Special Education Co-Teachers\u27 Perceptions: Collaboration, Involvement in Instruction, and Satisfaction

Co-teaching is an approach that is frequently used by schools when students both with and without disabilities are taught in an inclusive classroom. With co-teaching, a general education teacher and a special education teacher share the responsibility of planning and teaching students. This study examined the perceptions of elementary special education co-teachers (n=81) regarding their collaboration with the general educator and their involvement in instruction in the inclusive classroom. In addition, the special education teachers\u27 satisfaction with the co-teaching assignment was investigated. Findings showed that special education co-teachers shared an average of 30 minutes of co-planning a week, teachers who volunteered to co-teach were more likely to plan more often than teachers who were assigned to co-teach, teachers in their first 3 years of the co-teaching relationship tended to have scheduled planning time compared to the spontaneous planning time of co-teachers with long-term relationships. Co-teachers shared the management of the behaviors of all of the students in the classroom. The primary role of the co-teacher was floating and assisting with all students rather than focusing solely on the students with disabilities. However, many co-teachers taught small groups of students comprised of students both with and without disabilities. Overall, co-teachers were satisfied with their assignment and career

Incorporating evacuation potential into place vulnerability analysis

The purpose of this research is to illustrate a three-component operationalization of the Hazards-of-Place Model (HPM) by integrating urban infrastructure (using the capacity of road networks to facilitate evacuation as an example) to describe place vulnerability. This approach is informed by the HPM first articulated by Cutter (Vulnerability to environmental hazards. Prog Hum Geog. 20:529–39, 1996). The HPM is a conceptual framework through which place vulnerability is defined as a combination of social characteristics (expressed by selected socioeconomic demographics) and geophysical risk (expressed by probabilities of occurrence). Using a geographic information system (GIS), the study models the capacity of road networks to facilitate evacuation and used it as an example of urban infrastructure within which place vulnerability occurs. The output of the model was integrated with a geophysical risk layer and social vulnerability index layer as components for assessing the overall place vulnerability. The three-component approach to operationalizing the HPM provides a detailed and nuanced illustration of place-based vulnerability. As an applied tool, the three-component approach presents emergency planners with a new method of integrating diverse geographic data when illustrating spatial patterns of vulnerability to environmental hazards

Using the Change Point Model (CPM) Framework to Identify Windows for Water Resource Management Action in the Lower Colorado River Basin of Texas, USA

In water-stressed river basins with growing urban populations, conflicts over water resources have emerged between urban and agricultural interests, as managerial interventions occur with little warning and tend to favor urban over agricultural water uses. This research documents changes in water use along an urban-to-agricultural gradient to examine whether it is possible to leverage temporal fluctuations in key quantitative data indicators to detect periods in which we could expect substantive managerial interventions in water resource management. We employ the change point model (CPM) framework to locate shifts in water use, climate-related indicators, lake and river characteristics, and agricultural trends across urban and agricultural counties in the lower Colorado River basin of Texas. Three distinctive groupings of change points appear. Increasing water use by urban counties and a shift in local climate conditions characterize the first period. Declines in agricultural counties’ water use and crop production define the second. Drops in lake levels, lower river discharge, and an extended drought mark the third. We interpret the results relative to documented managerial intervention events and show that managerial interventions occur during and after significant change points. We conclude that the CPM framework may be used to monitor the optimal timing of managerial interventions and their effects to avoid negative outcomes

Recovery of Tourism-Based Economies on the Texas Gulf Coast after Hurricane Harvey

The summer tourist season plays an important role in Texas Gulf Coast economies; the Fourth of July holiday week serves as the peak of summer tourism activities. Independence Day celebrations generate considerable sales for small businesses and provide an important source of tax revenue for local municipalities. Both income sources supply communities with needed funds to sustain their operations through the coming off-season. The 2018 summer season was important for businesses that suffered damage at from Hurricane Harvey (August 2017). Income generated from sales during the Fourth of July holiday week will aid communities in their long-term recovery efforts following Hurricane Harvey. Small business owners and chambers of commerce in coastal areas affected by Hurricane Harvey identified the 2018 Fourth of July holiday week, in particular, as a pivotal measure of business recovery, as well as an important indicator of which businesses will remain open following the summer season. This research focused on small business recovery in Rockport and Fulton, Texas, during the 2018 Fourth of July holiday week and examined recovery from the perspective of tourists and small business owners to identify business recovery trajectories during this key week and to benchmark business operational statuses for longitudinal recovery monitoring

Using the Change Point Model (CPM) Framework to Identify Windows for Water Resource Management Action in the Lower Colorado River Basin of Texas, USA

In water-stressed river basins with growing urban populations, conflicts over water resources have emerged between urban and agricultural interests, as managerial interventions occur with little warning and tend to favor urban over agricultural water uses. This research documents changes in water use along an urban-to-agricultural gradient to examine whether it is possible to leverage temporal fluctuations in key quantitative data indicators to detect periods in which we could expect substantive managerial interventions in water resource management. We employ the change point model (CPM) framework to locate shifts in water use, climate-related indicators, lake and river characteristics, and agricultural trends across urban and agricultural counties in the lower Colorado River basin of Texas. Three distinctive groupings of change points appear. Increasing water use by urban counties and a shift in local climate conditions characterize the first period. Declines in agricultural counties’ water use and crop production define the second. Drops in lake levels, lower river discharge, and an extended drought mark the third. We interpret the results relative to documented managerial intervention events and show that managerial interventions occur during and after significant change points. We conclude that the CPM framework may be used to monitor the optimal timing of managerial interventions and their effects to avoid negative outcomes

Visualizing Demographic Trajectories with

In recent years, the proliferation of multi-temporal census data products and the increased capabilities of geospatial analysis and visualization techniques have encouraged longitudinal analyses of socioeconomic census data. Traditional cartographic methods for illustrating socioeconomic change tend to rely either on comparison of multiple temporal snapshots or on explicit representation of the magnitude of change occurring between different time periods. This paper proposes to add another perspective to the visualization of temporal change, by linking multi-temporal observations to a geometric configuration that is not based on geographic space, but on a spatialized representation of n-dimensional attribute space. The presented methodology aims at providing a cognitively plausible representation of changes occurring inside census areas by representing their attribute space trajectories as line features traversing a two-dimensional display space. First, the self-organizing map (SOM) method is used to transform n-dimensional data such that the resulting two-dimensional configuration can be represented with standard GIS data structures. Then, individual census observations are mapped onto the neural network and linked as temporal vertices to represent attribute space trajectories as directed graphs. This method is demonstrated for a data set containing 254 counties and 32 demographic variables. Various transformations and visual results are presented and discussed in the paper, from the visualization of individual component planes and trajectory clusters to the mapping of different attributes onto temporal trajectories