ATTITUDES AND BELIEFS HELD BY TEACHERS ON INTERDISCIPLINARY TEAMS WITH COMMON PLANNING TIME AT A HIGHLY EFFECTIVE MIDDLE SCHOOL

This study explored the beliefs and attitudes about education held by teachers on middle school interdisciplinary teams that shared common planning time (CPT) at a highly effective middle school. Data were analyzed to identify beliefs and attitudes towards students, fellow team members, and the larger school environment. Effective middle schools have interdisciplinary teacher teams. Teams sharing CPT are more effective than teams without CPT, as well as schools without teams at all. Previous research involved quantitative measures such as student test scores and suspension rates; as well as measures of work environment, self-efficacy, self-esteem, and climate. In the current educational climate of high-stakes testing and value-added measurements, pressures on educators increase daily. It is important to continue validating the team concept as a critical aspect of middle level education. This study qualitatively explored the attitudes and beliefs of effective middle level teachers on interdisciplinary teams sharing CPT and analyzed various influences upon them. Using a multiple case study qualitative research design, one suburban middle school that had previously received outside recognition of success was studied. Teachers from all participating teams were given an open-ended survey. Focus groups were held with individual teams from three different grade levels. Individual interviews were held with select members of each team, the longest serving as well as the newest team members. Building administrators were interviewed as well. Artifacts and documents were also examined. Analysis identified three main themes within the data: empathetic attitudes, team attitudes (flexibility, support, risk-taking), and a profound awareness of adolescence. These attitudes and beliefs influenced one another and overlapped in the teachers’ daily work. This research can influence professional development of pre-service teachers, middle level teachers, and administrators. Findings provide specific topic foci for small group learning community topics, stand-alone workshops, and more. The study’s conclusions also lend positive researched support to schools contemplating a move towards, or maintenance of, middle school teacher team structures with CPT

White Counselor Trainees\u27 Racial Identity and Working Alliance Perceptions

Racial identity has been theorized to significantly affect cross-racial counseling relationships (Helms, 1984, 1995). This study examined the direct impact of White racial identity of 124 counselor trainees on working alliance formation in a same-racial and cross-racial vicarious counseling analogue. Regardless of the race of the client, disintegration and reintegration attitudes negatively affected working alliance ratings, and pseudoindependent and autonomy attitudes positively affected working alliance ratings. Implications for counseling, supervision, training, and research are discussed

White Counselor Trainees\u27 Racial Identity and Working Alliance Perceptions

Racial identity has been theorized to significantly affect cross-racial counseling relationships (Helms, 1984, 1995). This study examined the direct impact of White racial identity of 124 counselor trainees on working alliance formation in a same-racial and cross-racial vicarious counseling analogue. Regardless of the race of the client, disintegration and reintegration attitudes negatively affected working alliance ratings, and pseudoindependent and autonomy attitudes positively affected working alliance ratings. Implications for counseling, supervision, training, and research are discussed

Troubling Truth in the Auchinleck Manuscript

“Troubling Truth in the Auchinleck Manuscript” argues that many of the romances contained in this famous volume (c. 1330-40) respond in complex ways to the intensely unstable reign of Edward II (1307-27), and to that reign’s cataclysmic end and aftermath. These romances engage with these crises’ varied and negative impact on the foundational medieval value of “truth”—i.e. loyalty, trustworthiness, honor. Richard Firth Green’s A Crisis of Truth examines many the late fourteenth century results of this destabilization of truth, and my work expands and adjusts his not only by examining the early fourteenth-century roots of such changes, but also by placing contemporary literature at the core of my investigation. I contend that romance provided the ideal ground for exploring the damage done by the recent disruptions of human truth, largely because romance itself freely mixed the untruths of fantasy with the troubling actualities of contemporary medieval life. My historicism is informed by—and looks to contribute to—the manuscript studies work that surrounds Auchinleck itself, the largest early witness to over a dozen new or unique Middle English romances. By blending an interdisciplinary approach with keen attention to the details of the romance texts themselves, my dissertation seeks to expose how this ostensibly “popular” literature creatively engages with its own historical circumstances, giving voice to a variety and depth of distress with those circumstances in a way that reveals otherwise obscure layers of this crisis of trut

The Truth Between the Teeth: An Analysis of Interproximal Tooth Wear at the Ables Creek Cemetery

