Key lessons from an urban wetlands summer school in Punta Arenas: the southernmost city in the American continent

As global issues continue to place increasing demands on soil resources, the need to provide soil science education to the next generation of soil scientists and the general public is becoming more imminent. In many countries around the world, including Canada, soil is either not included in the high school curriculum or it is not covered in depth. To address this need for better integration of soil science into high school programs in Canada, a national collaborative program entitled Soil 4 Youth (soilweb.landfood.ubc.ca/youth/), was established in 2009. The goals of the Soil 4 Youth program are to: (1) promote the discipline of soil science to high school students and teachers, (2) create open access soil education resources that can be directly implemented in high school curricula in Canada, and (3) raise awareness about the importance of soil. During the initial 4 years of the Soil 4 Youth program, we developed a variety of soil education resources, struck collaboration with several provincial high school teachers’ associations and not-for-profit organizations focused on promotion of science, and focused our efforts toward reaching a broader group of high school teachers and students. Our initial efforts of building the Soil 4 Youth program indicate that it is a viable platform through which collaboration among Canadian soil scientists and high school teachers can take place to ensure that high school students are better informed about the importance of soil. Impact Statement The Canadian collaborative program, Soil 4 Youth, was established to promote the discipline of soil science to high school students and teachers. The program provides a platform for collaboration among soil scientists and high school teachers to ensure that high school students are better informed about the importance of soil. This article describes the development of the Soil 4 Youth program, offering insights into the challenges and potential solutions to advance soil science education for youth.

Understanding how to leverage intellectual property for economic gain has become increasingly urgent, as the 21st century, a digital technology era, has made creativity and innovation a highly potential source of capital. Based on the issues outlined above, it is crucial to implement activities to enhance understanding of intellectual property and its use to generate income for the community. This community service activity will target high school and vocational school students and teachers in Semarang City. The current curriculum accommodates and is relevant to intellectual property. Furthermore, various scientific competitions have been held, resulting in diverse creative and innovative outcomes. These activities, designed to enhance teachers' and students' understanding of intellectual property and its commercialization, are delivered through presentations by the team and resource persons. To find out the results and potential impact of the activity, after the presentation of the material, a questions and answers session was held with questions regarding the material that had been given. The planned activity was attended by participants consisting of high school/vocational high school teachers and high school/vocational high school students in Semarang City/Regency totalling 100 people. The activity was held on 18 July 2024, on the 3rd Floor of the UNNES LPPM Building. The activity began after being opened by the Secretary of UNNES LPPM. As speakers at the activity were the Head of the Central Java Provincial Education and Culture Office, the Head of the Human Resources Division of the Central Java Provincial Education and Culture Office, the Head of the Vocational High School Section of the Central Java Region I Education Office Branch, and the Chairperson of the Center for Innovation, IP, and Commercialization. The four speakers delivered material guided by a moderator from the community service team.

This study aims to assess the knowledge of culturally responsive education among high school teachers and students in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. It utilizes a mixed-methods design, adopting a convergent mixed-methods approach. Data for this research were collected from high school students across various districts and cities within the province of East Kalimantan. The research data comprise quantitative information from questionnaire responses regarding knowledge of culturally responsive education. A questionnaire, commonly employed in survey research, is a structured instrument in which student participants select answers to pre-designed questions and provide basic demographic or personal information. Qualitative data were gathered through in-depth interviews with teachers. Data analysis involves two approaches: qualitative and quantitative. The qualitative analysis uses NVIVO software, while the quantitative analysis employs descriptive statistics and inferential t-tests. The findings indicate that all respondents fall within the proficient classification. The interviews with three teachers reveal four themes: 1) awareness and understanding of cultural diversity, 2) addressing injustice in the classroom, 3) building cross-cultural communication, and 4) curriculum and cultural diversity.

