From High School to Post-Secondary Life--Exploring the College Transition Experiences of Bilingual Latinx Youth

The current neoliberal education system often positions bilingual youth as deficient or lacking in skills. The discourse from some academic research paradigms tends to also take up this deficit orientation, focusing on the issues and needs of Latinx bilingual students, or the pedagogical strategies to “close achievement gaps.” The NYC Department of Education has attempted to address gaps in achievement by offering increased access to college and career readiness programs, positioning access as synonymous to equity. However, access alone does not lead to equity when the systems and norms that prioritize assimilation to the dominant white culture are not being challenged; moreover, increased access will not lead to equity if the voices and experiences of marginalized youth experiencing the transition to college are not amplified. This project will add to the growing body of scholarly work that aims to subvert deficit discourse around bilingual students by inviting them to author their own stories about their experiences in the transition to college. These narratives bring up various aspects of the transition to college: how first-generation Latinx bilingual youth navigate cultural and linguistic expectations in college, how they navigate the white, western, and patriarchal institutional norms of the college going process, sources of support in their educational journeys, what factors influenced their college choices, and how they have experienced college in the context of a global pandemic. This research recognizes bilingual students’ experiences and knowledges as truths, positioning them as knowledge creators. The purpose of this study is to document and explore how first-generation Latinx/ bilingual students experience the transition from high school to college, and how they navigate and question spaces in high school and college fraught with linguistic and cultural erasure. Employing Chicana Feminist epistemologies and post-positive realist perspectives of identity, this study will use pláticas to better understand the experiences of Latinx students as they transition to college, what educators can do to support their transition, and to think about how educators can work alongside Latinx students to fight erasure

Unmet need for family planning, contraceptive failure, and unintended pregnancy among HIV-infected and HIV-uninfected women in Zimbabwe.

BackgroundPrevention of unintended pregnancies among women living with HIV infection is a strategy recommended by the World Health Organization for prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT). We assessed pregnancy intentions and contraceptive use among HIV-positive and HIV-negative women with a recent pregnancy in Zimbabwe.MethodsWe analyzed baseline data from the evaluation of Zimbabwe's Accelerated National PMTCT Program. Eligible women were randomly sampled from the catchment areas of 157 health facilities offering PMTCT services in five provinces. Eligible women were ≥16 years old and mothers of infants (alive or deceased) born 9 to 18 months prior to the interview. Participants were interviewed about their HIV status, intendedness of the birth, and contraceptive use.ResultsOf 8,797 women, the mean age was 26.7 years, 92.8% were married or had a regular sexual partner, and they had an average of 2.7 lifetime births. Overall, 3,090 (35.1%) reported that their births were unintended; of these women, 1,477 (47.8%) and 1,613 (52.2%) were and were not using a contraceptive method prior to learning that they were pregnant, respectively. Twelve percent of women reported that they were HIV-positive at the time of the survey; women who reported that they were HIV-infected were significantly more likely to report that their pregnancy was unintended compared to women who reported that they were HIV-uninfected (44.9% vs. 33.8%, p<0.01). After adjustment for covariates, among women with unintended births, there was no association between self-reported HIV status and lack of contraception use prior to pregnancy.ConclusionsUnmet need for family planning and contraceptive failure contribute to unintended pregnancies among women in Zimbabwe. Both HIV-infected and HIV-uninfected women reported unintended pregnancies despite intending to avoid or delay pregnancy, highlighting the need for effective contraceptive methods that align with pregnancy intentions

Analysis of Misconceptions in High School Mathematics

Research on teachers’ ability to identify and address student “errors” asserts that because many students who are not proficient in basic math skills demonstrate numerous mathematics misconceptions, it is essential for teachers to recognize various misconceptions when adjusting instruction (Riccomini, 2005). The research of Stefanich and Rokusek (1992) affirms that when a pattern of error was diagnosed and instruction was directed to remediate the incorrect procedure, then new learning could take place quickly, and retention appeared to be long-term. Correspondingly, a study by Wilcox and Zielinski (1997) concluded that assessment helped teachers gain better insights into their students’ understanding, including misconceptions, and therefore helped to better diagnose error patterns and remediate them

Is Pressure Stressful? The Impact of Pressure on the Stress Response and Category Learning

We examine the basic question of whether pressure is stressful. We propose that when examining the role of stress or pressure in cognitive performance it is important to consider the type of pressure, the stress response, and the aspect of cognition assessed. In Experiment 1, outcome pressure was not experienced as stressful but did lead to impaired performance on a rule-based (RB) category learning task and not a more procedural information-integration (II) task. In Experiment 2, the addition of monitoring pressure resulted in a modest stress response to combined pressure and impairment on both tasks. Across experiments, higher stress appraisals were associated with decreased performance on the RB, but not the II, task. In turn, higher stress-reactivity (heart rate) was associated with enhanced performance on the II, but not the RB, task. This work represents an initial step towards integrating the stress-cognition and pressure-cognition literatures and suggests that integrating these fields may require consideration of the type of pressure, the stress-response, and the cognitive system mediating performance

Is Pressure Stressful? The Impact of Pressure on the Stress Response and Category Learning

We examine the basic question of whether pressure is stressful. We propose that when examining the role of stress or pressure in cognitive performance it is important to consider the type of pressure, the stress response, and the aspect of cognition assessed. In Experiment 1, outcome pressure was not experienced as stressful but did lead to impaired performance on a rule-based (RB) category learning task and not a more procedural information-integration (II) task. In Experiment 2, the addition of monitoring pressure resulted in a modest stress response to combined pressure and impairment on both tasks. Across experiments, higher stress appraisals were associated with decreased performance on the RB, but not the II, task. In turn, higher stress-reactivity (heart rate) was associated with enhanced performance on the II, but not the RB, task. This work represents an initial step towards integrating the stress-cognition and pressure-cognition literatures and suggests that integrating these fields may require consideration of the type of pressure, the stress-response, and the cognitive system mediating performance