Work Environment, Leadership, and Teacher Retention in Early Childhood Education

The need for quality child care and early childhood education has greatly increased over the last decade. The literature has provided multiple definitions of what constitutes quality care; one key factor was teacher consistency. This study examined the perspectives of leaders and teachers working in early childhood centers about their work environment and the relationship of the environment, including leadership characteristics, to teacher retention. Participants completed the Early Childhood Work Environment Survey about their perceptions of multiple organizational practices. Analysis of the data revealed that there was a significant relationship between a teacher’s perception of supervisor support and their commitment to stay at their current place of employment. Additional results indicated that the early childhood leader has a central role in the overall functioning of the childcare center with supervisor support having a significant relationship to all other dimensions of the work environment. Because of the multifaceted leadership role in early childhood it is suggested that leadership does influence a teacher’s retention decision

Teacher Training for the Implementation of the Incredible Years at GFW Elementary School

The purpose of this research project was to determine whether training the Early Childhood Special Education (ECSE) teachers, paraprofessionals, and staff would increase the social and emotional literacy of the children as well as the staff in the ECSE classroom . The four areas of training & research consisted of: 1. Increasing staff’s positive attention, encouragement and praise while working as a team in the ECSE classroom; 2. Using incentives for the purpose of promoting positive attention in the classroom; 3. Using more proactive teaching techniques for the purpose of preventing behavior problems in the classroom, and 4. Increasing staff’s proficiency in teaching social skills, problem-solving skills, and anger management skills. The staff trainings served as a prerequisite for the successful implementation of the Incredible Years (IY) Child Training Program called the Dina Dinosaur Social Skills and Problem Solving curriculum. This curriculum will be fully implemented in the ECSE classroom beginning in the fall, 2010. Focus groups and grounded theory methodology were utilized to collect and analyze the data

SR 2D micro-XRF imaging on entire rat thin sections in view of a pharmacokinetic study of a new bromine containing drug agains tuberculosis

Tuberculosis (TB) is a common and often deadly infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis in humans. Because of population growth, the absolute number of new cases is still increasing. Multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is defined as resistance to the two most effective first-line TB drugs and is a public health issue in many developing countries, as treatment is longer and requires more expensive drugs. Recently, a new experimental diarylquinoline anti-tuberculosis drug was discovered at Janssen Pharmaceutica, referred to as TMC207 and shown in Fig. 1. Before TMC207 can be made commercially available, one of the necessary investigations is a thorough pharmacokinetic study to investigate its absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion (ADME)

3D elemental imaging of the crustacean Ceriodaphnia by means of SR confocal micro-XRF

Daphnia is a freshwater crustacean (0.2-5 mm height) used for investigating the toxic effects of toxins (e.g. metals) on an ecosystem. Synchrotron radiation based micro X-ray fluorescence (SR micro-XRF) allows the investigation of the trace level metal distribution within these organisms in an essentially non-destructive manner. Several two-dimensional (2D), computed tomography (CT) and confocal micro-XRF experiments under conventional and cryogenic environments have been performed on Daphnia magna previously. However, due to its larger size (3 mm height) full three-dimensional (3D) imaging of the metal distributions is not practically feasible. In this contribution, we therefore report on the full 3D elemental imaging on Ceriodaphnia which is a smaller variant (1 mm height) by means of 3D confocal micro-XRF

Elemental anomalies in the hippocampal formation after repetitive electrical stimulation : an X-ray fluorescence microscopy study

Our previous studies carried out on the pilocarpine model of seizures showed that highly resolved elemental analysis might be very helpful in the investigation of processes involved in the pathogenesis of epilepsy, such as excitotoxicity or mossy fiber sprouting. In this study, the changes in elemental composition that occurred in the hippocampal formation in the electrical kindling model of seizures were examined to determine the mechanisms responsible for the phenomenon of kindling and spontaneous seizure activity that may occur in this animal model. X-ray fluorescence microscopy was applied for topographic and quantitative analysis of selected elements in tissues taken from rats subjected to repetitive transauricular electroshocks (ES) and controls (N). The detailed comparisons were carried out for sectors 1 and 3 of the Ammon's horn (CA1 and CA3, respectively), the dentate gyrus (DG) and hilus of DG. The obtained results showed only one statistically significant difference between ES and N groups, namely a higher level of Fe was noticed in CA3 region in the kindled animals. However, further analysis of correlations between the elemental levels and quantitative parameters describing electroshock-induced tonic and clonic seizures showed that the areal densities of some elements (Ca, Cu, Zn) strongly depended on the progress of kindling process. The areal density of Cu in CA1 decreased with the cumulative (totaled over 21 stimulation days) intensity and duration of electroshock-induced tonic seizures while Zn level in the hilus of DG was positively correlated with the duration and intensity of both tonic and clonic seizures