I found a really important article about the importance of community/family involvement in the education of students especially young students. It can define the students whole academic experience and attitude towards school. The achievements of students with involved familial support are clearly visible when comparing test scores. The simple fact is that students with little familial involvement just tend to preform poorly in school. The article I found that spoke of this is called, Linking School-Family-Community Partnerships in Urban Elementary Schools to Student Achievement on State Tests. It was important for me to understand what aspects of the students education or background are beneficial to their success. Student’s achievement is not defined solely on what happens in the classroom or on teacher’s teaching techniques, the students come having had experiences that we as teachers may not have even had. Divorce, physical/emotional abuse, refugees, immigrants and maybe even parental pressures. It is important for the teacher to understand where the student is coming from to accurately teach for them. What is important to understand about family involvement though is that the lack of involvement is often not intentional or because the parents don’t care. It could be because the parents or family have work all day and doesn’t get home till late. It is also possible that the family at home does not speak English. This article talks not only about how the involvement of family is important but also how to get familial involvement. Sending home instructions for the homework in the language of the family so that they can help the student is a good start. Giving parents little tasks to do when they get home from work such as read a bed time student with their kids or review homework and give feedback. This is all important information for me to learn because I can’t just focus on the curriculum itself. Including teaching techniques such as make sure you know your students and you bring in the family themselves to be a part of the education of their student. All this builds the confidence of not only the student, but the family of the student and they put more support in to the teacher. This will, hopefully, build confidence in the students, and will therefore increase test scores at the end of the year. Right now I’m still trying to develop the curriculum and teaching methods I would like to implement in the classrooms. This article has been helping me to do that.

2003. Sheldon, Steven B. 2003. “Linking School-Family-Community Partnerships in

Urban Elementary Schools to Student Achievement on State Tests.” The    

        Urban Review35(2):149-165

(http://ezproxy.redlands.edu/docview/751988396?accountid=14729). doi:

http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.redlands.edu/10.1023/A:1023713829693.

The article I found this week is called “Poverty and Serious Mental Illness: Toward Action on a Seemingly Intracatable Problem” by John Sylvestre (2017). It is a literature review that argues for community health programs that address larger groups of people rather than just individuals. The program would utilize collaboration of expertise between community psychologists and practitioners from other various fields. The question the article wants to answer is “what would be an effective strategy to combat poverty on a large scale?” and uses previous research that has been done to argue their points. When discussing the definition of what constitutes poverty and how it comes about, the author focuses on the lack of voice people stuck in poverty have and the shame and stigma they have experienced as a result. He claims that the relationship between serious mental illness and poverty is due to marginalization of people who suffer from them, resulting in lack of opportunities to advocate for themselves or find a way of making an income in order to meet their basic needs. The article suggests improving methods of tracking poverty throughout the country and taking steps towards the CMH community adopting a policy that benefits these people that matches the level of investment put into individual-level interventions. Inaction on a community level by CMH services and the government ignores the root issue of what causes poverty for people who suffer from serious mental illnesses. I found this article really interesting and found that it made a lot of good points that I am interested in including while further developing my research project proposal. I did think the article could have been a bit more organized regarding the points the author was trying to make. While the community based psychology programs and getting to the root of what the authors pinpoint to be the cause of poverty for people with mental illnesses, there were a lot of other sub-points that were mixed in and easy to gloss over or side-tracked from finishing a previous thought (at least that’s how I saw it, it could just be me).

Sylvestre, J., Notten, G., Kerman, N., Polillo, A., Czechowki, K. (2017). Poverty and Serious Mental Illness: Toward Action on a Seemingly Intractable Problem. American Journal of Community Psychology. (Volume 61, Iss. 1-2, pp. 153-165).

For this blog post I used google scholar to find Tracing Teachers’ Use of Technology in a Laptop Computer School: The Interplay of Teacher Beliefs, Social Dynamics, and Institutional Culture. By Mark Windschitl and Kurt Sahl. These authors tracked how multiple middle school teachers evolved their teaching techniques to include laptop programs. They watched how they integrated them over time and how it affected the productivity of the classroom. The topic was technology in the classroom. This being the lead into the question, as teachers integrate laptop usage into the classroom, how does that change the beliefs, social dynamics, and culture in the classroom. To conduct this research they used and ethnographic approach to examine the changes over time. I personally believe this be an amazing experiment and type of research. They took a very direct and personal approach living the lives of the people they are looking at through ethnography. I would advise my peers to look into people doing ethnographic work because of the interesting things that you may find out while eon the inside.

Windschitl, Mark, and Kurt Sahl. “Tracing Teachers’ Use of Technology in a Laptop Computer School: The Interplay of Teacher Beliefs, Social Dynamics, and Institutional Culture.” American Educational Research Journal, vol. 39, no. 1, 2002, pp. 165–205., doi:10.3102/00028312039001165.

