Teacher Contract Non-Renewal in the Rocky Mountains

Success for students in the 21st century increasingly relies on competencies and proficiencies typically available on]y through formal educational processes. Researchers have noted the paramount importance of quality teaching as the important criterion for student success (Haycock, 1998; Marzano, 2003). Recent reforms have increased the expectation that school principals energetically address teacher evaluations and subsequently remove ineffective teachers. These recent reforms tend to have common priorities, including emphasizing high quality teaching, evaluating teachers for merit pay purposes, and linking evaluation to student performance with an emphasis on the removal of ineffective teachers from the classroom

Making Makers: Tracing STEM Identity in Rural Communities

In this article, we describe efforts to reduce barriers of entry to pre-college engineering in a rural community by training local teens to become maker-mentors and staff a mobile makerspace in their community. We bring a communities of practice frame to our inquiry, focusing on inbound and peripheral learning and identity trajectories as a mechanism for representing the maker-mentor experience. Through a longitudinal case study, we traced the individual trajectories of five maker-mentors over two years. We found a collection of interrelated factors present in those students who maintained inbound trajectories and those who remained on the periphery. Our research suggests that the maker-mentors who facilitated events in the community, taught younger community members about making, and co-facilitated with other maker-mentors were more likely to have inbound trajectories. We offer lessons learned from including a mentorship component in a pre-college maker program, an unusual design feature that afforded more opportunities to create inbound trajectories. A key affordance of the maker-mentor program was that it allowed teens to explore areas of making that were in line with their interests while still being a part of a larger community of practice. Understanding learning and identity trajectories will allow us to continually improve pre-college engineering programming and education opportunities that build on students’ funds of knowledge

The 'questionableness' of things: opening up the conversation

The authors show, through its structure and form, what it means to open up a collaborative conversation. This chapter developed from a number of conversations that took place at the Fourth International Conference on Value and Virtue in Practice-Based Research, the twin themes of which were 'openness' and 'criticality'. These chance and often fleeting conversations focused on ideas explored in the keynote address that Jon delivered at the conference, but spanned out into a wider discussion of the relevance of those ideas within different areas of professional practice

Aging in the Right Place

Background: This project builds upon a pilot study that documented innovative shelter/housing solutions that have not undergone rigorous evaluation but hold the promise of supporting “aging in the right place” for older persons (50+) with experiences of homelessness (OPEH) in Montreal, Calgary, and Vancouver. “Aging in the right place” means older adults remain in their homes and communities supported by housing, health, social services responsive to their unique lifestyles and needs. While our pilot study identified innovative shelter/housing solutions that support OPEH to establish and maintain a home and work towards aging in the right place, there remains a knowledge gap regarding what works, why it works, and for whom it works. Methods/Design: Through a community-based participatory research approach, we will conduct evaluations of 11 different promising shelter/housing practices to determine the types of practices that appear most useful in supporting aging in the right place, and the groups of OPEH for whom the promising practices work based on intersections of risk (e.g., age, gender, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, disability, Indigenous status, and immigrant status). Our overall goal is to improve the shelter/housing options to meet the unique and complex health and social needs of OPEH across Canada. Discussion: Program evaluations will offer practice-based evidence of ways in which promising practices of shelter/housing might serve as best practices for supporting OPEH to establish and maintain a home and work towards aging in the right place. Project findings will inform housing, homelessness, health, and social service providers’ design and delivery of programs for OPEH to improve the sustainability of community housing, build provider capacity, and ensure supports that promote aging in the right place are sustained

