A Case Study of a Rural Iowa School Preparing to Meet New State Guidelines for School Libraries

A qualitative case study highlighting one rural Iowa elementary school provided insight into the issue of small schools without library programs as they are preparing to meet the Iowa reinstatement of the requirement for school library programs. The site was purposefully chosen because it has been operating without a school library program or professional teacher-librarian district-wide. All eight teachers and the nonendorsed library associate from one elementary school participated in either a focus group or semistructured interviews. The four district administrators were interviewed individually. Related documents were consulted. This study examined the status of the school library program, analyzed the stakeholder’s perceptions and expectations for the school library program and instructional role, and identified supports and obstacles to implementing the new state teacher-librarian and school library program and requirements. Three themes emerged from the data, exemplifying the expectations surrounding this school’s library program: (a) a minimal role for school library programs in the vision and reality of participants, (b) the invisibility of the professional qualifications and instructional and collaborative qualities of the teacher-librarian needed to increase program sustainability, and (c) a disconnect between the school library program and literacy, technology, and other curricular area school improvement initiatives. The results showed this school’s library program denied students access to libraries and learning opportunities essential for a democratic education. The data from this case study support these conclusions by showing an inability of the local school district to create or sustain a high quality school library program without a state mandate and the inability of the current state mandate to instill a high quality school library program in this district

The Status of Statewide Subscription Databases

This qualitative content analysis presents subscription databases available to school libraries through statewide purchases. The results may help school librarians evaluate grade and subject-area coverage, make comparisons to recommended databases, and note potential suggestions for their states to include in future contracts or for local purchase. All states had similar periodicals‘ indexing vendors; therefore, this study‘s focus was online subject reference databases. Results portrayed seventy-nine unique databases across thirty-three states analyzed. Most states studied (81 percent) had a wide variety of online reference subject content; twenty states (61 percent) included one or more general reference databases; seven states with no general reference had a range of titles in health, literary criticism, science, history, biography, and/or art. However, not all content areas were equally represented: examples: health (61 percent), literary criticism (55 percent), science (42 percent), history (39 percent), biography (33 percent), and arts (15 percent). There was disparity in six states with no general reference and gaps in subject coverage. In one state, the only secondary reference tool available was NoveList for readers‘ advisory. Another state‘s only secondary subject reference title was HeritageQuest. Additionally, pro/con databases, readers‘ advisory, and elementary general reference online databases were available in just over half of the states (51 percent); access to general encyclopedias online was offered by only 48 percent of states surveyed

Professional staffing levels and fourth-grade student research in rural schools with high-poverty levels

Rural schools in high-poverty areas are often understaffed. This descriptive phenomenological study examined fourth-grade state research projects in high- poverty rural Iowa schools to reveal the influence of school librarians’ staffing levels on student learning of research skills. To determine evidence of students’ critical literacy, ethical use of information, content learning, and understanding of the inquiry process, researchers analyzed twenty-four student work samples from eight schools, along with students’ responses to questionnaires and school librarians’ responses to surveys. Six (66 percent) student work samples in higher-staffed schools showed higher critical-literacy scores than those in the five lower-staffed schools. Six (of nine) students in higher-staffed schools garnered higher scores in ethical use of information. Content learning in all but one school was mainly factual. At the end of the project fourteen students (58 percent) posed new inquiry questions that were either conceptual or provocative

Professional staffing levels and fourth-grade student research in rural schools with high-poverty levels

Rural schools in high-poverty areas are often understaffed. This descriptive phenomenological study examined fourth-grade state research projects in high- poverty rural Iowa schools to reveal the influence of school librarians’ staffing levels on student learning of research skills. To determine evidence of students’ critical literacy, ethical use of information, content learning, and understanding of the inquiry process, researchers analyzed twenty-four student work samples from eight schools, along with students’ responses to questionnaires and school librarians’ responses to surveys. Six (66 percent) student work samples in higher-staffed schools showed higher critical-literacy scores than those in the five lower-staffed schools. Six (of nine) students in higher-staffed schools garnered higher scores in ethical use of information. Content learning in all but one school was mainly factual. At the end of the project fourteen students (58 percent) posed new inquiry questions that were either conceptual or provocative

Social Studies Content Reading about the American Revolution Enhanced with Graphic Novels

Graphic novels can contribute to effective content area reading on social studies topics such as the American Revolution. This action research study’s purpose was to examine student recall of facts, enjoyment of reading, and interest in the topic when using graphic novels as compared to illustrated nonfiction prose in social studies content area reading. Twenty-two fifth grade students (13 females, 9 males) in a public school in a Midwestern state participated in the study. Half of the students read about the Boston Massacre and Patrick Henry through graphic novels and read about Paul Revere and the Boston Tea Party with illustrated nonfiction texts, with the other half doing the opposite. The mean number of correct ideas recalled by students two weeks after reading two books in the graphic novel condition was 8.6 compared to 7.1 for the nonfiction prose condition with a medium effect size. Students rated their reading enjoyment significantly higher in the graphic novel condition indicating that graphic novels should be employed more often into the school curriculum. Suggestions for integrating graphic novels into the curriculum are provided along with other ways to take action

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

Evolutionary perspectives on bee mtDNA from mito-OMICS analyses of a solitary species

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Developing a framework for the ethical design and conduct of pragmatic trials in healthcare: a mixed methods research protocol

Canadian Institutes of Health Research through the Project Grant competition PJT-153045. Jeremy Grimshaw holds a Canada Research Chair in Health Knowledge Transfer and Uptake. Charles Weijer holds a Canada Research Chair in Bioethics. Sarah Edwards is funded by the UCL/UCLH Biomedical Research Centre (BRC). Vipul Jairath hold a personal Endowed Chair at Western University (John and Susan McDonald Endowed Chair). Joanne McKenzie is supported by an NHMRC Career Development Fellowship (1143429). The University of Aberdeen’s Health Services Research Unit is core-funded by the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government Health and Social Care Directorates. Ian D Graham is a CIHR Foundation Grant recipient (FDN# 143237)

Measurement of Multijet Production in epep Collisions at High Q2Q^2 and Determination of the Strong Coupling αs\alpha_s

Inclusive jet, dijet and trijet differential cross sections are measured in neutral current deep-inelastic scattering for exchanged boson virtualities 150 < Q^2 < 15000 GeV^2 using the H1 detector at HERA. The data were taken in the years 2003 to 2007 and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 351 pb^{-1}. Double differential Jet cross sections are obtained using a regularised unfolding procedure. They are presented as a function of Q^2 and the transverse momentum of the jet, P_T^jet, and as a function of Q^2 and the proton's longitudinal momentum fraction, Xi, carried by the parton participating in the hard interaction. In addition normalised double differential jet cross sections are measured as the ratio of the jet cross sections to the inclusive neutral current cross sections in the respective Q^2 bins of the jet measurements. Compared to earlier work, the measurements benefit from an improved reconstruction and calibration of the hadronic final state. The cross sections are compared to perturbative QCD calculations in next-to-leading order and are used to determine the running coupling and the value of the strong coupling constant as alpha_s(M_Z) = 0.1165 (8)_exp (38)_{pdf,theo}