Bryan College

BackgroundWhile rural students learning in the United States make up nearly 20% of the population, little attention is given to how to prepare these students effectively for a 21st Century STEM workforce. There are many constraints to improving STEM education in rural schools including a lack of engineering, technology education, and advanced science courses and experienced teachers to teach them. One promising approach is providing opportunities for rural school STEM teachers to engage in a community of practice (COP), where the CoP consists of experts with local rural knowledge and informed cultural context for place-based teaching.PurposeThe purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of integrated STEM teacher professional development (PD) on participation in Community of Practice (CoP) and enhance teacher self-efficacy in teaching STEM and impact student STEM learning outcomes.SampleA total of 40 secondary STEM teachers across three rural regions of the United States engaged in place-based integrated STEM professional development and built a community of practice with local rural knowledge experts. Additionally, a total of 572 of their secondary students were assessed for place-attachment, 21st century skills, STEM semantics, and career interest.Design and MethodsProtest/post-test assessment design was used to assess teacher self-efficacy in teaching STEM and community of practice engagement. Student assessments included a place attachment survey, a 21st-century skills survey, and a STEM semantics survey, which included STEM career interest as one of the five subconstructs.ResultsResearchers used a hypothesized structural equation model (SEM) to test the relationships among teacher CoP network size, teacher self-efficacy in STEM with student outcomes including students' place attachment, 21st-century skills, and STEM career interest.ConclusionThe research findings show promise of positive direct and indirect potential effects of increase in teachers' self-efficacy and COP network on these student outcomes.

Chinese international students represent a substantial proportion of Canada’s international student population, yet their academic and cultural experiences remain poorly understood. This qualitative study examines the experiences of Chinese undergraduate and graduate students in terms of classroom participation, communicating with faculty, and cultural engagement within the Canadian higher education system. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 31 students across three post-secondary institutions in Vancouver, Canada. While participants consistently described having strong academic preparation in China, many reported difficulties in navigating the unspoken expectations related to participation, initiative, and informal interactions. These experiences shaped how students engaged with classmates, instructors, and campus life more broadly. The findings highlight the limits of institutional approaches that rely on informal exposure and self-directed adaptation. Implications are discussed for multicultural education and student affairs practice, with a focus on institutional responsibility in supporting the success of international students.

Offshore wind (OSW) farms are slated for development in the Gulf of America (also known as the Gulf of Mexico), presenting a timely need to understand the potential effects of their construction and operation on marine ecosystems. To help address this need, we convened a transdisciplinary working group of scientists, managers, and representatives of commercial and recreational fisheries to identify and assess research priorities and recommendations related to the effects of OSW farms on fish and fisheries in the Gulf of America. Here, we share these research priorities for shrimp, reef fishes, coastal migratory pelagics, forage fishes, oceanic pelagic fishes, coastal elasmobranchs, and invasive species. We then detail OSW research needs that are related to oceanographic and ecological processes, and we provide specific recommendations for fisheries management, marine spatial planning, and detection of social and economic effects. Our synthesis highlights three overarching considerations: (1) targeted data collection is needed to disentangle the effects of OSW from those of concurrent natural and anthropogenic stressors, (2) measuring the effects of OSW will require maintaining the integrity of long-term fisheries-independent surveys and augmenting such surveys with comprehensive before-after-control-impact or before-after-gradient research designs, and (3) there are differences in public participation processes for nascent OSW development versus established fisheries management that should be considered to allow meaningful societal participation. Scientists and natural resource managers have a unique opportunity to address these priorities and recommendations, shaping the understanding of the effects of OSW.

Symptoms and pathophysiology are often discordant. To better understand areas of debate regarding diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) and compressive median neuropathy at the carpal tunnel (CMNCT), we assessed (1) Do studies distinguish CTS (illness) and CMNCT (pathophysiology)? (2) What aspects of diagnosis are evaluated in studies of CTS and CMNCT? and (3) What diagnostic strategies are used for CTS?. We identified 186 consecutive studies that addressed diagnostic strategies for CTS or CMNCT and assessed the aspects of diagnosis addressed, the diagnostic strategies addressed, the distinction between CTS and CMNCT, whether CTS or CMNCT was the subject of study, and the reference standard for CTS or CMNCT diagnosis. Seventy studies (38%) distinguished CTS and CMNCT. Most evaluated measures of pathophysiology either in isolation (68%) or combined with other factors (17%). Among the 128 studies that addressed diagnosis of CTS, the majority (66%) used a reference standard that included both symptoms and measures of pathophysiology, and the others used symptoms and signs alone. In diagnostic experiments, separation of symptoms and pathophysiology has the potential to identify factors associated with their discordance. Better understanding of such discordance could limit misattribution of symptoms to pathophysiology, misdiagnosis, and overtreatment.