Student Engagement: The Role of Teaching Within an Ecological Model of Adolescent Development

Due to the short- and long-term benefits associated with better student engagement teachers, parents, and the broader community have sought to understand how best to improve students’ engagement. Teachers and modifications to teaching, as a proximal factor to students’ engagement, have been a focus of efforts to enhance engagement. Furthermore, ecological models of adolescent development assert that factors from the individual student, family, peer group, and community are likely to be influential in the development of adolescent outcomes, including student engagement. To date the empirical engagement literature has failed to consider the potential for factors from multiple contexts to concurrently influence student engagement. Further, studies of student engagement have been limited in that they have prioritised either traditional school-based indicators of engagement (i.e., academic grades, suspension, attendance, dropout) or students’ subjective perspectives of engagement (i.e., psychological). These student perspectives are in response to the demands of school and encompass: i) a student’s overt and less readily observable behaviours; ii) liking and enthusiasm for school; and iii) efforts to understand the prescribed curriculum. The aims of the research were to: i) understand the extent to which teachers can improve students’ engagement; ii) elaborate upon non-teaching factors that influence engagement and; iii) recommend teaching modifications that can be employed to improve students’ engagement. Three studies were undertaken to address the overall research aims. The first study was a systematic review of existing research. Thirty-three cross-sectional and 13 longitudinal studies that investigated associations between teacher-student relationships and multiple indicators of engagement were synthesised. The second study, a self-report survey of 88 Year 7 students in Victoria, Australia, conceptualised teaching via self-determination theory. The students reported their perceptions of their teachers, family support, and individual factors including academic grades and mental health. Finally, a pre-existing dataset, from the International Youth Development Study was analysed. Adolescents (n = 719) were surveyed in Grade 10 and again in Grade 11 on a range of factors from the individual, school, family, peer, and community contexts. In Study 1 (Chapter 6), results indicated that when students and teachers formed a high quality caring relationship students were more likely to have better academic grades, attendance, and psychological engagement. Students were also more likely to have reduced levels of disruptive behaviours, suspensions, and dropout. Study 2 (Chapter 8) presented results of hierarchical regression analyses. After controlling for individual and family factors, better quality teaching was uniquely associated with behavioural and emotional engagement. The discussion explored the need for an integrated model of teaching to improve students’ engagement. The third and final study identified limits to teaching modifications within an ecological model of adolescent engagement. Specifically, Grade 10 teacher support was not a statistically significant predictor of Grade 11 engagement when factors from the individual, family, peer, and community were introduced to the analyses. It was proposed that prior individual educational experiences (i.e., academic grades and engagement) exerted a greater influence on high school engagement than short-term teaching modifications. Overall, teaching remains a proximal factor to students’ engagement. Students who experience high-quality caring relationships with their teachers and better classroom instruction and management were more likely to have better engagement. This was the case across both school-based and students’ subjective indicators of engagement. However, limits to teaching exist. Prior educational experiences and factors from the family, peer, and community were statistically significant predictors of engagement in the ecological models presented. Future research into engagement would benefit from longitudinal study designs that collect student-reported and school-based indicators of engagement at multiple time-points across the duration of a student’s academic career. Moreover, theoretical models of engagement should seek to elaborate upon the likely bi-directional relationships between the current predictors and student engagement outcomes. Practical recommendations included a need to recognise the limits to teaching and a need to identify how precisely a student’s engagement can be supported

Efficient algorithms and a two-stage framework for autonomous exploration of complex 3D environments using a climbing robot

