Soy protein

Soy protein comes from soybeans and offers multiple health benefits, some of which are just beginning to be discovered. This column reviews the health benefits of soy products with a special focus on women and children's health. To date, little has been written or researched that is directly related to perinatal health. Thus, the column has a more broad focus so that childbirth educators have a general resource to gain knowledge related to the use of soy-based foods.     

Improving nutrition in pregnant adolescents: recommendations for clinical practitioners

Pregnancy represents an ideal time for health promotion activities. Many women, including adolescents, are interested and willing to change health behaviors to improve the chance that they will deliver a healthy infant. This paper focuses on improving nutrition in pregnant adolescents. Seven recommendations are presented to help achieve this goal: 1) Focus on foods, not nutrients; 2) individualize and work within the pregnant adolescent's current eating habits; 3) consider the context of family and peer groups; 4) reward efforts; 5) make it easy; 6) focus on weight gain patterns for optimal birth outcomes; and 7) refer to a dietician, as needed. Use of these recommendations comprehensively addresses adolescent developmental needs to improve nutrition during pregnancy. These recommendations are not meant to be all-inclusive; rather, they are meant to serve as a guide for clinical management of nutrition for pregnant adolescents.     

Using Student Video Cases to Assess Pre-service Elementary Teachers’ Engineering Teaching Responsiveness

Our study addresses the need for new approaches to prepare novice elementary teachers to teach both science and engineering, and for new tools to measure how well those approaches are working. This in particular would inform the teacher educators of the extent to which novice teachers are developing expertise in facilitating their students’ engineering design work. One important dimension to measure is novice teachers’ abilities to notice the substance of student thinking and to respond in productive ways. This teacher noticing is particularly important in science and engineering education, where students’ initial, idiosyncratic ideas and practices influence the likelihood that particular instructional strategies will help them learn. This paper describes evidence of validity and reliability for the Video Case Diagnosis (VCD) task, a new instrument for measuring pre-service elementary teachers’ engineering teaching responsiveness. To complete the VCD, participants view a 6-min video episode of children solving an engineering design problem, describe in writing what they notice about the students’ science ideas and engineering practices, and propose how a teacher could productively respond to the students. The rubric for scoring VCD responses allowed two independent scorers to achieve inter-rater reliability. Content analysis of the video episode, systematic review of literature on science and engineering practices, and solicitation of external expert educator responses establish content validity for VCD. Field test results with three different participant groups who have different levels of engineering education experience offer evidence of construct validity.     

Self‐assessment methods in writing instruction: a conceptual framework,successful practices and essential strategies

Student writing achievement is essential to lifelong learner success, but supporting writing can be challenging for teachers. Several large‐scale analyses of publications on writing have called for further study of instructional methods, as the current literature does not sufficiently address the need to support best teaching practices. Self‐assessment methods in writing instruction present meaningful ways to promote student writing achievement through reflection and meta‐cognition during the writing process. Self‐assessment practices are described in publications across the academic disciplines where writing is required, and close investigations of the methods are also published in the research fields of literacy, English education and composition. This study aims to bridge these fields to construct a clear and comprehensive understanding of self‐assessment methods. Self‐assessment encompasses a wide range of practices and varied terminology. It is essential to clarify effective methods of self‐assessment and to disseminate practical information to educators. This paper presents the findings of an analysis of the literature yielding: (1) a theoretical framework for self‐assessment methods in writing instruction; (2) an overview of concepts/practices; (3) a list of literature‐supported strategies for effective classroom use derived from a study of a vast body of literature. Results strongly support self‐assessment as a means to foster student writing achievement, middle school through higher education. Delineated strategies can assist instructors with self‐assessment implementation.     

Partnering with Undergraduate Students to Conduct Library Focus Groups

Experiential learning is becoming an increasingly important part of the university experience. Academic libraries have long provided practicum opportunities for library and information science students. To date, however, few libraries have documented experiential learning partnerships with social science students. Librarians at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) partnered with the university's anthropology department in an experiential learning opportunity. Undergraduate students conducted focus groups to discover how MTSU students complete research assignments and what role the library plays in the process. This article describes the collaboration, and it discusses the benefits and drawbacks of partnering with undergraduate student researchers.     

Mario Van Peebles's Panther and Popular Memories of the Black Panther Party

The 1995 movie Panther depicted the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense as a vibrant but ultimately doomed social movement for racial and economic justice during the late 1960s. Panther's narrative indicted the white-operated police for perpetuating violence against African-Americans and for undermining movements for black empowerment. As such, this film represented a rare source of filmic counter-memory that challenged hegemonic memories of U.S. race relations. Newspaper reports and reviews of Panther, however, questioned the film's veracity as a source of historical information. An analysis of these reviews and reports indicates the challenges counter-memories confront in popular culture.     

Blue-collar work,career, and success: occupational narratives of Sisu

This study examined underground iron ore miners' occupational narratives to uncover how their stories socialize miners into blue-collar careers and reinforce their work identities. Through the root theme of sisu (Finnish for inner determination), underground miners create a status hierarchy that is used to construct a sense of pride around their work and to establish milestones of success for themselves and others in their workgroup. Furthermore, they communicatively construct exemplars that guide their performance and decisions during the unfolding of their work experiences. Their discourses provide alternatives to white-collar conceptualizations and practices of careers and success.     

What to do next: an exploratory study of the post-secondary decisions of American students

Research on college choices is the new tool used by Higher Educational Institutions to help them identify the influences and factors affecting potential student populations. To measure the growing rate of working students in higher education, we propose to examine the decisions made after graduating from high school to current demographic changes. In this study, we use data from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS: 2002) to estimate the influence of individual variables on post graduating high school choices using multinomial logistic regression analysis. Untangling the individual choices allows us to examine, four possible after high school life choices—students who decide to pursue post-secondary education (student); those who decide to work while attending a post-secondary institution (working student); those who decide to enter the workforce (worker) or high school graduates who neither work nor enroll in postsecondary education (unemployed). Results suggest that aside from socioeconomic status and achievement, interesting patterns for gender, ethnicity and family composition and its effect on the likelihood of a high school graduate’s life choices emerged. As an example, Asian students are more likely to enter their next phase in life as a student than a working student in comparison to white ones. That result is a clear example that not all high school students are alike in their life choices; therefore, for a better understanding in the needs and decision making ways of high school graduates, this paper addresses different factors that lead to a post-secondary decision in order to accommodate their transition to HEI.     

Certification and specialized competencies for teachers in gifted education programs

This article describes the value of Piaget's equilibration theory for understanding characteristics of the young gifted child. Key elements of equilibration theory are discussed. Differences in the equilibration patterns in gifted children are described and application of equilibration to other than cognitive systems is considered. The article concludes with some ideas for teachers and parents to help gifted young children search for equilibrium.