Factors Influencing Teacher Job Satisfaction and their Alignment with Current District Practices in a Rural School District

School districts’ decisions across the country are influencing the satisfaction level of teachers, in both positive and negative ways. With statistics reporting as high as fifty percent of teachers leaving the profession in the first five years of experience (Ingersoll, 2003), determining the reasons for teacher dissatisfaction are important in correcting district practices to be more supportive and satisfying to teachers. The purpose of this research study was to (a) determine the satisfaction level of teachers in a specific school district, (b) determine the practices building-level administrators have put into place and how they relate to the factors identified in the research as being contributive to teacher satisfaction levels, (c) determine the alignment of administrator practices and perceptions with those perceived by teachers in the same district, and (d) compare the results of the rural school district in this study with the results of a suburban school district to determine if demographics influenced the results of this research. The results of this study showed that teachers in the rural school district were satisfied in their position and profession, as shown by their responses on a majority of questions asked in the Factors Influencing Teacher Satisfaction Survey. The majority of responses in the highly satisfied to moderately satisfied categories in this survey supported alignment between district practices and practices identified through the research as being supportive of positive teacher job satisfaction. In a comparison of the administrator follow up interview questions and teacher follow up interview questions, a strong alignment was present between the two groups’ perceptions and practices perceived to be in place within the rural school district. The results of this study when compared with the results of the suburban school district proved that demographics had no impact on teacher job satisfaction

Lurch: Short Stories on Revolution

These short stories present an ongoing and incomplete attempt to comprehend the nature of revolution in its broadest context. Characters experience personal revelations in conjunction with, and often as the result of, their involvement with changing political, social, religious, or scientific landscapes. In this way, these stories explore revolution from the point of view of the singular unit, the revolutionary, in order to grasp the role of individual decisions and beliefs within greater movements

The educational technologist as a teacher

https://www.ester.ee/record=b5366838*es

A Survey of Interracial Interaction at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville: An Anthropological Analysis

This study was designed to explore the social interaction of Black and White students at the University of Tennessee and how this interaction impacted Black students\u27 college experience. Most of the pedagogical literature offers a psychosocial explanation of Black students\u27 failure to fully integrate on White college campuses. Early educational anthropology literature presents a cultural difference explanation at the micro level. Present educational anthropology literature offers a more complete explanation of variability in minority school performance through a multi-deterministic approach utilizing race, class, and gender. This study moves beyond classroom performance. It attempts to discover inductively how Black and White students and faculty interact on campus and how their interaction influences the college experience of Black students. This study used a qualitative research method, an open ended questionnaire for Black and White students, and a focus group of Black students, to gain access to student participants\u27 perceptions of interracial interaction. All student participants were enrolled at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville during 1991 spring semester. The data gathered from the questionnaire and focus group were analyzed using grounded theory to identify themes about interaction between Blacks and Whites on campus. The theory that emerged identified that Black students are unable to fully integrate at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The lack of integration was not an issue of biculturalism but of Black student participants encountering cultural stereotypes that are rooted in the historical legacy that implied Black people\u27s social inferiority. This forced many Black students to limit or guard their behavior when interacting with White people. Comments from Black student participants and their White student counterparts indicated that cultural stereotypes are pervasive in American society due to lack of first-hand interaction between people who are racially and ethnically different. Lack of first hand interaction creates a second hand enculturation process. Second hand enculturation occurs when people base their ideas about different types of people on socializing agents such as the media and family. The second hand enculturation process is further exacerbated on campus because of segregated activities, the wide spread perception of Whites that they experience reverse discrimination, and low numbers of Black students and faculty. The study findings have implications for educational administrators and researchers. Based on research findings, this study recommends campus programs and policies that would encourage and support interaction between people who are racially and ethnically different

Comparison of Different Studies to Analyse Adaptation on Dairy Farms

This paper compares and contrasts a number of farm-level modeling studies published in the academic literature. All of the studies examined adaptation on EU dairy farms in response to developments in agricultural policy and/or environmental legislation. The studies are compared on the basis of their respective aims, model structure, results and conclusions. Having reviewed the models and their application, the discussion section of the paper considers strengths and weaknesses of the studies and following from that it considers possible future developments in farm-level response modeling. The relevance and application of such developments in the context of an analytical study of adaptation in Irish dairy farms is discussed.Farm Management, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Here and Away: Motherhood and Belonging Among Expat Women in Geneva, Switzerland

