A Learning Journey II: Learned Course Maps as a Basis to Explore How Students Learned Community Psychology Practice Competencies in a Community Coalition Building Course

This paper presents an illustrative case study of how students learned community psychology practice competencies. Utilizing course mapping, focus groups, and reflective writing, students and faculty coded, analyzed and interpreted student data to better understand learning activities and processes which contributed to learning community psychology practice competencies in a coalition building course. A community coalition simulation and group work related to the final project emerged as two student learning activities that were found by students to contribute meaningfully to their learning three community psychology practice competencies: (1) Ecological perspectives, (2) community partnership and inclusion and (3) collaboration and coalition development. The instructor’s modeling community psychology practice competency skills was also reported by students to facilitate their learning

A Learning Journey II: Learned Course Maps as a Basis to Explore How Students Learned Community Psychology Practice Competencies in a Community Coalition Building Course

This paper presents an illustrative case study of how students learned community psychology practice competencies. Utilizing course mapping, focus groups, and reflective writing, students and faculty coded, analyzed and interpreted student data to better understand learning activities and processes which contributed to learning community psychology practice competencies in a coalition building course. A community coalition simulation and group work related to the final project emerged as two student learning activities that were found by students to contribute meaningfully to their learning three community psychology practice competencies: (1) Ecological perspectives, (2) community partnership and inclusion and (3) collaboration and coalition development. The instructor’s modeling community psychology practice competency skills was also reported by students to facilitate their learning

‘Understanding’ as a practical issue in sexual health education for people with intellectual disabilities: a study using two qualitative methods

Objective: Sexual health education is important in addressing the health and social inequalities faced by people with intellectual disabilities. However, provision of health-related advice and education to people with various types and degrees of linguistic and learning difficulties involves addressing complex issues of language and comprehension. This paper reports an exploratory study using two qualitative methods to examine the delivery of sexual health education to people with intellectual disabilities. Methods: Four video-recordings of sexual health education sessions were collected. Conversation analysis was used to examine in detail how such education occurs as a series of interactions between educators and learners. Interviews with four educators were carried out and analyzed using thematic analysis. Results: The analysis shows how educators anticipate problems of comprehension and how they respond when there is evidence that a person does not understand the activity or the educational message. This occurs particularly when verbal prompts involve long sentences and abstract concepts. We show a characteristic pattern which arises in these situations, in which both educator and learner jointly produce a superficially correct response. Conclusions: While interviews allows us some insight into contextual issues, strategy, and aspects of sexual health education which occur outside of the actual teaching sessions, analysis of actual interactions can show us patterns which occur in interactions between educators and learners when comprehension is in question. Addressing how sexual health education is delivered in practice and in detail provides valuable lessons about how such education can be improved

Police Sexual Violence: A Few Bad Apples or a Cultural Norm?

Approximately 1,600 police officers across the United States were arrested for sex-related crimes during the ten year period 2005-2014. The arrested officers were employed by more than 1,100 state and local law enforcement agencies located in all fifty states and the District of Columbia. These data suggest that police sexual violence is a problem involving more than a few “bad apples” and that the phenomenon of police sexual violence may be a cultural norm within many state and local law enforcement agencies. This presentation was accepted for presentation at the annual meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in San Antonio, TX, on March 27, 2020. The conference, however, was cancelled due to the global COVID-19 pandemic

Content, Social, and Metacognitive Statements: An Empirical Study Comparing Human-Human and Human-Computer Tutorial Dialogue

We present a study which compares human-human computer-mediated tutoring with two computer tutoring systems based on the same materials but differing in the type of feedback they provide. Our results show that there are significant differences in interaction style between human-human and human-computer tutoring, as well as between the two computer tutors, and that different dialogue characteristics predict learning gain in different conditions. We show that there are significant differences in the non-content statements that students make to human and computer tutors, but also to different types of computer tutors. These differences also affect which factors are correlated with learning gain and user satisfaction. We argue that ITS designers should pay particular attention to strategies for dealing with negative social and metacognitive statements, and also conduct further research on how interaction style affects human-computer tutoring. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

