Education and information can increase the acceptance of climate policies

An important question for policymakers worldwide is how to make climate and environmental policies acceptable among the populations. A new study sheds light on the preferences in five East African countries. The study shows, among others, that education and information about how revenues from carbon taxes are used are important factors.

Making climate policies acceptable to the public is crucial to make them effective and to avoid resistance and protests.

Research has, until now, focused on high-income countries. This new study, however, is based on a survey with 4,766 respondents in Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda.

It turns out that there are both similarities and differences compared to previous studies.

Important inform how revenues will be used

The researchers focused on educated individuals in urban areas since they are likely to influence policy processes.

This also means that the sample does not fully represent the total East African population.

One conclusion, that aligns with previous studies, is that a higher level of education and climate change concern are linked to a higher acceptance of policies aimed at reducing fossil fuel consumption.

If you specify how the revenue from a climate tax or subsidy removal would be used, the support for these policy instruments almost doubled.

Social programs more important than environmental

In contrast to earlier studies, the researchers found that investments in social programs, not environmental programs, increased the acceptability the most.

"One possible explanation would be that in a country where poverty is prevalent, social issues are more urgent to people," says Daniel Slunge, one of the study's authors.

Trust in government didn't seem to play a big role for the acceptance.

There were also significant differences between the countries.

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The sense of order distinguishes humans from other animals

Remembering the order of information is central for a person when participating in conversations, planning everyday life, or undergoing an education. A new study, published in the scientific journal PLoS One, shows that this ability is probably human unique. Even the closest relatives of humans, such as bonobos, do not learn order in the same way.

"The study contributes another piece of the puzzle to the question of how the mental abilities of humans and other animals differ, and why only humans speak languages, plan space travel, and have learned to exploit the earth so efficiently that we now pose a serious threat to countless other life forms," says Johan Lind, associate professor in ethology and deputy director at the Center for Cultural Evolution, Stockholm University. Since September also associate professor of ethology at Linköping University.

Already earlier research at Stockholm University has suggested that only humans have the ability to recognize and remember so-called sequential information, and that this ability is a fundamental building block underlying unique human cultural abilities. But previously, this sequence memory-hypothesis has not been tested in humans' closest relatives, the great apes. The new experiments now show that also bonobos, one of the great apes, struggle to learn the order of stimuli.

In the recently published book The Human Evolutionary Transition: From Animal Intelligence to Culture (Princeton University Press), ethologists Magnus Enquist and Johan Lind at Stockholm University, and Stefano Ghirlanda, researcher in psychology at Brooklyn College, New York, have launched a new theory for how humans became cultural beings. A central idea concerns the difference in how humans and other animals recognize and remember sequential information.

"We have previously analyzed a large number of studies that suggest that only humans recognize and remember sequential information faithfully. But, even though we analyzed data from a number of mammals and birds, including monkeys, there has been a lack of information from our closest relatives, the other great apes," says Johan Lind.

In a series of experiments, memory abilities of bonobos and humans were tested by having them press computer screens to, among other things, learn to distinguish between short sequences, including pressing right if a yellow square comes before a blue square, or by pressing to the left of the blue square appears before the yellow square.

"The study shows that bonobos forget that they have seen a blue square already five to 10 seconds after it has disappeared from the screen, and that they have great difficulty learning to distinguish the sequences blue-square-before-yellow-square from yellow-square- before-blue-square, even though they have been trained for thousands of trials," says Vera Vinken, associated with Stockholm University, now a PhD student in Great Britain at the Biosciences Institute, Newcastle University.

In contrast, the study shows that humans learned to distinguish the short sequences nearly immediately. However, it still remains to be shown exactly how our closest relatives can remember and use sequential information.

"We now know that our closest relatives do not share the same sequential mental abilities with humans. But even if the results indicate that their working memory works in principle in the same way as in rats and pigeons, no one has yet demonstrated this in practice," says Magnus Enquist, professor emeritus and one of the founders of the Center for Cultural Evolution.

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Hunter-gatherer childhoods may offer clues to improving education and wellbeing in developed countries

Hunter-gatherers can help us understand the conditions that children may be psychologically adapted to because we lived as hunter-gatherers for 95% of our evolutionary history. And paying greater attention to hunter-gatherer childhoods may help economically developed countries improve education and wellbeing.

Published today in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, a new study by Dr Nikhil Chaudhary, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Cambridge, and Dr Annie Swanepoel, a child psychiatrist, calls for new research into child mental health in hunter-gatherer societies. They explore the possibility that some common aspects of hunter-gatherer childhoods could help families in economically developed countries. Eventually, hunter-gatherer behaviours could inform 'experimental intervention trials' in homes, schools and nurseries.

The authors acknowledge that children living in hunter-gatherer societies live in very different environments and circumstances than those in developed countries. They also stress that hunter-gatherer children invariably face many difficulties that are not experienced in developed countries and, therefore, caution that these childhoods should not be idealised.

Drawing on his own observations of the BaYaka people in Congo and the extensive research of anthropologists studying other hunter-gatherer societies, Dr Chaudhary highlights major differences in the ways in which hunter-gatherer children are cared for compared to their peers in developed countries. He stresses that "contemporary hunter-gatherers must not be thought of as 'living fossils', and while their ways of life may offer some clues about our prehistory, they are still very much modern populations each with a unique cultural and demographic history."

Physical contact and attentiveness

Despite increasing uptake of baby carriers and baby massage in developed countries, levels of physical contact with infants remain far higher in hunter-gatherer societies. In Botswana, for instance, 10-20 week old !Kung infants are in physical contact with someone for around 90% of daylight hours, and almost 100% of crying bouts are responded to, almost always with comforting or nursing -- scolding is extremely rare.

The study points out that this exceptionally attentive childcare is made possible because of the major role played by non-parental caregivers, or 'alloparents', which is far rarer in developed countries.

Non-parental caregivers

In many hunter-gatherer societies, alloparents provide almost half of a child's care. A previous study found that in the DRC, Efe infants have 14 alloparents a day by the time they are 18 weeks old, and are passed between caregivers eight times an hour.

