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Many U.S. schools utilize grade retention (repeating grades when not meeting academic benchmarks) to allow more time for students to learn grade level material. However, some research suggests retention may increase inequalities and not help students progress. We use national data (Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study 2014-2017) and logistic regression to examine what predicts the likelihood of elementary school retention and whether retention is associated with long term outcomes. We find that race and family income did not predict who was most likely to be retained. As expected, boys were more likely to be retained than girls. Most importantly, we show that, of students in major metropolitan areas, retention did not predict long-term academic outcomes (regardless of race, sex, or familial income). Retention did predict long-term exclusionary discipline outcomes for Black students only supporting the School to Prison Pipeline framework.

The increase in the prevalence of mental illness among Black millennials has led to more awareness and advocacy within the generation. However, Black millennial men are still utilizing counseling services at significantly lower rates than millennial Black women and men of other races. Consequently, this leads to an increase in suicide completions and undiagnosed mental health issues among Black men who experience more severe and disabling symptoms of mental illness. An exploration of racism, stigma, mental health in the Black community, and Black masculinity influenced the development of this study. Based on past reported themes, Black Masculinity and Critical Race Theory are utilized as a multi-dimensional framework for this phenomenological study to provide in-depth information on the barriers to counseling experienced by millennial Black men in a metropolitan city in North Carolina. Using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis of the semi-structured interviews of this study, results indicated the following three themes as experienced barriers: "Black Pride", "Classical Masculinity", and "Negative Perceptions of Mental Health and Counseling." Implications for improving advocacy efforts in similar metropolitan areas by mental health professionals, universities, and general social justice advocates, as well as future research, are provided.

Trauma-informed frameworks are needed in metropolitan and urban university settings because many who enter higher education have experienced trauma or will experience trauma while at the university. This paper addresses the neurobiological and psychological underpinnings of trauma and addresses how these experiences can pose academic challenges, leading to misinterpretations of students' behaviors by faculty. This paper provides faculty with the knowledge to recognize, empathize, and respond effectively to students with trauma experiences and all students. The authors share four practical strategies for implementation (address feeling overwhelmed, address planning for assignments, provide ways to remember content and incorporate a focus on learning content) in the metropolitan and urban university classroom to create an inclusive educational environment that facilitates learning and growth for students who have experienced trauma and all students.

In the fall of 2019, our large southeastern metropolitan university launched a campus strategically situated in downtown Orlando. As we all remember, in the spring of 2020, as our campus was starting to build momentum as a student and community-centered hub, the world shut down because of a global pandemic. Our challenges over the last several years have been multifaceted. Our university lost key administrators who championed the efforts of the new campus and we have been trying to reclaim the vision and purpose of this space. We have also had a dearth of faculty engagement at the new campus partly because of so many remote courses and meetings. These challenges impact all stakeholders involved with the downtown campus. To reclaim our purpose, we interviewed key stakeholders (N = 21) connected to the university and/or the community to then use their perspectives on the downtown campus as well as their thoughts on community-engaged scholarship (CES) to create a strategic plan to move forward. To code our 188 (N = 188) units of analysis we used the six categories of community engagement as identified by Gordon Da Cruz, (2018). These categories include community-identified issues, scholarly investigation of public issues, collaborative and mutually beneficial community-university partnerships, collaborative knowledge production, institutional resources for the public good, and integration with faculty scholarship. Our findings reveal the following breakdown: community-identified issues (n = 12), scholarly investigation of public issues (n = 15), collaborative and mutually beneficial community-university partnerships (n = 66), collaborative knowledge production (n = 26), institutional resources for the public good (n = 50), and integration with faculty scholarship (n = 19). We used these distinctions as well as stakeholder suggestions to build a strategic plan and our seven primary goals or objectives for moving forward into our next phase.

E-learning tools technology is a paradigm shift in facilitating learning in our world today and the driving force of education in developed countries. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the accessibility and utilization of E-learning tools for teaching biology in secondary schools in Ilorin metropolis. The study was guided by the technology acceptance model theory, and employed a descriptive survey design. The population of the study were all biology teachers in public secondary schools in Ilorin metropolis. The sample size was determined from the estimate of the target population which is 368. The sample size for this study was 250 respondents from 100 public secondary schools. A well-structured questionnaire was the instrument. The data collected was analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings showed lack of access and low or non-utilization of E-learning tools for teaching biology in public secondary schools in Ilorin metropolis while factors observed to be responsible for the findings are low or lack of awareness on the part of teachers, poor policy formulation to incorporate the use of e-learning tools and poor infrastructure in the schools.

