Writing Strength-based IEPs for Students with Disabilities in Inclusive Classrooms

Throughout this practitioner-oriented paper, we provide a rationale, framework, and supporting materials to promote the development and implementation of personalized, contextualized, and holistic individualized education plans (IEPs) with a strength-based orientation. We believe that adopting strength-based IEP writing practices is vital to reconstructing students with disabilities as capable contributors to their inclusive classrooms. The use of strengths-based approaches is not necessarily new, however supporting individuals’ needs in a strength-based model has been largely overlooked in special education. Despite their growing application, inclusive pedagogical approaches are largely absent in the development of strength-based IEPs for students with disabilities. IEPs remain largely deficit-focused with only surface level attention given to documenting students’ strengths and abilities. When present levels academic performance statements and IEP goals are written in a deficit-oriented manner, special educators miss opportunities to see beyond the limitations and challenges that their students may face, and instead, overly focus on the shortcomings of the student. However, by adopting a strength-based approach, special educators can instead focus their attention on remediating these deficits by paying attention to the student as an individual and highlight their students’ many strengths and capabilities

An Engineering, Geological and Hydrological Environmental Assessment of a 250 MMSCFD Dry Ash Lurgi Coal Gasification Facility

A preliminary engineering, geological, and hydrological environmental assessment of a proposed 250 MMSCFD dry ash Lurgi coal gasification facility is discussed. The facility\u27s emission spectrum is examined on the basis of the proposed design and empirical data. This system utilizes approximately 13 million tons of lignite and 17,000 acre feet of water per year and consumes 6500 tons of oxygen per day. The results of the study indicate that the major gaseous effluent is CO2, that the federal limits on SO2 effluent may be met, and that the atmospheric degradation criterion will be the most difficult one to meet. The fate of trace elements during the gasification process is discussed. Available preliminary data indicate that the majority of the trace elements will be concentrated in and leave the system with the ash. The probable hydrological and geological impacts pertinent to ash and sludge disposal and water table depression are discussed. The results of the study indicate that the water table will be depressed during mine operations and that some groundwater pollution will occur due to waste disposal

Noise and dynamical pattern selection

In pattern forming systems such as Rayleigh-Benard convection or directional solidification, a large number of linearly stable, patterned steady states exist when the basic, simple steady state is unstable. Which of these steady states will be realized in a given experiment appears to depend on unobservable details of the system's initial conditions. We show, however, that weak, Gaussian white noise drives such a system toward a preferred wave number which depends only on the system parameters and is independent of initial conditions. We give a prescription for calculating this wave number, analytically near the onset of instability and numerically otherwise.Comment: 12 pages, REVTEX, no figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Amplitude expansion of the binary phase field crystal model

Amplitude representations of a binary phase field crystal model are developed for a two dimensional triangular lattice and three dimensional BCC and FCC crystal structures. The relationship between these amplitude equations and the standard phase field models for binary alloy solidification with elasticity are derived, providing an explicit connection between phase field crystal and phase field models. Sample simulations of solute migration at grain boundaries, eutectic solidification and quantum dot formation on nano-membranes are also presented.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure

Dynamic scaling and quasi-ordered states in the two dimensional Swift-Hohenberg equation

The process of pattern formation in the two dimensional Swift-Hohenberg equation is examined through numerical and analytic methods. Dynamic scaling relationships are developed for the collective ordering of convective rolls in the limit of infinite aspect ratio. The stationary solutions are shown to be strongly influenced by the strength of noise. Stationary states for small and large noise strengths appear to be quasi-ordered and disordered respectively. The dynamics of ordering from an initially inhomogeneous state is very slow in the former case and fast in the latter. Both numerical and analytic calculations indicate that the slow dynamics can be characterized by a simple scaling relationship, with a characteristic dynamic exponent of $1/4$ in the intermediate time regime

Cumulative and Differential Effects of Early Child Care and Middle Childhood Out-of-School Time on Adolescent Functioning.

Effects associated with early child care and out-of-school time (OST) during middle childhood were examined in a large sample of U.S. adolescents (N = 958). Both higher quality early child care AND more epochs of organized activities (afterschool programs and extracurricular activities) during middle childhood were linked to higher academic achievement at age 15. Differential associations were found in the behavioral domain. Higher quality early child care was associated with fewer externalizing problems, whereas more hours of early child care was linked to greater impulsivity. More epochs of organized activities was associated with greater social confidence. Relations between early child care and adolescent outcomes were not mediated or moderated by OST arrangements in middle childhood, consistent with independent, additive relations of these nonfamilial settings

Microscopic theory of network glasses

A molecular theory of the glass transition of network forming liquids is developed using a combination of self-consistent phonon and liquid state approaches. Both the dynamical transition and the entropy crisis characteristic of random first order transitions are mapped out as a function of the degree of bonding and the density. Using a scaling relation for a soft-core model to crudely translate the densities into temperatures, the theory predicts that the ratio of the dynamical transition temperature to the laboratory transition temperature rises as the degree of bonding increases, while the Kauzmann temperature falls relative to the laboratory transition. These results indicate why highly coordinated liquids should be "strong" while van der Waals liquids without coordination are "fragile".Comment: slightly revised version that has been accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let

Sharp interface limits of phase-field models

The use of continuum phase-field models to describe the motion of well-defined interfaces is discussed for a class of phenomena, that includes order/disorder transitions, spinodal decomposition and Ostwald ripening, dendritic growth, and the solidification of eutectic alloys. The projection operator method is used to extract the ``sharp interface limit'' from phase field models which have interfaces that are diffuse on a length scale $\xi$. In particular,phase-field equations are mapped onto sharp interface equations in the limits $\xi \kappa \ll 1$ and $\xi v/D \ll 1$, where $\kappa$ and $v$ are respectively the interface curvature and velocity and $D$ is the diffusion constant in the bulk. The calculations provide one general set of sharp interface equations that incorporate the Gibbs-Thomson condition, the Allen-Cahn equation and the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figure