ABSTRACT— Early morning school schedules are in the opposite direction to the sleep–wake cycle in adolescence and early adulthood. This conflict leads to sleep deprivation and irregular patterns whose consequences are scarcely explored. This article discusses the effects of three educational experiences with high school students, parents, teachers, and medical students. The first experience was developed with high school students in Natal, Brazil, to determine whether sleep habits would improve with increased awareness. Positive effects were observed in some aspects of sleep knowledge and practices. In the second experience in Atlanta, GA, sleep education activities were presented to middle and high school teachers, parents, and students to emphasize the importance of sleep. In the third program in Murcia, Spain, undergraduate medical students were introduced to chronobiology of sleep by a practical exercise that pointed out to what extent they shared most of adolescent sleep characteristics. Educational chronobiological experiences about sleep are essential to develop healthy sleep habits in the general population, particularly in students.

This paper studies on introduction of online education to provide opportunities for spreading university-level program by analyzing perception of high school students and teachers. The university-level program can be defined as the fulfillment of learning needs and the value offer of excellence education for outstanding high school students who want to improve their potential capabilities. For the study, a survey was conducted at high school students and teachers. As the result of the survey for high school students, the efficiency of education was the most important factor for the university-level program. The order of next important factors was the aid to entering university, the method of education, the satisfaction, and the recommendation of others. The result of high school teacher indicated that the efficiency of education was the most important factor as the high school students. The order of next important factors by high school teachers was the satisfaction, the aid to entering university, and the method of education. An activation of the university-level programs can be spread by analyzing the results of the survey. With the introduction of online education for the university-level program can conclude the guarantee of the right of studying and the reduction of education gap. This paper proposed an online education for the university-level program to guarantee the right of studying and to reduce the education gap.

Background/Context Policy makers and scholars have long called for the large-scale recruitment of teachers of color, partly based on evidence highlighting the positive effects of racial/ethnic matching between students and teachers of color on various student experiences and achievements. A more nuanced understanding of racial/ethnic matching effects moderated by contextual factors may help policy makers’ and administrators’ assignment decisions on how to consider student and teacher race/ethnicity. Purpose/Objective/Research Question This study examined the contextualized effects of racial/ethnic matching between high school students and teachers, focusing on the urbanicity of schools in the United States, by asking two main research questions: (1) What are the associations between the racial/ethnic matching of students and teachers, and students’ math achievement and self-efficacy in the United States overall? (2) What are the associations among racial/ethnic matching, math achievement, and math self-efficacy in urban schools, and do these patterns differ for suburban and rural schools? Research Design This study used restricted-use national longitudinal data provided by the NCES High School Longitudinal Study of 2009. A strategy of disaggregating data by schools’ urbanicity and three separate analyses with fixed-effect models for each urbanicity (urban, suburban, and rural) was followed to capture the variations across different schools’ urbanicity and to obtain unbiased estimates of racial/ethnic matching effects. Findings/Results Relatively lower percentages of Black, Hispanic, and Asian students were matched with their same-race/ethnicity math teachers compared with White students in all communities. This study found no supporting evidence for positive associations between racial/ethnic matching and math achievement scores and self-efficacy without considering urbanicity. Within the context of urbanicity, positive associations for math achievement were mainly found in the racial/ethnic matching of Black and Asian students taught by same-race/ethnicity teachers in suburban schools. Conversely, the racial/ethnic matching among Asian students and teachers in rural schools was significantly and negatively associated with both math achievement and self-efficacy. Conclusions/Recommendations By focusing specifically on schools’ urbanicity contexts, policy makers and education leaders should consider the relatively lower percentage of racial/ethnic matching between Black students and teachers in urban and suburban schools, and Hispanic students and teachers in urban and rural schools. As rural Asian populations grow and diversify, Asian teachers from diverse cultural backgrounds are urgently needed in these communities. Contextualized policy solutions that consider school environments and cultural differences and that challenge the one-size-fits-all approach will ultimately better address the specific and diverse needs of students of color living in different communities across the United States.

