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Guidance: Research on diverse SCS interview panels - privacy notice and MOU
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Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/research-on-diverse-scs-interview-panels-privacy-notice-and-mou
Trump's Declared an 'Emergency' on Immigration. Could a Future President Declare One on Education?
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President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency along the southern border of the issue of illegal immigration and wants to divert more than $8 billion in federal funding to build a wall, even though Congress isn't on board with the plan.
The issue is likely to be tied up in courts for months or more, with 16 states suing the Trump administration and Democrats on Capitol Hill trying to block the move. But if Trump is able to stick by his plan, it could represent a big shift in executive power.
After all, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., argued that, "A Democratic president can declare emergencies, as well ... So the precedent that the president is setting here is something that should be met with great unease and dismay by the Republicans." And Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C. is using that a reason not to support Trump's move.
That has us wondering: Could a future president—from either party—declare a national emergency on the achievement gap? Teacher shortages? Or, more likely, the long-term economic impact of not preparing enough students for the jobs of the future?
After all, there's plenty of data, and even reports, to encourage a president inclined to do so, starting with 1983's "A Nation At Risk," which warned the U.S. was falling dangerously behind its foreign competitors in educating students, and continuing with 2005's "Rising Above the Gathering Storm," which found that inadequate K-12 science education posed a threat to American leadership in science in a globalized economy.
More recently, in 2013, researchers from Georgetown University concluded that the economy will face a shortage of 5 million workers who have the needed training and education to do the jobs available.
So does that open the door for a President Bernie Sanders to declare an emergency on student debt, or a President Elizabeth Warren to declare an emergency on affordable child care? Or a President Marco Rubio to declare an emergency on lack of choice in education?
Not so fast, said David DeSchryver, a senior vice president at Whiteboard Advisors, a strategic consulting firm.
On the one hand, he could see how a potential leader could make an argument that a troubled K-12 system is hindering economic growth. "There are big questions about whether we have enough skilled and educated individuals to meet the demands of a changing economy. We need to rethink the way we operate. There's a continuum of programs that are not sufficing, and that has some serious economic consequences."
But it's tougher to say that the federal government should be given new power to resolve the problem, given that education has generally been a local and state issue, he said.
"You could build a case that there is a national crisis," he said. "It would be hard to build a case that the federal government is best suited to solve that crisis."
President Donald Trump turns back to the audience after speaking during an event in the Rose Garden at the White House Feb. 15 to declare a national emergency in order to build a wall along the southern border. --Susan Walsh/AP
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Source: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2019/02/trump-education-immigration-workforce-national-emergency.html
As More Latinos Go To College, Will Schools Step Up To Serve Them?
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This story about Hispanic-Serving Institutions was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.
By Delece Smith-Barrow, The Hechinger Report
ORLANDO, Fla. — The University of Central Florida opened during the civil rights movement, and from the beginning school leaders made racial diversity a priority. In 1969, the school established a black student union. In 1970, it developed an affirmative action strategy. Now UCF is on a new mission to excel in enrolling, educating and graduating Latino students, and nothing better sums up its new diversity goal than the phrase on the T-shirts displayed in the front of its bookstore: “¡Vamos Knights!”
The school is increasing its resources for Latinos, hosting roundtables on undocumented immigrant students and offering workshops on topics such as “Latinidad and LGBTQ+.” After Hurricane Maria, it welcomed displaced Puerto Ricans and gave them an in-state tuition break.
Like hundreds of universities around the country, the University of Central Florida’s Hispanic population has been growing, rising from 21.6 percent in fall 2014 to 26 percent today. Nationally, Hispanic college enrollment grew from 8 to 19 percent of all students between 1996 and 2016, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Cyndia Muñiz, UCF’s assistant director for Hispanic-serving initiatives, said her institution has embraced the growth. “We want to be an example of what it means to be a Hispanic-serving institution, if not the example,” she said.
There are incentives to do so. Any school with at least 25 percent Hispanic enrollment can apply to be federally recognized as a Hispanic-Serving Institution, a label that can qualify them for federal grants. UCF hit that enrollment threshold in the 2017-18 school year. It expects to be on the Department of Education’s list of Hispanic-serving schools by the end of 2018, Muñiz said.
During the 1995-96 school year, there were just 131 schools that fit the definition of a Hispanic-serving college or university. By 2016-17, there were 492, ranging from well-known four-year schools such as the University of California, Irvine to regional two-year schools such as New Jersey’s Essex County College. Nearly two-thirds of Latino undergraduates attend Hispanic-Serving Institutions, according to estimates by Excelencia in Education, an organization that advocates for Latinos in higher education. But the federal budget for HSIs isn’t keeping up, leaving many schools out of the running for one of the coveted, competitive federal grants.
And soon, there will be many more of these schools. In 2016-17 there were 333 colleges and universities on track to become Hispanic-serving, what Excelencia calls emerging HSIs. The schools have between 15 and 24.9 percent Latino enrollment.
Many colleges and universities are eager for the Hispanic-Serving Institution label. Beyond the potential grant dollars, being identified as “Hispanic-serving” makes them more attractive to minority students as schools vigorously compete for dwindling numbers of undergraduate learners. But advocates say the label can be hollow. That’s because the Department of Education doesn’t look at what services or programs a university offers these students, just their numbers.
“As more and more institutions hit that enrollment threshold, we have to raise the standards and expectations of what it is to be really serving our students,” said Deborah Santiago, co-founder of Excelencia in Education, at an event in Washington, D.C., in September.
