Miss mek wi trai: Using Multiliteracies Pedagogy to Effect Changes in Jamaica Inner-city Grade 7 Students' English Learning

My four-month research project is the first recorded Jamaican study to explore if and how multiliteracies pedagogy (MLS) paired with sociocultural theory (SCT) can improve inner-city students English language development (ELD) and engagement. In diglossic Jamaica, social class typically dictates Jamaican language abilities. Typically, most upper- and middle-class Jamaicans speak English, while most members of the Jamaican lower class speak Patois. English is the language of the Jamaican curriculum, employment and power. Improvement in my participants EDL will improve their access to better-paying jobs and higher education. I conducted my research in the following sequential manner: 1) a month of classroom observation of the original English teachers classroom; 2) two months where I taught my experiential communicative lessons inspired by MLS and SCT; 3) four student focus group interviews and one teacher interview; and, 4) document analysis of examples of students three individual work (two after-lesson reflections and a paragraph of narrative account). All of these data collection tools ensured that I captured my participants meaning making and subjectivities. My research findings support and diverge from the weight of evidence in multiliteracies pedagogy and sociocultural theory. Similar to other research employing MLS and SCT, my findings revealed that my participants became more engaged in their English learning during my experiential teaching than they were in their original English language class. The majority of the students writing skills also improved. However, unlike MLS and SCT based research, in my study there was not a strong relationship between the students emotional engagement and their behavioural engagement; there was also no relationship between the students emotional engagement and improvement in language development. I recommend that teachers incorporate multiliteracies-inspired communicative activities in their English classes, as these activities engage students and promote English language development. I also suggest that multiliteracies researchers implement goodbehavioural strategies to ensure that students are engaged cognitively, emotionally and behaviourally. Moreover, I encourage teachers, future researchers and the Jamaican Ministry of Education to respect the students voices and agency, rather than merely incorporating their lived experiences in their school learning

Cover of \u3ci\u3eVon Duprin Self-Releasing Fire Exit Latches\u3c/i\u3e

Cover of Von Duprin Self-Releasing Fire Exit Latches booklet

Letter from Vonnegut Hardware Company to T. B. Larrimore

Letter from Vonnegut Hardware Company to T. B. Larrimore [sic]. The one-page typewritten note is dated 19 November 1912

Rock Hill Hardware Company Records - Accession 220

The Rock Hill Hardware Company was organized on June 4, 1893 by A.R. Smith and John Gelzer, A.A. Barron and his sons R.E. and W.L. bought Smith out in 1896 and by 1907 had acquired the whole firm. The Barron family owned and operated it until it closed in 1978. The collection consists of a 1906 ledger, financial records, a photograph, a seed license, World War II ration booklets, and newspaper clippings.https://digitalcommons.winthrop.edu/manuscriptcollection_findingaids/1109/thumbnail.jp

Cascade: hardware for high/variable precision arithmetic

technical reportThe Cascade hardware architecture for high/variable precision arithmetic is described. It uses a radix-16 redundant signed-digit number representation and directly supports single or multiple precision addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, extraction of the square root and computation of the greatest common divisor. It is object-oriented and implements an abstract class of objects, variable precision integers. It provides a complete suite of memory management functions implemented in hardware, including a garbage collector. The Cascade hardware permits free tradeoffs of space versus time

Effects of needs-based patient education on self-efficacy and health outcomes in people with rheumatoid arthritis: A multicentre, single blind, randomised controlled trial

Objectives The Educational Needs Assessment Tool (ENAT) is a self-completed questionnaire, which allows patients with arthritis to prioritise their educational needs. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of needs-based patient education on self-efficacy, health outcomes and patient knowledge in people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Methods Patients with RA were enrolled into this multicentre, single-blind, parallel-group, pragmatic randomised controlled trial. Patients were randomised to either the intervention group (IG) where patients completed ENAT, responses of which were used by the clinical nurse specialist to guide patient education; or control group (CG) in which they received patient education without the use of ENAT. Patients were seen at weeks 0, 16 and 32. The primary outcome was selfefficacy (Arthritis Self Efficacy Scale (ASES)-Pain and ASES-Other symptoms). Secondary outcomes were health status (short form of Arthritis Impact Measurement Scale 2, AIMS2-SF) and patient knowledge questionnaire-RA. We investigated between-group differences using analysis of covariance, adjusting for baseline variables. Results A total of 132 patients were recruited (IG=70 and CG=62). Their mean (SD) age was 54 (12.3) years, 56 (13.3) years and disease duration 5.2 (4.9) years, 6.7 (8.9) years for IG and CG, respectively. There were significant between-group differences, in favour of IG at week 32 in the primary outcomes, ASES-Pain, mean difference (95% CI) -4.36 (1.17 to 7.55), t=-2.72, p=0.008 and ASES-Other symptoms, mean difference (95% CI) -5.84 (2.07 to 9.62), t=-3.07, p=0.003. In secondary outcomes, the between-group differences favoured IG in AIMS2-SF Symptoms and AIMS2-SF Affect. There were no between-group differences in other secondary outcomes. Conclusions The results suggest that needs-based education helps improve patients' self-efficacy and some aspects of health status

Adolescents as Agents of Change

  This article chronicles a research study in two middle schools in Canada where teachers and learners were engaged to create and integrate digital texts representative of social justice issues into the school curriculum. The article illustrates through samples of digital texts the tacit skills of students that are not readily seen in schools. Centred within a multiliteracies pedagogy (New London Group, 1996; Cope & Kalantzis, 2000), young adolescents were exposed to global issues through critical readings of children’s social justice picture books and young adult novels (Freire & Macedo, 1987, Christenson, 2000) . The adolescents’ critical reading and writing of digital and print texts raised understanding of the nexus between socio-political and economic injustice, hence showing them as critical agents of change within their school communities