Understanding Diverse Bilingual Learners: The Need for a Transdisciplinary Lens

The chapter synthesizes findings from diverse disciplinary perspectives to make the case that we need a new lens to better serve the diversity of bilingual learners. Drawing upon theories and findings from studies by educators, child developmentalists, and neuroscientists, but moving beyond any one disciplinary perspective, the authors aim to create a unity of new knowledge developed of theories from across disciplines. This approach is exactly what is needed to address the complexity of factors surrounding bilingual learners. Taking a transdisciplinary approach will allow us to move closer toward an understanding of the many factors affecting bilingual children and families, and this new knowledge can be applied to promote their educational and lifelong success

Towards a Model-Based Meal Detector for Type I Diabetics

Blood glucose management systems are an important class of Medical Cyber-Physical Systems that provide vital everyday decision support service to diabetics. An artificial pancreas, which integrates a continuous glucose monitor, a wearable insulin pump, and control algorithms running on embedded computing devices, can significantly improve the quality of life for millions of Type 1 diabetics. A primary problem in the development of an artificial pancreas is the accurate detection and estimation of meal carbohydrates, which cause significant glucose system disturbances. Meal carbohydrate detection is challenging since post-meal glucose responses greatly depend on patient-specific physiology and meal composition. In this paper, we develop a novel meal-time detector that leverages a linearized physiological model to realize a (nearly) constant false alarm rate (CFAR) performance despite unknown model parameters and uncertain meal inputs. Insilico evaluations using 10, 000 virtual subjects on an FDA-accepted maximal physiological model illustrate that the proposed CFAR meal detector significantly outperforms a current state-of-the-art meal detector that utilizes a voting scheme based on rate-of-change (RoC) measures. The proposed detector achieves 99.6% correct detection rate while averaging one false alarm every 24 days (a 1.4% false alarm rate), which represents an 84% reduction in false alarms and a 95% reduction in missed alarms when compared to the RoC approach

The Effects of Teaching Undergraduate Freshmen Biology Courses in Spanish and English

This study examines the attitudes and experiences of bilingual learners across two instructional types, identifying how the language of instruction affects the context of learning, and how the experience of the learners differs. Participants included 269 predominantly Hispanic undergraduate students in a general biology course attending a Hispanic Serving Institution in a bilingual community along the US-Mexico border. A bilingual faculty member, who recognizes the sociocultural and contextual factors that affect student learning and adopts a teaching philosophy founded in Culturally Responsive Practices (CRP) and valuing students’ Funds of Knowledge taught the class. This study utilized a mixed method design including analyses of quantitative student learning outcomesa and qualitative data on students’ experiences in educational contexts. While all learners were enrolled in sections of the course in which the instructor used CRP, only half of the learners received instruction bilingually in Spanish and English, allowing a comparison of the effects of bilingual instruction. Analyses of student experiences and knowledge gained revealed significantly greater learning in the bilingual courses, compared to English monolingual sections taught by the same faculty member. Results suggest that the use of bilingual instructional approaches can lead to positive outcomes for bilingual undergraduate students. These findings can be used by educators and policy makers alike, with interest in promoting the academic and sociocultural development of bilingual undergraduate students

Desiring Dual Language Bilingual Education: One Community’s Perspectives on Past and Future Directions for Bilingual Learners

Perceptions and beliefs about past, present, and future bilingual educational programs were gathered from key members of a bilingual community, including teachers, parents, and educational administrators. Participants’ responses were analyzed and three overarching themes emerged. Current perceptions of bilingual education programs are strongly influenced by: (a) sociohistorical and political factors, (b) the effectiveness of instructional techniques; and (c) beliefs about bilingualism in general. Implications of these results are described with a focus on how they can inform policies and practices for bilingual learners

Improving STEM Education in Research: Preliminary Report on the Development of a Computer-Assisted Student-Mentor Research Community

Research education in STEM disciplines currently suffers from 1) The inability to feasibly collect highly detailed data on both the student’s and mentor’s activities; 2) The lack of tools to assist students and mentors in organizing and managing their research activities and environments; and 3) The inability to correlate a student’s assessment results with their actual research activities. Together these three problems act to impede both the improvement and educational quality of student research experiences. We propose a computer-assisted student-mentor research community as a solution to these problems. Within this community setting, students and their mentors are provided tools to make their work easier, much like a word processor makes writing a letter easier. Through their use of these tools, details of student-mentor activities are automatically recorded in a relational database, without burdening users with the responsibility of archiving data. Equally important, student assessments of outcome can be directly related to student activity, allowing educators to identify practices resulting in successful research experiences. Community tools also facilitate the use of labor-intensive teaching laboratories involving real inquiry-based research. The community structure has the added benefit of allowing students to see, communicate and interact more freely with other students and their projects, thus enriching the student’s research experience. We provide herein a preliminary report on the development and testing of a prototype, student-mentor research community, and present its tools, an assessment of student interest in participating in the community, and discuss its further development into a nationally-available student-mentor research community