One measurement of how well a school serves its students is graduation rates. Latino students at Hispanic-Serving Institutions typically have higher graduation rates than Latino students at non-HSIs, according to a December 2017 report from The Education Trust, a nonprofit organization that advocates for low-income students. For example, Latino students who had an SAT score in the 1000 range and attended a Hispanic-Serving Institution had a 51 percent six-year graduation rate. Those who went to a non-HSI had a 46 percent graduation rate.
Photo: Delece Smith-Barrow/The Hechinger Report “We have to raise the standards and expectations of what it is to be really serving our students,” said Deborah Santiago, co-founder of Excelencia in Education.
Yet several institutions on the list of Hispanic-Serving Institutions have wide gaps in graduation rates between their white and Hispanic students. For example, at Oklahoma Panhandle State University, the six-year graduation rate for Latino students pursuing a bachelor’s degree is 20 percent, but for all students it’s 43 percent and for white students it’s 46 percent, according to a Hechinger analysis.
“Despite their growth, HSIs have been criticized for solely being ‘Hispanic-enrolling,’ meaning they enroll a large percentage of Latina/o students but do not necessarily produce equitable outcomes,” wrote Gina Garcia, an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh, in the Review of Higher Education journal in 2016. “Focusing solely on enrollment and graduation rates creates a limited understanding of what it means to have an identity for serving Latina/o students.”
At Oklahoma Panhandle State University (OPSU), the recent boost in Latino student enrollment is a reflection of demographic changes in the Panhandle region. Hispanics are more than 50 percent of those younger than 44 in Texas County, where the university is located, according to a report from the Oklahoma Policy Institute.
OPSU was recognized as a Hispanic-Serving Institution in February of 2018, and the administration says it’s trying to cater to its Latino students. The university is a member of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), and students participate in the group’s internship program, which serves as a pipeline to get more Latinos into the federal workforce. Director of Hispanic student services Teri Mora regularly accompanies members of the school’s Hispanic American Leadership Organization student group to the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute conference. OPSU students also won the National Hispanic College Quiz in 2015 and 2017. This year, the university started an alumni group for Latino students to strengthen engagement with graduates.
But it recognizes that its graduation rates for Latino students are far from stellar.
The university is in need of more resources, says Ryan Blanton, vice president of outreach. Oklahoma has slashed appropriations for higher education. Per-student funding fell by more than 30 percent between 2008 and 2017, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research institution that examines how to reduce poverty and inequality.
Becoming an HSI was critical for seeking resources to help the university close the graduation gap, says Blanton. “That allows us to go after federal programs designated specifically to increase graduation rates and better support Hispanic students in higher education.”
Nancy Melendez, a member of OPSU’s student senate and Hispanic American Leadership Organization, believes the school’s HSI designation will have a positive effect. “It’s definitely an improvement not just for us, but I think, for all minorities, that we’re creating a bigger diversity,” said Melendez, a 26-year-old senior from Mexico. “Not only are we growing in numbers, but we’re bettering ourselves.”
Forging an identity is part of the challenge of being Hispanic-serving in not just name but also practice. Unlike historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), the most well-known category of minority-serving institutions, Hispanic-serving schools were not created with the sole purpose of educating minority students. HBCUs were started in the 1800s because African-Americans were initially barred from enrolling in white colleges. Historically black schools are known for having curricula, faculty and student groups that center on black culture, and have been largely run by African-Americans since their incarnation. The term Hispanic-serving institution wasn’t created until the early 1990s, and receiving this designation does not mean a school is steeped in Latino culture or curricula.
The learning environment at Hispanic-serving schools varies widely. At some, such as University of California, Irvine and Florida International University, students can get a degree in Spanish. At others, such as Oklahoma Panhandle State University and Massachusetts’ Cambridge College, students don’t have this option. A Hechinger Report analysis found that at some schools, such as The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, over 30 percent of faculty are Latino. At others, such as California’s Mount Saint Mary’s University, less than 10 percent of faculty are Latino. On average, about 21 percent of faculty at Hispanic-Serving Institutions identify as Latino, according to a 2015 report from New America, a left-leaning think tank. At HBCUs, about 57 percent of faculty identify as black, according to a 2013 report from the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Minority Serving Institutions.
Currently, any school that meets the definition of an HSI can apply for certain grants, such as the Title V grant and the Title III Part F grant, administered by the U.S. Department of Education, which are awarded for five-year periods. The grants enable Hispanic-Serving Institutions to expand resources for Latino students. Title III Part F helps Latinos and low-income students who want a degree in science, technology, engineering or math, and the average grant amount is $775,000. Many Title V Grant requests are north of $2 million.
But plenty of schools that apply get zero dollars, and advocates worry that the growing number of institutions will quickly drain the pool of funding from Congress. In fiscal year 2015, the last year for which the Department of Education has data, Congress appropriated more than $100 billion for Title V. For Title III Part F — the STEM grant — the appropriation was nearly $95 million in 2013.
“There is still a huge gap, because the number of HSIs continues to grow more rapidly every year than the amount of dollars coming from Congress,” said Antonio Flores, president of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, which has lobbied for more federal money for these grants. “Only about half or less of all the HSIs get some grant funding at any given year because there is not enough money for everyone.”
As the number of Hispanic-Serving Institutions increases, “you have more competition,” Flores said.
