“You Want Me To Do What?” The Benefits of Co-teaching in the Middle Level

Exemplary middle schools use interdisciplinary teaming which often involves some level of co-planning, co-teaching, and co-assessing. In addition to this collaborative foundation, federal mandates for supporting students have led to frequent co-teaching between special educators, bilingual/bicultural specialists, and regular classroom teachers. Given that middle level educational frameworks, current inclusion practices, and demands for differentiation are all dependent upon teachers working together, increasing the presence of co-teaching within middle level teacher education program is both pragmatically sound and connected to foundational theories of middle level education. Middle school teachers and university faculty members who engage in co-teaching with teacher candidates can provide candidates with practical experiences tied closely to the work that will be expected of them as public school teachers. Early exposure to co-teaching models can better equip our students for their future work in today’s schools. This study highlights the benefits possible from the implementation of a co-teaching model within a middle level education program. Benefits of co-teaching for middle level teacher candidates, classroom teachers, and university faculty are included. The results of this study may provide a unique framework of co-teaching which enhances interactions among educational constituents for improved teacher preparation, professional development for practicing teachers, and improved instruction for middle grades students

The Reflexivitiy of Pain and Privilege

A Mestizo is an indigenous person of mixed heritage. Approximately 20 million Latinos living in the United States identify as Mestizos. Almost fifty percent racially or culturally identify as White, while the other half identify as Hispanic or mixed. These racial and cultural identifications are largely rooted in Spanish Imperialism and European Colonialism. Furthermore, these Mestizo identifications have vast effects on assimilation and achievement. A fresh and critical perspective frames the concerns surrounding many Mestizos today, as it attempts to offer people of indigenous decent and identification a voice while they continue clearing a path for those that may soon follow

The reflexivity of pain and privilege: An autoethnography of (Mestizo) identity and other Mestizo voices

Approximately 20 million Latinos living in the United States identify as Mestizos. A Mestizo is a person of mixed heritage. Almost half of these Mestizos racially or culturally identify as White, while the other half identify as Hispanic or racially mixed. These racial and cultural identifications have vast effects on educational performance: those identifying themselves as Hispanic or mixed experience lower academic achievement whereas those identifying as White do not. Many communities have experienced an influx of Mestizo-Latinos, but are ill prepared for the educational challenges due to the language and cultural differences Mestizos bring. This researcher himself has experienced the racial and cultural jerks between identity and society. It is through an autoethnographic journey that Latino and non-Latino voices are elucidated. Additional perspectives are gathered from the Marshalltown area to better situate the context of the research and complex yet integral culture of Mestizo-Latinos. Self-reflexive narratives, observational field-work, and intensive interviews are conducted to show those additional voices and perspectives. The interplay between the autoethnographic journey and that of interviews and observations is the crux of the study, where observational and interviewing layers inform the researcher of his own affective identity history. A holistic poststructuralist perspective is used to show this research as highly unique, and interrelated characteristics allow for embedded interpretations. Although limited to the researcher and his participants, this research is rich enough to frame the issues for other communities having Mestizo-Latinos

Synthesizing Middle Grades Research on Cultural Responsiveness: The Importance of a Shared Conceptual Framework

In conducting a literature review of 133 articles on cultural responsiveness in middle level education, we identified a lack of shared definitions, theoretical frameworks, methodological approaches, and foci, which made it impossible to synthesize across articles. Using a conceptual framework that required: 1) clear definitions of terms; 2) a critically conscious stance; and 3) inclusion of the middle school concept, we identified 14 articles that met these criteria. We then mapped differences and convergences across these studies, which allowed us to identify the conceptual gaps that the field must address in order to have common definitions and understandings that enable synthesis across studies

Rural Teachers’ Literacy Practices In and Out of the Classroom: Exploring Teacher Characteristics and Literacy Tools

Scholars who recognize the socially constructed nature of literacy acknowledge that important literacy processes take place across settings both in and out of school. Most of what is known about these trans-literacy practices relates to students, but little is known about the literacy practices of teachers in and outside of school. This study examines through survey research the in- and out-of-school literacy practices of teachers in a rural K-12 school district. The findings of the study suggest that for early career teachers, their out-of-school literacy practices are more deliberately connected to their literacy practices in school than for mid- and later-career teachers. This study calls for more descriptive research on the relationships between teachers’ literacy practices and use of literacy tools outside of school, and their literacy practices and pedagogical approaches to literacy in school

The PWWP domain and the evolution of unique DNA methylation toolkits in Hymenoptera.

