Integrating Mathematical Thinking Into Family Engagement Programs

The brief explains how exposing young children to early math concepts supports their development of reasoning and problem solving skills and later success in and out of school. It describes the unique ways each of five family engagement programs funded by the Heising-Simons Foundation developed, tested, and integrated early math learning into their usual activities. The brief lays out seven practical tips that emerged from the grantees' experiences that can guide practitioners and other stakeholders who are interested in integrating early math into their own family engagement programs, and sheds light on issues that programs may want to keep in mind while doing so.

Environmental Justice in Indian Country: Using Equity Assessments to Evaluate Impacts to Trust Resources, Watersheds and Eco-cultural Landscapes

Native American cultures, genetics, nutrition, and ways of life co-evolved with their natural systems through thousands of years. This process has resulted in seamless eco-cultural systems of humans, plants, animals, rivers, landforms, and air sheds. These eco-cultural systems have also provided its peoples with unique and valid environmental management science that has sustained the peoples and their resources for thousands of years. This resource-based perspective could form the basis of environmental justice risk assessment methodology in Indian Country. Cumulative impacts to tribal cultures are a combination of pre-existing stressors (existing conditions or co-risk factors) and any other contamination or new activity that affects environmental quality. Characterizing risks or impacts in Indian Country entails telling the cumulative story about risks to trust resources and a cultural way of life. Equity assessments could also be performed in a way that describes these systems-level cumulative risks/impacts. This requires improvements in metrics based on an understanding of the unbreakable ties between people, their cultures, and their resources. Specific recommendations are presented for performing equity assessments in Indian Country and for developing a Risk Ethics discipline

The Search for Values: Young Adults and the Literary Experience

published or submitted for publicatio

Hearing the Community: Evolution of a Nutrition and Physical Activity Program for African American Women to Improve Weight

Listening to the needs of the community is an important step toward reducing health disparities. Researchers may need to adjust their methods to maximize participation and benefit to the community. This report describes how the project team adjusted its approach to a weight loss intervention to support a community of African American women seeking to improve their health

The Ties that Bind: The Role of Place in Racial Identity Formation, Social Cohesion, Accord, and Discord in Two Historic, Black Gentrifying Atlanta Neighborhoods

Recent research has uncovered a new phenomenon in some distressed areas, black gentrification. Black gentrification follows the same pattern as mainstream gentrification with one notable exception: In black gentrifying neighborhoods both the poor and working class residents who resided in the neighborhood prior to its “gentrification” and the new residents of greater economic means are black. An additional hallmark of black gentrification that distinguishes it from traditional gentrification is that black gentrifiers in black gentrifying neighborhoods often feel a responsibility or obligation to their lower income black neighbors. Prior to the economic downturn in the United States, some in-town Atlanta neighborhoods were undergoing black gentrification. Amidst the current mortgage foreclosure epidemic facing the U.S., distressed urban areas like the ones under study, which began to gentrify in the last ten to twenty years, can easily fall prey to mortgage fraud and/or further decline. Sustained revitalization efforts require that the neighborhoods maintain a critical density level; therefore, neighborhoods cannot afford to lose more citizens. My dissertation focuses on two historic, black gentrifying in-town Atlanta neighborhoods: the Old Fourth Ward and the West End. The Old Fourth Ward is the location of the birth home of one of Atlanta’s most celebrated sons, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The West End, once a center of black consciousness in the city, now boasts one of the highest mortgage fraud rates in the nation. Revitalization efforts in both communities are in jeopardy. This dissertation explores ways to strengthen social and economic cohesion in these gentrifying black communities. Specifically, I argue that attachment to the neighborhood space (something I term “place affinity”) has the potential to obviate social tensions in gentrifying black communities and bind residents to each other and the social space they all occupy

Parents' and carers' understandings of the nature and purposes of parent-based intervention groups delivered by the paediatric Speech and Language Therapy service in Telford & Wrekin and Shropshire Primary Care Trusts: An exploratory study

