Fairclouth, Susan C., Farkas, George, Hibel, Jacob, “Unpacking the placement of American and Alaska Native Students in Special Education Programs and Services in the Early Grades: School Readiness as a Predictive Variable” Harvard Educational Review: Fall 2008, Vol, 78, No 3, pp 498-528

Susan Fairclouth, George Farkas, and Jacob Hibel investigated the question of whether or not Alaskan Natives and American Indians were placed into special education classrooms at higher rates than other ethnic groups. Fairclouth, Farkas, and Hibel interrogated the prior research which showed Alaskan Natives and American Indians to be placed consistently in special education classrooms and special education schools at higher rates when compared to other ethnic groups. However, they found that Alaskan Natives and American Indians were actually just as likely to be placed in special education classrooms as non-Hispanic white students. The information Fairclouth, Farkas, and Hibel needed to conduct this research is organizational data to find out the ethnic backgrounds of students placed in special education classrooms within schools. They compared national data for students in kindergarten and third grade. The data-gathering method used was public and private records. They found their data in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study which was public data. They used interval/ratio data to analyze results and compare numbers of students ethnic backgrounds in schools. This research seems well done. The researchers dug deep into pre-existing research to discover that Alaskan Natives and American Indians were placed into special education at higher rates than other ethnic groups, and then challenged that by doing their own research. Their findings did not in fact mimic that of the researchers who had previously explored the topic. They also seemed to account for many confounding factors. Some of these factors included socio-economic status and test scores. It was only when these factors were controlled that they found their results. They concluded that “the strongest predictor of special education placement is a student’s academic readiness on entering kindergarten as measured by the student’s pre-reading and pre-mathematics scores”.

A second article I found related to groundwater quality was printed in the March 2013 Journal of Environmental Health, Volume 75, Number 7. The article, titled “Private Drinking Water Quality in Rural Wisconsin,” discusses a water quality study conducted of approximately 4,000 privately owned wells. Between July 1^st, 2007 and December 31, 2010, Wisconsin health department officials tested these wells for coliform bacteria, nitrate, fluoride, and 13 metals. This study was performed as part of a program that provides assistance to low income families. It is estimated that 940,000 Wisconsin homes obtain their drinking water from privately owned wells. These wells are not regulated under the Federal Safe Drinking Water Act and most of these wells have never been tested for bacteria and other toxic metals. Some homeowners are unaware of the need to conduct these tests; as a result, nearly one million families are at risk of acute and chronic illnesses that can be cause by toxic chemicals and bacteria in the water. The study found the following: (1) 21 percent of the wells had iron that exceeded safe limits; (2) 18 percent of the wells had the coliform bacteria that exceeded safe limits; (3) 10 percent of the water samples from the wells were high in nitrate; and (4) 11 percent of the wells had elevated results for aluminum, arsenic, lead, manganese, or strontium. The authors concluded that because groundwater is vulnerable to a wide variety of contaminants due to human activities such as large-scale groundwater withdrawals, mining activities, industrial pollution, chemical fertilizers, and weed killers, it is critical that private drinking water wells should be monitored regularly. They further state that local water quality specialists and public health experts need to work together to provide guidance to private well owners regarding regular testing. The goal is to protect the health of these families that are at risk due to polluted groundwater wells.

Christenson, Megan, and Gorski, Patrick, and Knobeloch, Lynda. 2013 “Private Drinking Water Quality in Rural Wisconsin.” Journal of Environmental Health Volume 75(7): 16-19.

After scouring the periodical section of the library looking for any journal article about coral reefs, I came across “Bright spots among the world’s coral reefs.” This article is about the 39 researcher who came up with new approach of finding the best coral reef conservation methods that involve studying the unusually prosperous and the much-degraded coral reef sites, and the relationship socioeconomic drivers have with those sites. This is a correlational study. The researchers obtained data from over 2,500 sites and discovered 15 bright spot sites that are two standard deviations above the expected, and 35 dark spot sites that are two standard deviations below the expected. The Bayesian hierarchical model was used to compile all the data together. Interestingly, not all the bright spots were where the researcher expected. I believed that the flourishing coral reefs would be in isolated with strict fishing laws and little human interactions, but I am wrong because the places where bright spots and humans interact have solid sociocultural institutions which involves cultural taboos and marine tenure, above average local engagement in the maintenance and management of the coast and depend on coastal resources. Also, those areas have good environmental conditions, like deep water refuges. All that was discovered using statistics and surveying local experts at many different locations and surveying data providers. Out of the 18 socioeconomic drivers, the most influential are high compliance reserve, local population growth and human development index. The places with higher human development index have better maintained reefs because those locations are wealthier. All of this is shown on stacked bar graphs for different categories involving bright, average and dark spots using p-values. What can be taken away from this research is using the data found about the relationship between socioeconomic drivers and these outlier spots can inform governments, NGOs and investors the best ways to conserve coral reefs in the most populated by humans and the least. Also, which socioeconomic drivers need to be decreased to positively influence the shape of coral reefs.

