Training the Ethanol Workforce: The Importance of Partners in Niche Program Development

Educational, industry, and state leaders worked together to design a program to meet the training needs of Nebraska's fast-growing ethanol industry. The statewide initiative, guided by Northeast Community College and funded through the President's Community-Based Job Training Grants program, is developing dual-credit, short-term training that leads to a certificate, and degree programs in renewable fuels technology.     

Promoting Completion Through Organizational Development and Process Improvement

In 2007, Tulsa Community College (TCC) joined the national Achieving the Dream (ATD) network, which is dedicated to developing data-informed interventions to increase persistence and completion among community college students. TCC’s participation in the national initiative set it down a path for positive institutional change, but it was the College’s restructuring of their internal work teams and their process improvements since 2011–2012 that have resulted in a sustainable system that will help retain knowledge and ensure successful leadership transitions. In 2013, TCC rebranded its modified ATD system as Completing the Dream, combining the goals of Complete College America with the action research principles of Achieving the Dream. Because of these efforts, the College is in a stronger position today than it has ever been to serve our students using evidence-based strategies, ultimately resulting in more college-educated citizens in the Tulsa area.     

The Ability for Posterior Predictive Checking to Identify Model Misspecification in Bayesian Growth Mixture Modeling

Proper model specification is an issue for researchers, regardless of the estimation framework being utilized. Typically, indexes are used to compare the fit of one model to the fit of an alternate model. These indexes only provide an indication of relative fit and do not necessarily point toward proper model specification. There is a procedure in the Bayesian framework called posterior predictive checking that is designed theoretically to detect model misspecification for observed data. However, the performance of the posterior predictive check procedure has thus far not been directly examined under different conditions of mixture model misspecification. This article addresses this task and aims to provide additional insight into whether or not posterior predictive checks can detect model misspecification within the context of Bayesian growth mixture modeling. Results indicate that this procedure can only identify mixture model misspecification under very extreme cases of misspecification.     

The link between student-perceived teacher talk and student enjoyment,anxiety and discursive engagement in the classroom

This study seeks to understand the emotional connection of teachers' academically productive talk (APT) with student learning from the students' perspective. Using a sample of 2,225 students (N_{7th grade} = 1,146 and N_{8th grade} = 1,079) from 16 middle schools in a city of China, we investigate the relationship between students' perceptions of their teachers’ APT, student emotions (enjoyment and anxiety) and their discursive engagement with others in the mathematics classroom. Results from structural equation modelling and mediation analysis show that after controlling for gender, family resources and mathematics achievement, student-perceived teacher APT was positively associated with their discursive engagement with classmates. Furthermore, student enjoyment and anxiety in class mediated the relationship between student-perceived teacher APT and student discursive engagement with classmates. Multi-group analysis revealed that the model was invariant across genders and grades, indicating that the associations were applicable to male and female students as well as to seventh and eighth graders. These findings shed light on the emotional relationship of teacher APT with the discursive engagement of their students. Although prior research observes a positive relationship between teacher productive classroom talk and student discursive engagement primarily through classroom observations and teacher reflections, this study provides evidence from the students’ perspective and highlights the mediating role of student emotions in the relationship.     

School exclusion,substance misuse and use of weapons: an interpretative phenomenological analysis of interviews with children

The study presents data drawn from semi-structured interviews with five young people permanently excluded from schools in North East England. The research aimed to investigate the risk factors that lead to the children using illegal drugs, to determine the drivers and implications for drug misuse and the carrying of knives into school. The research also hoped to elicit from the young people, the solutions that could have prevented their exclusion from school. The interviews were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis to understand how a homogenous sample made sense of their lived experiences. The findings highlight the importance of prompt identification and support for children with learning and subsequent mental health needs as the evidence suggests they lead to perceived negative behaviours by teachers. The research provides further evidence that behaviour sanctions in mainstream schools such as detention and isolation booths do not improve behaviour but make it worse. Original to this research is the finding that children are consuming drugs before school to cope with their inability to access the learning, to aid their concentration and to medicate themselves to reduce the likelihood of being sanctioned by teachers.     

Self-Determination to Increase Oral Reading Fluency Performance: Pilot and Replication Single-Case Design Studies

We report findings from multiple baseline design studies examining the effects of a program (“Data Mountain”) to improve the oral reading fluency (ORF) performance of 12 third-grade students with significant reading difficulties. The Data Mountain program guided students through self-monitoring, goal setting, and motivation training related to their reading performance. In the pilot study, these components were introduced across two experimental phases (self-monitoring and goal setting, followed by motivation training) to observe potential additive effects. In the replication study, the full Data Mountain program was introduced in one experimental phase. Between-case standardized mean difference effect sizes yielded moderate effects across studies (ES = 0.53, 0.63). Visual analyses of data revealed that students demonstrated increased levels of words read correctly per minute (wpm). In the pilot study, students’ fluency increased to an average of 22 wpm in the self-monitoring and goal-setting phase, and to a further 9 wpm in the motivation training phase. In the replication study, students increased an average of 18 wpm with the Data Mountain program. These results provide evidence to suggest that self-determination and motivation training have the potential to support the ORF performance of students with significant reading difficulties in the elementary grades.     

PCARE epilogue: “the pistol of hope”; or,imprisoned workshop participants respond

Our incarcerated students in the Democratic Communication Workshop at Colorado Correctional Center respond to the PCARE essay. Through these contributions regarding their lived experiences in prison, the men in our workshop pose questions for Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies scholars concerned with confronting the problem of the prison–industrial complex—among these the largely unexamined issues facing families of people who are incarcerated. Amidst the dehumanization of daily life in prison, in the face of a system that treats them as disposable, our students are generous with readers in sharing their reflections, struggles, and hopes.     

The Digital Humanities Summer Scholarship: A model for library-led undergraduate digital scholarship

ABSTRACT

The article offers a model for library-centered undergraduate engagement with digital scholarship based on two years of successful implementation at Lafayette College. Librarians designed a competitive six-week summer internship where undergraduate students built their own digital research projects. Through their original projects, students practiced traditional research methods and simultaneously explored subfields of digital scholarship. The article's topics include the relationship between digital scholarship and information literacy, the library's role in facilitating digital scholarship, and the internship's design and execution. The article also includes reflections and recommendations for sustainable implementation.     

The Impact of Viewer Perceptions of Media Personae and Viewer Characteristics on the Strength,Enjoyment, and Satisfaction of Parasocial Relationships

Using a cross-sectional survey design (N = 338), we measured the impact of viewer perceptions of media personae and viewer characteristics on the strength, enjoyment, and satisfaction of parasocial relationships. Strength, enjoyment, and satisfaction of parasocial relationships were strongest with characters that viewers like that are perceived to be similar to the viewer or someone they know in real life. However, the strength and enjoyment of parasocial relationships decreased when the persona was perceived to be similar to either the viewer or someone they know in real life and the viewer was high on attachment anxiety, attachment avoidance, or loneliness. Limitations and implications are discussed.