The transient space of Geneva hosts a cosmopolitan and mobile population that challenges anthropological understandings of culture, community, and kinship in everyday life. Shrouded in privilege, the world of international expats operated almost invisibly in Geneva. When I asked doctors or midwives questions about them, I heard a dismissive message: "expat women do not have any problems." However, the transition to parenthood is a rite of passage that involved navigating physical, medical, emotional, and social challenges. This dissertation follows a cohort of first-time mothers through pregnancy and birth to explore how their position as expats shaped their prenatal education, care-seeking strategies, experiences, and birth narratives. Expat mothers built narratives of self and networks of support to manage their experiences of pregnancy and birth in Geneva that redefined their relationships to the local and the global, home and away, and the meaning of citizenship. These communities and identities viewed citizenship as strategic rather than as a mode of belonging rooted in local communities. They turned to each other and the internet for guidance and information about health care during pregnancy and birth. Because they often had private health insurance and economic capital, they looked for care in private clinics, trusting the market-based model of care presented. They wanted the ability to choose providers who would work with them for both pregnancy and birth and speak their language with them. However, Geneva has a robust public health system, and women faced fewer unnecessary interventions in the public hospital, so choosing private care in this context carried added risk. I argue that expat women were unable to make informed choices about medical care because their privilege created assumptions of competence which led to blind spots in their understanding of Swiss medical culture and systems of care. These elisions left them unable to advocate for themselves during birth.Doctor of Philosoph

An Examination of the Implications of Milk Quota Reform on the Viability and Productivity of Dairy Farming in Ireland

End of project reportThe aim of the project was to produce quality, scientific based policy advice on the most efficient means for the transfer of milk quota between dairy farmers. The main objective of the project was to identify milk quota transfer mechanisms that would ensure the viability of the maximum number of farmers in Ireland while still supporting an internationally competitive agricultural sector. During the course of the project the Irish Department of Agriculture introduced a new milk quota transfer scheme. The milk quota exchange scheme was launched in November 2006. At this stage the objectives of the project were altered to be more policy relevant. Rather than exploring the efficiency of various milk quota transfer models, the aim of the project was redirected to explore the efficiency of the scheme as it was operated in Ireland. The rationale for this change was to provide relevant and timely feedback to policy makers on the operation of the new scheme. While the MTR agreement guaranteed the continuation of the EU milk quota regime until 2014/15, it also made provisions for a review of the milk quota system to be conducted in 2008. Clearly any changes to EU milk quota policy would have implications for farmers in Ireland. A second objective of this project was to explore some policy scenarios that may transpire from the milk quota review and to estimate the implications for farmers in Ireland

Study abroad as a tool for internationalization and linguistic justice: A case study on Latine medical humanities and healthcare interpreting students

