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The intent of this study was to investigate changes in the curriculum caused by high-stakes testing mandates within 3 Southwest Virginia school systems to find best practices for instructional application in classrooms. This qualitative study was comprised of indepth interviews and observations with elementary school teachers and administrators. High-stakes testing has impacted the nation in myriad ways. The mandates from the government presented teachers and administrators with conditions that must be met according to the No Child Left Behind Act and individual state's standards. Teachers' perceptions of curriculum changes, Developmentally Appropriate Practices (DAP), testing mandates according to high-stakes testing, and accountability were examined through personal interviews and classroom observations. This study focused on policies and practices of esteemed teachers' creative abilities as they adhered to mandates and captivated students' abilities to perform in the classroom. Teachers and administrators shared their feelings and perceptions regarding new policies and how they made changes within the classrooms and school systems. The findings indicated that the most prevalent ideas concerning teachers and administrators developed into the patterns: educators' level of satisfaction, students' stress, school changes, and our future. Educators' level of satisfaction was the most frequent theme that demonstrated high-stakes testing affected their overall happiness level. The research reflected that educators were negatively affected by high-stakes testing. Constructive ideas were identified as to how they maintained creativity within the classroom that could inspire critical thinking. A model was developed to demonstrate the findings for best instructional practices for teaching high-stakes standards in the classroom. This research should add to existing research in this area and provide information that other educators might apply to their own classroom or educational environment. The participants in this study were the change agents, and their attitudes regarding the changes affected the decisions they made with the school curriculum.

Nursing specialization involves focusing on nursing practice in an identified specific area within the entire field of professional nursing. A defined specialty scope of practice statement and standards of professional practice, with accompanying competencies, are unique to each nursing specialty. These documents help assure continued understanding and recognition of nursing’s diverse professional contributions. The purpose of this article is to demystify the process for specialty nurses who are creating or revising their specialty nursing scope and standards of practice. We provide best practices for the developmental process based on our recently published scope and standards of specialty nursing practice. The conclusion provides strategies to disseminate scope and standards documents to appropriate stakeholders.

A gap exists in education research in the area of online readiness for secondary courses. In the current study, I examined the use of an online readiness assessment to inform students and educators of the necessary skills, aptitudes, and propensities needed for secondary course completion. In this research study, the perceptions of 17 secondary students in a North Texas public school were examined. Using a three-phase design, qualitative demographic surveys, focus groups, and open-ended end-of-course success questionnaires were collected and analyzed. The findings revealed the Revised McVay Online Readiness Assessment beneficial for providing students with information regarding skills needed for their online course success. Students were interested in how prior online experience influences online readiness and successful completion as well as the influence prior expectations of online learning had on online success. In addition, the study revealed the importance of student readiness relating to more specific self-regulatory skills including time-management, metacognitive self-monitoring, and task-strategies. The study results also revealed students found importance in knowing their comfort with online communication. K-12 school system and curriculum leaders may consider and take action to ensure effective curriculum and programs are implemented to achieve the desired results of student online course completion as well as providing students with necessary skills, such as comfort in online communication, and self-regulation specific to time-management, metacognitive self-monitoring, and task-strategies. The study results suggest an online readiness assessment would prove even more useful with the inclusion of such specific skills.

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<p>The agricultural data landscape is largely dysfunctional because of the industry’s highvariability  in  scale,  scope,  technological  adoption,  and  relationships.   Integrated  data  andmodels of agricultural sub-systems could be used to advance decision-making, but interoperability  challenges  prevent  successful  innovation.   In  this  work,  temporal  and  geospatial indexing  strategies  and  aggregation  were  explored  toward  the  development  of  functional data  structures  for  soils,  weather,  solar,  and  machinery-collected  yield  data  that  enhance data context, scalability, and sharability.</p> <p>The data structures were then employed in the creation of decision support tools including web-based  applications  and  visualizations.   One  such  tool  leveraged  a  geospatial  indexing technique called geohashing to visualize dense yield data and measure the outcomes of on-farm yield trials.  Additionally, the proposed scalable, open-standard data structures were used to drive a soil water balance model that can provide insights into soil moisture conditions critical to farm planning, logistics, and irrigation.  The model integrates SSURGO soil data,weather data from the Applied Climate Information System, and solar data from the National Solar Radiation Database in order to compute a soil water balance, returning values including runoff, evaporation, and soil moisture in an automated, continuous, and incremental manner.</p> <p>The approach leveraged the Open Ag Data Alliance framework to demonstrate how the data structures can be delivered through sharable Representational State Transfer Application Programming Interfaces and to run the model in a service-oriented manner such that it can be operated continuously and incrementally, which is essential for driving real-time decision support tools.  The implementations rely heavily on the Javascript Object Notation data schemas leveraged by Javascript/Typescript front-end web applications and back-end services delivered through Docker containers.  The approach embraces modular coding concepts and several levels of open source utility packages were published for interacting with data sources and supporting the service-based operations.</p> <p>By making use of the strategies laid out by this framework, industry and research canenhance data-based decision making through models and tools.  Developers and researchers will  be  better  equipped  to  take  on  the  data  wrangling  tasks  involved  in  retrieving  and parsing unfamiliar datasets, moving them throughout information technology systems, and understanding those datasets down to a semantic level.</p>