Speech and language therapists regularly offer indirect group interventions providing parental advice or training, rather than direct treatments for communication-disabled children. Although this has been found to benefit children, there has been little research into the impact of such parent-based intervention groups on parents themselves. This is despite evidence that parents and speech and language therapists have differing perceptions regarding aspects of speech and language therapy and children's communication development. The aim of this study was to explore parents and carers' experiences of attending parent-based intervention groups in a local context, in order to investigate their perceptions of the nature and purposes of the groups they had attended and to develop a preliminary theoretical understanding of their experience. Nine mothers and one father who had completed at least one parent-based intervention course were interviewed. This generated descriptive qualitative data, which was analysed using grounded theory approaches to reflect the parents' priorities and concerns. Themes of parents' experiences of intervention sessions, parental gains during session attendance, intervention facilitating processes of personal change and empowerment, and impacts of parent-based intervention courses in the wider context, were identified. The study findings were used to produce a description, grounded in the data, of parents' understandings of the nature and purposes of parent-based intervention groups in speech and language therapy. Connections were made between the role played by the groups in the experience of parents in the current study and processes of parental adaptation and empowerment described in the literature on chronic illness and disability in children. A theoretical model of parents' experience of parent-based intervention groups was also developed. This study provides a preliminary overview of parents' experiences of parent-based intervention groups and includes a number of findings that support discrete observations and suggestions extant in the literature. It adds to the information available on parents' perceptions of speech and language therapy and indicates areas for further research into the costs and benefits of intervention from a parental perspective. The study findings, connections identified between the groups and processes of parental adaptation and empowerment, and the theoretical model presented have potential implications for clinical practice in the local area and may be transferable to other settings. However, the study was limited in size and scope and further research to test these findings will be required

A Comparison of the Heroines in Three Representative Novels of Concha Espina

It has been the intent of this study to present a closely referenced comparison of the heroines of three representative novels by Concha Espina. Through the use of developmental analyses and plot summaries of La esfinge maragata, El metal de los muertos and El Caliz rojo it has been possible to obtain a valid assessment of the similarities and contrasts found in the respective protagonists. In spite of the obvious differences in environmental, social and circumstantial elements, the three women evidence essentially the same basic personality traits, attitudes and reactions. The personal tragedy in the lives of the three women and the anguish suffered by them result from similar sources. Each, yearning for a life of happiness, concentrates all her energy and attention on an illusorily ideal male figure, only to learn of his basic weakness; consequently, each is deprived of the much wanted life of love and happiness with him. Regardless of the resultant disillusionment, the women remain spiritually faithful to their mistaken illusions. The unrealistic devotion exhibited by them in their romantic relationships constitutes their most extraordinary characteristic

Historical knowledge in a knowledge economy – what types of knowledge matter?

This article examines the potential of history as a subject to contribute to a ‘knowledge economy’. Global trends in curricula reforms have often emphasised generic competences and development of students’ critical thinking to benefit the future economic position of citizens and nations. However, viewing knowledge in these terms presents a reductive view, particularly given that there is no clear definition of the nature of the knowledge which could or should be universally deployed in the pursuit of a ‘knowledge economy’. This paper presents an argument that a focus on ‘powerful’ disciplinary knowledge and ‘valuable’ frameworks of knowledge, in areas such as history education rather than generic competences and skills, would better serve a knowledge economy. Drawing on two empirical studies from England and New Zealand, which present different policy contexts, the paper explores the extent to which the potential of history education is being realised to develop such powerful and valuable knowledge. The data reveal similar patterns in both contexts; despite the history teachers in both countries sharing a disciplinary understanding of the subject this is not comprehensively reflected in the curricula they construct, and there are few attempts to create coherent frameworks of knowledge. This suggests that the opportunities for history education to support the development of a knowledge economy have not been fully realised and exploited

Online Mentoring: A Success Story

Since February 1993, the Internet-based Electronic Emissary Project has been helping teachers locate other Internet account holders who are subject matter experts ( SMEs ) in different disciplines, for the purpose of setting up curriculum-based, electronic exchanges among experts,students and teachers. The Electronic Emissary matches K-12 teachers and students with professional partners elsewhere in the world, helping them to explore new ways of experiencing collaborative learning in computer-mediated contexts. We would like to share with you some of what we have learned about how to conduct successful, curriculum-based electronic mail exchanges, using one long-term exchange as an example