Schooling for equitable excellence: principles of systemic design

Purpose: Education is a key institution of modern society, long recognized for its central role in the reproduction of inequities and with the potential to challenge them. Schools behave as their systems are designed. Achieving equity and excellence is not possible through attempts to fix “the school” or educators. Principles of systemic design that incorporate equity and excellence are needed to increase the likelihood of desirable outcomes. Design/methodology/approach: Using the social contract as a design principle, this paper systematically builds an empirical model of school provision aimed at equitable excellence. Findings: Equitable excellence in school provision is possible if choice is available across geolocation and socio-educational (dis)advantage, schools have autonomy over fiscal, personnel and curricular matters, public accountability is linked to academic outcomes and social impact, all moderated by the quality of teaching. Research limitations/implications: Data-driven empirical modelling is particularly attractive to policy makers, systemic authorities and researchers when theory (of all varieties) does not yield the necessary insights to support the functionality and effectiveness of systems to deliver equitable outcomes at scale. Empirical examples can be used to test the explanatory power of the novel model – and refine it when necessary. Practical implications: The empirical model and threshold question are the genesis of a common language for assessing relevant costs and benefits of initiatives for government and system designers. Significantly, establishing a threshold question and tests of legitimacy and strength to accompany the novel model provides a more principled way of prioritizing the competing demands on public investment in education. Originality/value: Establishing a threshold question and tests for legitimacy and strength to accompany the novel model provides a more principled way of prioritizing the competing demands to accompany

It’s not you, it’s me: A review of individual differences in visuo-spatial perspective taking

Visuo-spatial perspective taking (VSPT) concerns the ability to understand something about the visual relationship between an Agent or observation point on the one hand, and a target or scene on the other. Despite its importance to a wide variety of other abilities, from communication to navigation, and decades of research, there is as yet no theory of VSPT. Indeed, the heterogeneity of results from different (and sometimes the same) VSPT tasks point to a complex picture suggestive of multiple VSPT strategies, individual differences in performance, and context-specific factors that together have a bearing on both the efficiency and accuracy of outcomes. In this paper, we review the evidence in search of patterns in the data. We find a number of predictors of VSPT performance but also a number of gaps in our understanding that suggest useful pathways for future research and, possibly, a theory (or theories) of VSPT. Overall, this review makes the case for understanding VSPT by better understanding the perspective taker rather than the target agent or their perception

Wild chacma baboons (Papio ursinus) remember single foraging episodes

This study was supported by grants from Zürcher Hochschulverein, Schweizerische Akademie für Naturwissenschaften, Stiftung Thyll-Dürr, and Stiftung Annemarie Schindler, to R.N.Understanding animal episodic-like memory is important for tracing the evolution of the human mind. However, our knowledge about the existence and nature of episodic-like memory in non-human primates is minimal. We observed the behaviour of a wild male chacma baboon faced with a trade-off between protecting his stationary group from aggressive extra-group males and foraging among five out-of-sight platforms. These contained high-priority food at a time of natural food shortage. In 10 morning and eight evening trials, the male spontaneously visited the platforms in five and four different sequences, respectively. In addition, he interrupted foraging sequences at virtually any point on eight occasions, returning to the group for up to 2 h. He then visited some or all of the remaining platforms and prevented revisits to already depleted ones, apparently based on his memory for the previous foraging episode about food value, location, and time. Efficient use of memory allowed him to keep minimal time absent from his group while keeping food intake high. These findings support the idea that episodic-like memory offers an all-purpose solution to a wide variety of problems that require flexible, quick, yet precise decisions in situations arising from competition for food and mates in wild primates.PostprintPeer reviewe

False recognition in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease: rescue with sensory restriction and memantine.

Alzheimer's disease is commonly regarded as a loss of memory for past events. However, patients with Alzheimer's disease seem not only to forget events but also to express false confidence in remembering events that have never happened. How and why false recognition occurs in such patients is currently unknown, and treatments targeting this specific mnemonic abnormality have not been attempted. Here, we used a modified object recognition paradigm to show that the tgCRND8 mouse-which overexpresses amyloid β and develops amyloid plaques similar to those in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease-exhibits false recognition. Furthermore, we found that false recognition did not occur when tgCRND8 mice were kept in a dark, quiet chamber during the delay, paralleling previous findings in patients with mild cognitive impairment, which is often considered to be prodromal Alzheimer's disease. Additionally, false recognition did not occur when mice were treated with the partial N-methyl-d-aspartic acid receptor antagonist memantine. In a subsequent experiment, we found abnormally enhanced N-methyl-d-aspartic acid receptor-dependent long-term depression in these mice, which could be normalized by treatment with memantine. We suggest that Alzheimer's disease typical amyloid β pathology leads to aberrant synaptic plasticity, thereby making memory representations more susceptible to interfering sensory input, thus increasing the likelihood of false recognition. Parallels between these findings and those from the literature on Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment suggest a mechanism underlying false recognition in these patients. The false recognition phenomenon may provide a novel paradigm for the discovery of potential therapies to treat the mnemonic dysfunction characteristic of this disease

