Teaching Social Construction of Reality in the Basic Course: Opening Minds and Integrating Contexts

After a brief review of social construction theory (SCT), this paper explores the introduction of SCT into the hybrid basic communication course. SCT offers a theoretical perspective that can open minds and integrate the contexts of our basic course. Specifically, this article offers a) an introduction to the theory; b) application of SCT to the areas of interpersonal communication, small group communication and public communication; and c) a description of a syllabus using the hybrid basic communication course (all of the SCT projects referred to can be found in the Appendix)

Associate Faculty: Directing a Rich Resource of the Basic Course

This article offers ideas for Basic Course Director (BCD) about directing associate faculty. It is important that the BCD gives serious consideration to the processes of hiring, orienting, developing and evaluating associate faculty. Associate faculty offer many opportunities and challenges to the BCD. Because they are not traditional academics, they often bring a refreshingly different perspective to the classroom and the department. They may need mentoring to develop self-confidence, hone their teaching skills and begin to think of themselves as fully contributing members of the department. Their scheduling needs require the BCD to input different factors into the decision making process

Personal Investments, Professional Gains: Strategies of African American Women Teacher Educators

As African American mothers and teacher educators, the authors’ investment in teacher education is both personal and professional. The authors’ build upon these personal and professional investments in their teaching practices with primarily White pre-service teachers, in the hopes of better preparing them to teach African American children. This paper outlines pedagogical and curriculum strategies including reflective activities, the use of Black English Vernacular (BEV), and theoretical orientations. These strategies emphasize the a) political nature of teaching and the ways in which teacher positionality matters; b) importance of interpersonal relationships based on care, respect, and recognition of humanity; and, c) experiences students of color have in school and community

Advocating for African American Students: Cultural Perspectives on Best Practices

We are in revolutionary situation, no matter how unpopular that word may be. You must understand that in the attempt to correct so many generations of bad faith and cruelty, when it is operating not only in the classroom but in society, you will meet the most fantastic, the most brutal, and the most deter-mined resistance. James Baldwin, A Talk to Teacher

Measuring Student Engagement in the Online Course: The Online Student Engagement Scale (OSE)

Abstract Student engagement is critical to student learning, especially in the online environment, where students can often feel isolated and disconnected. Therefore, teachers and researchers need to be able to measure student engagement. This study provides validation of the Online Student Engagement scale (OSE) by correlating student self-reports of engagement (via the OSE) with tracking data of student behaviors from an online course management system. It hypothesized that reported student engagement on the OSE would be significantly correlated with two types of student behaviors: observational learning behaviors (i.e., reading e-mails, reading discussion posts, viewing content lectures and documents) and application learning behaviors (posting to forums, writing e-mails, taking quizzes). The OSE was significantly and positively correlated with application learning behaviors. Results are discussed along with potential uses of the OSE by researchers and online instructors

NEPC Review: Ten Years in New Orleans: Public School Resurgence and the Path Ahead

A recent report published by two organizations, Public Impact and New Schools for New Orleans, reviews the ten years of education reform in post-Katrina New Orleans, and the creation of a &ldquo;portfolio model&rdquo; of school governance. While the report acknowledges some of the critiques of these reforms, it exaggerates improvements and inaccurately downplays the ways that the reforms created and, in some cases, exacerbated inequities. In addition, the report erroneously presents the reforms as the result of a logical and apolitical process that simply recasts the role of government in public education, changing from the manager or operator of schools to &ldquo;a regulator of educational outcomes and equity,&rdquo; with operation turned over to a variety of non-profit organizations. Finally, the report overstates its claims of post-Katrina academic gains in New Orleans, evidence for which is scant and has significant limitations, particularly due to the repeated changes in test-score standards across the decade. For these reasons, the report does little to accurately inform the lay public or scholars about the current state and future of public education in New Orleans or the viability of &ldquo;portfolio&rdquo; districts.</p

Effect of ocean acidification on otolith development in larvae of a tropical marine fish

© The Author(s), 2011. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. The definitive version was published in Biogeosciences 8 (2011): 1631-1641, doi:10.5194/bg-8-1631-2011.Calcification in many invertebrate species is predicted to decline due to ocean acidification. The potential effects of elevated CO2 and reduced carbonate saturation state on other species, such as fish, are less well understood. Fish otoliths (earbones) are composed of aragonite, and thus, might be susceptible to either the reduced availability of carbonate ions in seawater at low pH, or to changes in extracellular concentrations of bicarbonate and carbonate ions caused by acid-base regulation in fish exposed to high pCO2. We reared larvae of the clownfish Amphiprion percula from hatching to settlement at three pHNBS and pCO2 levels (control: ~pH 8.15 and 404 μatm CO2; intermediate: pH 7.8 and 1050 μatm CO2; extreme: pH 7.6 and 1721 μatm CO2) to test the possible effects of ocean acidification on otolith development. There was no effect of the intermediate treatment (pH 7.8 and 1050 μatm CO2) on otolith size, shape, symmetry between left and right otoliths, or otolith elemental chemistry, compared with controls. However, in the more extreme treatment (pH 7.6 and 1721 μatm CO2) otolith area and maximum length were larger than controls, although no other traits were significantly affected. Our results support the hypothesis that pH regulation in the otolith endolymph can lead to increased precipitation of CaCO3 in otoliths of larval fish exposed to elevated CO2, as proposed by an earlier study, however, our results also show that sensitivity varies considerably among species. Importantly, our results suggest that otolith development in clownfishes is robust to even the more pessimistic changes in ocean chemistry predicted to occur by 2100

Thermodynamics of Extended Bodies in Special Relativity

Relativistic thermodynamics is generalized to accommodate four dimensional rotation in a flat spacetime. An extended body can be in equilibrium when its each element moves along a Killing flow. There are three types of basic Killing flows in a flat spacetime, each of which corresponds to translational motion, spatial rotation, and constant linear acceleration; spatial rotation and constant linear acceleration are regarded as four dimensional rotation. Translational motion has been mainly investigated in the past literature of relativistic thermodynamics. Thermodynamics of the other two is derived in the present paper.Comment: 8 pages, no figur