Anchor movements rest on the premise that people- and place-based initiatives can be mutually reinforcing. The community development movement, however, has been haunted for years by the people-place dilemma -- the idea that efforts to help people harm efforts to uplift places and vice versa. Most of the literature on the anchor strategy has focused on one horn of the dilemma, namely, the problem that revitalizing a place may lead to rising housing costs that burden and ultimately displace longtime lower-income residents of the neighborhood. In this article, we examine the other horn of the people-place dilemma -- that helping people in disinvested communities may enable them to move elsewhere, leaving behind poorer communities. We examine this issue through a case study of the St. Louis Anchor Action Network (STLAAN), a collaboration of 16 anchor institutions. St. Louis is a classic legacy city that once enjoyed rapid growth but is now characterized by a falling population and high poverty. We document longstanding trends that have drained STLAAN's focus geography of people and resources, as well as more recent growth of an "eds and meds" economy that presents an opportunity to address decades of disinvestment and decline. We document STLAAN's efforts to invest in its focus geography and the people who live there and conclude with research proposals that could help guide anchor initiatives facing similar challenges.

Abundant research has covered the benefits of and barriers to partnerships between schools and community-based organizations (CBOs; Sanders, 2001; Valli et al., 2016). The aim is for schools and CBOs to come together to foster student growth, particularly during out-of-school time. If two independent organizations, such as a school and a nonprofit CBO, are to work together to provide out-of-school time (OST) programming, then they must have common goals and set clear expectations. This study conceptualizes school-CBO collaboration as coordination of services and resources for children and their families through transparent and open dialogue about children's specific needs. Although literature detailing the characteristics of healthy school-CBO partnerships is abundant, few studies focus specifically on school staff members' perceptions of these partnerships. The authors' study aims to fill this gap. It suggests that schools take an active role in determining what their student body needs regarding OST programming and continually evaluate the fit between the needs and the programming. The aim of this study is to understand how school staff perceived OST programming provided by a CBO in their schools. The authors focused on four public schools in a single district in the southern U.S. where a single nonprofit CBO offered three empowerment-focused OST programs.

Colleges and universities have implemented a broad range of initiatives to support student success. Problem solving courses and course supplements are one approach. Evaluation of these courses has shown positive outcomes in terms of improved academic performance and other benefits. A number of these studies have also reported the largest positive effects with underperforming student groups. To further explore this approach a novel general education academic success course was developed. The course integrated a comprehensive problem-solving model into lectures and assignments as the basis of an active learning instructional strategy. Students were taught the model along with relevant academic skills content. They then applied the model to a personal challenge affecting their success in school and life. Using a matched cohort design, 826 course participants were compared with a campus-wide sample matched on key variables. Generalized linear models were used to estimate between group mean differences, and a Cox proportional hazards model was used to compare time to graduation. Results showed that students who successfully completed the course achieved higher cumulative GPAs overall compared with matched peers. Highest GPAs for students who took the course as freshmen suggested a transfer of knowledge over time. Results also showed that the course significantly benefited students from historically at-risk populations in terms of higher GPAs, units earned, retention, and graduation rates. This study shows that a well designed problem solving course can help students, especially those who struggle academically, to more effectively meet the challenges of college and daily life.

Background: Competent clinical reasoning forms the foundation for effective and efficient clinical swallowing examination (CSE) and consequent dysphagia management decisions. While the nature of initial CSEs has been evaluated, it remains unclear how new information gathered by speech-language therapists (SLTs) throughout a patient's acute-care journey is integrated into their initial clinical reasoning and management processes and used to review and revise initial management recommendations. Aims: To understand how SLTs' clinical reasoning and decision-making regarding dysphagia assessment and management evolve as patients transition through acute hospital care from referral to discharge. Methods & Procedures: A longitudinal, qualitative approach was employed to gather information from two SLTs who managed six patients at a metropolitan acute-care hospital. A retrospective 'think-aloud' protocol was utilized to prompt SLTs regarding their clinical reasoning and decision-making processes during initial and subsequent CSEs and patient interactions. Three types of concept maps were created based on these interviews: a descriptive concept map, a reasoning map and a hypothesis map. All concept maps were evaluated regarding their overall structure, facts gathered, types of reasoning engaged in (inductive versus deductive), types of hypotheses generated, and the diagnosis and management recommendations made following initial CSE and during subsequent dysphagia management. Outcomes & Results: Initial CSEs involved a rich process of fact-gathering, that was predominantly led by inductive reasoning (hypothesis generation) and some application of deductive reasoning (hypothesis testing), with the primary aims of determining the presence of dysphagia and identifying the safest diet and fluid recommendations. During follow-up assessments, SLTs engaged in increasingly more deductive testing of initial hypotheses, including fact-gathering aimed at determining the tolerance of current diet and fluid recommendations or the suitability for diet and/or fluid upgrade and less inductive reasoning. Consistent with this aim, SLTs' hypotheses were focused primarily on airway protection and medical status during the follow-up phase. Overall, both initial and follow-up swallowing assessments were targeted primarily at identifying suitable management recommendations, and less so on identifying and formulating diagnoses. None of the patients presented with adverse respiratory and/or swallowing outcomes during admission and following discharge from speech pathology. Conclusions & Implications: Swallowing assessment and management across the acute-care journey was observed as a high-quality, patient-centred process characterized by iterative cycles of inductive and deductive reasoning. This approach appears to maximize efficiency without compromising the quality of care. The outcomes of this research encourage further investigation and translation to tertiary and post-professional education contexts as a clear understanding of the processes involved in reaching diagnoses and management recommendations can inform career-long refinement of clinical skills.

