Equity and Excellence: Political Forces in the Education of Gifted Students in the United States and Abroad

Divisive rhetoric and heated political discourse surround the identification and education of gifted students and lead to opposing philosophical issues of egalitarianism versus elitism. ┬áResearchers have long chronicled the ambivalence in the United States over the concepts of giftedness and intellectual talent (Benbow &Stanley, 1996; see also Gallagher & Weiss, 1979).┬á┬áGallagher (2005) suggested that the two predominant social values reflected in American education are equity and excellence: ΓÇ£The dual and desirable educational goals of student equity and student excellence have often been in a serious struggle for scarce resources.┬á Student equity ensures all students a fair short a good education.┬á Student excellence promises every student the right to achieve as far and as high as he or she is capable. Because the problems of equity have greater immediacy than does the long-term enhancement of excellence, this struggle has often been won by equity.ΓÇ¥ (Gallagher, 2005, p. 32). The ebbs and flows of public perceptions of equity and excellence and political and historical events have significantly impacted the evolution of the field of gifted education in the United States and abroad.┬á In order to understand these influences on the respective ΓÇ£outlierΓÇ¥ student, itΓÇÖs important to consider the context of the country, significant events, overall educational reform efforts and the implications on the education of gifted students. This article provides a backdrop of the United StatesΓÇÖ ambivalence towards gifted education as well as provides an overview of a sample of countries as frames of reference. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.┬

Revisiting To-Morrow: A Contemporary Interpretation of Ebenezer Howard's Celebrated Garden City Model

In his essay, “The Garden City Idea and Modern Planning,” Lewis Mumford heralds the Garden City as the single most influential planning document of the twentieth century.[1] Rooted in the romantic socialist tradition, the Garden City scheme addressed the overwhelming degradation of the urban environment and the resultant decline in physical health and social morale that had occurred during the rapid industrialization of English cities. The concept was met with overwhelming enthusiasm both at home and abroad, which generated an international planning movement in the early twentieth century. The Garden City provided a template for town planning that ultimately resulted in the building of thirty-two new towns in the United Kingdom and many more around the world. Howard’s model was instrumental in establishing the Town and Country Planning Association, which has had a significant influence on planning legislation, elevating the Garden City “from its origins in a cheap book…to the status of an act of parliament.”[2] More than a century has passed since Ebenezer Howard first proposed the Garden City. While the worst of the insalubrious conditions of the industrial city have dissipated, a new and equally formidable environmental crisis has arisen that emphasizes human impact on the environment and the central role humans have assumed in shaping the planet. A critical analysis of the historic Garden City reveals a complex urban form whose guiding principles share an almost surreal affinity with contemporary sustainable planning, perhaps making it more relevant to present day than any other time since its inception. This thesis explores the potential of the celebrated Garden City model to address the unfolding environmental crisis of the twenty-first century. With the aid of contemporary ecological theories, the model is reinterpreted and updated to respond to the current environmental crisis. The result is the twenty-first century Garden City, that demonstrates a new highly adaptable urban framework that structures relationships between the man-made and natural environments. Through the exploration of the Garden City, a methodology is developed for the study of historic precedents. By challenging the model to respond to the twenty-first century crisis, it is first deconstructed and evaluated, and then reconceptualized toward contemporary interests. This method of approach suggests that an historic model maintains something of value that can be offered in contemporary times. It provides an alternative way to study and learn from historic models, while projecting their values in to the future. [1] Lewis Mumford, “The Garden City Idea and Modern Planning,” in Garden Cities of To-morrow, ed. Frederic J. Osborn (London: Faber and Faber, 1970), 29. [2] Ebenezer Howard, To-Morrow a Peaceful Path to Real Reform, Original Ed. with Commentary by Peter Hall, Dennis Hardy & Colin Ward (London; New York: Routledge, 2003), 185

