Attending to Small Talk in the Classroom: An Issue of Answerability/ Responsibility

Education, as a field, is inherently political, ideological, and contextual (Freire, 1970). As a result, there are no easy answers to address the myriad of highly contestable educational issues that arise as part of the daily classroom discourse. Educators can find themselves at a los for words when it comes to providing clear cut answers given the number of highly polarizing stances, comments, and opinions that elicit strong student and teacher responses. Yet, in the context of the classroom space, the teacher holds a lot of power, which must be coupled with an ethical responsiveness to student engagement, participation, and development of small talk in an education course as an approach to co-constructing a dialogic classroom community in which everyone has a responsibility to answerability

Building Resilient Higher Education Communities: Lessons Learned from Pandemic Teaching

The COVID-19 pandemic has left many educators grappling with uncertainties about the future of higher education while feeling exhausted from the stress and pressure to deliver quality education in unprecedented ways. While learning to incorporate new technology into remote, hybrid, and flipped classrooms, educators also find themselves responding to the psychosocial needs of students more than ever before. Yet the lack of established promising practices coupled with limited training and support on how to support students’ emotional well-being creates confusion and self-doubt. This conceptual article explores teacher experiences of teaching during a pandemic, missed opportunities, and highlights the need to develop resilience in educators as the next phase of teaching unfolds. Recognizing the shortfalls of traditional definitions of resilience when applied to higher education, the best path forward for building resilient communities in higher education. Resilient communities include an emphasis on well-being at all levels, normalizing stress responses, creating spaces for members to co-create discourse, planning input into future teaching strategies, while providing resources around developing pedagogy and support to build confidence in the face of disruption. The next phase of teaching requires that we move beyond a focus on being content experts and develop collaborative learning environments for the betterment of society

At Risk Means a Minority Kid: Deconstructing Deficit Discourses in the Study of Risk in Education and Human Services

Unexamined use of ubiquitous terms such as “at risk” in education and human service courses can lead to reifying raced, classed, and gendered deficit perspectives of youth and youth work. This paper examines the social construction of the term “at risk,” following students in four education and human services undergraduate and graduate courses and the work of two counselor and teacher educators as they engaged their students in the process of deconstructing and interrogating this term. Findings reveal that students enter the classroom with raced and classed assumptions of who is at risk. Students demonstrate a deficit orientation that contextualizes risk at the individual level, with students’ definitions of “at risk” often not including white youth engaged in risk behaviors. By engaging in explicitly taught critical inquiry and analysis of the discourses of risk, students began to voice more critical views of the term “at risk,” understand the socially constructed nature of the concept, and adopt a more systemic perspective of the social and political implications for educational and human service practice

Learning in Circles: The Power of a Humanizing Dialogic Practice

There is an increasing sense of urgency to reconnect to the basic notion of a humanizing dialogic practice. A practice that prioritizes lived experiences and recognizes students and teacher as active, knowledgeable and insightful participants of the school community. Given the emphasis placed on test scores, assessments and other accountability measures, students and teacher voices are often omitted from the national dialogue on what is working and what needs to change in order to foster caring schools and responsive classrooms. Yet their voices are precisely the ones we need to hear from as any kind of educational reform efforts will directly impact them. Drawing on critical pedagogical theories, this article conceptually explores the power of a humanizing dialogic practice grounded on circle practice. Circle practice is a simple structured process of communication that helps participants re-connect with a joyous appreciation of themselves and others while making meaningful connections to both context and content

StudyCircle: Promoting a Restorative Student Community

This essay presents a model of teaching and learning conceptualized as the StudyCircle Model of Restorative Communication. It was co-developed among second year communication students at the University of Sassari (Italy) in 2014-2015 with the purpose of facilitating active learning, promoting a culture of peace and well-being/life skills among students and faculty, and creating robust mechanisms for integrating marginalized students to the university community; thus potentially preventing school detachment among vulnerable student populations. Drawing on Peace Circles as a holistic methodology for promoting a restorative student community, this article presents the constructivist theoretical framework underpinning the StudyCircle Model, describes the paradigm in practice and discusses student outcomes which include active learning, conflict transformation and community building

StudyCircle: Promoting a Restorative Student Community

This essay presents a model of teaching and learning conceptualized as the StudyCircle Model of Restorative Communication. It was co-developed among second year communication students at the University of Sassari (Italy) in 2014-2015 with the purpose of facilitating active learning, promoting a culture of peace and well-being/life skills among students and faculty, and creating robust mechanisms for integrating marginalized students to the university community; thus potentially preventing school detachment among vulnerable student populations. Drawing on Peace Circles as a holistic methodology for promoting a restorative student community, this article presents the constructivist theoretical framework underpinning the StudyCircle Model, describes the paradigm in practice and discusses student outcomes which include active learning, conflict transformation and community building

Modeling and Validation of a Navy A6-Intruder Actively Controlled Landing Gear System

Concepts for long-range air travel are characterized by airframe designs with long, slender, relatively flexible fuselages. One aspect often overlooked is ground-induced vibration of these aircraft. This paper presents an analytical and experimental study of reducing ground-induced aircraft vibration loads by using actively controlled landing gear. A facility has been developed to test various active landing gear control concepts and their performance, The facility uses a Navy A6 Intruder landing gear fitted with an auxiliary hydraulic supply electronically controlled by servo valves. An analytical model of the gear is presented, including modifications to actuate the gear externally, and test data are used to validate the model. The control design is described and closed-loop test and analysis comparisons are presented

ENERGY SECURITY IN SINGAPORE

This thesis examines Singapore's current energy policy and addresses how it is helping the country achieve greater energy security. Using a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis approach, the three energy sub-sectors of hydrocarbons, nuclear energy, and renewables are evaluated to determine how Singapore’s core policy complements its energy security ambitions. The thesis concludes that Singapore need not possess a large endowment of domestic energy resources to enhance its energy security, as this can be achieved through partnership with international players, a whole-of-government approach, technical innovation, and perseverance in bridging the energy gap. With regard to the increasingly competitive international energy environment, Singapore need not take drastic measures to modify its current energy framework. Despite its lack of indigenous natural resources, Singapore will survive in a world of heightened energy demands by focusing on managing its foreign relations, because the future of energy security depends on positive ties between countries that participate in the global energy system.Lieutenant, United States NavyApproved for public release. distribution is unlimite