The label is more “sexy” now, says Santiago of Excelencia, because of the potential for federal grants, but its broad definition doesn’t always motivate schools to do the hard work of serving. That’s all the more reason to make the designation more meaningful: “We have seen institutions that say look … I’m an HSI because of my demography,” Santiago said. “I’m not necessarily an HSI where I own that definition because of my intentionality and my impact.”
Excelencia is one organization that’s trying to help schools act on their mission and increase the number of Latino college graduates.
On October 11, Excelencia announced the Seal of Excelencia, a voluntary certification for which institutions can apply. The seal will highlight schools that go above and beyond to help Latino students excel.
“The Seal of Excelencia is a way to codify what it really means to serve Latino students, not just enroll them,” Santiago said. “The seal is critical because we need to find ways to recognize what it means to serve these students well.”
Santiago anticipates that, initially, 20 schools will receive the seal. Those that apply but aren’t awarded a seal can participate in a “Ladder of Engagement … a way for us to bring together technical assistance around data, practice and leadership — which are the three pillars of the Seal of Excelencia — for institutions that want to do a better job.” The assistance will include improving curricula and faculty hiring, along with bolstering other practices to boost Latino student enrollment, academic performance and graduation rates.
“We think there needs to be more to differentiate or to better understand institutions that are taking seriously their commitment to the students who are enrolling and helping them to persist and complete,” Santiago said.
Even at the University of Central Florida, students say there’s work to be done. Puerto Rico native Jennifer Tirado came to UCF right after high school, just shortly after her family moved to Florida. In her early months on campus, the presence of Latino culture left something to be desired.
The 21-year-old senior remembers just one campus restaurant that specialized in Latino food — Cafe Bustelo — when she arrived. Now there’s also Pollo Tropical and Gringos Locos. More substantially, last year students formed the Puerto Rican Student Association, and now Tirado is its president.
She says the fact that the University of Central Florida is a Hispanic-Serving Institution is important. “It also means that the university cares about the Hispanic population.”
Source: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hispanic-serving-institutions-latinos-college_us_5bc5f994e4b03ec14971861d
Cultural Competence: Glimpsing the World Through Our Patients’ Eyes as We Guide Their Care
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The arrival of a family injured in a motor vehicle crash always engenders high emotion among the staff of an emergency department. A memorable incident from my own experience involved a Hispanic family of Jehovah’s Witnesses on their way home from church, hit by a drunk driver at an intersection. I remember the mother unconscious with head and abdominal injuries; the two children bleeding to death from multiple injuries; and a man, presumably the father, who was dead on arrival. My colleagues and I tried to suppress our outrage and shock at the unfairness of the incident.
Our trauma team divided up to care for the family, and in the midst of our efforts a nurse pulled me aside and told me that the dead-on-arrival patient was not the father of the children. The actual father had been in another car and was uninjured. He was now in the waiting room with several members of the church and wanted to speak with me to make sure I understood that his family were Jehovah’s Witnesses and were not to receive any blood. He was Spanish speaking and wanted others from his church to accompany him to help translate. I told the nurse we were too busy to talk with the husband or the church members at the moment; I then mentioned the problem of the blood transfusion to our trauma surgeon. I asked the charge nurse to contact the hospital’s legal team and a Spanish interpreter and tried to assess how important a blood transfusion would be for the mother and children. All of them were hypotensive and would probably need to go to the operating room. These were the days before CT scans and ultrasound were immediately available to define the extent of injury. Much of the diagnostic work would have to occur in the operating room during exploratory surgery. I could not predict how long any of the patients would survive without a transfusion. It could be minutes or hours. How could I let this family die over a religious belief that made no sense to me? How could we quickly discuss these complex issues in two languages? Would I be able to understand the cultural beliefs that might be linked to the eventual decisions?
Our surgeon whisked the mother off to surgery as I pondered the options. He promised to get the children to surgery as soon as his colleague arrived. He made no commitment about the blood transfusion. Over the next hour I alternated between caring for the injured children with our resident team and nurses, and talking to the father, his companions from church, and our hospital attorney. The attorney contacted an on-call judge who could decide whether the family’s wishes about the children could be overruled. The father and his religious community were insistent that no blood be given, regardless of the risk to the family, and explained that even though he and his wife were separated they were still legally married. He explained that if they received blood, they would not be able to go to heaven. The residents and nurses asked me questions about our ethical and legal duties. Wasn’t the welfare of our patients our primary priority, or was the right of patients to make a decision about their care more important? What about when patients were unconscious and you could not verify their wishes? There was no documentation of this family’s wishes in case of an emergency. We had all witnessed patients and families who changed their minds about treatment when faced with the possibility of impending death. And what about the special protections of children? Could parents make decisions that were against medical advice and might lead to their child’s death?
While this situation was extreme in its potential risks and complexity, many of the issues it raised are not so unusual in our current health system as an increasingly diverse population and their religious beliefs encounter health professionals who may have a different understanding of health and disease; may speak a different language; be of a different race, ethnicity, or class; and not share their patients’ religious or cultural beliefs. How do we unravel the various threads of a difficult medical decision, establish respectful communications, and determine the best course of action for the patients? What can we do to prepare our students, residents, and other health professionals to understand the elements of cross-cultural health care decision making and know what resources are available to find the best solutions? What are the deeper questions about developing health professionals’ cultural competence, how to teach and assess it and, ultimately, to educate caregivers to understand, respect, and fully support diverse populations?
Cultural Competence and Linguistic Competence
Betancourt et al1 define cultural competence in health care as
the ability of systems to provide care to patients with diverse values, beliefs, and behaviors, including tailoring delivery to meet patients’ social, cultural, and linguistic needs.
