Engaging Diversity And Marginalization Through Participatory Action Research: A Model For Independent School Reform

Authored by a university researcher, school practitioner, and high school student, this article examines how independent schools can utilize participatory action research (PAR) to bolster diversity and inclusion efforts. A case study approach was taken to showcase a two-year PAR project at a progressive independent school that sought to: (a) enrich institutional knowledge of student diversity, (b) capture the present-day schooling experiences of historically marginalized students in independent school settings, and (c) develop a dynamic action plan to ameliorate school issues that emerged through the PAR inquiry process. Committed to institutional research that informs school policy and practice, we argue that PAR provides a rigorous, student-centered, and democratic model for independent school reform

Race, Class, And Gender In Boys\u27 Education: Repositioning Intersectionality Theory

Boys\u27 identities are distinctly gendered, racialized, and classed across disparate social and cultural contexts. Related intersectional identity processes are associated with boys\u27 academic success. While intersectionality has been utilized throughout boys\u27 education scholarship, a limited, light touch approach is often enacted. As a critical logic of interpretation, intersectionality theory accounts for race, class, and gender within equity-based empirical studies. The authors contend insufficient engagement with intersectionality may lead educational research on boys\u27 social and learner identities to become static. Examining boys\u27 identities through intersectional approaches reveals more complex insights particularly related to their school engagement. Critical of the recent boy crisis literature, this article strives to compel theorists of boys\u27 education to more fully leverage the history, constructs, and epistemologies of intersectionality

Sociocultural Learning And The Hope For School Change: Participatory Action Research At A Public Elementary School

Educational reform in the United States has failed to adequately account for the complexities of urban schooling. Instead of spurring systematic school change, these oftentimes bureaucratic and authoritarian reform efforts have inspired widespread institutional distrust, which undermines improvement efforts and demoralizes school professionals. Persistent failure of “top-down” reform has fueled the use of democratic or “bottom-up” approaches to more sufficiently grapple with the highly dynamic nature of urban public schools. Participatory Action Research (PAR) has become an increasingly popular inquiry method to facilitate robust and democratic institutional change, whereby university-based researchers and school practitioners co-construct knowledge through a collaborative inquiry process. This 10-month case study (2010-2011) employed sociocultural learning theory and the tenets of PAR to examine its implementation at a public elementary school in a major northeastern city. In order to ameliorate a distressing school issue, participant interviews (N=10), school observations (+100 hours), and typewritten reflections (i.e., weekly memos; 100-200 words) captured detailed narratives associated with the evolution, challenges, as well as effective practice of PAR within a university and school partnership. Four interrelated themes of PAR implementation emerged: (1) hopes for the project; (2) vision of team roles; (3) learning through boundary crossing; and (4) boundary object potential

Isoform-Specific Inactivation and Aggregation of CaMKII under Ischemic-Like Conditions

poster abstractCalcium-Calmodulin Dependent Protein Kinase II (CaMKII), an enzyme critical for learning and memory, inactivates and self-associates into sedimentable aggregates following ischemic insults such as stroke or traumatic brain injury; the extent of inactivation correlates increased neuronal dysfunction and death. CaMKII α and β—isoforms found primarily in neurons—are well documented in their response to ischemic stress; α aggregates and undergoes catalytic inactivation quickly while β does not. However, γ and δ—primarily found in glial cells—are not well studied under these conditions. Previous research by our lab suggests that loss of CaMKII signaling in astrocytes may contribute to reduced glutamate uptake and neurotoxic ATP release. Therefore, there is a need to elucidate the role of the astrocytic CaMKII isoforms in ischemic stress. This study aims to investigate CaMKII δ and γ’s response to artificial ischemic conditions compared to CaMKII α. Activity assay of cell lysates expressing the four different human genes of CaMKII (α, β, γ, and δ) reveal that, under artificial ischemic conditions, δ undergoes very minimal loss of activity over time while γ experiences robust inactivation. We then used light scattering to compare α, δ, and γ sedimentation in real time and found that δ had an aggregation profile similar to α yet γ’s was radically different. A follow-up time-course sedimentation assay suggests that δ becomes sedimentable and undergoes an upwards molecular weight shift akin to α over time, indicative of autophosphorylation, but that γ begins partially sedimentable before becoming completely soluble upon activation, contrary to our hypothesis. This suggests that each isoform responds differentially to activation under ischemic-like conditions and that aggregation is not necessarily correlative with inactivation. We are currently characterizing endogenous astrocytic CaMKII expression and activity to later determine if these findings persist in a cellular environment under ischemic-like conditions. Mentor: Andy Hudmon, Stark Neurosciences Research Institute, IU School of Medicine, IUPUI, Indianapolis, I

