Search

The purpose of this qualitative study was to determine doctoral student perceptions about an experiential learning summer study away program involving one Texas educational leadership doctoral (Ed.D.) program. Students shared their perceptions about how the four-day study away trip advanced their professional and educational development in becoming more effective scholarpractitioner leaders. Data were collected and analyzed from a completed end-of-course reflective assignment involving students who participated in the study away program. After coding the data and identifying the common themes that emerged from the reflective writing narratives, there were four overarching themes that were derived from the students' responses: (1) encouraging collaborative campus-level decision making; (2) understanding the various contexts and environments of various public school campuses; (3) recognizing the importance of stakeholder trust within the educational setting; and (4) examining the experiential observations within the context of leadership theory and research. The researchers conclude that the experiential learning experience positively impacted the development of scholar-practitioner leaders. The authors further discuss the potential benefits that study away programs can have for other Ed.D. programs considering this option and offer recommendations about how faculty and site-based administrators can work together incorporating similar study away programs for their respective doctoral students.

Human-wildlife conflict is an important factor in the modern biodiversity crisis and has negative effects on both humans and wildlife (such as property destruction, injury, or death) that can impede conservation efforts for threatened species. Effectively addressing conflict requires an understanding of where it is likely to occur, particularly as climate change shifts wildlife ranges and human activities globally. Here, we examine how projected shifts in cropland density, human population density, and climatic suitability-three key drivers of human-elephant conflict-will shift conflict pressures for endangered Asian and African elephants to inform conflict management in a changing climate. We find that conflict risk (cropland density and/or human population density moving into the 90th percentile based on current-day values) increases in 2050, with a larger increase under the high-emissions regional rivalry SSP3 - RCP 7.0 scenario than the low-emissions sustainability SSP1 - RCP 2.6 scenario. We also find a net decrease in climatic suitability for both species along their extended range boundaries, with decreasing suitability most often overlapping increasing conflict risk when both suitability and conflict risk are changing. Our findings suggest that as climate changes, the risk of conflict with Asian and African elephants may shift and increase and managers should proactively mitigate that conflict to preserve these charismatic animals.

Aim: This study addresses the challenge of predicting the response of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) patients to immunotherapy.Methods: Using DNA methylation cytometry, we analyzed the immune profiles of six HNSCC patients who showed a positive response to immunotherapy over a year without disease progression.Results: There was an initial increase in CD8 T memory cells and natural killer cells during the first four cycles of immunotherapy, which then returned to baseline levels after a year. Baseline CD8 T cell levels were lower in HNSCC immunotherapy responders but became similar to those in healthy subjects after immunotherapy.Conclusion: These findings suggest that monitoring fluctuations in immune profiles could potentially identify biomarkers for immunotherapy response in HNSCC patients.

Single cancer cells within a tumor exhibit variable levels of resistance to drugs, ultimately leading to treatment failures. While tumor heterogeneity is recognized as a major obstacle to cancer therapy, standard dose-response measurements for the potency of targeted kinase inhibitors aggregate populations of cells, obscuring intercellular variations in responses. In this work, we develop an analytical and experimental framework to quantify and model dose responses of individual cancer cells to drugs. We first explore the connection between population and single-cell dose responses using a computational model, revealing that multiple heterogeneous populations can yield nearly identical population dose responses. We demonstrate that a single-cell analysis method, which we term a threshold inhibition surface, can differentiate among these populations. To demonstrate the applicability of this method, we develop a dose-titration assay to measure dose responses in single cells. We apply this assay to breast cancer cells responding to phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase inhibition (PI3Ki), using clinically relevant PI3Kis on breast cancer cell lines expressing fluorescent biosensors for kinase activity. We demonstrate that MCF-7 breast cancer cells exhibit heterogeneous dose responses with some cells requiring over ten-fold higher concentrations than the population average to achieve inhibition. Our work reimagines dose-response relationships for cancer drugs in an emerging paradigm of single-cell tumor heterogeneity.

