Teach For America

This article develops a comprehensive account of the cognitive and methodological foundations of the STEAM approach—Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics—in the specific context of physics education. Drawing on empirical findings from learning sciences, cognitive psychology, and discipline-based physics education research, it articulates how STEAM reframes physics learning as design-centered, representation-rich, inquiry-driven activity that recruits multiple modes of reasoning. Results and Discussion reports on theoretically grounded affordances of STEAM pedagogy: activation of generative processing, reduction and redistribution of cognitive load via multimodal representations, strengthening of conceptual coherence through modeling, and expansion of epistemic agency through design and critique. The article synthesizes methodological principles that make these affordances actionable: iterative modeling, productive failure and scaffolding, explicitly taught multiple representations, assessment aligned with process and product, and teacher professional learning focused on design thinking. The Conclusion maps implications for curriculum design and research, including the need for robust assessment of representational fluency and creativity, attention to equity and inclusion in design tasks, and stronger links between classroom-embedded inquiry and community contexts. The argument demonstrates that a well-specified STEAM approach can preserve the explanatory rigor of physics while expanding the repertoire of meaning-making practices that students use to understand and shape the physical world.

CDC's Colorectal Cancer Control Program (CRCCP) aims to increase colorectal cancer (CRC) screening prevalence by implementing evidence-based interventions (EBIs) in health system clinics partnering with the program. Program champions, as one of the key program components, are expected to facilitate the implementation of EBIs and support desired changes in many ways. Given limited information about the champions in clinical systems, this study investigated champion types, roles, and sustainability within the CRCCP. This mixed methods, cross-sectional study included a survey of 205 respondents (health system and clinic staff) representing 303 clinics and 12 qualitative interviews of CRCCP award recipients and partnering clinics. The survey assessed clinic characteristics, EBI implementation, information about program champions, and sustainability. Interview topics included champion roles, benefits, turnover, and maintenance. Champions worked at either the health system or clinic level. Among health systems, champions were quality improvement (QI) managers (48.5%), physicians (36.4%), or high-level administrators (27.3%). In clinics, champions were physicians (37.0%), QI managers (26.1%) or medical assistants (23.9%). Champions in both health systems and clinics were most often assigned the role (45.5% and 45.7%, respectively); yet clinic champions were more likely to naturally emerge than health system champions (26.1% vs. 15.2%). Among naturally emerging champions, 64.3% experienced zero turnover, more than for assigned champions. While champions in both groups received training, more champions in health systems reported being trained than those in clinics (75.8% vs 52.2%). No significant differences in EBIs implemented were observed between those clinics with and without a champion. Zero champion turnover was associated with great or very great leadership support (68.9%), program adaptation (60.7%) and organizational capacity (54.1%). Interviews found that champions' roles included advocating for CRC screening, providing technical assistance for EBI implementation, creating organizational policies for CRC screening, and overseeing QI. Interviewees reported a desire to address champion sustainability. These findings inform the use of program champions for clinic-based public health programs. Naturally emerging champions were more stable than those assigned the role.

A Review of AI Assisted Continuous Auditing Systems in Technology Risk and Cybersecurity Oversight explores how artificial intelligence is transforming assurance practices in increasingly digital and distributed enterprises. Traditional audit approaches, typically periodic and retrospective, struggle to keep pace with the speed, scale, and complexity of modern technology environments. Continuous auditing supported by artificial intelligence offers the ability to monitor controls, detect anomalies, and generate assurance insights in near real time. This review synthesizes current research and industry practices on AI enabled continuous auditing systems, focusing on their application in technology risk management and cybersecurity governance. The study examines machine learning, natural language processing, process mining, and anomaly detection techniques used to evaluate access controls, configuration management, incident response, and regulatory compliance. It categorizes existing models into data driven monitoring, predictive risk analytics, and automated assurance reporting approaches. Strengths and limitations are analyzed across scalability, explainability, data quality, and integration with governance risk and compliance platforms. The review highlights the growing convergence between internal audit, information security, and enterprise risk management functions as organizations adopt integrated assurance models. Emphasis is placed on explainable artificial intelligence, model transparency, and ethical considerations to ensure trust and regulatory acceptance. The paper proposes a conceptual lifecycle for AI assisted continuous auditing that includes data ingestion, control mapping, risk scoring, alerting, investigation support, and audit ready reporting. It also examines how dashboards and visualization tools enhance decision making for executives and boards. Key implementation challenges are discussed, including skills gaps, privacy concerns, legacy system integration, and resistance to organizational change. By consolidating fragmented knowledge, the review provides a comprehensive perspective on how AI can strengthen proactive oversight, reduce audit fatigue, and improve organizational resilience. Future research directions include standardized benchmarks, cross industry collaboration, and the integration of privacy preserving analytics. The findings position AI assisted continuous auditing as a strategic capability that enhances transparency, accountability, and cyber resilience in technology driven enterprises worldwide today.

