Biology and behaviour of sharks

As a group, sharks have survived for more than 300 million years and are admirably adapted to their environment. Their complex nervous and reproductive systems are of great scientific interest. Although a hazard in certain areas, they are also human benefactors, providing a small but useful supplement to normal sources of fish flesh, as well as a particularly fine quality leather.     

Consultation and Collaboration to Develop and Implement Restorative Practices in a Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Elementary School

ABSTRACT

Through an embedded single-case study design and qualitative methods, this article describes the school-wide implementation and preliminary results of a restorative practices (RP) program within a culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) elementary school. Located in an urban area with high rates of crime, violence, and poverty, the three-year multisystemic project brought school psychology knowledge and skills to (a) use multicultural consultation and participatory methods to introduce, adapt, and support RP in a CLD school, (b) present findings related to teachers, parents, students, and school climate, and (c) increase youth, parent, and community engagement and voice. The authors developed a comprehensive, culturally relevant model through an interdisciplinary school-university-community partnership. They used multicultural consultee-centered consultation, including bilingual/bicultural practices and cultural brokers, and participatory culture-specific intervention methods to collaboratively design, implement, and evaluate outcomes for students, parents, teachers, and others.     

Creating Educational Destruction: A Critical Exploration of Central Neoliberal Concepts and Their Transformative Effects on Public Education

Individualism and competition are central neoliberal concepts that have profoundly altered the U.S. public education system. This article draws on poststructuralist theory and advances the argument that these concepts have produced problematic policies and deeply flawed school choice mechanisms such as charter schools and school vouchers. I also explore how educational activists contested neoliberal ideology and reshaped reality as they defeated a neoliberal education policy in North Carolina.     

The Effects of Multimodal Communication Frequency,Geographic Distance,and Coresidence on Parent-Child Relationship Quality During Emerging Adulthood

The present study examined the role of three interrelated factors—multimodal communication frequency, geographic distance, and coresidence—in relation to emerging adult college students’ perceptions of parental relationship quality. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that emerging adults’ perceptions of relational closeness and communication satisfaction were related to lower levels of face-to-face interaction and higher levels of phone call interaction with their parents. Controlling for communication frequencies, students who lived separate from their parents reported greater communication satisfaction than those who coresided, yet coresidence was unassociated with relational closeness. Finally, geographic distance was unrelated to emerging adults’ perceptions of parental relationship quality.     

The Counseling Opportunity Structure: Examining Correlates of Four-Year College-Going Rates

This study examines the relationships between the normative and resource dimensions of a high school counseling department and four-year college-going rates. Utilizing data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS: 09), we employ multiple regression and latent class analysis to identify salient factors related to the college-going culture of a high school and to classify schools according to their underlying counseling opportunity structure, respectively. Results demonstrate that both norms (i.e., average caseload and hours spent on college counseling) and resources (i.e., college fairs, college course offerings, and financial aid) are important predictors of a school’s four-year college-going rates. These results, in turn, produced a three-level typology of schools based on a divergent, emergent, and convergent classification system. The study concludes with a discussion of findings and implications for researchers and policymakers interested in improving and better understanding the counseling opportunity structure.     

Aesthetic Learning,Creative Writing and English Teaching

My article argues that the concept of ‘aesthetic learning’ can be helpful for English teachers on two levels. First, it can be a useful identity for English teachers and students to adopt, based upon my own experiences as a secondary English teacher, creative writer and PhD student. Second, I argue that ‘aesthetic learning’ is an effective and productive way of analysing some of the learning processes that happen in the English teacher’s classroom. In order to arrive at these conclusions, I examine my own creative writing, teaching and learning processes from which I extrapolate the notion that we are all ‘aesthetic learners’ in the sense that we learn to appreciate the qualities of the worlds we inhabit, whether these are actual or virtual. Throughout, my own writing, learning and teaching are used to illustrate my argument. In particular, the article seeks to re-position my own teaching in secondary schools within the context of ‘aesthetic learning’.