When used effectively, laboratory courses can be very important for enriching teaching and learning. However, a review of many colleges and universities across the nation reveals that around 50% of the current Bachelor of Nursing programs have opted to remove (or possibly never included) the chemistry laboratory component. Authenticity is particularly important for prehealth professions students who are required to take general, organic, and biochemistry (GOB) chemistry courses; unfortunately, these students often do not feel the courses are relevant to their future careers. Using three of Herrington and Oliver's nine situated learning design elements, a GOB chemistry laboratory course has been redesigned to implement more authentic activities in the curriculum, largely through the use of an electronic laboratory notebook. The authenticity of the improvements was reviewed by a panel of practicing nurses and nursing faculty, and we report their feedback and evaluation. The general consensus of the panel is that the changes in the curriculum toward more authenticity are a great improvement for prehealthcare professionals.

The study was designed to test the relations among gender, adult-provided activity structure, and social behavior for children in middle childhood. Adult-provided structure was defined as verbally presented rules, guidelines, suggestions, and modeling. Children aged 7-11 years attended a 1-week summer day camp in which activities characterized by high or low adult structure were available. As predicted, girls spent more time in highly structured activities, whereas boys spent more time in low-structure activities. Once in high-structure activities, however, both genders displayed high rates of adult-directed bids for recognition, leadership attempts, and compliance and low rates of peer interaction. In low-structure activities, children directed high rates of leadership and other social behaviors to same-sex peers. Children who chose high-structure activities most often were also most likely to interact with adults in those activities. Those who chose low-structure activities showed the highest rates of interaction with male peers. Sex-typed personality attributes were not related to activity choice. The results are interpreted in a framework encompassing the interactions of "person" attributes, environmental variables, and behavior.

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ConclusionI do not see how denial of the dependence of humankind on our nonhuman relatives ~t la Kelly can lead to the ethical result he desired. Instead, the frank acceptance of our dependence on other species in all the ways in which we are dependent (including evolutionary ancestry) appears to me to be more likely to produce appropriate human behavior toward all life forms.