A Comparative Study of Best Teaching Practices across Three High School Music Ensembles: Band, Chorus, and Orchestra

This study is a look inside a Long Island High School’s band, chorus, and orchestra in order to glean perspective on what teaching practices, rehearsal techniques, methods of planning, philosophies of music education, priorities within the elements of musicianship, etc. are most utilized and incorporated into their daily routines. Since there is an established and recognized level of success throughout this Department of Music, it is clear that these teachers are effectively educating their students and achieving a high quality of musicianship. This study will seek to discover the methods of how these teachers continuously succeed. Time has been spent observing each ensemble, speaking with each teacher, and delving into what they each consider to be their keys to success, greatest practices, most effective ways in which they inspire, motivate, and engage their students, and more. This study will focus on how these teachers create a cognitive awareness of music and its qualities to their students, and how the teachers build and shape their students’ knowledge, skills and attitudes in the rehearsal setting. The teachers’ methods to achieve specific components of exemplary ensemble sounds will be compared and contrasted in order to explore the many qualities of music making, both definitive through intonation and rhythm, and non-definitive through concepts like tone quality and expression. Through assessing and surveying these highly effective teachers, this research will seek to provide insight to methods of success in a real-life high school music setting

Biochemical adaptations in cardiac hypertrophy

Cardiac hypertrophy is the adaptive response of the heart to chronic overload. The metabolic adaptations that occur during hypertrophy are initially beneficial, but can ultimately deteriorate into heart failure. The mechanisms underlying this are unknown. Evidence of impaired energy reserve, which may be caused by changes in the profile of substrate use, has been implicated in the transition of compensatory hypertrophy to heart failure. The work of this thesis characterises the alterations in substrate utilisation that occur in the heart, secondary to pressure-overload induced cardiac hypertrophy, the their implications on heart function.Pressure-overload hypertrophy was induced surgically in male Sprague- Dawley rats by inter-renal ligation. 13C-NMR spectroscopy was performed on extracts from hypertrophied and control hearts perfused with 13C-labelled substrate mixtures to determine the profile of substrate utilisation. Nine weeks pressure- overload achieved a moderate hypertrophy, evidenced by a 10-15% increase in heart mass to tibia length. The hypertrophied hearts showed an increased reliance on glucose and endogenous substrate contribution to TCA cycle oxidation for the production of ATP (15.0% versus 11.0%) compared to control hearts.Prolonged fifteen weeks pressure-overload resulted in further metabolic changes including impaired long-chain fatty acid oxidation and the accumulation of long-chain acylcarnitines. Alteration in substrate utilisation preceded any change in heart function and is strong evidence to suggest that impaired substrate delivery at the level of the mitochondria in cardiac hypertrophy plays an important role in the development of heart failure and is not a secondary phenomenon. At high workloads both hypertrophied and control hearts, showed similar profiles of substrate use, with glucose being the predominant substrate utilised for TCA cycle oxidation. At high workloads, hypertrophied hearts initially exhibited significantly higher mechanical function, but was not sustained, suggesting that physiological changes were becoming detrimental. This study highlights that sequential metabolic adaptations occur during the development of hypertrophy and precede any functional abnormality, providing potential prognostic markers

The Need for Performance Standards in Preschools: Stealing Shamelessly from Comprehensive School Mental Health Literature

Young children are at-risk for developing significant mental health difficulties just as their older, school-aged peers. Preschool settings have increasingly attempted to proactively address early childhood socioemotional needs by expanding their prevention and intervention activities. A number of emerging best practices in promoting early childhood mental health have been proposed. However, there are no comprehensive performance standards for preschool mental health and limited guidance on how preschools can align themselves with best practices. This expansion in service scope parallels the development of Comprehensive School Mental Health Systems in K-12 schools. Resources and tools developed for K-12 educational settings may serve as a useful example for preschool mental health systems interested in quality comprehensive mental health care. This conceptual article will describe the prevalence of mental health difficulties in young children, review the current guidance on supporting mental health in young children, and provide support for adapting widely used K-12 school mental health performance standards to establish comprehensive standards for organizing and implementing high quality care systems in preschool settings

Swimming Against the Tide: The Relational Praxis of Social Justice in Social Work

