Leaders learning from leaders as an emergent action learning strategy

This account of practice describes what three executive leaders in a professional association have learned about action learning and their own practices of organizational renewal. Data are approached narratively and stories are told from the perspectives of diverse educators’ experiences, agency, and expertise. Mature organizations can be revitalized and diversified through the action learning of executive leaders who integrate a new and diverse faculty body into the governance structure and decision-making process. The goal of facilitating diversity goals for established organizations has relevance for universities, schools, businesses, and other learning environments. Public conversations can strengthen the diversity-oriented outreach missions of professional organizations.     

Antiracism defined as equitable sociocultural interactions in prekindergarten: Classroom racial composition makes a difference

This study used secondary data from the My Teaching Partner-Math/Science 2013–2016 randomized control trial to explore whether equitable sociocultural classroom interactions (see Curenton et al., 2019) were associated with the skills of 105 four- and five-year-olds (52% boys; drawn from 20 unique video recordings of preschool teachers/classrooms; 43% were Black, Latine, Asian, or other racially marginalized learners). Equitable interactions predicted children's skills with effect sizes ranging from small (0.01–0.44) to large (1.00). Moderation analyses revealed that when classrooms had more racially marginalized learners, teachers’ use of equitable disciplinary and personalized learning practices were associated with higher executive functioning gains across prekindergarten. Findings illustrate how classroom composition can be a key indicator between equitable classroom interactions and young children's early skills.     

Build It and will They Come?: The Effect of Investing in Cultural Consumption Amenities in Higher Education on Student-Level Outcomes

Research in Higher Education - Despite a climate of fiscal scarcity, higher education institutions are making big investments in campus consumption amenities while reducing instructional...     

University students’ strategies and criteria during self-assessment: instructor’s feedback,rubrics, and year level effects

European Journal of Psychology of Education - This study explores the effects of feedback type, feedback occasion, and year level on student self-assessments in higher education. In total, 126...     

Evaluating the feasibility of remotely administered curriculum-based measurement for students with autism: A pilot study

Students with autism may struggle to develop the academic skills necessary for success in school and beyond. Understanding and improving academic skills performance requires appropriate measurement approaches. One such option that has been minimally studied with students with autism is curriculum-based measurement (CBM). Coinciding with the need to study different approaches to academic skills measurement for students with autism was the global pandemic which forced a shift to remote service delivery with little warning. While some autistic students struggled with this shift, others thrived, raising questions about how to further support students with autism in virtual formats. The purpose of this study was to examine the feasibility of using remotely administered CBM for autistic students by studying both the practicality and acceptability of this approach. Five students with autism (Grades 2–5) participated in this pilot study, completing reading, math, and writing CBMs at three time points. Student behavior and assessor fidelity were collected to examine practicality; assessor ratings of usability provided insight regarding the acceptability of the approach. Results indicated that remotely administered CBM is feasible for some students with autism: all participants completed the study tasks with minimal behavioral difficulties, and assessor ratings of acceptability were high.     

Team learning in IT implementation projects: Antecedents and consequences

This study investigates the antecedents and consequences of team learning, which is composed of information acquisition, dissemination, and implementation, in information technology (IT) implementation projects. By investigating 129 IT implementation project teams, we found that (1) information acquisition and information dissemination have a positive impact on project outcomes, such as speed-to-users, lower implementation cost, and operational effectiveness, and (2) team behavior and enabler variables, such as teamwork, team communication, interpersonal trust between team members, team commitment, and senior manager support, positively influence team learning. We also found that team anxiety moderates the relationship between team learning and project outcomes.     

Inducing chemotactic and haptotactic cues in microfluidic devices for three-dimensional in vitro assays

Microfluidic devices allow for the production of physiologically relevant cellular microenvironments by including biomimetic hydrogels and generating controlled chemical gradients. During transport, the biomolecules interact in distinct ways with the fibrillar networks: as purely diffusive factors in the soluble fluid or bound to the matrix proteins. These two main mechanisms may regulate distinct cell responses in order to guide their directional migration: caused by the substrate-bound chemoattractant gradient (haptotaxis) or by the gradient established within the soluble fluid (chemotaxis). In this work 3D diffusion experiments, in combination with ELISA assays, are performed using microfluidic platforms in order to quantify the distribution of PDGF-BB and TGF-β₁ across collagen and fibrin gels. Furthermore, to gain a deeper understanding of the fundamental processes, the experiments are reproduced by computer simulations based on a reaction-diffusion transport model. This model yields an accurate prediction of the experimental results, confirming that diffusion and binding phenomena are established within the microdevice.     

Instrument adaptation in cross-cultural studies of students’ mathematics-related beliefs: learning from healthcare research

Much comparative research into education-related beliefs has exploited questionnaires developed in one culture for use in another. This has been particularly the case in mathematics education, the focus of this paper. In so doing, researchers have tended to assume that translation alone is sufficient to warrant a reliable and valid instrument for cross-cultural research, prompting concerns that a number of necessary equivalences are unlikely to have been addressed. In this paper, we consider the nature of these equivalences before examining the literature of a different field, healthcare research, to synthesise an approach to instrument adaptation that is pragmatic but rigorous. Finally, we demonstrate how this pragmatic approach, incorporating extensive cognitive interviews, enabled us to adapt and refine a mathematics-related beliefs questionnaire, developed in Flanders, for use with students aged 14–15 in England and Spain. Analyses indicate that the instrument so developed is multidimensional, reliable and cross-culturally valid. Some implications are discussed.     

Granite desalination using electromigration. Influence of type of granite and saline contaminant

We describe the results of electromigration desalination of two soluble salt-contaminated Galician granites. The efficacy of electromigration, which had not been previously applied to granite, was assessed for two types of granite contaminated with a 20% NaCl solution and seawater. Desalination effectiveness was evaluated as follows: (1) analysis of anode and cathode ion content during testing; (2) analysis of ions at different distances from the electrodes after testing; (3) pH assessment of the stone surfaces; and (4) evaluation of colour changes. Results were very satisfactory; by the end of testing, chloride was reduced by almost 100% in both the NaCl and seawater contaminated samples. Sulfate reduction was also significant, despite this ion's lower mobility. The granite pH values remained close to neutral and colour changes were minimal. The difference in effectiveness of the process for the two types of stone was associated with their dissimilar pore structure.