Dr Chaudhary said: "Parents now have much less childcare support from their familial and social networks than would likely have been the case during most of our evolutionary history. Such differences seem likely to create the kind of evolutionary mismatches that could be harmful to both caregivers and children."

"The availability of other caregivers can reduce the negative impacts of stress within the nuclear family, and the risk of maternal depression, which has knock-on effects for child wellbeing and cognitive development."

The study emphasises that alloparenting is a core human adaptation, contradicting 'intensive mothering' narratives which emphasise that mothers should use their maternal instincts to manage childcare alone. Dr Chaudhary and Dr Swanepoel write that 'such narratives can lead to maternal exhaustion and have dangerous consequences'.

Care-giving ratios

The study points out that communal living in hunter-gatherer societies results in a very high ratio of available caregivers to infants/toddlers, which can even exceed 10:1.

This contrasts starkly with the nuclear family unit, and even more so with nursery settings, in developed countries. According to the UK's Department of Education regulations, nurseries require ratios of 1 carer to 3 children aged under 2 years, or 1 carer to 4 children aged 2-3.

Dr Chaudhary said: "Almost all day, hunter-gatherer infants and toddlers have a capable caregiver within a couple of metres of them. From the infant's perspective, that proximity and responsiveness, is very different from what is experienced in many nursery settings in the UK."

"If that ratio is stretched even thinner, we need to consider the possibility that this could have impacts on children's wellbeing."

Children providing care and mixed-age active learning

In hunter-gatherer societies, children play a significantly bigger role in providing care to infants and toddlers than is the case in developed countries. In some communities they begin providing some childcare from the age of four and are capable of sensitive caregiving; and it is common to see older, but still pre-adolescent children looking after infants.

By contrast, the NSPCC in the UK recommends that when leaving pre-adolescent children at home, babysitters should be in their late teens at least.

Dr Chaudhary said: "In developed countries, children are busy with schooling and may have less opportunity to develop caregiving competence. However, we should at least explore the possibility that older siblings could play a greater role in supporting their parents, which might also enhance their own social development."

The study also points out that instructive teaching is rare in hunter-gatherer societies and that infants primarily learn via observation and imitation. From around the age of two, hunter-gatherer children spend large portions of the day in mixed-age (2-16) 'playgroups' without adult supervision. There, they learn from one another, acquiring skills and knowledge collaboratively via highly active play practice and exploration.

Learning and play are two sides of the same coin, which contrasts with the lesson-time / play-time dichotomy of schooling in the UK and other developed countries.

Dr Chaudhary and Dr Swanepoel note that "Classroom schooling is often at odds with the modes of learning typical of human evolutionary history." The study acknowledges that children living in hunter-gather societies live in very different environments and circumstances than those in developed countries:

"Foraging skills are very different to those required to make a living in market-economies, and classroom teaching is certainly necessary to learn the latter. But children may possess certain psychological learning adaptations that can be practically harnessed in some aspects of their schooling. When peer and active learning can be incorporated, they have been shown to improve motivation and performance, and reduce stress." The authors also highlight that physical activity interventions have been shown to aid performance among students diagnosed with ADHD.

The study calls for more research into children's mental health in hunter-gatherer societies to test whether the hypothesised evolutionary mismatches actually exist. If they do, such insights could then be used to direct experimental intervention trials in developed countries.

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Learning with all your senses: Multimodal enrichment as the optimal learning strategy of the future

Many educational approaches assume that integrating complementary sensory and motor information into the learning experience can enhance learning, for example gestures help in learning new vocabulary in foreign language classes. In her recent publication, neuroscientist Katharina von Kriegstein from Technische Universität Dresden and Brian Mathias of the University of Aberdeen summarize these methods under the term "multimodal enrichment." This means enrichment with multiple senses and movement. Numerous current scientific studies prove that multimodal enrichment can enhance learning outcomes. Experiments in classrooms show similar results.

In the review article, the two researchers compare these findings with cognitive, neuroscience, and computational theories of multimodal enrichment. Recent neuroscience research has found that the positive effects of enriched learning are associated with response in brain regions that serve perception and motor function. For example, hearing a recently learned foreign language word, may elicit activity in motor brain regions if the word was associated with the performance of a congruent gesture during learning. These brain responses are causal to the benefits of multimodal enrichment for learning outcome. Computer algorithms confirm this hypothesis.

"The brain is optimized for learning with all the senses and with movement. Brain structures for perception and motor skills work together to promote this type of learning. We hope that our deeper understanding of the brain's learning mechanisms, will facilitate the development of optimal learning strategies in the future," explains Brian Mathias.

Katharina von Kriegstein adds, "The results of the literature we reviewed contribute to our understanding of why several long-used learning strategies, such as parts of the Montessori method, are effective. They also provide clear clues as to why some approaches are not as effective. Recently uncovered neuroscientific mechanisms may inspire the updating of cognitive and computational theories of learning, providing new hypotheses about learning. We anticipate that such an interdisciplinary and evidence-based approach will lead to the optimization of learning and teaching strategies in the future, for both humans and artificial systems."

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Impact of family background on children's education unchanged in a century, research reveals

The family background of UK children still influences their educational achievements at primary school as much as it did nearly one hundred years ago, a major new study has revealed.

The study, by the University of York, looked at data from 92,000 individuals born between 1921 and 2011 and revealed that the achievement gap between children from impoverished family backgrounds and their more privileged peers has remained stagnant.

This gap accounted for half a grade difference at primary school level, but the impact of family background persists and increases throughout the school years. Previous research suggests that by GCSE year, the effect of family background on school performance is more than three times worse, accounting for a 1.75 grade difference.

The enduring impact of family background on success in education perpetuates social and economic inequalities across generations, the researchers say. They are calling for educational policies which prioritise equality in learning outcomes for children over equality in opportunities.

Lead author of the study, Professor Sophie von Stumm from the Department of Education at the University of York, said: "Our study shows for the first time that despite the efforts of policy makers and educators, children from impoverished backgrounds, whether born in 1921 or the modern day, face the same prospect of earning lower grades and obtaining fewer educational opportunities than children from wealthier backgrounds.