Aging in the Right Place

Background: This project builds upon a pilot study that documented innovative shelter/housing solutions that have not undergone rigorous evaluation but hold the promise of supporting “aging in the right place” for older persons (50+) with experiences of homelessness (OPEH) in Montreal, Calgary, and Vancouver. “Aging in the right place” means older adults remain in their homes and communities supported by housing, health, social services responsive to their unique lifestyles and needs. While our pilot study identified innovative shelter/housing solutions that support OPEH to establish and maintain a home and work towards aging in the right place, there remains a knowledge gap regarding what works, why it works, and for whom it works. Methods/Design: Through a community-based participatory research approach, we will conduct evaluations of 11 different promising shelter/housing practices to determine the types of practices that appear most useful in supporting aging in the right place, and the groups of OPEH for whom the promising practices work based on intersections of risk (e.g., age, gender, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, disability, Indigenous status, and immigrant status). Our overall goal is to improve the shelter/housing options to meet the unique and complex health and social needs of OPEH across Canada. Discussion: Program evaluations will offer practice-based evidence of ways in which promising practices of shelter/housing might serve as best practices for supporting OPEH to establish and maintain a home and work towards aging in the right place. Project findings will inform housing, homelessness, health, and social service providers’ design and delivery of programs for OPEH to improve the sustainability of community housing, build provider capacity, and ensure supports that promote aging in the right place are sustained

Astro2020 Science White Paper: Triggered High-Priority Observations of Dynamic Solar System Phenomena

Unexpected dynamic phenomena have surprised solar system observers in the past and have led to important discoveries about solar system workings. Observations at the initial stages of these events provide crucial information on the physical processes at work. We advocate for long-term/permanent programs on ground-based and space-based telescopes of all sizes - including Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs) - to conduct observations of high-priority dynamic phenomena, based on a predefined set of triggering conditions. These programs will ensure that the best initial dataset of the triggering event are taken; separate additional observing programs will be required to study the temporal evolution of these phenomena. While not a comprehensive list, the following are notional examples of phenomena that are rare, that cannot be anticipated, and that provide high-impact advances to our understandings of planetary processes. Examples include: new cryovolcanic eruptions or plumes on ocean worlds; impacts on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, or Neptune; extreme eruptions on Io; convective superstorms on Saturn, Uranus, or Neptune; collisions within the asteroid belt or other small-body populations; discovery of an interstellar object passing through our solar system (e.g. 'Oumuamua); and responses of planetary atmospheres to major solar flares or coronal mass ejections.Comment: Astro2020 white pape

Humility, Self-Awareness, and Religious Ambivalence: Another Look at Beckett's ‘Humanistic Quietism’

This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Edinburgh University Press at http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/jobs.2014.0104. This article provides a commentary on the opaque and often contradictory arguments of ‘Humanistic Quietism’, Samuel Beckett's 1934 review of Thomas MacGreevy's Poems. Using Beckett's complicated relationship to both his own Protestant upbringing and the Catholicism of MacGreevy as a starting point, the article proposes new ways of understanding Beckett's ambivalent comments about MacGreevy's interiority, prayer-like poetry, humility, and quietism. It draws on Beckett's comments on Rilke, André Gide, and Arnold Geulincx, as well as his familiarity with Dante, to unpack the review's dense allusions and make sense of Beckett's aesthetic allegiances. </jats:p

Astro2020 Science White Paper: Triggered High-Priority Observations of Dynamic Solar System Phenomena

Unexpected dynamic phenomena have surprised solar system observers in the past and have led to important discoveries about solar system workings. Observations at the initial stages of these events provide crucial information on the physical processes at work. We advocate for long-term/permanent programs on ground-based and space-based telescopes of all sizes - including Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs) - to conduct observations of high-priority dynamic phenomena, based on a predefined set of triggering conditions. These programs will ensure that the best initial dataset of the triggering event are taken; separate additional observing programs will be required to study the temporal evolution of these phenomena. While not a comprehensive list, the following are notional examples of phenomena that are rare, that cannot be anticipated, and that provide high-impact advances to our understandings of planetary processes. Examples include: new cryovolcanic eruptions or plumes on ocean worlds; impacts on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, or Neptune; extreme eruptions on Io; convective superstorms on Saturn, Uranus, or Neptune; collisions within the asteroid belt or other small-body populations; discovery of an interstellar object passing through our solar system (e.g. 'Oumuamua); and responses of planetary atmospheres to major solar flares or coronal mass ejections

Erratum to: Methods for evaluating medical tests and biomarkers

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/s41512-016-0001-y.]