Risk Factors,Resilience, and Psychological Distress Among Holocaust and Nonholocaust Surviviors in the Post-9/11 Environment

Many older adults have experienced or witnessed devastating life events including wars, hurricanes, and explosions. This study examined retraumatization and the relationship between certain risk factors, resilience, and psychological distress in the post-9/11 environment among 120 community-dwelling older adults. Results indicate that Holocaust survivors suffered more posttraumatic symptoms during the ongoing War on Terrorism than a comparison group. A significant contributor to posttraumatic symptomatology was anxiety followed by sense of safety, and survivor status. Clinicians should anticipate that older adults exposed again to trauma may experience posttraumatic symptomatology. Health-care practitioners should focus on distant history of trauma when assessing older adults for posttraumatic stress.     

Graduate Social Work Students' Attitudes Toward Service-Learning

Service-learning attitudes among graduate social work students enrolled in a course on human diversity and oppression are presented. A survey was administered at the beginning and at the end of the semester to students enrolled in the course, which was taught using a service-learning approach. Among the results were believing that service-learning aided in meeting learning goals and higher overall satisfaction with the service-learning experience. This article expands the literature on service-learning in social work education and promotes the use of this experiential method in social work diversity curricula.     

Maslow and Team Organization

Many middle schools use the Web to disseminate and gather information. Online barriers often limit the accessibility of the Web for students with disabilities. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the accessibility of home pages of a sample of middle schools. The authors located 165 Web sites using a popular online directory and evaluated the sites for accessibility. A software program quantified the number of accessibility errors at each site. Most middle school home pages had accessibility problems, and the majority of them represented severe concerns that should be given a high priority for improvement. The good news is that the majority of the errors can easily be corrected. The work reflects a need for middle schools to continuously examine the accessibility of their home pages. Direction for improving accessibility is provided.     

School–University Partnerships: Reflections and Opportunities

Universities and schools have a long history of partnering with one another to achieve a range of educational goals in America's schools. For many years, the needs of the universities were the primary impetus for partnership. Universities needed practicum sites for student teachers and other educational professionals, as well as participants for the research of university social science faculty. In more recent years, the balance has begun to shift dramatically so that the needs of schools are increasingly driving the formation of school–university partnerships. This article briefly describes the recent history, development, and major foci of school–university partnerships. After identifying a relatively neglected area of school–university partnerships, the article describes an existing partnership that addresses this area in order to illustrate the potential and opportunities for partnership. Finally, this article closes with a discussion of the challenges and potential benefits of school–university partnerships.     

Factors Influencing Completion and Noncompletion of Community College Online Courses

Abstract

This study investigated the differences between demographic, enrollment, academic, and self-directed learning characteristics of completers and noncompleters in online courses at one community college. The study also obtained students' self-reported reasons for not completing their coursework. No significant differences were found in the characteristics of age, gender, ethnicity, financial aid eligibility, grade point average, and total hours enrolled; significant differences were found in gender, academic readiness, and completers enrolled in more online courses than noncompleters.     

‘Let your data tell a story:’ climate change experts and students navigating disciplinary argumentation in the classroom

ABSTRACT

Science education trends promote student engagement in authentic knowledge in practice to tackle personally consequential problems. This study explored how partnering scientists and students on a social media platform supported students’ development of disciplinary practice knowledge through practice-based learning with experts during two pilot enactments of a project-based curriculum focusing on the ecological impacts of climate change. Through the online platform, scientists provided feedback on students' infographics, visual argumentation artifacts that use data to communicate about climate change science. We conceptualize the infographics and professional data sets as boundary objects that supported authentic argumentation practices across classroom and professional contexts, but found that student generated data was not robust enough to cross these boundaries. Analysis of the structure and content of the scientists’ feedback revealed that when critiquing argumentation, scientists initiated engagement in multiple scientific practices, supporting a holistic rather than discrete model of practice-based learning. While traditional classroom inquiry has emphasized student experimentation, we found that engagement with existing professional data sets provided students with a platform for developing expertise in systemic scientific practices during argument construction. We further found that many students increased the complexity and improved the visual presentation of their arguments after feedback.     

Teachers’ Understanding and Operationalisation of ‘Science Capital’

Across the globe, governments, industry and educationalists are in agreement that more needs to be done to increase and broaden participation in post-16 science. Schools, as well as teachers, are seen as key in this effort. Previous research has found that engagement with science, inclination to study science and understanding of the value of science strongly relates to a student's science capital. This paper reports on findings from the pilot year of a one-year professional development (PD) programme designed to work with secondary-school teachers to build students’ science capital. The PD programme introduced teachers to the nature and importance of science capital and thereafter supported them to develop ways of implementing science capital-building pedagogy in their practice. The data comprise interviews with the participating teachers (n?=?10), observations of classroom practices and analyses of the teachers’ accounts of their practice. Our findings suggest that teachers found the concept of science capital to be compelling and to resonate with their own intuitive understandings and experiences. However, the ways in which the concept was operationalised in terms of the implementation of pedagogical practices varied. The difficulties inherent in the operationalisation are examined and recommendations for future work with teachers around the concept of science capital are developed.     

Narrative understandings of a school policy: intersecting student,teacher, parent and administrator perspectives

In this article, we examine one school’s experience with policy, as a means of shedding light on the intersection of factors contributing to challenges of implementing policies to support the academic achievement and social adaptation of immigrant and minority students in their school context. We begin with the presentation of a ‘big fight’ between two students of different ethnic and racial backgrounds, and consider multiple perspectives of how the disagreement was addressed by teachers and administrators, to offer insight into how issues of race and policy might have been understood by members of the school community. We use a narrative inquiry approach to examine ways in which a policy designed to enhance student participation was interpreted by various members of this school community. This study reveals nuances of the intersection between culture and (hidden) curriculum as it relates to the implementation of policies aimed at creating and maintaining safe school communities.