"We are calling for educational interventions that ensure the weakest students get the most support, as policies promoting equal learning opportunities only work if all children are equally well prepared to take advantage of them.

"For example, we know that children from low socioeconomic family backgrounds tend to start school with poorer language skills than their better-off peers. This early disadvantage makes it more difficult for them to utilise the learning opportunities that that school offers. In turn, children from impoverished families earn lower grades in primary and secondary school, and ultimately, they earn fewer educational qualifications than children from wealthier backgrounds."

The study looked at data provided by large cohort studies up until 2016. The researchers caution that the pandemic is likely to have intensified the link between family socioeconomic status and children's school performance because it increased inequality in families' access to resources.

Co-author of the study, Professor Paul Wakeling from the Department of Education at the University of York said: "There was rightly much public scrutiny of inequalities in GCSE grades during the pandemic. However, our findings highlight how important it is to consider inequalities in earlier years of schooling. The impacts could be felt for years to come "

Professor von Stumm added: "Children growing up in low socioeconomic family homes during the pandemic were disproportionately affected by school closures, with a lack of access to online learning and suitable learning environments.

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Higher education and language skills may help ward off dementia

New research has found that people with mild cognitive impairment may not inevitably develop dementia and, in fact, having higher education and advanced language skills more than doubles their chances of returning to normal.

The study, led by researchers at the University of Waterloo, may reassure those with mild cognitive impairment as it contradicts a common assumption that the condition is simply an early stage of dementia. People with mild cognitive impairment show signs of cognitive decline, but not enough to prevent them from performing typical daily tasks. They have been considered at higher risk of progressing to the more severe cognitive decline seen in dementia.

"Possessing high cognitive reserve -- based on education, high academic grades, and written language skills -- may predict what happens years after someone receives a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment," said Suzanne Tyas, a professor in the School of Public Health Sciences at Waterloo and lead author. "Even after considering age and genetics -- established risk factors for dementia -- we found that higher levels of education more than doubled the chances that people with mild cognitive impairment would return to normal cognition instead of progressing to dementia."

The study also found that language skills, whether reflected in high grades in English in school or in strong writing that was grammatically complex and full of ideas, were also protective.

The researchers discovered that almost one-third of 472 women diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment reverted to normal cognition at least once over an average of eight-and-a-half years following their diagnosis, with more than 80 per cent of them never developing dementia.

Almost another third of the total number progressed to dementia without ever reverting to normal cognition, while three per cent stayed in the mild cognitive impairment stage, and 36 per cent died. None of the participants reverted from dementia to mild cognitive impairment.

The researchers also highlighted that reverse transitions are much more common than progressing to dementia in relatively younger individuals who didn't carry a certain genetic risk factor and had high levels of education and language skills.

"We can't do much about age and genetics, so it's encouraging that our findings show that there are other ways to reduce the risk of dementia, such as building cognitive reserve through education and language skills earlier in life," Tyas said.

The study's findings have implications for treatment and research in people with mild cognitive impairment.

"If individuals with higher cognitive reserve are more likely to improve even without treatment, then this needs to be taken into consideration when recruiting participants for clinical trials of prospective treatments and when interpreting the results of these trials," Tyas said, adding there's no cure for most causes of dementia, so prevention is key.

For the analysis, researchers used complex modelling with data drawn from a longitudinal study called the Nun Study, which looked at older, highly educated religious sisters. The participants were mostly homogeneous, with similar socioeconomic status and marital and reproductive history, strengthening the conclusions of this work.

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1,500 endangered languages at high risk of being lost this century

A world-first study warns 1,500 endangered languages could no longer be spoken by the end of this century.

The study, led by The Australian National University (ANU), identified predictors that put endangered languages at high risk.

Co-author Professor Lindell Bromham said that of the world's 7,000 recognised languages, around half were currently endangered.

"We found that without immediate intervention, language loss could triple in the next 40 years. And by the end of this century, 1,500 languages could cease to be spoken."

Published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, they study charts the widest range of factors ever putting endangered languages under pressure.

One finding was that more years of schooling increased the level of language endangerment. The researchers say it shows we need to build curricula that support bilingual education, fostering both indigenous language proficiency as well as use of regionally-dominant languages.

"Across the 51 factors or predictors we investigated, we also found some really unexpected and surprising pressure points. This included road density," Professor Bromham said.

"Contact with other local languages is not the problem -- in fact languages in contact with many other Indigenous languages tend to be less endangered.

"But we found that the more roads there are, connecting country to city, and villages to towns, the higher the risk of languages being endangered. It's as if roads are helping dominant languages 'steam roll' over other smaller languages."

The researchers say the findings also have important lessons for preserving many of the endangered languages spoken by Australia's First Nations peoples.

"Australia has the dubious distinction of having one of the highest rates of language loss worldwide," Professor Felicity Meakins, from the University of Queensland and one of the study's co-authors, said.

"Prior to colonisation, more than 250 First Nations languages were spoken, and multilingualism was the norm. Now, only 40 languages are still spoken and just 12 are being learnt by children.

"First Nations languages need funding and support. Australia only spends $20.89 annually per capita of the Indigenous population on languages, which is abysmal compared with Canada's $69.30 and New Zealand's $296.44."

Professor Bromham said that as the world enters the UNESCO Decade of Indigenous Languages in 2022, the study's findings were a vital reminder that more action was urgently needed to preserve at-risk languages.

"When a language is lost, or is 'Sleeping' as we say for languages that are no longer spoken, we lose so much of our human cultural diversity. Every language is brilliant in its own way.

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Digital teaching: Opportunity or challenge?

In the past two years, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated lockdowns, not only the importance of interpersonal contact but also the indispensability of face-to-face teaching has been repeatedly addressed and discussed. Never before have lecturers had to change and redesign their teaching methods in such a short period of time. Poor Internet connections, difficulties in the technical implementation and the lack of personal exchange made the transfer of knowledge and teaching content more difficult.