Swimming Against the Tide: The Relational Praxis of Social Justice in Social Work Abstract This qualitative research study explores the praxis of social justice by social workers who identify as practising social justice–oriented social work in southern Ontario, Canada. The research is set against the backdrop of the evolution of social justice in social work, its practice in the current neoliberal environment, and its continued significance in the profession. The project draws on critical and liberal social justice philosophies to ask the question: “What does social justice praxis look like in the context of contemporary social work?” This is a crucial question because as social justice has moved to the foreground of social work education and professional parlance, the theorization and specifics of social justice praxis remain particular to the historic, socio-geopolitical context in which it is understood and practised. There are few studies that connect both how social workers find meaning in the term social justice and how this understanding is operationalized in their everyday work. Using a critical progressive postmodern lens, I employed a qualitative constructivist grounded theory methodology to uncover the political elements of social justice in both theory and practice Data were gathered from individual interviews with 20 experienced social workers who were recruited on the basis that social justice grounded their social work practice. The approach to this research is distinguished by an analysis that considers the context of the findings within the unique Canadian sociopolitical landscape and the evolution of professional social work in Canada, complemented by critical insights into the embodied experiences of the participants. In this study, I found that social justice is conceptualized and applied as relational. The motivation to pursue social justice in practice is developed through early experiences of adversity coupled with having relationships with mentors or role models, both being significant for foregrounding social justice. Praxis is continued through a number of intersecting intrapersonal elements that connect the personal to the professional as conscious, intentional, and purposeful practice that points to reflexivity in the actions in the everyday work and lives of social workers. At a theoretical level, the analysis teases out the specific element of social justice theories that underscore that social justice is relational, and the need for recognition before the redistribution. In this study, Recognition theory by Axel Honneth is the bridge between social justice as a theory and practice The everyday practices are interpersonal, complex, entwined, and grounded in relational approaches and skills. In contrast, social workers face hegemonic barriers and constraints that do not provide opportunities to make changes beyond the community level. These constraints also make them professionally vulnerable to loss of position and reputation through weaponizing of potential complaints to the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers. However, these social workers strategically manoeuvre around the barriers and constraints experienced in the neoliberal climate by using their professional and positional wisdom to advocate for both individual and local systemic change. The research points to the need for a clear ideological theoretical framework, much-needed professional and educational support, and training for social workers who practise social justice. Lastly, social workers, the profession, and social work education need to go beyond seeing social justice as only relevant to macro practice

Investigating speech and language impairments in delirium: a preliminary case-control study

<div><p>Introduction</p><p>Language impairment is recognized as as part of the delirium syndrome, yet there is little neuropsychological research on the nature of this dysfunction. Here we hypothesized that patients with delirium show impairments in language formation, coherence and comprehension.</p><p>Methods</p><p>This was a case-control study in 45 hospitalized patients (aged 65–97 years) with delirium, dementia without delirium, or no cognitive impairment (N = 15 per group). DSM-5 criteria were used for delirium. Speech was elicited during (1) structured conversational questioning, and (2) the "Cookie Theft" picture description task. Language comprehension was assessed through standardized verbal and written commands. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed.</p><p>Results</p><p>Delirium and dementia groups scored lower on the conversational assessment than the control group (p<0.01, moderate effect sizes (r) of 0.48 and 0.51, resp.). In the Cookie Theft task, the average length of utterances (i.e. unit of speech), indicating language productivity and fluency, distinguished patients with delirium from those with dementia (p<0.01, r = 0.50) and no cognitive impairment (p<0.01, r = 0.55). Patients with delirium performed worse on written comprehension tests compared to cognitively unimpaired patients (p<0.01, r = 0.63), but not compared to the dementia group.</p><p>Conclusions</p><p>Production of spontaneous speech, word quantity, speech content and verbal and written language comprehension are impaired in delirious patients compared to cognitively unimpaired patients. Additionally, patients with delirium produced significantly less fluent speech than those with dementia. These findings have implications for how speech and language are evaluated in delirium assessments, and also for communication with patients with delirium. A study limitation was that the delirium group included patients with co-morbid dementia, which precludes drawing conclusions about the specific language profile of delirium.</p></div