Year Six Annual Report: Activities, Findings and Evaluators\u27 Reports

The National Center for Engineering and Technology Education (NCETE) is a collaborative network of scholars with backgrounds in technology education, engineering, and related fields. Our mission is to build capacity in technology education and to improve the understanding of the learning and teaching of high school students and teachers as they apply engineering design processes to technological problems

A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America's Brightest Students, Volume II

Provides a comprehensive review of research on the academic acceleration of gifted students

Higher education technological knowledge and patterns of technology adoptions in undergraduate STEM courses

Identifying, examining, and understanding faculty members’ technological knowledge development and the process of technology adoption in higher education is a multifaceted process. Past studies have used Rogers (1995, 2003) diffusion of innovation theoretical framework to delineate the technology adoption process. These studies, however, have frequently reported the influencing factors based on the statistical analysis such as regression analysis-based approach, and have not focused on the emerging process of technology adoptions or the developing process of technological knowledge and pedagogical knowledge. A mixed method study was designed to see how faculty members acquire different technologies and develop technological knowledge that might help them adopt technologies in their classrooms and online using different pedagogies. A sample of STEM teaching faculty members with different ranks, tenure, teaching experience, and varied degree of experience in the use of educational technologies participated in the study. A survey was designed to identify internal and external factors affecting technology adoption and its effective use in different teaching activities. To elaborate survey results, the study also included class observations as well as pre- and post-observation interviews. Online classrooms used by the faculty via Blackboard learning management system, online flipped classrooms, or other websites such as Piazza were also examined for data triangulation. The findings of the study indicate that faculty members are influenced by their own professional motivations and student learning to improve their teaching methods and to enhance student interactions and learning through the use of different educational technologies. The adoption process was identified as spreading over a period of time and it looked at how faculty members’ developed their technological knowledge and pedagogical knowledge. With the recognition of the social, organizational, and professional motivational factors both expert faculty members, university administrators, and technologist could be made aware of the critical components necessary to construct and support a bottom-up or user-centric successful innovation adoption decision process. The bottom-up approach would use expert professors as change agents and educational designers that would encourage exchanges and meaningful dialogues about educational technology adoptions and effective uses of technology with pedagogy within each discipline and department

1999 National Summer Transportation Institute National Resource Center Final Report

DTFH61-99-X-00013This report summarizes the accomplishments of the 1999 National Summer Transportation Institute (NSTI) and the National Resource Center (NRC). This Final Report includes information about program management, finance and budget, and data collection activities. It contains a summary of the 30 Summer Transportation Institutes, their associated costs and other pertinent information

Classroom Management Styles: The Differences Among Traditionally-Licensed Teachers Who Were Formally Paraprofessionals and Alternatively-Licensed Teachers

The purpose of this study was to determine ifthere was a difference in the attitudes and beliefs of traditionally certified teachers who were previously assistant teachers and alternatively certified teachers regarding classroom management. The instrument used in the study was the Attitudes and Beliefs on Classroom Control Inventory -Revised and Revisited (ABCC-R) (Martin, Yin, & Mayall, 2008). The sample included 171 participants. Seventy seven of those participants were traditionally certified teachers who were previously assistant teachers, and 94 alternatively certified teachers from four school districts across the state. The study focused on two dimensions of classroom management: Instructional Management, tasks having to do with instruction and delivery (Martin, Yin, & Mayall, 2008) and People Management which pertains to teachers\u27 beliefs about students and what teachers do to develop student-teacher relationships (Martin, Yin, & Mayall, 2008). No significant difference was found between traditional certified teacher who were previously assistant teachers and alternatively certified teachers. Therefore, the overall fmding of this study is that both groups were similar in their attitudes and beliefs toward classroom management

The Effect of Cicadian Therapies in Models of Neurodegenerative Disease

Huntington’s Disease (HD) is an autosomal dominant disorder caused by excessive CAG repeats in the gene encoding the huntingtin protein which leads to progressive neurodegeneration that inflicts cognitive, psychiatric, cardiovascular and motor dysfunction. There is currently no treatment to prevent or delay the course of the disease. Neuronal loss in the striatum is thought to be responsible for the abnormal motor control present in HD patients, though the pathophysiology behind the non-motor symptoms is still unclear. Disturbances in sleep-wake cycles are common among HD patients with reports of delayed sleep onset, frequent bedtime awakenings, and excessive fatigue, and these disruptions are recapitulated in mouse models. Because circadian dysfunction manifests early in the disease in both patients and mouse models, we sought to determine if early interventions that improve circadian rhythmicity could benefit HD symptoms and delay disease progression. Evidence of altered histaminergic signaling in HD patients suggests that this pathway may contribute to disrupted rhythms in arousal. Utilizing the Q175 mouse model of HD, we demonstrated that nightly treatment with a histamine-3 receptor antagonist/inverse agonist improved several behavioral measures of HD including strengthening activity rhythms, cognitive performance, and mood, as well as reducing inappropriate activity during the normal sleep time. Our findings suggest that drugs targeting the histamine-3 receptor system may be beneficial as cognitive enhancers in the management of HD.One of the most powerful regulators of the circadian system is the daily feed/fast cycle, and in two separate studies we found that three months of time-restricted feeding (6-hours of feeding in the middle of the active phase followed by 18-hours fasting) improved the sleep/wake cycle, motor symptoms, and autonomic function in both the Q175 and BACHD mouse models.Finally, we sought to determine whether a ketogenic diet was sufficient to impart motor performance and sleep/wake rhythm benefits in BACHD mice similar to those observed under TRF. We found that the ketogenic diet improves circadian dysfunction as well as motor symptoms in the BACHD mouse model.Altogether, these studies support the hypothesis that early interventions that improve sleep/wake timing and circadian rhythmicity can ameliorate a range of symptoms of HD and related neurodegenerative disorders

Anthology

Yearbook for the academic year 1997--199

Investigating the Conversations that Occur During Undergraduate Research Experiences: A Case Study

Despite the increasing popularity of undergraduate research experiences across disciplines, little information currently exists to guide the design, evaluation, and improvement of these experiences. One challenge to generating such guidelines is the lack of evidence related to the processes and contexts in which undergraduate research experiences occur. My study sought to address this deficiency by exploring the norms of discourse that framed conversations between students and their mentors in biochemistry research as a model to understand the phenomenon of undergraduate research. I used a case-study approach to investigate the conversations that occurred between three student-mentor pairs as they engaged in research. Video-recorded observations of students and mentors working together helped me to identify discursive norms. I employed a stimulated recall interview protocol to identify how participants negotiated and established norms during a research experience. Analysis of discourse was informed by previous literature on undergraduate research experiences and conversation analysis theory. Viewing my analysis across cases allowed me to identify categories of conversations that framed the research experiences of student-mentor pairs. Based on these categories, I defined two distinct classes of research experiences present in my study: holistic and targeted experiences. I investigated individual turns-at-talk in conversations to generate findings on the nature of discourse present in each class of research experience. My work adds to current understandings of the processes by which undergraduate research experiences occur by providing details about the role discourse plays in shaping these experiences. The results from this work will be used to make recommendations for researchers involved in the investigation of undergraduate research as an educational practice and educators interested in improving the research experiences of their undergraduate students