Drivers for Change: A Study of Distributed Leadership and Performance Adaptation During Policy Innovation Implementation

Scaling up innovation in the instructional core remains a vexing proposition. Such disruptive innovations require teachers to engage in performance adaptation. Schools vary in their capacity to support changes in teachers’ day-today work. By comparing distributed instructional leadership practices of “odds-beating” schools with those at “typically performing schools,” this study identified four qualities of distributed instructional leadership that drive teacher performance adaptation: collective goal setting, instructional feedback, collective guided learning, and trusting relationships. These findings reiterate the need for policy to go beyond standards and accountability mandates to focus on the right drivers of change: capacity building, and opportunities for collaboration in tandem with pedagogical improvement

The Role of District and School Leaders\u27 Trust and Communications in the Simultaneous Implementation of Innovative Policies

This mixed-method multiple case study investigated nine elementary schools. Six “odds-beating schools, which serve relatively high numbers of economically disadvantaged children, achieved higher than predicted performance on state assessments when compared with three typically performing schools. The overarching research question guiding this study was: What forces, factors, and actors account for odds-beating schools\u27 better outcomes? The trust-communication connection provided one answer. Relational trust in odds-beating schools is an intraorganizational phenomenon, and it is accompanied by interorganizational trust (reciprocal trust). These two kinds of trust are accompanied by intraschool and district office-school communication mechanisms. Trust and communications are mutually constitutive as innovations are implemented. This connection is also an implementation outcome. When today\u27s innovation implementation initiatives reinforce this trust–communication connection, it becomes an organizational resource for future innovation implementation

Quantification of gastrointestinal liquid volumes and distribution following a 240 mL dose of water in the fasted state

Previous imaging studies offered a snapshot of water distribution in fasted humans and showed that water in the small intestine is distributed in small pockets. This study aimed to quantify the volume and number of water pockets in the upper gut of fasted healthy humans following ingestion of a glass of water (240 mL, as recommended for bioavailability/bioequivalence (BA/BE) studies), using recently validated noninvasive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) methods. Twelve healthy volunteers underwent upper and lower abdominal MRI scans before drinking 240 mL (8 fluid ounces) of water. After ingesting the water, they were scanned at intervals for 2 h. The drink volume, inclusion criteria, and fasting conditions matched the international standards for BA/BE testing in healthy volunteers. The images were processed for gastric and intestinal total water volumes and for the number and volume of separate intestinal water pockets larger than 0.5 mL. The fasted stomach contained 35 ± 7 mL (mean ± SEM) of resting water. Upon drinking, the gastric fluid rose to 242 ± 9 mL. The gastric water volume declined rapidly after that with a half emptying time (T50%) of 13 ± 1 min. The mean gastric volume returned back to baseline 45 min after the drink. The fasted small bowel contained a total volume of 43 ± 14 mL of resting water. Twelve minutes after ingestion of water, small bowel water content rose to a maximum value of 94 ± 24 mL contained within 15 ± 2 pockets of 6 ± 2 mL each. At 45 min, when the glass of water had emptied completely from the stomach, total intestinal water volume was 77 ± 15 mL distributed into 16 ± 3 pockets of 5 ± 1 mL each. MRI provided unprecedented insights into the time course, number, volume, and location of water pockets in the stomach and small intestine under conditions that represent standard BA/BE studies using validated techniques. These data add to our current understanding of gastrointestinal physiology and will help improve physiological relevance of in vitro testing methods and in silico transport analyses for prediction of bioperformance of oral solid dosage forms, particularly for low solubility Biopharmaceutics Classification System (BCS) Class 2 and Class 4 compounds

White and Black Boys Fall Further Behind White Girls during the Transition to High School

