Breaking Down Barriers for Student Parents and Caregivers with Family-Friendly Library Spaces

Abstract

In 2016, J. Murrey Atkins Library at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte opened a reservable study room where student parents and caregivers can study with their children on campus. In 2018, the library opened a second family-friendly study room to meet the needs of our growing campus community. To inform the room design, the library conducted a mixed methods research study that included a user survey, an examination of room reservation and usage data, and one-on-one user interviews. This paper focuses on the user-centered design process used to inform the development of the second, family-friendly, library study room.     

Body composition of female road and track endurance cyclists: Normative values and typical changes

The aims of this study were to describe normative values and seasonal variation of body composition in female cyclists comparing female road and track endurance cyclists, and to validate the use of anthropometry to monitor lean mass changes. Anthropometric profiles (seven site skinfolds) were measured over 16 years from 126 female cyclists. Lean mass index (LMI) was calculated as body weight?×?skinfolds^?x. The exponent (x) was calculated as the slope of the natural logarithm of body weight and skinfolds. Percentage changes in LMI were compared to lean mass changes measured using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) in a subset of 25 road cyclists. Compared to sub-elite and elite cyclists, world class cyclists were (mean [95% CI]) 1.18?kg [0.46, 1.90] and 0.60?kg [0.05, 1.15] lighter and had skinfolds that were 7.4?mm [3.8, 11.0] and 4.6?mm [1.8, 7.4] lower, respectively. Body weight (0.41?kg [0.04, 0.77]) and skinfolds (4.0?mm [2.1, 6.0]) were higher in the off-season compared to the early-season. World class female road cyclists had lower body weight (6.04?kg [2.73, 9.35]) and skinfolds (11.5?mm [1.1, 21.9]) than track endurance cyclists. LMI (mean exponent 0.15 [0.13, 0.18]) explained 87% of the variance in DXA lean mass. In conclusion, higher performing female cyclists were lighter and leaner than their less successful peers, road cyclists were lighter and leaner than track endurance cyclists, and weight and skinfolds were lowest early in the season. LMI appears to be a reasonably valid tool for monitoring lean mass changes.     

A Journey from STEM to STEAM: A Middle School Case Study

ABSTRACT

This article examines the initial journey of a middle school in South Carolina from a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) curriculum to a STEAM (STEM + art) curriculum. This is the first of a three-year longitudinal study that investigated the perceptions of the effectiveness, relative importance, and sustainability of a STEAM curriculum in which the arts animated learning on a daily basis for both teachers and administrators during the first year of implementation beginning in the fall 2014. The article also investigates the response that the faculty of a STEM-oriented middle school had to the induction of STEAM curriculum training.     

Teachers’ technology adoption and practices: lessons learned from the IWB phenomenon

The twenty-first century has seen unprecedented investment from governments around the world in educational technologies in schools. This paper investigates Australian teachers’ adoption and use of a popular technology that has been extensively supported by governments and school systems: the interactive whiteboard (IWB). The study suggests that a number of the barriers identified in the early days of adoption and use of this technology, such as professional support and access, still remain for many teachers, thereby impeding effective practices. The research also found that primary school teachers were using the technology in diverse ways, in contrast to secondary teachers who were using the IWB mainly for instructionist, presentational purposes. We conclude by considering various ways of reducing the effect of the identified barriers to support implementation of educational technologies in the classroom, especially the next generation of technologies promoted by governments and systems.     

“No,We Should Do It”: Youth Training Youth in Activist Research Methods

The Urban Review - This article explores a 9-month process of youth research capacity-building, beginning with the training of high school and college aged researchers in qualitative methodologies...     

Preservice teachers’ use of contrasting cases in mathematics instruction

Drawing comparisons between students’ alternative solution strategies to a single mathematics problem is a powerful yet challenging instructional practice. We examined 80 preservice teachers’ when asked to design a short lesson when given a problem and two student solutions—one correct and one incorrect. These micro-teaching events were videotaped and coded, revealing that fewer than half of participants (43%) made any explicit comparison or contrasts between the two solution strategies. Those who did were still not likely to use additional support strategies to draw students’ attention to key elements of the comparison. Further, correlations suggest that participants’ mathematical content knowledge may be related to whether participants’ showed contrasting cases but not to whether they used specific pedagogical cues to support those comparisons. While these micro-teaching events differ from the interactive constraints of a classroom, they reveal that participants did not immediately orient toward differing student solutions as a discussion opportunity, and that future instruction on contrasting cases must highlight the utility of this practice.     

Recovering lost histories of educational design: a case study in contemporary participatory strategies

Past practices shape and limit the design imagination of teachers, pupils, parents, governors, and others concerned with designing modern schools. Bringing histories of education to the table in the participatory design process of new school buildings and curricula is necessary. Schools having an extraordinary past have the potential to draw from that prefigurative practice. This paper reports a case study on how the Kees Boeke School in The Netherlands recently has returned to its own history in addressing the needs of its current and future learners in a redesign project. Through addressing the question of how the redesign might reflect a reconnection with the original vision of education espoused by Boeke—learning in relative freedom, with awareness of responsibilities for own and community’s well-being—the school management, architects, teachers, and students took part in a participatory design process. That process and the resulting school design is discussed. From this case study we argue that past adventures in education can inspire current redesign. Past experiences as well as concerns and beliefs about the future are an inevitable influence on initiatives to realise schools for the future, both for schools with experimental and those with traditional histories.     

New Counselor Educators’ Scholarly Productivity: Supportive and Discouraging Environments

Eighteen new counselor educators shared in‐depth reports of their efforts to establish an early record of scholarly productivity, critical to their success in academe. Analyses of their experiences using consensual qualitative research methods revealed components of both highly positive and highly discouraging program environments and their impact on participants’ research goals.