Teacher Awareness of Social Emotional Learning Standards and Strategies

This study investigated teacher knowledge and attitudes of both special education and general education teachers towards social emotional learning. A total of twenty-five certified special education teachers and twenty-five certified general education teachers were surveyed regarding their familiarity with the State of Illinois Social Emotional Learning Standards. Teachers’ perceptions of the competency of their higher education preparation and professional development to meet their students’ social emotional needs were solicited. The data gathered from this study suggests that universities should prepare teachers more adequately in the areas of social emotional learning. The data also supports that there is a need for districts to offer more workshops and professional development regarding students’ social emotional needs. Educational implications and recommendations based upon the findings of this study, for future research in social emotional learning are discussed

Application of Incident Command Structure to clinical trial management in the academic setting: principles and lessons learned

Background Clinical trial success depends on appropriate management, but practical guidance to trial organisation and planning is lacking. The Incident Command System (ICS) is the ‘gold standard’ management system developed for managing diverse operations in major incident and public health arenas. It enables effective and flexible management through integration of personnel, procedures, resources, and communications within a common hierarchical organisational structure. Conventional ICS organisation consists of five function modules: Command, Planning, Operations, Logistics, and Finance/Administration. Large clinical trials will require a separate Regulatory Administrative arm, and an Information arm, consisting of dedicated data management and information technology staff. We applied ICS principles to organisation and management of the Prehospital Use of Plasma in Traumatic Haemorrhage (PUPTH) trial. This trial was a multidepartmental, multiagency, randomised clinical trial investigating prehospital administration of thawed plasma on mortality and coagulation response in severely injured trauma patients. We describe the ICS system as it would apply to large clinical trials in general, and the benefits, barriers, and lessons learned in utilising ICS principles to reorganise and coordinate the PUPTH trial. Results Without a formal trial management structure, early stages of the trial were characterised by inertia and organisational confusion. Implementing ICS improved organisation, coordination, and communication between multiple agencies and service groups, and greatly streamlined regulatory compliance administration. However, unfamiliarity of clinicians with ICS culture, conflicting resource allocation priorities, and communication bottlenecks were significant barriers. Conclusions ICS is a flexible and powerful organisational tool for managing large complex clinical trials. However, for successful implementation the cultural, psychological, and social environment of trial participants must be accounted for, and personnel need to be educated in the basics of ICS

Legitimizing the ICC: Supporting the Court\u27s Prosecution of Those Responsible in Darfur

The conflict in Darfur is one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters. The fact that the Sudanese government, including its current sitting head of state, played a critical role in orchestrating the murder, rape, and displacement of hundreds of thousands of people in the regionmakes the violence perpetrated in this region particularly egregious. In an effort to address these problems, the U.N. Security Council referred the matter to the International Criminal Court (ICC). After its investigation, the ICC granted an arrest warrant for President Bashir, which charged him with crimes against humanity. Under the Rome Treaty, the U.N. Security Council can delay prosecution of President Bashir indefinitely, and certain sectors of the international community are pressuring it to do just that. Those that support the delay fear that allowing the prosecution to move forward will derail potential peace negotiations and result in more violence in the country. To support their contention, they cited threats made by the Sudanese government to escalate attacks. While the U.N. must address these threats, delaying prosecution is the wrong solution. This Note argues that allowing threats of violence to derail the pursuit of justice could irreparably damage the court’s international reputation and credibility. To bolster the legitimacy of the ICC, strengthen international criminal justice, and deter future leaders from following President Bashir’s destructive example, the U.N. and the rest of the international community must support the ICC in its apprehension of President Bashir and support the court in holding him accountable for his crimes

School textbooks and teachers' choices : a contextualizing and ethnographic study

