Nontraditional teachers: Personal learning styles and teaching styles

Growing numbers of career change adults are entering alternative certification programs to become teachers. These adults bring to the classroom many of the same characteristics of traditionally-prepared teachers. They also come with some unique characteristics, among them age, reasons for entering teaching, prior career experience and well-developed personalities that include learning preferences; This study conceptualized non-traditional teachers as mature adults, persons whose personality types and learning styles preferences had been well developed and also reinforced by their previous career choices. The study explored the effect of non-traditional teachers\u27 personal learning styles on their teaching styles. Four participants for this multiple-case study were identified through the use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Each participant chosen for the study was representative of one of four learning styles quadrants based on the 16-type MBTI. Observations and interviews were used to gather data from the participants and their supervisors using the methodology framework of Yin (1991), and the methods of qualitative data analysis developed by Lecompte and Preissle (1993). In addition, videotaped teaching sessions were viewed and coded by the researcher and a peer for triangulation; Consistent with previous findings on the relationship between teaching and learning styles of traditional teachers, this study found that non-traditional teachers tend to select instructional strategies and media that support their preferred learning styles. They do so regardless of other influences such as administrative support, availability of resources, and educational coursework. They were found to comply with school district and school curriculum mandates in ways uniquely their own, again, drawing on their preferred modes of learning to plan curricula, teach and assess; The findings suggest that learning styles are an important consideration for teacher educators. Not only is it important for teacher educators to consider prior experience and learning styles in developing teacher education courses, it is also important for them to communicate the impact of personal learning styles preferences to preservice and inservice teachers for their future work in the classroom

Data, Politics and Public Health: COVID-19 Data-Driven Decision Making in Public Discourse

In spring 2020, New York City became the acknowledged epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. To keep residents informed, Governor Cuomo conducted a streak of 111 daily press briefings reporting critical information about the status of the pandemic in the State at large, and New York City in particular. We show that through these briefings Governor Cuomo introduced an audience of New Yorkers and others to concepts basic to data-driven decision making such as data, science, models, and projections, and in so doing claimed that his decisions were unrelated to politics or whim. But we further suggest that data-driven decision making is not always immune from politics and human frailty in government. We conclude that basing policy decisions on data requires that policymakers insure the creation of a resilient and trustworthy health care data infrastructure to function as the scaffolding upon which policy making takes place

Municipal Government Use of Social Media: An Analysis of Three Chinese Cities

To investigate the use of information dissemination and public communication by Chinese municipal governments, we analyzed the social media use of three large cities with relatively mature social media development: Shanghai, Nanjing and Chengdu. We collected 4,429 government posts and users’ likes, shares and comments from Weibo accounts of each city’s information office. Government posts were coded into 7 types and 16 topics. We used cross-tabulation, correlation analysis and multivariate linear regression to analyze government posts, user responses and their inter-relationships. Chengdu has issued the most posts, while Nanjing has received the highest average user response to posts and exhibited the best signs of success in communication between the government and citizens

Minority Health Disparities in a 21st-century Pandemic: A Comprehensive Report of Project Research Focused on New York

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacted a starkly unequal toll on New Yorkers of color – both in terms of the virus itself and the accompanying social and economic impacts of the pandemic. These are not separate issues. They stem from the structural racism embedded in American society. While our work begins by establishing a statistical baseline for how the virus’s unequal toll played out in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York, any analysis of these disparities that looks solely at hospitalizations and deaths misses a tremendous piece of this tragic and preventable story. Minority health disparities have always existed in the United States. But COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated these disparities in ways policymakers cannot ignore; doing so would mean accepting inequity with life and death consequences. The COVID-19 pandemic also exposed gaps in existing knowledge about the causes of these inequities and, more important, how to end them. We need, for example, more and better data about the toll of the virus in New York’s Indigenous communities and Indigenous communities more generally. Additionally, our work suggests important differences exist in the way different minority groups experience the progression of the disease.More work is needed to fully explore those differences and their causes, particularly as they relate to additional minority communities in New York. This project has been an important initial step toward filling some of these gaps and identifying interventions that, by necessity, must be informed by and rooted in community experiences and insight. The University at Albany began this project at the direction of Gov. Andrew Cuomo with extreme urgency at the height of the most serious public health emergency New York has faced in a century. That urgency led to the creation of a new health equity research ecosystem at UAlbany that will long outlast this project and continue to produce new knowledge, insights, and recommendations to combat future public health threats we have yet to even imagine. The trauma inflicted on New Yorkers by the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be undone. But university researchers and government policymakers should jointly pledge to do everything in their power not to allow the lessons learned from COVID-19’s unequal path across New York to go unheeded