They suggest that cultural competence has emerged as part of an effort to reduce disparities in health care and describe how cultural competence can be divided into organizational leadership issues, systems issues—such as interpreter and health literacy services—and clinical issues related to values and beliefs.
Goode and Jones2 have defined linguistic competence as
the capacity of an organization and its personnel to communicate effectively and convey information in a manner that is easily understood by diverse audiences, including persons of limited English proficiency, those who have low literacy skills or are not literate, and individuals with disabilities.
Linguistic competence and cultural competence are intertwined such that the understanding of the meaning of words and phrases is related to the ability to understand concepts and values and to participate in decision making.3 In this issue of Academic Medicine, Ortega4 comments on the challenges of discordance in language capability between health professionals and patients and provides specific suggestions related to fostering a health system capable of caring for Spanish-speaking patients. It can sometimes be difficult to know whether miscommunication is occurring at the level of the words and phrases, or at the deeper level of concepts and values. For this reason, having the expertise both of cultural experts5—who can explain cultural beliefs and customs—and also of professional interpreters—who can explain the meaning of language—can provide the nuanced information needed to understand the thinking of a patient or family from a culture different from that of the health professional.
Disparities in Health Care
The issue of disparities in health care related to race and ethnicity was examined by the Institute of Medicine (IOM)6 in a 2003 report that concluded that
evidence of racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare is, with few exceptions, remarkably consistent across a range of illnesses and healthcare services.
The report presents examples of disparities in cardiovascular care, cancer diagnostics and treatments, use of analgesics, HIV care, diabetes care, kidney transplantation, maternal and child care, mental health, rehabilitation, and many surgical procedures, and further notes that
racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare occur in the context of broader historic and contemporary social and economic inequality and evidence of persistent racial and ethnic discrimination in many sectors of American life.
The Concept of “Otherness”
While the IOM report advocated improved cross-cultural education and better linguistic resources, Wear et al7 have raised concerns that better training and resources may only be scratching the surface and that a more profound reorientation of the health care system and health care education is needed. They suggest that health professionals be engaged with the stories and lives of patients who differ from them in regard to class, culture, religion, language, or race. They propose the use of stories that illustrate the effects of “otherness” and that highlight advocacy for patients “to do what is right, fair, and good in their care.” “Otherness” is a term that points out the sometimes-subtle ways in which health professionals may classify patients as different from themselves based on looks, language, or habits. Those classified as “other” may then become the source of fear, anger, or bias, all of which can affect communication and decisions about health care.
I think what Wear et al are getting at is that we, as caregivers, must go further than expanding our understanding of the lives and values of those who differ from us and providing better resources to help with communication, such as those presented by Juckett8 regarding culturally based diseases and related syndromes. Without personal cross-cultural experiences with patients, it is unlikely that a health professional could make use of Juckett’s information with confidence. Other barriers to communication and trust—related to social class and language—would also be likely to affect communication between a health professional and patient about an unusual folk belief. Wear et al are encouraging us to attempt, as much as possible, to see the world through the eyes of the patient using stories, art, or actual experience. While their suggestion broadens the discussion about achieving cultural competence, my own experience of living in another culture and speaking another language9 suggests that it takes months or years to truly begin to see the world through the eyes of someone from a foreign culture, and to have an inner understanding of the different cultural rules and, in many cases, financial limitations that shape patients’ responses. That is not to say that we should not try for such empathy, but we also need to explore other options to foster cultural competence to improve our care for a diverse population. I will use the case presented at the beginning of this essay to describe some of these options.
Analysis of the Case, and an Approach
Establishing communication
In the case I presented, the family spoke Spanish. We were able to involve a professional Spanish interpreter, who quickly clarified the complex web of relationships between family members that we had not been aware of. The interpreter was also able to help explain the severity of the injuries in ways that I wasn’t. Even subtle differences in the meaning of words can lead to miscommunication between health professionals and patients or their families. Karliner et al10 have shown that professional interpreters improve the quality of care provided to those with limited English proficiency more than ad hoc interpreters do. However, Hudelson et al11 suggest that health professionals have significant knowledge gaps about how best to use professional interpreters. The use of ad hoc interpreters such as friends and family members, while sometimes the only option, can create inaccurate information, breach confidentiality, and limit discussion of certain taboo topics. While the availability of telephone translator capabilities is an option for situations where in-person interpreters are not available, they are cumbersome and can only provide the most basic level of communications.
Ortega4 in this issue recommends a more formal and standardized approach to issues of the Spanish-language and Spanish-cultural competence of health professionals and the collection of data concerning their linguistic skills. My own experience as someone who speaks decent conversational Spanish is that when there is a trained interpreter available, there are often subtleties that get picked up that I would miss, perhaps partly because I am focused on the medical issues and do not consider the nuances of the language used. In addition to linguistic resources, the availability of a trained community health advocate who understands the culture of the patient can help with establishing rapport and trust. Dean et al12 have described the importance of rapport building in the acute care environment as part of a socioecological model of communications.
Cultural concepts and health professions education
In our case there was a difference of understanding about the role of blood in addressing a health problem. Members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses religion typically refuse blood or blood products, which presents difficult management decisions when blood loss could be a factor in the outcome. Milligan and Bellamy13 have described some approaches to address these conflicts. There are many other beliefs about causes of illnesses or treatments related to spiritual, philosophical, environmental, or religious principles. While no one can be aware of all of the various beliefs about health, students should be taught that it is important to know that they exist, find information about them, and be able to distinguish organized belief systems from delusions that may represent mental illness. When time and the acuity of a problem allow, there should be an effort to understand the beliefs.