The impact of asking intention or self-prediction questions on subsequent behavior: a meta-analysis

The current meta-analysis estimated the magnitude of the impact of asking intention and self-prediction questions on rates of subsequent behavior, and examined mediators and moderators of this question–behavior effect (QBE). Random-effects meta-analysis on 116 published tests of the effect indicated that intention/prediction questions have a small positive effect on behavior (d+ = 0.24). Little support was observed for attitude accessibility, cognitive dissonance, behavioral simulation, or processing fluency explanations of the QBE. Multivariate analyses indicated significant effects of social desirability of behavior/behavior domain (larger effects for more desirable and less risky behaviors), difficulty of behavior (larger effects for easy-to-perform behaviors), and sample type (larger effects among student samples). Although this review controls for co-occurrence of moderators in multivariate analyses, future primary research should systematically vary moderators in fully factorial designs. Further primary research is also needed to unravel the mechanisms underlying different variants of the QBE

The TRPC6 inhibitor, larixyl acetate, is effective in protecting against traumatic brain injury-induced systemic endothelial dysfunction

BACKGROUND: The incidence of traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) is on the rise in the USA. Concussions, or mild TBIs without skull fracture, account for about 75% of all TBIs. Mild TBIs (mTBIs) lead to memory and cognitive deficits, headaches, intraocular pressure rises, axonal degeneration, neuroinflammation, and an array of cerebrovascular dysfunctions, including increased vascular permeability and decreased cerebral blood flow. It has been recently reported that besides vascular dysfunction in the cerebral circulation, mTBI may also cause a significant impairment of endothelial function in the systemic circulation, at least within mesenteric microvessels. In this study, we investigated whether mTBI affects endothelial function in aortas and determined the contribution of transient receptor potential canonical (TRPC) channels to modulating mTBI-associated endothelial dysfunction. METHODS: We used a model of closed-head mTBI in C57BL/6, 129S, 129S-C57BL/6-F2 mice, and 129S-TRPC1 and 129S-C57BL/6-TRPC6 knockout mice to determine the effect of mTBI on endothelial function in mouse aortas employing ex vivo isometric tension measurements. Aortic tissue was also analyzed using immunofluorescence and qRT-PCR for TRPC6 expression following mTBI. RESULTS: We show that in various strains of mice, mTBI induces a pronounced and long-lasting endothelial dysfunction in the aorta. Ablation of TRPC6 protects mice from mTBI-associated aortic endothelial dysfunction, while TRPC1 ablation does not impact brain injury-induced endothelial impairment in the aorta. Consistent with a role of TRPC6 activation following mTBI, we observed improved endothelial function in wild type control mice subjected to mTBI following 7-day in vivo treatment with larixyl acetate, an inhibitor of TRPC6 channels. Conversely, in vitro treatment with the pro-inflammatory endotoxin lipopolysaccharide, which activates endothelial TRPC6 in a Toll-like receptor type 4 (TLR4)-dependent manner, worsened aortic endothelial dysfunction in wild type mice. Lipopolysaccharide treatment in vitro failed to elicit endothelial dysfunction in TRPC6 knockout mice. No change in endothelial TRPC6 expression was observed 7 days following TBI. CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that TRPC6 activation may be critical for inducing endothelial dysfunction following closed-head mTBI and that pharmacological inhibition of the channel may be a feasible therapeutic strategy for preventing mTBI-associated systemic endothelial dysfunction

A Panel of Papers Examining COVID-19 Masking and Vaccination Advertisements

This panel of papers harnesses persuasion theories to examine the content of masking and vaccination advertisements and public service announcements concerning COVID-19. The first paper describes major persuasion approaches, the rationale for the studies, and the methodology. The second and third papers describe the results of the content analyses, along with their implications for media messages on COVID and future research on these topics