Search

This paper details four encounters we experienced while traveling in Cuba as part of a multiethnic delegation of US social justice advocates. The encounters were linked by a common thread of race, which made them noteworthy and uncomfortably familiar to us as Black women. Since our return to the US, we have reflected on the four encounters and concluded that, as a collective, they reinforce a lesson and highlight a fundamental challenge that is at the core of the work of all critical multicultural and social justice educators.

In this article I detail correspondences between a breach of decorum that occurred during a speech delivered by President Obama before a joint session of the United States Congress and an encounter between a teacher education student and me in a graduate-level multicultural education course. The encounter served as a powerful, albeit inadvertent, impetus to theorize the nature of persistent resistance to diversity and critical multicultural education in one teacher education unit.

BackgroundAlthough many probiotic products are currently available in yogurt or pill form in the United States (US), there is uncertainty surrounding the structure of regulation of these products. As more therapeutic probiotics are developed, changes to existing regulatory process in the United States may be required to meet the needs of patients and users in the population.ObjectiveThis study examined how patients with chronic gastrointestinal (GI) diseases view the regulation of probiotics.DesignWe conducted a multi-site qualitative study consisting of focus groups of patients with chronic gastrointestinal diseases at three tertiary hospitals: at [institutions removed for blinded review].ResultsWe conducted 22 focus groups with 136 patients with major gastrointestinal (GI) diseases between March and August 2009. Participants were not familiar with the existing regulation of probiotic products but wanted assurances of accurate labelling of strain as well as safety. Participants raised concerns that regulation of probiotics might be accompanied by greater costs, reduced access and increased involvement of pharmaceutical companies. Although participants voiced significant doubt of government regulators, they felt that products containing genetically modified probiotic strains should have oversight comparable to that of pharmaceutical drugs.Discussion and conclusionIf GI patient perspectives are indicative of public perceptions of therapeutic probiotics in the United States, consumers may expect more rigorous regulation in the future while simultaneously wanting low costs, easy access and low involvement of pharmaceutical companies. Manufacturers, translational scientists, clinicians and regulators should be sensitive to consumer attitudes when designing, testing and regulating new therapeutic probiotics.

Teacher perceptions of student abilities can affect crucial placement decisions that, in turn, affect student opportunities to learn. The author's research shows that this is particularly the case with black students who have earned high scores on math assessments but who, on the basis of teacher judgment, have not been recommended for placement in algebra in 8th grade. The author suggests a "less-is-more" approach--that is, remove teacher judgment from placement decisions and use universally available academic achievement performance data. This will increase the true identification of high-performing students, thereby increasing the opportunity to learn among students of different demographic backgrounds and reducing achievement gaps.

BACKGROUND: Researchers have the potential to utilize genetic modification (GM) technologies to create a hybrid of "food" and "medicine" that may challenge traditional understandings of what is "natural". Moral and ethical concerns are likely to arise in any discussion of these therapeutic foods and will affect the integration of products into clinical care and daily life. This study examined how patients with chronic gastrointestinal (GI) diseases view probiotics as future bioengineered therapeutic foods. METHODS: A multi-site qualitative study consisting of focus groups with chronic GI diseases was conducted at Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, and Johns Hopkins University RESULTS: We conducted twenty-two focus groups with 136 patients with major GI diseases between March and August 2009. GI patients associated the term "natural" with concepts of diminished risk and morally "good"; conversely, patients associated the term "unnatural" with things that are "risky," "foreign", and morally "bad". Readily available unmodified probiotics were more commonly described as "natural" while genetically modified probiotics were more commonly labeled as "unnatural" and "risky". However, patients acknowledged that not all natural products are safe, nor are unnatural products always harmful. CONCLUSIONS: If GI patient perspectives are indicative of public perceptions of therapeutic foods, our findings suggest that the potential benefits and risks of clinical and public health initiatives employing therapeutic foods will be understood in moralistic terms. Bioethicists and others should be sensitive to the implicit normative appeals that are often embedded in the language of what is "natural" and "unnatural".

In just over a year, Massachusetts public colleges and universities have galvanized a statewide movement to adopt more comprehensive use of Open Educational Resources (OER). There had been prior nascent efforts to increase the utilization of OER in Massachusetts including: the launch of the Open Education Initiative at UMass Amherst, the MA #Go Open Project funded by a TAACCCT grant and the creation of a MA Community College OER Hub. These initiatives served as watershed moments in the journey to begin to make more faculty, staff, administrators and students aware of the utility of OER as a learning approach and as an effective way of reducing rapidly rising textbook costs. However, these efforts were accelerated when the statewide Student Advisory Council (SAC) presented a resolution to the state Board of Higher Education (BHE) in April 2018 asking the board to recognize OER as an approach to generate textbook costs savings for students and calling on the state Department of Higher Education (DHE) to explore and identify opportunities for implementing OER on a broader scale.

This study is a longitudinal look at the different mathematics placement profiles of Black students and White students from late elementary school through 8th grade. Results revealed that Black students had reduced odds of being placed in algebra by the time they entered 8th grade even after controlling for performance in mathematics. An important implication of this study is that placement recommendations must be monitored to ensure that high-achieving students are placed appropriately, regardless of racial background.

Mathematics autobiographies have the potential to help teachers reflect on their identities as mathematics learners and to understand their role in the development of their students' mathematics identities. This paper reports on a professional development project for K-2 teachers (n = 41), in which participants were asked to write mathematics autobiographies. Using an adaptation of an existing framework for characterizing teachers' mathematics stories, we describe the consistencies among the participants' experiences as mathematics learners and the events that are identified as being the impetus for a transition from a negative to a positive attitude toward mathematics. Implications for both teachers and teacher educators are presented.

This article describes a multiyear research project involving practicing K-2 teachers and the incorporation of Moodle as a qualitative data portal. Utilizing a case study of two participants, findings from the Moodle-facilitated data point known as "e-forum" are used to examine whether the community-building goal of the research was realized, and to describe the nature of each teacher's orientation toward cultural relevance, a central theme of the study. (Contains 3 tables.)

This article uses data from 65 teachers participating in a K-2 mathematics professional development research project as an example of how to analyze video recordings of teachers' classroom lessons using mixed methods. Through their discussion, the authors demonstrate how using a mixed methods approach to classroom video analysis allows researchers to draw more comprehensive conclusions about participants both collectively and individually. Implications for using a mixed methods approach to analyze classroom video research are provided. (Contains 1 figure, 4 tables, and 2 notes.)

The 2008 elections ushered in a new era in U.S. politics with implications for race relations and social justice activity. Drawing parallels between the contemporary African American community and splintering undercurrents in the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME), the author urges cross-generational coalescence around an organizational agenda accentuating critical multicultural education for this new era. (Contains 1 footnote.)