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In response to the demand for more STEM-certified teachers, identity has emerged as a theoretical lens for examining how candidates can be recruited into and retained in the teaching profession. This study explores the intersection between teaching identity and disciplinary identity as they relate to the development of a disciplinary teaching identity. Survey responses were collected from students in a teaching recruitment class for STEM majors, and regression models were developed to predict disciplinary teaching identity and program persistence. Findings from both models indicated that teaching identity is a strong predictor of both disciplinary teaching identity and program persistence, but disciplinary identity plays less of a role. These findings align with previous qualitative research on teacher identity development. Additionally, these findings highlight a need to engage STEM faculty in efforts to recruit students who strongly identify with STEM into the teaching profession.

Research Goes to School (RGS) is a professional development program that focuses on high school teachers of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects. This collective case study examines RGS participants and their use of project-based learning (PBL) as they implemented curricular units that they developed at the RGS summer workshop. Based on the analysis of the data from the observations, the RGS participants exhibited partial fidelity of implementation to the features of PBL. Analysis of the data from the interviews indicated that participants were aware of features of PBL that they were not able to fully implement. Participants also identified several supports, particularly from the RGS program such as being able to order materials to implement their units, as well as supports that were specific to their teaching contexts. The findings suggested that the professional development program had some positive if limited influence on teachers' instructional practices. This study highlights the need for professional development to enhance teachers' content knowledge as well as their knowledge of pedagogy and to promote collaboration between teachers and professional development providers, particularly once teachers are in their classroom contexts.

How does the precarity of creative work iterate with the precarity of creative spaces? In answer, we examine Covid-19 pandemic experiences of workers across diverse creative sectors in Sydney, Australia, drawing upon qualitative mapping research. Our findings highlight divergent experiences of precarity before and during the pandemic: many suffered, others adapted, some even thrived, depending upon the nature of their work, access to socialisation and networking opportunities, plus whether livelihood precariousness was worsened and overlaid with additional geographic factors, including venue loss, tenure vulnerability, housing insecurity, and access to production spaces. Using conceptual insights from labour and feminist geography, we argue that for the creative sectors to flourish and support diverse, well-remunerated and satisfying work, there must also be discussions of the post-pandemic geography of creative work. Space and social relations within and beyond the work sphere are co-constitutive of precarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As governments encourage circular economy (CE) initiatives, markets for waste recirculation are taking shape. But implementation is in its infancy and material circuits are emergent. Early food waste CEs shaped by commercial players emphasise capital investment, routinised forms of waged labour, processing sites distant from food waste sources, and transactional relationships. Less well understood is the potential for vernacular circularity beyond market-based, transactional frames. This paper reports from a collaborative research exercise with a non-profit community farm in nonmetropolitan Australia, seeking to connect with cafés to access food waste for composting. Cafés are a nexus of production and consumption, ubiquitous in the contemporary multicultural Australian context, and therefore ideal for grassroots CEs. Ten local cafes participated, reviewing existing food waste practices, motivations for circularity, and contextual factors including the regional setting. We found that food waste circularity emerges via divergent pathways related to enterprise type and scale, environmental values of actors, place embeddedness, and local relationships. These pathways reflect the place-based attributes and diverse sustainability values of residents and businesses in the coastal, industrial city of Wollongong, where the study is based. Contrasting distant, transactional circuits, are more-than-transactional food waste pathways, developed by microscale actors shaping vernacular material flows and "hacking" public provision of Food Organic and Garden Organic (FOGO) waste services to mobilise environmental values and community relationships. Overlooked by "big policy" more-than-transactional relationships bind producers, intermediaries and consumers in closer loops and, in so doing, enrich place and facilitate an ethic of care for soil and land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic brought to the surface the critical qualities of air – airflow, ventilation, particulates etc. – in relation to the well-being of people living in high-rise. Engineering and architectural research has burgeoned in response. However, in focusing on models of airflow, ventilation and particulates as discrete variables, engineering and architectural discourse fails to capture the diverse ways that air enters into and shapes the everyday lived experience of high-rise dwelling. Drawing on research in Sydney's Southwestern suburbs, we reveal high-rise as an assemblage that links apartment dwelling with air, via car-dependent suburbanisation, pollution and climate-change induced temperature extremes in the Anthropocene. In addition to viruses, air teems with carbon, insects, noise and pollutants, while viscerally mediating human encounters with fluctuating temperatures. Multiple relations between people, buildings and air unfold simultaneously, confounding attempts to account for air's elemental milieu through single variables like greenhouse gas or COVID-19. While embedded in relations of power, high-rise assemblages unleash vernacular adaptation that through low-tech and low-cost technologies work to connect suburban high-rise with evolving ecological systems. Recognising the pharmacological quality of air, as both 'poison' and 'cure', we contrast models of high-rise as encapsulated environments with resident (and other) experiments that orient high-rise to the elements, and the interlinked challenges of urban living in the Anthropocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critiques of intersectionality as an additive and simplistic model of understanding identity politics has led to calls for renewed concepts that better grasp the complexity and potential of shared struggle. In this article, we contend that the experiences of activists attempting to practice an intersectional human and animal rights politics are a crucial yet overlooked resource in the development of such conceptual imaginaries and ethical practice. Drawing on an historical case study conducted with activists involved in the 1990s anarchist collective 'One Struggle' in Israel/Palestine, we argue that an ethic of shared human and animal rights struggle cannot be separated from place-based and embodied politics. We show that activists cultivating intersectional politics in practice must negotiate affective forces of discomfort, alienation and exhaustion that wear down and constrain the potential for intersectional coalitions and joint struggles. These affects are generated through state disincentives, violence the cultural politics of nationalism and incommensurable differences. In this context, intersectional politics are a precarious achievement, dependent on the capacities of activists to continue to compromise and negotiate affectively charged encounters in everyday settings. To better capture the precarious, contingent and provisional nature of animal and human rights activism, we therefore propose the concept of 'actually existing intersectionality', illustrating how intersectionality is retheorised via emplaced, embodied activist practices. In so doing we make visible the work through which intersectional politics coheres through negotiation by actors in particular places and times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