Climate projections and their effects in the San Francisco Estuary have been evaluated as part of the US Geological Survey’s CASCaDE2 project. Understanding the ecological effects of climate change can help manage and maintain the ecological health and productivity of the San Francisco Estuary. In this study, we assessed downscaled air temperature data from 10 global climate models (GCMs) under two representative concentration pathway (RCP) trajectories for greenhouse gas concentrations for three regions of the San Francisco Estuary: Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, Suisun and Grizzly bays, and Suisun Marsh. We also used previously derived regression models to estimate future water temperatures at 16 locations in the upper San Francisco Estuary. We used a thermal regime approach to summarize water temperature projections to investigate changes to the thermal regime of the upper San Francisco Estuary, and used the Delta Smelt (Hypomesus transpacificus) to demonstrate the effects that a warming climate may have on the habitat needs of this fish species. Our results suggested there were no major differences in the extent of air-temperature warming among the three regions. Annual average air temperatures were projected to increase approximately 2.0 °C and 4.7 °C by the end of the century for the low and high RCP scenarios, respectively. We found timing, frequency, and magnitude metrics varied by period and RCP scenario, while duration and variability metrics varied by space for water-temperature thermal regimes. For example, the spawning window for Delta Smelt (thermal-regime duration metric) is projected to expand in the future, with spawning starting earlier for both RCP scenarios for most sites. Although our thermal-regime analysis focused on the life history of Delta Smelt, similar approaches could be used to assess climate-change threats to a wide array of native and invasive terrestrial and aquatic species found in San Francisco Estuary.

Background: Bladder cancer and therapy responses hinge on immune profiles in the tumor microenvironment (TME) and blood, yet studies linking tumor-infiltrating immune cells to peripheral immune profiles are limited. Methods: DNA methylation cytometry quantified TME and matched peripheral blood immune cell proportions. With tumor immune profile data as the input, subjects were grouped by immune infiltration status and consensus clustering. Results: Immune hot and cold groups had different immune compositions in the TME but not in circulating blood. Two clusters of patients identified with consensus clustering had different immune compositions not only in the TME but also in blood. Conclusion: Detailed immune profiling via methylation cytometry reveals the significance of understanding tumor and systemic immune relationships in cancer patients.

Student's social status within the context of physical education group work can influence engagement and behaviour during group tasks (Cohen [1994]. Restructuring the classroom: Conditions for productive small groups. "Review of Educational Research", 64(1), 1-35. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543064001001). According to Bourdieu ([1985]. The forms of capital. In J. G. Richard (Ed.), "Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education" (pp. 241-258)), this phenomenon is due to the group creating a doxa, or hierarchy, of social capital brought forth by each group member. Research shows social status can influence the experiences of students within group tasks, indicating the potential for unequal participation and interactions during group work (Brock et al. [2009]. The influence of student status on student interactions and experiences during a sport education unit. "Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy", 14(4), 355-375. https://doi.org/10.1080/17408980802400494; Cohen & Lotan [2014]. "Designing group work: Strategies for the heterogeneous classroom" (3rd ed.). Teachers College Press). In the sport education model, students experience affiliation with their teammates to build their sense of belonging and investment (García López & Kirk [2022]. Empowering children from socially vulnerable backgrounds through the use of roles in sport education. "Sport, Education and Society", 27(6), 676-688. https://doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2021.1897563; MacPhail et al. [2004]. Sport education: Promoting team affiliation through physical education. "Journal of Teaching in Physical Education", 23(2), 106-122. https://doi.org/10.1123/jtpe.23.2.106). Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore students' perceptions of status, roles, and team dynamics while participating in a sport education unit. Participants were eight fifth grade students representing two teams participating in a 20-lesson sport education floor hockey unit. Data collection included individual semi-structured interviews based on critical incidents as stimulated recall from GoPro recorded lessons. Results indicated students perceived their status to be based on their skill ability, used a more passive approach to group discussions to avoid conflict, and expressed frustrations with lack of contributions by teammates. Through transcendental phenomenology, this article reveals the perceptions of students' experiences related to their group identities and socialisation as they participate in physical education group work.

Some descriptions of learning represent the process as the development of organisations of elements. Various organisations have been proposed, for example, schemata and conceptual structures. Such representations assume that mental entities, such as concepts, are sufficiently stable and differentiated to be treated as units. We discuss these assumptions and propose a new term, assemblages, to refer to a person's activation of two or more conceptual resources in a context. Methodological challenges have resulted in a lack of research that examines how assemblages are formed. This study presents data from a microgenetic, multiple case study of four 16-17-year-old students. The participants were interviewed weekly, using various probes related to forces and motion over six months. We focus on two aspects of the assembly process in our analysis. First, we report data that indicate that participants perceived the units they assembled differently from expert conceptualisations and reflect on the stability of their assemblages. Second, we discuss how participants' expectations about the coherence of knowledge impact their assembly. We propose that future research investigates the stability and boundaries of conceptual resources and suggest teachers and researchers are cautious in assuming that data indicate a conceptual resource is stable or unitary.

