Tucson Unified School District

Background: In consideration of the central role of motivation to academic (and other) outcomes, the present study is part of a larger two-year project wherein we apply race-reimaged/race-focused perspectives to examine the ways ethnic studies promote motivation outcomes for Latinx youth. In the first year of the project, we examined curiosity as a central outcome in ethnic studies English language arts courses. Here, we focus on findings from the second year, which included social studies classrooms and a focus on self-regulation—a term that describes the behavioral, affective, motivation, and metacognitive processes that play a role in an individual’s efforts to pursue goals. Focus of Study: the research questions we examined in this study focused on the extent to which SDT was related to Latinx high school students’ self-regulation and examined how ethnic studies courses foster self-regulation through support of psychological needs reflected in SDT. We hypothesized that the race-reimaged and race-focused domains of SDT would predict self-regulation and that Latinx students in ethnic studies courses experience enhanced opportunities for autonomy, belonging, ethnic identity, and competence. Research Design: Using a qualitative-dominant sequential explanatory mixed methods design that consisted of two phases, we began with the administration of student surveys (collected in late fall and early spring of the academic year) that reflect the domains of SDT, as well as ethnic identity, for quantitative analyses. We build on the initial findings using qualitative methods that involved a subset of student interviews chosen by purposive extreme-case sampling based on self-regulation scores for students across each teachers’ classrooms during the second phase. Conclusions: Findings revealed significant paths among’ autonomy, ethnic identity, competence and students’ self-regulation. Moreover, both autonomy and ethnic identity were partially mediated by student belonging, which was found to be significantly and directly related to students’ self-regulation. Consistent with self-determination theory, there were medium to large effects in the relationships (r = .28 to .62) among autonomy, ethnic identity, and competence. Qualitative findings corroborated the paths and indicated that aims to promote student ethnic identity is a salient feature of ethnic studies classes that can support students’ motivation. Implications for future research are discussed.

Collectively, measures created for research use—whether self-report or observational—have contributed to evidence underscoring the importance of ensuring teachers develop knowledge and skills to engage in asset-based pedagogy. Teachers who wish to enhance their practice, however, do not have a way to elicit students’ perspectives of their instruction with a validated instrument designed to do so. Given that student identity is a robust predictor of minoritized students’ academic and non-academic outcomes, this study reflects the development and validation of Asset-Based Identities Measure that centers student voice to formatively inform teacher practice. The iterative design of the study included expert educators, students, and a larger validation sample of N = 860 students. Cognitive interviews and focus groups contributed to the refinement of the pilot measure across three identity domains. Factor structures were examined through confirmatory factor analyses resulting in a robust measure. Use of the measure is discussed.

This study reports the development of a portable whole cell biosensor system for environmental monitoring applications, such as air quality control, water pollution monitoring, and radiation leakage detection. The system consists of a lightweight mechanical housing, a temperature regulating system, and a microfluidic bacterial inoculation channel. The overall system, which is less than 200 g, serves as a portable incubator for cell inoculation and can be mounted on an unmanned aerial vehicle for monitoring remote and unreachable locations. The feedback control system maintains the inoculation temperature within 0.05 °C. The large surface-to-volume ratio of the polydimethylsiloxane microchannel facilitates effective gas exchange for rapid bacterial growth. Molecular dynamic simulation shows effective diffusion of major gas pollutants in PDMS toward gas sensing applications. By optimizing the design, we demonstrate the operation of the system in ambient temperatures from 5 °C to 32 °C and rapid bacterial growth in microchannels compared to standard bacterial culture techniques.

This case study describes collaboration between business executives and superintendents to influence local/regional K–12 educational change. Specifically, we examine participant like-mindedness about the ethics and appropriate focus of K–12 intermediary collaboration, the extent of democratic functioning, and key individuals to involve. Data sources consist of existing semistructured interviews with 6 superintendents and 28 business executives involved in intermediary organizations (i.e., chambers of commerce, business– education roundtables, educational nonprofits) within a metropolitan area of the U.S. Southwest. Furman's (2004) ethic of community frames the analysis. Participants narrate common moral purpose motivated by civic duty for the public good over profit-driven interests. Moreover, deficiencies in democratic collaborative processes formed divergent views on how this should be operationalized and thus caused some voices to be silenced. Superintendent inattention to democratic processes reinforced deficiencies despite the enabling potential of certain business executives.

This article addresses issues that leaders should consider when determining an exceptional child's need for extended school year services. An examination of the legal issues that emerged as a result of Pennsylvania's extended school year court cases is presented, and a broader range of educational issues that were not considered in the litigation is discussed. The authors take the position that decisions to implement extended school experiences for exceptional children should be based on educational determinants exceeding those presented in Armstrong vs. Kline and the more recent court cases. In addition, specific recommendations are made regarding policy development for extended school year programs serving exceptional children.

This paper describes two BASIC computer programs that calculate Hotelling's T2 statistic either for one sample or for two samples. Output of the program includes the Mahalanobis distance D2, the F ratio associated with T2, and its probability level.

A total of 102 Spanish-speaking preschool pupils and 104 English-speaking pupils were individually administered the Spanish and English versions of the Cooperative Preschool Inventory. Minimum logit chi-squared regression was applied to each of the 33 items of the verbal scale of the inventory. Several differences in the response patterns of the two groups were noted, although the number of potentially biased items was small (12%).

This paper describes a Pascal computer program which performs the Games-Howell procedure for making multiple comparisons among means of groups with unequal variances and unequal ns. Data are read from a text file consisting of means, variances, and sample sizes of the groups.

A computer program is described which computes coefficients of congruence, salient variable similarity indices, and chi-square tests of the differences between two factors in the pattern and size of their loadings. The program will make pairwise comparisons between factors in two independent samples. The program is written in BASIC for the TRS-80 microcomputer.