Current archaeological knowledge suggests that, by the Late Mississippian period, inhabitants of the southeastern United States had adopted maize agriculture and that maize was a key component of the normal diet. However, in some regions where wild food resources were easily attainable, there is evidence that the transition to agriculture was delayed or did not occur at all. This thesis examines Late Mississippian skeletal collections from two sites in eastern Arkansas, Ables Creek and Upper Nodena. Analysis of differences in interproximal tooth wear facet size and caries rates between the two populations reveals that the diets at these roughly contemporary sites were markedly different. The data collected and presented in this thesis reveals that the Ables Creek skeletal sample has significantly larger interproximal wear facets and dramatically lower caries rates than the Upper Nodena skeletal sample. This thesis discusses the possible cultural and ecological factors that could have led to this dietary difference. Additionally, this thesis introduces and assesses a new method for quantifying interproximal wear facet size

Archaeology and the Public: Exploring Popular Misconceptions

To understand how the public views archaeology and uncover the sources of their perceptions, this paper summarizes the interviews of 58 Fayetteville area high school and college students from the Fall (2000). Using standard ethnographic techniques, including prepared questionnaires and open-ended conversation, we identified several trends in the public\u27s perceptions of archaeology and have developed some hypotheses to account for them. As the Society for American Archaeology has only recently begun to understand, to better educate the general public about archaeology it is important to identify and understand the sources of these misconceptions. For more than a century, Hollywood, book publishers, advertisers and the American public have been fascinated with archaeology. More recently, archaeology has come to cable television with the introduction of the highly successful The Discovery Channel and The History Channel. In this paper, we focus specifically on issues pertaining to the connection the public creates between archaeologists and dinosaurs, gender biases about archaeology, and public views on the looting of archaeological sites. This paper concludes with reasons why this sort of study is essential to the field of archaeolog

Modeling the interlanguage: The effect of frequency in the L2 acquisition of English consonant clusters

This study seeks to determine whether the second language acquisition of non-native linguistic structures is best described within the framework of Optimality Theory, or within the framework of a usage-based model. These two frameworks make different predictions regarding the role of word frequency in second language acquisition. This study examines the productions of high and low-frequency English words as spoken by native speakers of S’gaw Karen, a language which does not permit coda clusters, who are acquiring English as a second language. Trends suggest that second language acquisition is better described within the framework of a usage-based model, suggesting a word-by-word acquisition of coda clusters, although limitations of the study are also noted in the discussion.Ope

Exploring the Value of Interprofessional Collaboration between Occupational Therapy and Design: A Pilot Survey Study

Background: Consistent with the American Occupational Therapy Association’s Vision 2025, interprofessional partnerships between occupational therapy and designers is necessary to “maximize health, well-being, and quality of life for all people . . . through effective solutions that facilitate participation in everyday living” (2016, para 1). Occupational therapy’s knowledge of the person-environment-occupation fit appears to make us well suited to collaborate with design teams to create environments that facilitate optimal function and promote health and well-being (Ainsworth & de Jonge, 2014). Method: Two short closed-ended online questionnaires were designed to gain an understanding of designer and occupational therapy practitioner impressions of interprofessional collaborations between occupational therapy practitioners and designers. Results: Domestically and internationally, 224 occupational therapy practitioners and 127 designers completed the questionnaires. The results indicate current barriers to collaboration among occupational therapy practitioners and designers are due to different professional languages, a lack of opportunity to interface, and designers not fully grasping the scope of occupational therapy as well as its value, which was found to be statistically significant. Conclusions: Productive daily living is incumbent upon a person supported by his or her environment using products to complete daily tasks that facilitate participation. Evidence-based research is needed to demonstrate the distinct value of occupational therapy on design teams

Deep Chandra Observations of the Compact Starburst Galaxy Henize 2-10: X-rays from the Massive Black Hole

We present follow-up X-ray observations of the candidate massive black hole (BH) in the nucleus of the low-mass, compact starburst galaxy Henize 2-10. Using new high-resolution observations from the Chandra X-ray Observatory totaling 200 ks in duration, as well as archival Chandra observations from 2001, we demonstrate the presence of a previously unidentified X-ray point source that is spatially coincident with the known nuclear radio source in Henize 2-10 (i.e., the massive BH). We show that the hard X-ray emission previously identified in the 2001 observation is dominated by a source that is distinct from the nucleus, with the properties expected for a high-mass X-ray binary. The X-ray luminosity of the nuclear source suggests the massive BH is radiating significantly below its Eddington limit (~10^-6 L_Edd), and the soft spectrum resembles other weakly accreting massive BHs including Sagittarius A*. Analysis of the X-ray light curve of the nucleus reveals the tentative detection of a ~9-hour periodicity, although additional observations are required to confirm this result. Our study highlights the need for sensitive high-resolution X-ray observations to probe low-level accretion, which is the dominant mode of BH activity throughout the Universe.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ Letters. 7 pages, 4 figure