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Feminist classrooms employ a variety of teaching strategies that empower students and inspire equity and justice. In this paper, we argue that integrating student-made documentary filmmaking into the college classroom is a powerful and effective form of feminist teaching. Specifically, feminist pedagogy views students as knowledge creators and demands collaborative, non-hierarchical learning experiences. These outcomes suggest that documentary filmmaking is a compelling and effective way to engage students in our increasingly visual and video-based culture. Based on our experiences teaching sociology at a women's college in the U.S., we illustrate the impact that documentary filmmaking has for student learning, empowerment, and justice work. We also develop and strengthen students' technical, multi-media skills, arguing this outcome expands feminist pedagogy to meet contemporary culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessment literacy (AL) empowers teachers (Grabowski & Dakin, 2014) by helping them make better decisions about the development, administration, and use of assessments (Harding & Kremmel, 2016; Popham, 2009). This is crucial because when teachers make erroneous interpretations, which lead to incorrect decisions, students can suffer unintended, negative consequences (Purpura, 2016; Purpura, Brown, & Schoonen, 2015). As essential as AL is to providing quality teaching and learning opportunities, assessment education remains inadequate (Lam, 2015; Mendoza & Arandia, 2009; Vogt & Tsagari, 2014). According to Cheng (2001), teachers spend up to a third of their time in assessment related activities; however, most "do so with little or no professional training" (Bachman, 2000, p. 19-20). In light of the demand for the development of instructor AL, this paper first defines and conceptualizes language assessment literacy (LAL). Then it problematizes LAL through an investigation of empirical studies conducted to explore pre- and in-service teacher education and resources that have been used to develop teachers' LAL. Finally, it examines how teachers' LAL levels are evaluated through assessments such as Cambridge University Press's Teaching Knowledge Test, the edTPA, and state teacher certification Praxis tests.

The study discussed in this paper is a systematic literature review related to the role of dual language programme (DLP) in mathematics education which has been published within the last 5 years. This study was conducted to identify the distribution of DLP studies in terms of year of publication, the study context covered in previous studies, the context of study areas used, focus and trends of past studies, research methods used in previous studies and the role of language in school mathematics education. This review study followed the guidelines of Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyzes (PRISMA) to analyze articles from Scopus and Web of Science. The findings of the study indicate that research trends in the implementation of the DLP on mathematics education for secondary school students showed an increase from 2017 to 2019. Most DLP-related articles are widely developed in the United States and Germany. The findings indicate that previous studies are more interested in studying the implementation of DLP in rural areas. Past studies have also preferred to use the design of either a qualitative study or a quantitative study to be implemented. Questionnaires, tests and interviews are among the research instruments that are often used for a study.

While internationalization is among the top strategic priorities of universities and colleges globally, research into the expanse of internationalization in the kinesiology discipline is not well researched. Given this gap, critical consideration of the state and status of the phenomenon is needed. Knowing more about what is being done in the name of internationalization within kinesiology and reflecting on how those actions and outcomes are aligned, or not, with key theoretical guidance is necessary in order to plan for improvement accordingly. For these reasons, this paper first provides a primer on internationalization in higher education, including how the phenomenon has come to be defined as well as key contemporary critiques associated with it. In particular, we highlight Beck's (2012) theoretical concept of 'eduscape' to critically consider the influences of globalization on internationalization within higher education kinesiology as well as Khoo, Taylor, and Andreotti's (2016) principles of intelligibility, dissent, and solidarity to consider the ways kinesiology scholars engage critically with internationalization processes. Presented next is a review of the kinesiology literature that is explicitly focused on internationalization. Then, the results of a pilot survey into the views of National Association for Kinesiology in Higher Education (NAKHE) members and other Western kinesiology scholars on internationalization is reported next. The paper concludes with recommendations as to how NAKHE and the broader community of Western kinesiology scholars might best navigate internationalization moving forward. We recommend the complexity-informed and principle-driven approach of inclusive leadership as a means of pursuing cognitive justice in the 21st century.

