Endless forms most stupid,icky, and small: The preponderance of noncharismatic invertebrates as integral to a biologically sound view of life

Big, beautiful organisms are useful for biological education, increasing evolution literacy, and biodiversity conservation. But if educators gloss over the ubiquity of streamlined and miniaturized organisms, they unwittingly leave students and the public vulnerable to the idea that the primary evolutionary plot of every metazoan lineage is “progressive” and "favors" complexity. We show that simple, small, and intriguingly repulsive invertebrate animals provide a counterpoint to misconceptions about evolution. Our examples can be immediately deployed in biology courses and outreach. This context emphasizes that chordates are not the pinnacle of evolution. Rather, in the evolution of animals, miniaturization, trait loss, and lack of perfection are at least as frequent as their opposites. Teaching about invertebrate animals in a “tree thinking” context uproots evolution misconceptions (for students and the public alike), provides a mental scaffold for understanding all animals, and helps to cultivate future ambassadors and experts on these little‐known, weird, and fascinating taxa.     

Community-based Adapted Tango Dancing for Individuals with Parkinson's Disease and Older Adults

Adapted tango dancing improves mobility and balance in older adults and additional populations with balance impairments. It is composed of very simple step elements. Adapted tango involves movement initiation and cessation, multi-directional perturbations, varied speeds and rhythms. Focus on foot placement, whole body coordination, and attention to partner, path of movement, and aesthetics likely underlie adapted tango’s demonstrated efficacy for improving mobility and balance. In this paper, we describe the methodology to disseminate the adapted tango teaching methods to dance instructor trainees and to implement the adapted tango by the trainees in the community for older adults and individuals with Parkinson’s Disease (PD). Efficacy in improving mobility (measured with the Timed Up and Go, Tandem stance, Berg Balance Scale, Gait Speed and 30 sec chair stand), safety and fidelity of the program is maximized through targeted instructor and volunteer training and a structured detailed syllabus outlining class practices and progression.     

微生物学课程中的微生物多样性教学内容的改革

为了强调物种多样性在微生物学课程中的分量,近几年我们尝试对教学内容进行了改革：①将微生物分类单元、细胞生物的拉丁双名法等共性分类知识调到绪论中;②在讲授原核微生物、真核微生物和病毒各章时,分别增加了它们的多样性与分类内容;③考虑到课时所限,采用图表概括方式介绍各大类微生物的主要分类类群及主要特征,将原先课堂教学中介绍的一些特殊微生物内容纳入到微生物多样性体系中讲解,适当予以详细介绍,     

Education for sustainability in higher education: a multiple-case study of three courses

Education for sustainability (EfS) in higher education is an emerging specialisation within the general field of EfS. EfS encompasses cognitive, affective and behavioural aspects, and aims at enhancing a variety of learning outcomes in these domains and reaching students from all programmes. One of the main challenges for higher education educators is to design courses in a way that will effectively promote the various learning outcomes of EfS. A central question is how sustainability should be integrated into the curriculum; which topics should be taught and which pedagogies ought to be applied to improve students’ knowledge, skills and motivation to promote sustainable living. The present study aimed to contribute to the knowledge about students’ learning outcomes yielded by different designs of EfS courses. This multiple-case study of three courses used a mixed-methods design. For each course, we identified its characteristics and analysed students’ self-reported learning outcomes. We found that: (1) a course with a higher degree of participatory learning, employing a system approach, promoted the highest and most varied learning outcomes; (2) the lecture-based course yielded the fewest learning outcomes; and (3) field trips promoted learning outcomes only when accompanied by more advanced pedagogies.     

Postsecondary Education in Industrial Ecology Across the World

In recent years, industrial ecology (IE) has become increasingly integrated into formal education as a distinct body of work. The aim of this article is to describe the state of IE in postsecondary education across the world by providing an inventory of programs and courses offered from a search conducted during the summer of 2012. Although some interpretation of the results is conducted, the aim of this article is to provide a snapshot of the state of IE in higher education in 2012 and serve as a starting point for future work. Data were collected on IE courses and programs across the world by Internet search in order to determine the prevalence of IE in postsecondary curricula. Subsequently, 190 universities and colleges from 46 countries were identified as offering courses and/or programs in IE. From this research, a total of 409 courses and 78 programs were inventoried and course content was analyzed (where available). The results indicate that IE is mainly studied at the graduate level within engineering and environmental disciplines, although undergraduate‐level curricula are emerging. In terms of disciplinary departments offering said curricula, IE is presented as a topic of instruction in varied fields of study, such as business and administration, and the arts. From the course syllabi analyzed, the main subjects being taught within IE education are introductory principles and general tools. Advanced or specialized aspects of the field are also covered, however, less frequently.     

高校病理生理学双语教学探析

双语教学作为蕴含着全新教育理念的教学形式,是我国高等教育改革的一项新措施,适应新时代背景下社会对高质量人才的需求。探析双语教学引入高校病理生理学中的可行意义、病理生理学双语教学中存在的问题、病理生理学双语教学的改进路径,有利于高校病理生理学双语教学的实践,对高校教育改革及医学专业人才培养起到积极的推动作用。     

Rings that Flow Like Quicksilver

Preparing dance specialist teachers to successfully educate an increasingly diverse student population highlights a number of challenges within an educational policy landscape characterized by technical production, methods-centric teacher preparation, teacher-proof curriculum, and standardization. The ramifications of these policies have significantly narrowed the scope of teacher preparation and stripped curricula of educational foundations content. This article presents a praxis-incorporative approach for integrating social foundations content into dance teacher preparation based on a review of relevant national standards. Recommendations and insights, grounded in research findings from an undergraduate dance pedagogy course (n = 59) taught from critical and feminist pedagogical perspectives, are discussed.