Contempt: The Silent “C” in PTSD

Graduate Applie

Early numerical experiences

There are large individual differences in children s mathematical abilities when starting formal schooling and these differences can have lasting consequences. One factor that could lead to differences in children s mathematics skills is the home numeracy environment. This thesis examines the home numeracy environment, firstly as a whole concept and then more in-depth of one area of the home numeracy environment, number books. The home numeracy environment section starts by presenting a systematic review of the home numeracy environment literature and draws conclusions about the inconsistency of the results. The studies presented in this section investigate both methodological and theoretical questions surrounding the home numeracy environment. A novel text message method to measure the home numeracy environment is presented and the relationship between three different measures of the home numeracy environment (questionnaire, observation and text messages) is investigated, as well as their relationships to mathematics skills. This section has two key findings: firstly the self-report measures of the home numeracy environment are not related to the observation measure and secondly all three measures (apart from child number talk in the observation) were not related to mathematics skills. The second section of this thesis focuses on number books. Number books are often used in the home to teach young children number symbols. They primarily use multiple concrete pictures, but the benefits (or costs) to using these types of images are not known. The next three studies investigate the use of abstract and concrete images to teach children number symbols using an artificial symbol learning paradigm. It is concluded that there is a cost to using multiple representations when teaching children number symbols, and therefore number books should use a single picture throughout for children to benefit the most from the book. Overall the findings from this thesis show that the home numeracy environment is very broad and future research should change the way the home numeracy environment is measured and conduct more in-depth analysis of areas of the home numeracy environment

A Comparative Study of the Perceptions of Elementary School Administrators, Teachers, and Students Regarding recess and Free Play in the Public School.

According to recent studies, the number of schools that have severely limited or eliminated recess and free-play opportunities is on the rise across the nation. School officials cite the increasing levels of state and federal pressure to perform on standardized tests as the primary reason for this shift away from the playground. The threat of lawsuits and safety concerns are also listed as factors in this change of policy. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to examine the perceptions of directors of schools, supervisors, principals, assistant principals, teachers, and students regarding recess and free play in three East Tennessee school systems. Representative schools were chosen from each system and examined. In addition, results from standardized test scores as provided by the state of Tennessee were examined for the selected schools. The findings of this study revealed that directors, supervisors, principals, teachers, and students were in favor of recess and stated that offering recess and free-play opportunities provided some benefit to students. Even so, two schools in the study had chosen to limit recess and free-play opportunities to varying degrees whereas the third school maintained a policy of recess breaks. In examining the test data, the two schools that had limited recess were found to have lower test scores than the school that had maintained the integrity of recess. Other factors could attribute to the lower scores. The findings did reveal that limiting recess appeared to offer no significant gain in scores just as providing recess did not appear to cause any decrease in test scores. Stakeholders interviewed expressed the perception that the benefits of having recess outweighed any potential threat of time lost in the classroom. Recommendations for further research include repeating this study in other school settings on a larger scale to see if the same results are realized

The Effects of Enrollment In Remedial Classes on Students’ High School Graduation Rates

The purpose of this study is to determine the effects on high school graduation rates of students who are placed in remedial and non-remedial classes while controlling for the students’ attendance rates. The importance of this study is to identify indicators which can positively or negatively affect high school graduation rates. The results may provide information to improve the historical low high school graduation rates. It is a quantitative study using a causal comparative design. Archival data will be retrieved from four public high schools in the panhandle of Florida. 00 students will be sampled, with 00 female students and 00 male students. Two of the schools are rural and two are suburban. The data collection retrieved will identify each student’s attendance rates, placement in remedial courses or not placed in remedial courses, and whether they graduated from high school in four years or did not, and this is from the student’s 9th grade year through their 12th grade year

Collaboration in Mathematics Teacher Education: the What, How, and Why of Mathematical Modeling

In this paper, we share our collaboration across the disciplines of mathematics and mathematics education to develop and implement a mathematical modeling task for prospective secondary mathematics teachers. Through this collaboration, we identified three key components of mathematical modeling: the what, how, and why. In this paper, we outline these components from the literature and how each framed our development and implementation of the Sprinkler Task in our mathematics content and mathematics methods courses for secondary teachers. These three components show that mathematical modeling is a particularly fruitful space for collaboration between the disciplines of mathematics and mathematics education in teacher education

Event-based analysis: Identifying and sequencing prehistoric activities in buried palimpsests. An example from Lake George, Australia.