Academic Entitlement in the Context of Learning Styles

This study explores the linkages between students’ sense of entitlement and their approaches to learning, based on survey research at a large public university in Canada.  Through literature review and pilot testing, a questionnaire instrument was developed that measures four constructs:  academic entitlement, deep learning, surface learning and strategic learning.  Survey responses (n=1=2116) suggest that students approach learning in mixed ways, and that approaches to learning intersect with students’ sense of entitlement in complex ways.  Overall, students’ scores on the sense of entitlement scale were found to be moderate, challenging some of the assertions about today’s students that have been made in the popular press.&nbsp

Constitutive regulation of the glutamate/aspartate transporter EAAT1 by Calcium-Calmodulin-Dependent Protein Kinase II

Glutamate clearance by astrocytes is an essential part of normal excitatory neurotransmission. Failure to adapt or maintain low levels of glutamate in the central nervous system is associated with multiple acute and chronic neurodegenerative diseases. The primary excitatory amino acid transporters in human astrocytes are EAAT1 and EAAT2 (GLAST and GLT-1, respectively, in rodents). While the inhibition of calcium/calmodulin-dependent kinase (CaMKII), a ubiquitously expressed serine/threonine protein kinase, results in diminished glutamate uptake in cultured primary rodent astrocytes (Ashpole et al. 2013), the molecular mechanism underlying this regulation is unknown. Here, we use a heterologous expression model to explore CaMKII regulation of EAAT1 and EAAT2. In transiently transfected HEK293T cells, pharmacological inhibition of CaMKII (using KN-93 or tat-CN21) reduces [3 H]-glutamate uptake in EAAT1 without altering EAAT2-mediated glutamate uptake. While over-expressing the Thr287Asp mutant to enhance autonomous CaMKII activity had no effect on either EAAT1 or EAAT2-mediated glutamate uptake, over-expressing a dominant-negative version of CaMKII (Asp136Asn) diminished EAAT1 glutamate uptake. SPOTS peptide arrays and recombinant glutathione S-transferase-fusion proteins of the intracellular N- and C-termini of EAAT1 identified two potential phosphorylation sites at residues Thr26 and Thr37 in the N-terminus. Introducing an Ala (a non-phospho mimetic) at Thr37 diminished EAAT1-mediated glutamate uptake, suggesting that the phosphorylation state of this residue is important for constitutive EAAT1 function. Our study is the first to identify a glutamate transporter as a direct CaMKII substrate and suggests that CaMKII signaling is a critical driver of constitutive glutamate uptake by EAAT1

Gambling Prevalence and Factors Associated with Gambling Participation among University Students in Uganda

This paper examines the prevalence of gambling for gain among university students and to gain a theory-based understanding and knowledge of the influence factors of this gambling behaviour based on the University Student Psychosocial Problems Development Theory (USPPDT). Relatively little is known about the factors associated with students’ gambling for financial gain encompassing a student’s biosocial/cultural and psycho characteristics informed by a theory. Participants were recruited from two public and three private universities in Uganda. A total of 1101 randomly selected students participated in the study and 976 (88.6%) completed the survey instruments. The self-reported current prevalence of gambling participation was 281 (28.8%) among university students (≥ 19 years). In agreement with the theory and findings from the study, student demographic characteristics, study program characteristics, student-related health burden characteristics, psychosocial functioning, and antisocial behaviour items were particularly predictive of students’ participation in gambling for financial gain. These risk factors for gambling are not presumed as causation, identifying them points to important implications in terms of prevention and intervention on student gambling behaviour. This points to a considered interplay of different players in designing transversal strategies for a student at risk for gambling