What Students Tell Us About School If We Ask

This article examines what school climate factors students perceive as helping them be successful in school, and what school administrators can do to aid the process. Specifically, the questions that drove this inquiry were How does sociocultural theory impact student voice and student engagement in the classroom? How does caring pedagogy impact student voice and student engagement in the classroom? What school climate factors do students perceive as helping them to be successful in school

Mill(er)ing Mandatory Minimums: What Federal Lawmakers Should Take from Miller v. Alabama

In this Article, I make the case that, while the robust proportionality principles informing Miller and similar cases are unlikely to translate into the end of mandatory minimum sentencing by way of the Eighth Amendment (at least anytime soon), embracing sentencing proportionality is the key for lawmakers who are – or should be – addressing the unsustainable growth in the federal prison population as a distinct threat to public safety. Politicians who support mandatory minimums have been immune over the years to the many reasoned arguments about how unjust those sentences are and what costs they pose to families and communities. Mandatory minimum sentences have been touted as necessary to keep the public safe, and support for these sentences has been seen as politically expedient. Even empirical arguments demonstrating that getting rid of mandatory sentencing will not harm public safety have fallen on deaf ears. We grew a criminal justice system addicted to solving social and public safety problems with incarceration and we combined that system with a long-simmering distrust of the judiciary, thereby creating mandatory minimums that dominate the sentencing field, directly and indirectly, through their sentencing guideline proxies

Combining representations in working memory: A brief report

A task combining both digit and Corsi memory tests was administered to a group of 75 children. The task is shown to share variance with standardized reading and maths attainments, even after partialling out performance on component tasks separately assessed. The emergent task property may reflect coordination skills, although several different refinements can be made to this general conclusion

The effects of virtual rehabilitation therapy on multiple sclerosis

In this review article, the effect of virtual rehabilitation therapy on multiple sclerosis, a neurodegenerative disorder, is explored. Multiple sclerosis is characterized by damaged nerves that result in incomplete signal processing between the brain and the spinal cord. The symptoms of this condition can include vision loss, decreased coordination, pain, fatigue, and deteriorating motor output. The severity of the symptoms and the rate of progression of multiple sclerosis can vary from person to person; some individuals live the majority of their lives with mild symptoms while others become bedridden and immobile. There is no cure for this disease, however implementation of virtual reality rehabilitation therapy shows promise in slowing the progression of deterioration in motor output and cognition. Through a variety of methods incorporating virtual reality, this review investigates the effects of this type of therapy on balance, manual dexterity, and mental health in patients with multiple sclerosis

Perceptions of IUPUI Faculty and Staff Regarding the Center for Service and Learning Faculty/Staff Development Programs

The purpose of this evaluation was to understand perceptions of IUPUI faculty and staff regarding the influence of the Center for Service and Learning’s (CSL) programs and resources on respondents. Specifically, the evaluation was intended to deepen CSL’s understanding of respondents’ experiences as community-engaged professionals at IUPUI. Additionally, the evaluation sought to gather input on new ideas to strengthen CSL services and programming going forward. IUPUI faculty and staff who have participated in CSL workshops, trainings, and/or requested information from CSL were emailed during the fall of 2018 and asked to participate in the Qualtrics survey. The survey was anonymous. This report shares overall findings from the survey and provides general recommendations

Bumblebee Pollination Ecology in a Restored Prairie Ecosystem: Foraging Rates, Pollen Sources, and Resource Partitioning

A major factor in evaluating the success of prairie, and other, ecosystem restoration projects is a determination of the extent to which pollinator communities have been reestablished along with the flora. I studied bumblebee pollination ecology of a prairie restoration project in central Minnesota to determine the extent to which the several bumblebee species were interacting with the reestablished native prairie flora and with each other to reestablish a viable pollinator community. This was accomplished by determining if the bumblebees are majoring, if they are majoring on the native prairie plant species conservation efforts are attempting to restore, and if resource partitioning is occurring. My study shows that individual bumblebees are specializing on one or a few of the restoration\u27s target plant species. Fifty-five of the 75 bumblebees sampled were majoring on at least one of ten native plant species. The combined result is that the bumblebee population as a whole is pollinating many of the native prairie plants. In addition, the data suggests the various species are demonstrating resource partitioning by concentrating on different assemblages of the available bloom. I have concluded that bumblebee portion of the prairie pollinator community is reestablishing itself

Walking Through the Darkness: Pastoral Care to Survivors of Traumatic Loss

The aim of this thesis is to define and expand on the experience of traumatic loss and to examine the helpful role that pastoral caregivers play in supporting survivors of traumatic loss. The thesis will discuss and analyze theological and psychological responses to traumatic loss that are both life-giving or growth-oriented and life-limiting or growth-inhibiting. Its goal is to serve as a guide for pastoral caregivers who are caring for with bereaved people walking through the darkness of traumatic loss. Part I will begin with an overview/analysis of the grief process, and parts II and III will build on the claim that traumatic loss is complex, warranting its own space for theological and psychological study. Part IV of the paper will examine theological responses to grief and traumatic loss, expanding on Pargament et al.\u27s (2006) work on spiritual orienting systems. Parts V and VI explore the role of pastoral caregivers in the grief process, delving into the ministry of presence and identifying healing practices, including an overview of the role of social support, prayer, forgiveness, meditation, and guided imagery. In conclusion, this thesis argues pastoral caregivers have a unique and impactful role in supporting survivors of traumatic loss. The goal is for this thesis to offer guidelines, both practical and theological, for pastoral caregivers and to contribute to the overall healing of those affected by traumatic loss

The use of focus cues in healthy ageing

It is known that general processing resources decline with age (Craik, 1983), yet language comprehension typically remains well preserved in normal aging (Wingfield & Grossman, 2006). It is well known that placing a concept within the scope of focus either with syntactic devices or prosody increases the salience of the text information (e.g., Birch & Rayner, 1997; Cutler & Fodor, 1979; Baker & Wagner, 1987; Cooreman & Sanford, 1996; Sturt, Sanford, Stewart & Dawydiak, 2004). Since information structuring cues are used over a lifetime, it is possible that it is preserved as a cue in older adults and that it may be used to offset other processing difficulties. However, focus may be considered a linguistic equivalent of devices for manipulating selective attention, and there is evidence that older people have difficulties with some selective attention tasks, and have difficulties with the inhibition of irrelevant stimuli. It is thus difficult to predict how older people might respond to focus cues during language processing. There is no evidence regarding this question, and the present thesis contains work aimed at an answer. This thesis presents a series of studies, including sentence continuation studies, self-paced reading studies, delayed probe recognition and eye-tracking studies, and one change detection study investigating the effect of focus and related cues on an older age group. The main findings are older adults showed in some cases larger effects of focus and subordination, in terms of reading times, change detection and probe recognition rates, than did their younger counterparts. However, older and younger participants have different processing patterns based on the proper name/role description contrast, unlike the findings from the information structuring cues. These findings are discussed in relation to existing research on how healthy adult ageing modulates language processing