(2009). Science and Creationism: A Response to Kenneth Tobin. Cultural Studies of Science Education, v4 n2 p495-504 Jun. In his December editorial on Michael Reiss, Kenneth Tobin (\Cult Stud Sci Educ\ 3:793-798, 2008), raises some very important questions for science and science teachers regarding science education and the teaching of creationism in the classroom. I agree with him that students' creationist ideologies should be treated not as misconceptions but as worldviews. Because of creationism's peculiarly strong political links though, I argue that such discussion must address three critical and interconnected issues, including the uncertain state of teaching evolution in public schools nationally, the political convergence of the creationist political beliefs with bigoted worldviews, and creationism's inherent contrariness to science and human progress. I suggest that we as science educators therefore not consider all sides to be equally right and to instead take side against the politics of creationism. I also argue that we need much more serious discussion on how to better teach science to… [Direct]
(2008). Ethical Dilemmas in Individual and Collective Rights-Based Approaches to Tertiary Education Scholarships: The Cases of Canada and Cuba. Comparative Education, v44 n4 p425-444 Nov. One of the ongoing debates in Canadian higher education is the dilemma of the brain drain and the seemingly conflicting goals between the strategies and intentions of various government departments. While Citizenship and Immigration Canada aims to recruit the brightest students from across the globe to study in Canada and to enable their long-term stay as permanent residents and ultimately as citizens, the Canadian International Development Agency is mandated to strengthen human capacity in developing countries. This paper provides a critical analysis of the brain drain problem by juxtaposing Canadian policies with Cuban policies as manifested in the two countries' divergent approaches to international students and tertiary education scholarships for students from poorer countries. Following an overview of the existing scholarship programmes in both countries, ethical and philosophical considerations are examined that appear to underlie the two countries' individual-rights-based and… [Direct]
(2009). Development of Spatial and Verbal Working Memory Capacity in the Human Brain. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, v21 n2 p316-332 Feb. A core aspect of working memory (WM) is the capacity to maintain goal-relevant information in mind, but little is known about how this capacity develops in the human brain. We compared brain activation, via fMRI, between children (ages 7-12 years) and adults (ages 20-29 years) performing tests of verbal and spatial WM with varying amounts (loads) of information to be maintained in WM. Children made disproportionately more errors than adults as WM load increased. Children and adults exhibited similar hemispheric asymmetry in activation, greater on the right for spatial WM and on the left for verbal WM. Children, however, failed to exhibit the same degree of increasing activation across WM loads as was exhibited by adults in multiple frontal and parietal cortical regions. Thus, children exhibited adult-like hemispheric specialization, but appeared immature in their ability to marshal the neural resources necessary to maintain large amounts of verbal or spatial information in WM…. [Direct]
(2011). Keys to Scholarship. Teacher Education and Practice, v24 n4 p465-467 Fall. Up ahead, a foreboding wooden door showing wear from passage of earlier travelers is spotted. As the old porch light emits a pale yellow glow, a key ring emerges from deep inside the coat pocket. Searching for just the right key, the voyager settles on one that also shows age. As the key enters its receptacle and begins to turn, a clicking noise is heard. Everyone wonders curiously, what will happen next? In the world of teaching and learning, many are wondering the same thing. According to Sir Ken Robinson (2011), a key can be turned in two directions: One way can activate the locking mechanism keeping potential resources secure yet removed from the learner. Turned in the opposite direction, the door graciously opens presenting a wealth of reserves available to all who enter. Within this analogy to expand on the challenges currently facing scholarship of teaching and learning within the environment of higher education, the traveler equates to the learner. Human beings possess deeply… [Direct]
(2011). Curved Saccade Trajectories Reveal Conflicting Predictions in Associative Learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, v37 n5 p1164-1177 Sep. We report how the trajectories of saccadic eye movements are affected by memory interference acquired during associative learning. Human participants learned to perform saccadic choice responses based on the presentation of arbitrary central cues A, B, AC, BC, AX, BY, X, and Y that were trained to predict the appearance of a peripheral target stimulus at 1 of 3 possible locations, right (R), mid (M), or left (L), in the upper hemifield. We analyzed as measures of associative learning the frequency, latency, and curvature of saccades elicited by the cues and directed at the trained locations in anticipation of the targets. Participants were trained on two concurrent discrimination problems A+R, AC+R, AX+M, X+M and B+L, BC+L, BY+M, Y+M. From a connectionist perspective, cues were predicted to acquire associative links connecting the cues to the trained outcomes in memory. Model simulations based on the learning rule of the Rescorla and Wagner (1972) model revealed that for some cues,… [Direct]
