The Expansion of School Resource Officers in a Florida County: A Mixed Methods Study

In the aftermath of school shootings, policymakers presented the expansion of school resource officers (SROs) in the nation\u27s schools as a method for keeping students safe. Recently, policing in the United States has come under increased scrutiny, and several school districts across the country cancelled their SRO contracts with law enforcement agencies. Notably, these contradictory decisions have been made with limited empirical knowledge surrounding, the roles, preparedness, and impact of SROs. A county in Florida substantially expanded its SRO program in the 2016-17 school year creating a new unit within the local sheriff\u27s office and an opportunity to investigate these topics. A convergent parallel mixed methods design was applied to examine this new unit, consisting of a quantitative strand using interrupted time series analysis to assess the new program\u27s effect on school-based arrests and Baker Act apprehensions, and a qualitative strand collecting and analyzing participant observations of training requirements and in-depth interviews with the SROs to explore their responsibilities, roles, and preparation for the position. Qualitative findings demonstrate that the primary role of the SROs is safety and security, while some also engage in a secondary role of engaging in positive interactions with the school community. Ambiguity exists surrounding execution of these roles, with the SROs relying a great deal on other relevant actors during decision-making. SROs identified the importance of careful selection for the position, training requirements are described, and problems with the training are identified. Contrary to this study\u27s hypotheses, quantitative results show that the new unit did not have a statistically significant impact on overall school-based arrests, but disaggregating the data showed a significant impact on felony arrests. Similarly, there was no statistically significant impact on overall Baker Act apprehensions of students, however, there is preliminary evidence of an impact on elementary school-aged students

IMPROVING THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE OF TRAUMA-IMPACTED STUDENTS: IDENTIFYING EMERGING BEST PRACTICES FOR TEACHING LOW-SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS URBAN STUDENTS

This qualitative action research concentrates on examining the best practices for teachers in trauma-informed practices by producing an implementation guide to train the trainer. The theoretical framework utilized to help inform the development of this research was Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory (1989) in relation to human development for identifying the emerging best practices with being trauma informed. The scope of this research focuses on low-socioeconomic status (SES) urban youth, so cultural sensitivity is naturally always a component of a complete train-the-trainer, trauma-informed teaching program. I identified the emerging best practices in two ways: (a) by gathering and summarizing supporting sources of literature and (b) by holding collaborative conversations with acknowledged experts in culturally competent trauma-informed training. The findings revealed six components essential to prepare the trainer on trauma-informed education training. First, culturally responsive pedagogy and culturally responsive teaching were identified to aid in bridging the gap in providing support. Social capital based upon lived experiences of students was recognized by acknowledging their needs through appropriate modeling of positive attitudes and behavior while increasing confidence in student learning using inclusive resources demonstrated throughout academic content. Next, the key principles of brain science were acknowledged showing a relationship between impact of trauma and learning affects such as: processing, decoding, self-regulation, and impulse control. Then, mental health was addressed to show there is an impact of negative interactions and disciplinary actions, according to Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological systems theory. Attitude and language were acknowledged as both verbal and non-verbal and having an impact on instructional behavior, which influences student climate in learning and behavior. Lastly, the equity and accountability components were identified to require teachers to move away from implicit bias issues by creating more cultural-normative behavior through designing more restorative practices while building partnerships with students and families alike. The result of this action research provided a set of emerging best practices embedded in the implementation guide to support the trainer in training educators on how to teach trauma-impacted youth in California’s culturally diverse public-school classrooms

Preparing School Leaders for a Changing World: Lessons From Exemplary Leadership Development Programs

Presents eight case studies of effective school leadership training programs and provides the key characteristics of high-quality training to help states and districts address long-standing weaknesses in the way principals are prepared for their jobs

Toward a theory of cultural transparency : elements of a social discourse of the visible and the invisible