Reverse logistics is an important process that is often misunderstood. Reverse logistics can cause considerable cost, but provide numerous opportunities. Many organisations do not understand the correct processes and procedures to follow and how to manage reverse logistics efficiently. The focus of this study was on best practices in reverse logistics. A best practice framework was developed to help organisations overcome problems and manage their reverse logistics more efficiently. This study adopted a mixed method research approach with both qualitative and quantitative elements. A comprehensive literature study was conducted to develop a conceptual best practice framework in reverse logistics and a survey was conducted to seek inputs from industry in South Africa to refine the framework into a workable instrument in practice. The study concluded that the best practices identified in literature have proven to be important in practice, and applying such practices will enable organisations to manage their reverse logistics more efficiently. / Business Management / M. Com. (Logistics)

Globalization and English-language predominance situate English teachers as increasingly influential mediators of both language and culture. In the iconic multicultural hub of Ontario, Canada, teachers work within a causal nexus of social theories of language, the information and communication technologies revolution, and unprecedented global interdependency. Changes in English curriculum reflect these trends, from references to “global citizenship,” to stress on “intercultural communication,” “cultural sensitivity,” and Information and Communication Technology (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2007). Delegated gatekeepers of both linguistic and critical literacies, and facing new questions about the purposes and priorities of their discipline, Ontario English teachers must negotiate the divide between an inherited curriculum and the impacts of sociocultural transformation on changing literacy needs. To contribute to a professional dialogue about teaching English in a multicultural society and global age, this thesis presents findings from interviews with fifteen Ontario secondary English teachers. The focal question, “How is English changing?” introduces a range of pressing issues, such as: displacing the canon, practicing intercultural communication, balancing a democratic discourse, or “common culture,” with respect for diverse values, and managing opposing views and resistance to English curriculum change. The data reveal how English teachers across levels of experience occupy contrasting positions on the curriculum change debate. In part, this can be explained in terms of epistemological orientations. The participants represent three categories: Adaptation, Applied Research / Collaborative Inquiry, and Activism, each by turn more geared toward reconceptualizing English for social diversity and global consciousness. Beyond these classifications, the teachers reflect dissonant perceptions, sometimes personal ambivalence, on the changing role of text choice, and written and oral dialogue in the English classroom. From passionate defenses of Shakespeare, to radical measures to revamp book lists for cultural relevance, to remarkable illustrations of curriculum linked with global consciousness and civic action, the responses of the English teachers delineate zones of difficulty, change, and possibility. They help, too, to catch sight of a new horizon: the English classroom as a space for “cultural conversation” (Applebee, 1994) where canon- and teacher-centred dialogue give way to intertextual (Bakhtin, 1981; Kristeva, 1980) and intercultural (R. Young, 1996) transactions.

Esta dissertação de mestrado fez parte do projeto Qualipso (Quality Platform for Open Source Software) que teve como principal objetivo melhorar a confiabilidade de sistemas de software livre. Nesse contexto, o enfoque desta pesquisa é um dos atributos de qualidade de software: usabilidade. As práticas de usabilidade no desenvolvimento de software livre, são aplicadas na maioria das vezes, em projetos patrocinados por grandes empresas ou que possuam especialistas em usabilidade como membros da equipe. Mas, em projetos menores da comunidade, compostos geralmente por desenvolvedores, raramente ela é considerada. Porém, a usabilidade é um atributo fundamental para a qualidade durante o uso de um sistema. Com base em valores compartilhados entre as comunidades de métodos ágeis e de software livre, esta dissertação propõe a adaptação de práticas de usabilidade no contexto de métodos ágeis para o contexto de comunidades de software livre. Por meio de pesquisa bibliográfica, levantamos as principais práticas de usabilidade tanto no âmbito de métodos ágeis, quanto no âmbito de software livre, e as classificamos de acordo com as fases do Design Centrado em Usuário, descrevendo cada uma com o formato nome-contexto-problema-solução-exemplos. As práticas foram exploradas em projetos de software livre, o que possibilitou maior entendimento de problemas enfrentados em contextos reais. Essa experiência resultou na proposta de adaptação de práticas de usabilidade ágil no contexto de comunidades de software livre. Dessa forma, descrevemos a realização de uma pesquisa-ação no projeto Arquigrafia-Brasil, um estudo de caso no projeto Mezuro e a aplicação de práticas de usabilidade em quatro projetos do Centro de Competência em Software Livre do IME-USP. / This Masters thesis was part of the Qualipso project (Quality Platform for Open Source Software) whose main objective was to improve the reliability of free and open source software systems. Within such context, the focus of this research is one of the attributes of software quality: usability. The usability practices in free and open source software development are applied most often in projects sponsored by large companies or employing usability experts as team members. But on smaller projects in the community, generally composed by developers, it is rarely considered. However, usability is an essential attribute to the quality in use of a system. Based on values shared between the communities of agile methods and free and open source software, this thesis proposes the adaptation of usability practices in the context of agile methods to the context of free and open source software communities. Through the study of the literature in the field, we gathered the main usability practices both within agile methods, as in free and open source software, and we classified according to User-Centered Design phases, describing each one with the format name-context-problem-solution-examples. The practices were explored in free and open source software projects, which enabled greater understanding of problems faced in real contexts. This experience resulted in the adaptation proposal of agile usability practices into the context of free and open source software communities. We describe the implementation of an action research in the Arquigrafia-Brazil project, a case study in the Mezuro project and the application of usability practices in four projects of the IME-USP FLOSS Competence Center.

In light of increasing mandates to incorporate close reading of primary source historical documents at the elementary level, this study explored the reading difficulty level of the US Constitution with preservice elementary teachers using a traditional cloze assessment procedure. While best practice pedagogy of social studies has long included thoughtful reading of primary sources, new language arts guidelines situate the analysis of primary documents within formulaic quantifiable frameworks, often problematic to the pre-service teacher. With implications for reading and social studies, this paper explores several relevant issues to both pre-service teachers and the elementary classrooms they will teach in.