Breaking Through the Noise: Literacy Teachers in the Face of Accountability, Evaluation, and Reform

In an era of increased accountability, it is important to understand how exemplary teachers navigate the demands placed on them by their schools, districts, and states in order to support student learning aligned with their beliefs of effective instruction. To understand these negotiations, tensions facing exemplary literacy teachers were examined through a qualitative interview study. Participants included nineteen experienced PK-6th grade teachers from across the U.S. Results of the study indicate that teachers experience discrepancies between their beliefs and state and local mandates, and they discuss a variety of strategies for negotiating these discrepancies. Findings suggest that schools can support effective literacy instruction by cultivating cultures of autonomy for teachers and strengthening teachers’ sense of agency

Commuter Campus in Transition: Meeting the Changing Needs of Students through Mixed-Methods Assessment

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis is an urban research university with approximately 30,000 commuter and residential students. This chapter discusses the space assessment done at University Library, the main campus library, which attempts to analyze and quantify the needs of both types of students. Two studies will be outlined, which started separately, but have since merged, both informing student use of library space. While both contain quantitative and qualitative elements, their methodologies are different. One used SMS (texting) in combination with one-on-one de-briefs to track student movement over the course of an entire day. The other uses in-library assessments to gauge student space use and preference. One limitation of in-library assessments is they only tell you about students who already use the library, not those who do not come to the library. The combination of these studies allows University Library to better plan library space, not only for current users, but also to target students who are not in the library (non-users)

What can agencies do to increase foster carer satisfaction?

Stable, long-term foster care homes are critical to ensuring a safe and nurturing childhood for many children worldwide. Greater foster carer satisfaction is associated with increased carer retention and is therefore critical in securing such stable homes for children. The purpose of this study is to determine which factors associated with foster care agencies contribute to higher levels of foster carer satisfaction. Results from a longitudinal study of 137 foster carers indicate that perceived adequacy of agency support, preplacement training, money to cover placement expenses, and a good match between the carer and the child are predictive of higher foster carer satisfaction. A mediation model further points to the provision of preplacement training as key to ensuring higher levels of satisfaction. Results offer new insights into factors related to foster carer retention and provide guidance to foster care agencies about actions that they can take to maximize the retention of foster carers

Carer Factors Associated with Foster-Placement Success and Breakdown

The characteristics of carers in successful foster placements are identified to enable targeting them through customised marketing and recruitment campaigns. A longitudinal study with seventy-five carers was conducted over twenty months. Eleven instances of placement breakdown were compared to placements that did not break down. Several personal and family factors were identified as increasing the likelihood of foster-placement success, including higher cognitive empathy of the carer, a high level of social support from family, a high-quality carer-partner relationship, higher levels of care-giving and role-carer demand satisfaction, and a good match, fewer conflicts and better relationship between the carer and foster child. Conflicts between the carer and the child mediate the association between carer-partner relationship quality and carer satisfaction with role demands. Findings have important practical implications: additional evaluations should be conducted during screening processes with a focus on the key markers of placement success identified in this study; more emphasis should be placed on developing support networks amongst carers\u27 friends and family; and greater involvement of carer partners in screening and training processes is of key importance

Rewiring Neural Interactions by Micro-Stimulation

Plasticity is a crucial component of normal brain function and a critical mechanism for recovery from injury. In vitro, associative pairing of presynaptic spiking and stimulus-induced postsynaptic depolarization causes changes in the synaptic efficacy of the presynaptic neuron, when activated by extrinsic stimulation. In vivo, such paradigms can alter the responses of whole groups of neurons to stimulation. Here, we used in vivo spike-triggered stimulation to drive plastic changes in rat forelimb sensorimotor cortex, which we monitored using a statistical measure of functional connectivity inferred from the spiking statistics of the neurons during normal, spontaneous behavior. These induced plastic changes in inferred functional connectivity depended on the latency between trigger spike and stimulation, and appear to reflect a robust reorganization of the network. Such targeted connectivity changes might provide a tool for rerouting the flow of information through a network, with implications for both rehabilitation and brain–machine interface applications

Utilizing the System Engineering Trade Study Analysis Method to Analyze Patient Aeromedical Evacuation

The US Air Force has gone through many aeromedical patient isolation transport system designs. The first designs were developed in response to the Ebola outbreak in 2014 and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic. The trade study analysis part of the system engineering design method was used to analyze the historic and current aeromedical patient contamination control transport systems. A trade study is a process that evaluates alternatives based upon various “-ilities”, such as reconfigurability, flexibility, durability, cost, and more, and performs a systematic analysis to aid designers in producing a ‘good’ design alternative given the large set of possible solutions. The analysis of these historic and current systems, in addition to speaking with stakeholders, resulted in design requirements for a new system. This article will discuss the findings from the analysis of the historic and current aeromedical patient isolation transport systems

Search Query Sea Change: Is it Time to Transform the Way We Teach Boolean?

Are searches that use Boolean operators better than natural language (phrase) searches? Librarians are led to believe this by common practice in reference and instruction; yet, a study of the efficacy of Boolean searches reveals a sea change, especially in first-year instruction. This poster will highlight results of a study, which compared simple Boolean search queries versus natural language searches in eight popular databases

Nuclear-localized focal adhesion kinase regulates inflammatory VCAM-1 expression.

Vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) plays important roles in development and inflammation. Tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and focal adhesion kinase (FAK) are key regulators of inflammatory and integrin-matrix signaling, respectively. Integrin costimulatory signals modulate inflammatory gene expression, but the important control points between these pathways remain unresolved. We report that pharmacological FAK inhibition prevented TNF-α-induced VCAM-1 expression within heart vessel-associated endothelial cells in vivo, and genetic or pharmacological FAK inhibition blocked VCAM-1 expression during development. FAK signaling facilitated TNF-α-induced, mitogen-activated protein kinase activation, and, surprisingly, FAK inhibition resulted in the loss of the GATA4 transcription factor required for TNF-α-induced VCAM-1 production. FAK inhibition also triggered FAK nuclear localization. In the nucleus, the FAK-FERM (band 4.1, ezrin, radixin, moesin homology) domain bound directly to GATA4 and enhanced its CHIP (C terminus of Hsp70-interacting protein) E3 ligase-dependent polyubiquitination and degradation. These studies reveal new developmental and anti-inflammatory roles for kinase-inhibited FAK in limiting VCAM-1 production via nuclear localization and promotion of GATA4 turnover