This study is a phenomenological exploration of assessment practices in elementary-level drama education. Through analysis of interviews with fourteen drama educators, it describes how elementary drama teachers conceptualize assessment in theory and practice. Specifically, it discusses teachers' explicit definitions of assessment; the content matter they assess (and do not assess); their expectations for student performance; and the scaffolded, iterative, and formative nature of much assessment practice. The study recommends specific policy reforms at the state, district, and school levels related to ensuring appropriate assessment measures are implemented and supported; promoting teacher agency in assessment development; and increasing student access to quality drama education at the elementary level.

In this article, we narrate a self-study that emerged through a collaborative, arts-based inquiry around Latinx diversity, especially those arising from citizenship status at the individual and family level. Coming from distinct professional educational landscapes (theatre/drama education, middle/secondary education, and elementary education), we worked inter-disciplinarily to orchestrate a series of workshops for a cohort of elementary teacher education candidates. Our specific focus was rooted in the meanings that applied theatre teaching strategies suggested for us as teacher educators and for the teacher candidates we prepare to teach in schools. We also sought implications that might cultivate broader critical discourses within and across teacher education about diversity. Our blending of self-study with arts-based pedagogies was a purposeful effort to expand our students' and our own professional subjectivities by disrupting xenophobic and racialized public discourse about national borders using play-based strategies to foster risk and generativity.

For 15 years the mission of PhosphoSitePlus((R)) (PSP, https://www.phosphosite.org) has been to provide comprehensive information and tools for the study of mammalian post-translational modifications (PTMs). The number of unique PTMs in PSP is now more than 450000 from over 22000 articles and thousands of MS datasets. The most important areas of growth in PSP are in disease and isoform informatics. Germline mutations associated with inherited diseases and somatic cancer mutations have been added to the database and can now be viewed along with PTMs and associated quantitative information on novel lollipop' plots. These plots enable researchers to interactively visualize the overlap between disease variants and PTMs, and to identify mutations that may alter phenotypes by rewiring signaling networks. We are expanding the sequence space to include over 30000 human and mouse isoforms to enable researchers to explore the important but understudied biology of isoforms. This represents a necessary expansion of sequence space to accommodate the growing precision and depth of coverage enabled by ongoing advances in mass spectrometry. Isoforms are aligned using a new algorithm. Exploring the worlds of PTMs and disease mutations in the entire isoform space will hopefully lead to new biomarkers,therapeutic targets, and insights into isoform biology.

This column seeks to provide a forum in which we can lean on each other to investigate and improve the quality of our classroom discussion leadership.

In an era of multimodality where research says literacies are richly plural and stretch far beyond the linguistic and auditory to include the visual, gestural, and spatial, the Socratic dialogue circle, with all its advantages, frames intellect as exclusively in our heads and mouths. Valuable discussion-meaning- making between people-emerges from all sorts of physical and social classroom interactions. One such interaction is a performed, choral interpretation, when a group of students enliven a text orally with movement. For English language arts (ELA) classrooms working on text-based talk, an in-class, choral interpretation of a literary text requires deep individual and social meaning-making and can serve as a scaffold toward whole-class discussion. Catalyzing spoken words with embodied commerce widens the circle of participation and deepens classroom discussion. This dynamic is especially true in classrooms that marginalize English language learners not by cognitive ability, but by discussion formats reliant exclusively on spoken, academic language.Correlations exist between arts experience and academic achievement (Catterall and National Endowment for the Arts 24), as well as between arts-based learning and enhanced brain function (Jensen 71; Sousa 222). Theater has long proven a productive scaffold for traditional (Clements and Fiorentino 182; Walker et al. 11; Wilhelm 61) and multiple (Schneider et al. 14) literacies. With these colleagues, we forward embodied arts-based text exploration as a tool for meaning negotiation in ELA classrooms.Applied theater structures can be used to deepen thought and speech about texts and include reluctant participants by taking on texts physically. Such embodied engagement emerged when a class of high school juniors chorally interpreted an Emily Dickinson poem, "'Hope' is the thing with feathers -." Choral interpretation, used alongside other applied theater strategies, becomes a discussion tool in conversation with school-privileged literacies. In the sections that follow, we outline three improvisational theater-based explorations of "Hope."Three Improvisations In taking up "Hope is the thing with feathers -" as an embodied discussion catalyst, we intertwined talk with process-based improvisation strategies. Our goal was for students to converse with the poem and each other bodily and verbally. What sort of talk might gesture and movement generate before, during, and after the activity?Floating HopeLooking at the poem and in particular the evocative first and title line-"' Hope' is the thing with feathers -that perches in the soul"-we divided the class into groups of five, giving each group an inflated balloon. Groups collaboratively floated the balloon as long as possible using only their bodies-fingers and foreheads mostly, some using knees, toes, and even breath. This challenge framed students to focus physically on the verb "float," together, without words. They played with metaphor, literally.The groups discussed and strategized over the challenge. We added other balloons, if the group was able. Each group assigned one member as observer-to write specific verbs, particular sounds, and vivid images describing the hope-floating challenge. After a few minutes, observers shared and compared. We continued, sans balloons, with students pantomiming the floating-motions as specifically as possible. Students selected a three-second movement sequence from their pantomime exploration and repeated it in a loop. They continued their movement, adjusting intensity based on a number called-one being subtle and ten being larger-than- life. We repeated the process from the beginning again-first with a ping-pong ball, then a feather, rotating new observers in each round.The observers and then participants shared. The discussion over three rounds evolved from rudimentary how-tos to layered synthesis and abstraction. Nina explained early on, for example, "When we tried to keep that feather in the air, it only stayed up when we dropped it at a certain angle and fanned it with a folder. …

