K-12 Education

This brief offers practical information and guidance to help school district and charter school leaders manage and strategically allocate resources amid widespread school closures and an almost certain reduction in education funding over the coming fiscal year due to the public health crisis caused by the new coronavirus. Districts and charter schools must make strategic decisions about how to allocate resources based on the specific needs of their own community. The decision-making principles detailed later in this brief, and summarized in the box to the right, provide some anchor points for education leaders to keep in mind when making these hard choices.

The teaching of Artificial Intelligence (AI) topics in school curricula is an important global 9 strategic initiative in educating the next generation. As AI technologies are new to K-12 schools, 10 there is a lack of studies that informed schools teachers about AI curriculum design. How to prepare 11 and engage teachers, and which suitable approaches to plan the curriculum for sustainable 12 development are unclear. Therefore, this case study aimed to explore the views of teachers with and 13 without AI teaching experience on key considerations for the preparation, implementation and 14 continuous refinement of a formal AI curriculum for K-12 schools. It draws on the Self-15 determination Theory (SDT) and four basic curriculum planning approaches-content, product, 16 process and praxis-as theoretical frameworks to explain the research problems and findings. We 17 conducted semi-structured interviews with 24 teachers-twelve with and twelve without experience 18 in teaching AI, and used thematic analysis to analyze the interview data. Our findings revealed that 19 genuine curriculum creation should encompass all four forms of curriculum design approach that 20 is coordinated by teacher self-determination to be an orchestrator of student learning experiences. 21 This study also proposed a curriculum development cycle for teachers and curriculum officers. 22

A novel technology-enabled and cost-effective face shield has been designed to protect the user’s face and mucus membrane area from infectious, biohazardous, or pathological COVID-19 aerosols by creating a protective Dynamic Ingress Barrier which blocks and transports aerosols away from the often breached and problematic periphery of mask/respirator protective zones. Additionally, this new PPE technology is designed to enhance air particle's flocculant properties by disrupting the structural integrity of the coronavirus electrostatic double layer and reducing its electrokinetic potential before accelerating it into the airspace. Thereby increasing its ability to flocculate with active viral aerosols, and subsequently, settle out of the airspace for cleaning, or capture via a filter. Finally, this enabled PPE technology facilitates contact tracing which, combined with other features, will prove to significantly reduce COVID-19 R(0) by minimizing a specific mode of transmission and addressing the OSHA Hierarchy of Controls on multiple levels.

In Fall 2014, the California Department of Education will make history by revising its K-12 History-Social Sciences Framework to bring it into compliance with Senate Bill 48, the Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful (FAIR) Education Act. In 2011, the FAIR Education Act amended the Education Code to ensure that the roles and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and people with disabilities are accurately portrayed in K-12 history instruction. This report, sponsored by the Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History (CLGBTH), an affiliated society of the American Historical Association, proposes revisions related to LGBT history. While the narrowest interpretation of law might require addition of a few token LGBT history-making individuals, this report calls for a more transformational approach. Social science education researchers have deemed a transformational approach the best practice for integrating diversity into frameworks and curricula. Such an approach expands students’ abilities to understand gender and sexuality as changing historical categories and as lenses for historical and contemporary analysis. It also reflects accurately the ways that professional historians have come to understand historical LGBT roles and contributions.

In brief, recommended Framework revisions by grade and theme include:

• Grade 2: LGBT families in the context of understanding family diversity as a contemporary and historical reality
• Grade 4: Central roles played by gender and sexuality in California’s history as a site of rich, contested, and changing diversity
• Grade 5: Variation over time, region, and culture in colonial American practices and laws with regard to gender and sexuality
• Grade 8: Fundamental transformations in gender and sexuality in conjunction with nineteenth-century urbanization and industrialization
• Grade 11: The evolution of modern LGBT communities and identities; twentieth-century persecution of sexual and gender minorities and the growth of the LGBT civil rights movement

Over a dozen historians from around the nation made revision suggestions. They focused on LGBT history but included related material on gender, race, class, and disability. They produced scholarship-supported justifications with suggested resources for teachers. An Executive Committee evaluated revisions and justifications for accuracy, relevance to the U.S. history survey, and grade-appropriate content. The final report had input from 20 leading scholars of LGBT history as well as a number of Californian K-12 educators. Adopting the revisions will make the Framework more accurate, incorporating findings from four decades of professional gender and sexuality history. Related improvements to K-12 curriculum and textbooks will promote an active, responsible citizenry in a diverse society. This report can also serve as a best-practices template for similar efforts toward the inclusion of LGBT history in K-12 education across the country.

This study explored the perceptions, attitudes, and willingness of pre-service science teachers in the College of Education at Kuwait University about using concept/mind maps and its related application software as facilitative tools, for teaching and learning, in science education. The first level (i.e., reaction) of Kirkpatrick's/Phillips' classic 5-level evaluation research model was exploited to assess and validate the reaction-based satisfaction level of pre-service science teachers. Although the findings disclose that 74.2 percent of participants asserted being aware about concept/mind maps beforehand. However, the vast majority, 96.8 percent, affirmed that they are not aware about concept/mind mapping application software. The results indicate that all participants were highly satisfied with utilizing concept/mind mapping and its related applications in education, accordingly, their reaction based satisfaction level was extremely positive and significantly high among all subgroups. The participants favored utilizing such tools for constructing their concept/mind maps over hand-drawing or regular desktop productivity applications. Also, all participants do consider that concept/mind maps and its related application software as being appropriate, valuable, and useful facilitative and enhancement tools in education. They also do believe that these tools are important constituents for promoting thrive and success in science education.