Introduction: Adolescent Mental health is a growing topic of concern for pediatric nurse practitioners. Adolescents are known for risky behaviors that can lead to poor health habits, unintentional and intentional injuries. There are recommendations from the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and the National Prevention Council (NPC) to screen adolescents for mental health concerns including depression and suicide. There are established guidelines and evidenced based screening tools to assist practitioners in screening for at risk adolescents. Yet many practitioners are unaware of these screening tools or do not feel comfortable discussing these difficult topics with adolescent. Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess Arizona’s Pediatric Nurse Practitioners' attitude, knowledge, and practice behaviors towards adolescent mental health screenings. The Theory of Planned Behavior was used to address the relationship between the practitioner’s perceived predictive behaviors and actual behaviors. By assessing practitioners’ experience with adolescence mental health screening, barriers were identified for planned future implementation studies. Methods: From this DNP project, a survey was created and electronically distributed to members of the Arizona Chapter of NAPNAP. There were 23 participants who completed the survey. A Likert-scale was used to allow the participants to express their experiences and concerns. Results: The survey showed that most pediatric nurse practitioners strongly agreed about the importance of screening adolescent for mental health concerns such as depression and suicide. The survey also found that although the PNPs felt willing to discuss the topics, their lack of knowledge about the recommendations resulted in them not screening every adolescent every time. Conclusion: The survey showed that PNPs identified adolescent with mental health concerns including depression and suicide in their practice. The results of the survey showed the PNPs are willing to discuss these topics, but need more knowledge and training regarding screening tools. In addition, the survey identified the barriers in screening of adolescents' mental health which include financial reimbursement and time management. Future studies should focus on improving mental health education for pediatric practitioners and resources to assist them in screening their adolescent patients.

Algebra test scores of the Maldivian students from grade 6 through 12 are the lowest compared to any other area of mathematics. Algebra is a fundamental topic in mathematics and lays the foundation for mathematical reasoning and complex problem-solving. Research shows that strengthening algebra instruction could improve student achievement. This concurrent mixed methods study examined the algebraic content and pedagogical knowledge of 5 sixth grade mathematics teachers who teach in 5 different schools across the Maldives. Shulman's major categories of teacher knowledge and Ball, Thames, and Phelps' domains of mathematical knowledge for teaching guided this study. The research questions examined the relationship between teachers' perceptions of their mastery of algebraic content and pedagogical knowledge, and what teachers actually know about algebraic content and pedagogy. Purposive sampling was used to select the 5 participants. Quantitative data were collected using the Diagnostic Teacher Assessments of Mathematics and Science - Middle Mathematics Teacher Assessments and qualitative data were gathered through lesson observations, interviews, and analysis of teachers' lesson plans and notes. All participants believed that they were proficient in both algebraic content and pedagogical knowledge. However, the results of this study showed that all participants lacked both algebraic content and pedagogical knowledge. Findings of this study were used to inform and design mathematics professional development to meet the needs of the participants. This mathematics professional development is expected to improve the instructional delivery of algebra through enhanced algebraic content and pedagogical knowledge. This could positively contribute to the improvement of student achievement in algebra.

