A long‐standing question in animal communication is whether signals reveal intrinsic properties of the signaller or extrinsic properties of its environment. Alarm calls, one of the most conspicuous components of antipredator behaviour, intuitively would appear to reflect internal states of the signaller. Pioneering research in primates and fowl, however, demonstrated that signallers may produce unique alarm calls during encounters with different types of predators, suggesting that signallers through selective production of alarm calls provide to conspecific receivers information about predators in the environment. In this article, we review evidence for such ‘functional reference’ in the alarm calls of birds based on explicit tests of two criteria proposed in Macedonia & Evans’ (Ethology 93, 1993, 177) influential conceptual framework: (1) that unique alarm calls are given to specific predator categories, and (2) that alarm calls isolated from contextual information elicit antipredator responses from receivers similar to those produced during actual predator encounters. Despite the importance of research on birds in development of the conceptual framework and the ubiquity of alarm calls in birds, evidence for functionally referential alarm calls in this clade is limited to six species. In these species, alarm calls are associated with the type of predator encountered as well as variation in hunting behaviour; with defence of reproductive effort in addition to predators of adults; with age‐related changes in predation risk; and with strong fitness benefits. Our review likely underestimates the occurrence of functional reference in avian alarm calls, as incomplete application and testing of the conceptual framework has limited our understanding. Throughout, therefore, we suggest avian taxa for future studies, as well as additional questions and experimental approaches that would strengthen our understanding of the meaning of functional reference in avian alarm calls.

This paper provides an analysis on how undergraduate students work together, justify their ideas, and make sense of key ideas during in-class scientific modeling activities in large-lecture classrooms.

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The purpose of this study is to identify the local impacts of national advanced technological education (ATE) centers on their host institutions. A sample of three mature, national ATE centers are chosen, with each center serving as a case for a mixed-methods, collective case study research design. Results, drawn from interviews and surveys, indicate that national ATE centers create a variety of direct local impacts (i.e., impacts related to improving education in the targeted technology field) and indirect local impacts (i.e., impacts on the host institution that are beyond the targeted technology field). Direct impacts are created by a depth of focus on and connections to the targeted technology field, whereas indirect impacts are created by diversification within the host institution through collaborations with other projects on campus. The organizational structure and physical location of a center are also found to be important factors affecting the types of impacts created. In addition, characteristics such as strong center–industry partnerships, leadership qualities of the center directors, and a culture that promotes grant getting at the host institution are found to contribute to both types of impacts. The authors suggest that local impacts can be sustained through development and articulation of an ATE center’s core competencies.

Recent calls for reform in education recommend science curricula to be based on central ideas instead of a larger number of topics and for alignment between current scientific research and curricula. Because alignment is rarely studied, especially for central ideas, we developed a methodology to discover the extent of alignment between primary literature (a proxy for current research) and textbooks (a common curricular resource that often drives curriculum). We illustrated the use of this methodology by applying it to the discipline of animal behavior based on the central ideas identified by Tinbergen (1963, Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie 20:410–433): causation, ontogeny, survival value, and evolution. We utilized deductive content analysis (both manual and automated) to collect data on how often these four ideas are addressed in animal behavior journal articles and the four most commonly used textbooks in the United States, identified by syllabi collected via a stratified random sample of U.S. post‐secondary institutions (n = 99). We observed an overall alignment between primary literature and textbooks in the use of the four central ideas—which suggests that the authors of animal behavior textbooks are meeting the suggestions provided by recent calls for reform that curriculum portrays current research. This paper illustrates the use of a methodology for evaluating the extent to which central ideas employed in primary research within a discipline are reflected within curricular resources. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 9999:1097–1118, 2017