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Research on teaching and learning in integrated education has focused on connections between arts and non-arts domains to provide a comprehensive experience for K-12 learners. Recently, STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) education has explored arts integration for more effective STEM learning. However, effective integration is often elusive; the arts are sometimes diluted as a consequence of well-intentioned integration within STEM subjects, with STEM learning risking similar superficial treatment within arts curricula. This qualitative pilot study focuses on The EcoSonic Playground Project (ESPP) -- an integrated STEAM project for students of all ages -- and evaluates its effectiveness from a co-equal integration standpoint, where participants use skills across STEM and arts areas equally in service of a common, musical goal. Findings suggested that this project supported, the application of existing cognitive and social-emotional skills and STEAM practices within an arts framework while fostering in participants the synthesis of new connections among skill areas. While recognizing findings are context specific, conclusions and recommendations may be of particular interest to educators and researchers exploring STEAM or other arts integration initiatives in the classroom.

In this study, a group of seven teacher educators report on how they embarked on a process of collaborative autoethnography to uncover the problems and possibilities of teaching arts education using digital methodologies. Arising from the pressing need to pivot from in-person, campus-based teaching to online modes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the phenomenon prompted the authors to engage in critical and inquiry-oriented reflection on the experience. While the full group comprised teacher educators from across diverse disciplines, the current study focuses primarily on the idiosyncratic nature of teaching arts subjects such as music, drama and visual arts education to student teachers. Using qualitative analysis, the study identifies key themes and insights gleaned from critical explorations of the data. Although embodied pedagogies are considered no less valuable than before, the study reveals unexpected benefits that arise in the digital context, especially in arts education. In this frame, arts education is recast in a dynamic and unexpected fashion, despite the exigencies of the digital environment. Ultimately, the study points to important teaching and learning experiences, and new ways of framing dimensions of those experiences, that can inform future teaching worlds in the digital space.

Teacher educators act as a conduit to student teachers of policy and this has an impact on practice. Changes in policy affect how subjects are viewed in terms of their importance. This research seeks to explore the apparent increase in emphasis on wellbeing development in policy which influences the work of arts teacher educators, alongside a declining focus on the arts, and a separation of wellbeing from the arts in policy lexicon. Adopting a self-study approach, this article explores if wellbeing features in our practice as arts teacher educators and how our arts education practice aligns with national policy and curriculum development in the Republic of Ireland. The results of the study outline ways in which arts teacher educators are shaped by policy. Recommendations are made for a broader view of wellbeing in policy, and an experience of wellbeing and arts which is embedded into learning processes in teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and purposeAtherosclerotic vertebrobasilar disease is an important cause of posterior circulation stroke. To examine the role of hemodynamic compromise, a prospective multicenter study, Vertebrobasilar Flow Evaluation and Risk of Transient Ischemic Attack and Stroke (VERiTAS), was conducted. Here, we report clinical features and vessel flow measurements from the study cohort.MethodsPatients with recent vertebrobasilar transient ischemic attack or stroke and ≥50% atherosclerotic stenosis or occlusion in vertebral or basilar arteries (BA) were enrolled. Large-vessel flow in the vertebrobasilar territory was assessed using quantitative MRA.ResultsThe cohort (n=72; 44% women) had a mean age of 65.6 years; 72% presented with ischemic stroke. Hypertension (93%) and hyperlipidemia (81%) were the most prevalent vascular risk factors. BA flows correlated negatively with percentage stenosis in the affected vessel and positively to the minimal diameter at the stenosis site (P

Charles Scott Sherrington (1857–1952) is widely acclaimed as the most important neurophysiologist in history. He became a legend in his own time, coined the term "synapse", and in 1932 received the Nobel Prize in medicine for his discoveries on the function of neurons. By the time he presented the Gifford Lectures 1937–38, he represented the best that science had to offer on behalf of the relationship of the mind to the natural world. The lectures, including one never publicly presented, were published as Man on His Nature (1941). Here neurology meets theology at the busy and often treacherous intersection of science and religion. Examining Sherrington's views in some detail, the standard rendering of Sherrington as a theist cannot be sustained by their contents; he ends up as at least a humanist and perhaps an atheist. Views by neurologists and philosophers of mind some seventy to eighty years later are compared and contrasted with Sherrington's. Although expectations of a materialist/reductionist answer to the mind/body problem have not been realized, neuroscientist Raymond Tallis appears as a parallel figure to Sherrington: both are clearly naturalistic humanists. A theistic response is presented addressing the mind/body problem from a hylomorphic process theology perspective, along with some comments regarding natural theology in general. In the end, this essay has two complementary aims: (1) to relocate Sherrington's neurotheology—if it can be called that—in a more appropriate historiographical category; and (2) to offer a viable answer to the mind/body problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning from the Wounded: The Civil War and the Rise of American Medical Science, by Shauna Devine. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2014. x, 372 pp. $39.95 US [...]