Reaching All Children? Understanding Early Care and Education Participation Among Immigrant Families: A Brief

Children born to immigrant parents often face multiple risk factors that make their participation in quality early education programs particularly beneficial--yet these children appear less likely to participate in such programs. This two-page brief summarizes the 26-page paper, Reaching All Children? Understanding Early Care and Education Participation Among Immigrant Families, part of CLASP's Breaking Down Barriers project intended to better understand and remedy the barriers immigrant families face to accessing high-quality early education programs

California\u27s Goal for More Renewable Energy: The Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) Program

California\u27s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) program is law passed in 2002 designed to stimulate renewable electricity generation in the state. It is compulsory and intended to produce a meaningful demand for renewables in California. It requires the utilities to increase their procurement of renewable electricity by at least one percent per year based on the prior year\u27s sales with California procuring 20% of its energy from renewable sources by 2010. With the increased environmental concerns of global warming, RPS has been acknowledged to be an active way in which California will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. However, California is several years into implementation of RPS, and the results are not as impressive as once thought. RPS is not a new public policy. Despite a lack of federal activity in the arena of global warming or RPS, twenty-three states have enacted RPS laws on their accord. Is RPS driven by a moral obligation to the environment? Are the goals of California\u27s RPS program attainable? Has the higher price tag of renewable energy development influenced RPS\u27s implementation? These are a few of the questions to be considered

The effect of perceptual availability and prior discourse on young children's use of referring expressions.

Choosing appropriate referring expressions requires assessing whether a referent is “available” to the addressee either perceptually or through discourse. In Study 1, we found that 3- and 4-year-olds, but not 2-year-olds, chose different referring expressions (noun vs. pronoun) depending on whether their addressee could see the intended referent or not. In Study 2, in more neutral discourse contexts than previous studies, we found that 3- and 4-year-olds clearly differed in their use of referring expressions according to whether their addressee had already mentioned a referent. Moreover, 2-yearolds responded with more naming constructions when the referent had not been mentioned previously. This suggests that, despite early social–cognitive developments, (a) it takes time tomaster the given/new contrast linguistically, and (b) children understand the contrast earlier based on discourse, rather than perceptual context

Three-year-olds are sensitive to semantic prominence during online language comprehension : A visual world study of pronoun resolution

Recent evidence from adult pronoun comprehension suggests that semantic factors such as verb transitivity affect referent salience and thereby anap- hora resolution. We tested whether the same semantic factors influence pronoun comprehension in young children. In a visual world study, 3-year- olds heard stories that began with a sentence containing either a high or a low transitivity verb. Looking behaviour to pictures depicting the subject and object of this sentence was recorded as children listened to a subsequent sentence containing a pronoun. Children showed a stronger preference to look to the subject as opposed to the object antecedent in the low transitivity condition. In addition there were general preferences (1) to look to the subject in both conditions and (2) to look more at both potential antecedents in the high transitivity condition. This suggests that children, like adults, are affected by semantic factors, specifically semantic prominence, when interpreting anaphoric pronouns.Peer reviewe

Impact of Advanced Placement Environmental Science on Environmental Beliefs and Actions of High School Students in Freehold Township High School, NJ

This study aimed to investigate the effects of Advanced Placement Environmental Science on the pro-environmental behaviors and beliefs in high school juniors and seniors at a high school in central New Jersey. Using a pro-environmental behaviors scale adapted from earlier research by Astrid Leeuw (2015) in conjunction with the theory of planned behavior, students were asked to complete binary survey questions designed to determine if they engaged in certain pro-environmental behaviors and scaled questions to determine environmental beliefs. A pilot study was created in the 2018/2019 school year in which students took the survey at the end of the school year to determine survey effectiveness and establish baseline results. In 2019/2020 a new group of high school students in the same school took pre- and post-surveys that were informed by the pilot study to investigate how Advanced Placement Environmental Science informed their pro-environmental behaviors and beliefs. The pre-survey was distributed in class in January 2020, and the post-survey was distributed during distance learning in April 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Potential ramifications of the change in distribution methods are explored in the paper. Statistical analyses were performed on the data collected. The effectiveness of Advanced Placement Environmental Science on pro-environmental behaviors and beliefs remains an ongoing question. There was no difference in the responses in the pre- and post-survey. Where statistically significant differences did exist, delays in IRB approval and local Board of Education approval combined with the change in pre- and post-survey distribution methods makes establishing a direct paired comparison difficult. Consistency in survey responses between the 2018/2019 and 2019/2020 cohorts was established. Potential avenues of future research are explored