There may be a tendency to classify the patient with unusual beliefs as a “difficult patient” because of the challenges that exist with developing trust or communications. Steinauer et al14 in this issue describe the challenge of difficult patients for students. Difficult patients present barriers for students to demonstrate their competence and can create moral dilemmas for students, since these patients can influence how faculty will assess their performance. One student described the challenge of trying to care for a difficult patient:
I felt hopeless because none of the things I was doing was making my rapport with him better. Which was really frustrating because it’s like, you know, I’ve done the [preclinical communication course] stuff…. I’ve basically listened to him, I listened to his concerns … but then it was like a one-way road where I was just doing things for him, but there was … no rapport, I believe, from his side. He wasn’t trying to build a relationship with me.13
Faculty need to be aware of the potential difficulties for students who are caring for difficult patients—including those who are culturally different. However, faculty should also help students realize that there also opportunities for learning and questioning assumptions (such as described by Wear et al) that such patients can provide.
Respecting identity and the “other”
An individual’s identity is both tied to and separate from his or her culture and beliefs. Our patients in the case study could be considered to have multiple identities. They were at the same time Hispanic, separated, immigrants, Jehovah’s Witnesses, children, poor, and of low medical literacy. We had difficulty recognizing these various identities and focused on the one that appeared to create the greatest conflict, the Jehovah’s Witnesses identity. Had we been able to focus on the other identities we might have been able to establish trust and have found a solution together.
There are many identities that patients carry that can affect their needs for health care, such as transgender, disabled, Hispanic, Native American, Muslim, and African American. These identities can also elicit the reaction of “otherness” that makes the establishment of trust difficult. Hinrichs et al15 describe one such example in this quote from a transgender patient:
I visited a doctor at one point that almost ran out of the room when he got a sense I was different somehow. He could not leave the examination room fast enough. You could just smell the fear on him that I was different.
“Otherness” can create barriers for patients also, since they can be intimidated by their perceptions of the “otherness” of some of their caregivers. A recent episode of the Academic Medicine podcast features a further discussion of “otherness” in health care.16
Baugh17 in this issue suggests that African American identity is a complex construct that should be understood as separate from the identity of Africans who recently immigrated to the United States. His arguments should increase our awareness of the many ways that we may perceive similarity and difference. Unfortunately, there is a long history of prejudice and stigmatization of those who are perceived to be different. Recognizing the various identities in our country’s diverse population and finding ways to understand, accept, and honor those identities is a part of creating a culturally supportive and welcoming health care environment and addressing health inequities. The selection and training of a diverse health professions workforce can also be an important part of achieving these goals.
Understanding applicable law and ethics
Legal and ethical consultation may help with decision making when cultural conflicts are difficult or impossible to resolve. In our case, the advice from legal counsel helped the health team develop a plan (described in the next paragraph) that they felt was ethically and legally sound. It combined legal and ethical principles and considered the religious views of the family and community. However, the use of the legal system to resolve a cultural or religious conflict may not improve trust between the health providers and patient or family because of the adversarial nature of the legal system. In our case, we defaulted to our legal system and were able to find support for the protection of the children and ultimately the unconscious mother, based on principles of beneficence and justice. While the legal system can help us find a way through the conflicts during an emergency such as we experienced in this case, we should recognize the limitations inherent in using it for decision making. Under nonemergency circumstances, a more collaborative approach is preferable.
Final Words
The case I presented had a relatively happy ending. The judge who was contacted agreed with the health professionals about the risks to the children and decided to provide an order of protection that allowed the children to receive blood, and they both survived. The mother also received blood under the principle that it was not clear what her wishes would have been and that she was estranged from her husband. She survived, and I spoke with her after she regained consciousness several days later and told her we had administered blood to her and her children. She sighed and thought for a moment, and then said in Spanish, “I need to be here for my children. They are my life.” Then she added, “Entiende?” “Do you understand?”
I thought back about how we had all struggled with the decisions about the care of this woman and her children and had tried to respect her rights and the beliefs of her family and community while balancing these with what we thought was the best chance for survival for all of them. I realized that none of us could probably fully understand what this woman must be feeling now and was hesitant to answer her. Finally, I nodded my head in acknowledgment of what she had said. “Yes, yes, I understand,” I responded.
Source: https://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/Fulltext/2018/09000/Cultural_Competence___Glimpsing_the_World_Through.1.aspx
Hard Copy or Electronic Textbooks? Professors Are More Concerned About Keeping Them Affordable
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Research Isn't Sexy...But You Need It Anyway
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Take literacy instruction.
While trying to capture the success in student achievement scores in literacy from the research and studies done in the 1980s to the early 2000s the RTI (Response To Intervention) process and framework were created (Vellutino et al.). RTI was developed to help schools replicate the gains witnessed in this research. Today, RTI has morphed into MTSS (Multi-Tiered System of Support) but very few districts have seen the increased in student-achievement that was initially experienced.
What happened?
While the RTI framework was adopted and utilized throughout the nation, the actual reading strategies and interventions used to achieve this growth were left behind. Implementing only half of the research (RTI Framework) while substituting different interventions and reading strategies have produced only limited results, leaving many administrators, teachers, and students frustrated. We know what works in literacy, and there is research behind it (most reading research is in the Psychology field) but still fail to dig into it, much less use it. (Kilpatrick)
Education research is vast. It spans across disciplines, instruction, leadership, and many other components that contribute to a school. The problem has become that research has been co-opted by publishers, organizations and individuals to sell one-size-fits-all quick fixes, programs and books. Many will ignore the fundamental findings of the research and insert their own ideas and practices that help these packages fly off the shelf.