(2002). Women Faculty of Color in the White Classroom: Narratives on the Pedagogical Implications of Teacher Diversity. This book compiles narratives by women professors of color who examine their classroom experiences in predominantly white U.S. campuses, focusing on the impact of their social positions upon their classroom practices and teaching-learning selves. The 19 papers are (1) "Introduction" (Lucila Vargas); (2) "Why Are We Still So Few and Why Has Our Progress Been So Slow?" (Lucila Vargas); (3) "My Classroom in Its Context: The Struggle for Multiculturalism" (Lucila Vargas); (4) "'Passing/Out' in the Classroom: Eradicating Binaries of Identity" (Giselle Liza Anatol); (5) "Reading the Body Indian: A Chicana Mestiza's Experience Teaching Literature" (Lisa D. Chavez); (6) "Useful Anger: Confrontation and Challenge in the Teaching of Gender, Race, and Violence" (Kimberly Nichele Brown); (7)"Negotiating the Minefield: Practicing Transformative Pedagogy as a Teacher of Color in a Classroom Climate of Suspicion" (Rashmi Luthra);…
(2015). Fostering Digital Citizenship through Safe and Responsible Use of ICT: A Review of Current Status in Asia and the Pacific as of December 2014. UNESCO Bangkok The proliferation and emergence of information and communications technology (ICT) has fundamentally changed the way in which society operates. The increasingly ubiquitous nature of ICT has also inevitably caused it to become indispensable as part of daily life and a basic building block of modern society. When used effectively and appropriately, the benefits of ICT are boundless, enabling inclusive and sustainable human development by providing people not only with access to information and services but also expending opportunities to participate in and contribute to the knowledge economy. Despite the affordances of ICT, the widespread use of ICT at present has brought about a range of social and ethical issues from online safety and security, misuse of information, and to health and mental hazard. Therefore, more so than ever, there is an urgent need to address and mitigate the risks associated with ICT use while simultaneously exploiting the opportunities afforded by these… [Direct]
(2009). The Challenges for Marketing Distance Education in Online Environment: An Intergrated Approach. Online Submission The education system of our times has transformed greatly due to enormous developments in the IT field, ease in access to online resources by the individuals and the teachers adopting new technologies in their instructional strategies, be it for course design, development or delivery. The field of Distance and Online Education is experiencing continuing growth. Starting from simple form of correspondence courses, this field has passed through various generations, employing from simple to complex technology like radio, television to computes, satellites, Internet, Wiki and Web 2.0 applications. The Internet and the Wide World Web have fundamentally altered the practice of distance teaching and learning. Many of the universities around the globe are offering their courses online. The emerging distance and online learning environments pose unique challenges towards marketing of distance education programmes. Distance education and online education is practiced in all the fields of human… [PDF]
(2009). Neoliberalization and Managerialization of "Education" in England and Wales–A Case for Reconstructing Education. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, v7 n2 p310-345 Nov. This paper argues that the neoliberalization of education in England, begun in the 1980s, is having profoundly harmful effects on the lives of individuals and society. Neoliberalism represents a shift away from the post-war social democratic notion of universal "citizenship" rights/identities toward a system of individual consumer rights/identities. In education, neoliberal reforms have exposed state provision to privatization and marketization, and the ideology of the "new managerialism" and its belief in "business" management practices. In this paper, the authors explore the dimensions of and potential resistances to this disenchanting status quo. They begin by outlining the drivers behind the privatization and marketization of education services before then detailing the impact of these changes on the education system (and, as a consequence, society) in England and Wales. This paper largely focuses on developments within the higher education (HE)… [PDF]
(2008). Interviewing Techniques Used in Selected Organizations Today. Business Communication Quarterly, v71 n3 p376-380. Businesses continue to use the job interview as a final determinant of the applicant's good fit for the company and its culture. Today, many companies are hiring less and/or are taking longer to find just the right person with the right skills for the right job. If an applicant is asked to come for an interview, the general feeling is that the applicant can do the job. So the applicant has to give an unforgettable interview. Companies will ask questions to assess the skills, experiences, and attitudes of job candidates to hire the best applicant for the job. This analysis links current interview instruction with current business practices. To gain knowledge of current business practices in the interview process, the author interviewed three human resources personnel in early 2008: Connie B. from a CPA firm, Bernadette H. from a regulatory government agency, and Eric S. from an oil service provider company. Based on these interviews, the types of hiring interviews conducted by these… [Direct]