The purpose of this study is to determine perceived challenges faced by MAPEH teachers during the transition from modular to face-to- face modality in terms of workload, students’ behaviour, teaching learning resources, teacher’s competency and training and supports. Also, to determine their perceived coping mechanism using the problem-focused, emotional-focused, and avoidant- focused. Additionally, to know the MAPEH teachers’ level of teaching competency in terms of content knowledge and pedagogy and learning environment. Findings revealed that the MAPEH teachers perceived challenges on limited teaching hours (3.64), students’ disruptive behaviour in sitting still, disturbing, and shouting/screaming toward others (3.78), have personal and family problems such as parent separation, financial support, and school pressure (3.82). As well as the absence of a reliable internet connection to support limited learning materials (4.00), limited textbooks, self-learning modules (3.98), and the lack of available electronic devices such as a computer, television, overhead projector, and audio speaker use for teaching learning (3.91). Moreover, respondents experience limited Trainings, seminars, and webinars for MAPEH teachers (3.71). Meanwhile, research result showed that Problem-focused (4.42) and emotional- focused (4.23) often perceived coping mechanism. Therefore, study shows that there is no significant relationship between challenges variables and Content Knowledge and Pedagogy is partially accepted. However, there is a positive significant relationship between the challenges variables and teacher’s competency is partially sustained. Moreover, there is no significant relationship between coping mechanism variables and content knowledge and pedagogy as well as the teaching environment competency.

The research article objective to explore the strategic interest of the US in South Asia, particularly after the 9/11 incident, which brought a change in the nature of strategic interests. The United States has maintained a strategic interest in South Asia since the Cold War, with the nature of the relationship evolving alongside geopolitical shifts. The US has several strategic interests in South Asia, including preventing security threats to the US, countering China's growing influence, and promoting cooperation through alliances and trade. To understand the nature of the relationship, the qualitative research methodology, drawing on secondary sources such as academic journals, news articles, and government reports are been used under the descriptive and analytical approach. The work concluded by discussing the future prospects of the US-South Asia relationship and the implications of relationship for the region and the world. Which emphasizes the need of continued cooperation and engagements to address the challenges and grab the opportunities at the diplomatic, economic and strategic ends that can ensure stability in the region.

The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD) involving Australia, India, Japan, and the United States of America began in 2017 following a decade-long gap, with the objective of ensuring a liberal Indo-Pacific area. These prolonged constraints temporarily harmed Quadrilateral cooperation, but they are not permanent due to the four countries' shared interests in preserving a regional balance of influence, access to the seas, a free economic order based on laws, combating political debt trapping, and reining in China’s assertiveness to claim territories. China's new leadership has been more aggressive and stronger, actively promoting its interests in South China and East China seas and also developing the BRI in order to display hegemonic ambitions. On the other hand, the QUAD States have already responded to China's growing aggressiveness by strengthening their collaboration in a variety of sectors, therefore multiplying the Allied States' capabilities. Despite the enormous harm caused by the Covid-19 epidemic, which presented a serious threat to the member states' economic development, coordination is likely to continue in order to fulfil common goals. The study discusses QUAD's response as well as India's strategic uncertainties in the Indian Ocean owing to China's growing influence in the blue waters. Due to the differing analyses of the threats faced by China, the paper reflects the view that India plays a critical role in the dialogue between the four countries. However, this does not prevent the QUAD Alliance from cooperating more closely on standards, strategic communications, economic policies, and military cooperation in order to preserve the democratic order that has benefited all of them.

IntroductionClassroom teachers need to monitor a group of students varying in interest, knowledge, and behavior at the same time that they present a lesson and adapt it on the fly to student questions and understanding. Many areas of expertise are associated with special kinds of perceptual skills, and teaching presents its own perceptual challenges. We discuss the special nature of the expert looking that teachers must develop and how it relates to more general models of expertise. Standard methods of classroom video are limited in their support of teacher professional looking, and we explore an alternative using mobile eyetracking that overcomes many of these limits. The combination of mobile eyetracking records and standard video enables the participant to “re-experience” a situation in a vivid way, while also seeing things they missed the first time through.MethodsWe report a study in which pairs of novice and experienced teachers teaching the same students watched their own mobile eyetracking recordings while performing a retrospective think-aloud task.ResultsExperienced teachers were better able to describe high-level features and their significance in the lessons, while novices were more likely to talk about in-the-moment events such as things they failed to see while teaching. This is consistent with work on expertise that suggests there are both costs and benefits to expert looking.DiscussionOur results suggest that the ability to quickly grasp the meaning of a classroom situation may be associated with less awareness of some of the lower-level features on which those inferences are based. Novice and experienced teachers notice different things and have different perspectives on classroom processes; understanding the cognitive process of teachers will require combining insights from each. The methods used in this study are quickly becoming less costly and more accessible, and they have a unique role to play in research and in teacher professional development.

