The Impact of Productive Struggle Support on Student Mindset in a High School Technology and Engineering Class: A Case Study

The goal of preparing students for life after secondary school, regardless of future student plans, will require the development of critical thinking to face complex problems in life. One potential tool in preparing students for these challenges is the use of purposeful teacher support of student productive struggle in learning new skills and concepts. As iterative failure and improvement are essential parts of the engineering design process, it is important to explore supportive productive struggle in engineering coursework. Social skills, perseverance, and learning strategies are part of the noncognitive factors that impact academic performance. One factor affecting student behavior and thinking is student mindset. Previous literature has shown that not only can fixed or growth mindset impact learning behaviors, mindsets are also capable of being altered through interventions. One missing piece of understanding mindsets is the role that challenging classroom experiences, such as working through significant struggle, have on the way students view their own intelligence. This action research case study aims to connect the research on supportive productive struggle with that of mindset, error attribution, and academic progression through lab tasks. The study was conducted with high school engineering students who engaged in three productive struggle lab tasks based in the context of mechanical advantage in simple machines. Throughout the lab tasks, the teacher provided support while maintaining rigor, student-aligned thinking, and student-led solution attempts, which are essential in productive struggle. Data collected through pre- and post-task mindset assessments, journals of academic work alongside reflections, and focus student interviews was utilized to answer inquiry questions about the relationship between productive struggle support and student mindset, attribution of errors, and academic progression through tasks. Data analysis revealed a statistically significant (p=0.05) change in mindset after supportive productive struggle. The data showed no consistent shifts in internal versus external error attribution across the tasks. Finally, the data suggest that supportive productive struggle experiences do increase student ability to make progress through challenges, including doing so with a more positive outlook on the experience. Additional rationale and discussion explains the findings as related to existing literature, researcher observations, and future implications

Radiation‐Induced Oral Mucositis Hamster Model Using a Linear Accelerator Enhances Clinical Relevance of Preclinical Studies for Treatment Strategy Investigation

Translational animal models for oral mucositis (OM) are necessary to simulate and assess the bioclinical effects and response in humans. These models should simulate high levels of radiation exposure that leads to oxidative stress and inflammatory‐initiated tissue changes. Hamster models have been extensively studied to observe pathological effects of radiation exposure and help in the development of effective treatments. To successfully evaluate the potential for treatment regimens with consistency and relevance, a radiation‐induced OM hamster model was developed using a clinical linear accelerator utilized by cancer patients daily. The dose exposure to the isolated, everted cheek pouch of a hamster, as well as the progression of injury, pro‐inflammatory marker, histological, and elasticity analyses of the buccal pouch were conducted to verify replicability and reproducibility of the injury model. The findings from this model demonstrated its ability to consistently induce injury and resolution over 28 days using an acute dose of 60 Gy. This model was developed to enhance clinical relevance when evaluating potential efficacious treatments and can now be utilized in efficacy studies to better evaluate developed therapeutics in a preclinical model that is easy to translate to clinical studies

Expressions 1997

https://openspace.dmacc.edu/expressions/1017/thumbnail.jp

Diffusion of e-health innovations in 'post-conflict' settings: a qualitative study on the personal experiences of health workers.

BACKGROUND: Technological innovations have the potential to strengthen human resources for health and improve access and quality of care in challenging 'post-conflict' contexts. However, analyses on the adoption of technology for health (that is, 'e-health') and whether and how e-health can strengthen a health workforce in these settings have been limited so far. This study explores the personal experiences of health workers using e-health innovations in selected post-conflict situations. METHODS: This study had a cross-sectional qualitative design. Telephone interviews were conducted with 12 health workers, from a variety of cadres and stages in their careers, from four post-conflict settings (Liberia, West Bank and Gaza, Sierra Leone and Somaliland) in 2012. Everett Roger's diffusion of innovation-decision model (that is, knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, contemplation) guided the thematic analysis. RESULTS: All health workers interviewed held positive perceptions of e-health, related to their beliefs that e-health can help them to access information and communicate with other health workers. However, understanding of the scope of e-health was generally limited, and often based on innovations that health workers have been introduced through by their international partners. Health workers reported a range of engagement with e-health innovations, mostly for communication (for example, email) and educational purposes (for example, online learning platforms). Poor, unreliable and unaffordable Internet was a commonly mentioned barrier to e-health use. Scaling-up existing e-health partnerships and innovations were suggested starting points to increase e-health innovation dissemination. CONCLUSIONS: Results from this study showed ICT based e-health innovations can relieve information and communication needs of health workers in post-conflict settings. However, more efforts and investments, preferably driven by healthcare workers within the post-conflict context, are needed to make e-health more widespread and sustainable. Increased awareness is necessary among health professionals, even among current e-health users, and physical and financial access barriers need to be addressed. Future e-health initiatives are likely to increase their impact if based on perceived health information needs of intended users