A survey of knowledge, attitudes towards drugs and towards other social issues was conducted among 362 elementary and high school teachers in an Ontario School Board District. Teachers scores on these scales were compared to those of high school students. Most elementary and high school teachers did not hold strong negative or positive attitudes towards legalization of marihuana. High school teachers did appear more in favour of legalization than elementary school teachers or students. High school students were more permissive towards drug use in general than both teacher groups. High school teachers knew the most about drugs. Scores on these scales were interrelated such that teachers favouring legalization of marihuana knew most about drugs and were more permissive towards other social issues such as abortion, homosexuality and the penal system. The authors conclude that in the past too much may have been made of a generation gap concerning drug use between high school teachers and students.

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract A Comprehensive and Integrated Approach to Increase Enrollments in Engineering Technology Abstract The future of America’s global competitiveness depends upon a well-educated, technologically literate workforce. However, if proactive measures are not taken in the near future, the United States will face a serious shortage of scientists, engineers, technologists, and mathematicians because high school students, especially those from underrepresented groups, are increasingly losing interest in these subjects. The key in reversing this trend lies in our ability to promote science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) subjects and professions in a more socially relevant, real-world context and to recognize the differences in learning styles and self-efficacy between males, females and minorities. In an effort to increase the number and diversity of students pursuing engineering related majors, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte has adopted a comprehensive and integrated approach involving three separate National Science Foundation (NSF) funded projects. Together, the projects are designed to raise the engineering awareness of middle and high school students, teachers and guidance counselors. The central project is the Enhancing Diversity in Engineering Technology (EDIET) project which focuses on the establishment and support of North Carolina Junior Engineering and Technology (NCJETS) clubs at local area high schools. In order to receive project support, a high school club must have a population of at least 50% non-traditional engineering student types. The clubs compete in regional competitions such as balsa wood bridge building, trebuchets, robotics, and math tests, etc. The EDIET project also sponsors week long summer engineering technology camps hosted by the university. To reinforce the impact of the EDIET project, the Teaching Engineering to Counselors and Teachers (TECT) project was developed to strengthen the way in which high school teachers and counselors approach the integration of engineering based materials into their courses and counseling. As STEM teachers and school guidance counselors will be the primary catalysts for introducing students to engineering and technology subjects and careers, the TECT project delivers week long professional development workshops that uses the well-established STEM model of hands-on activities as a tool to raise engineering awareness among the teachers and counselors. The TECT workshops have been closely integrated with the EDIET summer camps and makes use of the student camps to further promote best practices that reach across the diversity of student learning styles and interests. Finally, in order to provide financial support for underrepresented students entering engineering technology majors, the Career Opportunities for Meritorious Engineering Technology Scholars (COMETS) scholarship program was created. The program awards scholarships to qualifying students with the goal of improving student retention by reducing the need for students to work and take classes at the same time. This paper discusses some of the results and findings of this comprehensive and integrated approach to increase enrollments in engineering and engineering technology majors. 1. Introduction An essential component to the continued growth and stability of the American economy is a well- educated workforce able to create, develop and produce essential products, processes, and services1. However, it has become abundantly clear that the United States faces two significant challenges in that it has been unable to produce a sufficient number of domestic engineers2, and it has been unable to produce a sufficiently diverse engineering workforce3. In 2003, Gibbons2 reported that the demand for engineers is increasing, but the production of engineers in America is decreasing and the United States is facing an imminent shortage of scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians4. The literature indicates that one of the reasons for this shortage is that high school students that are members of traditionally underrepresented in engineering and technology

Challenging classroom behavior can interfere with learning. Fortunately known, positive, and proactive approaches to behavior management can improve student responding. Class-Wide Function-related Intervention Teams (CW-FIT) have led to improvement in student behavior across elementary and middle school contexts. However, little is known of the impact of the intervention on high school student behavior. This study evaluated CW-FIT’s utility in improving high school student and high school teacher behavior in a co-taught learning environment. A single-subject withdrawal design was used to evaluate improvements in on-task behavior for 14 high school students in one co-taught classroom. The impact on praise and reprimand statements of two high school teachers was also assessed. The findings showed improvement to student and teacher behavior and sustainability of the intervention. Further, teachers and students expressed satisfaction with the intervention and teachers maintained high levels of implementation fidelity. Limitations of the evaluation and areas for future research are presented.