In 1971, social critic Ivan Illich published Deschooling Society, a controversial work that critiqued mainstream education systems and proposed a radical alternative. While his work remains controversial, re-examining his ideas might advance efforts to design for learning at scale. First, we examine three design principles that emerge from Illich's writing on learning webs: (1) a holistic perspective that incorporates multidisciplinary thinking (in Illich's case, blending philosophy, politics, sociology, economics, theology, and cybernetics), (2) learning webs as a framework for thinking about learning beyond the limitations of school, and (3) broadening our view of what should be scaled (e.g., scaling opportunities rather than content). Second, we discuss three tensions in Illich's work that relate to scaling learning: (1) decentralization vs. centralization, (2) place-based vs. online learning at scale, and (3) serving the advantaged vs. the disadvantaged. In discussing these ideas and tensions, we discuss contemporary technologies and models, which may be seen as similar to learning webs. Finally, we suggest that Illich's work offers an opportunity to further connect work that sits across two related research communities: Learning @ Scale and connected learning.

Algorithmically optimizing the provision of limited resources is commonplace across domains from healthcare to lending. Optimization can lead to efficient resource allocation, but, if deployed without additional scrutiny, can also exacerbate inequality. Little is known about popular preferences regarding acceptable efficiency-equity trade-offs, making it difficult to design algorithms that are responsive to community needs and desires. Here we examine this trade-off and concomitant preferences in the context of GetCalFresh, an online service that streamlines the application process for California’s Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps). GetCalFresh runs online advertisements to raise awareness of their multilingual SNAP application service. We first demonstrate that when ads are optimized to garner the most enrollments per dollar, a disproportionately small number of Spanish speakers enroll due to relatively higher costs of non-English language advertising. Embedding these results in a survey (N = 1,532) of a diverse set of Americans, we find broad popular support for valuing equity in addition to efficiency: respondents generally preferred reducing total enrollments to facilitate increased enrollment of Spanish speakers. These results buttress recent calls to reevaluate the efficiency-centric paradigm popular in algorithmic resource allocation.

Abstract Purpose: Access to radiotherapy (RT) is now one of the stark examples of global cancer inequities. Over 800,000 new cancer cases require potentially curative or palliative RT services in Africa, arguably less than 15% of these patients currently have access to this important service. For a population of over 200 million, Nigeria requires a minimum of 280 RT machines for the increasing number of cancer cases. Painfully the country has only 8 government-funded radiotherapy machines. This study aimed to evaluate the status of the eight (8) Government-funded RT centres in Nigeria regarding RT equipment, workforce and infrastructure to quantify their ability to deliver effective RT to their patients. Methods: A survey addressing ten (10) critical areas was used to assess the eight (8) Government-funded RT centres in Nigeria. Results: Unfortunately, 6 of the 8 centres (75%) surveyed have not treated patients with RT over the last 2 years because they do not have functioning teletherapy machines. Only 2 RT centres have the capability of treating patients using advanced RT techniques. There is no PET-CT scan in any of the Government-funded RTcentres. The workforce capacity and infrastructure across the 8 centres are limited. All of the centres lack residency training programmes for medical physicists and radiation therapy technologists (RTTs) resulting in very few well-trained staff. Conclusion: As the Nigeria government plans for the new National Cancer Control Plan, there is an urgent need to scale up access to radiotherapy by upgrading the RT equipment, workforce and infrastructure to meet the current needs of Nigerian cancer patients. While the shortfall is apparent from a variety of radiotherapy-capacity data bases, this detailed analysis provides essential information for an implementation plan involving solutions from within Nigeria and with global partners. Citation Format: Runcie C.W. Chidebe, Chinedu S. Aruah, Tochukwu C. Orjiakor, Fatima Uba, Uchechukwu N Shagaya, Charles Ugwanyi, Aisha A Umar, Taofeeq Ige, Obinna C. Asogwa, Oiza T Ahmadu, Musa Ali-Gombe, Alabi Adewumi, Vitalis C. Okwor, Mutiu A Jimoh, Basheer Bello, Lucy O. Eriba, Yusuf A. Ahmed, Awwal Bisalla, Ukamaka Itanyi, Ramatallah A Balogun, Suleiman Alabi, David Pistenmaa, Coleman C. Norman, Dosanjh Manjit. The Status of Government-Funded Radiotherapy Centres in Nigeria [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 11th Annual Symposium on Global Cancer Research; Closing the Research-to-Implementation Gap; 2023 Apr 4-6. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2023;32(6_Suppl):Abstract nr 86.