Impact of a Free-Choice (‘Genius Time’) Inquiry Project on Student Skill-Building, Agency, and Motivation

Student investment in learning is often stronger when learning incorporates student choice, ‘real-world’ authenticity, and creativity. This action research investigated the impact of a particular tool for emphasizing these elements in learning: A free-choice, or ‘Genius Time,’ project in which middle school students in an independent all-boys school were asked to develop and carry out an individual project to investigate anything of their choosing, as part of their regular science class. This study aimed to determine how a project like this could impact student skill-building, self-efficacy, motivation, and student learning through the practice of inquiry. Through surveys, student self-assessment, student interviews, and teacher journaling, the results showed that this project was successful in building essential ‘21st Century’ skills, such as initiative, risk-taking, persistence, and resilience. In addition, students were engaged in meaningful inquiry learning because they were required to exercise and grow their own agency for learning, including their self-efficacy. Finally, this project may have facilitated a shift in participant personal motivation toward more intrinsic (rather than extrinsic) factors. These findings support a larger body of research and reporting about the effectiveness of project-based learning, and free-choice or passion projects in particular, to engage students with inquiry in meaningful ways

Dancing the Pluriverse: Indigenous Performance as Ontological Praxis

This article discusses ways that Indigenous dance is an ontological praxis that is embodied and telluric, meaning “of the earth.” It looks at how dancing bodies perform in relationship to ecosystems and entities within them, producing ontological distinctions and hierarchies that are often imbued with power. This makes dance a site of ontological struggle that potentially challenges the delusional ontological universality undergirding imperialism, genocide, and ecocide. The author explores these theoretical propositions through her participation in Oxlaval Q'anil, an emerging Ixil Maya dance project in Guatemala, and Dancing Earth, an itinerant and inter-tribal U.S.-based company founded by Rulan Tangen eleven years ago

Chlamydia Psittaci ST24: clonal strains of One Health importance dominate in Australian horse, bird and human infections

Chlamydia psittaci is traditionally regarded as a globally distributed avian pathogen that can cause zoonotic spill-over. Molecular research has identified an extended global host range and significant genetic diversity. However, Australia has reported a reduced host range (avian, horse, and human) with a dominance of clonal strains, denoted ST24. To better understand the widespread of this strain type in Australia, multilocus sequence typing (MLST) and ompA genotyping were applied on samples from a range of hosts (avian, equine, marsupial, and bovine) from Australia. MLST confirms that clonal ST24 strains dominate infections of Australian psittacine and equine hosts (82/88; 93.18%). However, this study also found novel hosts (Australian white ibis, King parrots, racing pigeon, bovine, and a wallaby) and demonstrated that strain diversity does exist in Australia. The discovery of a C. psittaci novel strain (ST306) in a novel host, the Western brush wallaby, is the first detection in a marsupial. Analysis of the results of this study applied a multidisciplinary approach regarding Chlamydia infections, equine infectious disease, ecology, and One Health. Recommendations include an update for the descriptive framework of C. psittaci disease and cell biology work to inform pathogenicity and complement molecular epidemiology