Research indicates that students benefit from working with faculty with whom they can identify. Do Hispanic students find Hispanic faculty with whom to work at Hispanic Serving Institutions? To answer that question, this study builds on a 13-year line of research that has focused on engaged, public, metropolitan research universities. From a national sample of 35 such universities, this study examines the eight R1 Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). These eight HSIs serve as important anchor institutions in their respective metropolitan regions: (a) Florida International University (Miami, FL); (b) University of California, Riverside (Los Angeles, CA); (c) University of Houston, Houston (Houston, TX); (d) University of Illinois, Chicago (Chicago, IL); (e) University of New Mexico (Albuquerque, NM); (f) University of North Texas, Denton (Dallas, TX); and (g) University of Texas, Arlington (Dallas, TX). Using IPEDS data, this study examines the proportional representation (ratio) of faculty to students in 18 intersectional gender-race/ethnicity categories for each HSI over the 10-year period, 2011 to 2020. The central statistic is the percentage of full-time faculty in a gender-race/ethnicity category (e.g., Female Hispanic/Latino full-time faculty) is subtracted by the percentage of 12- month unduplicated student headcount in that same category (e.g., Female Hispanic/Latino students). When the outcome of this operation is positive, the faculty in that category are said to be overrepresented; when negative, underrepresented. The study's findings demonstrate the underrepresentation of Female Hispanic/Latino faculty at these HSIs and the overrepresentation of Male White faculty. Details of each university's dynamics are discussed, as well as their overall pattern.

In many ways, Arizona is on the forefront of school choice: in addition to a state-wide open enrollment law, it was one of the first states to adopt charter school legislation in 1994 and currently has the second-highest percentage of public school students attending charter schools in the nation. Despite the extensive research on school choice, less is known about whether choice systems meaningfully impart more opportunities for students classified as English learners, a diverse group that has been the subject of multiple discriminatory policies and has one of the lowest graduation rates in the state. The current paper uses geospatial analysis to examine English learner participation in school choice in one Arizona metropolitan area. The results indicate that charter schools consistently under-enroll EL students regardless of demographic variability across geographic locations. Charter school locational patterns may be one contributing factor to EL enrollment disparities, though they are not likely to be the only reason. Employing a conceptual framework of motility or "mobility capital" (Kaufman et al., 2004) and a critical stance on the spatial dimensions of neoliberal reforms, findings suggest that unregulated school choice may not reliably provide improved schooling options for students classified as English learners.

Suburbs were once a haven for advantaged, White families to avoid city life and access high-status schools. This urban-suburban divide, however, has changed in recent decades as suburban communities (and their school districts) have diversified. This study provides an updated cross-sectional portrait of recent racial-ethnic segregation and inequality between and within urban and suburban school districts in U.S. metropolitan areas. We find that the urban-suburban divide remains an important stratifying force--a substantial portion of racial-ethnic residential and school segregation, as well as racial-ethnic inequality in school poverty and test scores, occurs between urban and suburban school districts. Significant segregation and inequality also occur between and within suburban school districts. Suburban stratification is a key feature of the geography of inequality, warranting theoretical and methodological attention.

This article examines the most recent trends on neighborhood racial integration in New York--the country's largest metropolitan area in 2019 with a total population of 19.2 million. We ask how the suburbanization of both immigration and poverty have transformed suburbs over the last two decades. We highlight four findings. First, ethnoracial diversification has led to a significant decline in nonintegrated neighborhoods and a sharp rise in integrated neighborhoods, but such a decline is more dramatic in suburbs than in cities. Second, White-integrated neighborhoods remain the most prevalent form of neighborhood integration in both cities and suburbs. Third, immigrant neighborhoods are more likely to be integrated in both suburbs and cities, but immigration's impact on neighborhood integration in suburbs was stronger in 2000 than in 2019. Finally, the impacts of concentrated immigration, affluence, and disadvantage on neighborhood integration are consistent across suburbs and cities, pointing to convergent processes over time.

