In practice—More than words: What can stop the language that hurts?

Intended or not, deep harm can come from carelessly chosen words. At Texas Christian University, educators use a program in the first few weeks of their students' college career to heighten awareness and stave off the damage of words that hurt.     

Framing social determinants of health within the professional public health community: research translation and implications for policy change

Despite what experts know about the importance of social determinants of health (SDOH), poor health is generally understood by the public as an individual problem ameliorated through lifestyle and/or healthcare. To remedy this knowledge gap and promote policy change, public health professionals are investing in media advocacy to raise public awareness about SDOH and promote collective responsibility for health improvement. However, policy theory suggests this may be insufficient. More attention to the role of professional communities, as mediators of research translation and important policy actors, is warranted. We conducted a content analysis of news articles published by the American Public Health Association and found substantial attention to SDOH. However, the discourse was more biomedical than expected given the evidence regarding the relative importance of the major categories of health determinants. This may be a barrier to policy change and detract from the field’s efforts to promote political action.     

“I Have a Hippopotamus!”: Preparing Effective Early Childhood Environmental Educators

ABSTRACT

This article describes an early childhood teacher-preparation program that infuses environmental education and nature experiences into courses, practicum, and student-teaching experiences. Program philosophy, pedagogy, materials, and methods are described and linked to the Early Childhood Environmental Education Programs: Guidelines for Excellence, the Guidelines for the Preparation and Professional Development of Environmental Educators, and state-level early learning guidelines that focus on connecting young children with nature. Preservice teachers build knowledge, skills, and dispositions for effective environmental education beginning from an awareness level and progressing to application and refinement. The value of nature is communicated explicitly and implicitly throughout the program. Preliminary analysis of student outcomes indicated that, over the course of the program, students’ ratings of the importance of nature and science experiences and outcomes increased, along with their confidence implementing environmental-education activities.     

The ABCs of private equity and venture capital data and information

ABSTRACT

In June 2017, the Business Reference & Services Section of the Reference & User Services Association organized and hosted an event known as the Publishers' Forum during the annual American Library Association Conference in Chicago, Illinois. The Publishers' Forum is a professional development event that brings together business librarians and publishers of business information to engage in a discussion about business information products. The theme of the 2017 Publishers' Forum was private equity and venture capital data and information, and three different publishers were invited to speak and showcase their information products. This article will provide an overview of the Publishers' Forum, discuss the selection of private equity and venture capital as the theme, and highlight the importance of private equity and venture capital to business librarianship. Finally, this article will include a discussion of each of the publishers who presented at the Publishers' Forum and the information products they showcased.     

Cataloging from the Center: Improving e-Book Cataloging on a Consortial Level

In 2014, the Ohio Library and Information Network (OhioLINK) overhauled its consortial cataloging workflows by switching to what has been termed a model of “cataloging from the center.” For more than 20 years, the Ohio academic library consortium relied on volunteers from its member institutions to catalog consortially purchased materials. Consolidating the consortial cataloging into the OhioLINK office allowed for revising the various workflows. Since 2014, the cataloging workflows for these shared electronic resources have improved efficiencies, allowing records to be provided to members in a more timely manner.     

Dealing with Data: Instructing with Infographics in an Undergraduate Sociology Course

As the collection and dissemination of “big data” become easier, we are exposed to increasing numbers of visuals, or infographics, that convey this data. Students are likely to interact with infographics through news, advertising, and social media platforms, but they may not have the skills in quantitative reasoning or visual literacy to effectively understand how data is employed or framed to tell particular stories. Teaching students about the tools, available data, and communication styles that infographics offer early in their coursework can provide them a basis on which to better develop a variety of analytic and communication tools throughout additional courses in their major field of study. Through the process of learning to locate, evaluate, and use data in infographics, students also become better consumers of data visualization. A series of scaffolded assignments that help accomplish this are detailed here.     

Teaching for tomorrow: An exploratory study of prekindergarten teachers’ underlying assumptions about how children learn

This study investigated eight prekindergarten teachers’ underlying assumptions about how children learn, and how these assumptions were used to inform and enact instruction. By contextualizing teachers’ knowledge and understanding as it is used in practice we were able to provide unique insight into the work of teaching. Participants focused on children’s ability to remember information, frequently through engagement and repetition. Teachers also anticipated what children would be learning in the early elementary years and taught that content, yet they did not necessarily expect children to remember the information, or even know if children learned the information. Implications for the design of both preservice and in-service teacher education are discussed. This includes helping teachers develop a strong foundational understanding of how children learn, establishing the pedagogical content knowledge relevant to teaching advanced symbol systems like literacy, and shifting pedagogical reasoning about practice. Given the link between the quality of instructional support and learning in the early years, developing the early childhood teaching force’s capacity to use knowledge to reason skillfully about teaching offers a critical lever for creating robust learning in the early years.     

Development of a competency model and tailored assessment method for high school science teachers utilizing a flipped learning approach

Many professional development programs aim to improve student outcomes by enhancing teacher competencies. Effective evaluation of these programs requires a clear delineation of the competencies to be gained. A competency model was developed to evaluate the impact of a teacher professional program that aimed to improve teachers’ ability to effectively implement technologically engaged modules in a flipped classroom setting. Competencies were identified via participatory evaluation techniques and assessments were aligned to the competencies. The competency of teachers in the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for creation and delivery of effective flipped lessons can be tracked using a radar graph to guide tailored professional development.

     

What’s growing on here? Garden-based pedagogy in a concrete jungle

This study explores experiences of a learning garden project at an urban faculty of education. The project opens a space for the theoretical and practical consideration of garden-based pedagogies and their influence on university students, educators, and the community as a whole. The learning garden was created by a small group of initial teacher education and graduate students and faculty volunteers. The group came together through shared interests in growing the theoretical, curricular, and pedagogical work carried out at the institution, through the opening of a unique and organic context for teaching and learning. This paper follows a duoethnographic approach as it traces the garden’s growth, our experiences with and in the garden, and the effects of the garden over its first year. Through dialogue, anecdotes and interactions, we explore themes that have grown from the research and garden’s growth, creating multiple, often unexpected, dimensions of praxis. We also unearth the complexities and tensions of institutional relationships as the garden interrupted norms and opened up spaces for multiplicity, alterity and difference in pedagogy, allowing us to revisit, review and renew our work in our institution’s approach to environmental education.     

Into the Unknown: Examining Neural Representations of Parent–Adolescent Interactions

The parent–adolescent relationship is important for adolescents’ emotion regulation (ER), yet little is known regarding the neural patterns of dyadic ER that occur during parent–adolescent interactions. A novel measure that can be used to examine such patterns is cross-brain connectivity (CBC)—concurrent and time-lagged connectivity between two individuals’ brain regions. This study sought to provide evidence of CBC and explore associations between CBC, parenting, and adolescent internalizing symptoms. Thirty-five adolescents (mean age = 15 years, 69% female, 72% Non-Hispanic White, 17% Black, 11% Hispanic or Latino) and one biological parent (94% female) completed an fMRI hyperscanning conflict discussion task. Results revealed CBC between emotion-related brain regions. Exploratory analyses indicated CBC is associated with parenting and adolescent depressive symptoms.