Cinner, Joshua E, Cindy Huchery, M. Aaron MacNeil, Nicholas A.J. Graham, Tim R. McClanahan, Joseph Maina, Eva Maire, John N. Kittinger, Christina C. Hicks, Camilo Mora, Edward H. Allison, Stephanie D’Agata, Andrew Hoey, David A. Feary, Larry Crowder, Ivor D. Williams, Michel Kulbicki, Laurent Vigliola, Laurent Wantiez, Graham Edgar, Rick D. Stuart-Smith, Stuart A. Sandin, Alison L. Green, Marah J. Hardt, Maria Beger, Alan Friedlander, Stuart J. Campbell, Katharine E. Holmes, Shaun K. Wilson, Eran Brokovich, Andrew J. Brooks, Juan J. Cruz-Motta, David J. Booth, Pascale Chabanet, Charlie Gough, Mark Tupper, Sebastian C. A. Ferse, U. Rashid Sumaila & David Mouillot. “Bright spots among the world’s coral reefs.” Nature 534, no. 3 (July 2016): 416-419.

The conference proceeding, Enhanced Biodegradation of Pesticides in the Environment written by Kenneth D. Racke and Joel R. Coats, is a secondary source because the authors use results from a variety of literature articles in order to reach a general conclusion on the effects of pesticides in the environment. This book also had an advisory board made up of 16 editors.
Pesticides in the soil ecosystem are not as effective in pest control as was first assumed. According to Racke microbial ecosystems are capable of rapid breakdown of any foreign organic or chemicals materials. This means the soil can clean itself from any pesticide rather rapidly, however this has caused an increased failure in pest control. Do to the resilience of the soil pesticide applicators have to apply more chemicals more often and maintain the toxicity levels in the soil for a longer period of time in order to be effective in killing pests. But furthermore, much of the pesticides that represents direct application to the soil are lost in the atmosphere. Considerable amounts of pesticides reach soils because of spray drift, runoff, or wash-off. Overall, pesticides become tangles with degradation processes that affect all abiotic organics added to the dynamic ecosystem.
This book chapter ties into my topic well, which is the effects of agrochemicals on humans. In order to understand why pesticides are causing harm, I must first understand why pesticides are widely used at such high quantities. It turns out pesticides are terrible at staying in the soil, much of it is lost to the atmosphere and a small portion of it is broken down by UV light. This is why so many pesticides are needed, because a small amount of the pesticides used are actually working. This also helps me understand that much of what is laid down is lost into the atmosphere, this means it is easy for pesticides to move through the air and end up in another location, causing unwanted effects or disease there.

Racke, Kenneth D., and Joel R. Coats. Enhanced Biodegradation of Pesticides in the Environment: Developed from a Symposium Sponsored by the Division of Agrochemicals at the 198th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, Miami, Florida, September 10-15, 1989. American Chemical Society, 1990.

Jamie Nord

The article I discovered in the current periodicals section, titled “Integration of Tribal Consultation to Help Facilitate Conservation and Collections Management at the Arizona State Museum,” illustrated the action research process of updating a museum’s conservation efforts of its cultural objects.  The Arizona State Museum contains 20,000 pottery pieces, but their preservation has proven difficult and concerning for the collection managers.  Therefore, their research question was “How can the Arizona State Museum assess and execute the preservation needs of its Native American pottery collection?”  The museum submitted a grant proposal to the NAGPRA Grant Program, since approximately 5,000 of the ceramic works of art were potentially eligible for repatriations.  The proposal funded the consultation efforts with members of the local tribal communities.  The goal of these consultations was to reevaluate the museum’s curation and preservation practices and to facilitate any repatriation requests that arose during the process.  They also conducted a condition survey of the pottery and compiled it into a database.  It allowed them to determine the different needs of the objects on a large scale, such as failing adhesive joins and required storage supports.  Thus, their data took the form of expert and cultural knowledge and shallow opinions and attitudes, which incorporated both categorical and respondent-centered data analysis.  The collection was moved into its new climate-controlled storage facility with greater visibility and access to the public.  However, the NAGPRA-eligible objects did not undergo any adhesive repairs, based on the opinions voiced in the tribal consultations. These objects were placed in archival storage until any official repatriation claims are processed.