Are Neighborhood Sociocultural Factors Influencing the Spatial Pattern of Gonorrhea in North Carolina?

PURPOSE: To determine if the spatial pattern of gonorrhea observed for North Carolina was influenced by neighborhood-level sociocultural determinants of health, including race/ethnicity. METHODS: A generalized linear mixed model with spatially correlated random effects was fit to measure the influence of socio-cultural factors on the spatial pattern of gonorrhea reported to the North Carolina State Health Department (January 1, 2005 to March 31, 2008). RESULTS: Neighborhood gonorrhea rates increased as the percent single mothers increased (25th to 75th neighborhood percentile Relative Rate 1.18, 95% CI 1.12, 1.25), and decreased as socioeconomic status increased (Relative Rate 0.89, 95% CI 0.84, 0.95). Increasing numbers of men in neighborhoods with more women than men did not change the gonorrhea rate, but was associated with decreased rates in neighborhoods with more men than women. Living in the mountains was protective for all race/ethnicities. Rurality was associated with decreased rates for Blacks and increased rates for Native Americans outside the mountains. PURPOSE: Neighborhood-level sociocultural factors, primarily those indicative of neighborhood deprivation, explained a significant proportion of the spatial pattern of gonorrhea in both urban and rural communities. Race/ethnicity was an important proxy for social and cultural factors not captured by measures of socioeconomic status

Bodyweight Perceptions among Texas Women: The Effects of Religion, Race/Ethnicity, and Citizenship Status

Despite previous work exploring linkages between religious participation and health, little research has looked at the role of religion in affecting bodyweight perceptions. Using the theoretical model developed by Levin et al. (Sociol Q 36(1):157–173, 1995) on the multidimensionality of religious participation, we develop several hypotheses and test them by using data from the 2004 Survey of Texas Adults. We estimate multinomial logistic regression models to determine the relative risk of women perceiving themselves as overweight. Results indicate that religious attendance lowers risk of women perceiving themselves as very overweight. Citizenship status was an important factor for Latinas, with noncitizens being less likely to see themselves as overweight. We also test interaction effects between religion and race. Religious attendance and prayer have a moderating effect among Latina non-citizens so that among these women, attendance and prayer intensify perceptions of feeling less overweight when compared to their white counterparts. Among African American women, the effect of increased church attendance leads to perceptions of being overweight. Prayer is also a correlate of overweight perceptions but only among African American women. We close with a discussion that highlights key implications from our findings, note study limitations, and several promising avenues for future research

Glycolytic requirement for NK cell cytotoxicity and cytomegalovirus control

NK cell activation has been shown to be metabolically regulated in vitro; however, the role of metabolism during in vivo NK cell responses to infection is unknown. We examined the role of glycolysis in NK cell function during murine cytomegalovirus (MCMV) infection and the ability of IL-15 to prime NK cells during CMV infection. The glucose metabolism inhibitor 2-deoxy-ᴅ-glucose (2DG) impaired both mouse and human NK cell cytotoxicity following priming in vitro. Similarly, MCMV-infected mice treated with 2DG had impaired clearance of NK-specific targets in vivo, which was associated with higher viral burden and susceptibility to infection on the C57BL/6 background. IL-15 priming is known to alter NK cell metabolism and metabolic requirements for activation. Treatment with the IL-15 superagonist ALT-803 rescued mice from otherwise lethal infection in an NK-dependent manner. Consistent with this, treatment of a patient with ALT-803 for recurrent CMV reactivation after hematopoietic cell transplant was associated with clearance of viremia. These studies demonstrate that NK cell-mediated control of viral infection requires glucose metabolism and that IL-15 treatment in vivo can reduce this requirement and may be effective as an antiviral therapy