Special education disproportionality in the United States,Germany, Kenya,and India

Disproportionality in special education includes the underrepresentation and overrepresentation of children by gender, economic status, race, ethnicity, language, and culture. This article reviews literature on disproportionality in the United States, Germany, Kenya, and India. Societal views of disability, classism, racism, and inequitable assessment are among the factors that contribute to disproportionality. Preventative medicine, equitable access to resources, ethical and effective assessment procedures, and educational practices that are gender equitable and culturally responsive may reduce the problem of disproportionality.     

Influence of Temporal Distance on the Perceived Importance of Career‐Related Self‐Efficacy and Outcome Expectations

Because all career choices are about future actions, time is an important contextual variable in social cognitive career choice ( Hesketh, 2000 ). However, there is a dearth of research examining the effect of time. The authors examined how temporal distance to career entry influences the perceived importance of self‐efficacy and outcome expectations concerning a career pursuit. They also examined the moderating effects of perceived support and barriers, as well as country. The participants were college students in the United States (n= 180) and in South Korea (n= 215). The results of hierarchical regression analyses did not show main effects of time, but a 3‐way interaction indicated the complex interplay of time and other contextual variables. Implications for career counseling and future research are discussed.     

‘Recuperando la dignidad humana [Recovering human dignity]’: Shuar mothers speak out on intercultural bilingual education

This paper presents findings from interviews conducted in December 2011, with seven Shuar mothers of children in an intercultural bilingual school in the southern Amazon region of Ecuador. This study had two objectives: (1) to foreground the perspectives of Shuar parents towards intercultural bilingual education (IBE) as implemented in the Shuar pedagogical institute, and (2) to collaborate as an intercultural research team (North American-Shuar) to ensure linguistic and cultural authenticity of data collection, and analysis. As a Shuar mother herself, the co-author shares the same language and culture as the participants, which led to a deeper level of trust and openness in the interviews. Current studies claim that IBE is losing ground, partly because parents want their children schooled in Spanish – the language of power – and see the IBE system as inferior. However, these Shuar mothers expressed a different concern: IBE has been too intertwined with Salesian missions and must become decolonized in order to reflect authentic Shuar cultural values and educational practices.     

The Impact of Formal and Informal Respite Care on Foster,Adoptive, and Kinship Parents Caring for Children Involved in the Child Welfare System

This paper reports the results of a quantitative 42-item survey that explored foster, adoptive, and kinship parents’ (N = 160) utilization of different types of respite services (formal, informal, and a mixture of formal and informal), as well as their impressions of the impact of respite care on aspects of their lives related to family cohesion and stability, caring for their children, and their personal wellbeing. An exploratory cross-sectional, survey design was used to assess both the formal and informal respite care experiences of the foster, adoptive, and kinship caregivers. Two-tailed Fisher’s exact tests were used to examine the relationship between the type of respite received and caregivers’ respite experiences. Findings indicated that parent experiences differed depending on the type of respite services they received. Specifically, parents who used a mixture of formal and informal respite reported positive experiences related to respite more frequently than the other two types of respite groups, while those who received only informal respite reported less benefit than others. Parents who used formal respite (either alone or mixed with informal respite) reported greater stress reduction. The greatest increase in family stability was reported by parents who received a mix of informal and formal respite. While this study revealed clear benefits for families to using both informal and formal respite services, the findings suggest that formal respite care was helpful to parents regardless of whether used alone or in combination with informal care.     

NGO Networks,the Diffusion and Adaptation of NGO Managerialism,and NGO Legitimacy in Latin America

Nongovernmental organization (NGO) networks have become key instruments used by NGOs in Latin America. Because these networks have important roles to play in advocating for the sector, earning public support, and improving the provision of public goods and services, understanding these networks is important to understanding the NGO sector more broadly. The article examines how NGO networks use collective texts to diffuse and adapt managerial practices. NGO networks use elements of managerialism and their adaptations to signal quality, secure recognition in social development, identify strengths and weaknesses of the sector, and define civil society in order to garner sector legitimacy. While looking at managerialism from a critical perspective, the article finds that understanding NGOs networks and the diffusion and adaption of NGO practices can further pinpoint effective sources of sector legitimacy and help to strengthen the sector’s role in social development.     

Using geotagged tweets to track population movements to and from Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria

Population and Environment - After a disaster, there is an urgent need for information on population mobility. Our analysis examines the suitability of Twitter data for measuring post-disaster...     

Reduction in Dietary Acrylamide Exposure—Impact of Potatoes with Low Acrylamide Potential

Acrylamide forms primarily from a reaction between reducing sugars (e.g., glucose and fructose) and an amino acid (asparagine, Asn) formed naturally in foods, including potatoes. This reaction occurs when carbohydrate‐rich foods are heated at temperatures above 120 °C. Multiple potato varieties were transformed with potato genomic DNA that results in down‐regulation of the expression of the asparagine synthetase‐1 gene (Asn1), significantly reducing synthesis of free Asn, and consequently lowering the potential to form acrylamide during cooking. These potatoes with low acrylamide potential (LAP) were tested in agronomic trials, and processed into French fries and potato chips. Decreased levels of acrylamide were measured in these cooked food products when derived from LAP potatoes compared with those derived from conventional potatoes. These reductions can be directly attributed to reduction in Asn levels in the LAP potatoes. The corresponding average reduction in exposure to acrylamide from French fry and potato chip consumption is estimated to be 65%, which would amount to approximately a 25% reduction in overall dietary exposure. Considering that children consume nearly three times more acrylamide than adults on a per kg body weight basis, they would experience the most impact from the reduced acrylamide associated with LAP potatoes. The potential public health impacts, in context of dietary acrylamide exposure reduction, are discussed in this study.     

Leadership’s Role in Process Safety: An Understanding of Behavioral Science Among Managers and Executives Is Needed

ABSTRACT

A recent prevalence of high visibility catastrophic events has garnered increased attention to process safety issues. While the use of Behavior-Based Safety interventions demonstrate a reduction in workplace injuries by targeting employee behavior, we believe that process safety requires a greater focus on the behavior of leaders (e.g., creating and executing strategy). One effective method to begin targeting leader behavior for the improvement of process safety is to teach leaders about the principles of behavior, including ways by which the science may be applied within their own organizational models.     

Beyond Planning:: Strategies for Successfully Implementing Strategic Decisions

This article brings strategy back to managers and their organizations. It argues and demonstrates empirically that what managers do, and the kind of organization they lead, matter in terms of achieving stated objectives. Managerial action involves a set of activities from assessing the problem to prioritising action, and takes place within an organizational context which has two important elements for decision-making. First, organizations have an accumulated stock of experience, and the more managers can access and utilise this experience base the better. Secondly, the culture and structure of an organization may exhibit more or less readiness for the changes that decisions bring about, and contexts less ready for change pose problems for managers in the implementation of decisions.This long-term study of 55 decisions in UK firms shows that careful managerial planning does not of itself guarantee successful outcomes: the organizational context is crucial in framing actions and influencing achievement, and decisions may send a firm on a trajectory beyond the point at which it can plan with confidence. Where experience and readiness are strong, decisions achieve stated objectives—where both are lacking, decisions tend to fail. But, as examination of two illustrative cases indicates, strength in either domain may be enough: sound experience may win out in comparatively unreceptive situations, and decisions may still succeed where experience is lacking but the organization is ready for change. The article closes with some implications for managers.