The paper explores the impact of the continental system exerted on the constitutional and political evolution of both the United States and individual states and tries to characterize the development of constitutional review phenomenon within the framework of the continental legal system and the Anglo-Saxon legal system. The research stands on the comparative legal analysis methodology within a diachronically featured paradigm. The paper explores the ways through which the continental system could exert relevant impact on the constitutional and political evolution of both the United States and individual states. Further on the article traces the development of the concepts of constitutional review within the framework of the continental legal system and the Anglo-Saxon legal system. The above stages of the analysis allowed the author to outline the specifics, nature of the essence of judicial review in the context of axiological analysis of public activities. The study concludes that judicial review is used to elucidate to what extent a rule of conduct complies with the safeguards of human and civil rights and liberties set out in a specific country.

The development of new communication technologies has led to a push for greater technology use for teaching and learning. This is most true for distance learning education, which relies heavily on new technologies. Distance learning students, however, seem to have very limited time available for studying and learning because of work and/or family commitments. This paper focuses on the actual use by distance learning students of different teaching and learning resources and their associated teaching technologies (learning tools). The organisation of one module has been conceptualised as a toolbox, encompassing all the learning tools provided to students. This toolbox also explicitly includes an embedded priority system for the examination of available learning resources, conceptualised as a "traffic-light toolbox" in this paper. Results from a survey on the resources actually used by students show that students are indeed time-constrained. Students consequently follow the priority system embedded into the module and do not use non-examinable resources much. This paper concludes that students' specific needs or situations need to be considered for the design of an effective learning toolbox, as opposed to just providing a bundle of learning tools that may be effective on their own. (Contains 1 table and 8 figures.)

This paper traces the century-long history of a library that has served teacher preparation programs in Calgary, Alberta, since 1909. It looks at how this library's role and collections adapted to shifting notions of what constituted good teacher education and changing economic circumstances. In recounting this history, the paper examines the historical circumstances that created a separate education library at the University of Calgary and how issues of group and professional identity contributed to its continuing existence. The various themes which emerge may be common to many North American education libraries.

Meeting the food requirements of international students is one of the many responsibilities of campus dining services that can, if fulfilled well, contribute to the success and retention of these students. Colleges and universities are continuing to diversify their enrollment with the recruitment of international students. Because many of these institutions require first-year students to live on campus, most international students live in residence halls and must purchase meal plans at some point during their collegiate career. The findings of this paper illuminate the food-related experiences of international students living on campus in their first year. Food quality, cultural differences, and the impact on future living decisions are discussed. [The discussion questions at the close of this article were developed by Amber Fallucca and Ryan Bronkema.]

In this paper, we report on the analysis of data collected from 684 students majoring in Accounting and Finance, to examine the relationship between academic outcomes and Work-integrated Education (WIE) and International Study Exchange (ISE) experiences. Both WIE and ISE are common elements of undergraduate business education because of the benefits to students' skills development they provide, particularly in the areas of graduate attribute development. This study examined the relationship between the change in students' academic performance and the amount and type of WIE a student undertook and whether or not they participated in an ISE. Findings showed that both completing a higher amount of WIE and undertaking an ISE are positive predictors of change in a student's grade point average. In addition, students who undertook industry-relevant WIE or WIE sourced by the school had higher grades on graduation. As well as benefits to overall academic achievement, the results showed that students who participated in ISE had significantly higher grades in the final year, major project, as well as a higher grade on graduation. Furthermore, undertaking an ISE and also doing extra WIE had the greatest effect on change in GPA. These findings strongly suggest that relevant WIE and ISE experiences are valuable for helping students be academically more successful when they return to study at their home institution.

Comparing group is one of the key uses of large-scale assessment results, which are used to gain insights to inform policy and practice and to examine the comparability of scores and score meaning. Such comparisons typically focus on examinees' final answers and responses to test questions, ignoring response process differences groups may engage in. This paper discusses and demonstrates the use of response process data in enhancing group comparison and fairness research methodologies. We propose two statistical approaches for identifying differential response processes which extend the differential item functioning (DIF) detection methods and demonstrate the complementary use of process data in comparing groups in two case studies. Our findings demonstrate the use of response process data in gaining insights about students' test-taking behaviors from different populations that go beyond what may be identified using response data only.

