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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Human Rights, Environmental Justice, Social Justice, Faith Values And Ethics: Building Stronger Partnerships For The Common Good By Understanding The Differences, Theresa Harris, Leanne M. Jablonski, Sarah Fortner, Malcolm Daniels Oct 2019

Human Rights, Environmental Justice, Social Justice, Faith Values And Ethics: Building Stronger Partnerships For The Common Good By Understanding The Differences, Theresa Harris, Leanne M. Jablonski, Sarah Fortner, Malcolm Daniels

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Partnerships between human rights practitioners, local communities, scientists, engineers, and health professionals have shown potential to address deeply rooted, systemic human rights concerns. These collaborations are essential for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and for engaging the perspectives and expertise of all constituents. However, even when the individuals in these partnerships or the organizations they represent have common goals, their motivations, analyses, and solutions often come from different perspectives. Members of good will can inadvertently alienate one another when attempting to work together. The fields of human rights, social justice, environmental justice, and ethics have each developed their …


Paired Measures Of Competence And Confidence Illuminate Impacts Of Privilege On College Students, Rachel M. Watson, Edward Nuhfer, Kali Nicholas Moon, Steven Fleisher, Paul Walter, Karl Wirth, Christopher Cogan, Ami Wangeline, Eric Gaze Jul 2019

Paired Measures Of Competence And Confidence Illuminate Impacts Of Privilege On College Students, Rachel M. Watson, Edward Nuhfer, Kali Nicholas Moon, Steven Fleisher, Paul Walter, Karl Wirth, Christopher Cogan, Ami Wangeline, Eric Gaze

Numeracy

We seek to understand how the experiences of groups that differ in gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation produce college-level educational performances that differ from the experiences of the dominant majority group. We employ two datasets: a National Database of 24,701 participants and a Paired-Measures Database with 3,323 participants. Both datasets provide demographic information, socioeconomic conditions of status as first-generation student, English as a first language, and interest in majoring in science, and competency scores on understanding science as a way of knowing obtained from the Science Literacy Concept Inventory. The Paired-Measures Database includes additional self-assessed competence ratings that enabled quantifying …


“Greening” Worcester: Municipal Best Practices For Sustainability, Erin Mckeon, Charline Kirongozi, Jared Duval, Antannia Greene, Qianshu Sun, Zewei Yao May 2019

“Greening” Worcester: Municipal Best Practices For Sustainability, Erin Mckeon, Charline Kirongozi, Jared Duval, Antannia Greene, Qianshu Sun, Zewei Yao

School of Professional Studies

In response to the urgent threat posed by climate change, more and more cities, including Worcester, are attempting to become more environmentally responsible and sustainable. Worcester is attempting to develop ways to become more sustainable; both to strengthen their communities and to protect the planet. The Green Worcester Working Group (GWWG) tasked the Clark Capstone Team with researching best practices for municipal sustainability. The GWWG has set the following priorities: climate change mitigation, resilience, open spaces, sustainable resource management, education and awareness. Taking these into account, the Clark Capstone Team researched the sustainability practices of cities in New England, across …


Critical Mathematical Inquiry Mar 2019

Critical Mathematical Inquiry

Occasional Paper Series

Welcome to Issue 41 of Bank Street’s Occasional Paper Series. The issue features a collection of papers by authors with a shared affinity for the work of critical mathematical inquiry (CMI). In what follows, we present our framing of mathematics education as a participatory venue for CMI and situate it in the context of another, perhaps more familiar approach to teaching mathematics for social justice (TMfSJ).


Linking Differential Equations To Social Justice And Environmental Concerns Feb 2019

Linking Differential Equations To Social Justice And Environmental Concerns

CODEE Journal

Special issue of the CODEE Journal in honor of its founder, Professor Robert Borrelli.


A Model Of The Transmission Of Cholera In A Population With Contaminated Water, Therese Shelton, Emma Kathryn Groves, Sherry Adrian Feb 2019

A Model Of The Transmission Of Cholera In A Population With Contaminated Water, Therese Shelton, Emma Kathryn Groves, Sherry Adrian

CODEE Journal

Cholera is an infectious disease that is a major concern in countries with inadequate access to clean water and proper sanitation. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), "cholera is a disease of inequity--an ancient illness that today sickens and kills only the poorest and most vulnerable people\dots The map of cholera is essentially the same as a map of poverty." We implement a published model (Fung, "Cholera Transmission Dynamic Models for Public Health Practitioners," Emerging Themes in Epidemiology, 2014) of a SIR model that includes a bacterial reservoir. Bacterial concentration in the water is modeled by the Monod …


Sir Models: Differential Equations That Support The Common Good, Lorelei Koss Feb 2019

Sir Models: Differential Equations That Support The Common Good, Lorelei Koss

CODEE Journal

This article surveys how SIR models have been extended beyond investigations of biologically infectious diseases to other topics that contribute to social inequality and environmental concerns. We present models that have been used to study sustainable agriculture, drug and alcohol use, the spread of violent ideologies on the internet, criminal activity, and health issues such as bulimia and obesity.


Pre-Service Teachers’ Emerging Views On Educational Equity, Melody Wilson Jan 2019

Pre-Service Teachers’ Emerging Views On Educational Equity, Melody Wilson

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

An equity-based Statistics course for pre-service mathematics teachers could play a role in the development of pre-service teachers’ equity literacy, encouraging conversations about equity in education and illuminating structural factors that contribute to the educational opportunity gap in the U.S. In the Winter 2019 semester, a faculty team at the author’s university piloted such a course. The course included data explorations dealing with structural inequities by race – one of the most difficult topics to address productively in a teacher preparation course. For the present study, a survey of pre-service teachers’ views on educational equity was administered in a required …


Numeracy And Social Justice: A Wide, Deep, And Longstanding Intersection, Kira Hamman, Victor Piercey, Samuel L. Tunstall Jan 2019

Numeracy And Social Justice: A Wide, Deep, And Longstanding Intersection, Kira Hamman, Victor Piercey, Samuel L. Tunstall

Numeracy

We discuss the connection between the numeracy and social justice movements both in historical context and in its modern incarnation. The intersection between numeracy and social justice encompasses a wide variety of disciplines and quantitative topics, but within that variety there are important commonalities. We examine the importance of sound quantitative measures for understanding social issues and the necessity of interdisciplinary collaboration in this work. Particular reference is made to the papers in the first part of the Numeracy special collection on social justice, which appear in this issue.