Practical Patriotism: Camp Fire Girls,Girl Scouts,and Americanization

Drawing primarily on discourses and events from the period surrounding World War I, this essay examines the methods deployed by Camp Fire Girls and Girls Scouts to recruit the daughters of immigrants and, upon joining, acculturate these new members to the American way of life. The argument begins by analyzing those discourses describing the so-called “new immigrant” from southern and eastern Europe as a threat to national unity. Turning to the ways in which the new immigrant problem was gendered through the rhetorical construction of a “girl problem,” this author argues that the advocates describing the girl problem leveraged the presumed cultural rift between foreign-born parents and their new-world children in order to induce the daughters of the foreign-born to perform as American. The essay closely analyzes the discourses of two groups committed to the project of Americanizing the daughters of immigrants: the Camp Fire Girls and Girl Scouts. The article contends that these groups, the two most popular of the period, Americanized the daughter of the foreign-born by using recruitment tactics that invited her to dissociate from an old-world ethnicity, deploying legendary heroines re-figuring the girl's American belonging, and engineering patriotic regimens habituating her to American customs. Ultimately, this essay demonstrates how these groups rhetorically refigured the cultural and social belonging of their members in order to assuage public concerns about national unity.     

Rapid production of protein-loaded biodegradable microparticles using surface acoustic waves

We present a straightforward and rapid surface acoustic wave (SAW) atomization-based technique for encapsulating proteins into 10 μm order particles composed of a biodegradable polymeric excipient, using bovine serum albumin (BSA) as an exemplar. Scans obtained from confocal microscopy provide qualitative proof of encapsulation and show the fluorescent conjugated protein to be distributed in a relatively uniform manner within the polymer shell. An ELISA assay of the collected particles demonstrates that the BSA survives the atomization, particle formation, and collection process with a yield of approximately 55%. The SAW atomization universally gave particles with a textured morphology, and increasing the frequency and polymer concentration generally gave smaller particles (to 3 μm average) with reduced porosity.     

The role of special schools for children with profound and multiple learning difficulties: is segregation always best?

The education of young people with profound and multiple learning difficulties continues to raise challenges and controversies. In this article, Ben Simmons, an ESRC funded PhD student and research assistant, and Phil Bayliss, programme director for the masters degree in special education and disability, both based in the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at the University of Exeter, describe their research into provision for pupils with profound and multiple learning difficulties in a special school in the south west of England. Their work, based in an interpretivist, qualitative approach, set out to illuminate issues relating to the inclusion of pupils with profound and multiple learning difficulties. The findings presented here suggest that the school, in spite of its strong reputation, struggled significantly to provide appropriate learning experiences for pupils with profound and multiple learning difficulties. Ben Simmons and Phil Bayliss discuss the need for improved staff development opportunities focused on enhancing current levels of knowledge and skills. They conclude by calling for a reappraisal of the established view that special schools necessarily provide the best learning environment for pupils with profound and multiple learning difficulties.     

Bridging theory and practice: a conceptual framework for consulting organisations

A growing number of organisations are emerging as partners to districts pursuing systemic improvement. Given the critical role a consulting organisation could play in supporting system reform efforts, how does a district leader looking to establish a consulting partnership determine what characteristics in a consulting organisation may be more likely to yield success? This paper utilises an exploratory sequential mixed methods approach for two purposes: (1) to assess whether the quality domains of consultants most prevalent in the literature are consistent with multiple sources of expert knowledge at the point of practice and (2) to determine which, if any, quality domains of consultants are perceived as more important than others for partnership success. Overall, the findings corroborated that the domains identified through the literature are influential to partnership success. While no specific domain or set of domains emerged as most dominant, interpersonal skills and content expertise are foundational indicators that crosscut the other domains.     

Early manifestations of intellectual performance: Evidence that genetic effects on later academic test performance are mediated through verbal performance in early childhood

Intellectual performance is highly heritable and robustly predicts lifelong health and success but the earliest manifestations of genetic effects on this asset are not well understood. This study examined whether early executive function (EF) or verbal performance mediate genetic influences on subsequent intellectual performance, in 561 U.S.-based adoptees (57% male) and their birth and adoptive parents (70% and 92% White, 13% and 4% African American, 7% and 2% Latinx, respectively), administered measures in 2003–2017. Genetic influences on children's academic performance at 7 years were mediated by verbal performance at 4.5 years (β = .22, 95% CI [0.08, 0.35], p = .002) and not via EF, indicating that verbal performance is an early manifestation of genetic propensity for intellectual performance.     

Developmental trajectories of behavioral inhibition from infancy to age seven: The role of genetic and environmental risk for psychopathology

The present study leveraged data from a longitudinal adoption study of 361 families recruited between 2003 and 2010 in the United States. We investigated how psychopathology symptoms in birth parents (BP; M_age = 24.1 years; 50.5–62.9% completed high school) and adoptive parents (AP; M_age = 37.8 years; 80.9% completed college; 94% mother–father couples) influenced children's behavioral inhibition (BI) trajectories. We used latent growth models of observed BI at 18 and 27 months, and 4.5 and 7 years in a sample of adopted children (Female = 42%, White = 57%, Black = 11%, Multi-racial = 21%, Latinx = 9%). BI generally decreased over time, yet there was substantial variability in these trajectories. Neither BP nor AP psychopathology symptoms independently predicted systematic differences in BI trajectories. Instead, we found that AP internalizing symptoms moderated the effects of BP psychopathology on trajectories of BI, indicating a gene by environment interaction.     

The C.R.E.A.T.E. approach to primary literature shifts undergraduates' self-assessed ability to read and analyze journal articles, attitudes about science, and epistemological beliefs

The C.R.E.A.T.E. (Consider, Read, Elucidate hypotheses, Analyze and interpret data, Think of the next Experiment) method uses intensive analysis of primary literature in the undergraduate classroom to demystify and humanize science. We have reported previously that the method improves students' critical thinking and content integration abilities, while at the same time enhancing their self-reported understanding of "who does science, and why." We report here the results of an assessment that addressed C.R.E.A.T.E. students' attitudes about the nature of science, beliefs about learning, and confidence in their ability to read, analyze, and explain research articles. Using a Likert-style survey administered pre- and postcourse, we found significant changes in students' confidence in their ability to read and analyze primary literature, self-assessed understanding of the nature of science, and epistemological beliefs (e.g., their sense of whether knowledge is certain and scientific talent innate). Thus, within a single semester, the inexpensive C.R.E.A.T.E. method can shift not just students' analytical abilities and understanding of scientists as people, but can also positively affect students' confidence with analysis of primary literature, their insight into the processes of science, and their beliefs about learning.