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Background: Nurses experienced intense ethical and moral challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our 2020 qualitative parent study of frontline nurses' experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic identified ethics as a cross-cutting theme with six subthemes: moral dilemmas, moral uncertainty, moral distress, moral injury, moral outrage, and moral courage. We re-analyzed ethics-related findings in light of refined definitions of ethics concepts. Research aim: To analyze frontline U.S. nurses' experiences of ethics during the COVID-19 pandemic. Research design: Qualitative analysis using a directed content methodology. Participants and research context: The study included 43 nurses from three major metropolitan academic medical centers and one community hospital in the northeastern, mid-Atlantic, midwestern, and western United States. Ethical considerations: Participant privacy and data confidentiality were addressed. Findings: Moral dilemmas arose from many situations, most frequently related to balancing safety and patient care. Moral uncertainty commonly arose from lacking health information or evidence about options. Moral distress occurred when nurses knew the right thing to do, but were prevented from doing so, including with end-of-life issues. Moral injury (accompanied by suffering, shame, or guilt) occurred after doing, seeing, or experiencing wrongdoing, often involving authority figures. Nurses expressed moral outrage at events and people within and outside healthcare. Despite difficult ethical situations, some nurses exemplified moral courage, sometimes by resisting policies they perceived as preventing compassionate care, guided by thinking about what was best for patients. Discussion: This content analysis of ethics-related subthemes revealed conceptual characteristics and clarified distinctions with corresponding exemplars. Conceptual clarity may inform responses and interventions to address ethical quandaries in nursing practice. Conclusions: Ethics education in nursing must address the moral dilemmas of pandemics, disasters, and other crises. Nurses need time and resources to heal from trying to provide the best care when no ideal option was available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: COVID-19 pandemic has led to heightened moral distress among healthcare providers. Despite evidence of gendered differences in experiences, there is limited feminist analysis of moral distress. Objectives: To identify types of moral distress among women healthcare providers during the COVID-19 pandemic; to explore how feminist political economy might be integrated into the study of moral distress. Research Design: This research draws on interviews and focus groups, the transcripts of which were analyzed using framework analysis. Research Participants and Context: 88 healthcare providers, based in British Columbia Canada, participated virtually. Ethical Considerations: The study received ethical approval from Simon Fraser University. Findings: Healthcare providers experienced moral dilemmas related to ability to provide quality and compassionate care while maintaining COVID-19 protocols. Moral constraints were exacerbated by staffing shortages and lack of access to PPE. Moral conflicts emerged when women tried to engage decision-makers to improve care, and moral uncertainty resulted from lack of clear and consistent information. At home, women experienced moral constraints related to inability to support children's education and wellbeing. Moral conflicts related to lack of flexible work environments and moral dilemmas developed between unpaid care responsibilities and COVID-19 risks. Women healthcare providers resisted moral residue and structural constraints by organizing for better working conditions, childcare, and access to PPE, engaging mental health support and drawing on professional pride. Discussion: COVID-19 has led to new and heightened experiences of moral distress among HCP in response to both paid and unpaid care work. While many of the experiences of moral distress at work were not explicitly gendered, implicit gender norms structured moral events. Women HCP had to take it upon themselves to organize, seek out resources, and resist moral residue. Conclusion: A feminist political economy lens illuminates how women healthcare providers faced and resisted a double layering of moral distress during the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The commercial determinants of health (CDoH) describe the adverse health effects associated with for-profit actors and their actions. Despite efforts to advance the definition, conceptualization, and empirical analyses of CDoH, the term's practical application to mitigate these effects requires the capacity to measure the influences of specific components of CDoH and the cumulative impacts of CDoH on the health and well-being of specific populations. Building on the Global Burden of Disease Study, we begin by conceptualizing CDoH as risk factor exposures that span agency and structural influences. We identify 6 components of these influences and propose an initial set of indicators and datasets to rank exposures as high, medium, or low. These are combined into a commercial determinants of health index (CDoHi) and illustrated by 3 countries. Although now a proof of concept, comparative analysis of CDoH exposures by population, over time and space, and their associated health outcomes will become possible with further development of indicators and datasets. Expansion of the CDoHi and application to varied populations groups will enable finer targeting of interventions to reduce health harms. The measurement of improvements to health and wellness from such interventions will, in turn, inform overall efforts to address the CDoH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Significant investments in public early childhood care and education (ECE) have yielded higher Hispanic enrollment in preschool-age programs, but progress has been uneven and inconsistent, especially for the youngest Hispanic children and low-income families. We review how ECE has contributed to Hispanic children's development, offering a detailed review of Hispanic children's participation in ECE, including evidence of effectiveness from ECE programs such as Early Head Start and Head Start, and state pre-K programs. We conclude with a discussion of why Hispanic children remain underserved by ECE and what policy changes could increase participation in these programs among Hispanics. We argue for expansion of