For a high-quality university education, face-to-face teaching is considered an extremely important core component. However, digital teaching also brings unexpected advantages and opportunities, demonstrates the Study and Teaching Commission of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychologie (German Psychological Society (DGPs)) in a report for Psychologische Rundschau. Therein, Dr. Anne Gärtner from Technische Universität Dresden explains that digital teaching offers students as well as lecturers new, unprecedented opportunities and brings a completely renewed form of teaching and learning to life: "On the one hand, the flexibility in terms of time and space in work organization is one of the greatest advantages of digital teaching, as not only time but also costs can be saved, for example, by eliminating travel. Lecturers have greater autonomy and can decide for themselves how to manage their time and organize their seminars and lectures. In addition, recorded teaching material can be reused."

Students feel similarly: digital teaching allows them to learn at their own personal pace and repeat recorded lectures as often as necessary. Nevertheless, "face-to-face teaching and digital formats should not be played off against each other," says Dr. Gärtner. "Digital teaching should be seen as a complementary means to further improve the quality of teaching, and the importance of face-to-face teaching should not be forgotten." Because even if online learning brings more advantages than initially expected, the lack of contact between lecturers and students leaves many gaps that cannot be "filled" online. One obvious disadvantage, for example, is the requirement of a stable Internet connection and the necessary technical equipment. Since digital teaching and its technical implementation was still uncharted territory for many, there was accordingly an increased workload, especially in the early days. In addition, one of the main disadvantages is undoubtedly the difficulty of remaining disciplined, focused and motivated in front of one's computer all by oneself over a long period. For students in particular, this requires significantly more self-discipline and organization than in face-to-face courses.

For Dr. Gärtner personally, the biggest disadvantage was not knowing whether she could actually reach her students in her online courses: "However, it turned out that my online seminars and lectures have been very well attended so far, and interaction and exchange have been possible, albeit in a somewhat different form. As well as that has worked out -- my digital seminar was even awarded a teaching prize, which I was particularly pleased about -- I still hope that I will soon be able to discuss things with students together again in the seminar room and conduct exciting experiments in the lab," explains the psychologist.

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A parent’s genes can influence a child’s educational success, inherited or not

A child's educational success depends on the genes that they haven't inherited from their parents, as well as the genes they have, according to a new study led by UCL researchers.

Funded by the Nuffield Foundation, the study confirms that genes a person inherits directly are most likely to contribute to their achievements in education. But parent genes that aren't directly inherited, yet have still shaped parents' own education levels and subsequently influenced the lifestyle and family environment they provide for their children, are also important and can affect how well a person does at school and beyond.

The study, a systematic review and meta-analysis of prior evidence of genetic impacts on educational outcomes, is published today in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

Children resemble their parents because of nature (the genes they inherit) and nurture (the environment they grow up in). But nature and nurture effects are intertwined.

Mothers and fathers each pass on half of their genes to their children, and although the other half of their genes are not passed on, they continue to influence the parents' traits and ultimately influence the traits in their children. For example, parents with a higher genetic propensity for learning may have a greater interest in activities such as reading that, in turn, nurture learning in their offspring.

This concept -- when parents' genes influence outcomes for their offspring by shaping the environment that they provide for them -- is called genetic nurture. It describes how parents' genes indirectly their children's characteristics.

For the current paper, researchers reviewed and analysed 12 studies in several countries and used a method called polygenic scoring to study the influence of millions of genetic variants on educational attainment in nearly 40,000 parent and child pairs.

The researchers found that genetic nurture had about half as much impact on education success as genetic inheritance.

Genetic nurture effects captured by polygenic scores in the studies explained at least 1.28% of variance in educational outcomes, while direct genetic effects explained at least 2.89% of variance in educational outcomes. The researchers say the findings are underestimated given that polygenic scores only capture a fraction of heritability in educational outcomes; the actual genetic effects could be multiple times higher, but direct genetic effects would probably still be roughly double those of genetic nurture effects.

Lead researcher Dr Jean-Baptiste Pingault (UCL Psychology & Language Sciences) said: "We discovered genetic nurture has a significant effect on a child's educational achievement. The effects were mainly down to their parents' education and how it influences the environment they provide. We also found that fathers and mothers had similar genetic nurture effects, suggesting both parents are equally important in shaping and fostering an environment favourable for a child's learning.

"This study illustrates how complex the relationship between genes and the environment is. Although our study uses genetic methods, it provides strong evidence that, as well as genetics, the environment really matters when we talk about education.

"Two aspects are complementary here. First, some of it depends on the genetic lottery, so parents do not have complete control and not everything is down to what they do. That said, what parents do and their choices do seem to matter. Our findings show that socioeconomic status and parental education are probably key.

"It is really important to understand how educational attainment (years of education, highest degree obtained) and achievement (scores and grades achieved) are passed on through families, and how this knowledge could help us break cycles of disadvantage across generations."

First author of the paper, Dr Biyao Wang (UCL Psychology & Language Sciences) said: "It is too early yet to say whether the most important is what happens within the family (such as parents reading to their children) or outside the family (such as parents choosing the best school and activities). Next we hope to work out which pathways genetic nurture operates through, if it changes during different stages of development, and identify what aspects of the environment are most important. This will be key to designing new interventions to encourage and support all children to succeed."

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New report aims to improve VR use in healthcare education

A new report that could help improve how immersive technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are used in healthcare education and training has been published with significant input from the University of Huddersfield.

Professor David Peebles, Director of the University's Centre for Cognition and Neuroscience, and Huddersfield PhD graduate Matthew Pears contributed to the report -- 'Immersive technologies in healthcare training and education: Three principles for progress' -- recently published by the University of Leeds with input from range of academics, technologists and health professionals.

The principles have also been expanded upon in a letter to the prestigious journal BMJ Simulation and Technology Enhanced Learning.

The Huddersfield contribution to the report stems from research conducted over several years, which involved another former Huddersfield PhD researcher, Yeshwanth Pulijala, and Professor Eunice Ma, now with Falmouth University.

"Yeshwanth had an interest in technology and education, and in using VR for dentistry training. Matthew was looking at soft skills and situation awareness, which could be applied to investigating how dentists were able to keep a track of what was going on around them. They were similar subjects, although with different emphases, and so it seemed a natural area for collaboration."

