<p>  </p> <p>The purpose of this research was to understand: (1) how students perceive a polytechnic high school model in relation to students’ college and career readiness, as well as (2) the challenges and successes that this type of school model presents, from the student perspective, after attending a semester of higher education at the model's collaborating university. To address these two research objectives, the authors conducted a case study of a novel public-charter high school developed by a state’s flagship research-intensive university in partnership with community, industry, and academic leaders. What makes this polytechnic high school model unique is its focus on supporting urban youth to pursue passions through science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) focused experiences, that are situated within industry-driven, hands-on projects, and a personalized learning environment. More specifically, this study examined the perceptions of this polytechnic high school model from its active senior class as well as its first graduating class after matriculating to the collaborating university. This study was conducted to better comprehend the model in relation to students’ college and career readiness (defined here as 21st century skills [creativity, communication, and collaboration], sense of belonging, and college/career intent). This was achieved by analyzing beginning of the year survey results from one school’s current seniors, as well as administering pre- and post-surveys to graduates of the unique polytechnic high school as students began and ended their first semester of post-secondary education at the collaborating university. In addition, data were obtained from a focus group with the alumni after completion of the first semester at the collaborating university. The resulting data were then analyzed to identify the participants perception of the innovative school model in relation to students’ 21st century skills, sense of belonging, college/career intent, as well as determining the challenges and successes encounter after transitioning to the collaborating university. While this research discusses the outcomes of a case study specifically focused on a polytechnic high school that is an innovative school-university collaborative model, the resulting data can be used to provide more information surrounding innovative educational approaches so that schools, educators, and other educational stakeholders have the necessary information needed to make informed decisions as they attempt to transform secondary learning experiences in response to societal changes.</p>

<p dir="ltr">The importance of art education in rural schools was researched. The benefits were listed. Barriers to access to art education in rural schools was identified as a problem. Ways to increase art education access in rural schools as solutions have been proposed. Public art in local rural community was described with ties to the classroom. </p>

<p>  </p> <p>The positions of the school board and superintendent have been in place for years and in that time not only have the dynamics of education changed, but the societal structures have also evolved. This quantitative study examined the relationships that exist between the school board’s engagement in training and professional development and their effectiveness in the areas of creating a vision, using data, establishing goals, communication, and trust. All aspects of the board’s effectiveness and engagement in training were scored based on the superintendent’s perception of them using the <em>Effective Board Leadership Practices Survey. </em>Using the Spearman’s <em>p </em>correlation coefficient, significant correlations were found between board training and all five of the forementioned characteristics. The strongest correlation was found between the board training variable and the goal-setting variable. While still significant, the weakest correlation was found between the board training variable and the use of data variable. The impact of this study for superintendents is to gain a better understanding of often used educational terms in the strategic planning process and offer potential improvements in implementing these different characteristics. The study recommends that superintendents should build trust with their school boards by facilitating ongoing training in the processes used to develop the district’s vision, processes used to define the district’s goals, and using data to not only make decisions, but to monitor the progress of those decisions. The study also recommends that superintendents need to understand the importance of working with the board to effectively communicate these different processes with the community stakeholders. </p>

<p>As the need for large elections increases and computer networking becomes more widely used, e-voting has become a major topic of interest in the field of cryptography. However, lack of cryptography knowledge among the general public is one obstacle to widespread deployment. In this paper, we present an e-voting scheme based on an existing scheme. Our scheme features an efficient location anonymization technique built on homomorphic encryption. This technique does not require any participation from the voter other than receiving and summing location shares. Moreover, our scheme is simplified and offers more protection against misbehaving parties. We also give an in-depth security analysis, present performance results, compare our scheme with existing schemes, and describe how our research can be used to enhance cybersecurity education.</p>