One hundred popular children's books for ages 0-6 were selected from a local metropolitan library system with data from 10 library branches. These frequently checked out books were then analyzed for how disabilities were represented in the books. This study found that only a few books checked out of the library represent children with differing abilities. Out of one hundred books, only thirty-six books show differing abilities with all of them depicting visual impairment (e.g., glasses) and four depicting a mobility impairment (e.g., wheelchair) in addition to the visual impairment. Understanding that children's literature influences children's attitudes, it is vital to find opportunities to engage children in books depicting children with disabilities as children begin to develop their understanding and attitudes at a young age. [Note: The volume number (7) shown in the header on the PDF is incorrect. The correct volume number is 8.]

The development of urban students' mathematical proving ability is a goal of several curricula frameworks, including some located in the southern hemisphere. However, in achieving this goal, most curriculum frameworks do so from a Western worldview, which is characterized by competition and the role of the individual. The purpose of this study was to use the emancipatory lens to critique the use of a quantitative methodology in favor of the Ubuntu worldview, a methodology grounded in indigenous African epistemologies, particularly storytelling. To this end, I analyzed data drawn from the administration of a survey questionnaire to a conveniently selected sample of 135 11th-grade students enrolled in three separate high schools from ethnically and socioeconomically diverse communities in the eThekwini metropolitan area of South Africa. The context for the argument in this study was provided by correlating students' understanding of functions of proof (verification, explanation, communication, discovery, and systematization) with their argumentation ability, two variables often considered as the key limiting factors for meaningful learning of mathematical proofs. The poor results obtained from a quantitative analysis of data using Western perspectives highlight the emerging need for finding postcolonial methodologies that are sensitive to ethnic issues in addition to language and gender issues. In addition, the inadequacy of the current mathematics curriculum to serve the linguistic and gender needs of urban African students became apparent. This increases the need for sub-Saharan instructors to have knowledge to pursue emancipatory instruction. The key contribution of this study to the field is that it sheds light on the marginalization of African students in learning mathematical proof and related concepts from Western perspectives rather than conducting instructional practices in the Global South's terms; the scope of the effort may explain why research efforts in this line of work have not been documented extensively in literature.

Purpose: The paper identifies and explores the perspectives of middle school educators regarding the benefits and challenges of an ongoing, emerging school-university partnership. Over five years, professors at one comprehensive, Midwestern university, formed a partnership with a local middle school. While progress has been made to develop the partnership, the authors recognized a lack of shared governance (Essential 7). In particular, they were unsure the partnership was mutually beneficial. The authors interviewed teachers, the principal, assistant principals, guidance counselors, the instructional coach and the youth service center director to gain their perspectives on the partnership. Design/methodology/approach: The authors used an intrinsic, evaluative case study to examine educators perceptions of the benefits and challenges of the partnership (Guba & Lincoln, 1981; Patton, 2002). This approach was used because within this bounded system the authors have an interest in obtaining information to help improve the program and partnership. Findings: Results suggest the partnership was beneficial in a number of ways including hiring of and offering fresh ideas to teachers. Educators also felt there were many benefits for university candidates. Challenges included scheduling, technology access and candidate disposition. Implications are discussed. Research limitations/implications: Inherent within the research methodology, researchers' inclusion in the data collection process may affect participants responses. Practical implications: Researchers discuss the implications of this work, including the role of hiring candidates and clear articulation of a mission for the partnership. Originality/value: This work adds to research on school site stakeholders' perspectives on the value of school-university partnerships and includes teachers and the schools' entire leadership team.

The way teachers support students' Knowledge Building discourse may influence their subsequent discourse moves and emotions. However, in previous research on Knowledge Building, teacher scaffolding was rarely scrutinized, especially in offline Knowledge Building discourse; neither was how the support is associated with students' discourse moves or emotions. This study addressed these issues by examining how two teachers scaffolded the offline Knowledge Building discourse of a class of students from grade 2 to grade 3 and the associations between teacher scaffolding and students' discourse moves and emotions. Through discourse analysis, we identified a few patterns of teaching scaffolding for Knowledge Building, including giving instructions, asking for elaboration, revoicing, asking for explanations, inviting different ideas, and inviting new directions. Using correlation analyses, we found positive correlations between teacher asking for explanations and students providing partial or elaborated explanations. Teacher inviting new directions was positively correlated with students' questions. There was a negative correlation between teacher asking for elaboration and student curiosity. This study has implications for how teacher support can be designed to foster desired student discourse moves and emotions.