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.Enabling robots to autonomously explore complex 3D environments is crucial in facilitating the automation of many real-world tasks. There exist many algorithms for exploring unknown environments with autonomous robots. Most of these are restricted to the 2D case, or to cases where the robot can be abstracted as a holonomic point robot. Algorithms that deal with the 3D case restrict the robot’s possible positions to the 2D plane, or assume that the robot can freely move through any empty space, like an idealised quadrocopter. This thesis presents a two-stage exploration framework that allows robots to consider any adherable surface in a 3D environment as a potential position from which to conduct exploration. The framework is therefore suitable to any robotic platform that must at all times maintain contact with a surface, but where this surface need not be the floor plane. A Nearest Neighbours Exploration Approach (NNEA) is developed to accomplish exploration of the environment immediately surrounding the robot when the robot is fixed to a position on a surface. In this approach, the Next Best Viewpoint is selected first by evaluating and choosing between candidate viewpoints that are within a bounded range of the robot’s current position. NNEA is demonstrated in experiments in a real bridge environment for the case of a high degrees of freedom (DOF) robot arm with a fixed base. NNEA is shown to result in faster exploration times in the case of a high-DOF robot arm in a fixed base position. Four frontier detection algorithms are proposed and investigated for determining the set of frontiers—the boundary between known and unknown space—after each map update. The resulting frontiers are used to limit which candidate positions need to be considered for exploration. The novel frontier detection algorithms are compared to other state of the art algorithms and are found to be suited for efficient frontier detection in different situations. A novel graph-based method for selecting the Next Best Base location (NBB) is presented in which the map is used to create an updated graph of possible positions for the robot base, sampled from all surfaces. Positions that are sufficiently close to the frontiers are selected as candidate positions for the robot to move to next. The information that could be gained from each reachable candidate position is estimated. A cost function determines which candidate is the best to move to next, and the robot moves to that position to take another sequence of scans. This method is demonstrated in simulations and experiments to be efficient in minimising the computation required to select and move to the NBB. The exploration framework and the developed algorithms and approach are demonstrated in simulation in an environment made up of unconnected surfaces, large enough that the robot is required to repeatedly move through the environment in order to fully explore it. The framework is shown to result in efficient exploration of the observable environment

Relationship between Chronic Disease Conditions and Colorectal Cancer Screening: Results from the 2012 National Health Interview Survey Data

Background: Uptake of screening remains crucial in the prevention of both the incidence of colorectal cancer (CRC) and its mortality.Objectives: To estimate the prevalence of CRC screening and identify chronic conditions that predict CRC screening uptake among US adults using the 2012 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) data.Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional analysis of the 2012 NHIS data. Chronic conditions examined were hypertension, cancer history, arthritis, ulcer, and high cholesterol level. A total of 21,511 participants were included in the analysis. Weighted univariate and multiple logistic regression analyses in SAS ver. 9.2 were used to estimate the odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs).Results: The overall prevalence of CRC screening was 19%. The prevalence of CRC screening in adults with cancer history, hypertension, ulcer, high cholesterol, and arthritis was significantly higher than those without the chronic conditions (26% vs.18%, 23% vs.16%, 25% vs.18%, 23% vs. 16%, and 23% vs. 17%, respectively). After adjusting for potential factors, hypertension (OR=1.18, 95%CI=1.08-1.30), ulcer (OR=1.28, 95%CI=1.10-1.48), high cholesterol (OR=1.25, 95%CI=1.14-1.39), and arthritis (OR=1.24, 95%CI=1.12-1.37) were all positively associated with CRC screening (p0.05). Females were less likely to screen for CRC than to males (OR=0.72; 95% CI=0.65-0.80). Compared to young adults (18-44 years), screening was significantly higher in middle-aged (45-64 years) and elder adults (65+) (OR=2.60, 95%CI=2.11-3.21 and OR=2.67, 95%CI=2.13-3.33, respectively). African Americans were more likely to screen for CRC compared to their white counterparts (OR=1.61, 95% CI=1.44-1.81).  Conclusions: We have found significant associations between chronic conditions and CRC screening uptake. We also found higher uptake of CRC screen in African Americans than Whites, in contrast to earlier findings

Detection of interstellar oxidaniumyl: abundant H2O+ towards the star-forming regions DR21, Sgr B2, and NGC6334

We identify a prominent absorption feature at 1115 GHz, detected in first HIFI spectra towards high-mass star-forming regions, and interpret its astrophysical origin. The characteristic hyperfine pattern of the H2O+ ground-state rotational transition, and the lack of other known low-energy transitions in this frequency range, identifies the feature as H2O+ absorption against the dust continuum background and allows us to derive the velocity profile of the absorbing gas. By comparing this velocity profile with velocity profiles of other tracers in the DR21 star-forming region, we constrain the frequency of the transition and the conditions for its formation. In DR21, the velocity distribution of H2O+ matches that of the [CII] line at 158\mu\m and of OH cm-wave absorption, both stemming from the hot and dense clump surfaces facing the HII-region and dynamically affected by the blister outflow. Diffuse foreground gas dominates the absorption towards Sgr B2. The integrated intensity of the absorption line allows us to derive lower limits to the H2O+ column density of 7.2e12 cm^-2 in NGC 6334, 2.3e13 cm^-2 in DR21, and 1.1e15 cm^-2 in Sgr B2.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&

Detection of interstellar oxidaniumyl: Abundant H2O+ towards the star-forming regions DR21, Sgr B2, and NGC6334

