School-Based Teacher Education in the United States : An Uneven Evolution

What does school-based teacher education mean in the United States? Certainly, it does not mean that funding, decision-making and management of programs are the province of individual school districts; in the United States, teacher education is firmly ensconced in higher education. The overwhelming majority of teachers are prepared in colleges and universities, licensed by individual states, and employed by local school districts. Law, tradition, and funding suggest that this general pattern will not change soon. While teacher education is located primarily in higher education institutions, school-based teacher education exists. It exists in many forms, ranging from student teaching and other field experiences in which students apply concepts and skills learned on campus to comprehensive partnerships among higher education institutions and local school districts for comprehensive initial and continuing teacher development. In this article, we explore several configurations of school-based teacher education. We first present brief scenarios that illustrate common schoolbased patterns, then describe several configurations currently in operation in the United States. We then summarise some of the issues inherent in school-based teacher education

Differential outcome expectancies of reinforcement and nonreinforcement and memory for temporal and nontemporal stimuli

The effects of differential outcome expectancies of food and no-food on memory for temporal and non-temporal stimuli were examined. Pigeons matched short (2s) and long (8s) sample durations to red and green comparison stimuli, and vertical and horizontal lines to vertical and horizontal lines. In Experiment 1, the Nondifferential Outcome group (NDO) received food or no-food on a random half of all trials. The Differential Outcome groups (DO) received food for correct responding to one temporal sample and one nontemporal sample, and no-food following the other samples. In the Differential Outcome-Short-Food group (DO-SF), the short sample stimulus was followed by food, whereas in the Differential Outcome-Long-Food group (DO-LF), the long sample stimulus was followed by food. On linetilt trials, food followed vertical for half of the subjects in each DO group. During a subsequent delayed matching-to-sample (DMTS) testing the NDO group displayed a typical choose-short bias. Other than at the 0s delays interval on no-food trials, the DO groups displayed equivalent biases to the most favourable outcome (choose-favourable bias). In Experiment 2 outcome expectancies were removed off-baseline for the DO groups, followed by a reintroduction of MTS with nondifferential outcomes for all groups. On session 1 of matching-to-sample (MTS), the DO groups performed less accurately than the NDO group. Performance of all groups was equivalent during delay testing. Apparently the performance of the DO groups had been guided by outcome expectancies which overshadowed sample stimulus control. These findings suggest that nonanalogical coding of event duration occurred

F.A.R.O.G. FORUM, Vol. 6 No. 4

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/francoamericain_forum/1065/thumbnail.jp

Lower age at menarche affects survival in older Australian women: results from the Australian Longitudinal Study of Ageing

Extent: 10p.Background: While menarche indicates the beginning of a woman's reproductive life, relatively little is known about the association between age at menarche and subsequent morbidity and mortality. We aimed to examine the effect of lower age at menarche on all-cause mortality in older Australian women over 15 years of follow-up. Methods: Data were drawn from the Australian Longitudinal Study of Ageing (n = 1,031 women aged 65-103 years). We estimated the hazard ratio (HR) associated with lower age at menarche using Cox proportional hazards models, and adjusted for a broad range of reproductive, demographic, health and lifestyle covariates. Results: During the follow-up period, 673 women (65%) died (average 7.3 years (SD 4.1) of follow-up for decedents). Women with menses onset < 12 years of age (10.7%; n = 106) had an increased hazard of death over the follow-up period (adjusted HR 1.28; 95%CI 0.99-1.65) compared with women who began menstruating aged ≥ 12 years (89.3%; n = 883). However, when age at menarche was considered as a continuous variable, the adjusted HRs associated with the linear and quadratic terms for age at menarche were not statistically significant at a 5% level of significance (linear HR 0.76; 95%CI 0.56 - 1.04; quadratic HR 1.01; 95%CI 1.00-1.02). Conclusion: Women with lower age at menarche may have reduced survival into old age. These results lend support to the known associations between earlier menarche and risk of metabolic disease in early adulthood. Strategies to minimise earlier menarche, such as promoting healthy weights and minimising family dysfunction during childhood, may also have positive longer-term effects on survival in later life.Lynne C Giles, Gary FV Glonek, Vivienne M Moore, Michael J Davies and Mary A Luszc