Minnesota River Valley Partners Project

The Minnesota River and its valley define the region. It connects all the communities, and its natural and cultural resource base has encouraged many citizen-lead partnerships to enhance and develop the region with an eye to its future. The partnership of Tatanka Bluffs, Green Corridor, Center for Changing Landscapes (CCL), and the Conservation Corps of Minnesota (CCM) received funds to: Build on the citizen-led initiatives and CCL’s work by creating additional designs that will connect all the Valley’s individual initiatives such as the county trail system, the Minnesota River State Trail, the Minnesota River Scenic Byway, the Minnesota River Water Trail, the acquired natural resource lands, and the historic initiatives into a seamless natural resource and cultural-based amenity system, Provide resources for the building of these designs by CCM, and Extend the impact of the Blandin Leadership Program graduates regionally by engaging graduates in a mentoring program with CCM youth members. This integrated approach to developing the natural and cultural resource based recreation economy in the Minnesota River Valley builds on the strengths of its partners and work already accomplished to move the Valley communities forward together.  Prepared in partnership with the Center for Changing Landscape, Conservation Corps Minnesota, Renville County Parks Department, and Tatanka Bluffs Corridor by the Community Assistantship Program (CAP), which is administered by the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) at the University of Minnesota

Systematic and Cell Type-Specific Telomere Length Changes in Subsets of Lymphocytes.

Telomeres, the protective DNA-protein complexes at the ends of linear chromosomes, are important for genome stability. Leukocyte or peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) telomere length is a potential biomarker for human aging that integrates genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors and is associated with mortality and risks for major diseases. However, only a limited number of studies have examined longitudinal changes of telomere length and few have reported data on sorted circulating immune cells. We examined the average telomere length (TL) in CD4+, CD8+CD28+, and CD8+CD28- T cells, B cells, and PBMCs, cross-sectionally and longitudinally, in a cohort of premenopausal women. We report that TL changes over 18 months were correlated among these three T cell types within the same participant. Additionally, PBMC TL change was also correlated with those of all three T cell types, and B cells. The rate of shortening for B cells was significantly greater than for the three T cell types. CD8+CD28- cells, despite having the shortest TL, showed significantly more rapid attrition when compared to CD8+CD28+ T cells. These results suggest systematically coordinated, yet cell type-specific responses to factors and pathways contribute to telomere length regulation

Being Motivated to Protect : The Influence of Sexual Communal Motivations on Sexual Risk Taking

College-aged students are a high-risk population for unplanned pregnancy with 40% of women between the ages of 18-20 experiencing an unplanned pregnancy. This can cause physical, mental, and emotional stress resulting in withdrawal from college for the student. Communal motivation (being oriented towards other’s needs) positively predicts condom use. WISE interventions, a simple yet impactful type of interventions targeted towards addressing a problem, have been shown to be successful. Participants completed a sexual risk behavior measure, sexual risk-taking measure and communal motivations (CM) measure following a sexual health video, and reflection activity were participants either applied the sexual health information to their relationship (experimental) or reflected on the sexual health material presented (control). CM was positively correlated with number of sexual partners in the past 3 months, r(262) = .162,

SLEEP, PRAY, AND STATUS: RELIGIOSITY AS A MODERATOR IN THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN SUBJECTIVE SOCIAL STATUS AND SLEEP IN AFRICAN AMERICAN YOUNG ADULTS