<p>  </p> <p>Education reforms aimed at improving student outcomes often fail because they are top-down and do not successfully scale to wider use. Over the past two decades, improvement science, which uses disciplined inquiry to solve district problems at scale, has emerged as a solution. This multi-case study investigated the question: What are the profiles and lived experiences of superintendents who use improvement science? Data for this study were collected through semi-structured interviews with three superintendents who were part of a superintendent network that focused on improvement science. The superintendents were from diverse districts: A regional Education Services District, an urban school district, and a suburban school district. Data were analyzed through themes that emerged in the literature and data. Four key findings were gleaned: Superintendents need to 1) prioritize a positive workplace culture, 2) shift ownership to staff, 3) support staff in sharing and risk taking, and 4) shift to the use of measurements at the team-level. Three recommendations stemmed from the findings and literature: Superintendents should 1) foster a workplace culture emphasizing ownership and vulnerability, 2) ensure implementation is user-centered, and 3) focus on solving the most pressing problems connected to student outcomes. Action steps for each recommendation are provided. Superintendent profiles showed them to be leaders who improve the workplace culture, are equity-driven, are vulnerable and reflective, are instructional leaders and system thinkers, and are collaborative. Yet they are still working toward staff taking ownership of improvement efforts. In essence, staff implementation has not caught up to superintendent vision. This study suggests if superintendents build capacity around a positive workplace culture and a user-centered, problem-specific approach, districts will be able to solve the most pressing student equity gap problems at scale.</p>

<p>Low levels of on-task behaviors can be troublesome for both teachers and students leading to difficulties associated with regulating off-task and disruptive behaviors and providing continuous prompts. Research indicates that students with intellectual disabilities (IDs) frequently engage in off-task and disruptive behaviors (e.g., talking, sleeping, and making negative statements). According to teachers, the on-task behaviors of students with IDs are unsatisfactory due to a behavioral deficit; as a result, these students demand more individual time and attention from adults than their typically developing classmates. This dependence on external prompts can have negative consequences for students with IDs, including exclusion from general education classes and school dropout. Although empirical investigations to address on-task behaviors is limited in Türkiye, Turkish educators indicated that one of their primary concerns was to manage off-task behaviors of students with disabilities in their classrooms. General education classroom teachers also have suggested that special education classrooms were a better placement for students with IDs because of the need to manage off-task behaviors via one-on-one or small group instructional arrangements. As a result of these off-task issues, there is a need for interventions to assist teachers in improving on-task behaviors of students with IDs which may, in turn, promote the inclusion of these students into general education classrooms. </p> <p>  One such intervention is self-management. Self-management strategies in general and self-monitoring in particular have been found to be effective in enhancing on-task behaviors of students with IDs due in part to intrusiveness, adaptability, and reactivity impact. These interventions can also be used to promote inclusion because the responsibility of behavior management passes from the teacher to the student.This change in responsibility could leave teachers more time to teach instead of providing continuous prompts given the higher teacher-student ration in general education classrooms. Unfortunately, there are several limitations in self-management research in Türkiye including the following: (a) the implementation of self-management interventions to improve on-task behaviors has been prominently conducted with students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and learning disabilities (LD); (b) the vast majority of these interventions has been conducted in segregated settings such as special education classrooms in middle school settings; and (c) systematic planning in generalization and maintenance has been lacking or limited that have caused lack of generalization of increased on-task behaviors to other settings. Given that Türkiye has only two studies investigated self-management interventions with students with IDs, these interventions have similar concerns as Western countries including lack of investigations in general education classrooms and the absence of generalization and maintenance planning.  </p> <p>In the current data set, self-management interventions (i.e., self-monitoring, self-evaluation, token economy) was utilized to improve on-task behaviors of 4 students with IDs in general education classrooms in Türkiye. A single case multiple-baseline across participants design was used. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate (a) the magnitude of the effect of self-monitoring of the on-task behaviors of Turkish students with IDs, (b) the extent to which the on-task behaviors of Turkish students with IDs generalized and maintained after exposure to self-monitoring training, (c) the effect of self-monitoring on the academic behaviors of Turkish students with IDs, and (d) the relationship between the implementation of self-monitoring and teacher reports on changes in students’ on-task behaviors.  Self-management interventions were implemented across three settings (i.e., Turkish-Language Art [TLA], math, social studies), and generalization data were collected in English-Language Art classes (ELA). Additionally, an average of 16-week maintenance data were collected from all the intervention settings (i.e., TLA, math, social studies). Based on two statistical analyses (i.e., Tau-U and Performance Criteria Based Effect Size [PCES]), the effect of self-management interventions was <em>immediate</em>, <em>generalized</em> across settings, and <em>maintained</em> over long period of time. PCESimmediate was computed to be 1.14 with a significant effect. The overall impact of the Tau-<em>U</em> intervention was 1.00 CI95 (.705 to 1.00), with generalization and maintenance effects of 1.00 CI95 (.695 to 1.00) and 1.00 CI95 (.592 to 1.00), respectively. The total PCES values were determined to be 1.2 for high effectiveness, 1.08 for generalization, and 1.2 for strong effect maintenance. The classroom teachers’ overall classroom behavior ratings were also aligned with the increased on-task behaviors. Therefore, study findings suggested that self-management interventions that originated in the West can be implemented in diverse cultural contexts, specifically with Turkish students with IDs in inclusive classrooms. Implications for future studies are discussed.   </p>