This thesis presents a new methodology for sequencing behavioural events in sub-surface stone artefact assemblages. While methods have been previously presented for the identification of activities, often termed 'moments in time', these studies have focused on temporally bounded living floors, usually in cave environments. Buried assemblages in open landscapes often do not retain such coherence, and so the development of a methodology for identifying and sequencing behavioural events in mixed assemblages is needed. This study develops a method, here termed event-based analysis (EBA), for the temporal sequencing of discrete activities in undifferentiated stratigraphies with vertically distributed artefactual deposits, which then allows comparisons of prehistoric activities to be made across space and time. Event-based analysis draws on several methods previously presented in the literature, principally RMU analysis, life-history framework and refitting for the reunification of refuse from single stone-working activities and the construction of inferences regarding the reduction and flow of stone though a site. Event-based analysis relies on these methods for identifying and understanding discrete stone working activities. EBA then extends the applicability of these methods to the analysis of temporally deep buried assemblages by providing a method whereby identified knapping and discard events can be sequenced. This shifts the unit of analysis in buried palimpsests from the assemblage to the event, and allows comparisons to be built over time and space from this behaviourally meaningful unit. This thesis is concerned with how archaeologists make inferences about prehistoric cultures from the archaeological record. To this end, a new methodological framework, event-based analysis, is advanced which both guides the construction of evidence-led inferences regarding prehistoric behaviour, and promotes the comparison of those behavioural inferences for the purpose of producing generalisations concerning use of place (Schiffer 2011). Using EBA, this project examines the configuration of foraging economies and technologies in the Lake George area of south-eastern Australia. A detailed place-use history is built from the comparison of discrete knapping and discard events over time and space. This thesis thus contributes to the development of archaeological methodologies which seek to build detailed and meaningful ‘thick descriptions’ (sensu Geertz (1973)) which are firmly grounded in the evidence examined. The aim is to provide detailed descriptions of the human activities which produced the stone artefact assemblages; it is to elucidate the ‘delicacy of its distinctions, not the sweep of its abstractions’ (Geertz 1973:25)

Targeting protein function: the expanding toolkit for conditional disruption

A major objective in biological research is to understand spatial and temporal requirements for any given gene, especially in dynamic processes acting over short periods, such as catalytically driven reactions, subcellular transport, cell division, cell rearrangement and cell migration. The interrogation of such processes requires the use of rapid and flexible methods of interfering with gene function. However, many of the most widely used interventional approaches, such as RNAi or CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats)-Cas9 (CRISPR-associated 9), operate at the level of the gene or its transcripts, meaning that the effects of gene perturbation are exhibited over longer time frames than the process under investigation. There has been much activity over the last few years to address this fundamental problem. In the present review, we describe recent advances in disruption technologies acting at the level of the expressed protein, involving inducible methods of protein cleavage, (in)activation, protein sequestration or degradation. Drawing on examples from model organisms we illustrate the utility of fast-acting techniques and discuss how different components of the molecular toolkit can be employed to dissect previously intractable biochemical processes and cellular behaviours.</jats:p

How Affirmative Action Context Shapes Collegiate Outcomes at America’s Selective Colleges and Universities

During the 1990s and early 2000s, the affirmative action context in the United States changed. Affirmative action in higher education was banned in several states, and the Supreme Court ruled in Grutter (2003) that affirmative action, while constitutional, should be implemented via holistic evaluation of applicants. In this article, we use two datasets to examine how affirmative action context relates to academic outcomes at selective colleges and universities in the United States before and after the Grutter decision and in states with and without bans on affirmative action. Underrepresented minority students earned higher grades in the period after the Grutter decision than before it, indicating that the holistic evaluation method required by Grutter may enhance educational outcomes for these students. In contrast, we find no support for the idea, proposed by critics of the policy, that banning affirmative action leads to better collegiate outcomes for Black and Latino students at selective institutions