The Role of Language in Anatomy and Physiology Instruction

Research indicates that student learning of science, student attitudes toward science, and their motivation to learn science and pursue science-related careers is related to classroom instruction. This study examined anatomy and physiology (A&P) classes in a south Texas high school where 97 percent of students are Hispanic bilingual learners. Classes were assigned to control or treatment groups, with the treatment group receiving instruction designed to help students develop a deeper understanding of anatomy vocabulary related to brain structures by making connections to these words in everyday life as well as to their understanding of Spanish. Main effects between group and test scores were significant, with the control group reporting higher test scores than the treatment group. We attribute this finding to a bleed-over of the treatment group instructional design to the control group. In addition, significant differences in mean and median scores were observed with respect to intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy. The statistically significant increases in learning for both groups suggests the activity-, problem-, and project-based (APB) curriculum has the potential to be an effective type of instruction, especially for bilingual learners

Characterizing Glycemic Control and Sleep in Adults with Long-Standing Type 1 Diabetes and Hypoglycemia Unawareness Initiating Hybrid Closed Loop Insulin Delivery

Nocturnal hypoglycemia is life threatening for individuals with type 1 diabetes (T1D) due to loss of hypoglycemia symptom recognition (hypoglycemia unawareness) and impaired glucose counter regulation. These individuals also show disturbed sleep, which may result from glycemic dysregulation. Whether use of a hybrid closed loop (HCL) insulin delivery system with integrated continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) designed for improving glycemic control, relates to better sleep across time in this population remains unknown. The purpose of this study was to describe long-term changes in glycemic control and objective sleep after initiating hybrid closed loop (HCL) insulin delivery in adults with type 1 diabetes and hypoglycemia unawareness. To accomplish this, six adults (median age = 58 y) participated in an 18-month ongoing trial assessing HCL effectiveness. Glycemic control and sleep were measured using continuous glucose monitoring and wrist accelerometers every 3 months. Paired sample t-tests and Cohen’s d effect sizes modeled glycemic and sleep changes and the magnitude of these changes from baseline to 9 months. Reduced hypoglycemia (d = 0:47‐0:79), reduced basal insulin requirements (d = 0:48), and a smaller glucose coefficient of variation (d = 0:47) occurred with medium-large effect sizes from baseline to 9 months. Hypoglycemia awareness improved from baseline to 6 months with medium-large effect sizes (Clarke score (d = 0:60), lability index (d = 0:50), HYPO score (d = 1:06)). Shorter sleep onset latency (d = 1:53; p \u3c 0:01), shorter sleep duration (d = 0:79), fewer total activity counts (d = 1:32), shorter average awakening length (d = 0:46), and delays in sleep onset (d = 1:06) and sleep midpoint (d = 0:72) occurred with medium-large effect sizes from baseline to 9 months. HCL led to clinically significant reductions in hypoglycemia and improved hypoglycemia awareness. Sleep showed a delayed onset, reduced awakening length and onset latency, and maintenance of high sleep efficiency after initiating HCL. Our findings add to the limited evidence on the relationships between diabetes therapeutic technologies and sleep health. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT03215914)

Disconnected submarine lobes as a record of stepped slope evolution over multiple sea-level cycles

The effects of abrupt changes in slope angle and orientation on turbidity current behavior have been investigated in numerous physical and numerical experiments and examined in outcrop, subsurface, and modern systems. However, the long-term impact of subtle and evolving seabed topography on the stratigraphic architecture of deep-water systems requires fine-scale observations and extensive 3-D constraints. This study focuses on the Permian Laingsburg and Fort Brown formations, where multiple large sand-rich systems (Units A–F) have been mapped from entrenched slope valleys, through channel-levee systems, to basin-floor lobe complexes over a 2500 km2 area. Here, we investigate three thinner (typically <5 m in thickness) and less extensive sand-rich packages, Units A/B, B/C, and D/E, between the large-scale systems. Typically, these sand-rich units are sharp-based and topped, and contain scours and mudstone clast conglomerates that indicate deposition from high-energy turbidity currents. The mapped thickness and facies distribution suggest a lobate form. These distinctive units were deposited in similar spatial positions within the basin-fill and suggest similar accommodation patterns on the slope and basin floor prior to the larger systems (B, C, and E). Stratigraphically, these thin units represent the first sand deposition following ­major periods of shut-down in sediment supply, and are interpreted as marking a partial re-establishment of sand delivery pathways creating “disconnected lobes” that are fed mainly by flows sourced from failures on the shelf and upper slope rather than major feeder channel-levee systems. Thickness and facies patterns throughout the deep-water stratigraphy suggest seabed topography was present early in the basin formation and maintained persistently in a similar area to ultimately form a stepped slope profile. The stepped slope profile evolved through three key stages of development: Phase 1, where sediment supply exceeds deformation rate (likely caused by differential subsidence); Phase 2, where sediment supply is on average equal to deformation rate; and Phase 3, where deformation rate outpaces sediment supply. This study demonstrates that smaller systems are a sensitive record of evolving seabed topography and they can consequently be used to recreate more accurate paleotopographic profiles