We tested the hypothesis that underrepresented students in active-learning classrooms experience narrower achievement gaps than underrepresented students in traditional lecturing classrooms, averaged across all science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields and courses. We conducted a comprehensive search for both published and unpublished studies that compared the performance of underrepresented students to their overrepresented classmates in active-learning and traditional-lecturing treatments. This search resulted in data on student examination scores from 15 studies (9,238 total students) and data on student failure rates from 26 studies (44,606 total students). Bayesian regression analyses showed that on average, active learning reduced achievement gaps in examination scores by 33% and narrowed gaps in passing rates by 45%. The reported proportion of time that students spend on in-class activities was important, as only classes that implemented high-intensity active learning narrowed achievement gaps. Sensitivity analyses showed that the conclusions are robust to sampling bias and other issues. To explain the extensive variation in efficacy observed among studies, we propose the heads-and-hearts hypothesis, which holds that meaningful reductions in achievement gaps only occur when course designs combine deliberate practice with inclusive teaching. Our results support calls to replace traditional lecturing with evidence-based, active-learning course designs across the STEM disciplines and suggest that innovations in instructional strategies can increase equity in higher education.

Summary Our understanding of current treatments for depression, and the development of more specific therapies, is limited by the complexity of the circuits controlling mood and the distributed actions of antidepressants. Although the therapeutic efficacy of SSRIs is correlated with increases in cortical activity, the cell types crucial for their action remain unknown. Here we employ bacTRAP translational profiling to show that layer 5 corticostriatal pyramidal cells expressing p11 (S100a10) are strongly and specifically responsive to chronic antidepressant treatment. This response requires p11 and includes the specific induction of Htr4 expression. Cortex-specific deletion of p11 abolishes behavioral responses to SSRI’s, but does not lead to increased depression-like behaviors. Our data identify corticostriatal projection neurons as critical for the response to antidepressants, and suggest that the regulation of serotonergic tone in this single cell type plays a pivotal role in antidepressant therapy.

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Mitochondria play a prominent role in mechanosensory hair cell damage and death. Although hair cells are thought to be energetically demanding cells, how mitochondria respond to these demands and how this might relate to cell death is largely unexplored. Using genetically encoded indicators, we found that mitochondrial calcium flux and oxidation are regulated by mechanotransduction and demonstrate that hair cell activity has both acute and long-term consequences on mitochondrial function. We tested whether variation in mitochondrial activity reflected differences in the vulnerability of hair cells to the toxic drug neomycin. We observed that susceptibility did not correspond to the acute level of mitochondrial activity but rather to the cumulative history of that activity.