Local Government Actions to Prevent Childhood Obesity

Offers guidance on policy and programmatic actions local governments can take, with community input, to promote healthy eating and physical activity and to ensure equal opportunities for healthy living in low-income neighborhoods. Profiles best practices

Grief Reimagined: A Comparative Analysis of Vergil\u27s \u3ci\u3eAeneid\u3c/i\u3e and St. Augustine’s \u3ci\u3eConfessions\u3c/i\u3e

This essay intends to comparatively analyze Vergil’s Aeneid and Saint Augustine’s Confessions to examine the shifting perspectives of grief throughout the ancient Mediterranean as the official Roman religion transitioned from Roman Paganism to Christianity following the Edict of Milan in 313 AD. Funerary customs and traditions presented in both the Aeneid and the Confessions provide one mode of insight to explain how expressions of grief evolved over time. The other direction offered in these primary texts includes depictions of the afterlife itself. Vergil and Saint Augustine both served as heralds of their respective eras—the Augustan and Christian eras—and can therefore serve as representatives for the viewpoints within their communities. I deduce that the novel Christian eschatological beliefs, reduced Christian interest in worldly desire, and newfound Christian hope in reunification with one sole Divinity and loved ones in the afterlife proved especially influential in accounting for the shifting disposition and expression of grief throughout the ancient Mediterranean

Attitudes and Perceptions of Early Childcare Professionals in Community-Based Programs in Regard to Inclusion of Children with Disabilities

The purpose of the study was to determine why early care and education facilities are not identified as inclusive. This study compared the differences in attitude toward inclusive programming among directors, preschool teachers, and infant/toddler teachers in early care and education facilities. This study addressed two questions in regard to the attitudes and perceptions of early childhood professionals. First, what are the attitudes of early childhood professionals toward advantages and disadvantages of inclusive classrooms and how their attitudes may differ depending on staff position? Second, what are the major obstacles identified by early childhood professionals to inclusive programming and how they correlate with the child’s degree of disability? It was predicted that infant and toddler teachers would demonstrate more positive attitudes toward the advantages of inclusive classrooms than directors or preschool teachers. It was also predicted that the major obstacles to inclusive programming identified by early childhood professionals would correlate with the child’s degree of disability. The limitations foreseen were that the study collected data only during a specified time from a sample group in a specific geographical area that was selected for convenience

Arkadia in transition: exploring late Bronze Age and early Iron Age human landscape

This research explores the region of Arkadia in the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age using an interpretative and phenomenologically inspired approach. It is region associated with many myths pointing to a continuing population throughout the period, yet beset with a problematic archaeological record. This has been the result of a number of factors ranging from the nature of the landscape to the history of research. However, the ability to locate sites of the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age within the landscape, allows insight into a region we had little hope of enlightening using more conventional approaches to the archaeological record. This theoretical and methodological stance is illustrated through an exploration of different aspects of the human experience such as religion, death and burial and the everyday. The ways in which these aspects can and usually are interpreted are considered, followed by a number of case studies, which are employed to explore how human actions were embedded within and informed by the very physicality of the landscape, and the differences apparent throughout time

Building and evaluating a program for leading a foreign speaking child into English.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Boston Universit

Models Of Faith And Learning In Theatre At Colleges And Universities Affiliated With Churches Of Christ: Selected Case Studies

The Churches of Christ, a body of Christian believers descending from the nineteenth century American Restoration Movement, have a well-documented history of establishing and supporting liberal arts colleges and universities. This study of theatre programs at three of these institutions--Lipscomb University, Pepperdine University, and York College--examines the model of faith and learning operating at each school and in its respective theatre department. This study utilizes a mixed-methods approach combining a multiple case study with a self-administered Likert-scale questionnaire, illuminating the ways that the schools describe their model of faith and learning, the ways that the theatre departments at the schools interpret this model, and the ways that a cross-section of the members of these schools understands this model, along with their corresponding expectations of their school\u27s theatre program. Robert Benne\u27s definition of Christian higher education according to three components--vision, ethos, and Christian persons--provides the theoretical framework guiding this study. Accordingly, an add-on model features academic studies alongside of Christian ethos and persons, whereas an integrated model features some measurable degree of integration in the classroom between the worlds of faith and academics. Statistical evaluations of the survey data are reported according to an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Correlation Coefficients. Survey data are then compared, using Benne\u27s categories, to the case study findings. Based on results of this study, recommendations are offered to teachers and directors in theatre programs at any faith-based institution of higher learning

Nature of the relationship between individual learning styles of female police officers and their career aspirations and experiences

This research was undertaken by a serving female police officer, within a British police force. It builds upon the existing literature concerning the career aspirations and experiences of female police officers on the one hand, and learning styles theory on the other. It uses the Honey and Mumford (1992) Learning Styles Questionnaire (LSQ) widely used within police training.\ud It examines whether any relationship can be demonstrated between learning styles theory (and in particular the LSQ) and female police officer career aspirations. The methodology is qualitative, starting with creating an introductory baseline drawn from 286 qualitative questionnaires completed by new recruits during their training, (74 female). These clarified issues about learning styles with both sexes, against which the female perspective could be better understood. The main research was based on semi-structured interviews which were conducted with female officers with a range of policing experience and service, from constable to chief constable rank.\ud Officers were found to uniformly have a moderate preference for the Activist, Reflector and Theorist learning styles, with a low preference for Pragmatist. New recruits average\ud on Reflector style was found to be higher than other groups which could reflect some bias in the selection process. Learning styles were found to be not static but malleable, and not a central factor in career aspiration and decisions. During the interviews, the most popular career aspirations for women were community/family support duties, C.I.D. and firearms. There was no evidence found to indicate that females are more undecided in their career aspirations than men. Female officers rated highly the need to undertake challenging work, including the opportunity to specialize, calling into question the decrease of the availability of such roles for police officers. The findings reveal a gap in the way in which the police gather deployment data, and interviewees claimed that officers of ACPO rank were reported as interfering with the career choices of subordinates. No strong relationship was found between learning styles and career aspirations, albeit some weak relationships were found between learning style preferences and career experiences.\ud This study is a contribution to knowledge through its emphasis on the experiences of individual officers and their preferred learning styles. Findings contribute to existing\ud knowledge by developing a conceptual framework identifying the combination of attributes exhibited by successful officers

Medieval Widowhood and Textual Guidance: The Corpus Revisions of Ancrene Wisse and the de Braose Anchoresses

The Corpus revision of Ancrene Wisse addresses a wider audience than the original, as the number of anchoresses in the English West Midlands grew. The revisions suggest that this broader audience included women who entered the anchorhold as widows. Loretta, countess of Leicester, and Annora de Braose de Mortimer, sisters who had been raised in the Welsh Marches, exemplify the kind of woman who may have formed this audience: wealthy and influential women who became anchoresses upon being widowed. While neither woman can be linked to the Corpus revision, their lives provide a window into the background of widowed anchoresses and the variety of reasons why they might have preferred the anchoritic life to remarriage or to the communal life of the convent