(2008). Using Category Structures to Test Iterated Learning as a Method for Identifying Inductive Biases. Cognitive Science, v32 n1 p68-107 Jan. Many of the problems studied in cognitive science are inductive problems, requiring people to evaluate hypotheses in the light of data. The key to solving these problems successfully is having the right inductive biases–assumptions about the world that make it possible to choose between hypotheses that are equally consistent with the observed data. This article explores a novel experimental method for identifying the biases that guide human inductive inferences. The idea behind this method is simple: This article uses the responses produced by a participant on one trial to generate the stimuli that either they or another participant will see on the next. A formal analysis of this \iterated learning\ procedure, based on the assumption that the learners are Bayesian agents, predicts that it should reveal the inductive biases of these learners, as expressed in a prior probability distribution over hypotheses. This article presents a series of experiments using stimuli based on a… [Direct]
(2010). Subliminal Priming of Actions Influences Sense of Control over Effects of Action. Cognition, v115 n1 p26-38 Apr. The experience of controlling one's own actions, and through them events in the outside world, is a pervasive feature of human mental life. Two experiments investigated the relation between this sense of control and the internal processes involved in action selection and cognitive control. Action selection was manipulated by subliminally priming left or right keypress actions in response to a supraliminal visual target. The action caused the display of one of several colours as an action effect. The specific colour shown depended on whether the participant's action was compatible or incompatible with the preceding subliminal prime, and not on the prime identity alone. Unlike previous studies, therefore, the primes did not predict the to-be-expected action effects. Participants rated how much control they experienced over the different colours. Replicating previous results, compatible primes facilitated responding, whereas incompatible primes interfered with response selection…. [Direct]
(2010). \Goals\ Are Not an Integral Component of Imitation. Cognition, v114 n3 p423-435 Mar. Several theories suggest that actions are coded for imitation in terms of mentalistic goals, or inferences about the actor's intentions, and that these goals solve the \correspondence problem\ by allowing sensory input to be translated into matching motor output. We tested this intention reading hypothesis against general process accounts of imitation using the pen-and-cups task. The task has three components: participants place a pen in one of two cups, using their right or left hand, and one of two grips. Previous research has revealed a colour minimum error pattern; when one of the components is differentially coloured (e.g., one cup is red and the other blue), accuracy is greatest on the coloured dimension. We found the colour minimum error pattern, not only in the standard version of the task, where participants imitate the actions of a human model, but also in three novel variants of the task, in which participants responded on the basis of spatial or arbitrary… [Direct]
(2008). Human Capital Key Worry for Reformers. Education Week, v28 n14 p1, 13 Dec. Corporations have been striving to perfect the \people side\ of their operations for decades. Most hunt aggressively for the right talent, train workers to produce at high levels, and reward top performers with promotions and higher pay. In public education, though, school districts have been more passive in managing this vital asset. Most rely on colleges and universities to supply workers, and pay and promote people for experience and education levels rather than for their success in raising student achievement. But as the pressure to improve schools continues to mount–and reform efforts fall short–a growing number of school district leaders, funders, education thinkers, and policymakers are zeroing in on developing \human capital\ as the key strategy to improve student learning. In Washington last month, the new Strategic Management of Human Capital project held a three-day national conference that drew representatives from 40 large school districts, teachers' unions, state… [Direct]
(2014). On the Sequential Negotiation of Identity in Spanish-Language Discourse: Mobilizing Linguistic Resources in the Service of Social Action. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. This dissertation takes an ethnomethodologically-grounded, conversation-analytic approach in investigating the sequential deployment of linguistic resources in Spanish-language talk-in-interaction. Three sets of resources are examined: 2nd-person singular reference forms (t√∫, vos, usted), indicative/subjunctive verbal mood selection, and Spanish-English intersentential code-switching. In each case, we ask: How is it that these elements of language are mobilized by speakers to accomplish identity in the service of social action in interaction? With regard to 2nd-person reference forms, we illustrate how the turn-by-turn progression of talk can make relevant shifts in the linguistic means through which speakers refer to their hearers. It is demonstrated that these shifts contribute to the objective of an utterance by mobilizing the pragmatic meaning of a pronominal form to embody a recalibration of who the interactants project they are to one another–not in general, but rather at a… [Direct]