With only a relatively small number of dental schools in the UK, the quartet visited seven dental schools in India in early 2017, with support from travel grants from Santander Bank, to test their VR-based training materials on students. The experience gained from that visit contributed to both researchers' PhDs, and ultimately led to the involvement of Professor Peebles and Matthew Pears in the new report.

The report argues for greater standardisation of how to use immersive technologies in healthcare training and education. As Professor Peebles explains, "It's about developing a set of principles and guidelines for the use of immersive technology in medical treatment. Immersive technology is becoming increasingly popular and, as the technology is advancing, it's becoming clear that there is great potential to make training more accessible and effective.

"It is important, however, that research is driven by the needs of the user and existing evidence rather than the technology. Rather than thinking 'we have a new bit of VR or AR kit, what can we do with it?', we should be looking at the problem that needs solving -- what are the learning needs, so how do we use technology to solve it?

"Developing immersive training materials can be very time-consuming and difficult to evaluate properly. Getting surgeons and medical students to take time out to test your VR training is challenging. In our case we were lucky to have a surgeon, Professor Ashraf Ayoub, a Professor of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at the University of Glasgow, who granted us permission to film a surgical procedure that was then transformed into a 3D environment to train students about situation awareness while in the operating theatre."

Professor Peebles hopes the work so far will provide a basis for more investigations that could help get the most from the potential that VR and immersive technology have to offer.

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Introducing play to higher education reduces stress and forms deeper connection material

A new study found higher education students are more engaged and motivated when they are taught using playful pedagogy rather than the traditional lecture-based method. The study was conducted by University of Colorado Denver counseling researcher Lisa Forbes and was published in the Journal of Teaching and Learning.

While many educators in higher education believe play is a method that is solely used for elementary education, Forbes argues that play is important in post-secondary education to enhance student learning outcomes.

Throughout the spring 2020 semester, Forbes observed students who were enrolled in three of her courses between the ages of 23-43. To introduce playful pedagogy, Forbes included games and play, not always tied to the content of that day's lesson, at the start of each class. She then provided many opportunities for role-play to practice counseling skills, and designed competitions within class activities.

During the study, students mentioned they saw more opportunities for growth while learning in a highly interactive environment. Students also described that the hands-on nature of learning through play established a means for skill acquisition, and they were able to retain the content more effectively.

"As we grow older, we're conditioned to believe that play is trivial, childish, and a waste of time," said Forbes. "This social script about play leads to it being excluded from higher education. A more interactive learning approach leads to a deeper and more rigorous connection to the material."

To maintain what Forbes described as "rigor" within higher education, the most common approach tends to be lecture-based learning. However, according to Forbes, this mode of education is counter to the very outcomes educators set out to achieve.

The results of the study suggest there is a unique and powerful classroom experience when play is valued and used in the learning process. According to Forbes, students who participated in this study also indicated that play increased positive emotions and connections with other students and the professor in the course.

"I also saw that when I introduced play, it helped students let their guard down and allowed them to reduce their stress, fear, or anxiety," said Forbes. "Play even motivated students to be vulnerably engaged, take risks, and feel more connected to the content."

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How medical schools can transform curriculums to undo racial biases

 Medical school curriculums may misuse race and play a role in perpetuating physician bias, a team led by Penn Medicine researchers found in an analysis of curriculum from the preclinical phase of medical education. In a perspective piece published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers identified five key categories in which curriculum misrepresented race in class discussions, presentations, and assessments. The authors recommend that rather than oversimplifying conversations about how race affects diseases' prevalence, diagnosis, and treatment, medical school faculty must widen the lens to "impart an adequate and accurate understanding of the complexity of these relationships."

"In medical school, 20 years ago, we often learned that higher rates of hypertension in certain racial and ethnic groups, was due to genetic predisposition, personal behaviors, or unfortunate circumstances. Now we know this is not true. There are no characteristics innate to racial and ethnic groups, biological or otherwise, that adequately explains these differences. They stem, instead, from differential experiences in our society -- it's structural racism, not race," said the study's senior author Jaya Aysola, MD, MPH, assistant dean of Inclusion and Diversity in the Perelman School of Medicine and executive director at the Penn Medicine Center for Health Equity Advancement. "When we speak of dismantling structural racism, we must begin with medical education, where these sorts of race-based biases are still being reinforced in the classroom."

Though the researchers focused on lectures from a single medical school, the study authors from other institutions found similar misrepresentations of race in their preclinical medical curriculums. The five categories of biases that the research team identified were: semantics, prevalence of disparities without context, race-based diagnostic bias, pathologizing race, and race-based clinical guidelines.

For example, the study authors noted the use of "African American," is a socially and politically meaningful identity for many people, but not for all people of African descent. Moreover, they write, it is a poor proxy for genetic difference, since it lumps people from many different ancestral populations together. The researchers also found that students were taught about the disproportionate burden of type 2 diabetes among the U.S. Akimel O'odham (formerly known as Pima) people, without sufficient historical and social context. Despite high degrees of genetic similarity, the Akimel O'odham living in Mexico have significantly lower rates of diabetes and obesity than those living in the U.S. The authors explain that a the construction of the Hoover Dam in 1930 that pushed the Akimel O'odham from their lands and into poverty, not a genetic predisposition, explains this pattern. The researchers also highlighted the teaching of guidelines that endorse the use of racial categories in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. One course they analyzed, for instance, encouraged the use of race-adjusted glomerular filtration rate, or GFR, equations, which many experts now say limits care for Black patients and exacerbates health disparities.

"Race is not a biomedical term, and it is a poor proxy for ancestry. Yet, we continue to generate, impart, and assess medical knowledge with this imprecision. In doing so, we perpetuate biases and ignore the actual contributors to the race-based differences we see," Aysola said. "There are several aspects of the medical education apparatus that we have to fundamentally change in order to get to the ideal state where we're dismantling the structures that perpetuate racism."

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Schools less important than parents in determining higher education aspirations

A new study shows that the elementary school a child attends has almost no influence on their desire to progress to higher education -- as factors including parental aspirations, academic support from their mother and having a desk to work on are much more important.