Local to global policy as a catalyst for change: key messages

Feeding and nourishing a growing and changing global population in the face of rising numbers of chronically hungry people, slow progress on malnutrition, environmental degradation, systemic inequality, and the dire projections of climate change, demands a transformation in global food systems. Policy change at multiple levels is critical for catalysing an inclusive and sustainable transformation in food systems; global and regional policy are transformative only insofar as they are translated into ambitious national action with adequate support, including both public and private investment. Three areas of policy change show potential to be catalytic: 1) reducing emissions and increasing resilience, 2) tackling food loss and waste, and 3) shifting diets to promote nutrition and sustainability. Trade-offs mean a multi-sectoral approach to policymaking is needed, while inequalities in food systems necessitate transparent, inclusive processes and results. Gender inequality, in particular, must be addressed. Transformation demands participation and action from all actors

School-Level Perspectives of the Ontario School Nutrition Program

The purpose of this study was to assess the implementation of a school snack program for children in elementary schools. School-level program volunteers’ experiences were explored using semi-structured interviews. Fieldnotes were taken during on-site school visits. Quantitative data were collected through a General Information Form and Weekly Logbooks. Seven elementary schools in Southwestern Ontario were invited and agreed to participate. Interviews (n = 27) revealed that volunteers valued the program for its universality, the excitement it created, the opportunity for students to try new foods, and the social interactions that it generated. Challenges included the burden on snack volunteers to plan, procure, and prepare foods; the competition the program posed for school priorities; limited funding; and a lack of clear purpose for the program. Suggestions for improvement included providing adequate and sustained resources and an integration of the program into the curriculum. Data obtained from 15 on-site visits, 7 General Information Forms, and 59 (out of a total of 70) Weekly Logbooks confirmed the data obtained from interviews. This research provides insights into the challenges of volunteer-led school snack programs in Canada and may guide policy makers, practitioners, and researchers in the development of a universal, nationally funded school food program

Investigating the spatial variation and risk factors of childhood anaemia in four sub-Saharan African countries.

BACKGROUND: The causes of childhood anaemia are multifactorial, interrelated and complex. Such causes vary from country to country, and within a country. Thus, strategies for anaemia control should be tailored to local conditions and take into account the specific etiology and prevalence of anaemia in a given setting and sub-population. In addition, policies and programmes for anaemia control that do not account for the spatial heterogeneity of anaemia in children may result in certain sub-populations being excluded, limiting the effectiveness of the programmes. This study investigated the demographic and socio-economic determinants as well as the spatial variation of anaemia in children aged 6 to 59 months in Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda. METHODS: The study made use of data collected from nationally representative Malaria Indicator Surveys (MIS) and Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) conducted in all four countries between 2015 and 2017. During these surveys, all children under the age of five years old in the sampled households were tested for malaria and anaemia. A child's anaemia status was based on the World Health Organization's cut-off points where a child was considered anaemic if their altitude adjusted haemoglobin (Hb) level was less than 11 g/dL. The explanatory variables considered comprised of individual, household and cluster level factors, including the child's malaria status. A multivariable hierarchical Bayesian geoadditive model was used which included a spatial effect for district of child's residence. RESULTS: Prevalence of childhood anaemia ranged from 36.4% to 61.9% across the four countries. Children with a positive malaria result had a significantly higher odds of anaemia [AOR = 4.401; 95% CrI: (3.979, 4.871)]. After adjusting for a child's malaria status and other demographic, socio-economic and environmental factors, the study revealed distinct spatial variation in childhood anaemia within and between Malawi, Uganda and Tanzania. The spatial variation appeared predominantly due to unmeasured district-specific factors that do not transcend boundaries. CONCLUSIONS: Anaemia control measures in Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda need to account for internal spatial heterogeneity evident in these countries. Efforts in assessing the local district-specific causes of childhood anaemia within each country should be focused on