What events, patterns, or people have shaped the field or marked its milestones since Youth Theatre Journal’s (YTJ’s) first issue in 1986? We put the call out to YTJ readers, this rich array of ent...

Reviewed by: Theatre in Education in Britain: Origins, Development and Influence by Roger Wooster Beth Murray Theatre in Education in Britain: Origins, Development and Influence. By Roger Wooster. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2016; pp. 312. Theatre in Education in Britain is divided into three parts, metaphorically titled—“Roots,” “Fruits,” and “Shoots?”—flanked by a helpful list of abbreviations and a chronological table. With this text, Roger Wooster brings light and specificity to the evolution of theatre in education (TIE) as a practice, as a field, and as an art form “born out of an expectation of social reform, an implicit trust in progressive education ideas and the hope for prosperity” (77), with a close look at its global germination in the local geography and polity of Britain. The book is a worthy read to the TIE field and all its kindred theatre forms, in Britain and beyond, as it chronicles a specific history with insights and implications for broader practical and theoretical realms. Wooster’s long career as a TIE company member, academic, and witness to the evolution of TIE lends clarity and credibility. In his introduction, the author is careful to explain that because the pages contain his perceptions, he worked to include other voices and perspectives, and encouraged these to challenge, oppose, and contradict his own positions. The respected voices of Warwick Dobson, Chris Vine, and Anthony Jackson resonate dialogically with Wooster’s, rather than simply echoing him, bringing a multivocal TIE sensibility to the piece. The “Roots” portion chronicles TIE’s groundwork as a product of varied forces, particularly the artistic, educational, and political. Centering primarily on the half-century from 1964 to the present, Wooster continually frames TIE as catalyzed and catalyst in the chemistry of person, place, and idea. The history emerges through a recounting of post–World War II politics and ethos, progressive education, developmental psychology, and alternative theatre, with a nod to pioneering figures such as Peter Slade, Brian Way, Dorothy Heathcote, Augusto Boal, Paolo Freire, Jerome Bruner, Lev Vygotsky, and Henry Giroux. Interspersed with descriptive vignettes depicting early TIE projects, the author deftly lays out the space between education reform and TIE expansion into a movement amid “pedagogical maturity” (55) from 1976 to 1990 in which time it “became a flagship for an authentic education that involved scaffolding knowledge for children between what they know and what they are capable of knowing” (86). The section ends with a pause in the aftermath of the National Curriculum and the Education Reform Act (ERA), as Wooster forecasts turbulence, but focuses on pre-ERA contributions—fruits. The “Fruits” section rests on two cases richly described, animating specific TIE strategies in context. The rhythm of these chapters is at once depictive, but also instructive, voicing the reflexive trajectory of each TIE piece’s emergence. These cases spawn chapters on the aesthetics of TIE, practical and logistical concerns of producing TIE, and international perspectives. Wooster vacillates naturally between distanced analyst and embedded TIE-maker. The international section broadens to acknowledge global alliances, parallels, and challenges for TIE beyond Britain, including the formation of international organizations around theatre and youth. The author showcases growth and progress, as well as timeless tensions for the field, such as identity, artistry, legitimacy, and political purpose. Placing these negotiations within and between TIE and Theatre for [End Page 270] Young Audiences (TYA) on an international scale humanizes and historicizes the field. The “Shoots?” component illuminates the present, forcing readers to consider TIE’s future, both as a unique form, as well as an emblem of arts in, or striving to be in, mainstream education. Wooster notes that “the most fruitful period of TIE occurred at the moment that it was most under attack” (173), and catalogs the challenges of the post-ERA years in which the movement, pressured to neutralize its pointed political edges and to service the standardized, struggles to “mutate or die” (181). As the author argues, “the devastating financial and educational effects of ERA eradicated much of the innovative pedagogy surrounding TIE as it had developed. The new shoots that emerged from this devastation had to survive in a world of educational targets and measurable outcomes” (187). Wooster spells...

