Learning to Teach from Anticipating Lessons through Comics-Based Approximations of Practice.

Teaching is complex and relational work that involves teacher’s interactions with individual or multiple students around the subject matter. It has been argued that observation experiences (e.g. field placement or watching video clips) are not sufficient to help prospective teachers to develop knowledge of teaching. This study aims to identify, examine, and illustrate the ways in which comics-based representations of teaching facilitate prospective teachers’ learning to teach. Specifically, the author explored how the use of a technology supported lesson-sketching tool, Depict, enabled prospective secondary mathematics teachers to attend to mathematical interactions between teacher and students in instruction when anticipating the development of a lesson. Drawing resources from Systemic Functional Linguistics, the author examined the ways in which anticipations of classroom interaction about a planned lesson differ when the anticipation was done using the Depict tool as compared with talking through the written lesson plan. Using case study methodology, the study investigated the aspects of the teaching work prospective teachers attended to when engaged in depicting a lesson, and observed the ways in which prospective teachers employed the graphic resources to support their lesson depiction. The results reveal that prospective teachers using Depict tool to create comics-based lesson slideshows immersed themselves in classroom settings and demonstrated their capacity to incorporate detailed teacher instructional actions, student reactions and mathematical tasks in their lessons. The prospective teachers unpacked their planned discrete class activities and attended to the relational nature among teacher, students and mathematics in instruction. The study indicates that the anticipation of a lesson, through creation of comics-based lesson depiction, could be a learning opportunity that approximates the interactive nature of teaching practice. The study suggests that comics-based representations of teaching can be seen as semiotic resources that mediate prospective teachers’ generation of teacher-student moment-to-moment class interactions, and facilitate their attention to instructional issues they have not previously been aware of. The study also implies that in order to engage prospective teachers in learning to do the work of teaching, teacher educators should consider directing prospective teachers’ attention to issues of temporality, multimodality and multivocality in instruction.Ph.D.Educational StudiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/91421/1/chialc_1.pd

Perioperative Stroke Following General Surgery

AbstractPerioperative stroke is rare; however, patients undergoing cardiovascular surgery are considered to be at high risk for perioperative stroke. Here, we outline a case where perioperative stroke occurred following total hip replacement surgery. The risk factors and possible causes of the stroke in this patient are discussed. In addition, we reiterate the appropriate management approaches needed to prevent perioperative stroke. Briefly, the importance of precise preoperative evaluation and of proper intraoperative and postoperative management should not be overlooked. Finally, it is important to realize that decreasing perioperative strokes and the disabilities associated with them will lower the financial burden on families and the community

Tuning the Solubility of Copper Complex in Atom Transfer Radical Self-Condensing Vinyl Polymerizations to Control Polymer Topology via One-Pot to the Synthesis of Hyperbranched Core Star Polymers

In this paper, we propose a simple one-pot methodology for proceeding from atom transfer reaction-induced conventional free radical polymerization (AT-FRP) to atom transfer self-condensing vinyl polymerization (AT-SCVP) through manipulation of the catalyst phase homogeneity (i.e., CuBr/2,2'-bipyridine (CuBr/Bpy)) in a mixture of styrene (St), 4-vinyl benzyl chloride (VBC), and ethyl 2-bromoisobutyrate. Tests of the solubilities of CuBr/Bpy and CuBr2/Bpy under various conditions revealed that both temperature and solvent polarity were factors affecting the solubility of these copper complexes. Accordingly, we obtained different polymer topologies when performing AT-SCVP in different single solvents. We investigated two different strategies to control the polymer topology in one-pot: varying temperature and varying solvent polarity. In both cases, different fractions of branching revealed the efficacy of varying the polymer topology. To diversify the functionality of the peripheral space, we performed chain extensions of the resulting hyperbranched poly(St-co-VBC) macroinitiator (name as: hbPSt MI) with either St or tBA (tert-butyl acrylate). The resulting hyperbranched core star polymer had high molecular weights (hbPSt-g-PSt: Mn = 25,000, Đ = 1.77; hbPSt-g-PtBA: Mn = 27,000, Đ = 1.98); hydrolysis of the tert-butyl groups of the later provided a hyperbranched core star polymer featuring hydrophilic poly(acrylic acid) segments

Participation and Environmental Factors of Children with Physical Disabilities in Taiwan

Participation is a critical health and education outcome of children and can be optimized by environmental supports. Children with physical disabilities often experience participation restriction and environmental barriers. Research is limited in describing participation in everyday activities of children with physical disabilities and identifying environmental barriers faced by those children in Taiwan. This chapter presents data of 94 children with physical disabilities aged 2–6 years and their families in Taiwan. Children with physical disabilities were primarily children with cerebral palsy (36%) and developmental (motor) delay (34%). Parents completed the Chinese version of Assessment of Preschool Children’s Participation (APCP-C) and the Chinese version of the Child and Adolescent Scale of Environment (CASE-C) by structured interview to assess pattern of participation and impact of environment factors to their children’s daily life. Participation of children with physical disabilities differed on the basis of level of severity, but not age and sex. Parents reported increased impacts of problems with the quality and availability of family and community resources than problems with assistance/attitude supports and physical design and access. The findings provide a profile of children’s pattern of participation and environmental barriers that impact participation in Taiwan

USING PARTICLE SWARM OPTIMIZATION TO ESTABLISH A LOCAL GEOMETRIC GEOID MODEL

There exist a number of methods for approximating the local geoid surface and studies carried out to determine a local geoid. In this study, performance of geoid by PSO method in modeling local geoid was presented and analyzed. The ellipsoidal heights (h), derived from GPS observations, and known orthometric heights from first-order bench marks were first used to create local geometric geoid model, then the PSO method was used to convert ellipsoidal heights into orthometric heights (H). The resulting values were used to compare between the spirit leveling and GPS methods. The adopted PSO method can improve the fitting of local geometric geoid by quadratic surface fitting method, which agrees with the known orthometric heights within ±1.02cmthe Cartography produced: General Map, Partial Maps, Profile, Cross Sections and others

THE INTERPLAY AMONG GESTURES, DISCOURSE AND DIAGRAMS IN STUDENTS’ GEOMETRICAL REASONING

This study identifies forms of interactions with diagrams that are involved in conjecturing; more specifically, how students display their thinking publicly through using multimodal representations. We describe how students interact with diagrams in both gestural and verbal forms, and examine how such multimodal interactions with diagrams reveal their reasoning about diagrams. We hypothesize that when limited information is given in a diagram, students make use of gestural and verbal expressions to compensate for those limitations as they engage in making conjectures. As a byproduct, the study also proposes a set of graphical representations of gestures that have been identified as important for geometrical reasoning. These can be employed to codify the gestural interactions and to depict the practices of teaching and learning in geometry classrooms.The research reported in this study was done with the support of a National Science Foundation CAREER grant, REC 0133619 to the second author. All opinions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Foundation.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78015/1/CC&PH-Gesture-share.pd

Staphylococcal Cassette Chromosome mec in MRSA, Taiwan

To determine the predominant staphylococcal cassette chromosome (SCC) mec element in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, we typed 190 isolates from a hospital in Taiwan. We found a shift from type IV to type III SCCmec element during 1992–2003, perhaps caused by selective pressure from indiscriminate use of antimicrobial drugs