A thematic content analysis of the seven issues (35 papers and two editorials) of the "International Research in Early Childhood Education" ("IRECE") journal published by Monash University in Melbourne, Victoria was conducted to explore the themes over its five years of publication. Publications were grouped into defined data chunks by year and Leximancer was used to discover concepts and themes. Five dominant themes emerged: children/s; childhood; learning; parent/s and teacher/s. Pathway analyses were then conducted to more fully understand and describe each theme. Data were used to visually represent the most frequently appearing terms to form a tag cloud, which in turn contributes to the development of a "folksonomy" for the journal. Finally, mentions of geographic regions were also explored which positively reflected on international focus of the journal.

Higher education is the linchpin of music education in North America. It is primarily in collegiate institutions that music teachers are educated throughout the life cycles of their careers. This begins with preservice programs, typically at the baccalaureate level, and continues with in-service professional development and graduate degree programs. It is in these programs that music teachers develop musical and pedagogical knowledge, skills, habits, and dispositions that guide them throughout their careers. American and Canadian collegiate music education programs have traditionally focused on preparing preservice music teachers for work in schools, providing professional development for in-service music teachers through graduate programs and other offerings, preparing professors of music education, and producing research and scholarship intended to inform and guide the profession. Music education professors operate within a dynamic web of institutions, society, and industry. Each of them has challenges, values, and priorities that affect music education in higher education and K-12 schools. The key issues that challenge collegiate music education programs reviewed in this paper include changing demographics and tastes in music; transformation of the music industry; new technologies that alter the way people interact, access information, and engage musically; cultural and financial changes in higher education; changing expectations for primary and secondary schools; and nonschool providers of music education services. These changes are the result of a continual democratization of society and a globalizing economy. One can expect these areas to continue evolving, with people having increasingly more access to information, music, and other people. In this paper, the author addresses each of them and discusses implications for collegiate music education programs. He then provides some closing thoughts. (Contains 5 notes.)

Professional mutual recognition agreements (MRAs) are one of the policy instruments employed in global and regional trade agreements to facilitate the mobility of skilled labour. While such agreements have been noted in the literature examining cross-border academic mobility, little is known about how they impact higher education. This paper examines the formation of professional MRAs in North America since the passing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), focusing on three fields: engineering, architecture, and accounting. In the three professions, asymmetries characterizing the NAFTA partners led to system-level reforms in Mexico. The paper discusses how and why the institutional arrangements governing professional higher education in the country were "harmonized" with those of the United States and Canada.

The author found "This Bridge Called My Back" at the local public library when she was, at age thirty-three, finally beginning to write again, and write honestly. There were Indian voices in "Bridge"--a few poems or personal narratives that moved her, but which barely began to represent the range of the writers or the astonishingly diverse Native communities from which these writers emerged. The author wanted to belong to this book, she wanted to own this book, she wanted her struggles as an "Indian woman" to be present and "part" of this beautiful, incredible book! In many ways, the book was somebody else's story. She felt that in order to have some claim to the book's power, she needed to become a sort of "generic" woman of color, lose her Indianness. The underrepresentation of Native women in "Bridge" is by no means an anomaly. The author has not found Indian women's voices to be truly present in most publications or forums, academic coursework, readings, conferences, or critical analyses of American literatures and culture (including projects by and about women of color). American Indian experiences are still absent from a communal discourse about racism, representation, academic life, literary theory, or the powers of love. The call for papers for this look back at "Bridge" has brought all these frustrations, never far away from the author, back full force. Women of color still need to talk about what it's like to be an Indigenous person alive in her still-colonized homeland; someone who, when she looks at that homeland, sees few traces of an Indigenous presence, or none that are recognizable--and yet, "knows that Indigenous presence is there because she is it." What does this do to their hearts, their sanity? What does it do to the other cultures and communities living in this homeland? The author has struggled to find the words for telling this, but perhaps the best way is through her own story as an Indian woman in academia in the late twentieth century. Four years into the academy, the author is only beginning to bridge the gaps found there--and to do it without using her own back as the bridge, refusing to learn "conditioned subservience," or bear the burdens of dehumanizing absent histories and voices. Some of her Indian friends have fled or abandoned academia, disgusted or exhausted by the constant battle; some have graduated with degrees only to find that non-Native scholars fill many of the positions in Native studies; others have simply turned their tremendous gifts and energies in other directions, discounting the university as a place with the potential to make a difference. So far, the author has stayed--isolated as a student, as a part-time lecturer, as a writer. She no longer fear that she will be judged "unable" to separate her mind from heart; instead, she acknowledges that she is "unwilling" to separate intellectual work from the work of the heart. (Contains 11 notes.)