Aims. We identify a prominent absorption feature at 1115 GHz, detected in first HIFI spectra towards high-mass star-forming regions, and interpret its astrophysical origin. Methods. The characteristic hyperfine pattern of the H2O+ ground-state rotational transition, and the lack of other known low-energy transitions in this frequency range, identifies the feature as H2O+ absorption against the dust continuum background and allows us to derive the velocity profile of the absorbing gas. By comparing this velocity profile with velocity profiles of other tracers in the DR21 star-forming region, we constrain the frequency of the transition and the conditions for its formation. Results. In DR21, the velocity distribution of H2O+ matches that of the [Cii] line at 158 μm and of OH cm-wave absorption, both stemming from the hot and dense clump surfaces facing the Hii-region and dynamically affected by the blister outflow. Diffuse foreground gas dominates the absorption towards Sgr B2. The integrated intensity of the absorption line allows us to derive lower limits to the H2O+ column density of 7.2 × 1012 cm−2 in NGC 6334, 2.3 × 1013 cm−2 in DR21, and 1.1 × 1015 cm−2 in Sgr B2

Case Reports1. A Late Presentation of Loeys-Dietz Syndrome: Beware of TGFβ Receptor Mutations in Benign Joint Hypermobility

Background: Thoracic aortic aneurysms (TAA) and dissections are not uncommon causes of sudden death in young adults. Loeys-Dietz syndrome (LDS) is a rare, recently described, autosomal dominant, connective tissue disease characterized by aggressive arterial aneurysms, resulting from mutations in the transforming growth factor beta (TGFβ) receptor genes TGFBR1 and TGFBR2. Mean age at death is 26.1 years, most often due to aortic dissection. We report an unusually late presentation of LDS, diagnosed following elective surgery in a female with a long history of joint hypermobility. Methods: A 51-year-old Caucasian lady complained of chest pain and headache following a dural leak from spinal anaesthesia for an elective ankle arthroscopy. CT scan and echocardiography demonstrated a dilated aortic root and significant aortic regurgitation. MRA demonstrated aortic tortuosity, an infrarenal aortic aneurysm and aneurysms in the left renal and right internal mammary arteries. She underwent aortic root repair and aortic valve replacement. She had a background of long-standing joint pains secondary to hypermobility, easy bruising, unusual fracture susceptibility and mild bronchiectasis. She had one healthy child age 32, after which she suffered a uterine prolapse. Examination revealed mild Marfanoid features. Uvula, skin and ophthalmological examination was normal. Results: Fibrillin-1 testing for Marfan syndrome (MFS) was negative. Detection of a c.1270G > C (p.Gly424Arg) TGFBR2 mutation confirmed the diagnosis of LDS. Losartan was started for vascular protection. Conclusions: LDS is a severe inherited vasculopathy that usually presents in childhood. It is characterized by aortic root dilatation and ascending aneurysms. There is a higher risk of aortic dissection compared with MFS. Clinical features overlap with MFS and Ehlers Danlos syndrome Type IV, but differentiating dysmorphogenic features include ocular hypertelorism, bifid uvula and cleft palate. Echocardiography and MRA or CT scanning from head to pelvis is recommended to establish the extent of vascular involvement. Management involves early surgical intervention, including early valve-sparing aortic root replacement, genetic counselling and close monitoring in pregnancy. Despite being caused by loss of function mutations in either TGFβ receptor, paradoxical activation of TGFβ signalling is seen, suggesting that TGFβ antagonism may confer disease modifying effects similar to those observed in MFS. TGFβ antagonism can be achieved with angiotensin antagonists, such as Losartan, which is able to delay aortic aneurysm development in preclinical models and in patients with MFS. Our case emphasizes the importance of timely recognition of vasculopathy syndromes in patients with hypermobility and the need for early surgical intervention. It also highlights their heterogeneity and the potential for late presentation. Disclosures: The authors have declared no conflicts of interes

Longitudinal and contextual associations between teacher-student relationships and student engagement: A systematic review

This systematic review examined multiple indicators of adolescent students’ engagement in school, and the indicators’ associations with teacher–student relationships (TSRs). Seven psychology, education, and social sciences databases were systematically searched. From this search, 46 published studies (13 longitudinal) were included for detailed analysis. Cross-sectional studies showed better quality TSRs were associated with enhanced engagement in school. These associations with TSRs were demonstrated among multiple indicators of student engagement (i.e., psychological engagement, academic grades, school attendance, disruptive behaviors, suspension, and dropout). Similar associations were found in longitudinal studies. Longitudinal and cross-sectional associations remained when covariates from the individual, family, school, and teacher contexts known to influence student engagement were controlled for. TSRs were shown to have an important but not exclusive role in their association with a comprehensive range of indicators of student engagement