Educational transitions, such as the one from middle school to high school, are difficult for all students but may be especially difficult for students from marginalized groups. During these critical periods in schooling, academic status can be reshaped and inequality between racial/ethnic groups and gender can deepen. Former PRC trainees April Sutton and Amy Langenkamp, along with PRC faculty research associate Chandra Muller and Kathryn Schiller (SUNY Albany), use nationally representative data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to investigate how the transition to high school affects the GPAs of young white, black, and Latino men and women. They show that white and black male students, especially higher-achieving black students, suffer the greatest academic losses at the high school starting gate. Notably, these young men do not recover lost academic ground the following year. Given the role that high school GPA plays in gender and racial/ethnic disparities in educational attainment, this research has significant implications for inequalities within and beyond high school.Population Research Cente

The Role of District and School Leaders\u27 Trust and Communications in the Simultaneous Implementation of Innovative Policies

This mixed-method multiple case study investigated nine elementary schools. Six “odds-beating schools, which serve relatively high numbers of economically disadvantaged children, achieved higher than predicted performance on state assessments when compared with three typically performing schools. The overarching research question guiding this study was: What forces, factors, and actors account for odds-beating schools\u27 better outcomes? The trust-communication connection provided one answer. Relational trust in odds-beating schools is an intraorganizational phenomenon, and it is accompanied by interorganizational trust (reciprocal trust). These two kinds of trust are accompanied by intraschool and district office-school communication mechanisms. Trust and communications are mutually constitutive as innovations are implemented. This connection is also an implementation outcome. When today\u27s innovation implementation initiatives reinforce this trust–communication connection, it becomes an organizational resource for future innovation implementation

Absorptive Capacity in Rural Schools: Bending Not Breaking During Disruptive Innovation Implementation

Rural schools have repeatedly been subjected to standardizing state and federal education policies that seek to minimize variance in instructional systems and increase the number of college- and career-ready graduates. The Race to the Top policy agenda combined standards-based and accountability-based reforms to meet these objectives and once again subjected rural schools to innovations from outside experts. This qualitative study uses four instrumental cases of rural schools to understand: 1) leadership strategies, and 2) mechanisms and processes of alignment, which allowed schools to maintain high levels of student performance in the face of disruptive policy innovations. The fi ndings of the cross-case analysis identify rural school and district leaders’ contingent use of adaptive strategies of buff ering, bridging, and brokering. Mechanisms and processes of shared goal setting, ongoing curriculum revision, and teacher collaboration that contribute to the development of coherence supported these strategies. Together, leadership strategies and coherence allow leaders and educators to assimilate, transform, and create new knowledge in ways that provide absorptive capacity and allow for selective implementation of disruptive innovations

A Case Study of the Neti Pot’s Rise, Americanization, and Rupture as Integrative Medicine in U.S. Media Discourse

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Health Communication on 16 Feb 2016, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2015.1047145In a period of only one decade in the United States, the neti pot shifted from obscure Ayurvedic health device to mainstream complementary and integrative medicine (CIM), touted by celebrities and sold widely in drug stores. We examine the neti pot as a case study for understanding how a foreign health practice became mainstreamed, and what that process reveals about more general discourses of health in the United States. Using discourse analysis of U.S. popular press and new media news (1999–2012) about the neti pot, we trace the development of discourses from neti’s first introduction in mainstream news, through the hype following Dr. Oz’s presentation on Oprah, to 2011 when two adults tragically died after using Naegleria fowleri amoeba-infested tap water in their neti pots. Neti pot discourses are an important site for communicative analysis because of the pot’s complexity as an intercultural artifact: Neti pots and their use are enfolded into the biomedical practice of nasal irrigation and simultaneously Orientalized as exotic/magical and suspect/dangerous. This dual positioning as normal and exotic creates inequitable access for using the neti pot as a resource for increasing cultural health capital (CHC). This article contributes to work that critically theorizes the transnationalism of CIM, as the neti pot became successfully Americanized. These results have implications for understanding global health practices’ incorporation or co-optation in new contexts, and the important role that popularly mediated health communication can play in framing what health care products and practices mean for consumers