4,925 research outputs found
The Policy Climate for Early Adolescent Initiatives
In an era that is instinctively distrustful of public solutions to problems of individual and family behavior, this essay outlines a broad strategy for early adolescent initiatives that considers, then exploits, the limitations of the current policy climate. The author discusses such strategies as connecting local and state initiatives with federal opportunities; the importance of marketing initiatives clearly and with an emphasis on impact; and the nuances of collaboration. Implementing these strategies are the most effective means to transcend the chilly climate that exists for early adolescent initiatives
Midcourse Corrections to a Major Initiative: A Report on The James Irvine Foundation's CORAL Experience
Draws lessons from the reorientation of the Communities Organizing Resources to Advance Learning (CORAL) Initiative, a $60 million initiative aimed at improving educational achievement in low-performing schools in five California cities
Mentoring, Policy and Politics
In this policy brief, former P/PV President Gary Walker asks, Is mentoring now a durable part of American social policy? If so is this unalloyed good news? Adapted from an article that first appeared in The Handbook of Youth Mentoring (DuBois and Karcher, ed. 2005), the brief reflects on the impact and appeal of mentoring, addresses various critiques of the movement and suggests future directions for mentorings application
Philanthropy and Outcomes: Dilemmas in the Quest for Accountability
Grantees report that never before have grant negotiations with foundation staffs been so focused on specifying outcomes. Some foundations have employed consultants to work with their staffs so that inputs, operational processes, and intended intermediate and long-term outcomes and impacts are specified and differentiated. A number have added evaluation departments to their organizational structure. Small and medium sized foundations, which have previously given exclusively to direct services, are now asking for and funding evaluations, so that they may know with objectivity and rigor if the projected outcomes are achieved. We do not recommend a moratorium on all outcome and impact assessments. In some settings, formal impact evaluation is what is called for. What we are arguing for is a strategic rethinking of when to utilize the tools of formal outcome and impact research
Supporting Answerers with Feedback in Social Q&A
Prior research has examined the use of Social Question and Answer (Q&A)
websites for answer and help seeking. However, the potential for these websites
to support domain learning has not yet been realized. Helping users write
effective answers can be beneficial for subject area learning for both
answerers and the recipients of answers. In this study, we examine the utility
of crowdsourced, criteria-based feedback for answerers on a student-centered
Q&A website, Brainly.com. In an experiment with 55 users, we compared
perceptions of the current rating system against two feedback designs with
explicit criteria (Appropriate, Understandable, and Generalizable). Contrary to
our hypotheses, answerers disagreed with and rejected the criteria-based
feedback. Although the criteria aligned with answerers' goals, and crowdsourced
ratings were found to be objectively accurate, the norms and expectations for
answers on Brainly conflicted with our design. We conclude with implications
for the design of feedback in social Q&A.Comment: Published in Proceedings of the Fifth Annual ACM Conference on
Learning at Scale, Article No. 10, London, United Kingdom. June 26 - 28, 201
Youth Development: Issues, Challenges and Directions
During the past decade there has been considerable concern and discussion about what Americans can do to improve the lives and life prospects of our youth. The changing economy, the stress on family and community life that changing economy brings, concern about the adequacy of public education, the highly publicized incidents of gun violence in schools and the very large cohort of teenagers that this decade brings have only heightened the legitimacy, and the rhetoric, of that concern. In this volume of nine essays, leading researchers and practitioners in the field of youth development share what they have learned over the past decade about the potential challenges of the "youth development approach" and offer some suggestions about how to proceed in the coming decade
Midcourse Corrections to a Major Initiative: A Report on The James Irvine Foundation's CORAL Initiative
This report draws lessons from the reorientation of the Communities Organizing Resources to Advance Learning (CORAL) initiative. CORAL is a $58 million initiative aimed at improving education achievement in low-performing schools in five California cities. The report outlines the inherent challenges to making midcourse corrections to major initiatives. It also reveals lessons that foundations and nonprofits can learn from the CORAL experience, including the importance of midcourse reviews for multiyear initiatives and the value of setting clear and measurable interim outcomes
The spinning artificial gravity environment: A design project
The SAGE, or Spinning Artificial Gravity Environment, design was carried out to develop an artificial gravity space station which could be used as a platform for the performance of medical research to determine the benefits of various, fractional gravity levels for astronauts normally subject to zero gravity. Desirable both for its medical research mission and a mission for the study of closed loop life-support and other factors in prolonged space flight, SAGE was designed as a low Earth orbiting, solar powered, manned space station
Big-bang nucleosynthesis revisited
The homogeneous big-bang nucleosynthesis yields of D, He-3, He-4, and Li-7 are computed taking into account recent measurements of the neutron mean-life as well as updates of several nuclear reaction rates which primarily affect the production of Li-7. The extraction of primordial abundances from observation and the likelihood that the primordial mass fraction of He-4, Y(sub p) is less than or equal to 0.24 are discussed. Using the primordial abundances of D + He-3 and Li-7 we limit the baryon-to-photon ratio (eta in units of 10 exp -10) 2.6 less than or equal to eta(sub 10) less than or equal to 4.3; which we use to argue that baryons contribute between 0.02 and 0.11 to the critical energy density of the universe. An upper limit to Y(sub p) of 0.24 constrains the number of light neutrinos to N(sub nu) less than or equal to 3.4, in excellent agreement with the LEP and SLC collider results. We turn this argument around to show that the collider limit of 3 neutrino species can be used to bound the primordial abundance of He-4: 0.235 less than or equal to Y(sub p) less than or equal to 0.245
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