Engineering Design Challenges in a Science Curriculum

Create a light and sound show to entertain your friends. Design an improved safety device for a car. Develop a 2-3 minute voice-over for a sports clip explaining the physics involved in the sport. Modify the design of a roller coaster to meet the needs of a specific group of riders. Design an appliance package for a family limited by the power and energy of wind generator. Develop a museum exhibit to acquaint visitors with the atom and nucleus and create a product that can be sold at the museum store after visitors leave your exhibit. All of these challenges are part of Active Physics (2005), a high school curriculum developed with support from NSF, field tested with thousands of students and presently used across the country. The challenges (mentioned above) serve as a framing structure for the required science content. Each chapter (approximately five weeks of instruction) is introduced by way of a chapter challenge. The students upon hearing the challenge at first react with silence. We originally thought that the students’ silence indicated interest – a rapt awe. Upon interviewing, we found out that the students were in shock. How can they possibly succeed at such a challenge? The sports voice-over or light show or museum exhibit interested them, but their lack of knowledge surrounding the science content suppressed any enthusiasm that they might have for the topic. After the first months of school, with some success at the chapter challenges, the students approached the next challenge with cautious confidence that they would be able to learn the science content and could then use their creativity to complete the challenge. In this brief paper, I will outline the ways in which the chapter challenge is introduced, revisited and then completed. Included in the discussion will be how the chapter challenges are chosen, how we scaffold students’ learning so that they can be successful and the benefits of the chapter challenge. Active Physics is neither an engineering course nor a technology course. It uses engineering design as a way in which students can approach their chapter challenge, but engineering design must remain in the background of the physics content and curriculum

Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration Parent Mediation Program January-June 2016 and Fiscal Year 2016 Evaluation Report

Under the auspices of the Parent Mediation Program (PMP), administered by the Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration (MOPC), separating, divorcing, or never-married parents in Massachusetts received up to four free hours of mediation services from community mediation centers to help deal with issues over parenting time, visitation, access, and parenting plans. MOPC and participating centers worked together to insure that the Parent Mediation Program weathered the twin challenges of reduced funding and increased demand for services during Fiscal Year 2016. The timely fulfillment of administrative responsibilities and the delivery of quality mediation services led to agreement rates, including parenting plan agreements, which were at the upper end of the range of typical rates for divorce agreements. PMP mediation helped most parents make at least some progress in reducing the involvement of courts and improving their interactions with one another, including managing their conflicts and communicating better. Sizable minorities of parents, particularly non-custodial parents, experienced some increase in their contacts with their children, thereby reinforcing their acceptance of responsibility for their child’s welfare. For the most part, parent satisfaction with the mediation process was high. The demonstrated effectiveness of the program formed the basis for recommending that the program be expanded and additional funding be sought

Access to Justice in the United States with Massachusetts Examples: An Introduction

The struggle to gain access to justice requires access to procedural justice, whereby interested parties can effectively participate in the legal processes needed for their pursuit of substantive justice. The justice system’s complexity and cost have effectively rendered the legal system inaccessible to a large portion of U.S. citizenry. A variety of measures have been instituted to increase access to justice, such as government financing of attorney representation, legal aid, pro bono legal assistance, class actions, alternative dispute resolution processes, etc. This paper provides an introduction to some of the issues surrounding the implementation of these measures, with most state-based examples drawn from the situation in Massachusetts

Intervening in School-Based Youth Conflict: Violence Reduction, Positive Youth Development, Peer Mediation, and Conflict Resolution Education

Public concern over youthful conflict was heightened during the latter half of the twentieth century by surges in juvenile violence and crime. In the 1990s, the prevention approach to reducing juvenile violence expanded to include a positive youth development focus which involved interventions to reinforce young people’s strengths. Strategies were devised and implemented in programs, including such school-based interventions as conflict resolution education and peer mediation, to enable youngsters to constructively manage conflict and increase the likelihood of positive outcomes. A review of the research provides promising evidence for the effectiveness of such programs in diminishing and managing school-based youth conflict. Consequently, schools may choose from a variety of demonstrably effective intervention programs to minimize student conflict and can base their decision in part upon the ease of implementing and maintaining the quality of the programs under consideration

Eviction: A story of displacement

About one-third of the US household population lives in rented housing. Among the housing disputes that occur between tenants and landlords, the removal of tenants from their property – that is, their displacement – by landlords through evictions poses one of the greatest threats to housing stability. The prevalence and high stakes of eviction elevate the importance of examining this phenomenon and the efficacy of various interventions, such as financial assistance, legal representation, and mediation

A Study for the Design and Administration of a Successful Foreclosure Mediation Program in Massachusetts

This study examines foreclosure mediation programs and legislation in ten jurisdictions across the nation as well as relevant research and scholarship in the field in order to capture best practices and lessons learned to inform the authorization and design of effective foreclosure mediation programming for Massachusetts. The lens for the examination is the need for foreclosure mediation in Massachusetts and the statutory and programmatic frameworks necessary for the design and implementation of a successful foreclosure mediation program. The study provides an account of how Massachusetts is dealing with residential foreclosures at present and the ways mediation can contribute to resolving foreclosure disputes

Community mediation of parenting disputes between estranged parents

Community mediation, characterized by free or low cost mediation services delivered primarily by volunteer mediators, aims to provide effective dispute resolution services to a broad spectrum of the population, particularly to underserved and low-income populations. The present study seeks to determine whether community mediation fulfills this goal with respect to divorce/separation-related parenting disputes while concomitantly testing the legitimacy of concerns about the quality of mediation services offered according to a community mediation model. Thus, the effectiveness of community mediation in resolving these disputes is measured through indicators reported by mediation participants, such as the population served, mediation results and party reactions to mediation, which encompass not only agreement and process satisfaction rates but also party motivation to use mediation, development of parenting plans, amount of court involvement, and relationship effects involving between-parent and parent-child interactions. The connections between relevant outcomes and the variables of conflict intensity and custodial status are also scrutinized