Teaching Refugee Students in Arizona: Examining the Implementation of Structured English Immersion

With an increase in refugee children entering schools around the world, it has grown increasingly important to examine educational policy formulation and implementation to understand how teachers are enacting policies to support this student population. This article focuses on the language policy that shapes educational experiences for refugee students in urban schools in Phoenix, Arizona. Through a review of the literature and data collected from teacher interviews and a survey, this article explores how teachers appropriate official educational policies to construct de facto policies in their classrooms. Innovative practices that teachers employ are also highlighted, and recommendations for further research, policy, and practice are provided

Biosensor design utilizing particle-bound enzymes

There is a clear need for affordable point-of-care diagnostics, especially in vulnerable low- and middle-income countries where access to laboratory-based testing is limited. This thesis explores whether recombinant protein technology in combination with a low-cost support matrix could provide a basis for an inexpensive, simple, and robust production process for the bio-sensing element of a diagnostic that would be amenable to manufacture in resource constrained settings. Silica was selected as the solid support for this work, given its biocompatibility and wide-availability (including extraction from natural sources, like sand, as demonstrated here). By employing an affinity binding sequence for silica in fusion with the central assay reagent protein targeting the analyte, simultaneous isolation and immobilisation onto silica carrier particles was achieved directly from lysate. In addition, the incorporation of a coloured fluorescent protein in the fusion enabled the protein production and immobilisation to be followed visually without significant laboratory equipment. Diagnostic sensing activity was retained in the immobilised fusion proteins, even over two months at 20-22 ⁰C in a dried state. A comparable limit of detection was achieved with immobilised reagents as with the soluble form. Taken together with the reduced downstream processing attained by a one-step purification and immobilisation approach, this supports the use of particle-bound reagents in the development of point-of-care tests. To make use of the particle-bound reagents, a novel falling particle biosensor design was explored in this thesis, where the sedimentation of the silica particles was used to drive mixing in an otherwise stationary fluid compartment. The performance of this design was compared against two other formats commonly employed with bio-functionalised particles – (A) a simple suspension in a microcentrifuge tube and (B) a packed bed in a microfluidic channel. The falling particle device outperformed both formats. Overall, this work has demonstrated that the integrated functionality of the fusion proteins could facilitate a production pathway from raw material to end diagnostic, highlighting the use of silica as a protein carrier and presenting a novel biosensor format for utilizing particle-bound enzymes.Gates Cambridge Trus

Panel I Discussion: The Criminal Justice System: George Floyd Bill & Qualified Immunity

This presentation explored the jurisprudence surrounding the doctrine of qualified immunity. It discusses the obscurity of many of its applications using the “clearly established” law standard. It also details a number of reasons justifying the call to eliminate the qualified immunity defense

Using an ethnographic approach to explore the influences on uptake and adherence in cardiac rehabilitation

Qualitative inquiry provides a powerful means to investigate which contextual mechanisms contribute to intervention uptake and adherence. Ethnography is efficacious in researching social interactions, behaviours and perceptions within groups, teams, organisations and communities, and can provide rich insights into individual/group views and actions. This ethnographic study will draw on longitudinal observations and two in-depth interviews conducted over a 6-month period with 10-20 participants. Working with two NHS Trusts, the researcher will collaborate with cardiology and cardiac rehabilitation staff to opportunistically recruit those who have opted to and opted not to attend core cardiac rehabilitation. Eligibility screening will take place as part of usual clinical care, with study criteria mirroring that of cardiac rehabilitation eligibility criteria. Snowball sampling will be used to recruit a maximum of two significant others (family and/or friends) as identified by patients. Thematic analysis sensitive to a Bourdieusian theoretical framework will be employed

Integrated programs for mothers with substance abuse issues: A systematic review of studies reporting on parenting outcomes