Published in the journal Educational Studies, the findings of the research looking at 1,000 pupils showed that school and class size, the grade point average of the school and property prices, had little influence on the desire to continue to higher education.

The research was carried out by Josip Šabić and Boris Jokić at the Centre for Educational Research and Development of the Institute for Social Research in Zagreb, Croatia, and was supported by the Croatian Science Foundation. The authors wanted to discover the main factors affecting pupils' intention to continue to higher education as they reach the end of elementary school.

In Croatia, children attend elementary schools up to age 14-15, at which point they move on to a secondary school. Here, they can either study for a four-year diploma, after which they have the option of applying for university, or a three-year diploma, which prepares pupils for work but does not permit them to apply for university.

To find out children's aspirations, they asked just over 1,000 pupils at 23 elementary schools in Zagreb to complete three separate questionnaires during their last two years at elementary school. These questionnaires asked them whether they would like to continue to higher education, as well as about their parents and home life. There were questions about their parents' aspirations for them, the level of academic support they received from each of their parents, whether they had their own room, computer and desk, and whether they enjoyed school.

The researchers also obtained information on the pupils' academic grades, as well as on the size of each school and its classes, the grade point average for each school, and property prices in the area around each school as a measure of socioeconomic status. Finally, they performed statistical analyses on these responses to determine which factors were most closely related with a desire to continue on to higher education.

This revealed that none of the school-level factors, including school and class size, grade point average of the school and property prices, had any influence on the desire to continue to higher education. In contrast, several factors related to parents and home life, such as parental educational aspirations, maternal academic support and having a desk to work on, did have an influence. As did gender, with girls more likely than boys to want to continue to higher education. And while school-level factors didn't have any influence, performance at school did: high academic grades were the single strongest predictor of a pupil's desire to continue to higher education, while enjoying school was also an important factor.

"The major finding arising from the present study is that none of the school level variables used in our analysis contributes to the explanation of pupils' aspirations for higher education," said Šabić. "In other words, pupils who have similar individual characteristics but attend different schools will likely hold similar aspirations for higher education.

"Another important finding is that parents can influence their child's aspirations by expressing their expectations regarding the child's educational path and by providing the basic conditions for completing homework and learning (i.e. a desk to work on)."

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Good home learning in early years boosts your secondary school achievements

The positive effects of a rich home learning environment during a child's early years continue into adolescence and help improve test scores later in life, according to a new study published in School Effectiveness and School Improvement.

This research shows pre-schoolers whose parents regularly read and talked about books with them scored better on math tests at age 12. The study, lead by Dr Simone Lehrl of the University of Bamberg, is one of the first to provide detail on the importance of early years home learning on children's development up to early adolescence.

Researchers studied 229 German children from age three until secondary school and participants' literacy and numeracy skills were tested annually in their three years of preschool (ages 3-5), and again when they were 12 or 13 years old.

They found that children gained from home stimulation in their preschool years in literacy, language and arithmetic skills which, in turn, led to higher outcomes in reading and mathematical skills in secondary school, regardless of the home learning environment then.

Dr Lehrl said: "Our results underline the great importance of exposing children to books for development not just in literacy but numeracy too: early language skills not only improve a child's reading but also boost mathematical ability.

"Encouraging caregivers to engage with their children in direct literacy activities, shared book reading and advanced verbal interactions during reading, and to include language and mathematical content during these activities, should promote children's reading and mathematical abilities in secondary school. Such experiences lay a strong foundation for later school success."

Formal literacy activities not only boosted language skills and reading comprehension but also improved numerical skills. Book exposure and the quality of verbal interactions regarding mathematical content during shared book reading (for example, talking about numbers and counting) when children were of preschool age were also associated with better math outcomes at age 12. The effect also worked the other way with the quality of parent-child interaction regarding mathematics also improving children's language skills.

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An hour or two of outdoor learning every week increases teachers' job satisfaction

A Swansea University study has revealed how as little as an hour a week of outdoor learning has tremendous benefits for children and also boosts teachers' job satisfaction.

Through interviews and focus groups, researchers explored the views and experiences of pupils and educators at three primary schools in south Wales that had adopted an outdoor learning programme, which entailed teaching the curriculum in the natural environment for at least an hour a week.

Interviews were held with headteachers and teachers, and focus groups were conducted with pupils aged 9-11 both before and during the implementation of an outdoor learning programme within the curriculum.

The schools in the study reported a variety of benefits of outdoor learning for both the child and the teacher and for improving health, wellbeing, education and engagement in school.

Lead author of the study Emily Marchant, a PhD researcher in Medical Studies at Swansea University, explained: "We found that the pupils felt a sense of freedom when outside the restricting walls of the classroom. They felt more able to express themselves, and enjoyed being able to move about more too. They also said they felt more engaged and were more positive about the learning experience. We also heard many say that their well-being and memory were better, and teachers told us how it helped engage all types of learners."

The benefits of outdoor education for children are well documented, but a finding of this study is the impact that the outdoor learning programme had on teachers.

Emily said: "Initially, some teachers had reservations about transferring the classroom outdoors but once outdoor learning was embedded within the curriculum, they spoke of improved job satisfaction and personal wellbeing. This is a really important finding given the current concerns around teacher retention rates. Overall, our findings highlight the potential of outdoor learning as a curriculum tool in improving school engagement and the health, wellbeing and education outcomes of children.

"The schools within our study have all continued with regular outdoor learning within the curriculum. With support and recognition from education inspectorates of the wider benefits to children's development and education, outdoor learning could be set within the primary school curriculum."

From Science Daily

Climate education for kids increases climate concerns for parents

A new study from North Carolina State University finds that educating children about climate change increases their parents' concerns about climate change.

"There's a robust body of work showing that kids can influence their parents' behavior and positions on environmental and social issues, but this is the first experimental study demonstrating that climate education for children promotes parental concern about climate change," says Danielle Lawson, lead author of a paper on the work and a Ph.D. student at NC State.

For the study, researchers worked with middle school science teachers to incorporate a climate change curriculum into their classrooms. Prior to teaching the curriculum, researchers had 238 students and 292 parents take a survey to measure their levels of concern regarding climate change.