established high-quality ECE into Hispanic-dense communities, for strategies that enroll and retain Latino children in ECE in ways that are family-centered and culturally responsive, and that ECE must adapt to better serve Hispanic families and dual language learners who require culturally appropriate pedagogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: In this study, we aimed to explore the relationship between intersectional inequities and moral distress among those working in Long-Term Care (LTC) in British Columbia, Canada. Methods: This was a cross-sectional and retrospective study. We assessed moral distress, of 1678 respondents, using a modified Moral Distress Scale, and an equivalent distress mitigation score, at the intersections of gender and racial/ethnic identity. Then, we explored which worker attributes were more predictive of intention to leave work. Results: We found notable difference in experiences of moral distress across intersecting identities, including high moral distress scores among Indigenous men and women, and white women. Significant differences in mitigation scores were also found by intersectional identities. Discussion: Moral distress was the most important predictor of intention to leave work. The differences across racial and gender identity groups suggest the need for tailored interventions to address moral distress among LTC providers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commercial tobacco products are a leading contributor to health disparities for many Indigenous peoples. Mainstream interventions developed for non-Indigenous peoples have been found less effective at addressing these disparities. Meaningful engagement is needed to develop effective measures but there are limited understandings of what engagement means in practice. We conduct a scoping review of studies self-reporting engagement with Indigenous peoples; assess their engagement against ethics guidelines concerning research involving Indigenous peoples and writings of Indigenous scholars; and draw lessons for advancing practice. We found engagement of Indigenous peoples in tobacco control research is practiced in varied ways—who conducts the research, who is engaged with, for what purpose, at what research steps, and what approaches are applied. Engagement ranges from limited to deeper commitment to research as decolonizing practice. Critical reflection along five questions can advance research practice for this purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As early childhood education programs in the United States increasingly serve a growing number of children from linguistically and culturally diverse families, understanding teacher practices to better serve these families continues to be an important focus for the profession. In programs that serve migrant farmworker families, little is known about teachers' communication practices and ways in which teachers promote parent engagement with migrant farmworker families. This article explores the practices of teachers relevant to family communication and engagement in Migrant and Seasonal Head Start programs, a branch of Head Start program for farmworker families, mostly of Mexican origin. This study used qualitative methods of in-depth interviews and a focus group to bring forth the perspectives and lived experience of Spanish-speaking and English-speaking teachers working with farmworker families in the Great Lakes region of the United States. Key findings illustrate the role of shared language and culture, mediated language barriers, the reliability of interpreters and written communication, and authentic ways of creating home–school connections with the migrant farmworker community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Progress in theorizing networks and events requires formulating a greater diversity of networks and, in particular, enabling network analysis to exploit relations between events and the attributes, actions, and variables that characterize them. We advance this line of inquiry in dialogue with a recent approach to the systematic study of violent conflicts among state actors and groups of people who refuse to accept their governments' power. One productive way to analyze an insurgency is to view it as a network of sequenced events across stages (periods) of conflict. We explore this formulation, identify limitations, and present illustrative analysis demonstrating how new and useful insights can be obtained by combining our formal approach with one grounded in the comparative analysis of case studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The biological complexity associated with the regulation of histone demethylases makes it desirable to configure a cellular mechanistic assay format that simultaneously encompasses as many of the relevant cellular processes as possible. In this report, the authors describe the configuration of a JMJD3 high-content cellular mechanistic imaging assay that uses single-cell multiparameter measurements to accurately assess cellular viability and the enzyme-dependent demethylation of the H3K27(Me)3 mark by exogenously expressed JMJD3. This approach couples robust statistical analyses with the spatial resolving power of cellular imaging. This enables segregation of expressing and nonexpressing cells into discrete subpopulations and consequently pharmacological quantification of compounds of interest in the expressing population at varying JMJD3 expression levels. Moreover, the authors demonstrate the utility of this hit identification strategy through the successful prosecution of a medium-throughput focused campaign of an 87 500-compound file, which has enabled the identification of JMJD3 cellular-active chemotypes. This study represents the first report of a demethylase high-content imaging assay with the ability to capture a repertoire of pharmacological tools, which are likely both to inform our mechanistic understanding of how JMJD3 is modulated and, more important, to contribute to the identification of novel therapeutic modalities for this demethylase enzyme. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses a study of the correlation between real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) threshold cycle (Ct) values and colony-forming units (CFU) on Herrold egg yolk medium (HEYM) for Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP) in fresh and thawed pooled fecal and environmental samples. Results found an inverse correlation between HEYM culture and real-time qPCR for (MAP). Rapid, quantitative estimates of MAP load has been found with the use of real-time qPCR.