Abstract 2101 SLEEP, PRAY, AND STATUS: RELIGIOSITY AS A MODERATOR IN THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN SUBJECTIVE SOCIAL STATUS AND SLEEP IN AFRICAN AMERICAN YOUNG ADULTS Elissa Kim, HS, Elizabeth A. Brown, HS, Alison Kwan, HS, Amara Craig, HS, Nataria T. Joseph, PhD, Psychology, Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA, Laurel M. Peterson, PhD, Psychology, Bryn Mawr, Bryn Mawr, PA Background: With growing importance being placed on biopsychosocial health, researchers have raised awareness about the role that subjective social status (SSS) plays in sleep. This is particularly important when examining African Americans given that they are at higher risk for experiencing poor sleep quality. However, religiosity has shown to impart lasting health benefits and behaviors that may be protective for sleep health. For example, the theory of religious coping proposes that religious behaviors can lead to adaptive stress responses that protect biopsychosocial health from the stressors of perceived low social status. Interactions between SSS and religiosity in predicting sleep quality are understudied. Objective: We aimed to examine whether SSS is associated with sleep quality and whether religiosity measured at global and momentary levels moderates this association in African American young adults. Methods: A sample of 129 healthy African American young adults completed 2 or 4 days of hourly ecological momentary assessment (EMA) surveys and a baseline survey. SSS was measured using the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status, sleep quality was measured using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), and religious behaviors were measured using recommended items from the Fetzer Institute (2003). A subsample of participants also wore an ActiGraph watch to assess objective sleep quality. Results: Lower SSS with respect to ones’ community (but not with respect to the United States population) was associated with worse sleep quality, b = -.28, p = .032, η2 = .04. Further, there was a significant interaction between SSS (with respect to the US population) and religiosity, p = .049, η2 = .06. Specifically, among those exhibiting higher SSS with respect to the US population, religious behaviors were protective, i.e., associated with better sleep quality. Results regarding momentary level religious behaviors and objective sleep will be presented. Conclusions: Results extend previous literature and suggest refinements to the theory of religious coping given that religiosity was shown to have a stronger positive effect on sleep quality among African Americans who reported having a higher perceived social status. Future research should continue to explore these factors at the momentary level to illuminate mechanisms by which these interactions unfold. LINK TO ABSTRACT: https://apps.psychosomatic.org/abstracts/previewAbstract.cfm?absid=82986&print=true&hideprint=true[10/3/2

The Relevance of the Colon to Zinc Nutrition

Globally, zinc deficiency is widespread, despite decades of research highlighting its negative effects on health, and in particular upon child health in low-income countries. Apart from inadequate dietary intake of bioavailable zinc, other significant contributors to zinc deficiency include the excessive intestinal loss of endogenously secreted zinc and impairment in small intestinal absorptive function. Such changes are likely to occur in children suffering from environmental (or tropical) enteropathy (EE)—an almost universal condition among inhabitants of developing countries characterized by morphologic and functional changes in the small intestine. Changes to the proximal gut in environmental enteropathy will likely influence the nature and amount of zinc delivered into the large intestine. Consequently, we reviewed the current literature to determine if colonic absorption of endogenous or exogenous (dietary) zinc could contribute to overall zinc nutriture. Whilst we found evidence that significant zinc absorption occurs in the rodent colon, and is favoured when microbially-fermentable carbohydrates (specifically resistant starch) are consumed, it is unclear whether this process occur in humans and/or to what degree. Constraints in study design in the few available studies may well have masked a possible colonic contribution to zinc nutrition. Furthermore these few available human studies have failed to include the actual target population that would benefit, namely infants affected by EE where zinc delivery to the colon may be increased and who are also at risk of zinc deficiency. In conducting this review we have not been able to confirm a colonic contribution to zinc absorption in humans. However, given the observations in rodents and that feeding resistant starch to children is feasible, definitive studies utilising the dual stable isotope method in children with EE should be undertaken.G.L. Gopalsamy, D.H Alpers, H.J Binder, C.D. Tran, B.S. Ramakrishna, I. Brown, M. Manary, Elissa Mortimer and G.P. Youn

PKCθ Signals Activation versus Tolerance In Vivo

Understanding the pathways that signal T cell tolerance versus activation is key to regulating immunity. Previous studies have linked CD28 and protein kinase C-θ (PKCθ) as a potential signaling pathway that influences T cell activation. Therefore, we have compared the responses of T cells deficient for CD28 and PKCθ in vivo and in vitro. Here, we demonstrate that the absence of PKCθ leads to the induction of T cell anergy, with a phenotype that is comparable to the absence of CD28. Further experiments examined whether PKCθ triggered other CD28-dependent responses. Our data show that CD4 T cell–B cell cooperation is dependent on CD28 but not PKCθ, whereas CD28 costimulatory signals that augment proliferation can be uncoupled from signals that regulate anergy. Therefore, PKCθ relays a defined subset of CD28 signals during T cell activation and is critical for the induction of activation versus tolerance in vivo