A longstanding problem in mathematics education has been to determine the knowledge that teachers need in order to teach mathematics effectively. It is generally agreed that teachers need a more advanced knowledge of the mathematical content that they are teaching. That is, teachers must know more about the content that they are teaching than their students and also know more than simply how to "do the math" at a particular grade level. At the same time, research does not clearly indicate what advanced mathematical knowledge (AMK) is useful in teaching or how it can be developed and identified in teachers. In particular, the potential AMK that is useful for teaching is too vast to be enumerated and may involve a great deal of tacit knowledge, which might be difficult to detect through observations of practice alone. In the last decade, researchers have identified that teaching practice entails a specialized knowledge of mathematics but the role of advanced mathematical knowledge in teaching practice remains unclear. However, the construct of horizon content knowledge (HCK) has emerged in the literature as a promising tool for characterizing AMK as it relates specifically to teaching practice. I propose an operationalization of HCK and then use that as a lens for analyzing the knowledge resources that a fourth and fifth grade teacher draw on in their encounters with the mathematical horizon. The analysis identifies what factors contribute to teachers' encounters with the horizon, characterizes the knowledge resources, or HCK, that teachers draw on to make sense of mathematics they engage with during their horizon encounters, and explores how HCK affords and constrains teachers' ability to navigate mathematical territory. My findings suggest that experienced teachers' HCK includes a situated, professional teaching knowledge that, while sometimes non-mathematical in nature, informs their understanding of mathematical content and teaching decisions. This professional teaching knowledge guides how teachers use and generate mathematical structures that sometimes align with established mathematical structures and in other cases do not. These findings have implications regarding the way in which the development of AMK is approached relative to teacher education, ongoing professional development, and curriculum design.

Continuous advancements in technology have led to increasingly comprehensive and distributed product development processes while in pursuit of improved products at reduced costs. Information associated with these products is ever changing, and structured frameworks have become integral to managing such fluid information. Ontologies and the Semantic Web have emerged as key alternatives for capturing product knowledge in both a human-readable and computable manner. The primary and conclusive focus of this research is to characterize relationships formed within methodically developed distributed design knowledge frameworks to ultimately provide a pervasive real-time awareness in distributed design processes. Utilizing formal logics in the form of the Semantic Web’s OWL and SWRL, causal relationships are expressed to guide and facilitate knowledge acquisition as well as identify contradictions between knowledge in a knowledge base. To improve the efficiency during both the development and operational phases of these “intelligent” frameworks, a semantic relatedness algorithm is designed specifically to identify and rank underlying relationships within product development processes. After reviewing several semantic relatedness measures, three techniques, including a novel meronomic technique, are combined to create AIERO, the Algorithm for Identifying Engineering Relationships in Ontologies. In determining its applicability and accuracy, AIERO was applied to three separate, independently developed ontologies. The results indicate AIERO is capable of consistently returning relatedness values one would intuitively expect. To assess the effectiveness of AIERO in exposing underlying causal relationships across product development platforms, a case study involving the development of an industry-inspired printed circuit board (PCB) is presented. After instantiating the PCB knowledge base and developing an initial set of rules, FIDOE, the Framework for Intelligent Distributed Ontologies in Engineering, was employed to identify additional causal relationships through extensional relatedness measurements. In a conclusive PCB redesign, the resulting “intelligent” framework demonstrates its ability to pass values between instances, identify inconsistencies amongst instantiated knowledge, and identify conflicting values within product development frameworks. The results highlight how the introduced semantic methods can enhance the current knowledge acquisition, knowledge management, and knowledge validation capabilities of traditional knowledge bases.

More than 38% of the U.S. public workforce will likely retire by 2030, which may result in a labor shortage. Business leaders may adopt strategies to mitigate knowledge loss within their organizations by capturing knowledge in a knowledge management system (KMS). The purpose of this single case study was to explore strategies that information technology (IT) managers use to develop and implement a KMS. The target population consisted of IT managers in a small-sized organization located in northwestern Florida who had implemented a KMS successfully. The conceptual framework for this study was organizational knowledge creation theory. The collection of public documents, execution of semistructured interviews with 5 qualified participants, literature on the topic, and member checking formed the determination of the findings of the study. Using triangulation and coding the data for emergent themes, 6 themes emerged from the data analysis: (a) training, (b) customer focus, (c) policy and governance, (d) leadership and management support, (e) communication and marketing, and (f) business process management. The application of the findings may contribute to social change by identifying strategies that leaders and IT managers from communities and government agencies use in implementing a KMS that may facilitate transparency and open flow of information to citizens, and allow access to timely, civic, and potentially life-enhancing information.