Jacqui Hutchison

Improving retention and graduate outcomes for students from a widening participation (WP) background is key to achieving more equitable outcomes. However, evidence suggests WP students experienced different challenges than their peers during the COVID‐19 pandemic. In this study, we focused on the pivot to online learning and exclusively examined WP students' experiences of higher education during this time to understand which practices supported students' access to education and which may have exacerbated existing inequalities. Data were collected across six focus groups from two Scottish universities ( N = 23). While many of their experiences mirrored those reported for the broader student population in the literature, our findings also suggest coming from a position of relative disadvantage magnifies both positive and negative elements of online learning. Based on these findings, recommendations are made for pedagogical practice to enhance the experience of WP students specifically but can also be applied to the student population more generally.

This study tests whether developments in self-knowledge and autobiographical memory across early to late childhood are related. Self-descriptions and autobiographical memory reports were collected from 379 three- to eleven-year-old predominantly white Scottish children, M age = 90.3 months, SD = 31.1, 54% female. Episodic memory was measured in an enactment task involving recall and source monitoring of performed and witnessed actions. The volume and complexity of self-knowledge and autobiographical memory reports increased with age, as did source monitoring ability and recall bias for own actions. Regression analyses and structural equation modeling confirmed a close association between these developments. These results inform our theoretical understanding of the development of the self-memory system in childhood, which may contribute to the gradual offset of childhood amnesia.

Following the pivot to online teaching as a result of COVID-19, a longstanding debate as to whether higher education should abandon traditional face-to-face lectures has reignited. In this paper, we set out our reflection on this issue based on the evidence available. We conclude that traditional on-campus lectures, and the recordings of those lectures have a place in higher education and the suggestion that they should be abandoned is as unhelpful as the suggestion that they should be the default mode of teaching. When lectures are deliberately chosen as the most appropriate method of teaching and when the same pedagogical care and attention is given as to other modes of delivery, they provide an effective, pragmatic solution, particularly for large classes.

As continued COVID-19 disruption looks likely across the world, perhaps until 2021, contingency plans are evolving in case of further disruption in the 2020–2021 academic year. This includes delivering face-to-face programs fully online for at least part of the upcoming academic year for new and continuing cohorts. This temporary pivot will necessitate distance teaching and learning across almost every conceivable pedagogy, from fundamental degrees to professionally accredited ones. Each institution, program, and course will have its own myriad of individualized needs; however, there is a common question that unites us all: how do we provide teaching and assessment to students in a manner that is accessible, fair, equitable, and provides the best learning whilst acknowledging the temporary nature of the pivot? No “one size fits all” solution exists, and many of the choices that need to be made will be far from simple; however, this paper provides a starting point and basic principles to facilitate discussions taking place around the globe by balancing what we know from the pedagogy of online learning with the practicalities imposed by this crisis and any future crises.

The current article examines how societal stereotypes might form and evolve through a process of cumulative cultural evolution as social information is repeatedly passed from person to person. Social psychology research has done much to inform our understanding about the substantial influence stereotypes exert on us as individuals and on our society, yet comparatively little is known about how society's pools of stereotype knowledge form and how they evolve. Here, we review evidence that as social information is repeatedly passed from person to person, there is a continuous cycle of stereotype formation and evolution that is driven by constraints and biases in (a) observations of the social environment, (b) cognitive representations of the social environment, and (c) social transmissions of cognitive representations of the social environment. We suggest the reason stereotypes exist and persist is because they are perfectly adapted for human cognition and the reason they are perfectly adapted for human cognition is because they are the cumulative product of human cognition.

All people share knowledge of cultural stereotypes of social groups—but what are the origins of these stereotypes? We examined whether stereotypes form spontaneously as information is repeatedly passed from person to person. As information about novel social targets was passed down a chain of individuals, what initially began as a set of random associations evolved into a system that was simplified and categorically structured. Over time, novel stereotypes emerged that not only were increasingly learnable but also allowed generalizations to be made about previously unseen social targets. By illuminating how cognitive and social factors influence how stereotypes form and change, these findings show how stereotypes might naturally evolve or be manipulated.