This dissertation develops a number of analytical categories for investigating what people know about the world in which they live. It is an attempt to open up a universe of discourse about learning that does justice to the social character of human life. The argument of the dissertation is developed in the context of an ethnographic study of a claim processing center in a large insurance company.The basic argument is that knowledge does not exist by itself in the form of information, but that it is part of the practice of specific sociocultural communities, called here "communities of practice." Learning then is a matter of gaining a form of membership in these communities: this is achieved by a process of increasing participation, which is called here "legitimate peripheral participation." Learning thus is tantamount to becoming a certain kind of person.Visible objects such as artifacts, symbols, language, gestures, also belong to the practice of these communities. Therefore, seeing the cultural significance of these objects, something I call "cultural transparency," requires access to the practices to which they belong. This in turn requires membership in the relevant communities. The relation between artifacts and persons, which one may describe as understanding or not understanding, is therefore never a direct relation between them, but one that is mediated by a person's specific forms of membership in specific communities and by an object's being part of the social practices of some communities, which may or may not be the same. To the extent that these communities are different, such an object can be called a "boundary object" that mediates the articulation of these communities. This dissertation investigates the nature of one such object and analyzes both the relations that it can mediate and the forms of knowledge and senses of self that can result.The availability of an analytical discourse such as the one explored here is important because technological advances and the division of labor imply that we deal more and more with objects that do not primarily belong to our communities of practice. This is especially relevant to the design of computer systems

The Management of Strategic Alliances - Performance Impact Factors and Alliance Management Capabilities in the Context of Logistics Alliances

The proliferation of logistics alliances has continued to grow, due to ongoing deregulation, globalization, increasingly demanding customers, and the constant pressure for efficiency improvements in logistics operations. Logistics alliances are voluntary and long-term agreements in which two or more independent supply chain entities render logistics activities together to achieve strategic goals for mutual competitive advantages. Partnering firms strive for revenue and/or costs gains, service improvements and better market positions through resource, information, and risk sharing among them. Every second Logistics Service Provider (LSP) already engages in a logistics partnership (either vertical or horizontal). The majority of German LSP (about 60%) cooperates with at least one competitor. Despite this proliferation of logistics alliances, about 70 per cent of logistics alliances have difficulties in meeting partners’ expectations and may even be considered failures. While scholars have spent considerable efforts over the last decades studying logistics alliances, major gaps remain in our understanding and explanation of logistics alliances and their evolution (both success and failure). Given the wide acknowledgement and increasing importance of logistics alliances on the one hand, but their well-established diagnosis of high failure rate on the other hand, this thesis identified four central research questions: (1) What are performance impact factors of logistics alliances? (2) Why are some firms more successful in their logistics alliances than others? And how may specific logistics alliance management capabilities explain these differences? (3) What are reasons for logistics alliance failure? And how can firms prevent failure and improve logistics alliance performance? (4) What are logistics-specific alliance management capabilities? And why are some firms not able to deploy them successfully? To answer the identified research questions, the aim of this thesis is to identify and explain logistics-specific (1) alliance performance impact factors, (2) alliance management capabilities, (3) reasons for alliance failure, and (4) barriers for the deployment of logistics alliance management capabilities. Thereby, the thesis wants to elaborate the current understanding and explanation of logistics alliances, and to help firms to prevent logistics alliance failure and to improve logistics alliance performance. Accordingly, the thesis builds on four independent research studies. Each of these four independent research studies provides a comprehensive account of logistics alliances. Thereby, this thesis adds to our understanding and explanation of logistics alliances and their performance. More specifically, it contributes to the logistics alliances scholarship in three ways: (1) Explanation of performance impact factors of logistics alliances (2) Introduction of new theoretical constructs (3) Providing empirical insights. Thereby, the thesis contributes both to the existing logistics alliance scholarship and to practice by helping firms to prevent failure and improve logistics alliance performances