Seventy-two of the students and 93 of the parents were in a control group, meaning the students did not receive the climate change curriculum; 166 students and 199 parents were in an experimental group, meaning the students did receive the climate curriculum. All students and parents took the survey again after the students in the experimental group had completed the climate curriculum.

"We found that there was an increase in climate concern for both the experimental and control groups, but that the shift was much more pronounced in families where children were taught the curriculum," Lawson says.

The climate survey measured concern on a 17-point scale, ranging from -8 (not concerned at all) to +8 (extremely concerned). On average, students in the control group had an increase in concern of 0.72 points on the second survey, while their parents increased 1.37 points. Meanwhile, students in the experimental group had an increase of 2.78 points, while their parents increased 3.89 points.

"We also found that the results were most pronounced for three groups: conservative parents, parents of daughters, and fathers," Lawson says. This was noteworthy because conservatives and men are typically among the least concerned about climate change.

On average, conservative parents' level of concern increased 4.77 points; parents of daughters increased 4.15 points; and fathers increased 4.31 points. All these key groups went from being marginally not concerned (-2.1 for conservatives, -1.8 for those with daughters, and -0.9 for fathers, compared to a zero midpoint) to moderately concerned (2.5 for conservatives, 2.5 for those with daughters, and 3.6 for fathers). These post-test concern levels were much higher than those in the control group (conservatives: 0.25; those with daughters: -1.6, fathers: -0.8).

Notably, liberal and conservative parents in the treatment group ended up with similar levels of climate change concern by the end of the study. The 4.5 point gap in the pretest shrunk to 1.2 after children learned about climate change.

"This study tells us that we can educate children about climate change and they're willing to learn, which is exciting because studies find that many adults are resistant to climate education, because it runs counter to their personal identities," Lawson says. "It also highlights that children share that information with their parents, particularly if they're given tools to facilitate communication -- and that parents are willing to listen."

"To be clear, climate change education is about giving people a good foundation in climate science and cultivating critical thinking skills," says Kathryn Stevenson, co-author of the paper and an assistant professor of parks, recreation and tourism management at NC State. "This is about education, not activism, and children are great educators. They seem to help people critically consider ways in which being concerned about climate change may be in line with their values."

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Being fair: The benefits of early childhood education

Children from low-income families who got intensive education early in life treat others with high levels of fairness in midlife, more than 40 years later, even when being fair comes at a high personal cost, according to a new study published today in Nature Communications.

The 78 people in the study were followed as part of the Abecedarian Project, begun in the 1970s and to this day one of the longest running randomized controlled studies of the effects of early childhood education in low-income and high-risk families.

Participants played games designed to measure their adherence to social norms and their social decision-making processes. In one game, a player was asked to split a sum of money -- $20 -with another participant. The participant could either accept the amount proposed, or reject it, in which case neither received any money. When faced with unequal offers, participants had to make trade-offs between self-interest and the enforcement of social norms of equality.

This is where the value of early childhood education became apparent. Players who, in the 1970s, had been given intensive educational training including cognitive and social stimulation when they were young children, strongly rejected unequal division of money among players when they were in midlife, even if it meant they would miss out on hefty financial gains themselves.

"When someone rejects an offer, they are sending a very strong signal to the other player about the decision regarding how the money should be divided," said Université de Montréal assistant psychology professor Sébastien Hétu, a first-author of the study. "People who received educational training through the Abecedarian Project were inclined to accept generally equal offers, but would reject disadvantageous and advantageous offers. In effect, they punished transgressions that they judged to be outside of the social norm of equality."

Originally developed and led by Craig Ramey, a professor and distinguished research scholar at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, the Abecedarian Project investigates the impacts of intensive early childhood educational interventions on language and learning in disadvantaged children. The new research involves an international group of scientists led by Virginia Tech neuroscientist Read Montague, in whose laboratory Hétu was a postdoctoral associate before coming to Montreal.?

Using computational modeling, the study's researchers also discovered differences in social decision-making strategies between participants. For example, in another game, players who had received educational interventions early in life planned further into the future than people who didn't.

"The participants who received early educational interventions were very sensitive to inequality, whether it was to their advantage or their disadvantage," said Yi Luo, first author of the study and a postdoctoral associate in Montague's lab. "Our results also suggest that they placed more value on the long-term benefits of promoting social norms as opposed to short-term benefits for personal gain."

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Making mistakes while studying actually helps you learn better

When learning something new, there are instances where trial and error helps rather than hinders, according to recent findings by Baycrest researchers.

Contrary to popular belief, when a person makes a mistake while learning, it improves their memory for the right information, but only if the error is close to the correct answer, according to a study published in the journal, Memory.

"Our research found evidence that mistakes that are a 'near miss' can help a person learn the information better than if no errors were made at all," says Dr. Nicole Anderson, senior author on the paper and senior scientist at Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute. "These types of errors can serve as stepping stones to remembering the right answer. But if the error made is a wild guess and out in left field, then a person does not learn the correct information as easily."

These findings could help with improving education for not only younger adults, but also late-life learners.

In one of the studies reported in the paper, researchers recruited 32 young adults with no Spanish background to guess the English definition of certain Spanish words. The Spanish words selected either resembled an English word with a similar meaning (such as careera, which means degree) or the word looked like an English word, but meant something different (such as carpeta, which resembles carpet, but means folder).

Participants were shown the Spanish words and asked to guess its meaning. Then, they were briefly shown the correct translation, before being shown another Spanish word. After repeating this process with 16 Spanish words, participants had a short break before their memory for the translations was tested.

Researchers found that people were better able to remember the correct translations for Spanish words that were similar to the English word. They had greater difficulty recalling the meaning for words that looked misleading.

"Based on these findings, someone studying for an exam should only take practice quizzes after reviewing the material," says Dr. Anderson, who is also an associate professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Toronto. "If a person takes a practice test and is unfamiliar with the content, they risk making guesses that are nowhere near the right answer. This could make it harder for them to learn the correct information later."