Caregiver coaching is a common component of early intervention services, but providers may be unfamiliar with methods of coaching for families of children who are Deaf or hard of hearing (DHH). This article provides guidance for early interventionists to implement caregiver coaching to facilitate language development in their children who are DHH. While the paper is written mainly for general interventionists who may be less familiar with the special needs of families with children who are DHH, the coaching guidance provided here may also be of value to early intervention providers who routinely serve this population as a model for coaching.

This qualitative study examined coach-teacher interactions among eight teachers, one administrator, and three university-based coaches in one rural elementary school. Framed within a theory of agency, we examined videos of coaching interactions as coaches and teachers debriefed and co-planned vocabulary instructional ideas stemming from a yearlong, schoolwide professional learning opportunity. We found that teachers' agentive actions (i.e. intentionality, autonomy, reflectivity, efficacy doubt, principled resistance) were in response coaches' talk that elicited reflection, sought clarification, expanded on instructional suggestions, and affirmed teachers' contributions to coaching conversations. We also found that teachers' challenges or resistance to presented vocabulary principles and literacy practices were not always acknowledged or taken up by the coaches. We conclude that reconsidering how and why teachers resist coaching suggestions might inform how we support and prepare coaches to work with teachers in ways that value and trust their individual contributions and prompt them to act agentively toward continuous improvement.

Pre-service teachers are required to become reflective practitioners who can adapt their skills to a range of contexts and the diverse needs of learners. Many consider the practicum experience as critical to forming values and dispositions that are essential to a professional teacher identity. This article focuses on the experiences of five White pre-service teachers who volunteered to teach in remote Indigenous communities in South Australia, specifically the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands, a desert environment in the far northwest of the state. As these pre-service teachers document their experiences, we draw upon Gee's work on identity to gain insights into how they understand the "rules" of their context and their own positionality. Our research reveals the ways privilege can foster possibilities and constraints, which afford certain subject positions for these pre-service teachers. We focus specifically on a prominent theme in their narratives--"authenticity" concerning their conception of teaching and learning.

Purpose: Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) often play a vital role in the delivery of university programs, yet GTAs may lack pedagogical experience. The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of GTAs during their first semester of university teaching. Specifically, we provide a descriptive account of the GTAs' lived experiences and how departments can best prepare GTAs. Method: Four first-year GTAs at a university in the United States participated in the study. Data collection included participant journals, focus group interviews, and individual interviews. Results: Utilizing situated learning theory as a theoretical frame, data sources generated four themes. GTAs reported positive experiences as ample support was provided, expectations were outlined, experiential learning occurred, and confidence increased through the establishment of routines. Discussion/ Conclusion: Findings indicated that GTAs can acclimate to their new universities and responsibilities with guidance, resources, and support.

The success of teachers is tied to their effectiveness in managing student behavior. In this meta-analysis, we identified 49 single-case-design studies that evaluated the effectiveness of teacher training on their implementation of behavioral support strategies. Training was most often provided in a one-on-one format (n = 18) and included ongoing coaching (n = 20). Thirty-three of the 49 designs met What Works Clearinghouse standards with or without reservations. The overall between-case standardized mean difference effect size was d = 1.50. We analyzed and grouped teacher- and student-level outcomes as a result of training into five domains: (a) teacher-delivered praise (d = 1.94), (b) teacher desirable behavior (e.g., treatment fidelity; d = 1.22), (c) teacher undesirable behavior (e.g., reprimands; d = 0.87), (d) student desirable behavior (d = 1.88), and (e) student undesirable behavior (d = 1.22). Across all studies, the combined nonoverlap of all pairs scores ranged from 0.37 to 1.0 (M = 0.866). We discuss future areas of research as well as implications for teacher training in behavioral support implementation.