Background and Context: Few instruments exist to measure students' CS engagement and learning especially in areas where coding happens with creative, project-based learning and in regard to students' self-beliefs about computing. Objective: We introduce the CS Interests and Beliefs Inventory (CSIBI), an instrument designed for novice secondary students learning by designing projects (particularly with physical computing). The inventory contains subscales on beliefs on problem solving competency, fascination in design, value of CS, creative expression, and beliefs about context-specific CS abilities alongside programming mindsets and outcomes. We explain the creation of the instrument and attend to the role of mindsets as mediators of self-beliefs and how CSIBI may be adapted to other K-12 project-based learning settings. Method: We administered the instrument to 303 novice CS secondary students who largely came from historically marginalized backgrounds (gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status). We assessed the nine-factor structure for the 32-item instrument using confirmatory factor analysis and tested the hypothesized model of mindsets as mediators with structural equation modeling. Findings: We confirmed the nine-factor structure of CSIBI and found significant positive correlations across factors. The structural model results showed that problem solving competency beliefs and CS creative expression promoted programming growth mindset, which subsequently fostered students' programming self-concept. Implications: We validated an instrument to measure secondary students' self-beliefs in CS that fills several gaps in K-12 CS measurement tools by focusing on contexts of learning by designing. CSIBI can be easily adapted to other learning by designing computing education contexts.

Purpose: Recent scholarship has explored higher education institutions' (HEIs) role in transitioning to a sustainable society, but empirically, questions remain regarding their impact on the sustainability of surrounding areas. This study aims to examine the correlation between HEIs' sustainability actions and local sustainability performance. Design/methodology/approach: This study uses a linear regression model and principal component analysis to examine the sustainability performance of 105 US metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) using the US cities sustainable development goal (SDG) index, which hosts 427 HEIs known for sustainability efforts. The weighted HEI sustainability performance score is calculated based on the QS sustainability universities ranking. Findings: The correlation between MSA and HEI sustainability performance exhibits a mix of positive and negative associations, with individual and interlinked SDGs serving as proxies. These correlations encompass a wide range of goals, from economic aspects of SDG 1, 2, 3, 7, 9, social aspects of SDG10 and 16, to socio-environmental aspects of SDG12. Research limitations/implications: Further exploration is needed to identify the causal mechanisms behind associations between SDG measures and HEI sustainability performance, whether influenced by the institution, the individual or both. Practical implications: This study suggests that HEIs are already associated with some aspects of community sustainability, but greater contributions to a broader array of sustainability measures are possible. Social implications: The correlation found between HEI sustainability actions and SDG10, 12 and 16 index performance in an MSA highlights a connection between HEIs and the attainment of societal goals. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to examine the correlation between HEI and MSA sustainability performance in the US through individual and interlinked SDG proxies. It provides novel empirical evidence that demonstrates an association between HEI and some aspects of community sustainability performance.

Cultural background can influence cognition, including executive functions (EFs), abilities that encompass skills responsible for self-regulation of thoughts and behavior. The seminal unity and diversity model of EFs proposes the existence, in adulthood, of at least three correlated but separable EF latent (shared variance in more than one task/indicator) domains: inhibition, updating and shifting. However, evidence of the cross-cultural generality of this framework is lacking, especially in adolescence, an age during which these domains become more clearly separable. We tested whether this EF fractionation could be observed in early adolescents (9- to 15-year-olds) from metropolitan areas in Brazil (São Paulo) and Iran (Tehran) (total sample: 739; 407 Iranians; 358 girls). Participants carried out two open-access tasks that are representative of each EF domain and that were adapted to each cultural context. Seven latent model configurations were tested. The three-correlated latent factor structure had adequate fit, and multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis invariance testing showed invariance for country at the level of the latent factor structure (configural), factor loadings (metric), and partial invariance at the intercept (scalar) level. Iranians had higher scores in all domains. Multiple indicators multiple causes invariance testing showed model invariance across age (except for one task) and parental education. Performance in all domains improved with age and only minimally with parental schooling. We conclude that EF fractionation into three domains is present in the first half of adolescence in two samples from underrepresented populations in the literature, suggesting a potential generality of EF latent unity/diversity development at this age.

