News by Subject Education

A new study shows that there is a huge disproportion in the level of funding for social science research into the greatest challenge in combating global warming -- how to get individuals and societies to overcome ingrained human habits to make the changes necessary to mitigate climate change.

Mathematics and science Braille textbooks are expensive and require an enormous effort to produce -- until now. A team of researchers has developed a method for easily creating textbooks in Braille, with an initial focus on math textbooks. The new process is made possible by a new authoring system which serves as a 'universal translator' for textbook formats. Based on this new method, the production of Braille textbooks will become easy, inexpensive, and widespread.

Psychology researchers from HSE University have trialed the reliability of a student engagement scale on 537 Russian primary school students. The findings indicated that the emotional component contributes the most to school engagement. The paper has been published in PLOS ONE journal.https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0225542

Telling youth not to 'sext' doesn't seem to be reducing the prevalence of them sharing nude photos or videos. A national sample of about 5,000 youth ages 12 to 17 showed 14 percent had sent and 23 percent had received sexually explicit images. Researchers say it's time to teach teens 'safe' sexting and provide important tips to avoid significant and long-term consequences, such as humiliation, extortion, victimization, school sanction, reputational damage, and even criminal charges.

In this editorial, concerns used to support the rollbacks of nutrition standards set forth in the 2010 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act are analyzed, with researchers finding not only that these concerns are not supported by evidence, but also that the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act had notable positive effects on the dietary quality of meals served to school-aged children.

A new study in the journal Family Practice, published by Oxford University Press, shows that there remains a meaningful gender gap between the number of biomedical papers written by women and those written by men.

Marijuana use among college students has been trending upward for years, but in states that have legalized recreational marijuana, use has jumped even higher. A study published today in Addiction shows that in states where marijuana was legalized by 2018, both occasional and frequent use among college students has continued to rise beyond the first year of legalization, suggesting an ongoing trend rather than a brief period of experimentation.

Affirmative action policies (AAP) such as quota systems based on racial or socio-economic criteria are often recommended as a way to increase enrollment of underrepresented students in higher education. But those policies can be controversial and their results are sometimes questioned. A new study from the University of Illinois looks at comprehensive data from Brazilian universities to understand the effect of AAPs on minority enrollments.