Bibliography: pages 140-157.This study provides evidence that most teachers choose their class textbooks haphazardly and without evaluating them. As a result, bad textbooks are as likely to be chosen and to succeed commercially as good ones are. One consequence of this is that many publishers and authors continue to get away with producing bad textbooks. The study begins by describing the context in which school textbooks are chosen. It gives an overview of the textbook's role, and concludes that it is an indispensable part of an effective education system, especially where other resources are lacking. The study then considers the degree to which South African textbooks fulfil their roles; it concludes that most textbooks in schools are poor, many being incomprehensible to their audiences, but attention is also drawn to some positive textbook development that has taken place. The study next considers how and why so many poor textbooks have been selected by educators: it summarises the part played by education departments and publishers, and reviews the state of textbook evaluation as a discipline. It concludes that South African educators are poorly equipped to evaluate and select textbooks. Against this background, the study describes an investigation of how teachers select textbooks for their classes. The findings are that choice is haphazard and that evaluation, in the rare instances when it takes place, is usually unsystematic and superficial. In conclusion, the study recommends that research into textbook development is done to provide a theoretical framework for effective evaluation, and that training and other support in textbook evaluation for teachers is established to improve selection practices. The study hypothesises that the resulting demand from a broad base of well-informed textbook-selectors in schools will give authors and publishers a more powerful incentive than any other pressures can to produce materials that withstand systematic, critical and wise evaluation

Red Lives: Grassroots Radicalism and Visionary Organizing in the American Century

Red Lives is a side-by-side social and intellectual biography of Claudia Jones, Emma Tenayuca, and Ah Quon McElrath, three working-class women who came-of-age during the Great Depression, and whose lifelong commitments to grassroots organizing and radical politics emerged from the Popular Front’s cross-class, multiracial coalitions and collective actions. All three joined the Communist Party as teenagers and first organized for groups representing youth, the unemployed, or workers, often on campaigns for race and gender equity, civil liberties, and democratic rights, in New York, Texas, and Hawai’i. They produced and published theoretical work that elaborated the underpinnings of their organizing strategies, and offered radical analyses—with race, gender, and class at the core—of capitalism, democracy, and social movements. Extending the Popular Front’s organizing models and theories for decades, they championed communist-inflected, anti-racist, and feminist politics until the end of their lives. Telling these women’s stories illuminates the unbroken history of both reactionary opposition to radical, multiracial, working-class women’s activism and that activism’s perseverance and influence throughout twentieth-century America. It makes four key interventions in the scholarship on twentieth century social movements. First, it insists on the centrality of anti-racist and feminist organizing to Depression- and World War II-era Popular Front politics and organizations. Second, it challenges common chronologies of American communism’s rise and fall by highlighting the continuance of radical organizing in the face of anticommunism, white supremacy, and the rise of Cold War liberalism. Third, it demonstrates Popular Front communist organizers’ legacies in the civil rights and women’s movements from the 1950s to the 1980s. Fourth, it provides an analysis of radicalism’s ongoing historical erasure by both liberal and right wing anticommunists. Offering detailed narratives of the left-affiliated movements and diverse political theories that formed these women’s times and careers, Red Lives presents fresh evidence of a grassroots American radicalism—Popular Frontism—far more influential, lasting, and independent from the control of either Soviet or American Communist Party leaders than previously recognized. Jones, Tenayuca, and McElrath embody ideals of the Popular Front and American communism, and those ideals’ under-recognized longevity as a constant strain in left politics from the 1930s into the twenty-first century. For these women, Popular Frontism’s principles included: support for a multiracial American national identity and historical narratives highlighting how organizing work by people of color, immigrants, and radicals shaped the nation; insistence that political and labor movements be grassroots and rank-and-file led, as well as deeply embedded in the needs of local communities and working-class families; and adherence to a revolutionary politics based in multiracial and cross-class campaigns for race, gender, and economic justice, simultaneously. Building on recent work that highlights the long civil rights and women’s movements and the survival of radical organizing in postwar politics, this dissertation illustrates the centrality of anti-racist and feminist organizing to pre-Cold War labor and civil rights organizations fighting for economic justice, then demonstrates the Popular Front organizers’ legacies in the civil rights and women’s movements in the later twentieth century. Establishing the endurance of Popular Frontism also permits a clearer awareness of the continuous and intimate forms of anticommunism throughout the century. This awareness disturbs the still common perception of McCarthyism as an exceptional phenomenon in American political life, and illuminates the deep ideological inextricability between anticommunism and white supremacy. Documenting the range of on-the-ground organizing strategies in which these women engaged to convince working people to take part in labor strikes, mass demonstrations, and electoral politics, this dissertation details the challenges they faced in building sustainable careers and economic security from these efforts. In an example of working-class intellectual history, it analyzes their political theories and writings to demonstrate their commitment to anti-racist, feminist, and class-based politics from the 1930s onward. The work draws on oral histories, personal letters, manuscript writings, newspapers, government records, and published work from archives in Texas, New York, Hawai’i, and London, as well as various secondary scholarly and biographical accounts. Placed alongside one another in this framework, these Popular Fronters’ separate stories offer a window into day-to-day organizing labor in modern social movements, as well as the divisions, debates, and dissent among and between national leaders and grassroots organizers engaged in building labor, civil rights, and economic justice movements. The grassroots radicalism and organizing strategies that Jones, Tenayuca, and McElrath practiced offer a record and road map of opportunities and pitfalls in creating the coalitions, campaigns, and political theory necessary for a more just world