<p>This qualitative single case study examined the social and emotional needs of teachers and what they need from principals to nurture the use of effective social and emotional competencies. Individual interviews were conducted with secondary teachers from one school district in Indiana.  Three themes emerged.  Teachers need: (1) boundaries, (2) space and time, and (3) collaboration and connectedness.  In addition, this study explored what principals could do to nurture the social and emotional needs of teachers.  Six findings were reported: Principals should (1) have a clear understanding of SEL competencies (2) nurture unique opportunities for collaboration (3) nurture a variety of topics on which to collaborate with teachers (4) provide the space and time necessary for teachers to process (5) model work-life balance (6) nurture personal connections between adults within the school.  These findings will help principals develop their leadership skills in supporting teachers in their application of social and emotional learning competencies.</p>

<p>  </p> <p>Over the years it has become more common for practitioners to use the NGSS scientific practices to inform curricula at the undergraduate level. One of these practices is argumentation, the process of engaging in argument from evidence. Argumentation is an important part of the scientific process because scientists must make claims about their research and then provide justification using evidence to support those claims. While being able to argue your claim based on evidence is a common occurrence for scientists, it is rarely something students engage with in general level courses. In order to incorporate argumentation in the classroom the Claim, Evidence, Reasoning (CER) framework was adopted to develop the argumentation materials. </p> <p>In this study, aspects of the CER framework have been adapted and incorporated into the existing curriculum of a second-semester general chemistry non-majors course. The changes include lecture discussions, worksheets, and exam questions to help scaffold and facilitate students’ argumentation development. In the spring 2020 and 2021 semesters, 80 students in each course were tracked through their CER assessments to gain insight into how students construct arguments. The arguments were analyzed based on completeness, correctness, and complexity. The results show support for the effectiveness of the curriculum intervention and were used to make recommendations for instructors using the CER framework and identify future areas of research.</p>

