Case Study of Teacher Beliefs About Student Achievement in a Suburban Middle School

The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceptions and beliefs of teachers at a Midwestern suburban middle school about students, student learning, and about teacher's beliefs of their collective abilities to achieve the task of school improvement. Saddleback Middle School (SMS) has experienced low standardized test scores since the implementation of NCLB. Of the school district's five middle schools, SMS consistently had the lowest scores in math and reading. The researcher sought to understand the relationship between teacher beliefs and student academic achievement. Eight volunteer teachers from SMS were interviewed twice and observed twice in their classroom settings. The findings of the interviews, observations, and information from teacher lesson plans and grading procedures were analyzed through the lens of Bandura's theory of collective teacher efficacy (CTE). With knowledge of the collective beliefs of the faculty, the leadership of the school could implement plans to improve faculty CTE and student achievement. Analysis of the data indicated a difference between what teachers thought of their teaching practices and how they actually performed in the classroom. They expressed knowledge of positive instructional practices to improve student learning but did not practice those strategies regularly in their classrooms. Participants tended to have a critical view of poor performing students and of the abilities of some of their colleagues. Findings indicate a need for future research regarding school culture and how it relates to CTE in school improvement and the limitations of case study research alone in investigating CTE beliefs of a faculty.School of Educational Studie

Age-related differences in reporting of drug-associated liver injury: Data-mining of the WHO Safety Report Database

Background/aims: Children, adults and the elderly exhibit differing frequency and manifestations of drug-induced liver injury, which may be due to physiological changes associated with development and/or aging. WHO Safety Report Database data-mining analyses assessed the impact of age on liver event reporting frequency with different phenotypes. Methods: 236 drugs associated with hepatotoxicity in the WHO Safety Report Database were evaluated using the Empirical Bayes Geometric Mean (EBGM) of the relative reporting ratio with 90% confidence interval (EB05 and EB95) calculated for 3 different age groups, 0-17, 18-64, and >65 years (or elderly), for overall, serious (acute liver failure), hepatocellular, and cholestatic liver injury. Results: Overall, cases of age 0-17, 18-64, and 65 years or older comprised 6%, 62%, and 32% of liver event reports. Acute liver failure and hepatocellular injury were more frequently reported among children compared to adults and the elderly while reports with cholestatic injury were more frequent among the elderly (p<0.00001). Twenty-nine drugs, including anti-retrovirals, CNS agents, and antimetabolites, were associated with significantly higher reporting frequency among children vs. others, while 10 drugs were associated with significantly higher reporting frequency among the elderly. Regarding drug characteristics, a potential to cause mitochondrial dysfunction was more prevalent among the drugs with increased pediatric reporting frequency while high lipophilicity and biliary excretion were more common among the drugs associated with higher reporting frequency in the elderly. Conclusion: Our analysis identified age-specific phenotypes in reported liver events and potential drug properties associated with age-specific hepatotoxicity. Further analyses are warranted to better understand potential age-specific susceptibility.Master of Public Healt

Let’s Talk: An Examination of Parental Involvement as a Predictor of STEM Achievement in Math for High School Girls

This research was conducted to examine the influence of parental involvement, in the form of parent conversations, on mathematics achievement for high school girls. Data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09) public-use file provided a sample of 13,694 students, including 6,592 girls for our analyses. A scale for measuring parent conversations was developed and regression analyses were conducted to examine whether this scale variable predicted mathematics achievement. Results indicated that conversational parental involvement was a significant predictor of mathematics achievement for Black and White girls, but not Hispanic and Asian. Implications for research and policy initiatives are discussed

A Mediterranean undercurrent seeding experiment (AMUSE) : part II: RAFOS float data report, May 1993-March 1995

This is the final data report of all acoustically tracked RAFOS data collected in 1993-1995 during A Mediterranean Undercurrent Seeding Experiment (AMUSE). The overall objective of the program was to observe directly the spreading pathways by which Mediterranean Water enters the North Atlantic. This includes the direct observation of Mediterranean eddies (meddies), which is one mechanism that transports Mediterranean Water to the North Atlantic. The experiment was comprised of a repeated high-resolution expendable bathythermograph (XBT) section and RAFOS float deployments across the Mediterranean Undercurrent south of Portugal near 8.5°W. A total of 49 floats were deployed at a rate of about two floats per week on 23 cruises on the chartered Portuguese-based vessel, Kialoa II, and one cruise on the R/V Endeavor. The floats were ballasted for 1100 or 1200 decibars (db) to seed the lower salinity core of the Mediterranean Undercurrent. The objectives of the Lagrangian float study were (1) to identify where meddies form, (2) to make the first direct estimate of meddy formation frequency, (3) to estimate the fraction of time meddies are being formed, and (4) to determine the pathways by which Mediterranean Water which is not trapped in meddies enters the North Atlantic.Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation through Grant No. OCE-91-01033 to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Grant No. OCE-91-00724 to Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and by the Luso-American Foundation for Development through Grant No. 54/93 to the University of Lisbon

