Leveraging University-School District Research Partnerships: Exploring the Longitudinal Effects of an Early Kindergarten Transition Program

With increasingly tight budgets, many public school districts lack research personnel to evaluate program efficacy or investigate best practices that raise student achievement. We highlight an example of a successful university-district partnership that offers district-driven research support while providing opportunities for practitioner-scholars to learn first-hand how to perform rigorous evaluation work. This article details the Early Kindergarten Transition program evaluation study conducted by a university-district partnership as well as testimony from district leadership on the utility of the research deliverables and long-term benefits of the research collaboration

Co-Learning: Maximizing Learning in Clinical Experiences

Researchers and teacher educators have given increased attention to co-teaching during the student teaching experience. Co-teaching facilitates an apprenticeship arrangement that encourages modeling of classroom practice for the candidate and a chance to implement directly what is being learned by the apprentice. The co-teaching model can be expanded to form a co-learning model in which there are three constituents of learners: the P-12 students, the candidate, and the cooperating mentor teacher. This co-learning model results in a synergistic effect that is greater than the sum of the parts

Impact of Culturally Responsive Teaching Workshop on Preservice Teachers: How to Teach Columbus from Multiple Perspectives

This qualitative case study examines the impact of a workshop on culturally responsive teaching on preservice elementary teacher candidates’ ability to conceptualize and apply culturally responsive instruction. The Rethinking Columbus workshop teaches students to read critically as text detectives, asking questions such as Whose voices are being heard and whose are not and what are the hidden messages in the text and illustrations Overall it appears that preservice teachers who participated in the workshop were able to generate numerous culturally relevant instructional strategies that directly aligned with the conceptual framework presented in the workshop. Students were also able to extend their learning by creating new and innovative strategies to engage elementary students in learning that were not discussed during the workshop. This paper describes the workshop model for teaching preservice teachers to be culturally responsive educators and includes numerous participant-generated examples of how to teach with a culturally responsive lens

Metropolitan school administrators: work values, role perceptions and burnout

Data were collected from 388 administrators from ten urban and suburban school districts in Oregon and Washington to identify the work values of public school administrators, (as measured by the Ohio Work Values Inventory, OWVI), and determine the relationship between public school administrator role perceptions associated with burnout, (as measured by the Administrator Role Perception Inventory, ARPI), and their work values. The data were analyzed by levels of administration, background data and specific scales on the instruments. Cluster sampling by district was used; i.e. all administrators within each of ten school districts in Oregon and Washington comprised the initial sample of 701 administrators. The independent variables of the study were level of administration and the biographical descriptors of sex, age, education, administrative work experience and years of administrative experience at the same job and at the same location. The dependent variables were the seven constructs of the ARPI and the eleven constructs of the OWVI. The results indicated only moderate burnout in administrators in the sample and no statistically significant differences in the burnout among different levels of administration, although respondents reported moderate to considerable job stress. There were no significant differences in the burnout of male and female administrators and in nine of the 11 work values measured. Women administrators assigned statistically significantly more importance to the work values of Self-realization and Ideas/Data. In total, there were 35 statistically significant correlations between the OWVI scales and the ARPI subscales and the Total ARPI scale, indicating there are statistically significant relationships between administrator work values and role perceptions associated with burnout. Statistically significant differences were found between three work values of central office administrators and elementary school administrators, with central office administrators assigning statistically significantly more importance to the work values of Independence and Prestige and less importance to Altruism than did elementary school administrators and statistically significantly more importance to Independence than building administrators. Respondents assigned the greatest importance to the work value of Task Satisfaction and the least importance to Solitude. Administrators assigned considerable importance to the work values of Altruism, Independence and Ideas/Data Orientation

Violence Affecting School Employees

A review of the literature shows significant violence (both physical and verbal threats) in schools in the United States (U.S.). Almost all of the studies focus on violence by students and against students. There is very limited information about violence involving employees in the schools even though teachers are three times more likely to be attacked than are students on a per capita basis. The purpose of this study was to understand the extent, causation, and reduction of violence against school employees in a metropolitan area. Administrators of all schools (K-12, vocational schools, and colleges) in a 4-county, 2-state metropolitan area were surveyed. The results of the survey found that violence in the Portland metropolitan area was not as prevalent as nationwide trends indicate. However, most respondents believed violence would continue at the present level into the future. More research needs to be conducted about violence against school employees, but it should carefully consider the geographical area and the type of respondents

Expression of prion protein increases cellular copper binding and antioxidant enzyme activities but not copper delivery

International audienceThe N-terminal region of the prion protein PrPC contains a series of octapeptide repeats. This region has been implicated in the binding of divalent metal ions, particularly copper. PrPC has been suggested to be involved in copper transport and metabolism and in cell defense mechanisms against oxidative insult, possibly through the regulation of the intracellular CuZn superoxide dismutase activity (CuZn-SOD) or a SOD-like activity of PrPC itself. However, up to now the link between PrPC expression and copper metabolism or SOD activity has still to be formally established; particularly because conflicting results have been obtained in vivo. In this study, we report a link between PrPC, copper binding, and resistance to oxidative stress. Radioactive copper (64Cu) was used at a physiological concentration to demonstrate that binding of copper to the outer plasma cell membrane is related to the level of PrPC expression in a cell line expressing a doxycycline-inducible murine PrPC gene. Cellular PIPLC pretreatment indicated that PrPC was not involved in copper delivery at physiological concentrations. We also demonstrated that murine PrPC expression increases several antioxidant enzyme activities and glutathione levels. Prion protein may be a stress sensor sensitive to copper and able to initiate, following copper binding, a signal transduction process acting on the antioxidant systems to improve cell defenses