Creating and Validating an Instrument to Measure Middle School Mathematics Teachers’ Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK)

Due to the pervasiveness of technology, the role and preparation of teachers as they strategically use technology for teaching mathematics needs to be examined. Technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) is a framework for knowledge as teachers develop meaningful learning experiences for their students while integrating strategic use of technology (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). The purpose of this study was to develop a survey for measuring mathematics teachers’ Mathematical Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (M-TPACK). The survey measures the domains of mathematics content, pedagogy and technology. This mixed methods study first examined middle school mathematics teachers’ TPACK through the use of an existing survey (Schmidt et al., 2009). Interviews were conducted to determine the availability and use of technology in middle school mathematics classrooms, and teachers’ strategic use of available technology for mathematics instruction. Finally, a survey measuring M-TPACK was developed to specifically measure teachers’ mathematical TPACK. Grandegenett (2008) asks for more concentration on helping teachers to imagine “possibilities” for using various approaches and strategies for integrating technology in mathematics instruction. This study presents important findings and supports the need for mathematics teachers’ professional development to reconceptualize the role of technology in mathematics instruction. By using the developed M-TPACK Survey, teacher educators and administers can use information about teachers’ knowledge and beliefs concerning technology to enhance teacher education programs and plan professional development. The survey developed from this study can be used for stakeholders as they determine the needs of mathematics teachers, move the concept of TPACK beyond theory and toward practice, and move toward offering appropriate technology experiences to enhance strategic mathematics instruction

Parental Discussions about Sexual Risk with African American Sons: The Role of Religiosity.

The current study investigated the relationship between parental religiosity (i.e., parent church attendance), and frequency of parent-youth communication about sexual risk (i.e., discussion about sex, and discussion about condom use) with African American boys. Participants were 65 parents of African American boys between the ages of 11 and 17 years. Results indicated no relationship between age and parent-son discussion about sexual risk. However, parental religiosity was negatively associated with frequency of communication with sons about sex and condom use. Parents who attended church more frequently reported fewer discussions about sex and condom use than parents who attended church less frequently. These findings suggest that religiosity may be a barrier to parental discussions about sex and sexual risk with African American sons. Findings underscore the importance of collaborating with church communities in supporting parents in educating African American boys about sexual health

Musculoskeletal Physical Therapy During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Is Telerehabilitation the Answer?

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has induced worldwide governments to adopt severe rules limiting individual freedom and imposing social distancing (eg, closing school, mandatory quarantine, restricting entertainments)1 in order to prevent the collapse of national health care systems. In addition to the goal of reducing the COVID-19 pandemic, this paradigm shift brings a different allocation of resources within diagnosis-related groups toward high-intensity levels of care (eg, intensive care units) needed for patients suffering of severe COVID-19. Although these measures are necessary in this pandemic, they constitute a barrier for health care professionals who are usually in close contact with patients needing low-intensity care, such as musculoskeletal (MSK) physical therapists

Re-Envisioning ESL for Short-Term Programs

ESL professionals have traditionally taught the four language skills, vocabulary, and grammar in Intensive English Programs (IEPs) to help incoming students satisfy the university’s ESL requirement. As international education continues to change, however, the ESL profession will need to re-conceptualize its role and make explicit its evolving relevance. IEPs and traditional ESL classes are not necessarily applicable to short-term programs, whose purpose is to give participants some experience at a US institution with a focus on a specific discipline or area of study.  This paper demonstrates two ways ESL professionals re-envisioned their role at the university for short-term programs (STPs) by creating English courses for the international education experience. With linguistic and cultural guidance from the ESL instructors, participants in these English courses critically analyzed impactful observations, perceptions, ideas, or events from the STP and gave PowerPoint presentations at a program-wide conference on their analysis of one academic or non-academic concept or observation that had the most impact

Myofascial trigger points alter the modular control during the execution of a reaching task: a pilot study

