Population education in the United States

The most significant expansion of population education in the U.S. has occurred over the past 5-year period. The environmental movement of the 1960 decade established a foundation on which population education quickly developed in the 1970 decade and gained acceptance in the population establishment and among funding agencies. During the years 1970-1976, several private organizations became actively involved in the population education field. Several viewpoints and population education approaches are now evident in the U.S. These approaches stress different aspects of the issue: extension of family planning, individual and social awareness, demography, behavioral objectives, value analysis, environmental strategy, and inquiry. Although these approaches are diverse, the U.S. has provided a basic framework for population education. Research in population education has consisted of little more than review studies, knowledge and attitude surveys, and several studies on the appropriateness of population education in the formal college school setting. Further research is needed to identify the goals, objectives, and strategy of population education, and these studies would have to be linked to the cognitive and moral development of the student.     

Enriching Professional Learning Networks: A Framework for Identification,Reflection, and Intention

Many educators in the 21st century utilize social media platforms to enrich professional learning networks (PLNs). PLNs are uniquely personalized networks that can support participatory and continuous learning. Social media services can mediate professional engagements with a wide variety of people, spaces and tools that might not otherwise be available. Teachers who once might have had access to only a handful of colleagues can now employ Facebook, Twitter and other mediums to learn from peers across the globe at any time. However, educators face numerous challenges building and enhancing their PLNs for professional growth. To support educators in the development of their PLNs, we present a framework for PLN enrichment. Rooted in our research and experiences with PLNs, this flexible framework is designed to help educators reflect upon how they might continuously improve their PLN experiences and outcomes.     

Comparison of dyslexic and nondyslexic adults on decoding and phonemic awareness tasks

This study was conducted to determine if the phonemic awareness skills of college-aged dyslexic students (n=10) differ from those of their nondyslexic peers (n=10). Both groups were tested on reading of real and nonsense words and a phoneme reversal task. Although the dyslexic subjects had received considerable language remediation and were all succeeding at their college studies at a level that did not significantly differ from the nondyslexic subjects, they performed significantly poorer on two measures of phonemic awareness: reading of nonsense words and increased error rate and response time on reversal of common three phoneme words. These results were interpreted to suggest that although the dyslexic subjects had improved their reading skills there remained a fundamental deficit in their ability to process phonological information quickly and accurately.     

Development of the International Ocean Literacy Survey: measuring knowledge across the world.

The Ocean Literacy movement began in the U.S. in the early 2000s, and has recently become an international effort. The focus on marine environmental issues and marine education is increasing, and yet it has been difficult to show progress of the ocean literacy movement, in part, because no widely adopted measurement tool exists. The International Ocean Literacy Survey (IOLS) aims to serve as a community-based measurement tool that allows the comparison of levels of ocean knowledge across time and location. The IOLS has already been subjected to two rounds of field testing. The results from the second testing, presented in this paper, provide evidence that the IOLS is psychometrically valid and reliable, and has a single factor structure across 17 languages and 24 countries. The analyses have also guided the construction of a third improved version that will be further tested in 2018.     

Teaching Plan‐Do‐Study‐Act (PDSA) in a Supply Chain Context: A Paper Football In‐Class Activity

We develop a single‐class period learning game for the Plan‐Do‐Study‐Act (PDSA) improvement cycle. The experiential activity walks teams through the PDSA problem‐solving process as they create paper American footballs and improve their performance using each step of the cycle. The game is one of the first to focus on PDSA. Key benefits include increased student attention, engagement, and learning. Empirical tests show that participant pre‐ and post‐test scores regarding their understanding of each phase of PDSA improved 21.2% after completing the game. Additionally, the treatment group performed 16.6% higher than the control group. In participant perception questions, 85% of participants felt the game was more effective than lecture or reading, 93% felt the game was fun, 95% felt the game improved their understanding of PDSA, and 98% felt the game was engaging.     

Post-traumatic stress disorder: a reaction to state-supported child abuse and neglect

The policy of apartheid not only fosters conditions conducive to child abuse and neglect, but is in itself abusive. Apartheid policies have led to civil unrest and high levels of violence in South Africa's black townships. Many youth are thus exposed to multiple trauma including witnessing death, being arrested, being beaten, being in exile, and being separated from family and friends. This had led many to develop Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) although this term is a misnomer in the South African context as traumatic stress is not historic but is current. Treatment programs have thus to be modified to accommodate the impossibility of guaranteeing even the physical safety of patients. They have also to be modified to accommodate the fact that most black youth are totally unfamiliar with the notion of the "talking cure." This paper describes a modified treatment program for PTSD which was developed in working with a group of 60 township refugees. Systematic follow up studies of its effectiveness were impossible as many of those treated have gone into hiding to escape the continuing violence in their communities, a violence facilitated by the ultimate guardian of the child, the State. However there are indications that the program was successful in providing immediate relief.