One of the 16 core beliefs of middle level thinking is that schools and families must work together on behalf of every young adolescent (National Middle School Association, 2010). However, in classrooms and on curriculum nights, communication emerges as a critical issue. This is especially true when it comes to teachers' interacting with Latino immigrant newcomer families. That is to say, in our regional context, the vast majority of middle level educators and administrators are monolingual English speakers; they themselves often see their monolingualism/culturalism as a stumbling block for communicating caring to Latino parents and the trust such caring generates. A recurring question we encounter in our various teacher education courses and on-site with our partners is: "How can teachers and institutions demonstrate a language and practice of caring in situations when they do not necessarily speak the same language?" Drawing from intercultural communication theory, we outline two over-arching intercultural communication principles that can be leveraged for communicating our interconnectedness and interdependence within and beyond increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse schooling contexts. Our intent here is more than to argue that we should care. Rather, we hope to provide practitioners with concrete intercultural "moves" for initiating the safe, productive learning spaces where Latino newcomer families can engage in the collaborative work of schools

TYA Playwriting in the New Latino SouthMultilingual, Multimodal Cultural Improvisation in the I-85 Corridor Beth Murray (bio), Irania Macías Patterson (bio), and Spencer Salas (bio) Mamá Goose, a collaboratively written multilingual play for young audiences, emerged in the Interstate 85 corridor in the southeastern United States, from Virginia to Alabama. The script is adapted from a published collection of traditional Latino nursery rhymes. This essay argues that diverse New Latino South narratives shaped the work’s creation, production/tour, and response as deeply as the anchor text, lending insight into the nexus of cultural commerce at play in the identity-soaked layers of place. Interstate 85 threads by old cotton plantations and emerging metropolitan areas, skirts beneath the Trail of Tears, passes sites of race riots and sit-ins, swerves around historically desegregated and quietly resegregated school systems, and begins to speak in hybrid tongues with bilingual billboards vying for the attention of new communities: “La Vaquita! El Flea Market Mass Grande de Georgia! / Pendergrass Flea Market: Come and get it folks!” On April 17, 2006, the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act (SB529) became law, requiring citizenship verification for individuals using Georgia’s public services to ensure their eligibility for such benefits. This legislation required citizenship verification of state employees and employers with state contracts and subcontracts; that businesses compensating undocumented employees more than $600 a year not claim wages as an allowable business expense; a 6 percent withholding tax for all nonresident aliens; and provided law enforcement with increased training [End Page 106] in the enforcement of federal immigration, among other things. Summarizing the legislation in 2006 via the Georgia.gov website, Governor Sonny Perdue explained, “This bill makes it clear that Georgia is a welcoming state that wants to treat our guests with Southern hospitality. But we cannot tolerate activity that distracts us from our ability to embrace those who come here legally.”1 Five years later, Georgia’s Illegal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Act of 2011 (HB 87) became law, allowing authorities to demand documentation during traffic stops and to create purposeful barriers for individuals without specific identification to access state facilities and services.2 Up and down the interstate, similar legislation has passed or has been introduced in the legislature. Each bill or law infuses mythic southern hospitality with a selective welcome. The influx of Latino immigrants in the I-85 corridor, ballooning between 1990 and 2000, continues unabated, with many counties experiencing more than a 500 percent increase