Myofascial trigger points (TP) constitute a conundrum in research and clinical practice as their etiopathogenesis is debated. Several studies investigating one or few muscles have shown that both active and latent TP causes an increased muscle activity, however the influence of TP on modular motor control during a reaching task is still unclear. Electromyographic signals, recorded from the muscles of the shoulder girdle and upper arm during a reaching task, were decomposed with Non-Negative Matrix Factorization algorithm. The extracted matrices of motor modules and activation signals were used to label the muscles condition as dominant or non-dominant. The presence of latent and active TP was detected in each muscle with manual examination. Despite a similar muscle activity was observed, we found that muscles with active TP had increased weighting coefficients when labeled in the dominant condition. No influences were found when muscles were in the non-dominant condition. These findings suggest that TP altered the motor control without co-contraction patterns. As a preliminary evidence, the present results suggest that the increased weighting coefficients in presence of TPs are associated with an alteration of the modular motor control without affecting the dimensionality of motor modules for each individual and reciprocal inhibition

Rancang Bangun Alat Pencacah Daun dan Ranting Gambir

Tanaman Gambir merupakan tanaman perdu yang memiliki nilai ekonomis tinggi. Ekstrak (getah) daun dan ranting gambir mengandung asam katechu tannat (tanin), katechin, pyrocatechol, florisin dan lilin fixed oil. Sumatera Barat merupakan penghasil gambir terbesar di Indonesia namun bila dilihat dari produktivitas per hektar masih rendah yaitu berkisar antara 300 sampai 400 kg gambir kering per hektar per tahun. Hal ini disebabkan pengolahan gambir yang masih tradisional. Salah satu solusi untuk mengatasi permasalahan diatas adalah dengan dibuatnya alat pencacah daun dan ranting gambir. Alat pencacah daun dan ranting gambir ini diharapkan dapat mempermudah masyarakat dalam proses pengempaan karena daun dan ranting gambir sudah dicacah terlebih dahulu. Kapasitas alat pencacah ini adalah 53,83 kg/jam dan laju pengumpanan 63,6 kg/jam. Untuk analisa ekonomi teknik didapat total biaya tetap Rp.1.911.052/tahun, total biaya tidak tetap Rp. 91.088,8 / jam, biaya sewa alat Rp. 1.706,9 /jam dan BEP untuk pengoperasionalan alat 2.365,45 Kg/jam. Harga jual alat pencacah daun dan ranting gambir adalah Rp. 7.463.000 dengan laba 30

Lightning performance evaluation of Italian 150 kV sub-transmission lines

A significant majority of overhead transmission lines' (OHLs) outages is due to backflashovers caused by direct lightning strikes: the realistic assessment of the lightning performance is thus an important task. The paper presents the analysis of the lightning performance of an existing 150kVItalian OHL, namely, its backflashover rate (BFOR), carried out by means of anATP-EMTP-based Monte Carlo procedure. Among other features, the procedure makes use of a simplified pi-circuit for line towers' grounding system, allowing a very accurate reproduction of transient behaviours at a very low computational cost. Tower grounding design modifications, aimed at improving the OHL lightning performance, are also proposed and discussed

A Survey of Operations Research and Analytics Literature Related to Anti-Human Trafficking

Human trafficking is a compound social, economic, and human rights issue occurring in all regions of the world. Understanding and addressing such a complex crime requires effort from multiple domains and perspectives. As of this writing, no systematic review exists of the Operations Research and Analytics literature applied to the domain of human trafficking. The purpose of this work is to fill this gap through a systematic literature review. Studies matching our search criteria were found ranging from 2010 to March 2021. These studies were gathered and analyzed to help answer the following three research questions: (i) What aspects of human trafficking are being studied by Operations Research and Analytics researchers? (ii) What Operations Research and Analytics methods are being applied in the anti-human trafficking domain? and (iii) What are the existing research gaps associated with (i) and (ii)? By answering these questions, we illuminate the extent to which these topics have been addressed in the literature, as well as inform future research opportunities in applying analytical methods to advance the fight against human trafficking.Comment: 28 pages, 6 Figures, 2 Table

Perceptions and Experiences of Individuals With Neck Pain: A Systematic Critical Review of Qualitative Studies With Meta-Summary and Meta-Synthesis

This study aimed at exploring the perspectives and experiences of individuals with neck pain by synthesizing all available qualitative studies