Virtual Learning in a Socially Digitized World

Contemporary education is awakening from a crisis that has held the development of its potential and its relevance at bay for well over a century. Revolutions in science and spirituality are emerging a new relational intelligence that demands commensurate educational paradigms for its blossoming into daily engagements with life and the world around us. At the same time as people are leading increasingly interconnected lives, aware of and often participating in the narratives of people and ecosystems in other parts of the planet, information and communications technologies are increasingly integrating with and serving to mediate the human experience. This article explores the power of this confluence at the current nexus of civilizational demands in the context of increased planetary stresses and destabilizations. The case is made for a thrivable education praxis that draws on these emergent aspects of our developmental potential and emphasizes the importance of functional conviviality as an operational principle of learning for life.     

The Role of Public Education in Place-Remaking: From a Retrospective Walk Through my Hometown to a Call to Action

ABSTRACT

This essay examines the role of public education in the process of place-remaking that relies on a false separation between teaching and issues of race, politics, and power. I construct a historical case study of my hometown that presents a counter narrative, presented by students, of race and legacy in the context of a public school and the surrounding community. Building upon a walk-as-method approach, I illustrate the confluence of historical, racialized narratives that are discoverable at the scale of the city but invisible within the walls of the school. I conclude with an in-progress professional code of ethical teaching and research practice for the learning sciences. These commitments are intended to support and protect students (and all young people in our communities) from bearing sole responsibility for critical stances based on their identities and histories-in-place.     

Non-organizational Religious Participation,Subjective Religiosity,and Spirituality among Older African Americans and Black Caribbeans

This study utilizes data from the National Survey of American Life to examine the sociodemographic and denominational correlates of religious involvement and spirituality among older African Americans and Black Caribbeans. Eleven measures of non-organizational religious participation, subjective religiosity, and spirituality are utilized. The findings indicate significant gender, income, region, marital status, denominational, and immigration status differences in religiosity and spirituality. Among older Black Caribbeans, income was a consistent correlate of religious participation and spirituality. The findings are discussed in relation to prior work in the area of religious involvement among older adults.     

Stereotype threat undermines academic learning

Two experiments tested whether stereotype threat can undermine the acquisition of academic knowledge and thus harm performance even in nonthreatening settings. In Experiment 1, Black and White students studied rare words in either nonthreatening or threatening conditions. One to two weeks later, participants recalled word definitions, half in a nonthreatening "warm-up" and half in a threatening "test." Replicating past research, Black students performed worse on the test than on the warm-up. But importantly, Black students who had studied in the threatening rather than nonthreatening environment performed worse even on the warm-up. White students were unaffected. In Experiment 2, a value affirmation eliminated the learning-threat effect and provided evidence of psychological process. The results suggest that stereotype threat causes a form of "double jeopardy" whereby threat can undermine both learning and performance. The discussion addresses implications for the interpretation of group differences and for understanding how brief threat-reducing interventions can produce long-lasting benefits.     

The influence of consistency, frequency, and semantics on learning to read: an artificial orthography paradigm

Two experiments explored learning, generalization, and the influence of semantics on orthographic processing in an artificial language. In Experiment 1, 16 adults learned to read 36 novel words written in novel characters. Posttraining, participants discriminated trained from untrained items and generalized to novel items, demonstrating extraction of individual character sounds. Frequency and consistency effects in learning and generalization showed that participants were sensitive to the statistics of their learning environment. In Experiment 2, 32 participants were preexposed to the sounds of all items (lexical phonology) and to novel definitions for half of these items (semantics). Preexposure to either lexical phonology or semantics boosted the early stages of orthographic learning relative to Experiment 1. By the end of training, facilitation was restricted to the semantic condition and to items containing low-frequency inconsistent vowels. Preexposure reduced generalization, suggesting that enhanced item-specific learning was achieved at the expense of character-sound abstraction. The authors' novel paradigm provides a new tool to explore orthographic learning. Although the present findings support the idea that semantic knowledge supports word reading processes, they also suggest that item-specific phonological knowledge is important in the early stages of learning to read.     

Age Differences and Similarities in Identity Distress Following the Katrina Disaster: Theoretical and Applied Implications of Erikson��s Theory

This study examined predictions from Erikson??s lifespan developmental theory in the context of severe disaster exposure. Relationships among traumatic stress exposure, age, identity distress, and posttraumatic stress (PTS) symptoms were explored among 401 individuals (age 18?C86, mean = 32.83, SD = 14.1 years) exposed to Hurricane Katrina. Traumatic exposure experiences were related to identity distress ratings, but results suggested that the association was a function of PTS symptoms. Identity distress was negatively correlated with age, but the association between identity distress and age was moderated by the level of PTS symptoms. Identity distress was associated with PTS symptoms even while controlling for general psychological symptoms. The utility of the identity distress construct and theoretical implications for identity research in the wake of disaster are discussed.     

Timing and aging: slowing of fastest regular tapping rate with preserved timing error detection and correction

This study assessed motor limits of regular tapping, timing error detection, and correction in 60 participants aged from 19 to 98 years. Rate limitations on motor production were estimated from the average inter-tap interval when tapping as fast as possible for 30 s. Timing error detection required participants to judge whether a sound sequence presented at a slow, intermediate, or fast speed contained an irregularity because of phase shift. This was performed with or without synchronizing to the sounds. On the basis of the just-detectable positive phase shift (JND), participants synchronized with sequences containing phase shifts that were subliminal, just detectable or supraliminal. On average, JNDs were 9% of the inter-onset interval and by and large were not affected by synchronization tapping. Speed of error correction was estimated from the number of tones to return within 20% of the preshift synchronization error. Consistent with previous findings of motor slowing with aging, the fastest inter-tap interval increased with age. However, there was no age-related decline in JNDs or speed of error correction, both of which reflect predictive abilities for intervals within the motor repertoire of human adults. These results point towards intact timing error processing up to an advanced age. In assessing timing abilities in the brain of older adults, it is important to differentiate between motor slowing and its impact on rhythmic behavior (e.g., walking pace) from anticipatory mechanisms ('what to expect when') and how these are used to adjust the timing of actions ('what to do when').     

Influences of APOE ε4 and expertise on performance of older pilots

Little is known about how APOE ε4-related differences in cognitive performance translate to real-life performance, where training and experience may help to sustain performance. We investigated the influences of APOE ε4 status, expertise (FAA pilot proficiency ratings), and their interaction on longitudinal flight simulator performance. Over a 2-year period, 139 pilots aged 42-69 years were tested annually. APOE ε4 carriers had lower memory performance than noncarriers (p = .019). APOE interacted with Expertise (p = .036), such that the beneficial influence of expertise (p = .013) on longitudinal flight simulator performance was more pronounced for ε4 carriers. Results suggest that relevant training and activity may help sustain middle-aged and older adults' real-world performance, especially among APOE ε4 carriers.     

Contributions of familiarity and recollection rejection to recognition: evidence from the time course of false recognition for semantic and conjunction lures

It has been suggested that both familiarity and recollection contribute to the recognition decision process. In this paper we leverage the form of false alarm rate functions--in which false alarm rates describe an inverted U-shaped function as the time between study and test increases--to assess how these processes support retention of semantic and surface form information from previously studied words. We directly compare the maxima of these functions for lures that are semantically related and lures that are related by surface form to previously studied material. This analysis reveals a more rapid loss of access to surface form than to semantic information. To separate the contributions of item familiarity and reminding-induced recollection rejection to this effect, we use a simple multinomial process model; this analysis reveals that this loss of access reflects both a more rapid loss of familiarity and lower rates of recollection for surface form information.