How Can Middle School Science Teachers Differentiate Instruction to Support All Learners in an Inclusive Classroom?

Barker, J. How Can Middle School Science Teachers Differentiate Instruction To Support All Learners In An Inclusive Classroom? (2020) The research question addressed in this capstone was, how can middle school science teachers differentiate instruction to support all learners in an inclusive classroom? Research was compiled in regards to the composition of an inclusive classroom, the mindset of teachers, differentiation as a philosophy, and differentiation as a means to modifying instruction. The information obtained was utilized for a culminating project in the form of curriculum for an eighth grade science classroom. The curriculum was envisioned for use in a public middle school science classroom with 1:1 technology access, but the strategies and philosophies would be helpful in many other content areas and settings. A unit outline with differentiated learning activities was created utilizing the Understanding by Design framework (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005), as well as inspired by Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design (Tomlinson & McTighe, 2006). Ultimately, this project created a path for teachers to follow as they navigate how to differentiate their lessons to allow all of their learners to reach success

Effect of instructional methodologies on student achievement modeling instruction vs. traditional instruction

ABSTRACT Different teaching styles can impact student learning in many ways. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of Modeling Instruction on student achievement in a high school Chemistry course. Different tests were used to compare the data at the beginning of a school year and at the end of the school year. The tests used were to determine gains in chemistry content knowledge, abilities to reason scientifically, and attitudes about learning chemistry. The control group was taught by traditional instruction through the use of lecture, note-taking, and textbook guided assignments. The experimental group was taught by the use of the Modeling Curriculum from Arizona State University, which consists of daily group activities, including white-boarding, journal-writing, and self-discovery tactics. As far as concepts in Chemistry were concerned, based on Chemistry Concept Inventory normalized gains, there was a significant gain for the Modeling group independent of students’ prior exposure to Physical Science and gender. There was also a positive increase towards favorable attitudes in learning Chemistry for the Modeling sample, based on the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science-Chemistry. The data in this study shows utilizing Modeling instruction in a high school Chemistry setting is effective for positive gains in content knowledge and attitudes about chemistry

Evidencing the value of patient and public involvement in inter-organisational health networks

Patient and public involvement (PPI) and inter-organisational networks (IONs) such as the Academic Health Science Network (AHSN) are parallel policy responses to “wicked problems” (Rittel and Weber, 1973, p. 155) in health. The two policy responses have spawned separate literatures with little overlap. This thesis synthesises the PPI and ION literatures to create a conceptual framework for understanding the context which an ION provides for PPI. By conceiving of PPI as one form of network-based collaboration, the framework provides a way to understand the structure, functioning, and extent of PPI in an ION. Value can then be evidenced at multiple levels. The thesis uses the conceptual framework to build theoretical propositions that are explored using a single case study design following Yin’s (2014) methodology. The findings show that public contributors to the AHSN played a range of roles. When health professionals deployed leadership practices in meetings, they transferred power to the public contributors, giving them the opportunity to speak. If the public contributors could play a role relevant to the opportunity, then the transfer of power led to the public making a contribution to the meeting. Where the contribution fitted with the style of the meeting, this reinforced trust relationships between professionals and the public. Even the most extensively involved public contributors were outsiders to the organisation, compared to professionals. As outsiders, the public made valuable contributions to the AHSN, in particular challenging it to better implement its stated aims and objectives. The conclusion argues that effective PPI requires dialogue between professionals and public contributors. Dialogue could be encouraged if network professionals directed their skills at the public as well as at network members. For example, public contributors could be invited to co-create the structure of PPI programmes. Professionals could give public contributors feedback part of the way through the programme. Finally, promoting the range of roles each public contributor can play would allow the public to create value by encouraging organisations to deliver according to their aims and objectives

Developing a typology of the roles public contributors undertake to establish legitimacy: A longitudinal case study of patient and public involvement in a health network

Objective To identify how public contributors established their legitimacy in the functioning of a patient and public involvement programme at a health network. Design A longitudinal case study with three embedded units (projects) involving public contributors. Interviews (n=24), observations (n=27) and documentary data collection occurred over 16 months. Setting The West of England Academic Health Science Network (WEAHSN), 1 of 15 regional AHSNs in England. Participants Interviews were conducted with public contributors (n=5) and professionals (n=19) who were staff from the WEAHSN, its member organisations and its partners. Results Public contributors established their legitimacy by using nine distinct roles: (1) lived experience, as a patient or carer; (2) occupational knowledge, offering job-related expertise; (3) occupational skills, offering aptitude developed through employment; (4) patient advocate, promoting the interests of patients; (5) keeper of the public purse, encouraging wise spending; (6) intuitive public, piloting materials suitable for the general public; (7) fresh-eyed reviewer, critiquing materials; (8) critical friend, critiquing progress and proposing new initiatives and (9) boundary spanner, urging professionals to work across organisations. Individual public contributors occupied many, but not all, of the roles. Conclusions Lived experience is only one of nine distinct public contributor roles. The WEAHSN provided a benign context for the study because in a health network public contributors are one of many parties seeking to establish legitimacy through finding valuable roles. The nine roles can be organised into a typology according to whether the basis for legitimacy lies in: the public contributor's knowledge, skills and experience; citizenship through the aspiration to achieve a broad public good; or being an outsider. The typology shows how public contributors can be involved in work where lived experience appears to lack relevance: strategic decision making; research unconnected to particular conditions; or acute service delivery