It should surprise no one that there are faculties throughout North America that refer to themselves as professional learning communities (PLCs) yet do none of the things that PLCs do. Conversely, there are faculties that could serve as model PLCs that may never reference the term. A school does not become a PLC by enrolling in a program, renaming existing practices, taking the PLC pledge, or learning the secret PLC handshake. A school becomes a professional learning community only when the educators within it align their practices with PLC concepts. Therefore, any valid assessment of the impact of PLC concepts on a school or the compatibility of those concepts with the middle school model would first need to determine if PLC practices were actually in place in the school. Only then would it be possible to determine the impact of those practices on the learning of both students and adults. The professional learning community concept does not offer a short cut to school improvement. It presents neither a program nor a recipe. It does provide a powerful, proven conceptual framework for transforming schools at all levels, but alas, even the grandest design eventually degenerates into hard work. A school staff must focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively on matters related to learning, and hold itself accountable for the kind of results that fuel continual improvement. When educators do the hard work necessary to implement these principles, their collective ability to help all students learn inevitably will rise. If they fail to demonstrate the discipline to initiate and sustain this work, their school is unlikely to become more effective, even if those within the school claim to be a professional learning community. The rise or fall of the professional learning community concept in any school will depend not on the merits of the concept itself, but on the most important element in the improvement of any school--the collective capacity, commitment,and persistence of the educators within it. (Contains 1 note.)

Learning as a central focus in the discourse on professional development is well grounded in the educational and professional development literature. Yet, despite this consensus, and significant research on how professionals learn, most professional development and continuing professional education (CPE) practices continue to focus on delivering content rather than enhancing learning. This paper provides an update and overview of adult education's ongoing critique of and contributions to debates about the aims, structure, and purposes of continuing professional development and CPE. The author profiles a long-standing and continuing effort by educational scholars to reclaim this vital area of study and practice, in order to bring their learning focus as well as their critical questions to bear on it.

Family literacy programs in North America and the United Kingdom have enjoyed widespread public and political support. Thousands of initiatives following a variety of models currently operate under the spectrum of family literacy programs. In this paper, the influence of learning theories, the research on children's early literacy development, and the sociopolitical context with gave rise to the intervention movement, will be reviewed with respect to their impact on current models of family literacy programs. The research on program evaluation is also considered, and is related to current practice and future directions in family literacy programming.

Global health is becoming an important area of inquiry and learning in North American research universities, stemming from on-going and new commitments to the field by multiple governmental and non-governmental agents. External demands for research and education in global health require enhanced inter-disciplinary, inter-sectoral and international collaborations, all perceived as growing trends but often not easily accommodated in universities. This paper investigates how four leading universities in Canada and the US have entered the field of global health, exploring the relationships among national contexts, academic structures, and institutional strategies. Content analysis of institutional records is triangulated with data from sixty interviews with academic leaders and researchers at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, McGill and Toronto. Resource asymmetries emerge as an important differentiating factor shaping the emergence of global health in the American and Canadian institutions. Domestic sources of support and previous academic structures provided important cumulative advantages to the US campuses in claiming national and international leadership in the field.

