Self-Concept in Children and Adolescents as A Lever for Change in Academic Success for Under-Served Youth

Children and adolescents in under-resourced urban communities simultaneously experience higher rates of major life stressors, including mental health problems, and less access to the services needed to address these concerns. The combination of high need and few resources makes identifying broadly effective, resource-minimal interventions a critical goal. Amongst potential targets for intervention, academic success, particularly graduating from high school, predicts positive life outcomes across a wide range of health factors. To be effective in supporting academic success in under-served communities, an intervention must be universally applicable, inexpensive, and easy to deliver with fidelity. The current study examined the promise of self-concept as a potential lever for change in academic success for underserved youth. Beginning with an examination of the proposed theoretical model, which suggests that changes in non-academic self-concept in children and teens can lead to improved academic outcomes by improving academic self-concept and reducing mental health symptoms, the study then reports the findings of a randomized controlled trial testing a self-guided journal writing intervention targeting non-academic self-concept for students in a diverse, under-resourced urban high school. vii The intervention was delivered as a classroom assignment, and 89 9th grade students consented to provide academic data (75 also agreed to provide self-report data) and were randomized to the intervention or an active control condition. Findings did not indicate a significant effect of the intervention on student GPA at the end of the academic year; however, evidence for the validity of the theoretical model emerged. Thus, the current study offers implications for future research and intervention design targeting under served adolescents in urban high schools

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

The Science Performance of JWST as Characterized in Commissioning

This paper characterizes the actual science performance of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), as determined from the six month commissioning period. We summarize the performance of the spacecraft, telescope, science instruments, and ground system, with an emphasis on differences from pre-launch expectations. Commissioning has made clear that JWST is fully capable of achieving the discoveries for which it was built. Moreover, almost across the board, the science performance of JWST is better than expected; in most cases, JWST will go deeper faster than expected. The telescope and instrument suite have demonstrated the sensitivity, stability, image quality, and spectral range that are necessary to transform our understanding of the cosmos through observations spanning from near-earth asteroids to the most distant galaxies.Comment: 5th version as accepted to PASP; 31 pages, 18 figures; https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1538-3873/acb29

The Impact of Three Preschool Intervention Programs Upon Selected Personality Variables

134 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1971.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least 4 m. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the 6.5 m James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 yr, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit

The Science Performance of JWST as Characterized in Commissioning

This paper characterizes the actual science performance of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), as determined from the six month commissioning period. We summarize the performance of the spacecraft, telescope, science instruments, and ground system, with an emphasis on differences from pre-launch expectations. Commissioning has made clear that JWST is fully capable of achieving the discoveries for which it was built. Moreover, almost across the board, the science performance of JWST is better than expected; in most cases, JWST will go deeper faster than expected. The telescope and instrument suite have demonstrated the sensitivity, stability, image quality, and spectral range that are necessary to transform our understanding of the cosmos through observations spanning from near-earth asteroids to the most distant galaxies