The Psychology of Gender

This chapter presents examples of active learning activities and how these experiential learning exercises are adapted to the course goals and objectives in a psychology of gender course. The focus of the chapter is on how to best integrate new research findings to the students’ existing knowledge base to create a new appreciation of these complex issues and how they influence each individual’s lif

Incidental memory for spatial information in young children as a function of age and gender

The purpose of the present study was to investigate Hasher and Zacks\u27 (1979,1984) automaticity theory of memory for spatial location information in young children using two incidental memory tasks. A total of 96 three- and fiveyear- olds (48 boys and 48 girls) were randomly assigned to either the manipulation condition (MC) or the observation condition (OC). In order to assess task difficulty, half of the participants manipulated a total of 18 genderstereotyped animal toys (male, female, neutral) and half of the participants a total of 9. After a 2 minute filler task, the participants were instructed to return the animals into their original spaces. Analyses of variance indicated a main effect of age, task difficulty, and gender-stereotype of the animals. Timing of reconstruction, strategy usage as well as implications for the automaticity theory are discussed

A Coversation with Chris Lowney

Chris Lowney, author of four books on leadership including Heroic Leadership: Best Practices from a 450-Year-Old Company that Changed the World, was interviewed for the inaugural issue of the Creighton Journal of Interdisciplinary Leadership. Heroic Leadershipdiscusses characteristics of great leaders based on principles developed by the Jesuits. In his interview he refers to the four core leadership pillars which are: self-awareness, ingenuity, love, and heroism. He sat down with Dr. Kristin Winford for an interview to talk about leadership and social justice

Administrators\u27 and Faculty\u27s Perceived Online Education Barriers and the Role of Transformational Leadership at a U.S. University in Lebanon

The purpose of this quantitative study was to identify the perceived barriers obstructing the implementation of online education by administrators and faculty at the School of Arts and Sciences of a U.S. university located in Lebanon. The aim of this study was to offer a solution to the most important perceived barriers to online education that informs administrative decisions concerning the appropriate modalities of online instruction that may be implemented at the university. The exploratory factor analysis identified 8 factors out of 35 possible perceived barriers to online education. Faculty and administrators perceived the structural barriers and the pedagogical barriers as very important. Faculty also perceived technical barriers as very important. As a first step toward offering online instruction, the university leadership could offer blended traditional and online education instruction for suitable courses in the School of Arts and Sciences with the goal of assessing feasibility and acceptance. The implementation of this solution may be smoother if facilitated using various leadership styles. In this article, the transformational leadership style is used for implementing the solution to the problem. The findings of this research may be beneficial for other universities in Lebanon and other nations that may be considering the implementation of online education

How to Launch an Interdisciplinary Leadership Program

Building a doctoral program in leadership is never an easy task, and building an interdisciplinary doctoral program is even more difficult. Yet, it is the interdisciplinary approach that differentiates typical leadership programs from others and offers learners an integrated view of leadership theories and practices. This special report presents an example of designing and implementing an interdisciplinary doctoral program that promotes social justice leadership. Drawing from firsthand experiences of program faculty, staff, and administration, we share lessons learned and the logic behind adopting an interdisciplinary approach for those creating programs that seeks to promote social justice. We found that by allowing students and faculty to convene together, rather than disperse into separate, isolated academic disciplines, emerging scholar-practitioners are encouraged to engage in realistic, professional practice investigation and problem-solving techniques. Through this experience, we also found that conscious coursework design involves integrating multiple, often quite divergent, disciplines into a core set of courses. Additionally, we learned that unifying students through a common mission permits distinctive discussions, including personal reflection and ethical decision-making opportunities among the concepts, constructs, and knowledge that extend beyond disciplinary lines (Cherney et al., 2012). We also found that cultivating a diverse student body and faculty base requires everyone to work strategically within the program, recognizing the call for coherence and consistency across disciplinary lines. Finally, we discovered that developing a dissertation in practice allows students to implement an evidence-based solution within their professional practice setting as their pinnacle doctorate work (Herr & Anderson, 2014; Olson & Clark, 2009). We conclude this paper by reiterating our finding that leadership programs that promote social justice are enhanced by adopting an interdisciplinary approach as this allows for the creation of a program that challenges students to learn at a more complex level, faculty to integrate disciplines, and programs to promote socially just ideals. We discuss implications for other schools seeking to develop an interdisciplinary doctoral leadership program

PHYSICS SCORES AS PREDICTORS OF THE MEDICAL COLLEGE ADMISSIONS TEST

Assessment tools used in a physics course were evaluated in terms of their predictive ability of student performance on the medical colleges admissions test (MCAT) physical sciences subtest. In particular, using regression and correlational analyses, relationships between the exams, final exam, overall semester scores, quiz scores, lab scores, paper score, and the MCAT scores on the physical sciences subtest were analyzed. The strongest correlations with the subtest scores existed with those tools that assessed analytical abilities. Specifically, the score on a comprehensive, multiple-choice final exam provided a single tool that can serve as an effective predictor of the subtest score. This study was undertaken to serve as an assessment tool to establish a baseline database from which future curriculum revisions could be planned and evaluated

NUCLEAR PHYSICS PROBLEM SOLVING: A CASE STUDY OF EXPERT-NOVICE DIFFERENCES

We examined problem-solving in nuclear science by gifted junior high school students, senior high school students, first year undergraduates, undergraduate physics majors, and graduate teaching assistants. The first study examined differences between expert and novice approaches, whereas the second study investigated the learning of problem-solving skills with a pre- and post-test. The results showed that with increased experience or expertise, students tended to solve the problems using higher levels of Bloom\u27s (1956) taxonomy. Junior high school students\u27 performance improved significantly after a week-long hands-on nuclear physics class. However, when solving a more conceptual nuclear physics problem, there were no significant differences in the pre- and post-tests of the gifted students at the same grade level. These studies suggest that gifted junior high school students have comparable cognitive abilities to older students, but that they lack the necessary knowledge base, that they use problem solving strategies that are lower on Bloom\u27s taxonomy, and that they focus on memorization rather than methods which are evaluative or synthetic

PREDICTING STUDENT PERFORMANCE IN A STATISTICS COURSE USING THE MATHEMATICS AND STATISTICS PERCEPTION SCALE (MPSP)

Students tend to have higher apprehension for a statistics class than for other psychology classes. Because anxiety can impair the performance in a class, and ultimately the mastery of the subject matter, the Mathematics and Statistic Perception Scale (MSPS) was designed to assess students\u27 perceptions of anxiety and attitudes toward statistics as well as provide a tool that could be used in classroom settings. The 22-item scale with three subscales (mathematics perceptions, statistics perceptions, and perceptions of relevance) was administered to 154 undergraduates and showed that over the course of a semester, perceptions of mathematics anxiety tended to decrease and perceptions of relevance tended to increase, whereas negative perceptions of statistics remained unchanged. Pre-test scores were predictive of final course grades. Programmatic assessment using the scale is discussed