The new objects of public and open prejudice are Hispanics, primarily Mexicans due to their large population and their proximity to the United States. Because the Iraq War is such a disaster on all fronts, conservatives and reactionaries have shifted their patriotic fervour from invading foreign countries to inveighing against brown-skinned foreigners who come in the United States. In this article, the author talks about America's xenophobia which goes back a long way past 1928 when it was alleged that Al Smith, the Democratic candidate and first Catholic to be nominated for the presidency, would build a tunnel from the Vatican to the White House so that the Pope could secretly run the country. The author also talks about interstate highways which were specifically created to aid evacuation in case of a Soviet attack. The interstate highway in the crosshairs of the xenophobes is I-69 or sometimes conflated with I-35. Anti-immigrant organisations see expansion of I-69 as a plot to create a NAFTA (North American Free Trade Association) superhighway stretching 1600 miles from Mexico to Canada; this would be the first step towards the creation of NAU, the North American Union, resulting in "the disintegration of these countries as sovereign nations." Although the interstate highway is considered as treason to some Americans, the author was astonished to find that to some Christians, it is deemed the road to salvation.

This chapter presents the author's response to Bernard Gifford and Guadalupe Valdes's article "The Linguistic Isolation of Hispanic Students in California's Public Schools: The Challenge of Reintegration." In their article, Gifford and Valdes consult the historical record concerning English-speaking Anglo contact with Spanish-speaking "Californios" in 19th-century North America and provide statistical evidence of the resegregation currently being experienced by Latino students. They describe how, shortly after the Mexican government ceded California to the United States in 1848, an ideology of racial, cultural, and linguistic superiority led to the enactment of English-only legislative and educational policy, as well as a segregated system of schooling. Gifford and Valdes identify the fears of white parents who worry about the effects Latino children would have on their own children's educational progress. The author believes that these fears motivated the establishment of a segregated school system in an earlier era, and as Gifford and Valdes suggest, it may also contribute to the intense and sustained linguistic isolation that is a result of today's racial and ethnic segregation.

Over the past year, a number of journals have reprised many of the questions plaguing higher education--providing a full year's worth of sleepless nights. While each of these issues justifies considerable dialogue and attention, the one issue on which parents, students, the public, and educators can agree is the importance--and the challenge--of student success. Whether the concerns are about the future of an individual student, the nation's competitiveness, or the health and security of the world's people, the underlying issue is the challenge of making students' college experience successful. Success requires encouragement and nurturing every step of the way--from well-qualified, credentialed K-12 teachers to professors who recognize what it takes to reach today's student and to tap into his or her creative or scholarly potential. In this article, the author argues that a renewed focus on student success could help reinvigorate the public's appreciation of higher education as a place to grow, to dream, to be creative, to think--a place of opportunity. (Contains 9 notes.)

Colleges and universities are increasingly using online education across North America. There is, however, a debate on the effectiveness of this new technology as a pedagogical tool. In this paper, using our experiences in teaching more than l0 online courses, we examine the role of online education, its advantages and disadvantages, methods of delivery, and discuss possible ways in improving the effectiveness of this new teaching instrument.

In this paper we provide a North American perspective as we explore the formation and comprehension of queer knowledge in adult education and in larger sociocultural contexts. We consider the need to position queer in adult education mindful of how queer is historically and currently positioned in culture and society. In doing so, we articulate queer--a term representing our spectral community that incorporates a diversity of sex, sexual, and gender differences--and queerness: our ways of being, believing, desiring, becoming, belonging, and acting in life-and-learning spaces. Then we turn to queer history and queer studies to investigate queer knowledge as fugitive knowledge integral and informative to our project to transgress the social and reconstitute the cultural in adult education as a field of study and practice. We locate queer knowledge as an antecedent to queer praxis, and focus on inclusive queer praxis as a transgressive practice-expression-reflection dynamic and a site of transformative learning.

