High School Redesign: Carnegie Unit as a Catalyst for Change

Researchers examined seven schools in Alberta undergoing high school redesign and removing the Carnegie Unit, a time-based metric for awarding course credits. A mixed methods convergent parallel design was used to gather data from leadership teams in the schools and to examine evidence of impact on student learning. Qualitative and quantitative data were analyzed concurrently and then merged for the analysis. Findings illustrate that removing the Carnegie Unit was a catalyst for redesign and learning improvements.  Five constitutive factors enable high school redesign, including a collective disposition as a learning community, a focus on relationship building, obtaining student input, collaboration, and making changes to learning tasks and assessment practices.  The findings provide insight into the ways in which leadership teams formed complex adaptive systems to enable change and may serve to inform practitioners and school leaders, schools and systems, and those who study policy changes in schools

Emergence in School Systems: Lessons from Complexity and Pedagogical Leadership

The theoretical framework for this study draws on conceptual advances from two bodies of scholarship: 1) complexity thinking in education, which has recently focused on school system change and, 2) school leadership research, which has recently attended to the effects of leadership interventions to school improvement. Using a complexity-thinking framework, the purpose of this study was to understand how leadership practices contribute to shaping change in school systems and how change occurred across the system. Our study was conducted in an urban centre in Alberta within a public-school jurisdiction and in an area of the city that had a high population of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds from low-income households compared to other areas across the school jurisdiction. Students in this area typically scored in the lowest quartile on provincial standardized examinations. Our findings are significant because complexity thinking in the context of school leadership has not received sufficient empirical attention. In our study we identified and described pedagogical leadership practices that play a central role in redressing disparities currently found in schools

Pathways to sustainable futures: A “production pedagogy” model for STEM education

STEM education initiatives currently pervade the global landscape of educational reform.Unfortunately, the rush to adopt STEM reforms in North American schools and develop students for competitive 21st century knowledge economies has encouraged an uncritical embrace of underlying STEM narratives and purposes, thus foreclosing critical discussion, alternative models, and new perspectives on doing science education differently. Here, we unpack narratives and practices informing STEM education that induct learning actors into ‘anticipatory regimes’ that advance neoliberal ends and techno capitalist ideologies. We argue first that STEM narratives of progress, competition, and innovation increasingly obscure the urgent ecological, ethical and social justice conditions students confront daily. Ironically, this prepares them for a future rendered unsustainable by scientific and technological orthodoxy. We then draw upon critical sustainability studies (CSS) to articulate new axiological orientations that reposition science and technology learning. Lastly, we describe and illustrate an approach aligned with these critical principles–production pedagogy–whose theories and practices re-vision science and technology education. These strategies will situate students in agentive roles now, in this present, using real-world tools in authentic sociotechnical contexts. They can then confront their own capacities and limitations to engage in personally relevant ways, as producers, with techno-scientific knowledge

Omecamtiv mecarbil in chronic heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, GALACTIC‐HF: baseline characteristics and comparison with contemporary clinical trials

Aims: The safety and efficacy of the novel selective cardiac myosin activator, omecamtiv mecarbil, in patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) is tested in the Global Approach to Lowering Adverse Cardiac outcomes Through Improving Contractility in Heart Failure (GALACTIC‐HF) trial. Here we describe the baseline characteristics of participants in GALACTIC‐HF and how these compare with other contemporary trials. Methods and Results: Adults with established HFrEF, New York Heart Association functional class (NYHA) ≥ II, EF ≤35%, elevated natriuretic peptides and either current hospitalization for HF or history of hospitalization/ emergency department visit for HF within a year were randomized to either placebo or omecamtiv mecarbil (pharmacokinetic‐guided dosing: 25, 37.5 or 50 mg bid). 8256 patients [male (79%), non‐white (22%), mean age 65 years] were enrolled with a mean EF 27%, ischemic etiology in 54%, NYHA II 53% and III/IV 47%, and median NT‐proBNP 1971 pg/mL. HF therapies at baseline were among the most effectively employed in contemporary HF trials. GALACTIC‐HF randomized patients representative of recent HF registries and trials with substantial numbers of patients also having characteristics understudied in previous trials including more from North America (n = 1386), enrolled as inpatients (n = 2084), systolic blood pressure < 100 mmHg (n = 1127), estimated glomerular filtration rate < 30 mL/min/1.73 m2 (n = 528), and treated with sacubitril‐valsartan at baseline (n = 1594). Conclusions: GALACTIC‐HF enrolled a well‐treated, high‐risk population from both inpatient and outpatient settings, which will provide a definitive evaluation of the efficacy and safety of this novel therapy, as well as informing its potential future implementation

Mapping conservation on the ground: situational analyses of a biosphere reserve in Mexico

