Search

Introduction: The U.S. Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) provides tiered reimbursements for healthy foods for children at participating family childcare homes (FCCH). Higher tier 1 reimbursements are for providers who operate in low-income communities or who are themselves living on a low income. All FCCHs received a higher rate to address food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: A survey was administered in the spring of 2023 to a randomly selected sample of licensed California FCCHs to assess the perceived impacts of the increased reimbursement on CACFP participation and anticipated challenges with reinstated tiered rates. A total of 518 surveys (261 tier 1, 257 tier 2) were analyzed using linear or logistic regression, adjusting for confounders. Results: Among tier 1 and tier 2 providers combined, over half reported lowering out-of-pocket spending for food (59%) and serving greater variety (55%) and quality (54%) of foods. Tier 2 providers reported experiencing more benefits (p < 0.05) and tended to be more likely to implement optional CACFP best practices (although not significantly different between tiers). Most FCCH providers found reimbursement rates were inadequate before (83%) the pandemic; this amount decreased to 54% post-pandemic for tier 1 and tier 2 providers combined. Conclusions: The temporary CACFP reimbursement positively impacted the perceived quality and variety of foods served to children, especially among tier 2 providers. Increased reimbursements for all FCCHs may ensure children have access to the healthy meals and snacks provided by the CACFP.

In response to urgent calls for teaching that is culturally affirming, scholars have developed a myriad of images of culturally sustaining (and related) pedagogies (CSPs). However, for maths teachers, CSPs remain elusive, in part because these images are typically content-neutral and their applicability to practice opaque. In this paper, I synthesize research to help conceptualize and clarify what CSPs may look like specifically in mathematics classrooms. I offer a framework for CSPs in mathematics comprised of four dimensions: (1) anti-assimilationism; (2) strengths-based teaching; (3) power and justice; and (4) affirming identities.

Traditional teacher andragogy models oversimplify teaching multilingual students, overlooking both the complexity of identity and the contexts in which this work occurs. In this paper, we describe our intersectional approach to research, highlighting its affordances for research on teachers' learning to support multilingual students. This intersectional lens opens urgent new research questions, invites different types of data, and offers informative analytic approaches to improve both research and practice.

The Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) provides reimbursements for nutritious foods for children with low-income at participating child care sites in the United States. The CACFP is associated with improved child diet quality, health outcomes, and food security. However CACFP participation rates are declining. Independent child care centers make up a substantial portion of CACFP sites, yet little is known about their barriers to participation. Researcher-led focus groups and interviews were conducted in 2021-2022 with 16 CACFP-participating independent centers and 5 CACFP sponsors across California CACFP administrative regions to identify participation benefits, barriers, and facilitators. Transcripts were coded for themes using the grounded theory method. CACFP benefits include reimbursement for food, supporting communities with low incomes, and healthy food guidelines. Barriers include paperwork, administrative reviews, communication, inadequate reimbursement, staffing, nutrition standards, training needs, eligibility determination, technological challenges, and COVID-19-related staffing and supply-chain issues. Facilitators included improved communication, additional and improved training, nutrition standards and administrative review support, online forms, reduced and streamlined paperwork. Sponsored centers cited fewer barriers than un-sponsored centers, suggesting sponsors facilitate independent centers' CACFP participation. CACFP participation barriers should be reduced to better support centers and improve nutrition and food security for families with low-income.

That education is empowering is one of the U.S.'s most sacred tenets; however, for many Indigenous students, schooling has been intentionally damaging. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, in this article I highlight tribal education leaders' sensemaking about the paradoxes and promises of their work in education, as they navigate the antinomical ideas that education can be both empowering and damaging. Rooting analysis in Tribal Critical Race Theory (TribalCrit) (Brayboy, 2005), I connect tribal nation-building with various Indigenous educational efforts, including opportunities provided by the charter school movement. Findings highlight values that Indigenous leaders hold for their students' education, including cultural and linguistic sustenance, cultural congruity, and self-determination. Using mathematics as a lens to examine some of the contours of Native education, analysis illuminates complexities inherent in Indigenous education and tribal nation-building.