In this essay, Hausman states that, for centuries, Indians were only important to academia if they were dead. From missionary ethnographers to cultural anthropologists, he claims, North America has been thoroughly raked by academics seeking an authentic representation of traditional life in this space. Yet many historians, who have shaped the future by shaping the past, have generally required their Native subjects to be dead, dying, or completely immobilized before they can be thoroughly identified, catalogued, and analyzed. When American Indians are incorporated into the multicultural stew that liberal academics tend to trumpet, parading through classrooms with an assumed mandate for "militant tolerance," the portrayal of their existence in North America continues to find ground somewhere other than North America. The United States' academia still generally thinks that Americans are from somewhere else, that things that are "from here" are inherently "from somewhere else" rather than "from here." In this article, the author discusses multiculturalism in American academia and how Americans perceive "diversity" as something created by migration that coexisted with the decimation of things Indigenous. (Contains 2 notes.)

Harmful algae and cyanobacteria blooms are increasing in frequency and intensity in freshwater systems due to anthropogenic impacts such as nutrient loading in watersheds and engineered alterations of natural waterways. There are multiple physical factors that affect the conditions in a freshwater system that contribute to optimal habitats for harmful algae and toxin-producing cyanobacteria. A growing body of research shows that climate change stressors also are impacting water-body conditions that favor harmful algae and cyanobacteria species over other phytoplankton. The overgrowth of these organisms, or a "bloom," increases the opportunity for exposure to toxins by humans, companion animals, livestock, and wildlife. As waters warm and precipitation patterns change over time, exposure to these blooms is projected to increase. Hence, it is important that states and tribes develop monitoring and reporting strategies as well as align governmental policies to protect their citizens and ecosystems within their jurisdiction. Currently, the policies and approaches taken to monitor and report on harmful algae and cyanobacteria blooms vary widely among states, and it is undetermined if any tribes have specific policies on harmful algae blooms. This paper synthesizes research on algal blooms in inland freshwater systems of the United States. This review examines how climate change contributes to trends in bloom frequency or severity and outlines approaches that states and tribes may use to monitor, report, and respond to harmful algae and cyanobacteria blooms. Significance Statement: Inland bodies of freshwater supply drinking water for humans and animals, water for irrigating crops, habitats for aquatic species, places of cultural significance for Indigenous peoples, and other important functions. Many of these bodies of water have been polluted with runoff from industry, including agriculture, and already support harmful algal blooms during warm conditions. Hot extremes associated with climate change are expected to increase the occurrence and duration of harmful algal blooms, and in some places, initiate blooms where none have been recorded previously. These toxic blooms are harmful to people, companion animals, livestock, and wildlife. It is important to review the interconnections among biological, climate, and water systems to monitor blooms and alert the public about their toxin production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author discusses the impact of compulsory state schooling in North America. The author stresses that schools are not making kids smarter, more capable or more skilled. The basic aspects of everyday school life have emerged and continue to evolve not as a response to the needs of students, but as driven by institutional needs. The author points out that it is impossible to describe "The Good School" as if it were a magic formula that could be applied and reapplied anywhere. (Contains 6 notes.)