The Sierra de Huautla region is one of 41 protected areas in Mexico designated as a biosphere reserve. SBHR is inhabited by 31 communities, which work together to safeguard the natural environment of that area with two government-affiliated agencies, and other local actors. Drawing upon frameworks from the field of Science and Technology Studies, specifically from Social World Arenas and Actor Network Theory, I analyze how conservation initiatives shape and transform theoretical, social, and physical landscapes. Given that my research focuses on the actual practices people are engaged in while involved in conservation efforts, my research is primarily informed by ground-level qualitative work, and I make use of Situational Analysis as my primary method of data collection and interpretation. I adopt SA to identify the many and varied actors (both human and non-human) that contribute to the construction of the Sierra de Huautla biosphere as a ‘natural environment’. My research also looks at how various actors -scientists, local community inhabitants- perform activities and roles within the complex contexts of conservation projects. This work offers insights about the genesis of conservation initiatives, the varied modes of participation they support and the challenging institutional constraints, which often make it difficult to fulfil conservation goals. These insights provide valuable ideas, precedents, and guidelines for sites where similar collaborative conservation initiatives are anticipated or being established

Social participation in Biosphere Reserves: Ideas for Training Managers of Conservation and Natural Protected Areas in Mexico

El establecimiento de Áreas Naturales Protegidas, particularmente de Reservas de la Biosfera (RB), ha sido el instrumento de política pública ambiental más aplicado en México en las últimas décadas. Las RB han sido priorizadas porque representan una modalidad integral de conservación en la que se pretende incorporar a las comunidades locales que habitan las reservas en el manejo y la conservación de los recursos naturales que se encuentran en estos lugares. La integración de las comunidades locales en el manejo de las RB ha sido un tema de interés en investigación social. Estudios recientes señalan que existe una disparidad clara entre los objetivos integrales de RB y el alcance de éstos. Las comunidades locales que habitan las RB no han sido consideradas en el diseño y la administración de estas áreas y, en la mayoría de los casos, los actores locales actúan como meros operadores en proyectos gubernamentales. La integración de las comunidades locales como participantes activos en las RB está en vías de mejorar dado el interés por promover iniciativas efectivas. Adicionalmente, la actual revisión de esquemas de política pública en materia de manejo en RB crea un espacio propicio para sugerir esquemas de inclusión social concretos en éste tipo de iniciativas de conservación, tales como la atención a aspectos particulares a cada caso de RB y la formación de administradores y conservacionistas. El presente trabajo aborda el tema de la participación social en las RB bajo una aproximación sociológica desde la perspectiva interaccionista. Se proponen sugerencias concretas para atender lo que se convierte en una omisión seria en materia de política pública ambiental en el país y se sugiere una intervención educativa hasta el momento, poco atendida: la formación de conservacionistas y profesionales en manejo ambiental

Re-mapping integrative conservation: (Dis) coordinate participation in a biosphere reserve in Mexico

'Community participation' has, over the past decades, become a key component of nature conservation initiatives worldwide. 'Participation', a term that signals the involvement of local stakeholders in conservation practices, is central to Integrative Natural Protected Areas (INPAs) in Latin America, where INPAs have become the dominant form of environmental protection policy and biodiversity research. Based on an analysis of the Sierra de Huautla Biosphere Reserve (SDHBR) in Mexico, this paper describes different and frequently conflicting understandings and practices of community integration. Drawing upon Situational Analysis (SA), we examine the forms through which local participation may be coordinated, in advance, by extra-local conservation agencies. We then trace competing forms of participation where local stakeholders devise tactics to challenge imposed policy templates and articulate their own co-emerging interests. By interrogating a neoliberal rhetoric of inclusion, and by re-mapping local participation on the ground, we make visible an approach to socio-natural conservation research that is more critical, more accountable, and more attentive to local agency

Innovative Methods to Study School System Dynamics

The transformations currently underway in many school systems point towards teachers becoming actively engaged in research, as well as finding ways to bring new educational research knowledge into school classrooms. In this paper, we discuss two methodological approaches that have strengthened our own research of schools systems: Social Network Analysis and the Social World Arenas framework. We suggest that these analytical approaches are useful tools for studying complex adaptive systems in education and provide the means to improve teachers’ scholarship of teaching and learning.YesWerklund School of Education, Galileo Educational Networ

Hacking for collaboration towards redesigning group work

In this session you will design scrappy little experiments called “hacks” to work towards redesigning collaboration in your practice. You will use a design thinking process and engage with findings from our design-based research study focused on improving the design of student collaboration through scaffolding, technology and assessment

It's Not About Ideas, It's About Concepts: Teachers' Experiences Desiging Robotics Tasks

Research reports that use of robotics construction kits allow children to improve planning, reasoning, and problem-solving skills while also providing opportunities to engage in collaboration and teamwork. Incorporating robotics tasks in the classroom also provides a playful way for teachers to integrate engineering content, while also providing concrete applications of science and mathematics content. In this paper, two robotics tasks are described in detail and implications for STEM learning in the elementary classroom are discussed.YesUniversity of Calgary Werklund School of Education, Galileo Educational Network, Navigator, Centaur Products Inc., Marathon Oi