Study abroad as a tool for internationalization and linguistic justice: A case study on Latine medical humanities and healthcare interpreting students Mobility programs are an essential vehicle for fomenting global competencies and for internationalizing the curricula of students preparing to serve patients as clinicians or as healthcare interpreters (Wu et al. 2020). This presentation examines a study abroad program designed for Spanish-speaking students of medical humanities and healthcare interpreting at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), a public Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) where 59 percent of students identify as Latine (UTSA 2022b) and 45 percent are first-generation college students (UTSA 2022a). At UTSA, less than ½ of 1 percent of undergraduates participate in study abroad programs (Nolan-Ferrell, Catherine, personal communication, July 2, 2023); however, all participants in the study abroad experience examined here (n=11) identify as Latine. Because study abroad for minoritized students is often seen as frivolous or irrelevant, or as the purview of white students (Kentengian and Peace 2019: 87), the positionality of our students was an essential consideration throughout the design and execution of the experience. In the present case study, personal and social dimensions of instruction, in line with Martínez-Gómez 2020, were leveraged to foment dialog about identity, race, discrimination, health equity, and language access. Furthermore, Latine students’ bilingualism in Spanish and English was leveraged, with the primary objective of facilitating unique access to transnational systems. Internationalization of the curriculum was implemented via a comparative approach to (a) public health and preventive medicine, (b) hospital administration, (c) dietary diversity and health, (d) medicine and the arts, and (e) healthcare interpreting and language access. Encouraging Latine students to more effectively position themselves in communities of (medical) practice as Spanish speakers contributed directly to facilitating dialog about language access as an issue of social justice. With these objectives in mind, students were required to do extensive guided journaling and craft ontological narratives via written reflections and oral presentations. Through exposure to facilities, resources, and expertise at a multi-campus Spanish university, students acquired substantive knowledge in the five aforementioned domains while engaging in conversations around health inequities, access to care, discrimination (personal, cultural, systemic), and location of the self as Spanish speakers. Their reflections on these elements were examined through thematic coding, revealing high levels of self-awareness and self-assurance in the face of discrimination, confidence in their Spanish, and revelations about language access as an issue of social justice. The first iteration of this study abroad experience for Spanish-speaking Latine students promises to shed light on as-yet uninterrogated dimensions of global medical education for primarily heritage speakers of Spanish in Spain. References Kentengian, I. M. and Peace, M. M. (2019). Mi Idioma’: Heritage speakers’ language varieties and identity positioning during study abroad. Contact, community, and connections: Current approaches to Spanish in multilingual populations: 83-108. Martínez-Gómez, A. (2020). Language brokering experience among interpreting students: pedagogical implications for the development of interpreting competence. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 14(3), 303–321. https://doi.org/10.1080/1750399X.2020.1736436 University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) (2022a). First-generation & transfer student programs. https://www.utsa.edu/firstgen/ University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) (2022b). Institutional research and analysis: Student demographics. https://www.utsa.edu/ir/content/dashboards/student-demographics.html Wu, A., Leask, B., Choi, E., Unangst, L., & de Wit, H. (2020). Internationalization of medical education—a scoping review of the current status in the United States. Medical Science Educator, 30(4), 1693–1705. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40670-020-01034-

Olanzapine Attenuates Cue-elicited Craving for Tobacco

Rationale: Recent biological conceptualizations of craving and addiction have implicated mesolimbic dopamine activity as a central feature of the process of addiction. Imaging, and pharmacological studies have supported a role for dopaminergic structures in cue-elicited craving for tobacco. Objective: If mesolimbic dopamine activity is associated with cue-elicited craving for tobacco, a dopamine antagonist should attenuate cueelicited craving for tobacco. Thus, the aim of the present study was to determine whether an atypical antipsychotic (olanzapine, 5 mg) decreased cue-elicited craving for tobacco. Method: Participants were randomly assigned to 5 days of pretreatment with olanzapine (5 mg; n=31) or were randomly assigned to 5 days of a matching placebo (n=28). Approximately 8 h after the last dose, participants were exposed to a control cue (pencil) followed by exposure to smoking cues. Participants subsequently smoked either nicotine cigarettes or de-nicotinized cigarettes. Results: Olanzapine attenuated cue-elicited craving for tobacco but did not moderate the subjective effects of smoking. Discussion: This study represents one of the first investigations of the effect of atypical antipsychotics on cue-elicited craving for tobacco. The results suggest that medications with similar profiles may reduce cue-elicited craving, which in turn, may partially explain recent observations that atypical antipsychotics may reduce substance use

The Status of Women and Entrepreneurship in Utah

Is Utah a good place for women to start and run businesses? You may be misled if you rely on what the media has been reporting the past few years about women in Utah. A host of state rankings has continually put Utah as one of the worst states in the nation for women. For example, Utah did not fare well in the WalletHub’s recent “2015’s Best and Worst States for Women’s Equality.” Utah was also included in the New York Post’s “5 Places Women Shouldn’t Spend Their Travel Dollars,” and in 2014 Utah was ranked as the worst state for women on the “10 Worst States for Women” list at 24/7Wallst.com. In addition, Utah did poorly in the Center for American Progress report, “The State of Women in America: A 50-State Analysis of How Women are Faring Across the Nation.”4 Although it is clear that we need to improve the representation of women in leadership and decision-making roles, in the gender wage gap, and in funding for programs and efforts that support the well-being of Utah women, these rankings were based on limited criteria. However, one area not included in these criteria that would have strengthened Utah rankings is women and entrepreneurship