Expectations Divergence: Exploring White Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices at a Diverse Suburban High School

This qualitative study was designed to explore how primarily White educators describe their beliefs about student opportunity and achievement. In order to develop more equitable teaching practices, this study provides insights into the multi-dimensionality of teacher beliefs and expectations. Biases, prejudices, and socioeconomics inequities underlie the social context of teaching that guides practice, influences decision-making, and shapes what type of classroom interactions are valued. Teachers insensitive or unfamiliar with the needs of diverse learners make the understanding of required knowledge and skills difficult. This case study design examined the experiences of educators at Heartfelt High School (pseudonym), undergoing reform in a suburban district in the northeastern United States. Archival data, collected in the 2011-2012 school year as part of a previous study of school reform effort, included semi-structured interviews collected from 10 participants at Heartfelt. Participants were teachers and administrators. Using a constant comparative method, the present study examined these educators and teacher beliefs. The researcher used an inductive process to make meaning of the archival data, allowing research questions to emerge concurrently with the constant comparative analysis focused on classifying data using the cloud-base program Dedoose. To understand the educators’ descriptions, an Expectations Divergence framework emerged to recognize tensions in teacher beliefs. Administrators must be cognizant of teacher beliefs, knowledge, and behavior as a starting point to alter teacher practices. In order for this change to happen, administrators must work with teachers to achieve social justice for all students

Developmental dysarthria in a young adult with cerebral palsy : a speech subsystems analysis

The speech of children with cerebral palsy (CP) and dysarthria is associated with limited breath control, voice quality changes and imprecise articulation. These problems can reduce speech intelligibility, which can act as a barrier to successful interactions. Whilst the impact of the speech problems is well recognised, research on the nature of the speech impairment is relatively limited. This study aims to provide a detailed description of the speech production abilities of a 16-year old boy with CP using a speech subsystems approach. It will examine which subsystems might be affected that could impact upon intelligibility in this speaker. To achieve this, various speech samples were analysed regarding a range of acoustic and linguistic parameters and subsequently compared to the performances of his typically developing twin brother. Results showed that changes in respiration, phonation and articulation may contribute to the intelligibility issues experienced by the speaker with CP

Empires, materials and entanglements: the power of material entanglements in the Gupta Political Formation

The Gupta Political Formation has been called “the golden-age” of India yet little archaeological study has been done on the period. Through the ideas of new materialism, in particular Hodder’s (2012) Theory of Entanglement, and Katchadurian’s (2016) Satrapal Conditions, this thesis aims to explore three powerful materials: textile clothing, metals and spices. These materials appear influential and integral to the inner workings of the Gupta Political Formation (GPF) and so provide the opportunity to investigate the political, social and economic movements made by the rulers of the GPF in pursuit of these materials. It is the purpose of this thesis to shine a light on their influence in the movements of the political machine we know as the Gupta Political Formation and to explore the inner-workings of empire through material desires and dependencies

Expectations Divergence: Exploring White Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices at a Diverse Suburban High School

This qualitative study was designed to explore how primarily White educators describe their beliefs about student opportunity and achievement. In order to develop more equitable teaching practices, this study provides insights into the multi-dimensionality of teacher beliefs and expectations. Biases, prejudices, and socioeconomics inequities underlie the social context of teaching that guides practice, influences decision-making, and shapes what type of classroom interactions are valued. Teachers insensitive or unfamiliar with the needs of diverse learners make the understanding of required knowledge and skills difficult. This case study design examined the experiences of educators at Heartfelt High School (pseudonym), undergoing reform in a suburban district in the northeastern United States. Archival data, collected in the 2011-2012 school year as part of a previous study of school reform effort, included semi-structured interviews collected from 10 participants at Heartfelt. Participants were teachers and administrators. Using a constant comparative method, the present study examined these educators and teacher beliefs. The researcher used an inductive process to make meaning of the archival data, allowing research questions to emerge concurrently with the constant comparative analysis focused on classifying data using the cloud-base program Dedoose. To understand the educators’ descriptions, an Expectations Divergence framework emerged to recognize tensions in teacher beliefs. Administrators must be cognizant of teacher beliefs, knowledge, and behavior as a starting point to alter teacher practices. In order for this change to happen, administrators must work with teachers to achieve social justice for all students