Resilient Families Plus: Evaluation Report and Executive Summary

Resilient Families Plus is a 10-week school-based family intervention designed for students in their initial high school years and their parents. The program aims to bolster family relations since the premise of the program is that positive family environments are associated with better social and learning outcomes (Shortt et al., 2007; Toumbourou, et al., 2013). Resilient Families Plus has been newly created from the original and established program called Resilient Families developed by Professor Toumbourou and colleagues at the Centre for Adolescent Health in conjunction with Deakin University (‘program developers’). Resilient Families Plus is a new prevention program with a family home reading component and is an extension from the previous Resilient Families program. Resilient Families Plus comprises the same five core elements of the original Resilient Families program but with two extra components which focus on academic and learning outcomes in addition to the health and well-being outcomes central to the original program. Academic and learning outcomes become a new focus through the introduction of the Parent committee training session and distribution of a parent reading campaign brochure designed to encourage adolescents to read an extra 10 minutes per day. The Resilient Families Plus pilot was conducted in Terms 2 and 4 in 2018 with Year 8 students and their parents from two Victorian secondary schools. These two schools had a high percentage of students from disadvantaged backgrounds (both schools had more than 50% students in the bottom quartile on the ICSEA1 measure). The aim of the evaluation was to examine the feasibility of the Resilient Families Plus intervention and its readiness for trial, and to explore whether the program had an influence on academic achievement precursors such as academic self-concept (Mathematics Self-Concept and English Self-Concept) and academic resilience. The original protocol of this evaluation included a comparison of two intervention groups (Resilient Families and Resilient Families Plus) and a control group. However, low recruitment (two schools and 34 students) resulted in the need to amend the evaluation design to a smaller scale study of one intervention group (Resilient Families Plus) reducing the potential for robust estimates of impact. Accompanying this impact study was an implementation and process evaluation and cost calculation of the Resilient Families Plus program. The evaluation of Resilient Families Plus was independently conducted by Western Sydney University between July 2017 and March 2019. The program delivery was co-funded by VicHealth and Evidence for Learning, and the evaluation was funded by Evidence for Learning

Habitual Behavior Is Mediated by a Shift in Response-Outcome Encoding by Infralimbic Cortex

The ability to flexibly switch between goal-directed actions and habits is critical for adaptive behavior. The infralimbic prefrontal cortex (IfL-C) has been consistently identified as a crucial structure for the regulation of response strategies. To investigate the role of the IfL-C, the present study employed two validated reinforcement schedules that either promote habits or goal-directed actions in mice. The results reveal that information about action-outcome relationships is differentially encoded in the IfL-C during actions and habits as evidenced by encoding of behavioral outcomes during goal-directed actions that is lost during habits. Optogenetic inhibition of the IfL-C selectively at press during habitual behavior (when firing rates are reduced during unreinforced goal-directed actions) resulted in restoration of sensitivity to change of action-outcome contingency. These results reveal a novel functional mechanism by which IfL-C promotes habitual behavior, and provide insight into strategies for the treatment and prevention of pathological, inflexible behavior common in neuropsychiatric illness

Extracorporeal Shock Wave Therapy (ESWT) as a treatment for recurrent Neurogenic Heterotopic Ossification (NHO)

“This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Brain Injury on 5 Feb 2013, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.3109/02699052.2012.729293." © 2013 Informa UK Ltd.Primary objective: To describe the effects of extracorporeal shock wave therapy (ESWT) on neurogenic heterotopic ossification (NHO). Research design: A single case study was considered the most appropriate methodology in this situation. Methods and procedures: The subject was a 43 year old female 10 years post-traumatic brain injury with recurring NHO around the hip joint. Baseline assessments of pain using a 10-point VAS, range of motion of the hip using a goniometer and walking ability (number of steps over a standard distance) were conducted. Four applications of ESWT using a Minispec™ Extracorporeal Shock Wave Lithotripsy machine (Medispec Int. USA) administered over 6 weeks to the anterolateral aspect of the right hip. Follow-up assessments were conducted weekly over the period of intervention and then monthly for 5 months. Main outcomes and results: Immediately following treatment, pain was reduced to 0 on the VAS scale; hip range of motion increased and the number of steps over a standard distance reduced, indicating increased step length. At 5-month follow-up, without further ESWT intervention, these results were maintained. Conclusion: This case study suggests that ESWT may be a non-invasive, low risk intervention for the management of NHO

The problems of offenders with mental disorders: A plurality of perspectives within a single mental health care organisation