With the abundance of research available, why do very few practitioners use it? What barriers exist that slow the transfer into the classroom? And what can be done to support administrators and practitioners in their quest of research-based methods?
We believe that there are 5 main barriers that exist which impacts how or if educators use research. While there could certainly be more added to this list, we feel these were the top 5 problem areas.
- Access and Abundance: Digging deep into research is typically done during college. Free access to databases, extensive libraries, experts for days. But upon graduation access is limited and met with the dreaded paywalls when locating many peer-reviewed articles, journals, and research. On top of limited access, the abundance of research out there is overwhelming. A simple search on Google Scholar with the keywords “Struggling Readers” lists 500,000 results. It is no wonder educators do not know where to begin when sifting through the research.
- Lack of Research in PD: There is no doubt the access to professional development is more abundant now than ever before. But that comes at a risk for individual educators and district leadership. We want to provide and participate in high-quality learning, however, much isn’t grounded in any realistic or research-based practices but instead they are the ideas that someone read about or heard about or tweeted about. Anyone today can learn about innovation, makerspaces, augmented reality, really any instructional practice, create a slide deck and share it with the world. Instructional practices that impact student learning are based in more than tweets and blog posts. As learners and leaders we have to model and understand where these ideas are coming from and that are they based in sound research.
- Time, Or The Lack Of: Time is a commonly mentioned barrier for educators. From new initiatives, faculty meetings, lesson planning, and connecting with students; time to do everything well is a deterrent for many educators when it comes to research.
- Research is Written For Researchers: Most research is written for other researchers, not necessarily the practitioners in the field. With this in mind, it is no wonder that many educators find it inaccessible because of the jargon used by a specific group of professionals. This jargon is filled with technical terminology that is understood at both a literal and figurative level by the group but leave the rest of us guessing. (Education Jargon Generator)
- Distrust and Disconnect Between Theory and Practice: First, disconnect. There often times is a gap between theory and reality when reading research done by professionals in the same discipline but with little to no educational background. Ideas, studies, and strategies are examined with a skeptical lens and doubt is raised when research seems isolated or without consideration of the whole child or educator demands. What many educators do not realize is the disconnect within education research itself. With no agreed upon definition of research-based, no common training methods for preservice educators, and both qualitative and quantitative inquiries producing complementary but still fragmented results, the disconnect, cognitive bias, and skepticism of authority is not only confusing, but creates a sense of distrust among the education community. Educators are more apt to believe other teachers implementing a program or using a specific framework over the years of research with statistics and data. (D.W. Miller)
Items To Consider
- Comparing Sources: One source isn’t gospel. Do your homework. Be open to opposing ideas. Don’t be married to an idea because you agree. If the research isn’t there, it’s not there. Be a critical discerner of information and ask lots of questions when you participate in professional development or are in a presentation. Ask where the research is and investigate yourself. Can you draw the same conclusions? Compile a list, according to your discipline, of leading theorists in the field to cross-check what you hear and read.
- Research-Based Is A Convoluted Term: When designing activities that include techniques or strategies that have been research-proven, you can then call it “researched-based”. Since there are varying degrees of improvement (statistically significant yes, but how much) and are there approaches that work better and have a higher effect size, it is important have a basic understanding of the research. If there isn’t any then that doesn’t mean you can’t use it. It just means you have to be more skeptical of the results, long term.
- Be A Researcher: No, this doesn’t mean you need to know about standard deviations or methodologies. What it means is be a student of your students. Gather data and examine what’s happening with student learning. What does the data show? Are the practices you are using improving student understanding? Are the results what you expected? What went wrong (or right!)? Be a reflective educator.
- Always Remember To Keep Students First: Even research can get it wrong. You know your students. Always do what is best for them, even when that means going against what others say.
Resource/Reading List:
The Black Hole of Education Research-D.W. Miller
Why Don’t Teachers Use Education Research In Teaching?
Research Proves...Very Little
Using Research and Reason In Education
Free Education Research Databases-CSULB
Unpaywall
Digital Promise Research Map
Source: http://blog.web20classroom.org/2018/07/researchisntsexy.html
12 Tips to Help You Identify Classroom-Ready Tools
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The Common Sense Education team is constantly searching for the best tools for digital teaching and learning. Our experts have rated and reviewed more than 3,000 (and counting!) apps, websites, and games for their learning potential. Through all this, we consistently come across new tools that are unlike anything we've seen before. The innovation happening in the edtech world is a big part of our inspiration and motivation to keep reviewing.
But our main motivation is keeping you -- teachers -- informed about the latest tools for digital learning. Brand-new products come onto the market all the time, but they aren't all created equal -- some are clearly more "finished" than others. Of course, some developers release early versions of their products to get feedback from new users. While many of these digital tools are just fine for classroom use, others may be unfinished, unpolished, or simply not appropriate for kids' learning.
So, from alpha to beta and beyond, what are the key traits we look for in a quality edtech product? Here are 12 questions our education editors ask that can help you identify classroom-ready digital tools.
1. Have teachers' and students' actual needs been taken into account?
Can the tool be used in a variety of classroom settings or scenarios? Have teachers' practical considerations (time, funding, logistics) been considered? Does it seem like actual teachers were involved in the product's design and development? PocketLab meets teachers' needs by making devices that are portable enough to take anywhere and more affordable than traditional equipment.
