Curriculum development practice

This paper discusses the subject of curriculum development. More specifically the paper discusses involvement with curriculum development in teaching and adopts a reflective writing style

Disenfranchising America’s Youth: How Current Voting Laws Are Contrary to the Intent of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment

[Excerpt] “Laws attempting to suppress student voters are not a new advent. Since the Twenty-Sixth Amendment lowered the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen in 1971, states have been passing legislation that has challenged, restricted, and continuously narrowed the eligibility of students to vote. The reasoning behind these laws generally focuses on the belief that student voters dilute the power of permanent resident voters, tend to vote in democratic blocks, and are not sufficiently invested in the community. Regardless of the motivation, these voting laws often have the effect of disenfranchising non-informed students, who either miss the opportunity to vote in their own state or decide not to vote due to the lack of excitement involved in absentee voting.

Exploring marriage-parenting typologies and their contextual antecedents and developmental sequelae

To identify types of families, latent-class analysis was applied to (reported) marriage and (observed) parenting measures obtained during the infancy, toddler, and/or preschool years for 828 two-parent families participating in the NICHD Study of Child Care. Five types of families were identified: Consistently Supportive (i.e., good parenting, good marriage, 15% of sample), Consistently Moderate (i.e., moderate marriage, moderate parenting, 43%), Consistently Risky (i.e., poor parenting, poor marriage, 16%), Good Parenting/Poor Marriage (19%), and Poor Parenting/Good Marriage (7%). When groups were compared in terms of contextual antecedents (measured at child age I month) and child cognitive-academic and socioemotional functioning in first grade, results indicated (a) that contextual risks increased linearly and children's functioning decreased linearly as one moved across the first three aforementioned groups; and after controlling for group differences in background factors (b) that children in the Good-Parenting/Poor-Marriage families outperformed those in the Poor Parenting/Good Marriage; (c) that there was evidence of "added value" developmentally when children experienced two sources of support (i.e., good marriage and good parenting) rather than just one (i.e., good marriage or good parenting); but (d) that there was only modest evidence of protective buffering whereby children experiencing just good parenting (but not just good marriages) outperformed children experiencing poor parenting and poor marriages. Results are discussed in terms of the relative influence of marriage and parenting on child development and the potential benefits of applying typological approaches to the study of marriage-parenting family subsystems

Infant-mother attachment security, contextual risk, and early development: A moderational analysis

In light of evidence that the effects of attachment security on subsequent development may be contingent on the social context in which the child continues to develop, we examined the effect of attachment security at age 15 months, cumulative contextual risk from I to 36 months, and the interaction of attachment and cumulative risk to predict socioemotional and cognitive linguistic functioning at age 3 years, using data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care. Results indicated that early attachment predicts both socioemotional development and language skills, but not cognitive functioning as indexed by a measure of school readiness, and that tire effect of attachment on socioemotional development and expressive language varied as a function of social-contextual risk. Insecure-avoidant infants proved most vulnerable to contextual risk, not children classified as secure or insecure more generally, although in one instance security did prove protective with respect to the adverse effects of cumulative contextual risk. Findings are discussed in terms of risk and resilience and in light of the probabilistic nature of the relation between early attachment and later development

Theory of mind and attentional bias to facial emotional expressions: A preliminary study

Theory of mind ability has been associated with performance in interpersonal interactions and has been found to influence aspects such as emotion recognition, social competence, and social anxiety. Being able to attribute mental states to others requires attention to subtle communication cues such as facial emotional expressions. Decoding and interpreting emotions expressed by the face, especially those with negative valence, are essential skills to successful social interaction. The current study explored the association between theory of mind skills and attentional bias to facial emotional expressions. According to the study hypothesis, individuals with poor theory of mind skills showed preferential attention to negative faces over both non-negative faces and neutral objects. Tentative explanations for the findings are offered emphasizing the potential adaptive role of vigilance for threat as a way of allocating a limited capacity to interpret others’ mental states to obtain as much information as possible about potential danger in the social environment

Compensation for Uneven Surfaces When Building Laser Deposited Structures

Direct Laser Deposition (DLD) is a blown-powder laser deposition process that can be used to quickly produce, modify or repair fully-dense metallic parts by a layered manufacturing method. However, uneven substrate surfaces often cause variation in the deposited layer which is magnified by succeeding layers. Research carried out at the University of Liverpool has resulted in a non-feedback layer height controlling process based on controlling the shape of the powder streams emitted from a four-port side feed nozzle. This method limits deposited layer height by causing a sharp reduction of catchment efficiency in the vertical plane at a fixed distance from the powder feed nozzle, and is therefore capable of depositing a consistent layer height in spite of power, powder flow or process velocity variation. This paper demonstrates how this method of layer height control can compensate for irregular substrate surfaces in the production of accurate DLD parts.Mechanical Engineerin

The effect of supplementary grass silage and standard concentrate on milk fat fatty acid composition and iodine value when cows are fed a whole rapeseed-based concentrate at pasture

peer-reviewedThe use of grass silage and concentrates to supplement fresh grass intake is commonly practised in dairy systems. However, the effects of such supplementation within a dietary regime designed to produce a spreadable butter are unknown. Sixteen Holstein Friesian cows were used in an incomplete changeover design to investigate the effect on milk fat of supplementation with grass silage (GS) or standard concentrate (SC) when offering a concentrate based on whole rapeseed at pasture (RC+G). A control diet of fresh grass and standard concentrate (SC+G) was also included. Diet had no effect (P > 0.05) on milk yield or on the lactose concentration of milk. The iodine value (IV; grams of iodine per 100 g milk fat) of milk fat with the RC+G diet was greater (43.9, P < 0.05) than with the SC+G diet (39.9). The iodine value of milk fat was reduced (P < 0.05) when RC+G+GS was offered (41.5 g/100g), but not when RC+G+SC was offered (43.1 g/100g), compared with when RC+G was offered. The proportion of unsaturated fatty acids in milk fat was higher (P < 0.05) when the RC+G diet was offered compared with either RC+G+GS or RC+G+SC. If supplementary feedstuffs are to be used in combination with a wholerapeseed- based concentrate and pasture, then inclusion of standard concentrate would be preferred over grass silage because the negative impact on the iodine value of milk fat was less. However, further research is required to investigate the effect on IV of milk fat when a standard concentrate supplement is offered at levels that increase milk yield

Development Assistance, Institution Building, and Social Cohesion after Civil War: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Liberia

Can brief, foreign-funded efforts to build local institutions have positive effects on local patterns of governance, cooperation, and well-being? Prior research suggests that such small-scale, externally driven interventions are unlikely to substantially alter patterns of social interaction in a community, and that the ability of a community to act collectively is the result of a slow and necessarily indigenous process. We address this question using a randomized field experiment to assess the effects of a community-driven reconstruction (CDR) project carried out by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in northern Liberia. The project attempted to build democratic, community-level institutions for making and implementing decisions about local public goods. We find powerful evidence that the program was successful in increasing social cohesion, some evidence that it reinforced democratic political attitudes and increased confidence in local decision-making procedures, but only weak evidence that material well-being was positively affected. There is essentially no evidence of adverse effects.Liberia; reconstruction; post-conflict; institution building; democracy; development; peacebuilding