I found an article titled, “Technology in the Classroom: Good or Bad?” This report comes from a teacher who discusses the benefits and drawbacks of implementing technology in the classroom and academic setting. The study mainly includes younger students at the elementary level and the article analyzes the possible benefits of technology in the classroom as well as looking at how it changes student’s learning outcomes. The author uses a list of pros and cons to evaluate the state in which students learn and says that the benefits of technology include computer skills, more engagement with readings, and better communication abilities. The drawbacks of using such technology in the classroom involve shorter attention spans, teachers are not as equipped at using the technology, and funding is also an issue. The author lists more benefits than negative outcomes and argues that the integration of technology at an early age is more helpful to develop skills that will be useful in a competitive society. Important technological tools include ipads, phones, and computers that allow students to play interactive games that promote good learning habits. The fact that this information comes from a teacher provides insight into the activities and learning capabilities of young students. This study involves expert knowledge and reports of acts, behaviors, and events. This study is important in comparing the level of technology needed in the classroom to get results from students and to see which tools work best to promote good learning habits.

Curtiss, Ella. “Technology in the Classroom: Good or Bad?.” The Smiling Classroom, 7 Aug. 2017. Accessed 9 Mar. 2018.

For this research example I looked at an article titled “Mismanaging concussions in intercollegiate Football.” I was interested in this article because the concussions that NFL players experience before they are playing professionally are extremely damaging to the development of their brains. This article uses examples to express the dangers of competing with a concussion, and mismanaging to let athletes compete with a concussion. Athletes are competitive and want to play hard all the time. It is hard for athletes to rest when they are competing for a spot on a team. Additionally, a lot of coaches admire players for going all out. This can lead to several problems. For instance, in the article a player for Eastern Illinois University in 2006 experienced several concussions but was repeatedly cleared to play days after experiencing them. As a result, the player (Adrian Arrington) was forced to drop out of school because he was having memory problems, suffering from depression, and experienced daily migraines. Years later, he mentioned how his coaches mentality was “play hard every day” and that he never stressed the importance of tackling properly and players safety. These examples are seen everywhere now, especially with the development and publicity of CTE. The research question they sought to answer was; does coaching styles effect the health of college football players? This article answers it well and goes into depth about examples of coaches taking the right action to prevent concussions, and coaches taking the wrong action and putting players in higher risk of CTE.
This article used in-depth interviews to find the data. Reports of Acts, behaviors and events was another type of data. Lastly, a data gathering method for this research was public and private records.

The research example I am using for this exercise is titled “Organophosphate Pesticide Exposure and Neurodevelopment in Young Mexican-American Children”, this research can be found in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. The topic of my research has been changed, instead of looking at the effects of pesticides of human health I will be looking at the environmental injustice linked to the widespread use of pesticides. The study conducted an investigation of the neurodevelopment and behavior of a cohort made up of Latino children from farmworker families in the Salinas Valley of California. Some background, billion pounds of pesticides are used per year in the United States, most of them are used in agriculture. The exposures of pesticides are widespread, this includes pregnant woman and children. This study researched the relationship of prenatal and child Organophosphate urinary metabolite levels. 6 nonspecific metabolites in maternal and child urine. The effects of organophosphate overtime were measured using the different age groups 6, 12, and 24 months of age. This form of testing better explains how the pesticides effect children as they develop in their first years of life. Each child was assigned Mental Development and Psychomotor Development Indices and a report on the Child Behavior Checklist. Fetuses and young children may be more susceptible to the neuro effects of pesticides. This has to do with how fast their brains are developing and their already lower-than-adult levels of detoxifying enzymes. Organophosphate and been known to break down an enzyme which prevents acetylcholine from building up in the neuronal junction. The research topic here is the environmental injustice’s related to pesticides and minorities, the research question is ‘are young Mexican-American Children at a higher risk of improper neurodevelopment due to organophosphate pesticide exposure’. The type of data needed to answer this question is demographic data, however in this case the study was conducted on a cohort so there was more data of the report type.

Eskenazi, Brenda, et al. “Organophosphate Pesticide Exposure and Neurodevelopment in Young Mexican-American Children.” Environmental Health Perspectives, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, May 2007, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1867968/.

The research study I found this week is from the book called, “Changes in Mental Illness Stigma in California During the Statewide Stigma and Discrimination Reduction Initiative.” This book was written by a various of authors including, Rebecca Collins, Eunice Wong, Elizabeth Roth, Jennifer Cerully, and Joyce Marks.

Collins, Rebecca L., Eunice C. Wong, Elizabeth Roth, Jennifer L. Cerully, and Joyce S. Marks. “Changes in Mental Illness Stigma in California During the Statewide Stigma and Discrimination Reduction Initiative.” In Changes in Mental Illness Stigma in California During the Statewide Stigma and Discrimination Reduction Initiative, 1-10. RAND Corporation, 2015. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.redlands.edu/stable/10.7249/j.ctt15sk8gd.1.

