Literacy Coaching In The United States: Implications For Taiwan

Literacy coaching has become a popular professional development approach in the United States over the last decade. To date, there has been little research on the different lived experiences and challenges of literacy coaches working in different contexts. Furthermore, research findings regarding the effectiveness of literacy coaching are inconclusive. To fill the gaps in the literature, this study was designed to explore the nature of literacy coaching in the United States and examine the relationship between literacy coaching and student literacy achievement, both from the perspective of literacy coaches and that of classroom teachers. An embedded mixed methods research design, comprising a main strand and a supplemental strand, was adopted to explore the research questions. In the main strand, 3 literacy coaches were interviewed and observed; in the supplemental strand, 108 classroom teachers completed an online survey featuring both closed-ended and open-ended questions. The findings of this study show that both literacy coaches and classroom teachers perceive that literacy coaching is an effective type of professional development in improving teaching and learning. It is perceived as better than most of the previously used professional development methods (e.g., one-shot workshops, conferences, face-to-face college coursework, online college coursework, and reading professional literature) because literacy coaches can provide timely, on-site, continuous, and personalized assistance to support teacher learning in a self-directed, reflective and collaborative way. The effectiveness of literacy coaching, however, depends in part on the skills and qualifications of literacy coaches, as well as the receptiveness of classroom teachers and the support of administrators. The findings also reveal that literacy coaching is a stressful and demanding job because in order to be effective, literacy coaches have to assume multiple, yet at times, undefined roles. The findings reveal the need for support of literacy coaches in order to help them survive and thrive. The implications of this study include providing a clear job description for coaches, maintaining appropriate coach-teacher ratio, educating administrators about literacy coaching, providing coaches with ongoing professional development opportunities, providing coaches with release time for networking, and providing teachers with the necessary support and release time for working with literacy coaches

Global burden of 369 diseases and injuries in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

Background: In an era of shifting global agendas and expanded emphasis on non-communicable diseases and injuries along with communicable diseases, sound evidence on trends by cause at the national level is essential. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) provides a systematic scientific assessment of published, publicly available, and contributed data on incidence, prevalence, and mortality for a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list of diseases and injuries. Methods: GBD estimates incidence, prevalence, mortality, years of life lost (YLLs), years lived with disability (YLDs), and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) due to 369 diseases and injuries, for two sexes, and for 204 countries and territories. Input data were extracted from censuses, household surveys, civil registration and vital statistics, disease registries, health service use, air pollution monitors, satellite imaging, disease notifications, and other sources. Cause-specific death rates and cause fractions were calculated using the Cause of Death Ensemble model and spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression. Cause-specific deaths were adjusted to match the total all-cause deaths calculated as part of the GBD population, fertility, and mortality estimates. Deaths were multiplied by standard life expectancy at each age to calculate YLLs. A Bayesian meta-regression modelling tool, DisMod-MR 2.1, was used to ensure consistency between incidence, prevalence, remission, excess mortality, and cause-specific mortality for most causes. Prevalence estimates were multiplied by disability weights for mutually exclusive sequelae of diseases and injuries to calculate YLDs. We considered results in the context of the Socio-demographic Index (SDI), a composite indicator of income per capita, years of schooling, and fertility rate in females younger than 25 years. Uncertainty intervals (UIs) were generated for every metric using the 25th and 975th ordered 1000 draw values of the posterior distribution. Findings: Global health has steadily improved over the past 30 years as measured by age-standardised DALY rates. After taking into account population growth and ageing, the absolute number of DALYs has remained stable. Since 2010, the pace of decline in global age-standardised DALY rates has accelerated in age groups younger than 50 years compared with the 1990–2010 time period, with the greatest annualised rate of decline occurring in the 0–9-year age group. Six infectious diseases were among the top ten causes of DALYs in children younger than 10 years in 2019: lower respiratory infections (ranked second), diarrhoeal diseases (third), malaria (fifth), meningitis (sixth), whooping cough (ninth), and sexually transmitted infections (which, in this age group, is fully accounted for by congenital syphilis; ranked tenth). In adolescents aged 10–24 years, three injury causes were among the top causes of DALYs: road injuries (ranked first), self-harm (third), and interpersonal violence (fifth). Five of the causes that were in the top ten for ages 10–24 years were also in the top ten in the 25–49-year age group: road injuries (ranked first), HIV/AIDS (second), low back pain (fourth), headache disorders (fifth), and depressive disorders (sixth). In 2019, ischaemic heart disease and stroke were the top-ranked causes of DALYs in both the 50–74-year and 75-years-and-older age groups. Since 1990, there has been a marked shift towards a greater proportion of burden due to YLDs from non-communicable diseases and injuries. In 2019, there were 11 countries where non-communicable disease and injury YLDs constituted more than half of all disease burden. Decreases in age-standardised DALY rates have accelerated over the past decade in countries at the lower end of the SDI range, while improvements have started to stagnate or even reverse in countries with higher SDI. Interpretation: As disability becomes an increasingly large component of disease burden and a larger component of health expenditure, greater research and developm nt investment is needed to identify new, more effective intervention strategies. With a rapidly ageing global population, the demands on health services to deal with disabling outcomes, which increase with age, will require policy makers to anticipate these changes. The mix of universal and more geographically specific influences on health reinforces the need for regular reporting on population health in detail and by underlying cause to help decision makers to identify success stories of disease control to emulate, as well as opportunities to improve. Funding: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY 4.0 licens