DNMT3 in Hymenoptera has a unique duplication of the essential PWWP domain. Using GST-tagged PWWP fusion proteins and histone arrays we show that these domains have gained new properties and represent the first case of PWWP domains binding to H3K27 chromatin modifications, including H3K27me3, a key modification that is important during development. Phylogenetic analyses of 107 genomes indicate that the duplicated PWWP domains separated into two sister clades, and their distinct binding capacities are supported by 3D modeling. Other features of this unique DNA methylation system include variable copies, losses, and duplications of DNMT1 and DNMT3, and combinatorial generations of DNMT3 isoforms including variants missing the catalytic domain. Some of these losses and duplications of are found only in parasitic wasps. We discuss our findings in the context of the crosstalk between DNA methylation and histone methylation, and the expanded potential of epigenomic modifications in Hymenoptera to drive evolutionary novelties

Who Wants to Farm? Youth Aspirations, Opportunities and Rising Food Prices

Who wants to farm? In an era of land grabs and environmental uncertainty, improving smallholder productivity has become a higher priority on the poverty and food security agenda in development, focusing attention on the next generation of farmers. Yet emerging evidence about the material realities and social norms and desires of young people in developing countries indicates a reasonably widespread withdrawal from work on the land as an emerging norm. While de-agrarianisation is not new, policymakers are correct to be concerned about a withdrawal from the sector: smallholder productivity growth, and agricultural transformation more broadly, depend in part on the extent to which capable, skilled young people can be retained or attracted to farming, and on policies that support that retention. So who wants to farm, and under what conditions? Where are economic, environmental and social conditions favourable to active recruitment by educated young people into farming? What policy and programmatic conditions are creating attractive opportunities in farming or agro-food industry livelihoods? This paper explores these conditions in a context of food price volatility, and in particular rising food prices since 2007. To do so, it analyses primary qualitative research on the attitudes of young people and their families to farming in 2012, a time when food prices had been high and volatile for half a decade. In theory, assuming higher prices benefit small farmers, food farming should be more attractive since food prices started to rise in 2007. But this simple causal assumption overlooks both that in many developing countries, it takes considerable economic power - ownership or access to cultivable land and affordable credit for inputs - to turn a profit in farming. It also fails to take into account more sociological explanations governing work and occupational choice - status aspiration and merit on the one hand, and perceived risk on the other. These two explanations help to explain why young people from relatively low income families, particularly those most likely to innovate and raise productivity levels, do not perceive farming as a realistically desirable occupational choice. Based on analysis of interviews, focus group discussion and household case studies with almost 1500 people in 23 rural, urban and peri-urban communities in low and middle income Asian, African and Latin American countries in 2012, this research digs deeper into some of the established explanations as to why youth in developing countries appear reluctant to enter farming, and identifies conditions under which capable and enterprising youth are being attracted to farming, and entry-points for youth participation in policymaking around agriculture and food security

Learners’ anxiety in audiographic conferences: a discursive psychology approach to emotion talk

Success and failure in language learning are partly determined by the learners’ ability to regulate their emotions. Negative feelings are more likely to frustrate progress, while positive ones make the task of learning a second language (L2) a more effective experience. To date no significant body of research has been carried out into the role of anxiety in the field of computer-assisted language learning (CALL). The present study adopts discursive psychology (DP) as its methodological approach to examine anxiety not as a psychological state, but as a social construct in the context of an audiographic conferencing tool. After interviewing a sample of learners of Spanish at the Open University (OU), our findings reveal a strong connection between emotion and learner beliefs

Reciprocal regulation of actin cytoskeleton remodelling and cell migration by Ca2+ and Zn2+: role of TRPM2 channels

Cell migration is a fundamental feature of tumour metastasis and angiogenesis. It is regulated by a variety of signalling molecules including H2O2 and Ca2+. Here, we asked whether the H2O2-sensitive transient receptor potential melastatin 2 (TRPM2) Ca2+ channel serves as a molecular link between H2O2 and Ca2+. H2O2-mediated activation of TRPM2 channels induced filopodia formation, loss of actin stress fibres and disassembly of focal adhesions, leading to increased migration of HeLa and prostate cancer (PC)-3 cells. Activation of TRPM2 channels, however, caused intracellular release of not only Ca2+ but also of Zn2+. Intriguingly, elevation of intracellular Zn2+ faithfully reproduced all of the effects of H2O2, whereas Ca2+ showed opposite effects. Interestingly, H2O2 caused increased trafficking of Zn2+-enriched lysosomes to the leading edge of migrating cells, presumably to impart polarisation of Zn2+ location. Thus, our results indicate that a reciprocal interplay between Ca2+ and Zn2+ regulates actin remodelling and cell migration; they call for a revision of the current notion that implicates an exclusive role for Ca2+ in cell migration