(Press-News.org) Professional development workshops for college teachers, designed to encourage the use of active, "learner-centered" teaching methods, may be less effective than the participants believe, according to research reported in the July issue of BioScience.
Diane Ebert-May of Michigan State University and her colleagues studied the teaching of participants in two such established programs for faculty teaching introductory biology courses. Although after the workshops most of the faculty judged themselves to be providing the favored, learner-centered teaching, which encourages student engagement and exploration rather than lecture-style presentations, analysis of video recordings showed that most of the participants were still using traditional styles of teaching up to two years later. More experienced teachers were less likely to adopt the favored teaching styles than early-career teachers.
Ebert-May and her five coauthors examined data from two multi-day programs, one of which occurred over several years and one of which was repeated annually. Both programs led to participating faculty knowing more about inquiry-based teaching, as expected, and a large majority of them also reported later in questionnaires that they were actually using such practices. But 75 percent were not in fact doing so substantially, according to Ebert-May's study. The researchers state that the results call into question the value of the self-assessment method frequently used in education studies, and recommend that in future, researchers should rely on validated independent assessments of teaching performance. Although a lack of support from colleagues for adopting learner-centered teaching methods is often suggested as an explanation when they are not adopted, the participants in Ebert-May's study reported that having insufficient time was the main impediment to their revising their teaching.
Ebert-May and her coauthors conclude that changes are needed in professional development programs if they are to bring about real improvements in teaching practice. In particular, they favor providing participating faculty with more opportunities for direct practice of what they have learned. "Instant replays of teaching with expert commentary may become our most powerful tool to improve outcomes," they conclude.
###
By noon EST on 6 July 2011 and until early August, the full text of the article will be available for free download through the copy of this press release available at www.aibs.org/bioscience-press-releases/.
BioScience, published 12 times per year, is the journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS). BioScience publishes commentary and peer-reviewed articles covering a wide range of biological fields, with a focus on "Organisms from Molecules to the Environment." The journal has been published since 1964. AIBS is an umbrella organization for professional scientific societies and organizations involved with biology. It represents some 200 member societies and organizations with a combined membership of about 250,000.
The complete list of peer-reviewed articles in the July 2011 issue of BioScience is as follows:
Spring Flowering Response to Climate Change between 1936 and 2006 in Alberta, Canada by Elisabeth Beaubien and Andreas Hamann
Borders of Biodiversity: Life at the Edge of the World's Large Lakes by Yvonne Vadeboncoeur, Peter B. McIntyre, and M. Jake Vander Zanden
Correlates of Vertebrate Extinction Risk in Canada by Sean C. Anderson, Robert G. Farmer, Francesco Ferretti, Aimee Lee S. Houde, and Jeffrey A. Hutchings
What We Say Is Not What We Do: Effective Evaluation of Faculty Professional Development Programs by Diane Ebert-May, Terry L. Derting, Janet Hodder, Jennifer L. Momsen, Tammy M. Long, and Sarah E. Jardeleza
Crop Wild Relatives—Undervalued, Underutilized, and under Threat? by Brian V. Ford-Lloyd, Markus Schmidt, Susan J. Armstrong, Oz Barazani, Jan Engels, Rivka Hadas, Karl Hammer, Shelagh P. Kel, Dingming Kang, Korous Khoshbakht, Yinghui Li, Chunlin Long, Bao-Rong Lu, Keping Ma, Viet Tung Nguyen, Lijuan Qiu, Song Ge, Wei Wei, Zongwen Zhang, and
Nigel Maxted
END
Gray whales survived many cycles of global cooling and warming over the past few million years, likely by exploiting a more varied diet than they do today, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, and Smithsonian Institution paleontologists.
The researchers, who analyzed California gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) responses to climate change over the past 120,000 years, also found evidence to support the idea that the population of gray whales along the Pacific Coast before the arrival of humans was two to four times today's population, which ...
