Searching for social justice : an ethnographic study of a historically black university's PETE classroom

textHistorically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have played and continue to play an important role in uplifting African Americans through education. Most of these institutions began as normal schools designed to prepare teachers who would train and educate students of color— a population that has been historically marginalized and oppressed. Scholarly conversations regarding teaching and teacher education for social justice omit the contributions of HBCUs. Likewise, scholarship about social justice within the field of Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) has been minimal. These trends including the current overemphasis on the training of a monolithic White female middle class teaching force served to justify the ethnographic study in an historically Black PETE program. Rooted in situated learning theory, this study used ethnographic methods and methodology to explore the manifestations of social justice and (physical education) teacher education at Jackie Robinson University— an HBCU. This study uncovered several cultural manifestations of social justice within JRU using interviews, artifact analyses, and observations of several cultural manifestations about social justice and teacher educating for social justice were uncovered. One of the most prominent manifestations is “The Gap”, a theme that can be seen throughout the historical and contemporary culture of JRU. In one sense, “The Gap” represents the void filled by the university as it provides opportunities for education for students with limited educational options. In another sense, “The Gap” represents tensions within the institution. These tensions exist as gaps among students, faculty, administration, and the university as a whole. Despite “The Gap”, Teacher Education for social justice exists in the culture of JRU as forms of care and culturally relevant pedagogy. While these cultural manifestations were located within specific classrooms, they represent the ethos of the university as a whole. The findings of this study offer both theoretical and practical value. From a theoretical perspective, the findings shed insight into the meaning of social justice and (physical education) teacher education for social justice in an ethnically diverse context. In a practical sense, the strategies utilized by (physical education) teacher educators at JRU foster a classroom culture of holistic education.Curriculum and Instructio

Cost and Benefit Analysis of Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus (TSWV) Management Technology in Georgia.

Recent trend depicts that tomatoes and tomatoes products rank 2nd most important vegetable crop in the United States after potatoes and potatoes products contributing 20 percent of total vegetable production. More-so, tomato is equally ranked 2nd in the United States in terms of production value, generating $1.3 billion after head lettuce that contributed$1.4 billion in the same time period. In 2006, 422,000 acres of tomatoes were planted in the United States. Tomato is equally an important economic crop in the state of Georgia. In 2008, it ranked 14th in the Georgia vegetable acreage as 3,985 acres were planted. It also ranked 6th in terms of farm gate value in the same time period generating $51.2 million. Thrips-vectored tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV) is a serious disease capable of causing damages to the plant, fruits, quality and reducing yields drastically. Managing TSWV can be complex. For instance, metalized UV-mulch may significantly reduce TSWV, but delay tomato maturity, potentially affecting price and market window. Also, resistant tomato lines may eliminate damages due to TSWV, but could have negative horticultural attributes that standard TSWV-susceptible hybrids do not. TSWV can induce irregular ripening in fruit after packing, affecting post harvest costs. This study is aimed at providing the optimal return per unit of enterprise using cost and benefit estimates of the combination of available inputs used in the various management strategies. Thereafter, the result of the differentially developed techniques and risk-rated cost and benefit budgets will be used to determine which of the risk-rated thrips, TSWV and IPM decision criteria would provide superior pareto-optimal economic and financial benefit to tomato growersTomatoes production, Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus (TSWV), inputs, fixed cost, variable costs, profitability, cost and benefit., Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Agricultural Finance, Crop Production/Industries, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management, Financial Economics, Health Economics and Policy, Marketing, Production Economics, Productivity Analysis, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Risk and Uncertainty, Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Dual Eligibles: Medicaid Enrollment and Spending for Medicare Beneficiaries in 2007

Provides an update on the share of total Medicaid enrollment and spending on those eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid through 2007, state-by-state estimates of Medicaid enrollment and expenditures for dual eligibles, and a breakdown of expenditures

The April 29, 1965, Puget Sound earthquake and the crustal and upper mantle structure of western Washington