Constraining Nuclear Symmetry Energy with Multi-messenger Resonant Shattering Flares

Much effort is devoted to measuring the nuclear symmetry energy through neutron star (NS) and nuclear observables. Since matter in the NS core may be non-hadronic, observables like radii and tidal deformability may not provide reliable constraints on properties of nucleonic matter. We demonstrate that coincident timing of a resonant shattering flare (RSF) and gravitational wave signal during binary NS inspiral probes the crust-core transition region and provides constraints on the symmetry energy comparable to terrestrial nuclear experiments. We show that nuclear masses, RSFs and measurements of NS radii and tidal deformabilities constrain different density ranges of the EOS, providing complementary probes.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures submitted to PR

Variation in antibiotic treatment failure outcome definitions in randomised trials and observational studies of antibiotic pre-scribing strategies: A systematic review and narrative synthesis

Antibiotic treatment failure is used as an outcome in randomised trials and observational studies of antibiotic treatment strategies and may comprise different events that indicate failure to achieve a desired clinical response. However, the lack of a universally recognised definition has led to considerable variation in the types of events included. We undertook a systematic review of published studies investigating antibiotic treatment strategies for common uncomplicated infections, aiming to describe variation in terminology and components of the antibiotic treatment failure outcomes. We searched Medline, Embase, and the Cochrane Central Register of Clinical trials for English language studies published between January 2010 and January 2021. The population of interest was ambulatory patients seen in primary care or outpatient settings with respiratory tract (RTI), urinary tract (UTI), or skin and soft tissue infection (SSTI), where different antibiotic prescribing strategies were compared, and the outcome was antibiotic treatment failure. We narratively summarised key features from eligible studies and used frequencies and proportions to describe terminology, components, and time periods used to ascertain antibiotic treatment failure outcomes. Database searches identified 2967 unique records, from which 36 studies met our inclusion criteria. This included 10 randomised controlled trials and 26 observational studies, with 20 studies of RTI, 12 of UTI, 4 of SSTI, and 2 of both RTI and SSTI. We identified three key components of treatment failure definitions: prescription changes, escalation of care, and change in clinical condition. Prescription changes were most popular in studies of UTI, while changes in clinical condition were most common in RTI and SSTI studies. We found substantial variation in the definition of antibiotic treatment failure in included studies, even amongst studies of the same infection subtype and study design. Considerable further work is needed to develop a standardised definition of antibiotic treatment failure in partnership with patients, clinicians, and relevant stakeholders

Cytogenetic analysis of adult T-Cell leukemia/ lymphoma: evaluation of a Caribbean cohort

Adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATLL) is a rare and highly aggressive type of peripheral T-cell lymphoma associated with human T-lymphotropic virus, type I (HTLV-I) infection. ATLL has a long latency and only a small percentage of HTLV-I infected individuals develop ATLL, suggesting the requirement of additional genetic events for neoplastic transformation of HTLV-I infected lymphocytes. The disease is endemic in several regions of the world, in particular, southwestern Japan and the Caribbean basin. The clinical features of Caribbean ATLL have been reported to differ from Japanese cases, includ- ing a younger age at diagnosis, higher frequency of the lymphomatous subtype, and a more aggressive clinical course [1–7]. A number of publications have described the cytogenetic profile of Japanese ATLL [8–11]; however, cytogenetic data on Caribbean ATLL are limited [5,6]. In this study, we assessed the cytogenetic alterations in a large series of Caribbean ATLL cases to investigate whether the differences in the types and frequencies of karyotype abnormalities account for the reported differ- ences in clinical presentation and outcome between Japanese and Caribbean patients