in the Latin American immigrant population—in some cases beginning from very small numbers.3 Within the transformed social geography of the New Latino South, such anti-immigration legislation is increasingly problematic. Highway signage signals “Welcome! ¡Bienvenido!” but the subtext is far more complex. Most children in our play’s target age range (3 to 8 years old) are not monitoring their state legislature and its influence on their emerging identities. However, the impact is real, affecting every aspect of life across the diverse, culturally contested borderlands of I-85. It was in the contested social geography of I-85 that the 2013 Charlotte, North Carolina, production of Mamá Goose—a children’s play loosely adapted from Mamá Goose: A Latino Nursery Treasury/Un tesoro de rimas infantiles—opened as four actors frolicked to the lyric: “Cantamos! Jugemos! Cantamos y jugemos! Let’s sing! Let’s play! Let’s sing and play!”4 Forty-five minutes later—after a series of escapades revolving around the actors’ discovery of an extraordinary egg, and each child’s desire to keep it, the children and Abuela (Grandmother) are still singing, having come to the conclusion that the egg—and their childhood world—wasn’t one person’s, but everyone’s. “Compartimos. We share. It’s ours. Es nuestro.” The story is told with a particular attention to multimodality, employing song, dance/movement, and American Sign Language among its many active vocabularies.5 The play itself—on a certain level—was intended as a space for rethinking transnational identity in a complex immigration legislation era through interwoven sets of semiotic systems playfully problematizing habitual binary, language-based positions. This multimodal dynamic in a show for monolingual and...

This article examines the assessment terrains and processes employed formally and informally by a theatre-focused group of adults adapting and performing children's original writing as plays for young audiences through a project called YOUR Stories on Stage. The journey of three anchor child-written exemplars from original form through screening into script then onto rehearsal and performance is chronicled and questioned to help articulate specific ways a theatre lens on children's writing finds strengths and assets in the work, with particular attention to elements of multimodal literacy (Cope and Kalantzis 2009; Jewitt and Kress 2003). The same three pieces of writing are also analyzed with the well-established criteria of six-traits writing analysis (Spandel 2012) used widely in various forms by classroom teachers, school systems, and testing organizations. Complementary and contrasting patterns are identified and discussed with findings pointing to echoed connections between the two approaches, particularly in the areas of voice and word choice. A need for a wider range of assessments used in writing and literacy instruction is highlighted, including those assessments of artistic elements alone and in relation to narrow views of literacy as reading and writing.

PhosphoSitePlus® (PSP, http://www.phosphosite.org/), a knowledgebase dedicated to mammalian post-translational modifications (PTMs), contains over 330 000 non-redundant PTMs, including phospho, acetyl, ubiquityl and methyl groups. Over 95% of the sites are from mass spectrometry (MS) experiments. In order to improve data reliability, early MS data have been reanalyzed, applying a common standard of analysis across over 1 000 000 spectra. Site assignments with P > 0.05 were filtered out. Two new downloads are available from PSP. The ‘Regulatory sites’ dataset includes curated information about modification sites that regulate downstream cellular processes, molecular functions and protein-protein interactions. The ‘PTMVar’ dataset, an intersect of missense mutations and PTMs from PSP, identifies over 25 000 PTMVars (PTMs Impacted by Variants) that can rewire signaling pathways. The PTMVar data include missense mutations from UniPROTKB, TCGA and other sources that cause over 2000 diseases or syndromes (MIM) and polymorphisms, or are associated with hundreds of cancers. PTMVars include 18 548 phosphorlyation sites, 3412 ubiquitylation sites, 2316 acetylation sites, 685 methylation sites and 245 succinylation sites.