Teaching the Tough Topics: Fostering Ideological Awareness through the Inclusion of Societally Impactful Topics in Introductory Biology

Development and integration of ideological awareness curriculum enhances students’ ability to apply traditional biology learning objectives to societally relevant topics by understanding the biases, stereotypes, and assumptions that shape the world around them.

Contesting “Authenticity” in Authentic Leadership through a Mad Studies Lens

A Mad Studies/social model of mental distress lens was used to critique authentic leadership. We deconstructed the dilemma of authenticity and leadership by exploring how authentic leadership (dis)allows the inclusion of people with mental illness. We found that their minds are treated as disruptive and rarely ever read as authentic. For followers to view “mentally ill” leaders as authentic requires candidness, disability disclosure, and emulating norms typical to their ingroup membership. We conclude this paper by challenging HRD to rethink its stance on disruptive leadership as symptomatic of mental illness. Employees with mental health marginality can develop an authentic identity in the workplace through authenticity building experiences such as connecting mad leaders to peer-support training, offering specialized leadership development, and co-producing a mental health awareness curriculum that challenges unhealthy workplace discourses that stigmatize mad leaders and workers.

Impact of Ethics and Social Awareness Curriculum on the Engineering Identity Formation of High School Girls

A national need exists to effectively engage women and people categorized as minorities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields and career paths. Given the minimal existence of standards and accreditation boards for engineering design and holistic engineering practice in K–12 contexts, we must better understand how said engineering design and holistic engineering practice affects the learning and identity formation of K–12 students. Here, 50 rising 9th–12th grade girls are exposed to either a socio-ethics enhanced engineering curriculum or a standard engineering curriculum through a week-long STEM summer camp. Qualitative methods are used to conduct a thematic analysis on the engineering language used by students in each curriculum group. Significant differences in language and attitudes towards engineering and the practice of STEM subjects is observed through the incorporation of ethics and humanities into a standard model engineering curriculum. The study presented in this paper demonstrates that students have a tendency towards describing scientific ideas through abstract terms, while a group who participated in the social science integrated camp tended to describe scientific ideas using social-emotional terms. Lastly, students who participated in the camp with integrated social sciences displayed an expanded view and sense of responsibility for the society for which their science is developed to serve. These results could have implications on how STEM subjects are communicated to attract and sustain student interest.

Prescriptive language attitudes in a dual language elementary school

Language misconceptions are still very prevalent among the public, partially due to lack of linguistic education in schools. Language misconceptions can influence language attitudes, including the language attitudes of language-minority children towards their native language. In this study, 5th graders enrolled in a dual language program participated in an 18-lesson language awareness curriculum and completed Likert-type pre/posttest surveys and pretest/posttest interviews. Students’ prescriptive language attitude results are compared to those of an English-instruction control group that did not receive language awareness lessons. Both bilingual and monolingual students believed formal, school-based language to be superior to informal language. Despite having received language awareness instruction, students in the treatment group continued to hold prescriptivist language attitudes. Implications for future language awareness curricula are discussed.

Developing a Phonological Awareness Curriculum: Reflections on an Implementation Science Framework

PurposeThis article describes the process of developing and implementing a supplemental early literacy curriculum designed for preschoolers demonstrating delays in literacy development.MethodIntervention research and implementation research have traditionally been viewed as sequential processes. This article illustrates a process of intervention development that was paralleled by a focus on implementation in early childhood settings. The exploration, preparation, implementation, sustainment framework is used to describe factors that need to be considered during a progression through these 4 phases of implementation. A post hoc analysis provides insight into a rather nonlinear progression of intervention development and highlights considerations and activities that have facilitated implementation.ConclusionsThe guiding principles of the exploration, preparation, implementation, sustainment implementation science framework highlight the important considerations in developing effective and practical interventions. Considering implementation and sustainment during the intervention development process and using data-based decision making has the potential to expand the availability of user-friendly evidence-based practices in communication sciences and disorders and encourage a bridging of the researcher–clinician gap.