Book reviews

The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption Clay Johnson O'Reilly, 2011, 150pp. ISBN 978‐1‐449‐30468‐3, £11.20 hbk www.informationdiet.com     

The effects of team training on team outcomes: A meta‐analysis

A meta‐analysis was conducted to determine relationships between team training and team effectiveness. Results from the 21 studies provided evidence that training is positively related to team effectiveness and effectiveness in five outcome categories: affective, cognitive, subjective task‐based skill, objective task‐based skill, and teamwork skill.     

Instructional Interventions Across the Inquiry Process

ABSTRACT

Information literacy aims to develop in students the necessary skills, knowledge, and dispositions to use information to solve problems, make decisions, and generate new knowledge. The literature is replete with examples of guiding students in accessing and evaluating information sources. Less prevalent is processing information—the heart of the inquiry. Analysis, inference, and synthesis are critical thinking skills that take information literacy beyond a bibliographic task. In this liberal arts college setting, librarians team with consultants in quantitative reasoning, writing, and presentation technologies to deliver an information literacy program that supports not only the search, but also the analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and presentation of findings and insights.     

Examination of adolescents' screen time and physical fitness as independent correlates of weight status and blood pressure

Abstract

Physical fitness performance is an important health correlate yet is often unrelated to sedentary behaviour in early adolescence. In this study, we examined the association of sedentary behaviour (i.e. screen time) with weight-related health markers and blood pressure, after controlling for cardiorespiratory fitness performance. American middle school students (N = 153, 56% females) aged 11–15 years (mean 12.6 years, s = 0.5) completed assessments of cardiorespiratory fitness performance, screen time, weight status (BMI percentile, waist-to-height ratio), and blood pressure. Multivariate analysis of covariance, controlling for cardiorespiratory fitness performance, found those who met the daily recommendation of 2 h or less of screen time (n = 36, 23.5%) had significantly lower BMI (p < 0.05) and systolic blood pressure (p < 0.01) compared with those who exceeded this recommendation. Findings suggest specific intervention programmes may be designed to target both cardiorespiratory fitness and sedentary behaviours to maximize early adolescent health because these behaviours are likely to have unique and independent effects on youth health markers.     

Connecting the dots: Theorizing and mapping learning entanglement through archaeology and design

Designing for digitally enhanced learning has increased in complexity. In response, this paper calls for a reconceptualization of technology—as the reconfiguring of space, place, materials, time and social relations—enrolled and refashioned in emergent learning activity. Such reconceptualization requires analytical tools, methods and processes to map heterogeneous assemblages of people, tools and tasks. Educational researchers and designers are in need of approaches and theories that move beyond deterministic accounts about the utility of individual learning technologies, to connect theory, research and practice. Our research shows that in learning to distinguish between elements that are open to alteration through design and those that are not, educational designers gain deeper insights into the flows of matter, information and humans characteristic of productive networked learning environments. And this, in turn, gives rise to valued qualities of emergent learning activity in alignment with current theories about learning. In this paper, we present a series of methods adapted from archaeology and design, illustrating their power in tracing the complex webs of dependence characteristic of productive learning entanglement, with the aim of supporting future design for learning.     

Integrating medical communication skills with library skills curricula among first year medical students at the University of the West Indies,St. Augustine

A two-year study designed to integrate the medical communication skills and library skills curricula at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine is reported. Given that an integrated approach to curriculum development offers benefits to learners and staff. The objective of this study was to explore the feasibility of implementing this approach among Year 1 pre-clinical students in 1997 and 1998. Student performance on an essay question that integrated the application of students' knowledge of written communication and library skills in a final examination performance was assessed. Pre- and post-test results of students' library skills were compared within each year. anova analysis indicated that there was a significant increase in mean scores from pre-test to post-test which suggests that students performed better on a test of their knowledge and application of library skills after instruction, but the unavailability of a control group made this finding inconclusive. The findings are discussed in relation to practical and intellectual issues in curriculum integration. It is concluded that this type of curriculum integration is feasible, creates linkages in the curriculum and does not increase demand on student time.     

Examining Children's Implicit Racial Attitudes Using Exemplar and Category-Based Measures

The goal of this research was to examine children's implicit racial attitudes. Across three studies, a total of 359 White 5- to 12-year-olds completed child-friendly exemplar (Affective Priming Task; Affect Misattribution Procedure) and category-based (Implicit Association Test) implicit measures of racial attitudes. Younger children (5- to 8-year-olds) showed automatic ingroup positivity toward White child exemplars, whereas older children (9- to 12-year-olds) did not. Children also showed no evidence of automatic negativity toward Black exemplars, despite demonstrating consistent pro-White versus Black bias on the category-based measure. Together, the results suggest that (a) implicit ingroup and outgroup attitudes can follow distinct developmental trajectories, and (b) the spontaneous activation of implicit intergroup attitudes can depend on the salience of race.