Implicit Gender Bias, Engagement, and Protective Factors in STEM Faculty

The present study assessed implicit gender bias and job engagement among STEM faculty at a mid-size liberal arts university. Forty-nine faculty in each of the departments of natural and social sciences were assessed for implicit gender bias and job engagement. We found that men had greater implicit gender bias than women in the natural sciences. In addition, women in natural science departments felt marginally less engaged than women in social science departments. Women’s disengagement was positively associated with imposter phenomenon and perceived lack of control in departmental decisions. However, women who actively participated in a women’s organization or had an advocate had more positive psychological outcomes. These findings suggest that although women STEM faculty, particularly in the natural sciences, experience challenges, support provided by women’s organizations or advocates may be an important strategy to reduce the effects of these challenges

Hamiltonian Privilege

We argue that Hamiltonian mechanics is more fundamental than Lagrangian mechanics. Our argument provides a non-metaphysical strategy for privileging one formulation of a theory over another: ceteris paribus, a more general formulation is more fundamental. We illustrate this criterion through a novel interpretation of classical mechanics, based on three physical conditions. Two of these conditions suffice for recovering Hamiltonian mechanics. A third condition is necessary for Lagrangian mechanics. Hence, Lagrangian systems are a proper subset of Hamiltonian systems. Finally, we provide a geometric interpretation of the principle of stationary action and rebut arguments for privileging Lagrangian mechanics

Nurse education leaders' perspectives on the teaching of numeracy to undergraduate nursing students : a qualitative research study

Aim The aim of this study was to explore the perspectives of nurse education leaders of Australian undergraduate nursing degrees on the teaching of nursing numeracy and how the Australian Nursing & Midwifery Accreditation Standards influence curriculum development. Background Nurses’ numeracy skills are reportedly deficient worldwide, posing a significant threat to patient safety. This is an issue for the education of undergraduate nurses and thus for the nursing profession. The international literature reveals a heterogeneous blend of learning approaches, but it is unclear which approaches are best suited to improve the numerical calculation ability of nurses. In the Australian context, there are no accreditation standards referring to numeracy, therefore, it is important to discover how nurse education leaders’ design and implement the teaching of numeracy. Design A qualitative approach using thematic analysis was employed. The setting was Australian universities that delivered an accredited undergraduate nursing degree leading to nursing registration. Methods Purposive sampling was used to recruit 17 nurse education leaders of Australian undergraduate nursing degrees. Individual, semi-structured virtual interviews were conducted between November 2022 and January 2023. Interview data were analysed using Braun and Clarke’s (2006) six phases of thematic analysis. Findings Five themes emerged from the analysis: (i) indistinct accreditation standards, (ii) teaching basic maths for clinical applications, (iii) a range of bespoke teaching approaches (iv) we’re nurses, not numeracy educators and (v) assumptions about an unprepared cohort. Conclusion The leaders of undergraduate nursing degrees assumed that nursing students would have proficiency in numeracy skills on entering university. However, this was not the case, hence numeracy was an essential skill that needed to be taught to the undergraduate nursing students. Lack of direction from the accreditation council led to the existence of various curricula and an array of approaches to teaching numeracy and medication calculations, which challenged nursing academics who did not consider themselves numeracy educators. This study makes a novel contribution to knowledge, teaching and practice in undergraduate nursing numeracy curricula

XMM-Newton Observation of an X-ray Trail Between the Spiral Galaxy NGC6872 and the Central Elliptical NGC6876 in the Pavo Group

We present XMM-Newton observations of a trail of enhanced X-rayemission extending along the 8'.7 X 4' region between the spiral NGC6872 and the dominant elliptical NGC6876 in the Pavo Group,the first known X-ray trail associated with a spiral galaxy in a poor galaxy group and, with projected length of 90 kpc, one of the longest X-ray trails observed in any system. The X-ray surface brightness in the trail region is roughly constant beyond ~20 kpc of NGC6876 in the direction of NGC6872. The trail is hotter (~ 1 keV) than the undisturbed Pavo IGM (~0.5 keV) and has low metal abundances (0.2 Zsolar). The 0.5-2 keV luminosity of the trail, measured using a 67 X 90 kpc rectangular region, is 6.6 X 10^{40} erg/s. We compare the properties of gas in the trail to the spectral properties of gas in the spiral NGC6872 and in the elliptical NGC6876 to constrain its origin. We suggest that the X-ray trail is either IGM gas gravitationally focused into a Bondi-Hoyle wake, a thermal mixture of ~64% Pavo IGM gas with ~36% galaxy gas that has been removed from the spiral NGC6872 by turbulent viscous stripping, or both, due to the spiral's supersonic motion at angle xi ~ 40 degrees with respect to the plane of the sky, past the Pavo group center (NGC6876) through the densest region of the Pavo IGM. Assuming xi = 40 degrees and a filling factor eta in a cylindrical volume with radius 33 kpc and projected length 90 kpc, the mean electron density and total hot gas mass in the trail is 9.5 X 10^{-4}*eta^{-1/2} cm^{-3} and 1.1 X 10^{10}*eta^{1/2} Msolar, respectively.Comment: typos corrected in Eq. 7 & 8, figures and discussion unchanged, 39 pages, 11 postscript figures, submitted to Ap