We tested the hypothesis that underrepresented students in active-learning classrooms experience narrower achievement gaps than underrepresented students in traditional lecturing classrooms, averaged across all science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields and courses. We conducted a comprehensive search for both published and unpublished studies that compared the performance of underrepresented students to their overrepresented classmates in active-learning and traditional-lecturing treatments. This search resulted in data on student examination scores from 15 studies (9,238 total students) and data on student failure rates from 26 studies (44,606 total students). Bayesian regression analyses showed that on average, active learning reduced achievement gaps in examination scores by 33% and narrowed gaps in passing rates by 45%. The reported proportion of time that students spend on in-class activities was important, as only classes that implemented high-intensity active learning narrowed achievement gaps. Sensitivity analyses showed that the conclusions are robust to sampling bias and other issues. To explain the extensive variation in efficacy observed among studies, we propose the heads-and-hearts hypothesis, which holds that meaningful reductions in achievement gaps only occur when course designs combine deliberate practice with inclusive teaching. Our results support calls to replace traditional lecturing with evidence-based, active-learning course designs across the STEM disciplines and suggest that innovations in instructional strategies can increase equity in higher education.

To sense the outside world, some neurons protrude across epithelia, the cellular barriers that line every surface of our bodies. To study the morphogenesis of such neurons, we examined the C. elegans amphid, in which dendrites protrude through a glial channel at the nose. During development, amphid dendrites extend by attaching to the nose via DYF-7, a type of protein typically found in epithelial apical ECM. Here, we show that amphid neurons and glia exhibit epithelial properties, including tight junctions and apical-basal polarity, and develop in a manner resembling other epithelia. We find that DYF-7 is a fibril-forming apical ECM component that promotes formation of the tube-shaped glial channel, reminiscent of roles for apical ECM in other narrow epithelial tubes. We also identify a requirement for FRM-2, a homolog of EPBL15/moe/Yurt that promotes epithelial integrity in other systems. Finally, we show that other environmentally exposed neurons share a requirement for DYF-7. Together, our results suggest that these neurons and glia can be viewed as part of an epithelium continuous with the skin, and are shaped by mechanisms shared with other epithelia.

Following Hochschild's The Managed Heart, which emphasized the problematic features that emotional labour had for women flight attendants, a critical literature emerged which focused on the more enjoyable aspects of emotional labour in service employee experience. This article draws on this literature and analyses emotional labour as a gendered cultural performance but takes issue with the individualizing and pluralistic tenor in the post-Hochschild discussions. Using a qualitative and quantitative study of nearly 3000 Australian flight attendants, it focuses on organizational and occupational health and safety variables, as well as sexual harassment and passenger abuse -factors barely discussed by Hochschild's critics. The qualitative data indicate that emotional labour is both pleasurable and difficult at different times for the same individual. Gender is still pivotal, as Hochschild suggested, linking emotional labour with sexual harassment. At the same time, the most significant predictors from the quantitative study of whether emotional labour would be costly were organizational. Variables such as whether flight attendants felt valued by the company show that the airline management context is highly influential in the way in which emotional labour is experienced. As a means of understanding the complex relations in this important and eroticized area of service work where flight attendants, airline crews, airline management and passengers have convergent and conflicting interests, the article also deploys a new concept: 'demanding publics', to refer to trangressions of the legitimate boundaries of the service worker.

We developed an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) that aims to promote engagement and learning by dynamically detecting and responding to students' boredom and disengagement. The tutor uses a commercial eye tracker to monitor a student's gaze patterns and identify when the student is bored, disengaged, and has zoned out. The tutor then attempts to reengage the student with dialogue moves that direct the student to reorient his or her attentional patterns towards the animated pedagogical agent embodying the tutor. We evaluated the efficacy of the gaze-reactive tutor in promoting learning, motivation, and engagement in a controlled experiment where 48 students were tutored on four biology topics with both gaze-reactive and non gaze-reactive (control condition) versions of the tutor. The results indicated that: (a) gaze-sensitive dialogues were successful in dynamically reorienting students' attentional patterns to the important areas of the interface, (b) gaze-reactivity was effective in promoting learning gains for questions that required deep reasoning, (c) gaze-reactivity had minimal impact on students' state motivation and on self-reported engagement, and (d) individual differences in scholastic aptitude moderated the impact of gaze-reactivity on overall learning gains. We discuss the implications of our findings, limitations, future work, and consider the possibility of using gaze-reactive ITSs in classrooms.