Simultaneous modeling of source parameters and local layered earth structure for the April 29, 1965, Puget Sound earthquake was done using both ray and layer matrix formulations for point dislocations imbedded in layered media. The source parameters obtained are: dip 70° to the east, strike 344°, rake −75°, 63 km depth, average moment of 1.4 ± 0.6 × 10^(26) dyne-cm, and a triangular time function with a rise time of 0.5 sec and falloff of 2.5 sec. An upper mantle and crustal model for southern Puget Sound was determined from inferred reflections from interfaces above the source. The main features of the model include a distinct 15-km-thick low-velocity zone with a 2.5-km/sec P-wave-velocity contrast lower boundary situated at approximately 56-km depth. Ray calculations which allow for sources in dipping structure indicate that the inferred high contrast value can trade off significantly with interface dip provided the structure dips eastward. The effective crustal model is less than 15 km thick with a substantial sediment section near the surface. A stacking technique using the instantaneous amplitude of the analytic signal is developed for interpreting short-period teleseismic observations. The inferred reflection from the base of the low-velocity zone is recovered from short-period P and S waves. An apparent attenuation is also observed for pP from comparisons between the short- and long-period data sets. This correlates with the local surface structure of Puget Sound and yields an effective Q of approximately 65 for the crust and upper mantle

An Efficient Framework for Global Non-Convex Polynomial Optimization over the Hypercube

We present a novel efficient theoretical and numerical framework for solving global non-convex polynomial optimization problems. We analytically demonstrate that such problems can be efficiently reformulated using a non-linear objective over a convex set; further, these reformulated problems possess no spurious local minima (i.e., every local minimum is a global minimum). We introduce an algorithm for solving these resulting problems using the augmented Lagrangian and the method of Burer and Monteiro. We show through numerical experiments that polynomial scaling in dimension and degree is achievable for computing the optimal value and location of previously intractable global polynomial optimization problems in high dimension

The temporal development of strategy: patterns in the UK insurance industry

Much writing in the field of strategic management remains an exercise in comparative statics. Cross sectional research methods are combined with the notion of stable equilibria to analyse the fit between the positioning or resource base of the firm and its performance However, the inadequacies of this tradition are increasingly being recognised even by the scholars who created it (Porter 1991). Strategy can no longer be conceived through the static language of states or positions and must be understood as an innovation contest where the bureaucratic and inflexible will not survive (Webb and Pettigrew 1999). This study takes up the challenge to explore the dynamics of strategy development. The empirical focus of the paper is the UK insurance industry in the 1980s and 1990s, a period of considerable upheaval. By means of an innovative cross-correlational time series analysis, we are able to show the ebb and flow of strategic change in the industry and the patterns of initiation and imitation as certain firms lead in areas of strategy and others follow A comparative case study analysis enabled the micro processes and internal contexts of consistent early and late adopters of strategy to be investigated The findings of our case studies were interrogated and interpreted by developing theoretical ideas from three literatures which historically have not talked to one another These are the literatures on innovation, institutionalism and contextualism The empirical results show firms pursuing multiple strategies at one point in time and altering the strategic agenda over time Our analysis of nine firms reveals the existence of leaders and laggards in the development of a variety of strategic initiatives The comparative case studies indicate that the ‘strategic agility’ of a firm depends both on management having the ability to act and the context in which such action occurs being receptiv

Historical framework to explain long-term coupled human and natural system feedbacks: application to a multiple-ownership forest landscape in the northern Great Lakes region, USA

Current and future human and forest landscape conditions are influenced by the cumulative, unfolding history of social-ecological interactions. Examining past system responses, especially unintended consequences, can reveal valuable insights that promote learning and adaptation in forest policy and management. Temporal couplings are complex, however; they can be difficult to trace, characterize, and explain. We develop a framework that integrates environmental history into analysis of coupled human and natural systems (CHANS). Our study demonstrates how historical data and methods can help to explain temporal complexity of long-term CHANS feedbacks. We focus on two sources of temporal complexity: legacy effects and lagged interactions. We apply our framework to a multiple-ownership forest landscape comprising tribal and nonindustrial private forest ownerships in Wisconsin. Our framework features four elements that help investigators better understand complex systems through time: (1) a temporal axis parsed into historical periods (periodization), (2) representation of links between historical periods and system feedbacks, (3) representation of land ownership history, and (4) nested geographical scales of historical analysis. The framework can help to reveal legacy effects and lagged interactions, illuminate turning points and periods in system dynamics, and distil insights from unintended consequences that inform institutional and policy adaptation. We also assess the validity of using land ownership to represent the social component of CHANS models. When treated as a categorical variable and interpreted in historical context, land ownership can validly represent decision-making structure, culture, and knowledge system in spatially explicit social-ecological models