More than 99 per cent of modern vertebrates (animals with a backbone, including humans) have jaws, yet 420 million years ago, jawless, toothless armour-plated fishes dominated the seas, lakes, and rivers. There were no vertebrates yet on land and the recently evolved jawed fishes were minor players in this alien world, some sporting unusual jaw shapes and structures that bear little physical resemblance to modern animals.
The researchers, led by Dr Philip Anderson of Bristol's School of Earth Sciences, applied concepts from physics and engineering to unravel the potential ...
BOULDER, Colo. – Showcasing new tools for widespread development of quantum circuits made of mechanical parts, scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a flexible, broadly
usable technique for steadily calming the vibrations of an engineered mechanical object down to the quantum "ground state," the lowest
possible energy level.
Described in a Nature paper posted online July 6,* the NIST experiments nearly stop the beating motion of a microscopic aluminum drum made of about 1 trillion atoms, placing the drum in a realm ...
Results from a study of over 50 000 pregnancies revealed that women who gave up smoking when their pregnancy was confirmed gave birth to babies with a similar birthweight to those born to mothers who had never smoked, Professor Nick Macklon, from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of Southampton, UK, told the annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology today (Wednesday).
Low birthweight is the most common negative outcome of smoking during pregnancy, but foetuses exposed to maternal smoking are also at risk of premature ...
The group looked at 60,650 singletons in a common Nordic database from ART registers in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden and compared these to a control group of 360,022 naturally conceived (NC) singletons. In both groups 0.4 % of singletons were stillborn, with a definition of stillbirth as a dead child after 22 weeks of gestation. After having been matched with the control group regarding mother's parity and year of birth, the overall risk of stillbirth was found to be marginally higher (1.1 fold) in ART children after adjusting for factors such as maternal age and ...
Other important data the European IVF Monitoring group (EIM) on 2008 cycles and the International Committee Monitoring Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ICMART) on 2007 cycles highlighted were Sweden's low rate of multiple births – the lowest in the world – and Spain's 30 % share of egg donations in Europe.
The EIM collected data on frozen oocyte retrieval (FOR) cycles for the first time. Until today, egg freezing is still not offered on a wide scale but can be an option for women who wish to postpone motherhood or are facing cancer therapy to save their lives. Recently, ...
In 2009, 1,547 ART children were born in public clinics in Denmark, projecting a net tax revenue of €224 million and €247 million in 25 and 50 years respectively. The authors of the study calculated that reductions of 30-50% in ART cycles following the new policy would lead to cost savings of €67 - €111 million for the Danish government in 2034. By 2059 however, when the IVF cohort are 50 years of age, the government would have lost €74 - €123 million due to less tax contributions from fewer children born.
"The most common argument governments use not to fund ART is ...
POF is not only associated with infertility but also with significantly increased morbidity and mortality, as well as a decreased quality of life equivalent to that of people with type 2 diabetes or rheumatoid arthritis, said Dr. Rumana Islam, from Imperial College, London, UK.
Previous studies of POF, defined as the onset of menopause before the age of 40, have assessed the small group of women who seek hospital care, and therefore there is little information about the risks and impacts of POF across a whole population, Dr. Islam explained. With her colleague Dr. Rufus ...
TORONTO, ON – A Toronto-based researcher is at the helm of a massive, worldwide study that identifies the top global challenges in mental health. The paper resulting from the study appears in Nature today.
Professor Abdallah S. Daar, senior scientist with the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health at the University Health Network (UHN) and the University of Toronto, co-authored the historic study, "Grand Challenges in Global Mental Health." The study – the world's largest of its kind – brought together more than 400 international researchers, advocates, clinicians ...
Researchers at King's College London have found a molecule in the body which controls sensitivity to pain from UVB irradiation, identifying it as a new target for medicines to treat pain caused by other common inflammatory conditions such as arthritis.
The molecule, called CXCL5, is part of a family of proteins called chemokines, which recruit inflammatory immune cells to the injured tissue, triggering pain and tenderness. This is the first study to reveal this molecule's role in mediating pain.
The study, funded by the Wellcome Trust (as part of the London Pain Consortium), ...
