Search

To date, much of the work on mobile and social media in the context of sexual violence has focused on its threats and harmful effects, particularly in relation to cyber-bullying and other forms of online harassment. But what if we think of such technologies as technologies of non-violence? In this article we make a case for exploring this work in rural South Africa, where, in spite of some challenges of access, the availability of technology is increasing the number of possible ways of addressing sexual violence. Building on what we offer as a primer of technologies currently available, we consider the implications of this work for researchers (especially those in education), interested in how technology can help to address sexual violence.

The tragic murder of Mr. George Floyd brought to the head long-standing issues of racial justice and equity in the United States and beyond. This prompted many institutions of higher education, including professional organizations and societies, to engage in long-overdue conversations about the role of scientific institutions in perpetuating racism. Similar to many professional societies and organizations, the Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research (SABER), a leading international professional organization for discipline-based biology education researchers, has long struggled with a lack of representation of People of Color (POC) at all levels within the organization. The events surrounding Mr. Floyd’s death prompted the members of SABER to engage in conversations to promote self-reflection and discussion on how the society could become more antiracist and inclusive. These, in turn, resulted in several initiatives that led to concrete actions to support POC, increase their representation, and amplify their voices within SABER. These initiatives included: a self-study of SABER to determine challenges and identify ways to address them, a year-long seminar series focused on issues of social justice and inclusion, a special interest group to provide networking opportunities for POC and to center their voices, and an increase in the diversity of keynote speakers and seminar topics at SABER conferences. In this article, we chronicle the journey of SABER in its efforts to become more inclusive and antiracist. We are interested in increasing POC representation within our community and seek to bring our resources and scholarship to reimagine professional societies as catalyst agents towards an equitable antiracist experience. Specifically, we describe the 12 concrete actions that SABER enacted over a period of a year and the results from these actions so far. In addition, we discuss remaining challenges and future steps to continue to build a more welcoming, inclusive, and equitable space for all biology education researchers, especially our POC members. Ultimately, we hope that the steps undertaken by SABER will enable many more professional societies to embark on their reflection journeys to further broaden scientific communities.

Abstract Background The success of the learning assistant (LA) model has largely been attributed to LA facilitation of active learning tasks. A deeper understanding of how LAs facilitate these tasks would inform LA training and support successful adoption of the LA model. Our investigation of LA actions during their interaction with students in the classroom contributes to that understanding. We present and discuss the development of the action taxonomy for learning assistants (ATLAs), as well as illustrate its applicability by presenting some analyses that were conducted on sample data. Results The LAs carried out several different actions that we categorized broadly as LA-Directed Facilitation, LA-Guided Facilitation, Advice, Feedback, Course-Related Talk, and Non-Course-Related Talk. LA-Directed Facilitation and LA-Guided Facilitation were the most common types of actions observed. We found that LA actions varied by course. Conclusions ATLAs is a tool that can be used to examine LA actions. In our sample data set, LAs undertook many different actions during interactions with students which indicates that LAs play several different roles in the classroom. These findings have practical implications not only for faculty seeking to implement a peer instruction model such as the LA model, but also for instructors wanting to utilize LAs in their courses more effectively. Understanding what the LAs are doing during interactions with students can provide us insight into the different roles that LAs undertake. Knowledge of these roles will guide effective training, feedback, and direction of LAs, particularly during the pedagogy course.

Science provides a method to learn about the relationships between observed patterns and the processes that generate them. However, inference can be confounded when an observed pattern cannot be clearly and wholly attributed to a hypothesized process. Over-reliance on traditional single-hypothesis methods (i.e. null hypothesis significance testing) has resulted in replication crises in several disciplines, and ecology exhibits features common to these fields (e.g. low-power study designs, questionable research practices, etc.). Considering multiple working hypotheses in combination with pre-data collection modelling can be an effective means to mitigate many of these problems. We present a framework for explicitly modelling systems in which relevant processes are commonly omitted, overlooked or not considered and provide a formal workflow for a pre-data collection analysis of multiple candidate hypotheses. We advocate for and suggest ways that pre-data collection modelling can be combined with consideration of multiple working hypotheses to improve the efficiency and accuracy of research in ecology.