Moreno, Teresa, Chris White, Alyce Sadongei, and Nancy Odegaard. “Integration of Tribal Consultation to Help Facilitate Conservation and Collections Management at the Arizona State Museum.” Society for American Archaeology 9, no. 2 (March 2009): 36-40.

The article Agriculture Drainwater Effects on Wildlife in Central California, written by Harry M. Ohlendorf and Roger L. Hothem is found in the Handbook of Ecotoxicology. This handbook is a primary source because it was published by the CRC Press and has a review board made up of 16 reviewers. In California’s San Joaquin Valley and in other agricultural areas in the Western U.S., irrigation wastewater pollutes nearby aquifers with agrochemicals that have been applied to crops in order to combat pests and diseases. Much of the irrigation water is leached into evaporation ponds causing an abundance of food, this is because the soil underneath the evaporation ponds are nutrient packed allowing wild plants to flourish. The focus of this article is to analyze the effects of subsurface agricultural drainwater on the San Joaquin Valley wildlife. For the sake of the blog I will skip the methods used and move onto the findings. Most of the effects of agricultural drainwater on wildlife were first recorded at Kesterson Reservoir in 1983. The number one element in concern was Selenium because it bio accumulates and is toxic to bird embryos, birds, frogs, snakes, and mammals. Other elements were also recorded in high concentrations in organisms and evaporation ponds. This article ties well into my topic, which is the effects of agrochemicals on humans. This article helps prove the presence of agrochemical particles in subsurface agricultural drainwater. It would be interesting to assess how many people have reported heart disease or cancers and whether or not there is a correlation between where they live and where they get their water from. If many people are reporting diseases near agricultural fields and are drinking well water, that water should be tested for agrochemical particles.

Ohlendorf, H. M., & Hothem, R. L. (n.d.). Agricultural Drainwater Effects on Wildlife in Central California. In Handbook of ecotoxicology. Lewis .

It has been quite difficult to find good research articles that have to do specifically with my research topic which is the how building a better classroom community can better benefit the self-esteem and comfort of students in school which, in extension, will result in better academic grades. Because I wasn’t finding anything that I necessarily agreed with I decided to broaden my search. In doing so, I found an article that spoke about “place-based learning”. This text was called Place Based Education: Connecting Classrooms and Communities by David Sobel. This author has written many books and articles about place-based learning so I was able to gain a lot of information from him.

I discovered that place-based learning was very similar to the teaching strategy that I had mapped out in my head. It draws on the location of the school such as country, region, suburban or urban and the socioeconomic status of the surrounding communities and by doing so creates a more community oriented classroom. The students have a more hands-on approach to learning and much of the lessons learned are applied to different events or situations that students can see locally in their community. This idea originated from the concern that students didn’t feel that what they learned in the classroom had anything to do with the “outside world”. The fact that students had separated school from the rest of their life was dangerous because then the motivation for education was declining. Place-based learning was created to show students that they can make a positive difference in their community and that they can apply what they learn to their every day lives.

At the moment, I am continuing to do more research in this teaching strategy while also trying to focus a little more on the cultural awareness aspect of the place-based education strategy. I, personally, have a hypothesis that including local culture will greatly benefit kids in school. My target research group is Hawaii, however, I have found very little on any articles about education in general, so I will continue to broaden my search.

