Understanding Equitable Assessment: How Preservice Teachers Make Meaning of DisAbility

Disproportionality of historically marginalized populations in special education continues to be a critical concern. The identification of students with disabilities is reliant on valid and reliable assessment that is free of bias. The extent to which this is possible given measurement constraints and an increasingly diverse student population is unclear. How teachers are trained to design, select, administer, score, and interpret assessment data related to the identification of students with disabilities is vastly under-researched considering the significant implications of assessment practices. In this study, six special education preservice teachers engaged in an assessment methods course during their second semester of an initial certification program. This study focuses on shifts in preservice teacher understanding and the associated learning experiences in the course. Findings from this study have the potential to inform general and special education teacher preparation coursework

Auditory Motion Information Drives Visual Motion Perception

BACKGROUND: Vision provides the most salient information with regard to the stimulus motion. However, it has recently been demonstrated that static visual stimuli are perceived as moving laterally by alternating left-right sound sources. The underlying mechanism of this phenomenon remains unclear; it has not yet been determined whether auditory motion signals, rather than auditory positional signals, can directly contribute to visual motion perception. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Static visual flashes were presented at retinal locations outside the fovea together with a lateral auditory motion provided by a virtual stereo noise source smoothly shifting in the horizontal plane. The flash appeared to move by means of the auditory motion when the spatiotemporal position of the flashes was in the middle of the auditory motion trajectory. Furthermore, the lateral auditory motion altered visual motion perception in a global motion display where different localized motion signals of multiple visual stimuli were combined to produce a coherent visual motion perception. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: These findings suggest there exist direct interactions between auditory and visual motion signals, and that there might be common neural substrates for auditory and visual motion processing

High-throughput sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater provides insights into circulating variants

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) likely emerged from a zoonotic spill-over event and has led to a global pandemic. The public health response has been predominantly informed by surveillance of symptomatic individuals and contact tracing, with quarantine, and other preventive measures have then been applied to mitigate further spread. Non-traditional methods of surveillance such as genomic epidemiology and wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) have also been leveraged during this pandemic. Genomic epidemiology uses high-throughput sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 genomes to inform local and international transmission events, as well as the diversity of circulating variants. WBE uses wastewater to analyse community spread, as it is known that SARS-CoV-2 is shed through bodily excretions. Since both symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals contribute to wastewater inputs, we hypothesized that the resultant pooled sample of population-wide excreta can provide a more comprehensive picture of SARS-CoV-2 genomic diversity circulating in a community than clinical testing and sequencing alone. In this study, we analysed 91 wastewater samples from 11 states in the USA, where the majority of samples represent Maricopa County, Arizona (USA). With the objective of assessing the viral diversity at a population scale, we undertook a single-nucleotide variant (SNV) analysis on data from 52 samples with \u3e90% SARS-CoV-2 genome coverage of sequence reads, and compared these SNVs with those detected in genomes sequenced from clinical patients. We identified 7973 SNVs, of which 548 were “novel” SNVs that had not yet been identified in the global clinical-derived data as of 17th June 2020 (the day after our last wastewater sampling date). However, between 17th of June 2020 and 20th November 2020, almost half of the novel SNVs have since been detected in clinical-derived data. Using the combination of SNVs present in each sample, we identified the more probable lineages present in that sample and compared them to lineages observed in North America prior to our sampling dates. The wastewater-derived SARS-CoV-2 sequence data indicates there were more lineages circulating across the sampled communities than represented in the clinical-derived data. Principal coordinate analyses identified patterns in population structure based on genetic variation within the sequenced samples, with clear trends associated with increased diversity likely due to a higher number of infected individuals relative to the sampling dates. We demonstrate that genetic correlation analysis combined with SNVs analysis using wastewater sampling can provide a comprehensive snapshot of the SARS-CoV-2 genetic population structure circulating within a community, which might not be observed if relying solely on clinical cases

Subtyping of Breast Cancer by Immunohistochemistry to Investigate a Relationship between Subtype and Short and Long Term Survival: A Collaborative Analysis of Data for 10,159 Cases from 12 Studies

Peer reviewe

Symbolic and Nonsymbolic Equivalence Tasks: The Influence of Symbols on Students with Mathematics Difficulty

Students often experience difficulty with attaching meaning to mathematics symbols. Many students react to symbols, such as the equal sign, as a command to “do something” or “write an answer” without reflecting upon the proper relational meaning of the equal sign. One method for assessing equal-sign understanding is through nonstandard equations (e.g., 3 + 4 = __ + 5) where student answers provide cues about operational or relational interpretation of the equal sign. This study investigated the influence of symbolic and nonsymbolic presentations on a measure of nonstandard equations. A representative sample of 2nd-grade students (n = 413) solved a set of nonstandard equations presented with symbols (i.e., symbolic) and the same set presented with pictures and stories (i.e., nonsymbolic). Students with and without mathematics difficulty demonstrated significantly higher scores on the nonsymbolic version without mathematics symbols. Results have implications for mathematics assessment and instruction

The Effect of Tutoring with Nonstandard Equations for Students with Mathematics Difficulty

Students often misinterpret the equal sign (=) as operational instead of relational. Research indicates misinterpretation of the equal sign occurs because students receive relatively little exposure to equations that promote relational understanding of the equal sign. No study, however, has examined effects of nonstandard equations on the equation solving and equal-sign understanding of students with mathematics difficulty (MD). In the present study, second-grade students with MD (n = 51) were randomly assigned to standard equations tutoring, combined tutoring (standard and nonstandard equations), and notutoring control. Combined tutoring students demonstrated greater gains on equation-solving assessments and equal-sign tasks compared to the other two conditions. Standard tutoring students demonstrated improved skill on equation solving over control students, but combined tutoring students’ performance gains were significantly larger. Results indicate that exposure to and practice with nonstandard equations positively influence student understanding of the equal sign

Using Content Acquisition Podcasts to Improve Teacher Candidate Knowledge of Curriculum-based Measurement

Given the significant literature supporting the use of curriculum-based measurement (CBM) for data-based decision making, it is critical that teacher candidates learn about it prior to student teaching and entry into the field as full-time teachers. The authors of this study used a content acquisition podcast (CAP), a multimedia-based instructional tool, to deliver information regarding CBM to teacher candidates. A second set of students received a practitioner-friendly text containing the same content as the CAP. Participants from three universities (N = 270) were randomly assigned to condition and completed pretest, posttest, and maintenance probes of CBM knowledge and ability to apply skill. In addition, participants completed a measure of motivation during their instruction. Results showed that participants who learned using the CAP scored significantly higher on the knowledge and application measures and reported being more motivated during instruction than peers in the text-only condition. The authors discuss implications for teacher education instruction and future research

Using Content Acquisition Podcasts to Increase Student Knowledge and to Reduce Perceived Cognitive Lead

The use of multimedia-driven instruction in college courses is an emerging practice designed to increase students’ knowledge. However, limited research has validated the effectiveness of using multimedia to teach students about functional behavioral assessments (FBAs). To test the effectiveness of a multimedia tool called Content Acquisition Podcasts (CAPs), this study utilized a pretest–posttest design across two groups of students. One group received instruction on FBAs in the form of a CAP, whereas the other group received a typical lecture (control comparison). Results revealed that members of the CAP group performed better on the posttest compared to the students who received the lecture when the pretest scores were controlled for previous knowledge. In addition, students in the CAP group had lower self-reported levels of cognitive load. Implications for the use of CAPs and future research are discussed