OBJECTIVES: Limited research has assessed how virtual care (VC) affects cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk management, especially in community clinic settings. This study assessed change in community clinic patients' CVD risk management during the COVID-19 pandemic and CVD risk factor control among patients who had primarily in-person or primarily VC visits. STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective interrupted time-series analysis. METHODS: Data came from an electronic health record shared by 52 community clinics for index (March 1, 2019, to February 29, 2020) and follow-up (July 1, 2020, to February 28, 2022) periods. Analyses compared follow-up period changes in slope and level of population monthly means of 10-year reversible CVD risk score, blood pressure (BP), and hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) among patients whose completed follow-up period visits were primarily in person vs primarily VC. Propensity score weighting minimized confounding. RESULTS: There were 10,028 in-person and 6593 VC patients in CVD risk analyses, 9874 in-person and 5390 VC patients in BP analyses, and 8221 in-person and 4937 VC patients in HbA1c analyses. The VC group was more commonly younger, female, White, and urban. Mean reversible CVD risk, mean systolic BP, and percentage of BP measurements that were 140/90 mm Hg or higher increased significantly from index to follow-up periods in both groups. Rate of change between these periods was the same for all outcomes in both groups, regardless of care modality. CONCLUSIONS: Among community clinic patients with CVD risk, receiving a majority of care in person vs a majority of care via VC was not significantly associated with longitudinal trends in reversible CVD risk score or key CVD risk factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indiana Science Initiative (ISI) is a systemic effort to reform K-8 science education. The program provides teachers with professional development, reform-oriented science modules, and materials support. To examine the impact of the initiative's professional development, a participant observation study was conducted in the program's pilot year. Five teachers in grades 3-6 were observed and interviewed as they implemented the ISI-provided modules. Analysis of the observation data revealed that the teachers incorporated each of the features of inquiry science instruction. However, they did not consistently teach in a way that was aligned with the intent of the ISI. Examination of interview data provided insight into influences on teachers' use of inquiry with the ISI-provided modules. These data revealed that teachers were aware of the intent of the ISI and attempted to align their instruction. However, teachers were influenced by their perceptions of students' behavior and abilities as well as timing and the appropriate level of teacher control needed to facilitate science instruction. The research suggests that professional development activities should prepare teachers to help learners evaluate explanations against alternatives, connect explanations to scientific knowledge, and provide strategies to address teachers' perceptions of students, timing, and teacher control.

Age-Friendly Health Systems (AFHS) commit to providing evidence-based, low-risk, coordinated care centered on what matters most to older adults, their families, and caregivers. Nova Southeastern University's South Florida Geriatric Workforce Enhancement Program (NSU SFGWEP) has partnered with primary care clinics to provide AFHS training and support to promote AFHS transformation in Broward and Miami-Dade Counties. NSU SFGWEP provides face-to-face and virtual training for AFHS and Electronic Health Record (EHR) documentation as part of the initiative. This project focuses on a group of primary care clinics in Broward County, Florida. In this paper, we evaluate the progress of AFHS transformation through six e-clinical measures that collectively provide indicators of the 4 M framework of AFHS (What Matters, Medication, Mentation, and Mobility). We used provider feedback and e-clinical measures aligned with the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) to measure clinic outcomes. From Jan 1– Dec 31, 2019, to Jan 1–Dec 31, 2020, the clinics improved high-risk medication management (0–3.71%), advanced care planning (6.79%–20.74%), and fall risk assessment (no data- 46.72%). Results demonstrate some success and ongoing opportunities to continue and expand AFHS interventions for sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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