Educational Leaders’ Role in Sustaining Achievement in Successful, High- Poverty Title I Elementary Schools: A Case Study on Practices and Actions Leaders Take

An education system where every student is successful has been a primary goal for the United States. Increasing student achievement for student populations identified as at risk for not meeting educational goals is imperative for students, school leaders and educators, policymakers, businesses, and taxpayers across the nation. The purpose of this qualitative, multiple-case study was to explore and describe practices and actions used by educational leaders in two successful high-poverty Title I schools who influenced sustained achievement. Three themes were identified in each school through thematic analysis of interviews, observations, and documents. For one school, the three themes were (a) a high-quality team, (b) practices to maximize learning, and (c) a caring culture. For the second school, the three themes were (a) systems for learning, (b) functioning as a team, and (c) a student-focused staff. The findings indicated that leaders utilized systems to influence sustained achievement that was corroborated in educational leadership literature. This study extended research on Title I schools by specifically looking at leader practices and actions in high-poverty public elementary schools that sustained achievement beyond two consecutive years in Colorado. The results of this study may provide educational leaders and policymakers with insights on leaders’ use of systems: instructional leadership, a caring culture focused on students, and increasing student learning

Creeping From the Woodwork...

My written thesis focuses on the collision and orchestration of three main subjects and other related subheadings. These three subjects are Remix Theory, Chaos Theory, and Narrative Theory. My interest in Remix Theory revolves around appropriation in the internet era, and my view of the artist as filter rather than genius. I have avoided stylistic branding in favor of creative play, and while I see threads of similarity throughout my work, I try not to force consistency. The similarities weaving throughout my bodies of work are not linear and work much like wormholes connecting alternate universes.&nbsp; While the collision of multiple subjects/themes may initially sound disjunctive, in terms of my visual process and output it makes sense. This idea of finding order in the seemingly disordered is linked to my layman interest in Chaos Theory. This field of science and mathematics arches over a wide area and has numerous branches that are of interest to me including Systems Theory and Complexity Theory. The aspects of my art that this theory supports and inspires are nonlinearity, interconnectedness, and self generated feedback in the making process that contributes to a hermetic quality in my art. The way I bury information and purposely hide elements lends itself to this type of feedback, and while these early decisions seem small they may have a great impact on the outcome of the whole project. Although it may seem problematic to hide information if art operates on a communicative level, this activity functions as a generative process to tease out narrative implications. This activity inverts our expectation in the information age. Even as I include autobiographical elements, I am less concerned that the viewer gets an understanding of "me" from these works as they encounter relatable residues and sticky substances. These elements carry with them emotive energies that are more important than the origins of specific stories, and they can become immersed in a series of complex relationships. While I desire my art to carry emotive qualities, I am not concerned with specific emotional elicitations, as often our emotional responses are complex series of tangled emotions. The mixture is rarely clear or reproducible from one person to the next. Narrative is potent as a mode of knowing and understanding the world, as well as a way to convey that world to others. I do not simply equate narrative with story: for me narrative must include discourse. In a studio visit, Clive Murphy stated that "an attitude" comes across in my work, and that is what is most successful. This was important to hear considering my thoughts on the artist as filter. If the artist is to filter, then that filter must be unique in some way and that filter must be used to project new meanings into the world. The ability for narrative to construct reality, and advance reality is one of its most important qualities. While I have an appreciation for a wide range of art, the artists I tend to gravitate toward in relation to my own style are ones who do not necessarily exist neatly within a singular contextual category. Some of these artists are Ivan Albright, H.C. Westerman, Ed Paschke, William T. Wiley, Robert Crumb, Peter Saul, Trenton Doyle Hancock, and Frank Magnotta. For my thesis project I am thinking more spatially, and find comparison in the work of Ed and Nancy Kienholz, Jason Rhoades, and David Altmejd, and more currently Sarah Sze, Justin Cooper, and John Neff. Other interests that surface throughout this paper include ambiguity, the grotesque, modification, folk and outsider aesthetics, the internet (not necessarily as a medium), open-endedness, Avant-pop sensibilities, and multiplicity: the collision of these subjects helps to explain my interest in creating what I call "subnarrative- paths". One could think of this concept as the creation of interconnected narratives that the viewer can contemplate and interact with. This can provide insight to other inspirational or motivating aspects in my creative process. &nbsp;</p

Comparison of Measured Leakage Current Distributions with Calculated Damage Energy Distributions in HgCdTe

This paper presents a combined Monte Carlo and analytic approach to the calculation of the pixel-to-pixel distribution of proton-induced damage in a HgCdTe sensor array and compares the results to measured dark current distributions after damage by 63 MeV protons. The moments of the Coulombic, nuclear elastic and nuclear inelastic damage distribution were extracted from Monte Carlo simulations and combined to form a damage distribution using the analytic techniques first described in [I]. The calculations show that the high energy recoils from the nuclear inelastic reactions (calculated using the Monte Car10 code MCNPX [2]) produce a pronounced skewing of the damage energy distribution. The nuclear elastic component (also calculated using the MCNPX) has a negligible effect on the shape of the damage distribution. The Coulombic contribution was calculated using MRED [3,4], a Geant4 [4,5] application. The comparison with the dark current distribution strongly suggests that mechanisms which are not linearly correlated with nonionizing damage produced according to collision kinematics are responsible for the observed dark current increases. This has important implications for the process of predicting the on-orbit dark current response of the HgCdTe sensor array

Evidence for mate selection in captive-breeding rockfishes (genus Sebastes): inference from parentage analysis and the major histocompatibility complex (MHC)