Introduction: Lower gastrointestinal bleeding (LGIB) frequently leads to emergency department (ED) visits and hospitalizations, encompassing a spectrum of outcomes from spontaneous resolution to intrahospital mortality. Aim: The purpose of this study was to validate a scoring system designed to identify cases of low‐risk LGIB, allowing for safe discharge from the ED. Methods: A retrospective analysis of all gastrointestinal bleeding cases presented at three EDs in 2020 was conducted, focusing specifically on patients with LGIB. The SHA2PE score incorporates factors such as systolic blood pressure, hemoglobin levels, use of antiplatelet or anticoagulant medications, pulse rate, and episodes of bright blood per rectum. Results: Out of 1112 patients presenting with LGIB to the ED, 55 were hospitalized, 20 required blood transfusions, 15 underwent colonoscopies, one underwent interventional radiology procedures, and two patients died. Employing a SHA2PE score with a cutoff value of 1 yielded a specificity of 78.5% (95% CI (confidence interval) [75.8–81.0]), sensitivity of 76.8% (95% CI [63.6–87.0]), positive predictive value (PPV) of 17.0% (95% CI [12.6–22.2]), and negative predictive value (NPV) of 98.3% (95% CI [97.2–99.1]) for predicting the need for hospitalization and intrahospital intervention. When considering return visits to the ED within 7 days with the same presentation, the score demonstrated a specificity of 78.8% (95% CI [76.0–81.3]), sensitivity of 68.6% (95% CI [56.4–79.1]), PPV of 19% (95% CI [14.3–24.4]), and NPV of 97.2% (95% CI [95.8–98.2]). Conclusions: The SHA2PE score demonstrates potential in predicting cases of low‐risk LGIB, offering a high NPV for hospitalization, the need for intrahospital intervention, and return visits to the ED. However, these findings should be interpreted cautiously given the low prevalence of interventions and limitations in the study's population and design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers' decisions are often undergirded by their sense of pedagogical responsibility: whom and what they feel beholden to. However, research on teacher sensemaking has rarely examined how teachers reason about their pedagogical responsibilities. The study analysed an emotional conversation among urban mathematics teachers about what they teach mathematics "for," given the many non-mathematical challenges they and their students face. The familiarity and simplicity of "love" and "life skills" narratives deployed to describe what it means to be a good teacher and to do good teaching may be comforting, but limit teachers' engagement with other authentic forms of pedagogical reasoning about their pedagogical responsibility in complex sociopolitical contexts. The findings reveal the importance of opportunities to explore alternate possibilities 'for what,' especially within structured and supportive teacher collaborative groups.

Mathematics teacher coaching is a promising but largely overlooked form of professional development (PD) for supporting mathematics teachers' learning of justice-oriented teaching. In this article, we critically review the literature to illuminate what we currently know about mathematics teacher coaching and to highlight studies' contributions and limitations to inform future work. Broadly, we find that four programs of research have developed, investigating: (a) coaches' activities and relationships, (b) the effects of coaching on student assessment scores, (c) the effects of coaching on teachers' practices or behaviors, and (d) the effects of coaching on teachers' knowledge or beliefs. From this analysis, we argue that justice-oriented perspectives of teaching, in tandem with sociocultural theories of teachers' learning, could allow for more nuanced investigations of coaching and could support design of learning experiences for teachers that bring us closer to educational justice.

AbstractThis study explored the types of constraints that inhibit women’s participation in community basketball. It investigated whether the perception of these constraints changes at different ages to understand how this impacts one’s intention to leave the sport of basketball. A mixed-methods approach was used. In phase 1, Concept Mapping examined the types of constraints faced by Australian women community basketball players. In phase 2, quantitative survey data were analyzed to understand how age and the constraints identified from phase 1 impacted on women’s intention to leave basketball. Results demonstrated that key types of constraints are a lack of playing opportunities and gender discrimination. Younger women were more likely to intend to leave basketball when they reported higher incidences of these constraints, indicating that they are more difficult to negotiate. Sport organizations must increase playing opportunities for young women and eradicate nuanced gender discrimination to improve the retention of younger women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women athletes in elite leagues are increasingly viewed as professional, but often this label is aspirational and does not reflect their experience. They are rarely provided with professional working conditions, which creates barriers to becoming elite, full-time athletes. This research aimed to explore the barriers faced by Australian women basketballers at the elite and sub-elite level, how those barriers vary at each stage on the professionalization continuum, and how this impacted the athlete's experience. Concept Mapping is a two-phased mixed-methods technique that was used to explore the barriers faced by elite and sub-elite women basketballers. Participants in both groups separately brainstormed barriers they faced, sorted them into groups based on similarity of meaning, and rated them for importance and frequency. For sub-elite players, barriers resulting from the inability to balance sporting commitment with other facets of their lives were rated the most important and most frequently experienced. For elite players, the main barrier was low pay. Both these types of barriers link to the respective stage of professionalization of their leagues. Cluster maps and go-zones for each group represent the data. By placing the results in the context of Bowes and Culvin's (2021) definition of professionalization, this research adds to the understanding of how the current stage of professionalization in Australian women's basketball hinders career progression for these athletes, and diminishes their experience as a player. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sport official's experience of abuse in their role is well documented, but the additional gendered barriers that women officials face are not. This study used Concept Mapping to explore the most important and frequent barriers that women referees and officials in Australian basketball face. Results were analyzed according to the Socio-Ecological Framework with a feminist lens, which demonstrated the complexity and interconnectedness of barriers between different levels. While participants were not specifically asked about gendered experiences, the results indicated that barriers were overwhelmingly gendered at every level, including discriminatory resourcing, lack of senior women, and concerningly, incidents of sexual harassment. This research sheds new light on the experience of women officials and the organizational and societal barriers that limit their careers and make their workplace unsafe. Finally, it discusses where the locus of responsibility lies in addressing these issues for women sport officials, placing emphasis on the role of organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]