Communication Disorders and Challenging Behaviors: Supporting Children’s Functional Communication Goals in the Classroom

Children with communication disorders may express frustrations through challenging behaviors such as aggressive behaviors and social withdrawal. Challenging behaviors may lead to difficulties with building social competencies including emotional regulation and peer engagement. Individualized planning of functional goals for children with communication disorders provides support for social communication to increase quality classroom interactions. Teachers, families and service providers can work together to assess the purpose of the child’s behaviors in order to create more functional ways for the child to communicate as the spoken language continues to improve. This article focuses on strategies including considerations for collaboration in initial planning, communication modifications, and peer supports.     

Politicising the ‘personal’: the resistant potential of creative pedagogies in teaching and learning ‘sensitive’ issues

Drawing upon student narratives gleaned through qualitative interviews, this paper argues that teaching and learning ‘sensitive’ issues surrounding gender and sexualities through ‘creative’ pedagogies can be a mode of resistance against the reproduction of problematic social discourses, and to the negative impacts of neoliberalism on student’s learning within higher education. The findings point to the importance of speaking about sensitive issues; the value of creative approaches for enhancing learning; and that together these can enable students to articulate an agenda for social change. Students saw the ‘personal as political’ – of sharing personal journeys around sensitive issues as important. They further spoke of ‘apathy’ in an neoliberal era of student ‘consumers’ and how this could curtail ‘creative’ teaching and jeopardise learning. Overall, it is argued that creative approaches to teaching and learning sensitive issues can invoke a resistant potentiality which exposes the ‘hidden injuries’ (Gill, 2010) of the neoliberal university.     

Screening homeless youth for histories of abuse: prevalence, enduring effects, and interest in treatment

Objectives

To identify the incidence of self-reported physical and sexual child abuse among homeless youth, the self-perceived effects of past abuse, and current interest in treatment for past abuse among homeless youth with histories of abuse.

Methods

Homeless and street-involved persons aged 18-23 filled out a questionnaire and participated in a structured assessment of histories of abuse, tobacco use and substance abuse.

Results

Sixty-four homeless youth in Salt Lake City, Utah completed the study, 43 males and 21 females. Eighty-four percent screened positive for childhood physical and/or sexual abuse occurring before the age of 18; 42% screened positive for both physical and sexual abuse; 72% reported still being affected by their abuse. Among all abuse victims, 44% were interested in treatment for their abuse history and 62% of homeless youth who reported still being affected by their abuse were interested in treatment. Individuals were more likely to be interested in treatment if they were female, had not completed high school or had been previously asked about family dysfunction. Many victims who declined treatment offered spontaneous insight into their decision. Interest in treatment was similar to interest in treatment for other behaviors such as smoking and substance abuse.

Conclusions

Histories of abuse are common among homeless youth. A majority of those reporting a history of abuse are still affected by their abuse. Interest in treatment for a history of abuse was comparable to interest in treatment for other morbidities in the homeless youth population such as tobacco use and substance abuse. Our finding that homeless youth continue to be impacted by their abuse and are interested in treatment should prompt more screening for histories of abuse.     

Teaching Evolution in New Zealand’s Schools—Reviewing Changes in the New Zealand Science Curriculum

New Zealand has had a national school science curriculum for more than 80 years. In the past the evolution content of this document has varied, and has at times been strongly influenced by creationist lobby groups. The ‘new’ science curriculum, to be fully implemented in 2010, places much greater emphasis than before on understanding evolution, and also on teaching the nature of science. Interplay between the two can potentially improve student understanding of the culture and processes of science in general and evolutionary theory in particular. While the explicit use of the word ‘evolution’ highlights its significance, it is necessary to provide both resources and pedagogical guidelines to support teachers in dealing with this important topic.     

Deconstructing Engineering Education Programmes: The DEEP Project to reform the mechanical engineering curriculum

The goal of the Deconstructing Engineering Education Programmes project is to revise the mechanical engineering undergraduate curriculum to make the discipline more able to attract and retain a diverse community of students. The project seeks to reduce and reorder the prerequisite structure linking courses to offer greater flexibility for students. This paper describes the methods used to study the prerequisites and the resulting proposed curriculum revision. The process involved dissecting each course into topics at roughly the level of a line in a syllabus, editing the list of topics, associating prerequisites and successors to each topic and then using a genetic algorithm to produce clusters of topics. The new curriculum, which consists of 12 clusters, each of which could be a full year course, is quite different from the traditional curriculum.     

“Coming Out” in a Feminist Classroom

Ideological differences in a writing class evoke the passion of political sensitivities. A graduate student tells of “coming out” as a pro-life advocate in an essay before his feminist classmates and professor. The exchange created instant and irreconcilable enemies, but he also found some unexpected support from a hesitant voice within that classroom.

Genome Consortium for Active Teaching: meeting the goals of BIO2010

The Genome Consortium for Active Teaching (GCAT) facilitates the use of modern genomics methods in undergraduate education. Initially focused on microarray technology, but with an eye toward diversification, GCAT is a community working to improve the education of tomorrow's life science professionals. GCAT participants have access to affordable microarrays, microarray scanners, free software for data analysis, and faculty workshops. Microarrays provided by GCAT have been used by 141 faculty on 134 campuses, including 21 faculty that serve large numbers of underrepresented minority students. An estimated 9480 undergraduates a year will have access to microarrays by 2009 as a direct result of GCAT faculty workshops. Gains for students include significantly improved comprehension of topics in functional genomics and increased interest in research. Faculty reported improved access to new technology and gains in understanding thanks to their involvement with GCAT. GCAT's network of supportive colleagues encourages faculty to explore genomics through student research and to learn a new and complex method with their undergraduates. GCAT is meeting important goals of BIO2010 by making research methods accessible to undergraduates, training faculty in genomics and bioinformatics, integrating mathematics into the biology curriculum, and increasing participation by underrepresented minority students.     

Exploring the Relationship of Home Country Government Reforms and the Choices of International Higher Education Scholarship Program Participants

Many international scholarship programs expect that graduates will return home to apply their education for socioeconomic development, yet national contextual factors shape these anticipated outcomes. Through comparing Georgia and Moldova, this research examines how one contextual factor—the home government’s reforms—influenced U.S. higher education graduates’ pathways. Notably, the decade-old, pro-democratic revolutions in each country were identified as “critical moments” that shaped how international scholarship alumni estimated their role and responsibility in their country’s progress. Findings contribute to nuanced understanding of how student mobility influences change in post-Soviet countries, leading to improved international education programs.