Studying for Exams Just Got More Relaxing—Animal-Assisted Activities at the University of Connecticut Library

In recent years, academic libraries have expanded their traditional focus on intellectual and scholarly pursuits, with many libraries now initiating programs that support student growth, development, and wellness. Although providing animal-assisted activities to college students is a fairly new concept, the social and therapeutic benefits of pet ownership or simply interacting with a companion animal are well documented. The University of Connecticut's Homer Babbidge Library on the Storrs campus chose to support the physical and emotional well-being of students during the stress-filled week of finals by providing therapy dogs. Student interaction and feedback were overwhelmingly positive.     

Does moderate-intensity continuous training result in greater total energy expenditure compared to high-intensity interval training?

Recently in the Journal of Sports Sciences, Schaun et al. published a study on the comparison of energy expenditure between high-intensity interval training and moderate continuous training performed in water. With this Letter to the Editor, we would like to comment on the methodological aspects that should be considered to analyze the results presented, as well as the conclusions.

Abbreviations: CONT, moderate-intensity continuous training; EPOC, excess post-exercise oxygen consumption; HIIT, high-intensity interval training; VO2max, maximal oxygen consumption.     

Does engagement in Forest School influence perceptions of risk,held by children,their parents,and their school staff?

In a climate where, it is claimed, children now spend very little time out of doors because adults fear for their safety and impose a ‘zero risk childhood’ on them, Forest School aims to offer learners the opportunity to take ‘supported risks’. This study investigated perceptions of risk associated with the outdoors, held by children, their parents and practitioners, and whether accessing Forest School impacts on these perceptions of risk. Practitioners were generally either strongly risk-averse or strongly permissive; Forest School influenced them to be less risk-averse in some respects. Parents held ambiguous perceptions, wanting to keep their children very safe but also to help them develop strong and confident attitudes to risk. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Implementing cycles of Assess,Plan, Do,Review: a literature review of practitioner perspectives

This article uses a literature review process to explore current literature on Response to Intervention (RtI), an approach to the identification of and provision for students with special educational needs introduced in the USA by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004. Parallels are made between RtI and the graduated approach of successive cycles of Assess, Plan, Do, Review (APDR) outlined in the Special Educational Needs and Disability Code of Practice introduced in England in 2014. Research concerning APDR is scarce, and therefore this review looks to research on RtI to inform current practice. Recurring themes throughout the literature relate to the ongoing professional development and learning for practitioners that is afforded by engagement in RtI, and an awareness that it takes time to accrue the benefits of such an approach. Further research is needed to ascertain the outworking of a reform such as RtI/APDR within the English context.     

Impacts of contextual and explicit instruction on preservice elementary teachers' understandings of the nature of science

This mixed‐methods investigation compared the relative impacts of instructional approach and context of nature of science instruction on preservice elementary teachers' understandings. The sample consisted of 75 preservice teachers enrolled in four sections of an elementary science methods course. Independent variables included instructional approach to teaching nature of science (implicit vs. explicit) and the context of nature of science instruction (as a stand‐alone topic vs. situated within instruction about global climate change and global warming). These treatments were randomly applied to the four class sections along a 2 × 2 matrix, permitting the comparison of outcomes for each independent variable separately and in combination to those of a control group. Data collection spanned the semester‐long course and included written responses to pre‐ and post‐treatment administrations of the VNOS‐B, semi‐structured interviews, and a variety of classroom artifacts. Qualitative methods were used to analyze the data with the goal of constructing profiles of participants' understandings of the nature of science and of global climate change /global warming (GCC/GW). These profiles were compared across treatments using non‐parametric statistics to assess the relative effectiveness of the four instructional approaches. Results indicated that preservice teachers who experienced explicit instruction about the nature of science made statistically significant gains in their views of nature of science regardless of whether the nature of science instruction was situated within the context of GCC/GW or as a stand‐alone topic. Further, the participants who experienced explicit nature of science instruction as a stand‐alone topic were able to apply their understandings of nature of science appropriately to novel situations and issues. We address the implications of these results for teaching the nature of science in teacher preparation courses. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., Inc. J Res Sci Teach 48: 414–436, 2011