Amidst institutional reckonings with anti-blackness, minority-serving institutions (MSIs) are thought to be an intervention. But, how do Black students perceive being served at Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs)? Analyzing focus groups (n= 33), we find Black students perceived anti-blackness at an HSI from: overrepresentation of white personnel in power; lack of culturally attuned and financial support; racially hostile climate; and little solidarity from non-Black Latinx and other peers. We show that HSIs contend with anti-Black institutional embeddedness, too, and argue that the goals of HSIs to serve racially minoritized students will not be achieved unless they address institutional, organizational, and interpersonal anti-Blackness.

Background: Adolescents with overweight or obesity are at greater risk of having physical and psychosocial consequences. With increased disparities and inadequate literature on prevalence of adolescent weight status in rural Appalachia, there is potential for further complications. Unfortunately, adolescent obesity treatment options are often limited, especially in medically underserved regions. Methods: This cross-sectional study of adolescents at eight rural Appalachian schools examined weight status among and associations between body mass index percentile (BMIp) categories and health-related perceptions and weight-control intentions. Previously validated instruments were utilized. Analyses included independent samples t-tests, ANOVA tests, and chi-squared tests. Results: Of 814 adolescents (ages 11-13; 55.0% girls), BMIp revealed 20.8% overweight, 22.7% obese, and 10.6% severely obese. Adolescents with higher BMIp categories reported poorer self-rated health, inaccurate weight perceptions, and greater weight loss intentions (all p < 0.05). Conclusions: Findings, including high prevalence of adolescents with overweight and obesity, emphasize the need for more obesity prevention and treatment options. Schools may be an ideal setting to reach at-risk adolescents and provide obesity prevention and treatment options, especially in medically underserved regions such as rural Appalachia. Opportunities and challenges to apply findings, including school-based obesity programs, are discussed.

Parents, particularly mothers, of autistic children may be especially vulnerable to the negative effects of COVID-19. The current longitudinal study examined changes in psychological distress (anxiety, depression, stress) and marital functioning of mothers and fathers of autistic children across three time points between April and October 2020, and the extent to which pre-COVID factors predicted changes in these outcomes. Participants were 94 mothers and 58 fathers of autistic children drawn from a larger longitudinal study about family relationships and autistic children's mental health that began prior to the pandemic. Results indicated that mothers reported higher levels of psychological distress compared to fathers in July and October 2020. Although, on average, levels of psychological distress and marital functioning did not significantly change for mothers and fathers, pre-pandemic child functioning and marital satisfaction predicted individual differences in change in marital satisfaction during the pandemic for mothers. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Purpose: A common goal of peer-mediated interventions is to train peers to successfully initiate and maintain social and linguistic interactions with a target child in the classroom. Ample evidence indicates that peer-mediated interventions improve social and linguistic outcomes for students in the primary and later grades with developmental disabilities; however, relatively little work has focused on applying these approaches to socially isolated preschoolers who are vulnerable to academic and social challenges. In this early-stage feasibility study, we examined the potential of Promoting Early Engagement, Relationships, and Socialization (PEERS), a peer-mediated intervention designed to support socially isolated preschoolers. The main goal was to consider whether the intervention showed promise for improving the social and linguistic experiences of young, isolated children and was appropriate for implementation in a preschool setting. Method: In one preschool classroom, two peers who were well connected to their classmates were trained via storybook-based activities to provide social support to an isolated classmate. In-person and sensing technology observations were used to examine the target student's incoming peer interactions, outgoing peer interactions, and physical proximity to peers. Results: In-person observations showed a trend toward increased interactions; sensing technology data, which provided longer snapshots of classroom experiences, were more variable. In addition, teachers perceived PEERS to be appropriate and effective. Conclusion: The findings of this study support further investigation of storybook-based peer-mediated interventions in preschool settings to improve the social and linguistic experiences of children who are socially isolated.

Although evidence-based practices for improving academic engagement for students with emotional and/or behavioral disorders (EBD) have been identified, many teachers do not implement these practices with optimal fidelity. Thus, effective strategies are needed to improve teacher fidelity. Performance feedback is an effective professional development strategy, but it is unclear whether ancillary strategies like goal setting might further improve fidelity. In this study, we evaluated the effects of email performance feedback with and without goal setting on teacher implementation of opportunities to respond and behavior-specific praise using a multiple probe design. Participants were four general and special educators at a U.S. alternative school for students with EBD. Results indicated that a combination of written performance feedback and goal setting was effective, and that performance feedback alone was also effective. We were unable to determine whether the goal-setting component strengthened the performance feedback. Teachers provided positive feedback about the utility and feasibility of performance feedback with goal setting.

