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This qualitative study examined special education teachers' perceptions of student success in online instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic school closures to isolate the key determinants in the differential student outcomes reported by the teachers. Data were collected from 16 teachers in the U.S. state of California using semi-structured interviews and analyzed using thematic coding. The six themes that emerged from the data were that the key determinants of student outcomes were variables related to teacher, school administrator, district, student, parent, and pedagogy. The study showed that underlying deficit thinking in school professionals, lack of planned support for those parents and students needing the most support, and limited range of teaching practices were responsible for the equity gap seen in the differential student outcomes. Recommendations include training school administrators, providing parent support to access technology, addressing needs of non-English speaking families, expanding pedagogical practices, and planning for students with the most extensive support needs.

Background: The mental health of Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT), Master of Occupational Therapy (MOT), and Doctorate of Occupation Therapy (OTD) students was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The investigators explored the impact of the pandemic on the students' mental health. Methods: The study included 90 students from the DPT, MOT, and OTD programs. The data was collected using a survey including demographics and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21. Results: The prevalence of stress, anxiety, and depression increased two-fold in all three disciplines of students. Out of the 90 students, 60% reported stress, 52.2% anxiety, and 53.3% depression. No significant difference was observed between genders, marital status, and the different disciplines. Conclusion: This study shows that graduate DPT, MOT, and OTD students experienced a significant degree of mental health disorder during the pandemic. Adequate measures need to be adopted to support the well-being of the students and for a successful academic career.

This longitudinal study examines elementary teachers' self-efficacy for science teaching in the years after professional development (PD) ended and during a subsequent 3-year period of follow-up support. Self-efficacy is important because teachers make decisions about classroom activities based, in part, on how confident they are in their abilities to carry out specific instructional strategies. The central research question was, How does teachers' personal science teaching efficacy change during periods with and without PD support? Data sources included semistructured interviews, a self-efficacy assessment, and surveys conducted at five time points. Overall findings show a decline in teachers' personal science teaching efficacy in the years after PD ended. However, during the years of follow-up support, elementary teachers' self-efficacy in science teaching increased and, by the end of 3 years, returned to nearly the same level as when the initial PD ended. Case studies of four teachers highlight the shifts that occurred during the years with and without follow-up support. This study reinforces the need for, and potential value of, providing follow-up support for teachers to sustain PD outcomes over time.

This study relates the transformation of one student's narrative identity (stories told about the student by himself and others) which took place over four months as he engaged in the pedagogy of multiliteracies while creating a multimodal book with his favorite images of family and school; videos and images of his favorite activities at home and school; an identity chart with adjectives that best described him; strengths; and a transition plan describing what he wanted to do after school that was presented at the individualized education program (IEP) meeting. Grounded theory was used to analyze the data collected through interviews, observations, and video and audio recordings. Data indicated that multiliteracies enabled student agency and offered this student with extensive support needs, who had struggled to access literacy through traditional instruction, an opportunity to change his narrative identity from deficit to competence.

Traditional literacy practices using print-based texts exclude students with complex support needs from the full range of literacy activities provided to peers without disabilities, which may limit them to low-level literacy skills or functional skills. By contrast, by including various forms of representation and text, multiliteracies are uniquely positioned to address the literacy development of students with complex support needs. The present study aimed to investigate the changes in student engagement, teacher-student interaction, staff and parent perceptions, and self-advocacy opportunities created during the implementation of multiliteracies with students with complex support needs. In a public high school classroom in northern California with a teacher and six paraeducators, two students with complex support needs created a multimodal book to present as student input at their individualized education program meetings. The book included the students' favorite images of family and school, videos and images of their favorite activities at home and school, an identity chart with adjectives that best described them, a description of their strengths, and a transition plan describing what they wanted to do after school. Grounded theory was used to analyze the data collected through interviews, observations, and video and audio recordings. Data suggested that multiliteracies' pedagogy created new learning spaces, empowering teacher-student interactions, and student self-advocacy.

Seventh- and 8th-grade students in a within-teacher randomized control study read from visual-syntactic formatted text for 44 min per week over the course of 1 year. On the annual state assessment, we found small statistically significant improvements on the overall English Language Arts scaled score (ES = 0.05, p < 0.05) and the writing assessment (ES = 0.07, p < 0.01) for the treatment group compared to the control group. We found no interactions between gifted, special education, or English learner classification and treatment status on the effect on overall English Language Arts score, but our categorical and subgroup analyses showed that the use of visual-syntactic text formatting provided a modest benefit to middle school students who were near or at grade level in the prior school year.

Enzyme kinetics is an essential part of a chemistry curriculum, especially for students interested in biomedical research or in health care fields. Though the concept is routinely performed in undergraduate chemistry/biochemistry classrooms using other spectroscopic methods, we provide an optimized approach that uses a real-time monitoring of the kinetics by quantitative NMR (qNMR) spectroscopy and a direct analysis of the time course data using Lambert-W function. The century old Michaelis-Menten equation, one of the fundamental concepts in biochemistry, relates the time derivative of the substrate to two kinetic parameters (the Michaelis constant K[subscript M] and the maximum rate V[subscript max]) and to the concentration of the substrate. The exact solution to the Michaelis-Menten equation, in terms of the Lambert-W function, is not available in standard curve-fitting tools. The high-quality of the real-time qNMR data on the enzyme kinetics enables a revisit of the concept of applying the progress curve analysis. This is particularly made feasible with the advent of analytical approximations of the Lambert-W function. Thus, the combination of NMR experimental time-course data with progress curve analysis is demonstrated in the case of enzyme (invertase) catalyzed hydrolysis reaction (conversion of sucrose to fructose and glucose) to provide students with direct and simple estimations of kinetic parameters of Michaelis-Menten. Complete details on how to implement the experiment and perform data analysis are provided in the Supporting Information.

One of the least understood elements of refugee resettlement in the United States is the organizational matrix through which states implement their policies. States, as sub-national governments in a federal structure, have incredible discretion during the implementation process for much of the federal policies and programs administered from Washington, D.C. Drawing on extensive interviews with 18 policy implementers in Georgia and California, I argue that a hierarchical model of policy implementation predicated on the leadership of the state refugee coordinator is key to understanding resettlement policy and administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 9 January 1857, a large earthquake of magnitude 7.9 occurred on the San Andreas fault, with rupture initiating at Parkfield in central California and propagating in a southeasterly direction over a distance of more than 360 km. Such a unilateral rupture produces significant directivity toward the San Fernando and Los Angeles basins. Indeed, newspaper reports of sloshing observed in the Los Angeles river point to long-duration (1-2 min) and long-period (2-8 sec) shaking. If such an earthquake were to happen today, it could impose significant seismic demand on present-day tall buildings. Using state-of-the-art computational tools in seismology and structural engineering, validated using data from the 17 January 1994, magnitude 6.7 Northridge earthquake, we determine the damage to an existing and a new 18-story steel moment-frame building in southern California due to ground motion from two hypothetical magnitude 7.9 earthquakes on the San Andreas fault. Our study indicates that serious damage occurs in these buildings at many locations in the region in one of the two scenarios. For a north-to-south rupture scenario, the peak velocity is of the order of 1 m·sec-1 in the Los Angeles basin, including downtown Los Angeles, and 2 m·sec-1 in the San Fernando valley, while the peak displacements are of the older of 1 m and 2 m in the Los Angeles basin and San Fernando valley, respectively. For a south-to-north rupture scenario the peak velocities and displacements are reduced by a factor of roughly 2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]