Increasing Low-income Mothers’ Educational Attainment: Implications for Anti-poverty Programs and Policy

Context: Emerging research indicates parental educational attainment is not always stable over time, particularly among young adults with lower levels of income and educational attainment. Though increases in postsecondary education are often highlighted as a route to greater earnings among higher-income students, it is unclear whether increases in parental educational attainment can improve the socioeconomic circumstances of low-income families. Objective: The first goal of the current study was to determine whether low-income mothers increased their educational attainment over a 6-year period as their children transitioned from early childhood through elementary school. Second, the current study examined a range of individual characteristics that may help or hinder a mother’s re-entrance into education. Last, associations between increased maternal education and indicators of family socioeconomic resources were examined to determine ways that increased education among low-income mothers of young children may serve as a mechanism to reduce poverty or other poverty-related risks. Design and Sample: Data for this study come from the Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP), a cluster randomized control trial of Head Start centers and a longitudinal follow-up of children and their families. The current study included 432 participants. Of those participants, 97% were the child’s mother or female caregiver, 70% lived below the Federal Poverty Line at baseline, and 93% identified as a racial/ethnic minority (i.e., African American, black, or Hispanic). Main Outcome Measures: Maternal educational attainment was collected at 4 time-points across a 6-year period. From these data, a binary variable was created to indicate whether (1) or not (0) mothers increased their educational attainment. Maternal report of household income, unemployment status, and poverty-related risk were examined as indicators of family socioeconomic resources. Results: Thirty-nine percent of mothers increased their educational attainment over the 6-year period of study, and the majority of those mothers attained additional degrees rather than years of schooling alone. Mothers whose children attended treatment-assigned preschool classrooms at baseline were subsequently more likely to increase their educational attainment over time than were mothers of children who initially attended control-assigned classrooms in preschool. Analyses of the roles of parental characteristics in predicting gains in maternal education suggest that mothers who reported greater depressive symptomatology were less likely to increase their educational attainment. Increases in educational attainment, in turn, were positively associated with income earned in subsequent years of our longitudinal follow-up study and negatively associated with maternal unemployment and poverty-related risk when children were in 5th grade. Conclusions: Increases in parent educational attainment were impressive for our sample of low-income mothers, given their exposure to a range of poverty-related risks. Furthermore, our analyses support prior research suggesting that increases in maternal educational attainment may serve as an important mechanism to reduce families’ experience of income poverty

Cell Phone Information Seeking Explains Blood Pressure in African American Women

Although cell phone use and Internet access via cell phone is not marked by racial disparities, little is known about how cell phone use relates to blood pressure and health information seeking behaviors. The purposes of this study were to (a) describe Internet activities, cell phone use, and information seeking; (b) determine differences in blood pressure and information seeking between cell phone information seekers and nonseekers; and (c) examine cell phone information seeking as a predictor of blood pressure in African American women. Participants ( N = 147) completed a survey and had their blood pressure measured. Independent-sample t tests showed a significant difference in systolic blood pressure in cell phone information seekers and nonseekers. Linear regression revealed cell phone information seeking as an independent predictor of systolic blood pressure, despite confounders. It is possible that cell phone information seekers were using health information to make decisions about self-management of blood pressure

Review of recombinant human deoxyribonuclease (rhDNase) in the management of patients with cystic fibrosis

The most important problem in cystic fibrosis (CF) lung disease is chronic airway inflammation and infection, which starts early in life. To prevent severe lung damage, it is important to mobilize as much sputum as possible from the lung on a daily basis. RhDNase is an enzyme that breaks down DNA strands in airway secretions, hydrolyzes the DNA present in sputum/mucus of CF patients, reducing viscosity in the lungs and promoting secretion clearance. Several well performed trials have proven its efficacy in young CF patients with mild disease as well as in older patients with more advanced lung disease. Daily inhalation of this agent slows down lung function decline and decreases the frequency of respiratory exacerbations. The drug is well tolerated by most patients independent of the severity of lung disease

Replicas of Social Change: Examining Reflections of Religious Shifts in Japanese Society Through Literary Depictions of Kitsune Characters

This study examines the roles of female kitsune (fox) characters in Japanese literature in different historical eras: the Heian period (794-1185), the Edo period (1603-1868), the Meiji period in addition to the period before the end of World War II (1868-1945), and the modern day (late twentieth to early twenty-first centuries). The goal of this analysis of kitsune folk tales, legends, and stories is to reunite the ‘folk’ with their folklore - providing evidence of how the content of folk tales, legends, and other stories are shaped by their contexts and thus serve as valuable historical records of the lives and minds of the people who created them. The construction and portrayal of female kitsune characters has been especially influenced by the historical, political, and religious environments of their respective periods in Japanese history. The social status and gendered expectations placed upon women at different times in Japan had a significant effect upon the narrative functions of kitsune women. From their use as tools in teaching and proselytizing Buddhist values in the Heian period, to serving as an agent for the subversion of gender norms and covert political/social criticisms in the Edo period, to becoming living memories and holdouts of “traditional” Japanese society born of a desire to preserve the past in the face of the drastic changes of the Meiji period, and finally to their current position as pop culture icons heralded for their cute or overtly sexualized characteristics both within Japan and abroad, the kitsune woman is undoubtedly able to retain her popularity as a result of her ambivalent and adaptable nature. The kitsune is uniquely intertwined and tied up with perceptions and expressions of the feminine in Japan

The DART-Europe project: towards developing a European theses portal

This paper will report on the new European theses project DART-Europe. The purpose of this project is to align institutional and national e-theses developments across Europe with the wider open archives movement by the construction of a European portal for research theses, thus enabling a global view of European institutional research assets. This project is driven through an innovative partnership between an information provider and an international body of university libraries and open access consortia. The project’s goal is to explore the creation of a European model for the deposit, discovery, use and long-term care of research theses in an open access environment. The paper will outline the projected outcomes of DART-Europe, which is an active group of institutions in addition to a technical service. To this end, DART-Europe is engaged with disciplines and institutions that are widening the definition of research by redefining the formats of theses. For institutions and countries without a repository infrastructure, DART-Europe will enable the creation of a depository. Institutions and countries with a repository infrastructure can engage with DART-Europe to deliver their e-theses. DART-Europe acts as a technology bridge for researchers between those who have existing infrastructures and those who do not. The DART-Europe architecture assumes free at point of use access to full text theses, whether held on the DART-Europe server or by institutional repositories. This paper will provide session attendees with the current progress of this initiative, including a report on the 5 strands of the project, including: architecture; creation of a management tool kit; content acquisition; digital preservation and an investigation of business models

Logging in to Learning Analytics

According to the most recent Higher Education Editions of the Horizon Report (Johnson et al., 2013; Johnson, Adams, & Cummins, 2012; Johnson, Smith, Willis, Levine, & Haywood, 2011), learning analytics (LA) is an emerging technology that will be widely adopted within the next few years. In this article, I use the McKinsey 7S Model (Waterman, Peters, & Phillips, 1980) as a way to organize a review of the learning analytics (LA) literature, in order to help organizational leaders assess and increase an organization’s readiness for LA. More specifically, I identify the 7 areas of an organization that need to be aligned for optimal performance; and explain what suggestions and cautions the current LA literature offers in relation to each of the 7 areas