This study explores whether the social support that young adolescents may draw on for their academic activities is related to bow much they learn in mathematics and reading over the course ofa pear. Data came from 1997 survey reports collected by the Consortium for Chicago School Research from 30,000 sixth and eighth graders in 304 Chicago public elementary schools about the support these students receive from their teachers, their parents, their peers, and their neighborhoods and from annual standardized tests conducted by the Chicago Public Schools. Using hierarchical linear modeling methods, we found that, on average, social support is positively but modestly related to learning. However, both learning and the relationship between social support and learning are contingent on the academic press of the school students attend. Findings are discussed within the context of school reform policies focusing on increasing social support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a sample of 9,631 students in 789 U.S. high schools with three waves of data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, the study presented here was an extension of an earlier study that found positive effects for practices that are consistent with the restructuring movement on learning in the first two years of high school and on the equitable distribution of learning by social class. The current study identified the characteristics of high school organization that are positively related to learning in mathematics and science and to equity during the first and last two years of high school and investigated whether such organizational factors explain the results of the earlier study. It found that although students learn somewhat less in the last two years than in the first two years, several features of the social and academic organization of high schools are strongly associated with learning in both periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study assessed the impact on 10th-grade students of attending high schools whose practices are consistent with the school-restructuring movement. Using data on a sample of 11,794 sophomores in 830 high schools from the first two waves of the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988, the authors evaluated restructuring effects on students' gains in engagement and achievement in four subjects and the social distribution of those gains. High schools with several practices consistent with restructuring and those with none of the 30 practices that were considered were contrasted with schools that engaged in only traditional reforms. School size was evaluated as an independent structural feature. The results revealed that students" gains in achievement and engagement were significantly higher in schools with restructuring practices and lower in schools without reforms. Higher and more socially equitable engagement and achievement were consistently associated with smaller high schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on a study of the impact of attending restructured schools on the achievement and engagement of young adolescents. It places the movement toward restructuring in a conceptual framework favoring the development of more communally organized schools and away from the largely bureaucratic organization of most American schools. Using a subsample of 8,845 eighth graders in 377 public, Catholic, and independent middle-grade schools from the base year of the National Longitudinal Study of 1988, the authors examined the effects of school restructuring (less departmentalization, more heterogeneous grouping, more team teaching, and a composite restructuring index) on students' achievement, engagement with academic work, and at-risk behaviors. Modest but consistently positive effects of restructuring were found on both achievement and engagement, as well as with a more equitable social distribution of these outcomes. Students attending schools with fewer eighth-grade peers also demonstrated more academic engagement and a more equitable distribution of achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article measures the impact of social organization of schools on teachers' efficacy and job satisfaction. Organizational features are increasingly seen as important determinants of effective schools, with frequently cited features including the school's organizational culture, ethos, or climate. Efficacy, in psychological terms, is a person's perceived expectation of succeeding at a task or obtaining a valued outcome through personal effort. Satisfaction, is an affective response to achieving that goal. In an organizational environment, efficacy and satisfaction typically do not reflect expectations of a particular occurrence or task. Social psychology has identified both intrinsic and extrinsic sources of information about performance as important determinants of professional satisfaction and efficacy. The major ecological structure influencing teachers' efficacy and satisfaction is, unsurprisingly, the classroom. Fundamental to determining their efficacy and satisfaction is the expectations teachers hold for their students. If students are seen as having low ability or as being unable to learn, teachers tend to lower their expectations of their own ability to teach them.

