Effect of assumptions by pre-service teachers concerning family life, extracurricular involvement and socioeconomic status [abstract]

Abstract only availableThe state of Missouri wants to produce highly qualified educators in order to facilitate high performing students; because of this it is vital that pre-service teachers alter their expectation in order to maintain high expectations for all students thus lessoning the achievement gap. For over twenty years researchers have demonstrated that teacher expectations have impacted student's academic performance. Tom Good states, “Teachers' high expectations of their students contributes to students achieving at or near their potential, while students receiving low expectations will not gain as much as they could have if taught differently” (1987). As pre-service teachers (students in the teacher development program taking 2000 level courses) develop as educators at the University of Missouri the knowledge of what impacts their expectations needs to be understood in order to adjust them to best meet their student's academic needs. These teachers are being placed in America's classroom and have a direct impact on student's educational performance. Lower student performance resulting from low teacher expectations may result in low test scores for students leading to lowered funding and decreased value in the district. Within this research we will be examining what formulates pre-service teacher's expectations of their students. Our research is crucial to determining how to better educate future teachers in order to establish teacher's high expectations and higher achievement from their students. In order to determine these factors we poled 368 students in an entry level teacher development course at the University of Missouri. In the past the expectations of in-service teacher's has been studied in correlation with student achievement to determine the effect upon students' performance. Past research has shown race to be a large factor in teacher expectation. For example generally African American students are thought to perform poorly, while Asian students are expected to perform highly. We will analyze University of Missouri pre-service teacher's survey responses in order to identify patterns within their reasoning for the expectation given. Surveys included mixed race variable and factors that one might infer would impact teacher expectations, such as family life, extracurricular involvement, and socio economic status of the different scenarios represented. Surveys included a control scenario with a race, gender, and SES variable

Effects of Perceptual and Conceptual Cues in a Response Switching Task

ABSTRACT In the directed response switching (DRS) task, participants kept two conflicting responses active, choosing between responses on each trial. The primary response was word naming, whereas the secondary response was a generic verbal response, "bam." In previous versions of DRS, we used color as the sole cue for the correct response, potentially allowing people to make decisions about correct responses without fully encoding the stimuli. In the present experiment, we varied perceptual (color) and conceptual (group membership) cues to examine the effect of more complex cues on decision making. We also manipulated the ease of detecting the primary response and secondary response cues. Using response times as the dependent measure, we found a three-way interaction: Altering the nature of the cues lead to dramatic changes in cognitive control performance. Conceptual input exaggerated both the task and discrimination effects, relative to perceptual input. DESIG

False stereotypes: Future teacher's expectations for their students [abstract]

Abstract only availablePrevious research has shown that teacher have preconceived expectations for their students. This mixed-methodological study examined how pre-service teachers expected students to perform academically based on demographic characteristics and the academic year of enrollment between sophomore and senior students. Participants (n = 354) included undergraduates enrolled in a teacher education program at a large mid-western university. Data were collected in a survey format in which participants ranked one out of twelve possible student scenarios defined by the following characteristics: gender, race, and SES. All twelve student scenarios presented a child with a stable family and involved in extracurricular activities. The participants used a scale from 1 to 5 (3 being "average" and 5 being "above average") to rank what their expectations for that particular student would be in their classroom. In addition, the participants explained their rating with a rationale. We examined the rationales for the numerical ratings provided on one question in particular within the survey, "How do you expect this student to perform academically in your classroom?" Above average ratings were further explored because the majority of both seniors and sophomores rated their scenario accordingly. (Seniors: 72.5%; Sophomores: 76.8%) Qualitative responses into the following categories: race, SES, family stability, and extracurricular involvement were tallied and analyzed. Overall, extracurricular involvement and/or family stability were viewed as indicators for above average academic performance. No significant differences were found between the sophomore and senior responses. Across scenarios the most stated reasons for above average academic performance were family stability and/or extracurricular involvement. No differences were found between race, gender, or SES. These findings suggest that many pre-service teachers, regardless of class rank, hold assumptions that a "stable" family and extracurricular involvement plays a significant role in their student's academic performance. Further implications for teacher preparation programs are discussed.College of Educatio

Treatment for Vestibular Disorders: How Does Your Physical Therapist Treat Dizziness Related to Vestibular Problems?

Dizziness is very common, but it is never normal. Dizziness can make performing daily activities, work, and walking difficult. Many people get dizzy when they turn their head, which can cause problems with walking and makes people more likely to fall. Most of the time dizziness is not from a life-threatening disease. Often dizziness is because of a disorder of the vestibular (or inner ear balance) system. People can get vestibular disorders from infections in the ear, problems with the immune system, medications that harm the inner ear, and rarely from diabetes or stroke because of a lack of blood flow to the inner ear. Stress, poor sleep, migraines, overdoing some activities, and feeling sad can increase symptoms. New guidelines for the treatment of vestibular disorders were published in the April 2016 issue of the Journal of Neurologic Physical Therapy. The guideline describes which exercises are best to treat the dizziness and balance problems commonly seen with an inner ear disorder