Rockfish species of the genus Sebastes are notable for being numerous and diverse. Rockfishes are unusual among fish because they fertilize their eggs internally and release live, swimming larvae. They undergo complex courting behaviors, which may allow females to be selective about their mates. The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) has been implicated as having an important role in mate selection in other fishes, especially in sticklebacks and salmonids. Research has suggested that females choose mates that optimize the MHC genotypes of their offspring. Previous research on rockfishes indicates that multiple functional MHC sequences may be found in each species, and that multiple mating is common in the genus, possibly as a bet-hedging strategy against uncertain or incomplete mate-selection information. In this project, we characterized the MHC genotypes of copper and quillback rockfish parents, assessed parentage of fourteen larval broods, and assessed the MHC genotypes of the parents to determine if MHC-mediated mate choice was occurring. As in previous studies, we found that rockfish possess multiple, highly-variable MHC genes, and that females may mate with multiple males. We also found evidence of female preference for particular males. However, we found no strong evidence of selection based on MHC genotype. Females were not consistently selective based on relatedness, allele count, proportion of shared alleles, or minimum, mean, or maximum DNA or amino acid genetic distance. Instead, it appears that females were selective based on other measures of mate quality not considered in this study, with some hedging of bets through multiple mating also occurring.Keywords: Multiple paternity, Mating system, Hybridization, Balancing selection, MHC, Mate choice, Major histocompatibility comple

Progress in information technology and tourism management: 20 years on and 10 years after the Internet—The state of eTourism research

This paper reviews the published articles on eTourism in the past 20 years. Using a wide variety of sources, mainly in the tourism literature, this paper comprehensively reviews and analyzes prior studies in the context of Internet applications to Tourism. The paper also projects future developments in eTourism and demonstrates critical changes that will influence the tourism industry structure. A major contribution of this paper is its overview of the research and development efforts that have been endeavoured in the field, and the challenges that tourism researchers are, and will be, facing

An Airport Experience Framework from a Tourism Perspective

This study, by integrating the perspectives of sociological, psychological, and service marketing and management, all of which affect the passenger experience, proposes a theoretical framework for the creation of the airport experience in relation to tourism. This research responds to the current phenomenon in which airports are offering other types of experiences within the airport terminal, expanding the role of an airport from being a utility for transportation into a place where various and different values can be offered. This research explores the current airport experience and adds to research on airport experience by clarifying ten key components necessary for airport passenger experience propositions based on existing research, the current industry phenomena, and the empirical study. The paper also underlines those components that can enhance passenger experience in relation to tourism and highlights the role that airports contribute to a destination

Tourism Culture: Nexus, Characteristics, Context and Sustainability

This article makes the case for tourism culture; the new cultural expressions, practises and identities, influenced by hosts, guests and industry context, which may develop in destinations, as a useful perspective with which to draw together various conceptual narratives within the tourism studies literature. Research in three small islands finds evidence of a distinctive cultural landscape which emerges from the interaction of host and guest cultures, and the exchange, change and creativity that results. Tourism industry dynamics are found to facilitate or undermine this process, as in turn they may be influenced by. This tourism culture has implications for the continuation and evolution of indigenous culture, as it does for the absorption of elements of tourist cultures. The emergent fusion may be symptomatic of a richer cultural landscape and might be considered as an indicator of more sustainable communities and forms of tourism development

Cultural experience tourist motives dimensionality : a cross-cultural study

This empirical research of tourists&rsquo; cultural experiences aims to advance theory by developing a measurement model of tourists&rsquo; motives towards attending cultural experiences for samples of Western and Asian tourists visiting Melbourne, Australia. Drawing upon Iso-Ahola&rsquo;s (1989) seeking/avoiding dichotomy theory for tourist motivation dimensions, the hypothesized dimensions primarily included escape and seeking-related dimensions, and some hedonic dimensions because of their relevance to aesthetic products (Hirschman &amp; Holbrook, 1982; Holbrook &amp; Hirschman, 1982), which are the context for this study. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were used to crossvalidate the underlying dimensionality structure of cultural experience motives. A four-factor model was extracted from the EFA consistent with some theoretical formulations and was retained in the CFA. Specific cultural language group differences for the motive dimensions were also hypothesized between Western and Asian tourist samples, and within the Chinese- and Japanese-speaking Asian tourist samples, but not within the different cultural groups of English-speaking Western tourists. These cross-cultural hypotheses were tested for the motive dimension measurement model using invariance testing in CFA. The findings for the motive dimensions differing by cultural group were not as expected. Significant cultural differences between Western and Asian tourists were not found, but a new finding of this study was significant differences between English-speaking tourists in their motives for attending cultural experiences. Marketing implications of these findings are also presented.<br /

An exploratory analysis of planning characteristics in Australian visitor attractions

This paper provides an exploratory analysis of the planning practices of 408 Australian attraction operators. The results indicate that attraction managers can be divided into four categories: those that do not engage in any formal planning, those that adopt a short-term planning approach, those that develop long-term plans, and those that use both short-term and long-term planning approaches. An evaluation of the sophistication of attraction planning showed a bipolar distribution. Attraction managers favored a planning horizon of three or five years, and were inclined to involve their employees in the planning process. Managers relied strongly on their own research and tourism industry intelligence when formulating business plans. The content of plans tended to focus on operational activities, financial planning and marketing. The study provides a benchmark for the comparison of attraction planning efforts in various contexts. © 2006 Asia Pacific Tourism Association