This article, Interview: Ghada Karmi, A Voice from Exile, was found in a journal entitled: Middle East Policy. Ghada Karmi is a physician at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. Dr. Karmi elaborates on the treatment and occupation of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. She explains how Palestinians in Israel are part of an apartheid state and are treated with extreme disrespect and are often victims of violence. The topic of this article is the effects of Israeli power over Palestinians living in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. The research question is: What are the major issues that people should know about the apartheid state in Israel? Dr. Karmi uses reports of acts, behavior, and events in addition to expert knowledge in order to show us just how brutal the Israel/Palestine conflict actually is. This in-depth interview calls on her personal experiences living in the region and experiencing the rivalry. Qualitative data methods with a respondent-centered analysis were necessary in reporting the personal accounts of a Palestinian woman. I think this research made it easier from a sociological perspective to see how Palestinians actually live in Israeli-occupied territories. Often, people analyzing foreign policy does not actually look at daily life and how the policy affects the people living there. This interview allowed me to analyze a first-hand experience which gave me more empathy for the situation. I think this factor in of itself is interesting and why I enjoy applying sociological theory to policy issues. Being able to empathize with human beings is important if we want to make a difference in the world. Dr. Karmi’s willingness to show us this helps us understand the struggle between two world powers.

Karmi, Ghada. “Interview: Ghadi Karmi, A Voice from Exile.” Middle East Policy, vol. 17, no. 1, 2010, pp. 82-89.

The title of the Journal is “Progressive architecture”.” The article within the Journal is called “Bussel, A. (1995). Don’t kill the NEA. Progressive Architecture, 76(8), 9.” The abstract of this article discussed how dismantling the National Endowment for the Arts would put a huge halt to modestly funded design programs. This is because the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) is the only national advocate for the art and design community. The article states that if people want to have a voice in decisions affecting the environment in relationship to architecture, there will be a strong need for more federal backing/money. The author questions how to get more federal backing, and explores options to make the art and design community flourish more. The author continues to explain the reasons why art and design is important/crucial in our rapidly developing world. To gather data for this article, you would need expert knowledge because the information is not common knowledge. You would need to do quantitative analysis because the data is numeric.  This research is very persuasive. It has a clear goal to gain more funding from the federal government and is backed up with quotes and good data. I think that my classmates and other readers might find the quotes within the article, regarding how important design programs are to the word as a whole, to be interesting.

Bussel, A. (1995). Don’t kill the NEA. Progressive Architecture, 76(8), 9.

While I was unable to find a printed research article in the Armacost Library regarding the relationship between mental illness and socioeconomic status, which is my research topic, I did find a few research articles on education strategies that can increase the future success rate of children from low income families to match that of children from other economic backgrounds. I felt that this was related to my topic in that the articles focused on pinpointing a specific factor that contributes to socioeconomic stratification, quality of available education, and offered realistic solutions. I found these articles in the Journal of Education Psychology and have decided to focus on the article “Low-Income Immigrant Pupils Learning Vocabulary Through Digital Picture Storybooks” by Marian J. A. J. Verhallen and Adriana G. Bus. The study was done in the Netherlands and the main questions the researchers wanted to answer were “does presentation format effect the development of vocabulary for preliterate, immigrant children?” and “are receptive vocabulary and expressive vocabulary differentially affected by presentation format?”. Demographic data and shallow reports of acts were needed to answer these questions. Participants were acquired by contacting teachers and school administrations for information regarding their students’ backgrounds in order to determine which students fit into their demographic requirements (5 years old, used Moroccan-Berber or Turkish at home, were of a low-income family, etc.). Students that met demographic requirements were then tested academically in their Dutch language abilities and non-verbal intelligence. The remaining students that met the criteria were exposed to different story-telling presentations through CD-ROM. One story was told with static illustration, while the other was a video. Their results, analyzed through covariance (ANCOVAs), found that while both types of story-telling were effective, the video version of the story was more effective in teaching new vocabulary to the students. There was no difference between receptive vocabulary and expressive vocabulary between the two formats, although it was determined that receptive vocabulary is acquired more easily than expressive vocabulary regardless of exposure format. I personally felt that the study was thorough and well-done, as it even mentioned ways in which to expose this demographic of students to video story-telling in order to increase their vocabulary which translates into better understanding of their school material. This would hypothetically increase their chances of success later in their education if they were exposed to video story-telling. Although I think that whether or not the results of the study would be taken seriously by schools with a large minority population and give children access to those resources is critical to the research findings having any effect. It is possible that lack of willingness to accommodate minority children is a factor in their stunted vocabulary development that could have been tested for or taken into consideration

Verhallen, M., Bus, A. (2010). Low-Income Immigrant Pupils Learning Vocabulary Through Digital Picture Storybooks. Journal of Educational Psychology. (Vol. 102, No. 1, pp. 54-61).