2. Does the tool support active, experiential learning?
Are kids immersed in the learning experience? What can they do to connect learning to other areas in their lives? Will they stay motivated to continue learning and exploring? A tool like Minecraft: Education Edition does a great job of reeling kids in and empowering them to learn.
3. Can students get constructive feedback, advice, and helpful hints?
Look for tools that offer students the right amount of help without muddling or complicating the experience. For example, Khan Academy makes it easy for kids to access help and hints in multiple ways and formats.
4. As a teacher, can you get clear, actionable data on student performance?
A dashboard is key, but look for one that doesn't overwhelm with too much information. The data you get should offer a clear pathway toward student improvement. For example, LightSail offers robust data that's still easy to use in personalizing students' learning.
5. Does the product support a diverse range of learners?
Will kids with different cultural or linguistic backgrounds or learning styles have access to the content? Does the product have built-in tools to help struggling readers, English-language learners, special education students, or kids with learning differences? A site like Newsela reaches all learners by providing high-interest, nonfiction texts that can be adjusted to individual students' reading levels.
6. Is enough learning content covered -- without sacrificing depth?
Will students learn a little bit about a lot of things? Often, this approach can make learning a mile wide and an inch deep. Make sure that kids can address the learning topics in a deep way. Usually, this involves critical and conceptual thinking. DragonBox models this well, with a deep dive into a specific topic that also supports conceptual learning.
7. Does the product encourage kids' collaborative and collective learning?
Can kids' interactions build greater or more meaningful understanding? Goosechase EDU is a great example of a resource where students can work in teams to solve digital scavenger hunts. An important note, though: If a product includes social features, make sure the developers have taken kids' online privacy and safety into account.
8. Does it offer assessment data while also balancing the need for kids' privacy and safety?
Does the tool offer performance or behavior data in ways that will help you support students' learning? Does it also ensure that kids aren't asked to share too much? Make sure the product's privacy policy is available as well as written in simple, comprehensible language. Formative is an assessment tool that has policies transparent enough to earn our "Use Responsibly" privacy recommendation.
9. Does the product help you meet different kids at their levels?
Do the content and design match the tool's target age group? Will kindergartners be able to read the directions? Will the graphics feel condescending to high school students? Can the learning content be adjusted or differentiated to maximize individual learning? Woot Math is a good example of a product that adapts as kids progress.
10. Is diversity (gender, race, and culture) presented without bias or stereotype?
Will students see a spectrum of backgrounds represented? Are the representations as responsible and unbiased as possible? Are there opportunities for different kinds of kids to identify with different kinds of characters? You can see a wide range of ideas and people on websites such as StoryCorps.
11. Does it promote distraction-free learning for kids?
Do advertisements, links for teachers and other adults, or sales and subscription information pull kids away from learning? Does the design keep kids' attention focused on the right task? Zearn is a resource where students come first and information for adults is tucked away out of sight.
12. Last, is the product both innovative and essential to your teaching?
Does the product fill a critical need in education today? The best edtech products don't merely substitute for an existing classroom tool; they change and redefine what great teaching and learning look like.
Source: https://www.commonsense.org/education/blog/12-tips-to-help-you-identify-classroom-ready-tools
30 days of financial fitness: 3 cool resources to raise financial literacy in kids
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As a parent and educator, I know it is super important that my kids learn how to make smart financial decisions now, before they go off into the real world. But I know that raising money confident kids isn’t always easy.
It involves planning.
It involves understanding ourselves how to be money confident—and that can be scary, even as adults.
So when I was asked by the good people at T. Rowe Price to take a look at the Money Confident Kids® resources they have for school and home, you bet I was ready. The more I learn, the more I can help my children become financially fit.
I really love the range and creativity of these resources, and you will, too.
Here’s the skinny. . .
When Maddy, Owen, and Cora were young, we started them off with Spend, Save and Give Jars. These jars helped them understand generally how important it is to be wise with our money, but to be honest, as time went on, we kind of forgot about the jars.
Now that they’re older, I know they need more than three simple jars to help them understand and manage money. I know they need more than just a checkbook or ledger sheet to keep track of their expenses.
I know that kids today are used to multi-sensory learning—they need online and offline, they need interactive and old-school hardcopy. The combination of all of these elements will ensure that all of our kids get what they need which is why I love these three resources from T. Rowe Price.
1.) Money Confident Kids mini-mags
Almost every day, I leave something out on the counter for my kids to read, which is why I love these Money Confident Kids mini-magazines!
There’s a Money Confident Kids magazine for middle schoolers, which was created in partnership with Junior Scholastic, and there’s one for high schoolers, created in partnership with Choices Magazine.
I simply printed the magazines, added a note to each with a few articles I thought would be interesting for Maddy, Owen, and Cora, and I let them read!
There are high-interest articles, images, and infographics in each magazine which kids really respond to. And if you’re not sure what to do with these resources on their own—if you need more ideas for discussion or follow-up—each magazine has its own teaching guide that you can use as support. So cool.
Also on the site is a fun Heads or Tails Savings Game where kids can literally flip a coin and see what will happen if they:
- simply put money they earned from a summer job into a savings account; or
- put money they earned from a summer job into a savings account and add $50/ month to the account.
It’s worth checking out, for sure.
2.) 30-Day Financial Fitness Calendar
As a person who thrives on consistency, the 30 Days of Financial Fitness Calendar made me want to dance.