Socializing One Health: an innovative strategy to investigate social and behavioral risks of emerging viral threats

In an effort to strengthen global capacity to prevent, detect, and control infectious diseases in animals and people, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) PREDICT project funded development of regional, national, and local One Health capacities for early disease detection, rapid response, disease control, and risk reduction. From the outset, the EPT approach was inclusive of social science research methods designed to understand the contexts and behaviors of communities living and working at human-animal-environment interfaces considered high-risk for virus emergence. Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, PREDICT behavioral research aimed to identify and assess a range of socio-cultural behaviors that could be influential in zoonotic disease emergence, amplification, and transmission. This broad approach to behavioral risk characterization enabled us to identify and characterize human activities that could be linked to the transmission dynamics of new and emerging viruses. This paper provides a discussion of implementation of a social science approach within a zoonotic surveillance framework. We conducted in-depth ethnographic interviews and focus groups to better understand the individual- and community-level knowledge, attitudes, and practices that potentially put participants at risk for zoonotic disease transmission from the animals they live and work with, across 6 interface domains. When we asked highly-exposed individuals (ie. bushmeat hunters, wildlife or guano farmers) about the risk they perceived in their occupational activities, most did not perceive it to be risky, whether because it was normalized by years (or generations) of doing such an activity, or due to lack of information about potential risks. Integrating the social sciences allows investigations of the specific human activities that are hypothesized to drive disease emergence, amplification, and transmission, in order to better substantiate behavioral disease drivers, along with the social dimensions of infection and transmission dynamics. Understanding these dynamics is critical to achieving health security--the protection from threats to health-- which requires investments in both collective and individual health security. Involving behavioral sciences into zoonotic disease surveillance allowed us to push toward fuller community integration and engagement and toward dialogue and implementation of recommendations for disease prevention and improved health security

[[alternative]]The Study of Relationship between Art Museum Visitors'

[[abstract]]本研究基於「全民､終生､平等的美術鑑賞教育」之研究動機，以文化人 類學､發展心理學和美學為理論基礎，在臺北市立美術館舉辦「美術鑑賞 教育展」，抽取參觀展覽的觀眾1200人接受問卷調查。旨在探討「觀眾特 性與美術鑑賞能力之關係」，以及觀眾的「美術鑑賞能力發展階段」，藉 以明瞭國人的美術鑑賞水準，據此發展出更堅實的美術鑑賞教育理論。本 研究的研究工具有二：一為評估觀眾美術鑑賞能力而編製的「美術鑑賞教 育展問卷調查表」；二為「美術鑑賞教育展」所展出的十二幅美術原作。 資料處理兼採量的統計和質的分析二種方式，在「觀眾特性與美術鑑賞能 力方面」，以χ考驗各項假設，對於達到顯著水準的項目則繼續進行「事 後比較」，確切找出存有顯著差異的組別；美術鑑賞能力的發展階段則依 據評分模式來評定。茲將本研究的重要發現臚列如下：一､美術館觀眾包 括不同性別､年齡､職業､教育程度的人，和來自各地的參觀者，美術館 鑑賞教育具有「全民､終生､平等」的性質。二､觀眾特性與美術鑑賞能 力息息相關。 (一)觀眾的年齡､教育程度､職業､專業程度和美術鑑賞 能力有顯著的相關；唯觀眾的居住地區和美術鑑賞能力無明顯的關係。 (二)觀眾的性別與美術鑑賞品味有顯著的相關，但與美術知識水準､美術 鑑賞能力的發展階段無明顯關係。三､美術鑑賞能力的發展具有循序漸進 的階段性。將觀眾的美術鑑賞能力，依評分模式歸納為五階段：ヾ主觀偏 好期；ゝ視覺寫實期；ゞ情感表現期；々形式風格期；ぁ綜合判斷期；發 現此五階段各有其特徵，並具有循序漸進､依次提昇的發展性質。根據文 獻探討及研究結果，本研究分別就學校､文化機構､未來研究方向提出建 議，以供參酌。