Using Flow Feature to Extract Pulsatile Blood Flow from 4D Flow MRI Images

4D flow MRI images make it possible to measure pulsatile blood flow inside deforming vessel, which is critical in accurate blood flow visualization, simulation, and evaluation. Such data has great potential to overcome problems in existing work, which usually does not reflect the dynamic nature of elastic vessels and blood flows in cardiac cycles. However, the 4D flow MRI data is often low-resolution and with strong noise. Due to these challenges, few efforts have been successfully conducted to extract dynamic blood flow fields and deforming artery over cardiac cycles, especially for small artery like carotid. In this paper, a robust flow feature, particularly the mean flow intensity is used to segment blood flow regions inside vessels from 4D flow MRI images in whole cardiac cycle. To estimate this flow feature more accurately, adaptive weights are added to the raw velocity vectors based on the noise strength of MRI imaging. Then, based on this feature, target arteries are tracked in at different time steps in a cardiac cycle. This method is applied to the clinical 4D flow MRI data in neck area. Dynamic vessel walls and blood flows are effectively generated in a cardiac cycle in the relatively small carotid arteries. Good image segmentation results on 2D slices are presented, together with the visualization of 3D arteries and blood flows. Evaluation of the method was performed by clinical doctors and by checking flow volume rates in the vertebral and carotid arteries

Bipartite partial duals and circuits in medial graphs

It is well known that a plane graph is Eulerian if and only if its geometric dual is bipartite. We extend this result to partial duals of plane graphs. We then characterize all bipartite partial duals of a plane graph in terms of oriented circuits in its medial graph.Comment: v2: minor changes. To appear in Combinatoric

Levels and patterns of physical activity and sedentary time among superdiverse adolescents in East London: a cross-sectional study

Objectives: Little is known about the physical activity (PA) and sedentary time (ST) habits of adolescents from superdiverse communities in the UK. The objectives of this study are to examine and report the patterns of PA/ST among adolescents in East London living in superdiverse communities, to identify opportunities/barriers to PA and inform policy/practice. Design: 1,260 young people (aged 11-13) young people from 7 secondary schools in East London completed a questionnaire on PA/ST over the past 7 days as part of the Newham's Every Child a Sports Person (NECaSP) intervention. Socio-demographic and anthropometric data were obtained. Significance tests were conducted to determine differences between socio-demographic and anthropometric predictors and PA/ST. Multinomial logit regression was used to explore the effects of ethnicity, sex and BMI on PA levels. Results: Males were significantly more likely to engage in PA at least 5 times during school in the past week (U=5.07, z= -11.76, p< .05). Obese participants were less likely to report engaging in PA 5 times in the past week (U=4.11, z= -1.17, p< .05). Black Caribbean girls (U=5.08, z= -1.92, p< .05) were significantly more likely to report engaging in no activity. Multinomial logit regression analyses revealed that girls with higher BMI were less likely to engage in PA at least 4 times after school in the last week than boys (b=.11, Wald X2(1)=9.81, p< .01). Walking (36.4%), jogging/running (29.9%), and football (28%) were the most frequently reported activities. Conclusion: Engaging girls in PA during and after school is important and making sports clubs and activities available and attractive to this target group may help increase engagement in PA and reduce ST. Findings support the need for more sex-specific and culturally responsive pedagogy in schools with curricula that respects diversity and individuality and has meaning and value amongst superdiverse young people. Finally, we need to extend current work presented and provide substantial evidence of the ways young people from minority ethnic groups process and act on the public health policy and the ways they understand and enact physical activity

Vestibular Rehabilitation for Peripheral Vestibular Hypofunction: An Evidence-Based Clinical Practice Guideline: From the American Physical Therapy Association Neurology Section

Background: Uncompensated vestibular hypofunction results in postural instability, visual blurring with head movement, and subjective complaints of dizziness and/or imbalance. We sought to answer the question, \ Is vestibular exercise effective at enhancing recovery of function in people with peripheral (unilateral or bilateral) vestibular hypofunction?\ Methods: A systematic review of the literature was performed in 5 databases published after 1985 and 5 additional sources for relevant publications were searched. Article types included meta-analyses, systematic reviews, randomized controlled trials, cohort studies, case control series, and case series for human subjects, published in English. One hundred thirty-five articles were identified as relevant to this clinical practice guideline. Results/Discussion: Based on strong evidence and a preponderance of benefit over harm, clinicians should offer vestibular rehabilitation to persons with unilateral and bilateral vestibular hypofunction with impairments and functional limitations related to the vestibular deficit. Based on strong evidence and a preponderance of harm over benefit, clinicians should not include voluntary saccadic or smooth-pursuit eye movements in isolation (ie, without head movement) as specific exercises for gaze stability. Based on moderate evidence, clinicians may offer specific exercise techniques to target identified impairments or functional limitations. Based on moderate evidence and in consideration of patient preference, clinicians may provide supervised vestibular rehabilitation. Based on expert opinion extrapolated from the evidence, clinicians may prescribe a minimum of 3 times per day for the performance of gaze stability exercises as 1 component of a home exercise program. Based on expert opinion extrapolated from the evidence (range of supervised visits: 2-38 weeks, mean = 10 weeks), clinicians may consider providing adequate supervised vestibular rehabilitation sessions for the patient to understand the goals of the program and how to manage and progress themselves independently. As a general guide, persons without significant comorbidities that affect mobility and with acute or subacute unilateral vestibular hypofunction may need once a week supervised sessions for 2 to 3 weeks; persons with chronic unilateral vestibular hypofunction may need once a week sessions for 4 to 6 weeks; and persons with bilateral vestibular hypofunction may need once a week sessions for 8 to 12 weeks. In addition to supervised sessions, patients are provided a daily home exercise program. Disclaimer: These recommendations are intended as a guide for physical therapists and clinicians to optimize rehabilitation outcomes for persons with peripheral vestibular hypofunction undergoing vestibular rehabilitation