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Wind patterns shape migratory pathways and detours of many procellariiform bird species that seasonally migrate between hemispheres. These seabirds are long-lived, and the period of immaturity is presumed to be a time of development and learning the environment, specifically how to use wind to their advantage. We assess how wind encountered by individual Great Shearwaters (Ardenna gravis) varies along the migration journey and compare responses between presumed mature and immature birds (early and late, respectively) in southbound migration and mature birds in northbound migration. We analyze modeled Argos locations from 71 individual tracks of migratory Great Shearwaters with concurrent U (East/West) and V (North/South) wind components. Migration in seabirds is well studied, but there is limited quantitative work measuring individual birds directly interacting with wind and their associated changes in flight behavior during migration. We show that Great Shearwaters made optimal use of winds, and that different age groups made decisions that exposed them to different wind constraints. Overall, Great Shearwaters derived positive responses from wind under most conditions and did not rely on a drifting strategy, which would be suggested if wind effect (difference between ground and airspeed) was predominantly positive during migrations. Instead, they appeared to use a compensating strategy to achieve an acceptable course and speed. The difference we observed in migration phenologies suggests that by migrating later, immature birds might travel the path of least resistance and experience flight conditions that are less risky furthering their ability to withstand a variety of wind conditions encountered later in life as done by adults, which migrate earlier and are subject to more variable flight conditions. We conclude that like other procellariiforms, a longer period of sexual maturity is required to enhance flight performance and mediate energy expenditure through experiential learning and increased fitness.

This scientific essay focuses on the work and personality of an outstanding psychologist E.E. Kravtsova, who passed away in spring 2020, on the eve of her anniversary. Continuing the work of her grandfather L.S. Vygotsky, she regarded it not as a “family” matter, but as common heritage, where new forms of social practice, primarily educational, emerge.

The article describes the theoretical grounds and structure of a literature course as a part of aesthetic education at school, based on the concept of developmental learning by D.B. Elkonin and V.V Davydov. This course became a first attempt to create a program from the first to the final year at school, which required finding a solution to a complicated problem of transferring the practice of developmental learning from primary to secondary school. The conception was innovative in that it considered literature as a part of Arts rather than Philology. The purpose of the course is to educate a cultured reader who would be able to engage in a text-mediated dialogue with an author. The course is based on the ‘author – literary text – reader’ relation (M.Bakhtin). It is shown that a child’s experience of creative work in literature (as the author) is essential for fostering the cultured reader. Learning happens through acquiring and interchanging the positions of the author, reader, critic and theorist, and furthermore, on different educational stages these positions play different roles in literature development of schoolchildren. The main educational paths are: “Readers’ practice and creative work of children” and “History of the world literature”.

The article analyzes the provisions of the cultural-historical psychology that serve as a theoretical and methodological basis for the practice of general education in biology. International monitoring of educational achievements reveals low biological literacy of Russian schoolchildren. The authors see the main reason in the insufficiently thought-out selection of the subject content. In middle school courses, it is mostly empirical, reduced to the study of the structure and functions of organisms and their diversity. In high school courses, it is theoretical, but theoretical concepts are given in a ready-made form, are not sufficiently interconnected and are often reduced to dictionary definitions, which negatively affects the development of cognitive and personal abilities of students. Currently, general biological education is being reformed, and the concentric construction of the subject content is being replaced with a linear one, which completely eliminates theoretical concepts from the middle school courses. The authors see the solution to the problem in updating the content of the school course in biology. As a methodological basis for the selection of content, a system approach is considered, the provisions of which were implemented by L.S. Vygotsky in the construction of the subject area of the cultural-historical psychology. Vygotsky’s ideas about developmental learning and their further elaboration in the general psychological and psychological-pedagogical theory of activity are suggested as a theoretical basis for the organization of the educational process. Special attention is paid to the theory of learning activity developed in the works of D.B. Elkonin, V.V. Davydov, their disciples and followers. The paper presents the concept of the content for the school course in biology and describes the experience of its implementation.