Purpose: In collaboration with their home cities, universities increasingly develop courses in which students investigate urban sustainability challenges. This paper aims to understand how far-reaching the collaboration with urban stakeholders in these courses is and what students are meant to learn from the transdisciplinary pedagogies. Design/methodology/approach: This research is designed as a qualitative multiple-case study into the intentions of transdisciplinary courses in which universities collaborate with their home cities: Delft University of Technology in Delft and Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions in Amsterdam. The study compares the written intentions of eight courses in course descriptions with the ideal intentions that teachers describe in interviews. Findings: First, seven of the eight investigated courses were designed for urban stakeholders to participate at a distance or as a client but rarely was a course intended to lead to a collaborative partnership between the city and students. Second, the metacognitive learning objectives, such as learning to deal with biases and values of others or getting to know one's strengths and weaknesses in collaboration, were often absent in the course descriptions. Learning objectives relating to metacognition are at the heart of transdisciplinary work, yet when they remain implicit in the learning objectives, they are difficult to teach. Originality/value: This paper presents insight into the levels of participation intended in transdisciplinary courses. Furthermore, it shows the (mis)alignment between intended learning objectives in course descriptions and teachers' ideals. Understanding both the current state of transdisciplinarity in sustainability courses and what teachers envision is vital for the next steps in the development of transdisciplinary education.

More than sixty years after "Brown v. Board of Education," racial and economic segregation in American schools is deepening. At the same time, dynamic racial and economic change in cities and suburbs offers new opportunities for intentional school integration. School leaders are an integral part of those opportunities. We draw on the integration theory of choice to explore how leadership can nurture the policies and practices that contribute to diverse, inclusive school communities in four U.S. metropolitan area schools. We purposefully selected the sites with an eye toward variation in grades served (pre-K, elementary, middle and high), locale (e.g., urban, suburban or regional) and commitment to intentionally fostering integration. Based on 22 interviews with a range of school leaders connected to the sites, including principals, directors, assistant principals and superintendents, we find that leaders who implement specialized programming and demonstrate agility with financial and human resources can help support school integration in the face of systemic segregation. We close with recommendations for policy and practice.

In this manuscript, the authors discuss a seven-day research project that occurred within the Birmingham metropolitan area where fourth graders researched the role that public issues played in the creation of two suburban school systems in their city. We coded student work samples to look for themes. Emergent themes from student work samples are described in the findings section. We conclude in our discussion section with some recommendations for future research studies to teach issues of race in U.S. history based on our findings.

The presence of Cigano/Roma students in secondary education in Portugal is still a rarity, considering that less than 3% of young Ciganos/Roma attend secondary education. This article aims to highlight the need for a comprehensive understanding of the perceptions of school teachers and principals on educational (under)achievement, absenteeism and school integration of Cigano students. To this end, we analyse data from an online questionnaire survey of a sample of 819 teachers, school principals and deputy principals and other senior management staff in schools of the Metropolitan Areas. These respondents express persistent representations and stereotypes in relation to the educational trajectories of Cigano students, especially in assigning prime causes of school failure to factors relating to the students' family or own intrinsic issues, rarely indicating institutional factors or those linked to their teaching practices. Although this is a study centred on Portugal, the lessons drawn from it can point to new directions for other contexts, as the educational achievement of Cigano students represents an opportunity and an invitation to transform and upgrade school institutions as well as the educational system as a whole, which should be more innovative, reflexive and increasingly open to the community.

Despite a global commitment to guarantee access to and participation in high-quality education for all, the acceptance of marginalised pupils into mainstream education and changing policies and practices to support the aim are still contested challenges. This article discusses how inclusive education policy is understood and applied by pedagogues at the micro level in three different countries, Iceland, Finland and the Netherlands, focusing on tensions. A qualitative thematic analysis of 22 interviews with teachers, tutors and school directors reveals that an inclusive policy frame does not prevent pedagogues from favouring a normative 'centre'. Pupils' local language competence becomes crucial for in-/exclusion. In addition, we find more emphasis on inclusive actions at the micro level as a response to exclusive policies and settings. This comparative study highlights the interplay among policies, practices and pedagogues' beliefs and attitudes and how they affect one another in striving to achieve inclusive aims.

The notion of scientific visual literacy has been advocated in recent science curriculum reform documents and related learning outcomes are expected from students. However, few studies have been conducted to determine how it is tested in high-stakes examinations. This study utilized the Visualization Blooming Tool to examine the level of visual cognition involved in visual-based physics questions in the Senior High School Entrance Examination (SHSEE) in China. Content analysis was adopted as the research method and 12 sets of the SHSEE physics from four Chinese metropolises (Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Suzhou) in 2020, 2021, and 2022 were targeted. The results indicate that although all four metropolises examined the higher-order visual cognitive skills, they placed more emphasis on the levels of apply and analyze but less on evaluate and create. Moreover, the examination items required students to interpret visual representations more often than to construct them, which may be detrimental to developing students' scientific visual literacy. It is suggested that the examination of higher-order visual cognitive skills and encoded visual representation should be strengthened in future high-stakes physics examinations.

