An Examination of Staff Perceptions of the Effectiveness of the Professional Learning Community Model: A Multiple Case Study Design

This qualitative multiple case study sought to understand staff members’ perceptions of the components of an effective and sustainable professional learning community. The Professional Learning Community Assessment questionnaire and interviews were the instruments utilized to attain data. The study’s results allowed the researcher to identify areas of strength and areas of weakness that were integral aspects of each learning community’s operation. Specifically, the study included 22 participants across three middle school study sites. There were 12 key findings that emerged from the data across the three study locations. The findings revealed the need for regular collaboration, supportive leadership practices, a clear vision and a distinct set of values to guide learning community members. Additionally, the findings highlighted the beneficial aspects of professional learning communities but revealed the need for refinement related to adequate meeting time, supportive structures, and planning. Future research should be conducted across a longer time period with a larger sample size to ascertain if the findings are similar to those that arose from this research. Finally, a recommendation of adding an evaluative component to the learning community was made. This will enable school administrators to regularly monitor the progress of the PLC. This study will support positive change and will provide valuable data that can be utilized at each of the study sites to promote a school culture of collaboration, academic success, and collegiality. This research may potentially result in a more well-organized learning environment. The findings may serve as the impetus for sustained change and an atmosphere that influences teacher and student learning

A Child\u27s Right to Be Gay: Addressing the Emotional Maltreatment of Queer Youth

Queer youth constitute an isolated and invisible population severely in need of help from all segments of society. They are harassed and rejected by their peers, the media, and the public in general. Queer youth are the most at-risk population of adolescents for suicide, homelessness, substance abuse, prostitution, and HIV infection. Most critically, queer youth often do not receive the necessary familial support needed to cope in such an environment. To the contrary, they are emotionally maltreated by their parents more often than any other group of adolescents. The author asserts that it is imperative for the legal system to help queer youth by recognizing the severity of emotional abuse directed at a child\u27s sexual orientation. She begins by examining the causes and effects of parental maltreatment of queer youth. She then argues that the current denial of emotional abuse of queer youth by parents results from four factors: (1) the general disregard in the legal system for psychological child abuse; (2) the institutional dominance of heterosexuality; (3) the belief that a child\u27s sexual orientation is mutable; and (4) the parental rights doctrine. Finally, the paper suggests statutory recognition of emotional abuse directed at a child\u27s sexual orientation as a form of child abuse

Treasures Of Their Truth: Selected Conversations On The Context For Leadership In Southern Malawi

Western knowledge of African philosophy, culture, leadership, and pre- and post- colonial history reflects both myths and truths that originate from Western ways of doing research. This ethnographic study (Creswell, 2009; Denzin & Lincoln, 2011; Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007; O\u27Leary, 2004) seeks to develop an understanding of the context for leadership in Malawi, a Sub-Saharan country. Using the indigenous research paradigm, which is a set of research beliefs or framework (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011) in which the researcher and the researched are connected, knowledge is relational, truth is relational with the universe, and research methodologies are based on indigenous knowledge, conversations with three citizens reveal the social context for leadership in southern Malawi. Leadership is defined using the direction, alignment, and/or commitment (DAC) framework, such that any collective activity, system, or entity that produces DAC is leadership, whether at the group, organizational, or societal level (Drath et al., 2008). Indigenous methodologies and methods such as indigenous interviews, self-reflection, and inclusion of indigenous knowledge inform the research, allowing the voices of the informants to be heard alongside the voice of the researcher, and the informants to become equal partners with the researcher. Digital media is used to collect data and produce a digital ethnographic storytelling website, thus providing a platform for reconstructing the oral experience (Underberg & Zorn, 2013). The digital ethnographic storytelling website is: https://sites.google.com/site/treasuresresearch/home

Urban Elementary and Middle School Teachers\u27 Perceptions of Instructional Time, Resources and Facilities and Their Relationship to Student Academic Achievement Reading and Mathematics

Federal and state laws rely on multiple indicators to measure and improve student performance. However, inadequate attention has been directed at school climate as a means to improve student academic achievement even through there is a diverse body of research linking school climate to student achievement and academic performance (Kober, 2001; Loukas & Robinson, 2005; Shindler, et al 2004). The specific purpose of this study is to examine elementary and middle school teachers\u27 perceptions of school climate dimensions such as: use of instructional time, access to resources, and adequate facilities, in relationship to students academic achievement in an urban school district. The researcher used secondary data to analyze teachers\u27 perceptions related of time, resources, and facilities and their relationship to student academic achievement. According to the data results, overall, elementary and middle school teachers believe there is: good use of their time during the school day, time to collaborate, time to meet the needs of students, and adequate non-instructional time. As with the second aspect regarding the level of access teachers have to instructional resources, teachers feel they have access to the resources needed. The third aspect addressed in the results is related to teachers\u27 perceptions about the overall quality of the facilities in which they work. According to the data collected, teachers believe that the school facilities are clean and well maintained, and that their work space is sufficient and supportive for the teaching and learning process. The last set of data analyzed the relationship between the mean results from elementary and middle school teachers\u27 perceptions about the related items concerning time, resources, and facilities and that of schools whose achieve results were proficient in reading and math on the 2010 Tennessee Comprehensive Achievement Program (TCAP) assessment. Teachers from schools that had proficient scores in reading and math, believed that there were too many interruptions during instructional time, class size matters when student achievement is considered, and there is a need to protect teachers from duties that interfere with their responsibility to educate students. Conclusion from this study indicated that there were no significant differences between elementary and middle school teachers\u27 perceptions about use of instructional time, access to resources or facilities. However, there was a difference in teachers\u27 perceptions that worked in schools with proficient reading and math scores on standardized test