The reinforcement learning (RL) research area is very active, with an important number of new contributions, especially considering the emergent field of deep RL (DRL). However, a number of scientific and technical challenges still need to be resolved, among which we acknowledge the ability to abstract actions or the difficulty to explore the environment in sparse-reward settings which can be addressed by intrinsic motivation (IM). We propose to survey these research works through a new taxonomy based on information theory: we computationally revisit the notions of surprise, novelty, and skill-learning. This allows us to identify advantages and disadvantages of methods and exhibit current outlooks of research. Our analysis suggests that novelty and surprise can assist the building of a hierarchy of transferable skills which abstracts dynamics and makes the exploration process more robust.

Simulating biological intelligence has been proved to be an effective way to design intelligent robots, and simultaneously can solve the problems existing in machine learning methods. For creatures, their motor skills achieving is the first stage of learning. By combining two important cognitive elements: orientation and curiosity, this article proposes a new neurobiologically-inspired sensorimotor developmental learning method for the mobile robot. In this method, curiosity promotes robot's exploration of the environment, while orientation enhances robot's exploitation knowledge of the environment. The orientation cognitive algorithm is designed based on Skinner's operant conditioning theory, and its rationality is proved. The balance of exploration and exploitation, which is a key problem for all the cognitive learning method, is solved in this method. The developmental learning process can avoid fixed sensorimotor mapping space problem, and help reduce learning waste as well as computing waste. All of the developmental learning method's characters are finally verified via simulations on a virtual mobile robot.

In Brazilian schools, many teachers do not organize their teaching and students’ tasks and actions in a way that facilitates theoretical thinking based on the abstraction and generalization of the work content. Because many students struggle to accomplish the tasks and actions themselves, teachers guide them. Over time, the students begin to have more autonomy in executing the proposed activities, as they completed mental operations while learning. This article aims to investigate how young people’s and adults’ awareness of the countryside is formed based on visual elements and writing, facilitating an understanding of their reality. A didactic–formative experiment was performed based on the cultural–historical theory. The comic books produced by the participants allowed them to develop their overall thinking, moving from the abstract to the concrete. They also formed an awareness of reality, which allowed them to have greater autonomy in the production of these stories as a means of representation and transformation of reality.

This essay describes one institution’s struggle to grow its EdD program by adding an equivalent online version of a successful face-to-face program. One of the challenges faced was that of creating a comparable experience for online students to share their ongoing action research, an activity that had long been part of the face-to-face version of the program. An innovative, all-day, virtual doctoral research conference was developed and implemented. We describe our creative rethinking of the original event, towards a new, successful, and fully-online redesigned event. Although the event continues to be refined, the inaugural event proved to be a successful solution to the challenge of transferring all components of a face-to-face program over to its online equivalent. Feedback from students who participated in the conference is shared, and recommendations for other EdD programs is offered.

El artículo es una sistematización de la aplicación de tipologias de tareas docentes en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de la Unidad Curricular “Análisis del Dato Estadístico” en la formación de los gestores sociales de la Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela. Como característica esencial de las tareas docentes se asume la consideración de dos dimensiones principales la dimensión formativa, y la dimensión contextualizada-vivencial. Los objetivos de tareas docentes transitan desde la familiarización hasta la aplicación del contenido, destacándose la significación del conocimiento estadístico en la formación académica, el desempeño laboral y la vida. Se ofrece además el juicio valorativo de los estudiantes en relación con la propuesta de tareas. ABSTRACT The paper is an attempt to systematize learning tasks in the teaching learning process of “Analysis of Statistical Data” in social agents’ training at the Bolivarian University of Venezuela. Two main dimensions characterize the learning tasks proposed: the contextual-experience and the educative dimension. The learning tasks objectives go from familiarizing to full implementation in the social practice. The meaning of these learning tasks for the pupils is surveyed.

The paper is an attempt to systematize learning tasks in the teaching learning process of “Analysis of Statistical Data” in social agents’ training at the Bolivarian University of Venezuela. Two main dimensions characterize the learning tasks proposed: the contextual-experience and the educative dimension. The learning tasks objectives go from familiarizing to full implementation in the social practice. The meaning of these learning tasks for the pupils is surveyed.