African American English And Urban Literature: Creating Culturally Caring Classrooms

Language and literacy are a means of delivering care through consideration of students’ home culture; however, a cultural mismatch between the predominantly white, female educator population and the diverse urban student population is reflected in language and literacy instruction. Urban curricula often fail to incorporate culturally relevant literature, in part due to a dearth of texts that reflect student experiences. Dialectal differences between African American English (AAE) and Mainstream American English (MAE) and a history of racism have attached a reformatory stigma to AAE and its speakers. The authors assert that language and literacy instruction that validates children’s lived experience mediates this hegemony, leads to empathetic relationships between teachers and students of different cultural backgrounds, and promotes academic success. This paper seeks to 1) dissect the relationship between academic achievement and affirmation of student culture through language and literacy instruction, 2) enumerate classroom strategies that empower students and foster the development of self-efficacy 3) identify ways teachers might weave value for diversity in language and literacy into a pedagogy of care for urban classrooms

Dissecting Molecular Pathways That Underlie Disease-Causing Gata1 Mutations

Each mammalian cell type has a unique gene expression pattern that supports its specialized function. Mutations in factors that regulate gene expression can disrupt normal function and cause human disease, though the mechanistic consequences of these defects are often unknown. Here, we address how alterations in the transcription factor GATA1 lead to distinct hematologic disorders by combining structural, biochemical, and genomic approaches with gene complementation systems that examine GATA1 function in biologically relevant cellular contexts. We first investigated missense mutations in the GATA1 N-terminal zinc finger (NF) and found that NF mutations impair association with essential GATA1 cofactors. Several NF mutations diminish FOG1 binding, resulting in greatly reduced transcriptional activation and repression. This severely impairs erythroid and megakaryocyte maturation and correlates with pronounced clinical phenotypes. Notably, clinical severity parallels the degree of FOG1 disruption. Unexpectedly, NF mutations shown to disrupt DNA binding of GATA1 in vitro did not measurably affect target gene occupancy in vivo. Rather, one of these falls into a subset of mutations that diminish TAL1 complex binding. Reduced association with the TAL1 complex moderately impairs transcriptional activation, resulting in subtle defects in erythroid and megakaryocyte development that correlate with relatively mild disease presentations. Remarkably, different substitutions at the same amino acid position can selectively inhibit TAL1 complex or FOG1 binding, producing distinct cellular and clinical phenotypes. We next examined splice site mutations in the second exon of GATA1 that lead to the expression of an amino-truncated protein called GATA1 short (GATA1s). We found that GATA1s was significantly impaired in binding to erythroid-specific target genes, while occupancy at megakaryocyte-specific genes was normal. This results in a strongly diminished erythroid gene expression program and inhibits erythroid maturation, similar to the phenotype observed in patients. In concert, our findings uncover novel molecular mechanisms that link genetic defects in GATA1 to cellular and human phenotypes. Applying this knowledge to the clinic should improve patient diagnosis, classification, and treatment. More broadly, this work highlights the power of gene complementation assays for elucidating the underlying basis of disease, and serves as a model for the study of other disease-causing mutations

Barriers To Success: Sheep And Goat Producers In The Service-Grazing Industry

Service-grazing is a novel term for grazing done on land not owned or rented by a livestock producer or manager, for the purpose of land management, and for which the owner or land manager receiving grazing services pays compensation to the service provider. This research project seeks to gather detailed information about producers in the Western United States, providing grazing services under this project’s definition of “service-grazing”, with a focus on those operating in California, in order to discover the business models or practices necessary to be successful within a service-based grazing operation. To this end, an online survey consisting of 59 questions was designed and administered to 25 service-grazers operating with the Western United States. Demographic data collected suggested that service-grazers tend to be younger than most sheep producers. They are also highly educated and generally not generational farmers. The majority of service grazers graze mostly goats and are highly dependent on off-farm income. Due to the limited number of responses received to the survey, it is recommended that future work be split into two parts: 1) compiling an accurate and up-to-date list of producers providing grazing services, with detailed demographic information and specific characteristics of each operation; 2) a further survey to question those producers as to the feasibility of transitioning, in whole or in part, from a production-based livestock operation to one providing grazing services

teacher shortage as a local phenomenon: district leader sensemaking, responses, and implications for policy

While the teacher shortage is a national crisis, the manifestations of the shortage are felt most acutely at the local district level. The diversity of these micro-contexts often leads to disparities in the ways local school systems are served by large-scale initiatives. District leaders provide an important lens for understanding the localized manifestation of teacher shortages. This research contributes to the existing macro-level literature on teacher shortages through investigation of the ways in which district leaders in West Virginia make sense of and respond to the teacher shortage. As part of a broader study, we share analyses of interviews with seven district leaders across five county school districts and highlight the ways in which leaders made sense of the phenomenon in paradoxical ways, both in terms of the most salient causes as well as the perceived locus of control in addressing the teacher shortage. Findings also highlight the way district leader sensemaking led to action, with responses differing based on relative affordances of metropolitan versus rural contexts. We conclude with implications for policy and research to further understand the local nature of teacher shortages and to address the problem, particularly in rural contexts underserved by current research and policy

An active video game intervention does not improve physical activity and sedentary time of children at-risk for developmental coordination disorder: A crossover randomized trial

© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Background: Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) are highly inactive and sedentary. The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of a home-based active video game intervention on objectively measured physical activity and sedentary behaviour in children at risk for DCD. Methods: In a crossover randomized clinical trial, 21 children (mean age 11.0, SD 1.0; n=11 girls) in Perth, Western Australia participated in two 16-week periods: no active video games (AVGs) control period and AVGs intervention period. Two active input consoles were provided to participants along with a selection of non-violent AVGs for participants to play at home. Participants wore accelerometers at baseline and following each period to determine minutes of sedentary, light, moderate and vigorous times in addition to self-reported types of activities in a diary. Linear mixed models, adjusted for the order of periods, compared physical activity and sedentary time during the last week of each period. Results: There were no significant differences between the intervention and control periods in time spent in sedentary (decrease of -1.0min/day during the intervention period, 95%CI -12.1, 10.1), light (increase of 2.2min/day, 95%CI -8.8, 13.2), moderate (decrease of 0.7min/day, 95%CI -4.6, 3.3) or vigorous (decrease of -0.6min/day, 95%CI -1.6, 0.4). Conclusions: Among children at risk for DCD, participating in this AVG intervention did not improve objectively measured physical activity and sedentary time