The Salience and Urgency of Enterprise Data Management In the Public Sector

In this emerging topics paper, we argue that enterprise data management is a key enabler for new and innovative uses of data. Given widespread recognition of the public value potential of these new uses of data, enterprise data management capability is increasingly salient and recognized as urgent. We further argue that creating capability for enterprise data management is poorly understood. However, since enterprise data management is a future practitioner imperative, new research from the digital government community addressing the challenges to creating such capability is required. We illustrate the salience and urgency of enterprise data management through three vignettes that highlight the potential of such efforts to reorganize the public sector along new data oriented lines. A focus on the role of governance and the chief data officer as key enablers to creating public value from data highlight the need for research in these areas

Biochar modification to enhance sorption of inorganics from water

Biochar can be used as a sorbent to remove inorganic pollutants from water but the efficiency of sorption can be improved by activation or modification. This review evaluates various methods to increase the sorption efficiency of biochar including activation with steam, acids and bases and the production of biochar-based composites with metal oxides, carbonaceous materials, clays, organic compounds, and biofilms. We describe the approaches, and explain how each modification alters the sorption capacity. Physical and chemical activation enhances the surface area or functionality of biochar, whereas modification to produce biochar-based composites uses the biochar as a scaffold to embed new materials to create surfaces with novel surface properties upon which inorganic pollutants can sorb. Many of these approaches enhanced the retention of a wide range of inorganic pollutants in waters, but here we provide a comparative assessment for Cd2+, Cu2+, Hg2+, Pb2+, Zn2+, NH4+, NO3-, PO43-, CrO42- and AsO43-

Estudio neurofisiológico de la estructura del sueño en pacientes epilépticos

Existe una interacción clínicamente importante entre la epilepsia y el sueño, compleja y recíproca. El sueño y la privación del mismo pueden aumentar las descargas epileptiformes. Asimismo, se han descrito alteraciones del sueño en pacientes epilépticos, con causa multifactorial. OBJETIVOS: Este estudio de investigación tiene como propósito aportar información sobre la arquitectura del sueño de los pacientes epilépticos de nuestro medio, así como su relación con los diversos factores intrínsecos. MATERIAL Y METODO: Mediante un estudio observacional retrospectivo, de casos y controles, se analiza la estructura del sueño de 230 pacientes epilépticos -excluyendo a los pacientes con trastorno primario concomitante del sueño - y de 41 sujetos control, a través de la polisomnografía nocturna. CONCLUSIONES: Nuestros resultados muestran que los pacientes epilépticos derivados para un estudio de polisomnografía nocturna presentan una perturbación de la calidad del sueño, con aumento de la fase II y disminución del sueño REM, con diferencias significativas en relación al grupo control. Esta tendencia se observa en los distintos estratos analizados, en función de la edad, sexo y actividad paroxística. Asimismo los resultados muestran signos de mayor privación de sueño en los pacientes epilépticos. Con diferencias significativas y relevantes en los estudios realizados en varores, niños y pacientes con actividad paroxística generalizada epileptiforme. Por otro lado, observamos que la actividad paroxística, sin el efecto de los fármacos antiepilépticos, se asocia a un aumento significativo del sueño lento profundo, con tendencia a la disminución del sueño REM. Y respecto a la terapia antiepiléptica, hemos observado que algunas modalidades de tratamiento antiepiléptico muestran una tendencia a la estabilización del sueño, mientras que otras muestran efectos negativos. Hemos observado que los pacientes tratados con carbamazepina (en monoterapia o asociado a ácido valproico) presentan signos de estabilización de la arquitectura del sueño. Los pacientes tratados con fenitoína en monoterapia y ácido valproico (en monoterapia o asociado a benzodiazepina) presentan datos de estabilización del sueño REM. Por el contrario, los pacientes tratados en politerapia, así como los pacientes tratados con benzodiacepinas presentan una tendencia a la alteración de la arquitectura del sueño. CONSIDERACIONES: Por todo ello, queríamos destacar la importancia del diagnóstico temprano de la epilepsia, así como un tratamiento antiepiléptico adecuado, atendiendo a la estructura del sueño, además del control de las crisis

Competition and strategic responses to fundraising in donative markets

Nonprofit (NP) organizations provide key social service goods but rely on donations, obtained in a competitive environment, for that provision. Yet most research focuses on competition in the output markets without considering inter- and intra-sector competition in the markets for donations. This paper develops and estimates a model of NPs’ fundraising to secure donations. We highlight the strategic nature of the fundraising decision and show theoretically that rival NPs’ fundraising responses can be either strategic complements or strategic substitutes but find empirically that responses are predominantly strategic substitutes. We find that donors are relatively inelastic to fundraising but also that NPs have nontrivial responses to rival’s fundraising and these effects are stronger within than across sectors. However, in totality, the across sector impacts are important to consider. We find that counterfactually removing a NP from a market increases equilibrium NP-level fundraising but decreases total fundraising in the market