Making Sense of Successful Global Teams

Global teams tend to underperform. Teamwork often frustrates members compromising the results as well as employee motivation. In practice, bad results are often camouflaged, and both management and team members lack insight into what is really driving teams and why they do not reach their goals. The underlying metaphor our economic model is built on is the “machine” where people instead of active agents with true influence are implicitly seen as resources, executors of processes and walking curriculum vitaes to be aligned in precise ways to achieve often arbitrary goals and to meet unrealistic expectations. This study takes a critical stand towards this mainstream view and applies reflexive methodology, the lens of sensemaking as well as the metaphor and the narrative as rhetorical devices to study how and why global teams form and evolve the way they do over time. The insights of this study are based on an experimental methodology studying many teams from a close range, and reveal how different structurally identical well-performing global teams executing the same tasks can be. Teams when studied from within, are dynamic phenomena rather than static sums of their parts. Alternative team metaphors, such as the “chain gang”, “dysfunctional family”, “sandbox”, “scouts” and “master cooks”, for instance, emerge. The very different team dynamics are in part explained by how successful team members are at social sensemaking – establishing shared understandings around such basic concepts as “leadership”, “good communication” and “team goals”. Individual team members and their capability and willingness to engage in self-reflection and their decisions to act or not to act on what may first appear mundane events, can have huge influence over what their teams become. Sustainably successful teams work both on the task and the team itself and consider the team as a constant work-in-progress and not a fixed entity. This study proposes innovative ways of looking at and studying global teams. People, team members, can be considered active agents, capable human beings on whose sensemaking paths depend on what these teams become and how they evolve over time

The School Discipline Consensus Report: Strategies from the Field to Keep Students Engaged in School and Out of the Juvenile Justice System

Research and data on school discipline practices are clear: millions of students are being removed from their classrooms each year, mostly in middle and high schools, and overwhelmingly for minor misconduct. When suspended, these students are at a significantly higher risk of falling behind academically, dropping out of school and coming into contact with the juvenile justice system. A disproportionately large percentage of disciplined students are youth of color, students with disabilities, and youth who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT).There is no question that when students commit serious offenses or pose a threat to school safety they may need to be removed from the campus or arrested. Such incidents, however, are relatively rare, and school typically remains the safest place a young person can be during the day. In schools with high rates of suspension for minor offenses, however, students and teachers often feel they are not safe or supported in their learning environment. Trailblazing student and parent groups, advocacy organizations, researchers, professional associations and school districts have raised the visibility of exclusionary discipline practices across the nation. In response, individual schools, districts, and state education systems have implemented research-based approaches to address student misbehavior that hold youth accountable address victims' needs, and effectively improve both student conduct and adult responses These approaches also help keep students engaged in classrooms and out of courtrooms The federal government has also put a spotlight on these issues. As part of the Supportive School Discipline Initiative, the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice issued joint guidance in January 2014 to assist public elementary and secondary schools in meeting their obligations under federal law to administer student discipline without discriminating on the basis of race, color or national origin. The School Discipline Consensus Report builds on this foundation and breaks new ground by integrating some of the best thinking and innovative strategies from the fields of education, health law enforcement, and juvenile justice. Leaders in these diverse systems agree that local and state governments must not only help schools reduce the number of students suspended, expelled and arrested, but must also provide conditions for learning wherein all students feel safe, welcome, and supported. The central thesis of this comprehensive report is that achieving these objectives requires the combination of a positive school climate, tiered levels of behavioral interventions, and a partnership between education, police, and court officials that is dedicated to preventing youth arrests or referrals to the juvenile justice system for minor school-based offenses

What happened to my commitment? Exception diagnosis among misalignment and misbehavior

This paper studies misalignment of commitments associated with temporal constraints. We propose a diagnosis algorithm where agents reason based on the current states of their commitments. We also provide an alignment policy that can be applied by an agent when the diagnosis algorithm identifies a misalignment. We formalize a delivery process from e-commerce using REC, and present a case study to demonstrate the workings of our approach

Sleep Medicine and the Evolution of Contemporary Sleep Pharmacotherapy

Sleep is a fundamental physiological feature experienced by all known mammalian, and most non-mammalian, species. Underscoring its importance is the wide array of neural and cellular processes that have evolved to govern when and how it occurs, its duration, sequence of phases, and the influence it exerts on numerous other brain functions. This book takes up the growing prevalence of sleep disorders affecting these processes and the panorama of pharmaceutical tools that have evolved for their medical care. Its wide-ranging discussion promises not only recent updates on their clinical management but a contemporary window into sleep’s cross-cutting relevance for the many neurological dysfunctions now known to associate with sleep disturbances