Even if a person makes a mistake while testing themselves, as long as their error is close to the right answer, they're more likely to remember the right information, adds Dr. Anderson.

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Education linked to higher risk of short-sightedness

A new study provides "strong evidence" that more time spent in education is a risk factor for myopia.

Spending more years in full time education is associated with a greater risk of developing short-sightedness (myopia), finds a study published by The BMJ today.

The researchers say their study provides "strong evidence" that more time spent in education is a risk factor for myopia, and that the findings "have important implications for educational practices."

Myopia, or short-sightedness, is a leading cause of visual impairment worldwide. Currently, 30-50% of adults in the United States and Europe are myopic, with levels of 80-90% reported in school leavers in some East Asian countries.

Based on existing trends, the number of people affected by myopia worldwide is expected to increase from 1.4 billion to 5 billion by 2050, affecting about half of the world's population. Almost 10% of these people (around 9 million) will have high myopia, which carries a greater risk of blindness.

Many studies have reported strong links between education and myopia, but it is not clear whether increasing exposure to education causes myopia, myopic children are more studious, or socioeconomic position leads to myopia and higher levels of education.

So researchers based at the University of Bristol and Cardiff University set out to determine whether education is a direct (causal) risk factor for myopia, or myopia is a causal risk factor for more years in education.

Using a technique called Mendelian randomisation, they analysed 44 genetic variants associated with myopia and 69 genetic variants associated with years of schooling for 67,798 men and women aged 40 to 69 years from the UK Biobank database.

Analysing genetic information in this way avoids some of the problems that afflict traditional observational studies, making the results less prone to unmeasured (confounding) factors, and therefore more likely to be reliable.

An association that is observed using Mendelian randomisation therefore strengthens the inference of a causal relationship.

After taking account of potentially influential factors, Mendelian randomisation analyses suggested that every additional year of education was associated with more myopia (a refractive error of ?0.27 dioptres a year).

To put this into context, a university graduate from the UK with 17 years of education would, on average, be at least ?1 dioptre more myopic than someone who left school at 16 (with 12 years of education). This level of myopia would mean needing glasses for driving.

By contrast, there was little evidence to suggest that myopia led people to remain in education for longer.

The researchers point to some study limitations. For example, UK Biobank participants have been shown to be more highly educated, have healthier lifestyles, and report fewer health issues compared with the general UK population, which may have affected the results. However, there was little evidence that this could explain their findings.

"This study shows that exposure to more years in education contributes to the rising prevalence of myopia, and highlights a need for further research and discussion about how educational practices might be improved to achieve better outcomes without adversely affecting vision," they conclude.

In a linked editorial, Professor Ian Morgan at the Australian National University and colleagues say the evidence suggests that it is not only genes but environmental and social factors that may have major effects on myopia.

They point to East Asia, where early intense educational pressures combined with little time for play outdoors has led to almost 50% of children being myopic by the end of primary school, compared with less than 10% in a study of British children.

"Early onset allows more time for myopia to progress to high and potentially pathological myopia," they warn, and they argue that education systems "must change to help protect the visual health of future generations."

In a linked opinion piece, study author Denize Atan also points to evidence showing that time spent outdoors in childhood partially protects against the development of myopia.

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Study explores link between curiosity and school achievement

Researchers know that certain factors give children a leg up when it comes to school performance. Family income, access to early childhood programs and home environment rank high on the list.

Now, researchers are looking at another potentially advantageous element: curiosity.

The more curious the child, the more likely he or she may be to perform better in school -- regardless of economic background -- suggests a new study published in Pediatric Research.

Researchers at University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital and the Center for Human Growth and Development analyzed data from 6,200 kindergartners from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort. The cohort is a nationally representative, population-based study sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education that has followed thousands of children since birth in 2001.

The U-M team measured curiosity based on a behavioral questionnaire from parents and assessed reading and math achievement among kindergartners.

The most surprising association offered new insight: Children with lower socioeconomic status generally have lower achievement than peers, but those who were characterized as curious performed similarly on math and reading assessments as children from higher income families.

"Our results suggest that while higher curiosity is associated with higher academic achievement in all children, the association of curiosity with academic achievement is greater in children with low socioeconomic status," says lead researcher Prachi Shah, M.D., a developmental and behavioral pediatrician at Mott and an assistant research scientist at U-M's Center for Human Growth and Development.

The findings present an opportunity for families, educators and policymakers.

"Curiosity is characterized by the joy of discovery and the desire for exploration and is characterized by the motivation to seek answers to the unknown," Shah says. "Promoting curiosity in children, especially those from environments of economic disadvantage may be an important, underrecognized way to address the achievement gap."

Cultivating curious kids

When it comes to nurturing curiosity, the quality of the early environment matters.

Children who grow up in financially secure conditions tend to have greater access to resources to encourage reading and math academic achievement, whereas those from poorer communities are more likely to be raised in less stimulating environments, Shah notes. In less-stimulating situations, the drive for academic achievement is related to a child's motivation to learn, or curiosity, she explains.

Parents of children enrolled in the longitudinal study were interviewed during home visits; the children were assessed when they were nine months and two years old, and again when they entered preschool and kindergarten. Reading levels, math skills and behavior were measured in these children when they reached kindergarten in 2006 and 2007.

U-M researchers factored in another important known contributor to academic achievement known as "effortful control," or the ability to stay focused in class. They found that even independent of those skills, children who were identified as curious fared well in math and reading.

"These findings suggest that even if a child manifests low effortful control, they can still have more optimal academic achievement, if they have high curiosity" Shah says. "Currently, most classroom interventions have focused on the cultivation of early effortful control and a child's self-regulatory capacities, but our results suggest that an alternate message, focused on the importance of curiosity, should also be considered."

Shah notes that fostering early academic achievement in young children has been a longstanding goal for pediatricians and policymakers, with a growing awareness of the role social-emotional skills in school readiness.

And while more study is needed, similar efforts to boost curiosity could one day follow.

"While our results suggest that the promotion of curiosity may be a valuable intervention target to foster early academic achievement, with particular advantage for children in poverty, further research is needed to help us better understand how to develop interventions to cultivate curiosity in young children.

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