Punta Arenas, Chile, the southernmost city in the world (53 degrees S), with a population of 154,000, is located near the Antarctic ozone hole (AOH) and has been regularly affected by high levels of ultraviolet-B (UV-B) radiation each spring for the last 20 years. Large increases in UV-B associated with the AOH have been measured with increases in UV-B at 297 nm of up to 38 times those of similar days with normal ozone. Recently we reported significant increases in sunburns during the spring of 1999 on days with low ozone because of the AOH. A surveillance of skin cancers occurring from 1987 to 2000 was performed. Age, sex, location, type of skin cancer and skin phototype were recorded. A Brewer Spectrophotometer was used in order to obtain in situ measurements of ozone and UV-B. Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) data from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was used in order to establish pre-ozone hole climatology. Ozone levels as low as 145 DU (Dobson Units) were recorded, a 56% decrease in ozone, and UV-B levels up to 4.947 J/m2. These levels are close to summertime levels at mid latitudes. For the 14-year period--from 1987 to 2000--173 cases of skin cancer were diagnosed, 65 during the first 7 years, 108 during the second, an increase of 66%. Cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM), 19% of the cases, increased by 56%, raising the rate from 1.22 to 1.91 per 100,000. Non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC), 81% of the total, increased the rate from 5.43 to 7.94 per 100 000 (P < 0.05), a 46% increase. Patients with CMM and NMSC had skin phototypes I-II in 59% and 54% of cases, respectively. Days with more than 25% ozone loss occurred in 143 days during the last 20 springs. Significant increases of UV-B were observed under ozone hole conditions, especially around 300 nm, the most carcinogenic wavelengths. Highly unusual ozone loss and UV-B increases have occurred in the Punta Arenas area over the past two decades resulting in the non-photoadapted population being repeatedly exposed to an altered solar UV spectrum with a greater effectiveness for erythema and photocarcinogenesis. This phenomenon has not previously been reported over other populated areas and an additional increase in the skin cancer rate attributable to the AOH may be occurring. Research on the clinical and subclinical impact of these abnormalities is urgently needed.

We examine the appearance of the ozone hole over a populated area with more than 100,000 inhabitants. The largest population concentrations on the South American continent nearest the ozone hole region are Punta Arenas, Chile (53.0°S, 70.9°W) and Ushuaia, Argentina (54.5°S, 68.0°W), located close to the strait of Magallanes, opposite the Antarctic Peninsula. A special field mission was held in Punta Arenas, in September‐October 1995 to investigate the vertical distribution of ozone during the appearance of the Antarctic ozone hole. Previous work has shown that the city of Punta Arenas is located at the edge of the hole area and is affected every year during a few days in the October period. The ozone trend near these locations is −0.5% per year using the yearly averages and −1.2% per year using the October means. This trend is 2 to 5 times larger than the global average. Several ozonesondes of the electrochemical concentration cell type were launched from Punta Arenas to determine the vertical distribution of ozone during “normal” and “perturbed” conditions. The ozone hole passed over Punta Arenas on October 12, 13 and 14, 1995. In addition to the sondes, which were launched once a day, ozone column amounts and UVB radiation were measured with a ground‐based ozone Brewer spectrophotometer. The strongest ozone depletion over Punta Arenas in 1995 occurred on October 13, when the ozone column decreased from a “normal” value of about 325 Dobson Units (DU) to 200 DU; the vertical distribution of ozone on October 13 compared with October 6 shows depleted ozone roughly 50% less during hole conditions in the stratosphere. The UVB intensities have increased accordingly. The spectral ratio for October 13 to October 4 is 13 times larger at 297 nm.

