Reflections on Asset-Based Pre-College Engineering Education to Promote Equity: An Introduction to the Special Issue

In our call for proposals, we argued that engineering education is in need of a paradigm shift that takes students’ assets as epistemologically primary to our conception of what engineering, and engineering education, can and should be. The 12 papers collected in this special issue show how a focus on youth assets can realign engineering education to be more humane, more inclusive, and just as meaningful as that of a traditional model. The papers offer both theoretical argumentation and empirical evidence to support their answers to the question of how asset-based approaches can improve engineering education. An emergent theme in these papers is that relationships and community are central to what it means to attend to and leverage youth assets for learning. In this introduction, we reflect on the papers, their individual and collective findings, and we offer a call to action to the field of engineering education

Examining Experienced Teachers’ Noticing of and Responses to Students’ Engineering

Engineering design places unique demands on teachers, as students are coming up with new, unanticipated ideas to problems along often unpredictable trajectories. These demands motivate a responsive approach to teaching, in which teachers attend their students’ thinking and flexibly adapt their instructional plans and objectives. A great deal of literature has focused on responsive teaching in science and mathematics, but there has been little research or professional development on this approach in engineering. In this work, we conducted clinical video-based interviews with six elementary teachers experienced in teaching engineering to discuss what they noticed in their students’ thinking and how they responded. Using analytical methods based on the grounded theory approach, we identified four themes in what teachers noticed in their students’ engineering: how students (1) framed (or interpreted) the project, (2) engaged in the engineering design process, (3) exhibited informed designer patterns, and (4) communicated with each other in ways that supported their engineering. Although none of these teachers had a formal background in engineering, we show how these themes connect to disciplinary aspects of engineering design. We also identified challenges that teachers perceived facing when responding to students’ work. By showing teachers’ abilities and challenges for responsive teaching, these findings motivate a research and professional development agenda to support teachers in eliciting, noticing, and responding to their students’ engineering

Marshall University Music Department Presents a Music Alive Faculty & Guest Artist Collaboration Series, Violautalino Trio, Kristen Alves, violin, Wendell Dobbs, flute, Júlio Ribeiro Alves, guitar

https://mds.marshall.edu/music_perf/1278/thumbnail.jp

Marshall University Music Department Presents La ballerine et le trio, Ana Cecília Alves & Violautalino Trio

https://mds.marshall.edu/music_perf/1365/thumbnail.jp

Marshall University Music Department Presents Serendipity

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Recognition and Positional Identity in an Elementary Professional Learning Community: A Case Study

Professional learning communities are typically conceived of as spaces for reducing teacher isolation, supporting informed and committed teachers, and fostering student academic gains. Focusing on a professional learning community that supported the teaching and learning of engineering in elementary schools, we also conceived of this learning environment as a space for negotiating a teacher-of- engineering identity. Calling attention to emergent issues of power and status through a lens of positional identity, this article examines a Black female educator’s sense of self as a teacher-of-engineering and how this perception was informed by participation in the professional learning community. Findings reveal that racialized and gendered positionings informed the teacher’s perception of having limited access to being recognized in this space as a teacher-of-engineering. Implications for this work include reimagining the design of professional learning spaces in engineering education that intentionally account for teachers’ identity development, as well as supporting the identity development for teachers from historically marginalized communities

Comprehensive genomic characterization of head and neck squamous cell carcinomas

The Cancer Genome Atlas profiled 279 head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCCs) to provide a comprehensive landscape of somatic genomic alterations. Here we show that human-papillomavirus-associated tumours are dominated by helical domain mutations of the oncogene PIK3CA, novel alterations involving loss of TRAF3, and amplification of the cell cycle gene E2F1. Smoking-related HNSCCs demonstrate near universal loss-of-function TP53 mutations and CDKN2A inactivation with frequent copy number alterations including amplification of 3q26/28 and 11q13/22. A subgroup of oral cavity tumours with favourable clinical outcomes displayed infrequent copy number alterations in conjunction with activating mutations of HRAS or PIK3CA, coupled with inactivating mutations of CASP8, NOTCH1 and TP53. Other distinct subgroups contained loss-of-function alterations of the chromatin modifier NSD1, WNT pathway genes AJUBA and FAT1, and activation of oxidative stress factor NFE2L2, mainly in laryngeal tumours. Therapeutic candidate alterations were identified in most HNSCCsclose9