Integrating Human Culture, Community, and Sense of Place Into an Existing High School Environmental Studies Curriculum

This capstone addresses challenges faced by a first year high school teacher on an interdisciplinary team integrating social studies into an environmental studies curriculum. After exploring literature in biodiversity, biocultural diversity, and place-based education, the author determines that the existing curriculum can be enhanced to make stronger connections between people and the places already being studied, including the local community. To that end, this paper presents a sub-unit, developed using the Understanding by Design ® model, that seeks to integrate human culture, community, and sense of place into an environmental studies curriculum. The sub-unit includes six weeks of lessons to supplement an existing ten-week unit on biodiversity

Democratic Service Learning

The ultimate purpose of American public education is to help students learn how to be compassionate, problem-solving citizens in a democratic society. It is the job of schools to help each generation envision a better future and acquire the dispositions, skills, and experiences to make this vision a reality. Our youngest citizens need a democratic education, for which service-learning is an indispensable element

Cross-linguistic similarity and task demands in Japanese-English bilingual processing

Even in languages that do not share script, bilinguals process cognates faster than matched noncognates in a range of tasks. The current research more fully explores what underpins the cognate ‘advantage’ in different script bilinguals (Japanese-English). To do this, instead of the more traditional binary cognate/noncognate distinction, the current study uses continuous measures of phonological and semantic overlap, L2 (second language) proficiency and lexical variables (e.g., frequency). An L2 picture naming (Experiment 1) revealed a significant interaction between phonological and semantic similarity and demonstrates that degree of overlap modulates naming times. In lexical decision (Experiment 2), increased phonological similarity (e.g., bus/basu/vs. radio/rajio/) lead to faster response times. Interestingly, increased semantic similarity slowed response times in lexical decision. The studies also indicate how L2 proficiency and lexical variables modulate L2 word processing. These findings are explained in terms of current models of bilingual lexical processing

Making sense of the Sense Model: translation priming with Japanese-English bilinguals

Many studies have reported that first language (L1) translation primes speed responses to second language (L2) targets, whereas L2 translation primes generally do not speed up responses to L1 targets in lexical decision. According to the Sense Model (Finkbeiner, Forster, Nicol & Nakamura, 2004) this asymmetry is due to the proportion of senses activated by the prime. Because L2 primes activate only a subset of the L1 translations senses, priming is not observed. In this study we test the predictions of the Sense Model by using Japanese-English cognates, which allow us to manipulate the number of senses that words have in each language. Contrary to the predictions of the Sense Model, our results replicated the typical asymmetrical priming effects, suggesting that it is not the total activation of senses that drives the priming effect. Rather the results are more in line with theories that postulate slower, and thus ineffective, activation of semantics by L2 primes

Naturalistic reading in the L2 and the impact of word frequency and cross-linguistic similarity

While psycholinguistic studies of first language (L1) reading have identified multiple factors that predict the speed of lexical access, there are few studies investigating whether such factors influence second language (L2) reading. For usage-based models of acquisition and processing, two lexical factors that are believed to be crucial in L2 reading are word frequency and cross-linguistic similarity. No previous studies, however, have looked at these factors during naturalistic reading tasks when readers’ L1 and L2 differ in script. In this study, we monitored the eye movements of Japanese speakers of English while they read a short story. We used linear mixed effects modelling to investigate the role of word frequency and cross-linguistic similarity, as well as other factors such as language proficiency, on L2 lexical access. Word frequency was a strong predictor of word reading speed. A cross-linguistic measure of phonological similarity was not significant, indicating that even if lexical representations in the L1 were activated during L2 reading, this activation did not influence reading speed. The findings are discussed in terms of a localist connectionist model of word recognition

Using Known Populations of Pronghorn to Evaluate Sampling Plans and Estimators

Although sampling plans and estimators of abundance have good theoretical properties, their performance in real situations is rarely assessed because true population sizes are unknown. We evaluated widely used sampling plans and estimators of population size on 3 known clustered distributions of pronghorn (Antilocapra americana). Our criteria were accuracy of the estimate, coverage of 95% confidence intervals, and cost. Sampling plans were combinations of sampling intensities (16, 33, and 50%), sample selection (simple random sampling without replacement, systematic sampling, and probability proportional to size sampling with replacement), and stratification. We paired sampling plans with suitable estimators (simple, ratio, and probability proportional to size). We used area of the sampling unit as the auxiliary variable for the ratio and probability proportional to size estimators. All estimators were nearly unbiased, but precision was generally low (overall x coefficient of variation [CV] = 29). Coverage of 95% confidence intervals was only 89% because of the highly skewed distribution of the pronghorn counts and small sample sizes, especially with stratification. Stratification combined with accurate estimates of optimal stratum sample sizes increased precision, reducing the mean CV from 33 without stratification to 25 with stratification; costs increased 23%. Precise results (x CV = 13) but poor confidence interval coverage (83%) were obtained with simple and ratio estimators when the allocation scheme included all sampling units in the stratum containing most pronghorn. Although areas of the sampling units varied, ratio estimators and probability proportional to size sampling did not increase precision, possibly because of the clumped distribution of pronghorn. Managers should be cautious in using sampling plans and estimators to estimate abundance of aggregated populations