Under the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic, it is a must for education institutes all over the world to incorporate online teaching into their teaching program. In Vietnam, high school teachers and students are now familiar with blended teaching in which students will learn from at least 30% of their lessons online and 70% face-to-face. This research aims at investigating Vietnamese high school students’ perceptions toward the benefits and challenges of blended teaching. Two research questions will be answered (1) “What are high school students’ perceptions toward the benefits of blended teaching?” and (2) “What are high school students’ perceptions toward the challenges of blended teaching?”. There were 200 sciences students (72 participants majoring in Physics, 60 in Chemistry, and 68 in Biology) from 3 high schools for the gifted in Vietnam who participated in the study. The results of the research show that the majority of participants agreed on the benefits and challenges of blended teaching in the context of high school for the gifted in Vietnam. The current study suggests that teachers should have an effective lecture design to help their students acquire science knowledge better in blended classes.&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt; Article visualizations:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0934/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

Partnerships between the public and researchers in participatory research projects are shifting towards co-creational models. Within archaeology, traditional projects involve the public through artefact treatment and data handling and entry. In the project discussed herein, we aimed to fully engage participants (high school students and teachers) in the research process using advanced scientific methods. We introduce a novel co-creational framework, which actively involved high school students in archaeological research. In the initial phase, we collaborated with local museums and high school teachers to integrate archaeological expertise with educational objectives in our participatory project setup. High school teachers facilitated curriculum connections, while museums contributed valuable materials and local archaeological insights. In the final study programme, students participated in hands-on laboratory work, using both a morphological approach and Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) to analyse archaeological leather samples. Standardised protocols were adapted to match student capabilities while maintaining scientific validity. A total of 3,319 high school students handled 917 different archaeological objects and analysed 3,900 samples. Based on the highest quality result with 3–5 replicates for each object, we achieved taxonomic identifications for 95% of the objects. Evaluation of participating students’ outcomes showed strong engagement in the scientific process, demonstrating the value of co-creational partnerships in enhancing both research and educational outcomes. Our model fosters interdisciplinary thinking and scientific skills among students while establishing one of the largest archaeological datasets globally. The project’s cross-disciplinary approach and robust validation methods ensure high-quality data for future archaeological research, highlighting the powerful potential of public involvement in scientific endeavours. Moving forward, expanding the range of materials analysed could broaden participation and further enrich both research and educational experiences.

Offers observations from a high school English teacher and a college professor (and former high school teacher) on dilemmas of the term paper: to teach it or not in high school; the importance of research skills; the wish to prepare students well for college and for life; and high school students’ comments regarding their term paper assignment.

An effort is being made to introduce engineering and technology to Arkansas high school students. This objective would be accomplished with the assistance of high school teachers. Initial plans include high school teacher training, summer of 1995; high school competition, fall/spring of 1995-1996; and high school student workshop, summer of 1996. The authors describe the organization of this pilot program, and discuss the nature of engineering topics and activities presented in the workshop. The vehicle for introducing engineering will be Stiquito, a small hexapod robot. This inexpensive ($3 each) device employs several concepts from electrical, mechanical, and chemical engineering. Applications of the robot would encompass computer and industrial enginering concepts as well. The teacher training workshop will take place in two one-week sessions. High school teachers will attend a workshop at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and learn about enginering, the Stiquito robot, and the student design competition. The student competition will be conducted at the high schools by the teachers. Teams of two students will build the robot and devise an innovaitve application for the robot. The winning team from each school of the competition will be invited to attend a summer workshop at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. During the workshop, the students will learn about engineering and the role of engineers in society, and participate in engineering activities. >