Recovery of Deep Moonquake Focal Mechanisms

Deep moonquakes are clustered not only in space but also in time: their recurrence times correspond to the durations of the anomalistic and draconic months, with some clusters preferring one of the two periods, while others are active with both periods. A key constraint for the understanding of the connection between the orbital motion of the Moon and its seismic activity is the focal mechanism: the orientation of the fault surface on which failure occurs during the quake. Due to the small aperture of the Apollo seismic network and the strong scattering of seismic waves within the lunar crust, the evaluation of P wave first motions to constrain the strike and dip of the fault planes is not feasible. Instead we evaluate the amplitude ratios of P and S waves. Seismograms are rotated into the P-SV-SH coordinate frame and amplitudes are determined as averages over short time windows after the arrival to reduce the impact of the scattering coda, which is independent of the source orientation. We allow for reversals of the fault motion, as observed for some clusters in previous studies, by taking into account the absolute amplitude only, without sign. An empirical site correction factor is applied to correct for amplitude distortions in the crust. We construct ensembles of fault plane solutions using an exhaustive grid search by accepting all orientations that reproduce the measured amplitude ratios within the observed standard deviations. Since all events of a given cluster are supposed to share the same fault plane, the combination of the individual inversion results further constrains the orientation. We evaluate 106 events from 25 different moonquake clusters. The most active cluster A001 contributes 37 events, while others contribute 1 to 9 events per cluster. Comparison of fault orientations with the variation of the tidal stress results in preferred orientations

The emotional and cognitive processing of negative news photographs

The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file.Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on October 18, 2007)Vita.Includes bibliographical references.Thesis (Ph. D.) University of Missouri-Columbia 2005.Dissertations, Academic -- University of Missouri--Columbia -- Journalism.The purpose of this study was to determine if the structural features and emotional content of negative news images affected viewers' responses. A pair of within-subjects experiments manipulated the color and size of the photographs as well as the intensity, which was defined by the arousal and valence ratings of the content. Experiment 1 manipulated the variables of color and intensity, and Experiment 2 manipulated size and intensity. Physiological and self-report scales were used to measure orienting responses, arousal, valence, newsworthiness and offensiveness. Recognition tests were administered to measure accuracy and response times. Results indicate that the structural feature of color failed to produce significant responses. The size of images and the intensity of the content had a greater influence on people's emotional assessments and news judgment. In addition, the intensity variable was replicated across two experiments, and the findings show that the results were the same for both

Gold standard or fool's gold: the pursuit of certainty in experimental criminology

This article assesses some of the claims made for experimental research in the field of rehabilitation of offenders. It suggests that both policy officials and evaluators have tended to over-invest financially and intellectually in a technocratic model of reducing reoffending that emphasizes programmes for offenders, and to under-invest in models that see the process as a complex ‘people changing’ skill. It argues that the complexity of this process renders it hard to evaluate using experimental methods of evaluation such as randomized controlled trials (RCTs). RCTs provide strong internal validity, but in complex settings offer weak external validity, making it hard to generalize from the experimental setting to other settings. The article suggests that the proper role for evaluative research in this field should be seen as building and testing middle-level theories about how best to change offenders’ behaviour

Identification of common and idiosyncratic shocks in real equity prices: Australia 1982 to 2002

A structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model of real equity prices in Australia is specified to contain common shocks in international equity markets and domestic shocks in Australian financial and goods markets. Common shocks are identified through the long-run comovements of international equity markets, resulting in the model being characterized as having more shocks than variables. The empirical results show that the dot-com crisis of 2000 causes Australian real equity values to depreciate significantly below a precrisis baseline forecast, while contagion from the Asian financial crisis of 1997–1998 is found to have a much smaller negative impact

Financial contagion and asset pricing

Asset market interconnectedness can give rise to significant contagion risks during periods of financial crises that extend beyond the risks associated with changes in volatilities and correlation. These channels include the transmission of shocks operating through changes in the higher order comoments of asset returns, including changes in coskewness arising from changes in the interaction between volatility and average returns across asset markets. These additional contagion channels have nontrivial implications for the pricing of options through changes in the payoff probability structure and more generally, in the management of financial risks. The effects of incorrectly pricing risk has proved to be significant during many financial crises, including the subprime crisis from mid 2007 to mid 2008, the Great Recession beginning 2008 and the European debt crisis from 2010. Using an exchange options model, the effects of changes in the comoments of asset returns across asset markets are investigated with special emphasis given to understanding the effects on hedging risk during financial crises. The results reveal that by not correctly pricing the risks arising from higher order moments during financial crises, there is significant mispricing of options, while hedged portfolios during noncrisis periods become exposed to price movements in times of crises.The authors gratefully acknowledge Australian Research Council Grant DP0985783

Improving the quality of life of care home residents with dementia: cost-effectiveness of an optimized intervention for residents with clinically significant agitation in dementia

Introduction: To examine whether an optimized intervention is a more cost-effective option than treatment as usual (TAU) for improving agitation and quality of life in nursing home residents with clinically significant agitation and dementia. Methods: A cost-effectiveness analysis within a cluster-randomized factorial study in 69 care homes with 549 residents was conducted. Each cluster was randomized to receive either the Well-being and Health for people with Dementia (WHELD) intervention or TAU for nine months. Health and social care costs, agitation, and quality of life outcomes were evaluated. Results: Improvements in agitation and quality of life were evident in residents allocated to the WHELD intervention group. The additional cost of the WHELD intervention was offset by the higher health and social care costs incurred by TAU group residents (mean difference, £2103; 95% confidence interval, −13 to 4219). Discussion: The WHELD intervention has clinical and economic benefits when used in residents with clinically significant agitation