This study investigated how the organization of the mathematics curriculum in U.S. high schools affects how much students learn in that subject. The study used data on the background and academic proficiency of 3,056 high school seniors in 123 public high schools from the 1990 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in mathematics. These data were linked with information from students `high school transcripts and with information from their high schools about courses offered during that period. To accommodate the nested structure of the data and research questions, we used Hierarchical Linear Modeling (FILM) methods, including a subroutine (HLM2PV) that simplifies the proper use of multiple plausible values estimates for NAEP proficiency scores. Results provide support for our hypothesis about curriculum constraint: Students learn more in schools that offer them a narrow curriculum composed mostly of academic courses. Difficulties in conducting school effects studies using NAEP proficiency score outcomes, particularly the procedures for estimating plausible values, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study described in this article investigates the relationship between high school size and student learning. We used three waves of data from NELS:88 and hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) methods to examine how students' achievement growth in two subjects (reading and mathematics) over the high school years is influenced by the size of the high school they attend. Three research questions guided the study: (a) Which size high school is most effective for students' learning?, (b) In which size high school is learning most equitably distributed?, and (c) Are size effects consistent across high schools defined by their social compositions? Results suggest that the ideal high school, defined in terms of effectiveness (i.e., learning), enrolls between 600 and 900 students. In schools smaller than this, students learn less; those in large high schools (especially over 2,100) learn considerably less. Learning is mow equitable in very small schools, with equity defined by the relationship between learning and student socioeconomic status (SES). An important finding from the study is that the influence of school size on learning is different in schools that enrol! students of varying SES and in schools with differing proportions of minorities. Enrollment size has a stronger effect on learning in schools with lower-SES students and also in schools with high concentrations of minority students. Implications for educational policy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the lasting impact of taking algebra before high school on students' subsequent mathematics attainment in high school. Using a nationally representative sample of high school students, I explore the effects of early access to algebra on students' access to advanced mathematics courses and subsequent high school math achievement Results demonstrate that early access to algebra has an effect beyond simple increased knowledge measures and, in fact, may "socialize" a student into taking more mathematics, regulating access both to advanced coursework and increased achievement in high school. Implications for broader curriculum policy changes concerning early access to algebra are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the contexts of families and school districts, we investigate the effect of parental choke of schools on social stratification in education. We focus on Detroit, one of the few U. S. cities without a major choice plan (1991). Using multilevel methods to analyze data from 710 household heads in 45 Detroit-area school districts, results showed that minority and disadvantaged respondents, especially from the city, favor choke. We concluded that access to low-quality schools-measured either by respondents' perceptions or resource levels for school districts- motivates positive opinions toward choice. We discuss the potential effects on the Detroit public schools of an interdistrict choice plan, suggesting that choke would further stratify an already highly inequitable distribution ofsocial, economic, and academic resources around education in the Detroit area. We question the individualistic premise undergirding arguments favoring choke. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the possibility of differences in the salaries of male and female teachers in America's secondary schools, once differences in their qualifications are taken into account. The random sample of 8,894 teachers in 377 high schools is from the Administrator and Teacher Survey, which collected data in 1983-1984 from a random subset of the schools originally sampled in the High School and Beyond study (Moles, 1988). In examining salary differences in public, Catholic, and other private schools, the study uses two techniques: ordinary least-squares (OLS) regression and hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). HLM allows for adjustment of differing labor market conditions between schools and districts, a factor identified in the literature as important but not systematically controlled heretofore. Qualification differences considered include training (education and courses taken in major teaching area), type of teaching (mathematics, science, coaching), and experience (years of experience and new teacher status). Other school factors that might justifiably affect salary levels are considered, including market conditions, the proportion of female faculty, school sector, whether the school offers extra pay for extra responsibilities, and whether the school participates in a merit pay program. Unadjusted salary differences of about $2, 600 favoring males are reduced to about $1,100, $1,700, and $2,600 for public, Catholic, and other private schools, respectively, by statistical adjustment for qualifications, market, and responsibility differences. We must conclude, however, that significant salary discrimination against female teachers exists in all high school sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most humans believe in a god or gods, a belief that may promote prosociality toward coreligionists. A critical question is whether such enhanced prosociality is primarily parochial and confined to the religious ingroup or whether it extends to members of religious outgroups. To address this question, we conducted field and online experiments with Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Jewish adults in the Middle East, Fiji, and the United States (N = 4,753). Participants were given the opportunity to share money with anonymous strangers from different ethno-religious groups. We manipulated whether they were asked to think about their god before making their choice. Thinking about God increased giving by 11% (4.17% of the total stake), an increase that was extended equally to ingroup and outgroup members. This suggests that belief in a god or gods may facilitate intergroup cooperation, particularly in economic transactions, even in contexts with heightened intergroup tension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]