“There and back again”: Reimagining the public library for the twenty-first century

The redefining of the scope and function of the public library in the twenty-first century, and reconstruction of the virtual and physical space it occupies, appear to have taken public libraries on a journey to “there and back again.” In some of the debates surrounding contemporary challenges, we can discern echoes from previous generations as they too debated the primary role of the public library in the community, the nature and purpose of services and resources provided, and the best way to meet community needs. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, many of the solutions reached by twenty-first century libraries have much in common with the solutions of previous generations. Reflecting early public library activities, today’s responses include the introduction of nonstandard classification schemes; the expansion of programs to enhance recreational and educational pursuits; the integration of multiple community services within the library; and provision of a variety of community learning, creative, and recreational spaces. Using the development of public libraries in Australia as a case study, and a critical narrative approach, this paper will argue that the vision for the function and purpose of the public library in the twenty-first century is not a new one but, perhaps unconsciously, a return to historical foundations.published or submitted for publicationOpe

An Analysis of Physical Wellness During Pregnancy

There is a lack of proper physical wellness increasing in society. This qualitative phenomenological study explored physical wellness during pregnancy using the theoretic framework of Social Cognitive Theory to show perceptions and lived experiences of women who are pregnant or who have been pregnant in the past three years. Three research questions were the focus of this qualitative study. RQ1: what aspects of physical wellness are important to women who are pregnant? RQ2: what are women’s physical wellness experiences during pregnancy? RQ3: how are women who are pregnant educated about physical wellness? Ten women in central Florida who are pregnant or have been pregnant in the past three years were used for the sample size. Open-ended semi structured interview questions were used to collect data. The interview was conducted over virtual Teams meeting. The data collected was analyzed by using thematic analysis method for identifying, analyzing, and reporting patterns within data. The results from this study described similar women’s perceptions and experiences of physical wellness during pregnancy. This study is significant because it brings awareness to the importance of physical wellness during pregnancy. This study also adds to the gap in the literature on physical wellness during pregnancy

The Relationship Between Job Satisfaction and Collegial Support to Retention of Nurse Educators in Baccalaureate and Higher Degree Nursing Programs in Virginia

This descriptive correlational study was designed to explore job satisfaction and collegial support in relation to the retention of nurse educators. A survey questionnaire adapted from Batiste-Beaty (1990/1991) was used to collect data on nurse educators\u27 retention rates and their perceptions of job satisfaction and collegial support in their present institutions. The survey was distributed to the 350 faculty members in the 12 baccalaureate and higher degree nursing programs in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The survey had a 51% return rate, with a total of 178 respondents. The two primary statistical procedures used in analyzing the data were Pearson\u27s product-moment correlation and analysis of variance. The data supported the first hypothesis, indicating that as job satisfaction increases, the likelihood of a faculty member\u27s leaving his or her present position decreases. The second hypothesis was also supported in part, indicating that as the perception of collegial support increases, the probability of a faculty member\u27s leaving his or her current institution decreases. The third hypothesis, which stated that perceived job satisfaction would vary on the basis of four professional-demographic variables (academic rank, tenure status, level of professional education and age) was supported in all but one area, age. The fourth hypothesis which stated that perceived collegial support will vary on the basis of the four professional-demographic variables was supported only in part. It varied only on the basis of academic rank. The findings revealed that job satisfaction and collegial support were correlated with retention of nurse educators in baccalaureate and higher degree nursing programs in Virginia. Additionally, significant relationships between the professional-demographic variables of academic rank, tenure status, and level of professional education and job satisfaction were found. A positive relationship was found between academic rank and collegial support. However, no relationships were found between age and the variables of job satisfaction and collegial support. It is suggested that data from this study may be useful in considering issues of retention as the current and projected nursing supply-and-demand imbalance becomes a reality within the new millennium