With a daily money-related focus that was actually manageable, I truly think that any family can be on its way to financial fitness if they follow it.
With daily ideas like:
- Start the Conversation: Ask kids, what do you want to be when you grow up? How much education or training does that require, and what how will that impact college savings?
- Visit the Bank: Take your child to the bank and give him or her a mini tutorial. . .
- Kid Chefs, Part 1: Cook your child’s favorite dinner at home and keep track of the cost with him or her. . .
- Taste the Difference: Give a blind taste test comparing name and generic products and explain the cost comparison between items. . .
it’s hard not to want to jump right in and get started on our own challenge!
3.) The Star Banks Adventure® App
The Star Banks Adventure app is a fun and new app for players ages about 8 years old and above. It’s a great way for kids to put to use the skills and ideas that they’re learning about how to be more confident with money.
Owen has given the game a shot a few times, and he said it’s a little bit of a mix of several games he is familiar with but with a totally different spin. Granted, Owen’s 13—and a pretty serious gamer—so Star Banks Adventure wasn’t too tricky or challenging for him, but it kept him entertained and reading for a while.
I like that this game provides yet another way to encourage us all to talk about the important concepts of financial literacy.
And if teachers want to bring this game to the classroom, there’s even a “classroom mode” that allows the teacher to focus on key learning ideas and to track students’ progress. Perhaps parents could even do the same for the kids in their family! Love it!
Check out the Money Confident Kids website for more.
Really, this is just the tip of the iceberg; there are dozens of other cool resources worth checking out and using either at home or in the classroom.
I actually even forwarded the site to my kids’ administrative teams at their schools just to let them know these resources are available. I’m sure any educator who checks out these resources will gladly use them and introduce them to students!
Really, no matter the age of your children, today is the day to begin helping your kids to make financially fit decisions. It’s not even an option, friends; it’s a necessity.
Learn more:
fyi: Many thanks to the great people at T. Rowe Price for sharing these resources and for sponsoring this post. As always, my opinions and ideas are all my own, influenced only by my experience as a parent and educator.
T. ROWE PRICE, STARBANKS ADVENTURE, AND MONEY CONFIDENT KIDS are trademarks of T. Rowe Price Group, Inc. Used with permission.
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Source: https://teachmama.com/raise-financial-literacy-in-kids/
Three Most Important Takeaways from the Thai Cave Rescue
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By Harry Keller
Former ETCJ Science Editor
& President of SmartScience
The first lesson is that you don’t have to be clever or high-tech to solve this sort of problem. The final solution was straightforward, although extremely difficult to implement. It involved existing diving technology. These days, everyone seeks the high-tech or innovative solution first.
You might consider the solution used as being the “brute force” solution. A large number of air tanks had to be assembled along with a large number, around 90 as I’ve read, of highly experienced and capable divers. Divers deployed the air hose essential to survival and ferried food to the trapped soccer team. They set up a line for navigating the more difficult portions of the submerged cave. Some even stayed with the remaining few team members until the last one disappeared into the gloomy waters with his two accompanying divers.
The second lesson is that every cave of any difficulty should have prominent warning signs posted to keep out inexperienced people. What were those team members doing so deep in the cave? I have yet to see an answer to that question. Their foolishness cost one diver his life. It might have cost all 13 their lives, too. I sincerely hope that the publicity accompanying this incident keeps others from running these risks. The coach should have known better.
The third lesson is the importance of organization. I think that those in charge did essentially everything right, although they might have been able to move more rapidly had there not been so much “noise” to filter out. The noise came from the media and a great many well-meaning individuals and organizations. The volunteer divers were the good part.
The first step, always, is to put someone in charge. The next step, in this situation, was to ensure the ongoing life of those trapped children and coach. The air hose and food did that. (We later learned that the oxygen being pumped in was barely sufficient.) Finally, focus on the rescue itself. Make a plan. Execute that plan.
The hole-drilling and the intercession of Elon Musk did not help things one bit. The pumping did help, though, and it helped a great deal. There’s a tendency to do everything possible in a crisis situation when you really must focus on one solution. Someone finally did that, and you see the results.
Thirteen people walked and crawled into a cave. They went in a very long way without diving or swimming. Indeed, those children did not know how to swim. (We later learned that they did know how to swim.) The rain appeared at exactly the wrong time and trapped them. It turned a simple search-and-rescue into a cave-diving operation.
I do not wish to be a “Monday-morning quarterback” here. As far as I know, the people in charge did everything they had to do to make the rescue a success. Was time wasted on other ideas? I can’t tell. Was the air hose run to the trapping chamber as soon as possible? I have no information about that. Did the media circus affect the ability of the rescue team, including the support people, to do their job? I have not read anything that will answer that question. Was the final solution planned and implemented as quickly as possible? No one has reported on that. Did all the people who rescued those trapped children (and coach) show determination, courage, and skill? It sure looks like it to me.
The one black spot is the dead diver. How could that death have been prevented. Not being a diver myself, I have no way to figure that out. He and all of the other divers who battled extremely challenging conditions deserve to be held up as heroes. That coach who made the decision to enter and traverse that cave now has to live with the knowledge that his actions caused the death of one young man and risked the lives of many more. I am glad that I am not he.
__________
Related article by Keller: Science Is Not the Friend of Thai Cave Soccer Team
Filed under: Uncategorized |
Source: https://etcjournal.com/2018/07/19/three-most-important-takeaways-from-the-thai-cave-rescue/