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Integrated treatment programs (those that include on-site pregnancy-, parenting-, or child-related services with addiction services) were developed to break the intergenerational cycle of addiction, dysfunctional parenting, and poor outcomes for mothers and children, yet there has been no systematic review of studies of parenting outcomes.</p> <p>Objectives</p> <p>As part of larger systematic review to examine the effectiveness of integrated programs for mothers with substance abuse issues, we performed a systematic review of studies published from 1990 to 2011 with data on parenting outcomes.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Literature search strategies included online bibliographic database searches, checking printed sources, and requests to researchers. Studies were included if all participants were mothers with substance abuse problems at baseline, the treatment program included at least one specific substance use treatment and at least one parenting or child service, and there were quantitative data on parenting outcomes. We summarized data on parenting skills and capacity outcomes.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>There were 24 cohort studies, 3 quasi-experimental studies, and 4 randomized trials. In the three randomized trials comparing integrated programs to addiction treatment-as-usual (<it>N </it>= 419), most improvements in parenting skills favored integrated programs and most effect sizes indicated that this advantage was small, <it>d</it>s = -0.02 to 0.94. Results for child protection services involvement did not differ by group. In the three studies that examined factors associated with treatment effects, parenting improvements were associated with attachment-based parenting interventions, children residing in the treatment facility, and improvements in maternal mental health.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This is the first systematic review of studies evaluating the effectiveness of integrated programs on parenting. The limited available evidence supports integrated programs, as findings suggest that they are associated with improvements in parenting skills. However, more research is required comparing integrated programs to addiction treatment-as-usual. This review highlights the need for improved methodology, study quality, and reporting to improve our understanding of how best to meet the parenting needs of women with substance abuse issues.</p

Examining Integrated Youth Services Using the Bioecological Model: Alignments and Opportunities

Integrated youth service (IYS) is a collaborative approach that brings practitioners together from across disciplines to provide comprehensive services including mental health care for youth and their families. IYS models serve as an advancement in practice as they go beyond the capacity of individual programs and services to reduce the fragmentation of care. Yet, there continue to be opportunities to expand on this perspective and promote health beyond the scope of formalized services. The bioecological model is a theoretical model that examines individual development within multiple systems of influence as well as through interactional processes between the individual and their environment. This paper provides an overview of the bioecological model and the major components of the IYS model, describing alignment and complementarity. The bioecological model provides some explanations for why IYS models may be effective and helps to provide direction to expand applied practice toward a more holistic perspective

Building an Interdisciplinary Research Program in Water Conservation: Approach, Preliminary Findings, and Next Steps

Effective urban water conservation programs must harness a synergy of new technologies, public policies, social cost pricing, information dissemination, citizen engagement, and coordinated actions across decision making scales. Together, these factors affect the volume of water an individual user ultimately saves and the overall success of a conservation program or programs. Over the past 18 months, we have started building an interdisciplinary research program in urban water conservation to quantify and assess the effects of these interconnected factors to motivate citizen engagement. We have interviewed water utility managers and conservation coordinators across the state of Utah, held focus groups with different water user groups, and tested our ability to recruit households into a future, multi-year water conservation study. Preliminary results suggest: Nearly all households we recruited agreed to enroll in the future study; Differences in enrollment were statistically insignificant across the different methods we used to interact with participants; and, Participants expressed interest in a broad range of information, technology, financial, and community conservation programs. In developing our research program, we have also identified the importance of: Broadly conceiving motivators, contexts, and scales (e.g. household or community) that may influence water use and conservation behavior; Developing integrated cyber-infrastructure and computing capabilities to collect and organize data, process it into site-specific, contextualized information, share it as feedback with participants, and subsequently measure its effects; Differentiating household capacity to conserve (comparing water use to need) from stated willingness-to-conserve and conservation actions; Involving household participants as collaborators through participatory action research; Training and delegating responsibilities to graduate student researchers; and, Collaborating with local water utilities. We are pursuing funding to run a large, multi-year study that will allow us to investigate the separate and cumulative effects of various water conservation programs on household water use. As part of the study, we also seek to test whether presenting households with estimates of their capacity to conserve can effectively motivate willingness-toconserve and conservation actions. The study will elucidate the contextualized factors that shape residential water use and people’s conservation actions