Getting a Grip on Variability.

Because science is a modeling enterprise, a key question for educators is: What kind of repertoire can initiate students into the practice of generating, revising, and critiquing models of the natural world? Based on our 20 years of work with teachers and students, we nominate variability as a set of connected key ideas that bridge mathematics and science and are fundamental for equipping youngsters for the posing and pursuit of questions about science. Accordingly, we describe a sequence for helping young students begin to reason productively about variability. Students first participate in random processes, such as repeated measure of a person's outstretched arms, that generate variable outcomes.

Supportive-expressive dynamic psychotherapy in the community mental health system: a pilot effectiveness trial for the treatment of depression.

The goal of the current article is to present the results of a randomized pilot investigation of a brief dynamic psychotherapy compared with treatment-as-usual (TAU) in the treatment of moderate-to-severe depression in the community mental health system. Forty patients seeking services for moderate-to-severe depression in the community mental health system were randomized to 12 weeks of psychotherapy, with either a community therapist trained in brief dynamic psychotherapy or a TAU therapist. Results indicated that blind judges could discriminate the dynamic sessions from the TAU sessions on adherence to dynamic interventions.

Belief revision in children: the role of prior knowledge and strategies for generating evidence.

Evolving beliefs and reasoning strategies were observed in 22 fifth- and sixth-grade children who worked over 8 weeks for a total of about 5 h on a causal reasoning problem. Children planned, performed, and interpreted experiments to learn about the relations between design features and speed of race cars in a computerized microworld. The group made progress, but by the end of the sessions did not fully understand those features that disconfirmed their initial beliefs.