As many U.S. school administrators create policies around hair, many often neglect to consider racial differences, especially those pertaining to hair care and maintenance styles. News media outlets have recently highlighted the ways schools create and sustain racially biased policies and schooling environments, demonstrating the media's role in promoting awareness of schools' mistreatment of Black children. This study examines media reports that shed light on these dynamics, focusing on urban/metropolitan areas in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, and Massachusetts. We ask: What do news media accounts--explicitly and implicitly--reveal about Black children and their families' experiences with hair policies in K-12 schools? We take up critical race discourse analysis to examine selected news media accounts of four recent, high profile (i.e., viral) events of Black students' experiences with hair policies in K-12 U.S. schools. Analysis of our data revealed that Black students face undue discrimination due to schools' hair policies, and that they and their families reject antiBlack constructions of Black hair care practices and styles.

Australian educators teaching in the early years of formal schooling find themselves grappling with the dilemmas of preparing learners to sit performance-based assessments in later years and their sense of pedagogic responsibility towards designing competency-based assessment. Studies have explored this tension in the primary and middle years where learners sit national standardised assessments, but there is limited research in the earliest years. Therefore, this article aims to share an educator's experience of using an inquiry-based approach named LAUNCH to act agentically within government assessment systems. Design-based research in an exploratory case study of an Australian Preparatory classroom investigates an educator's pedagogic orientations to the assessment of 14 five- and six-year-old learners' writing and text production. Qualitative data generated from video and audio recordings and learner-generated artefacts captures these pedagogies over a four-week time frame. Sociologist Basil Bernstein's two pedagogic orientations to assessment - competence and performance - provide the theoretical framework for the study. The findings reveal that a mix of orientations allows learners to achieve the "expected" knowledge and skills that they need to do well in performance-based assessments, as well as "unexpected" knowledge and skills. For those committed to discussions about professional ethics and assessments, it is crucial that archetypes of pedagogic orientations to assessment are shared to illuminate a close study of practice.

Emergency remote delivery (ERD) employed by post-compulsory education providers during COVID-19 has left an enduring legacy. In particular, "hyflex" (simultaneous online and in-person delivery) teaching and learning (HTL) has the potential to offer a choice of mode and flexibility, and open new ways of thinking about adult student engagement. To explore whether existing ideas about student engagement are 'fit for purpose' for HTL, we conducted a mixed-methods study, using post-course online surveys (n = 110) and semi-structured interviews with students (n = 10) engaged in undergraduate and postgraduate courses in seven disciplinary areas in a large metropolitan university in Australia. Kahu and Nelson's student engagement framework, and the educational interface in particular, guided our analysis. Our findings illustrate the ways that hyflex accommodates unplanned crises and personal challenges to provide flexible and equitable access to learning, as well as fostering aspects of the educational interface: self-efficacy, emotions, wellbeing, and belonging. Tertiary and adult education providers should build on such experiential learnings gained since the pandemic by continuing to invest in resources to support hyflex teaching as an essential feature of students and staff being able to balance the competing demands of life and study/work, especially in the context of unplanned events.

One schooling sector that had been growing before the pandemic, hybrid schools, in which students attend physical classes fewer than five days per week and are homeschooled on the other days, has seen recent continued growth. One factor that has not been explored is the commuting patterns families follow to use these schools. Whether families drive more miles to attend these part-time schools, or fewer, or neither, is the question this study seeks to address. In this manuscript, using individual student address data, we examine the commute distances made by students at four schools: two conventional, 5-day private schools, and two hybrid schools. We find that suburban hybrid school students do commute longer distances, but fewer total miles per week.

Many metropolitan cities have undergone rapid demographic changes in recent years, and such changes hasten and widen linguistic diversities. Similar changes are happening in Sydney, Australia and Hamburg, Germany. These changes are most acutely felt and observed in the classrooms where multiple languages are spoken, despite a prevalent monolingual mindset in education in both these contexts. What do pre-service teachers think of language learning and multilingualism in the face of demographic and sociolinguistic changes? This is a particularly urgent question for pre-service teachers, whose perspectives on multilingualism will considerably influence on how their students view language learning and maintenance. Based on a survey of 436 pre-service teachers in Sydney and Hamburg, this comparative study explores the relationship between their linguistic profiles (monolingual, multilingual and how they become multilinguals) and the way they perceive societal multilingualism and the need to promote multilingual education to all. The findings suggest that formal language education, more than heritage backgrounds and knowledge, provided the necessary experience to foster a more open attitude towards societal multilingualism and language learning.