The concept of fiscal sustainability has become increasingly used over the last 20 years. However, much of the literature on fiscal sustainability at the sub-national level ignores the role of intergovernmental fiscal relations. To address this gap, this paper discusses a sufficient condition for sub-national fiscal sustainability and examines the importance of intergovernmental aid in determining that sustainability. Using panel data of counties and municipalities in the US, and using unit root and cointegration analytic techniques, this paper finds different levels of fiscal sustainability between counties and municipalities. We also find that intergovernmental aid plays an important role for fiscal sustainability for both counties and municipalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Foucauldian literature on the 'financialisation of everyday life' has documented the way neoliberal discourses and practices call forth willing entrepreneurial-investorial and debtor financialised subjects. However, recent qualitative studies on the lived experiences of financialisation suggested that financialised households are often unwilling to adopt the subjectivities of neoliberal discourse (which we call 'reluctant financialisation') and only selectively draw on their elements (referred to as 'variegated subjectivities'). This paper uses quantitative data to examine whether willing or reluctant financialisation is more widespread and if there are geographical, cross-country differences; and to assess the 'variegated subjectivities' argument. We conduct two studies: in the first, we compare the extent to which financialised households embrace key aspects of the financialised subjectivities called forth by neoliberal discourse in the mature financialised economy of the United States vs newly financialising Hungary. In the second, we examine the 'variegated subjectivities' hypothesis in Hungary. Our results show, first, that the majority of financialised households do not hold the financialised subject position fostered by neoliberal discourse. Second, they lend support to the 'variegated subjectivities' hypothesis. This means that reluctance, rather than whole-hearted embracement of neoliberal subjectivities is the main experience of financialisation. Household financialisation is neither driven nor legitimised by households 'buying into' neoliberal discourses. Although this may indicate a larger resistance potential in everyday life than previously assumed, we suggest a more negative interpretation: that of 'domesticated neoliberalism', which does not require neoliberal subjects but co-opts households' existing moral economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a new set of daily gridded fields and area averages of temperature and precipitation is introduced that covers the contiguous United States (CONUS) from 1951 to present. With daily updates and a grid resolution of approximately 0.0417° (nominally 5 km), the product, named nClimGrid-Daily, is designed to be used particularly in climate monitoring and other applications that rely on placing event-specific meteorological patterns into a long-term historical context. The gridded fields were generated by interpolating morning and midnight observations from the Global Historical Climatology Network–Daily dataset using thin-plate smoothing splines. Additional processing steps limit the adverse effects of spatial and temporal variations in station density, observation time, and other factors on the quality and homogeneity of the fields. The resulting gridded data provide smoothed representations of the point observations, although the accuracy of estimates for individual grid points and days can be sensitive to local spatial variability and the ability of the available observations and interpolation technique to capture that variability. The nClimGrid-Daily dataset is therefore recommended for applications that require the aggregation of estimates in space and/or time, such as climate monitoring analyses at regional to national scales. Significance Statement: Many applications that use historical weather observations require data on a high-resolution grid that are updated daily. Here, a new dataset of daily temperature and precipitation for 1951–present is introduced that was created by interpolating irregularly spaced observations to a regular grid with a spacing of 0.0417° across the contiguous United States. Compared to other such datasets, this product is particularly suitable for monitoring climate and drought on a daily basis because it was processed so as to limit artificial variations in space and time that may result from changes in the types and distribution of observations used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: A single conceptualization of mental health based on empirical research has yet to be adopted by researchers and practitioners. This paper aims to explore how diverse Americans define mental health. The aim of the study was to build a conceptualization of the term "mental health", using qualitative and quantitative methods, on the basis of definitions provided by an ethnically diverse sample of lay-people and professionals. Design/methodology/approach: Concept mapping methods, including multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis, were applied to 146 statements generated by 125 participants of diverse American racial and ethnic groups. The resulting concept map was inspected visually, quantitatively and qualitatively. Findings: Out of the 146 statements, 8 overarching themes emerged from multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis. Themes include Well-being, balance, coping, adaptability, relational, self, lack of mental illness and physical. T-tests revealed statistically significant differences on ratings of importance for statements within the theme "Lack of Mental Illness" from those included in "Well-Being", "Balance" and "Coping." Statements included in the theme "Lack of Mental Illness" were rated least essential to the construct of mental health. The "Self" cluster appeared at the center of the data visualization, suggesting that Americans believe that self is essential to the construct in question. Practical implications: This mixed-method study is consistent with prior evidence that mental health and mental illness might best be considered separate constructs (Westerhof and Keyes, 2010). A logical follow-up might examine why the concept of "Self" emerges centrally as it would help mental health practitioners and policymakers to focus their understanding of mental health to improve mental health interventions. Originality/value: Understanding that the concept of "Self" is central to Americans' conceptualizing of mental health may help mental health practitioners and policymakers to focus their efforts in delivering targeted mental health interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heeney critiques two works on, respectively, American and Canadian independent schools: "The Elite Schools" by Leonard Baird and "A Question of Privilege" by Carolyn Gossage. He discusses the social context of their historical model, the English public school, and draws comparisons to the schools described in these two works. (SJL)