<p>Graduate students are a critical part of academia and the academic environment. However, literature suggests that graduate students, as a community, are also experiencing concerns with mental well-being.</p> <p>  Increasingly stressful life situations and academic rigor as well as a culture of celebrating overwork and the stress of academia, have been linked as contributors toward mental distress and a general decline in well-being for graduate students.</p> <p>  One of the biggest factors in determining the success and well-being of graduate students is their faculty adviser. </p> <p>  A supportive adviser that is well matched to a student's interests and working style can likely lead to the graduate students being more likely to graduate, to have increased scholarly output, and to find a job after graduation. It stands, then, that faculty advisers may also have an effect on the mental well-being of their students.</p> <p>  However, there is currently a lack of information about how students match with the mentoring and management styles of their advisors as well as how they may find surrogate support systems, such as social media, to persevere during their graduate program or what support gaps they might fill with online communities.</p> <p>  Therefore this study explored the needs of graduate students, how graduate students may turn to online communities as an means of support, and how faculty advisors can be better matched with graduate students to help guide them toward success in graduate school. The resulting knowledge from this study can provide insights for developing enhanced methods for 1) matching students and advisors based on management and mentoring styles, 2) understanding the evolution of graduate students needs over time, and 3) establishing more thoughtful admission metrics/processes for graduate schools. In addition, an investigation into social media platforms can help us better understand how graduate students use social media for support during their studies as well as identify some common graduate student challenges and helpful strategies to mitigate these challenges. Ultimately, establishing this knowledge can be one step toward generating a more supportive and collaborative academic community which can in turn support the well-being of graduate students</p> <p>  </p> <p>According to the results of this study, the data suggests that graduate students are experiencing stress resulting from differences in the styles of management and mentoring between them and their faculty advisors. </p> <p>This stress can be linked to the pressures placed upon them related to scholarly output without clearly defined objectives for them. </p> <p>Student participants also indicated that they doubted the quality of their graduate work and had the feeling they were not moving forward.</p> <p>Some common challenges described by students via social media posts were linked to the limited guidance and/or mentorship received.</p> <p>In regard to turning to social media for support, it seems as though graduate students tend to use social media platforms to either share negative experiences that they faced or milestones achieved within their graduate programs.</p> <p>The findings suggest that the graduate students may use social media without expecting or receiving feedback on how to handle any challenges posted.</p> <p>In addition, graduate student survey participants also indicated that their advisors used primarily a ``coaching" style, indicating a low level of advisor involvement, with a high level of student involvement. </p> <p>While a majority of participants indicated that their advising style on the Student-Advisor Involvement Matrix was a “coaching” model, the managerial style responses were more varied. </p> <p>This may indicate that students do not clearly know how to define their advisors management style, or that their rankings reflect emotional response to their advisor rather than the style itself. </p> <p>That being said, the findings also suggests that there may be an opportunity to better investigate, align, and/or prepare for the management and advising styles between advisors and students.</p> <p> </p> <p>While this study has limitations, the results can provide insight toward to creation of tools for matching prospective graduate students with faculty advisors based on interests as well as management and mentoring styles.</p> <p>In addition the common challenges experienced by graduate student identified via the social media analysis as well as as the shared strategies for addressing these challenges can be used for developing potential interventions for supporting faculty advisor and graduate student relationships. </p> <p>For example, the interventions can include additional management training for faculty advisors, increased mental health services for graduate students, support for understanding how graduate student needs change over time, graduate student planning tools, empathetic mentorship training, or improved graduate student handbooks.</p>

<p dir="ltr">American society’s increase in ethnic textures, interracial tension, immigrants, religion, gender, disability, ability, and students who speak languages other than English as their first language prolongs the pedagogical challenges teachers encounter in the classroom due to diversity. This study explored the experiences of secondary social studies teachers as curricular-instructional gatekeepers implementing culturally responsive pedagogy in times of socio-political tensions in the United States. The teacher as curricular-instructional gatekeeper framework guided this research. By adopting a qualitative multiple-case study, I utilized interviews with four teachers, two hundred hours of classroom observation, and document analysis as data sources. The findings revealed that the social studies gatekeepers’ culturally responsive practices amidst the present socio-political tensions included exposing diverse perspectives to diverse students, leveraging culturally diverse learners’ lived experiences, diversifying instructional methodologies for diverse learners, and confronting stereotypes in a culturally diverse classroom. Moreover, I discovered that present happenings influence culturally responsive practices by presenting difficulty in exposing specific topics to diverse learners, limiting classroom participation for responsive teaching, increasing workload in planning responsive lessons, and becoming a better teacher in a culturally diverse classroom. I recommend that further research should be conducted to explore the role of teacher education programs in preparing pre-service or in-service teachers to implement culturally responsive practices, how the multiple identities of in-service social studies teachers interplay to influence their implementation of culturally responsive practices, and how professional development training offered to in-service social studies teachers prepare them to implement culturally responsive practices amidst the growing legislation in the United States.</p>