A big part in change toward the mentally ill in general is changing the stigma around it. This book focuses on taking a small step toward change by trying to implement initiatives in California toward mental illness. This study included finding about what Californians knew about ways to help the mentally ill and to further inform them to hopefully make mentally ill people more socially accepted in society instead of outcasted. The research question in this piece is “How many Californians know about mentally ill programs to help change their stigmas?” The type of data needed for this project is shallow opinions and attitudes. In order to obtain this type of data they will need to contact a series of surveys – they chose to do phone surveys at random to adults 18 and older. This requires qualitative data analysis because people are sharing their opinions and they need to be interpreted since everyone has different thoughts. I believe this research project was conducted well. They chose a sample at random throughout the entire state and even accounted for different races, which I thought was interesting, but a nice touch.

Hosp, John L., and Daniel J. Reschly. “Referral Rates for Intervention or Assessment.” The Journal of Special Education, vol. 37, no. 2, 2003, pp. 67–80.,doi:10.1177/00224669030370020201.

Hosp and Reschly analyzed literature that looks at the referral rates for special education testing and assessment based on students racial groups. They looked at three groups: Caucasian, African American, and Hispanic. They identify the referral stage as being the most important, and so their study focuses on this part. Their goal, like my own research, is to determine disproportionality in special education based on racial identity.

They sought to answer the research question of whether students of different racial or ethnic groups are disproportionately identified for special education services. This is a meta-analysis which looked at other research studies. They also looked at quantitative demographic information within the United States. Data was collected after 1975 from all kinds of publications. The information was then coded and analyzed.

This research seems thorough and vast. There was a lot of statistical analysis involved in the processing of data that I did not understand most of. My concern for this study was just how vast the research was. I think I would have liked more information about their sample populations, since each research study they used had a different way of choosing their population and had a different population. I also wonder if they were able to know if they repeated any populations, which would have changed the data.

They found that there was no significant difference between the referral rates of Hispanic students and Caucasian students. They also found that there was more disproportionality with students who were African American and Caucasian.

In researching for my research proposal, I came across an article that related directly to my research topic: “Reducing Academic Achievement Gaps: The role of Community Service and Service -Learning” (Scales et al., 2006). This article’s topic focuses on strategies to promote student achievement and equity for student achievement in different social groups, specifically in regards to community service and service learning. While this article asked many research questions, the one that encompassed the article was: Does service and service learning play a role in improving achievement among low-income students? The type of data gathered was organization/ demographic data from the 2001-2002 Common Core of Data public school universe file. This data reported the instructional level of classrooms, urbanity of the school, average class sizes, and minority status. This study also used aggregate data from a sample of US middle and high school students, looking at measures of: “40 developmental assets, 10 risk behavior patterns, 5 developmental deficits, and 8 thriving behaviors” (Scales et al., 2006). The sample was weighed by race and ethnicity and urbanity proportions. Another type of data gathered reports of acts, behaviors, and events, taken from a survey administered to a sample of middle and high school students in Colorado Springs. The data gathering methods consisted of public and private records and surveys administered to middle/ high school students. The data analysis method was ordinal and interval/ ratio data. The survey questions asked the participants to rank a statement, which was the ordinal data. For example, the survey asked principles if they though the impact of service-learning on factors identified by the researchers was “very positive,” “somewhat positive,” etc. The surveys also asked participants to report hours spent on community projects, which would be interval/ ratio data. The results found service-learning was valuable for student engagement and achievement, specifically in urban, nonwhite, high poverty schools (Scales et al., 2006).

Scales, P.C., Roehlkepartain, E.C., Neal, M., Kielsmeier, J.C., & Benson P.L. (2006). Reducing academic achievement gaps: The role of community service and service-learning. Journal of Experiential Education, 29(1), 38-60.

I found an article from BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, a peer-reviewed journal that has articles about different studies related to pregnancy and childbirth. The article is called “Exploration of Perceptions and Decision-Making Processes Related to Childbirth in Rural Sierra Leone” and it is by Laura Treacy and Mette Sagbakken. The article explains a study that was done in rural Sierra Leone to understand how women decide how to give birth. The topic of the article is childbirth decisions in rural areas, and the research question is asking how women and their communities in rural Sierra Leone make decisions about childbirth. The article is primary literature. 

The type of data needed for this study is deep opinions and attitudes. The data was collected from focus groups and interviews. The researchers maintained diaries while in the field that recorded observed data in order to help formulate interview questions and later find social patterns. All of the data was analyzed in tables to compare different views.

The study concluded that the women of Sierra Leone have very complicated ways of making decisions about childbirth, and that they are all quite different. The study also concluded that women make their decisions with their community as opposed to on their own, which I found very fascinating.

The study is very helpful for my own research. Since it is so similar to my research proposal it was helpful to read something that could potentially guide my research design. I appreciate that all of the possible ethical conflicts and concerns were disclosed at the end of the study, because working with focus groups and interviews can definitely bring up ethical issues. I also appreciate that this study was done in a small, rural area because it shed light on a place that many people probably do not know much about. I like learning more about how women make these decisions in different parts of the world.

Citation:

Treacy, Laura and Mette Sagbakken. 2015. “Exploration of Perceptions and Decision-Making Processes Related to Childbirth in Rural Sierra Leone.” BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth15(87).