Managers, doctors, nurses, occupational therapists, social workers, psychologists, unqualified staff and service users were interviewed for a qualitative study of risk management and rehabilitation in an inner city medium secure forensic mental health care unit. Different professional orientations to service user problems were identified. Doctors focused primarily on the diagnosis of mental disorder, which they managed mainly through pharmaceutical interventions. Psychologists were principally concerned with personal factors, for example service user insight into their biographical history. Occupational therapists concentrated mainly on daily living skills, and social workers on post-discharge living arrangements. Some front line nurses, held accountable for security lapses, adopted a criminogenic approach. Service users were more likely than professionals to understand their needs in terms of their wider life circumstances. These differences are explored qualitatively in relation to four models of crossdisciplinary relationships: monoprofessional self-organisation combined with restricted communication; hermeneutic reaching out to other perspectives; the establishment of interdisciplinary sub-systems; and transdisciplinary merger. Relationships between professions working in this unit, as portrayed in qualitative interviews, corresponded mainly to the first model of monoprofessional self-organisation. Reasons for restricted crossdisciplinary understanding, particularly the wide power/status differences between the medical and other professions, and between staff and patients, are discussed

Brassica ASTRA: an integrated database for Brassica genomic research

Brassica ASTRA is a public database for genomic information on Brassica species. The database incorporates expressed sequences with Swiss-Prot and GenBank comparative sequence annotation as well as secondary Gene Ontology (GO) annotation derived from the comparison with Arabidopsis TAIR GO annotations. Simple sequence repeat molecular markers are identified within resident sequences and mapped onto the closely related Arabidopsis genome sequence. Bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) end sequences derived from the Multinational Brassica Genome Project are also mapped onto the Arabidopsis genome sequence enabling users to identify candidate Brassica BACs corresponding to syntenic regions of Arabidopsis. This information is maintained in a MySQL database with a web interface providing the primary means of interrogation. The database is accessible at http://hornbill.cspp.latrobe.edu.au

Mortality in HIV and tuberculosis patients following implementation of integrated HIV-TB treatment: Results from an open-label cluster-randomized trial

Background: HIV-TB treatment integration reduces mortality. Operational implementation of integrated services is challenging. This study assessed the impact of quality improvement (QI) for HIV-TB integration on mortality within primary healthcare (PHC) clinics in South Africa. // Methods: An open-label cluster randomized controlled study was conducted between 2016 and 2018 in 40 rural clinics in South Africa. The study statistician randomized PHC nurse-supervisors 1:1 into 16 clusters (eight nurse-supervisors supporting 20 clinics per arm) to receive QI, supported HIV-TB integration intervention or standard of care (control). Nurse supervisors and clinics under their supervision, based in the study health districts were eligible for inclusion in this study. Nurse supervisors were excluded if their clinics were managed by municipal health (different resource allocation), did not offer co-located antiretroviral therapy (ART) and TB services, services were performed by a single nurse, did not receive non-governmental organisation (NGO) support, patient data was not available for > 50% of attendees. The analysis population consists of all patients newly diagnosed with (i) both TB and HIV (ii) HIV only (among patients previously treated for TB or those who never had TB before) and (iii) TB only (among patients already diagnosed with HIV or those who were never diagnosed with HIV) after QI implementation in the intervention arm, or enrolment in the control arm. Mortality rates was assessed 12 months post enrolment, using unpaired t-tests and cox-proportional hazards model. (Clinicaltrials.gov, NCT02654613, registered 01 June 2015, trial closed). // Findings: Overall, 21 379 participants were enrolled between December 2016 and December 2018 in intervention and control arm clinics: 1329 and 841 HIV-TB co-infected (10·2%); 10 799 and 6 611 people living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)/ acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) (PLWHA) only (81·4%); 1 131 and 668 patients with TB only (8·4%), respectively. Average cluster sizes were 1657 (range 170–5782) and 1015 (range 33–2027) in intervention and control arms. By 12 months, 6529 (68·7%) and 4074 (70·4%) were alive and in care, 568 (6·0%) and 321 (5·6%) had completed TB treatment, 1078 (11·3%) and 694 (12·0%) were lost to follow-up, with 245 and 156 deaths occurring in intervention and control arms, respectively. Mortality rates overall [95% confidence interval (CI)] was 4·5 (3·4–5·9) in intervention arm, and 3·8 (2·6–5·4) per 100 person-years in control arm clusters [mortality rate ratio (MRR): 1·19 (95% CI 0·79–1·80)]. Mortality rates among HIV-TB co-infected patients was 10·1 (6·7–15·3) and 9·8 (5·0–18·9) per 100 person-years, [MRR: 1·04 (95% CI 0·51–2·10)], in intervention and control arm clusters, respectively. // Interpretation: HIV-TB integration supported by a QI intervention did not reduce mortality in HIV-TB co-infected patients. Demonstrating mortality benefit from health systems process improvements in real-world operational settings remains challenging. Despite the study being potentially underpowered to demonstrate the effect size, integration interventions were implemented using existing facility staff and infrastructure reflecting the real-world context where most patients in similar settings access care, thereby improving generalizability and scalability of study findings