This article examines the role creative and cultural higher education plays in the top-down development of Astana -- the new capital of Kazakhstan. Drawing on a mapping of higher education institutions in Kazakhstan's old (Almaty) and new capital cities as well as qualitative interview data with creative and cultural practitioners, academics and policymakers, we explore the complex relationship between the development of higher education infrastructure and the broader development of the local creative and cultural ecosystem of the new capital. By exploring challenges and opportunities surrounding these developments within the new capital city, we draw some insight regarding the sustainable development of higher education and the creative and cultural ecosystem more broadly. We find that creative and cultural higher education plays an essential role in the development of the new capital city and its opportunity to lead as a creative and cultural capital. In turn, we argue that creative and cultural HE development cannot happen in isolation but needs to be planned and carried out as part of the more comprehensive creative and cultural ecosystem development, reinforcing the local creative and cultural economy and being shaped by it. It also needs to be seen as a long-term development strategy rather than a short-term solution to jump ahead in urban hierarchies. However, we warn that wider political influences may hinder the development of a genuinely independent creative and cultural higher education system.

In this article, we ask how students with a range of social class and ethnic backgrounds perceive their opportunities to participate in the classroom and influence their learning, and what perceptions teachers have of teaching and students' participation in a school with a diverse student body. The context of this study is a lower secondary school in a relatively disadvantaged neighborhood in the metropolitan area of Helsinki, Finland. The ethnographic data comprise 40 observation days and interviews with students (n = 24) and teachers (n = 11). We used Basil Bernstein's notions of pedagogic rights, particularly participation, as well as visible (i.e., teacher-centered) and invisible (i.e., learner-centered) pedagogies in our analysis. We argue that despite the current national core curriculum's emphasis on students' active participation in their learning process, students' wishes regarding teaching and their own learning were somewhat conservative: visible pedagogies were preferred over invisible pedagogies. Also, the teachers perceived that teacher-led teaching and clear structures were beneficial in a school in which students' backgrounds were diverse. Based on the views of the students and teachers, teacher-led teaching promoted learning. However, teacher-led teaching may prevent students from participating in the classroom discussions and constructing their active, democratic citizenship.

Language learning classrooms are sites of discovery not only of language, but of identity, culture, and community. The pedagogical approach described here, critical media work (CMW), integrates language teaching and social issues by using media literacy as a bridge. CMW explores antiracist discourse in popular media (digital and analog) to dismantle simplified, binary thinking about race. CMW encourages semiotic analyses of antiracist discourse and examines messages along continuums that emphasize complexities and intersections of race, language, and culture. We share how language teachers at two urban colleges that serve immigrant populations integrate CMW into their classes, and we discuss the effectiveness of this pedagogy in terms of language learning and antiracist education. We maintain that language teaching and social justice education can support each other and that media literacy provides a meaningful and effective foundation for engaged antiracist pedagogy.

This study aims to adapt the Adult Interpersonal Acceptance Rejection Scale to Turkish culture and examine the validity and reliability of the Turkish version of this scale. 653 university students selected by the convenience sampling method constitute the study sample. The original factor structure of the scale was examined by confirmatory factor analysis. The results revealed that the original factor structure of the Adult Interpersonal Acceptance-Rejection Scale was confirmed in the Turkish sample. The internal consistency of the scale items was associated with the Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient and was calculated as 0.908. In addition, Cronbach's alpha values were 0.915 for the mother acceptance sub-dimension, 0.909 for best friend acceptance sub-dimension, and 0.911 for the romantic partner acceptance sub-dimension. Correlation coefficients were calculated between the Adult Interpersonal Acceptance Rejection Scale and the Two-Dimensional Self-Esteem Scale, the Interdependent Happiness Scale, and the Life Satisfaction Scale to prove the validity of the criterion. The results showed that the sub-dimensions of the scales were significantly related. These results show that the Turkish version of the Adult Interpersonal Acceptance Rejection Scale is a valid and reliable measurement tool that can be used for research purposes to determine the levels of interpersonal acceptance and rejection of adult individuals.

Like many predominantly Black urban cities, Detroit, Michigan, has experienced significant out-migration among Black residents over the past 30 years. This situation has altered families' relationships to the communities and schools where they have been nurtured or call home. Therefore, this paper examines how seven Black families' place attachments influenced their geographic movement and school choices in the Detroit metropolitan region. Findings show that despite families' movement to surrounding suburbs, varied experiences in Detroit influenced families' decision-making regarding where to live, their search for sociocultural experiences that supported their families holistically, and their perceptions and navigation of municipal boundaries and borders. Families' intention toward maintaining connections with Detroit enact what I term embracing the city. Embracing the city helps consider the importance of socio-spatial ties that persist and orient Black families' community perceptions and school choices in suburban contexts.