This study investigates undergraduate STEM students' interpretation of quantities and quantitative relationships on graphical representations in biology (population growth) and chemistry (titration) contexts. Interviews (n = 15) were conducted to explore the interplay between students' covariational reasoning skills and their use of disciplinary knowledge to form mental images during graphical interpretation. Our findings suggest that disciplinary knowledge plays an important role in students' ability to interpret scientific graphs. Interviews revealed that using disciplinary knowledge to form mental images of represented quantities may enhance students' covariational reasoning abilities, while lacking it may hinder more sophisticated covariational reasoning. Detailed descriptions of four students representing contrasting cases are analyzed, showing how mental imagery supports richer graphic sense-making. In the cases examined here, students who have a deep understanding of the disciplinary concepts behind the graphs are better able to make accurate interpretations and predictions. These findings have implications for science education, as they suggest instructors should focus on helping students to develop a deep understanding of disciplinary knowledge in order to improve their ability to interpret scientific graphs.

Most biology undergraduates learn about mutations in multiple classrooms throughout their college career. Understanding personalised genome test results, genome editing controversies, and the appearance of new variants of viruses or antibiotic resistant bacteria all require foundational knowledge about mutations. However, the abstract nature of molecular processes surrounding mutations makes them one of the more difficult topics for students to understand and apply. Instructors need valid assessment tools to document student understanding and tailor their instructional methods to address student knowledge gaps. We describe here the development and validation of the Mutations Criterion Referenced Assessment (MuCRA). This formative assessment was developed through an iterative process involving expert feedback and student responses to both open-ended and multiple-choice questions. The final MuCRA is composed of 10 multiple-choice questions aligned with three learning objectives. The item difficulty for each question was between 0.32-0.65, while the discrimination index ranged from 0.31-0.75 and the reliability (KR20) for the MuCRA was 0.69. The congruence analyses demonstrated distractors are capturing student misconceptions in 9/10 questions. These data indicate that the MuCRA can be used to reliably assess student learning and common misconceptions about mutations.

As the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) increases, there is a growing need to develop physical activity interventions that address the behavioral challenges experienced by individuals with ASD. Physical education teachers have employed behavioral supports that add more structure and adapt the environment for individuals with ASD, which are associated with increased engagement for individuals with ASD during PE. The purpose of this study was to quantify motor engaged behaviors (i.e. motor appropriate (MA)), motor inappropriate (MI), motor supported (MS) during skill practice in 18 individuals with ASD (ages 7-19 years) participating in an adapted tennis program (ACEing Autism) using the Academic Learning Time in Physical Education (ALT-PE) instrument. Overall, the supports provided during the program may have enabled participants with ASD to spend more time in MA and MS than MI. Indeed, the participants spent over 50% of their time in MA during the program.

Abstract Chronic inflammation is associated with diabetes and contributes to the development and progression of micro- and macrovascular complications. Transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) has been proposed to reduce levels of circulating inflammatory cytokines in non-diabetics by activating the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway. We investigated the anti-inflammatory potential of tVNS as a secondary endpoint of a randomized controlled trial in people with diabetes (NCT04143269). 131 people with diabetes (type 1: n = 63; type 2: n = 68), gastrointestinal symptoms and various degrees of autonomic neuropathy were included and randomly assigned to self-administer active (n = 63) or sham (n = 68) tVNS over two successive study periods: (1) Seven days with four daily administrations and, (2) 56 days with two daily administrations. Levels of systemic inflammatory cytokines (IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, TNF-α, IFN-γ) were quantified from blood samples by multiplex technology. Information regarding age, sex, diabetes type, and the presence of cardiac autonomic neuropathy (CAN) was included in the analysis as possible confounders. No differences in either cytokine were seen after study period 1 and 2 between active and sham tVNS (all p-values > 0.08). Age, sex, diabetes type, presence of CAN, and baseline levels of inflammatory cytokines were not associated with changes after treatment (all p-values > 0.07). A tendency towards slight reductions in TNF-α levels after active treatment was observed in those with no CAN compared to those with early or manifest CAN (p = 0.052). In conclusion, tVNS did not influence the level of systemic inflammation in people with diabetes.