Temporal context and conditional associative learning

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>We investigated how temporal context affects the learning of arbitrary visuo-motor associations. Human observers viewed highly distinguishable, fractal objects and learned to choose for each object the one motor response (of four) that was rewarded. Some objects were consistently preceded by specific other objects, while other objects lacked this task-irrelevant but predictive context.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The results of five experiments showed that predictive context consistently and significantly accelerated associative learning. A simple model of reinforcement learning, in which three successive objects informed response selection, reproduced our behavioral results.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our results imply that not just the representation of a current event, but also the representations of past events, are reinforced during conditional associative learning. In addition, these findings are broadly consistent with the prediction of attractor network models of associative learning and their prophecy of a persistent representation of past objects.</p

Hippocampal-Dependent Spatial Memory in the Water Maze is Preserved in an Experimental Model of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy in Rats

Cognitive impairment is a major concern in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). While different experimental models have been used to characterize TLE-related cognitive deficits, little is known on whether a particular deficit is more associated with the underlying brain injuries than with the epileptic condition per se. Here, we look at the relationship between the pattern of brain damage and spatial memory deficits in two chronic models of TLE (lithium-pilocarpine, LIP and kainic acid, KA) from two different rat strains (Wistar and Sprague-Dawley) using the Morris water maze and the elevated plus maze in combination with MRI imaging and post-morten neuronal immunostaining. We found fundamental differences between LIP- and KA-treated epileptic rats regarding spatial memory deficits and anxiety. LIP-treated animals from both strains showed significant impairment in the acquisition and retention of spatial memory, and were unable to learn a cued version of the task. In contrast, KA-treated rats were differently affected. Sprague-Dawley KA-treated rats learned less efficiently than Wistar KA-treated animals, which performed similar to control rats in the acquisition and in a probe trial testing for spatial memory. Different anxiety levels and the extension of brain lesions affecting the hippocampus and the amydgala concur with spatial memory deficits observed in epileptic rats. Hence, our results suggest that hippocampal-dependent spatial memory is not necessarily affected in TLE and that comorbidity between spatial deficits and anxiety is more related with the underlying brain lesions than with the epileptic condition per se

Grammatical gender and linguistic relativity: A systematic review

Many languages assign nouns to a grammatical gender class, such that ‘bed’ might be assigned masculine gender in one language (e.g. Italian) but feminine gender in another (e.g. Spanish). In the context of research assessing the potential for language to influence thought (the linguistic relativity hypothesis), a number of scholars have investigated whether grammatical gender assignment ‘rubs off’ on concepts themselves, such that Italian speakers might conceptualise beds as more masculine than Spanish speakers. We systematically reviewed 43 pieces of empirical research examining grammatical gender and thought, which together tested 5,895 participants. We classified the findings in terms of their support for this hypothesis, and assessed the results against parameters previously identified as potentially influencing outcomes. Overall, we found that support was strongly task- and context-dependent, and rested heavily on outcomes that have clear and equally-viable alternative explanations. We also argue that it remains unclear whether grammatical gender is in fact a useful tool for investigating relativity

Advancing the Relational Research Program

As a field of study educational administration has a reputation for talking past one another. In this paper, I endeavour to pick up on some matters raised across the special issue with the explicit intent of advancing the relational research program. Due to the limitations on article length, but also the depth of some of the queries raised, I am unable to attend to all matters raised. I will be thinking through all matters and these will be presented in other forums. For this paper, my attention is limited to: the intellectual project – or social epistemology – that generated this special issue, the notion of productive theorizing, matters of context, what is a relation, and the audience or audiences of educational administration scholarship

Australian educational leadership research

Australia has a rich and diverse history of contributing to educational leadership research on a global scale. Significant theoretical developments have been generated by Australian-based scholars and there have been consistent contributions to large-scale international longitudinal projects. However, Australian educational leadership research and researchers are at a critical juncture. Despite a consistent claim that context matters, locally generated research and researchers are often overlooked by professional associations, systems, and educators. To engage with these matters, in this article I provide a brief overview of the theoretical and empirical contributions of Australian-based researchers, highlight the competing voices that have drowned out local contributions to national dialogues, and offer a comment on how Australian educational leadership research/ers warrant a larger audience than they currently receive