Best Practices in Healthy Homes and Rural Rehab

Recognizing the importance of rehab work for housing preservation, and the difficulty of running a sustainable rehab line of business, in 2015 the Rural Initiative prioritized an inquiry into the rural rehab line of business. A cross section of experts were gathered from the NeighborWorks network to form a year-long Rural Rehab Task Force to provide recommendations on how NeighborWorks can better support rehab in training, technical assistance, and resource allocation, and to share best practices by producing model business plans demonstrating different ways to structure sustainable rehab programs

What\u27s Really Needed to Effectuate Resource Protection in Communities

This article examines the challenges presented by the complexity of environmental laws at the local level, through the use of a case study. It documents the important role that comprehensive planning and local regulations play in protecting the natural resources in our communities. In considering lessons learned, this article also considers what else is needed to continue protecting the environment at the local level. First, there is an overwhelming need for municipalities to develop a regional strategy to protect their natural resources. Second, local laws play an important role in protecting natural resources. While we often think of the state and federal statutes as being the guardians of our waterways and air, more and more local laws are catching what falls through the cracks of the state and federal system. Third, it is very challenging to be an effective local official. The system is complex; the job requires a tremendous amount of time and dedication, awareness and education. It\u27s no wonder that many supervisors and mayors run unopposed or that it is difficult to find volunteers to serve on local boards. Fourth, if we don\u27t focus on supporting the development of local leadership, then all the discussions about local environmental law and smart growth will be for nothing because the ideas will fall on fallow ground. Local officials need training, financial support and enhanced community process, within a regional framework

NH Department of Health and Human Services Public Health Laboratories Shellfish Program 2005

The Department of Health and Human Services-New Hampshire Public Health Laboratories (DHHS-NHPHL) has continued to carry out various actions providing laboratory analyses for the routine water quality monitoring, “Red Tide” monitoring, and additional testing after rainfall, excess sewage treatment plant, and emergency events. Also, a validation study was performed using non-EPA funds to compare results between the traditional Paralytic Shellfish Poison bioassay and a newer developed test allowed for screening use

NH Department of Health and Human Services Public Health Laboratories Shellfish Program Activities January 2005 - December 2005

The Department of Health and Human Services-New Hampshire Public Health Laboratories (DHHS-NHPHL) has continued to carry out various actions providing laboratory analyses for the routine water quality monitoring, “Red Tide” monitoring, and additional testing after rainfall, excess sewage treatment plant, and emergency events. Also, a validation study was performed using non-EPA funds to compare results between the traditional Paralytic Shellfish Poison bioassay and a newer developed test allowed for screening use

Bakhtinian Dialogic and Vygotskian Dialectic: Compatabilities and contradictions in the classroom?

This article explores two central notions of ‘dialectics’ and ‘dialogics’ based on the work of Vygotsky (drawing on philosophers such as Hegel, Spinoza, Engels and Marx) and Bakhtin (drawing on members of the Bakhtin Circle and writers such as Dostoevsky and Rabelais) respectively, as well their varying interanimations within Stalin-Marxist Russian society. It is proposed that these two positions are incommensurably located alongside one another in contemporary education. I argue that Bakhtin offers diametrically oppositional educational provocations to those of Vygotsky. The implications of these interpretations will be explored with consideration of their underlying philosophical incompatibilities and contradictions, as well as the opportunities such a consideration pose for educational practice today

“Now you see me, now you don't": Dialogic loopholes in authorship activity with the very young

The genesis for this paper lies in the problematic nature of assessment practice, as a central authorship activity, for early childhood education teachers. This paper draws on dialogic philosophy to explore this challenge based on a doctoral investigation of a very young child (White, 2009) and the strategic means by which she reveals and conceals meaning through dialogic loopholes that are generated through eavesdropping tactics. The central argument made is that what can be seen and interpreted, when language is not shared between dialogic partners, is always and only an ontologic endeavour and never an epistemological truth. Seen in relation to the very young child, this tenet invites the potential to ‘see’ more and to move beyond narrow definitions of learning as an outcome of authorial intervention on the part of the teacher; to embrace uncertainty and difference as a central pedagogical stance; and to re-vision the infant as polyphonic hero in their own adventure plots

Aesthetics of the beautiful: Ideologic tensions in contemporary assessment

Pedagogy is an uncertain art. Yet by its very nature, contemporary teaching and learning practice typically suggests that the expert teacher must come to know their student well enough to plan and predict for educational challenges that will expand and extend their thinking. In many countries, this process is underpinned by bureaucratic ideology that has persuasively developed an agenda for assessment as accountability for pedagogy. As a result assessment practice in these educational institutions is very public, highly accountable and heavily prescribed through curriculum documents that claim to encompass societal agendas. In some cases, such practices are even legislated. Assessment practice is now seen as integral to the pedagogical process since it is through assessment that the teacher purportedly comes to understand the learner; thus providing a rationale for the teaching approaches and strategies that are applied in order to progress learning. In this chronotopic location I suggest there is little room for uncertainty, since the quest to capture the "essence" of the learner and mould them towards societal goals is as much a political agenda of accountability as it is pedagogical