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LAWRENCE – The University of Kansas, through the Juniper Gardens Children’s Project, is a partner in two autism spectrum disorder research projects that have recently been awarded $13 million in federal grants. One grant funds continuation of the Autism Intervention Research Network for Behavioral Health (AIR-B 4) based at the University of California-Los Angeles. An additional funded project between KU and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill aims to evaluate use of an assessment tool that monitors the progress of interventions for young children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.
Research explores how speakers use creativity in English as a second language
LAWRENCE — A University of Kansas education researcher has published a journal article and book chapter on creativity in speaking, teaching and assessment of the teaching of English to speakers of other languages. The work illustrates her efforts in the “real world implications of language on everyday life” and how educators can look beyond prescriptive notions of how language is assessed to become advocates for their students.
Aerospace engineering students earn acclaim in international design competition
LAWRENCE — Three student teams from the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Kansas have won prestigious design awards from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Students in the program have won more first-, second- and third-place aerospace design awards in the competition than at any other university in the world.
Contact: Jen Humphrey, Life Span Institute, 785-864-6621, [email protected], @kulifespan
Grants worth $13M will support interventions for families affected by autism spectrum disorder
LAWRENCE – The University of Kansas, through the Juniper Gardens Children’s Project, is a partner in two autism spectrum disorder research projects that have recently been awarded $13 million in federal grants.
One grant funds continuation of the Autism Intervention Research Network for Behavioral Health (AIR-B 4) based at the University of California-Los Angeles, a project that focuses on partnering with community groups and key stakeholders to provide access to effective interventions for underserved families. An additional funded project between KU and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill aims to evaluate use of an assessment tool that monitors the progress of interventions for young children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.
“These grants continue our decades-long emphasis on community-participatory research – involving the community in describing and addressing their needs through research, and with their input – as well as our long-standing focus on children’s development and autism,” said Brian Boyd, director of the Juniper Gardens Children’s Project in Kansas City, Kansas.
The AIR-B 4 grant funds three intervention studies, all of which use a team-based approach that relies on social networks and on partnering with community providers to implement the studies. Two of the interventions will be implemented through Juniper Gardens, among other university partners.
The Mind the Gap portion of the project focuses on providing resources and support for families soon after a child is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Such early support has been shown previously to improve family empowerment and access to services. Juniper Gardens will work within existing and new community partners and families to carry out the research.
Additionally through the AIR-B 4 grant, KU will build on its broad research in self-determination to improve outcomes for adolescents with autism spectrum disorder. Self-determination, which is the ability to act as an agent in one’s own life in order to attain goals, has been pioneered at KU through the Kansas Center on Developmental Disabilities.
Self-determination will be taught through a three-phase process called the Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction, which helps students gain the necessary skills for success later in life. The study also involves partnering with area school districts in Lawrence and Kansas City, Kansas, as well as districts near the University of California-Los Angeles, the University of Washington and the University of California-Davis.
“There’s an emphasis in these studies on working with underserved schools and communities,” Boyd said. “We already know that many of these interventions are effective, so this is much more about determining if we can get community agencies to implement and sustain these interventions long term without the heavy involvement of researchers.”
As part of AIR B-4, KU will establish community advisory boards that may include teachers, administrators, social workers, parents, autistic individuals themselves and other community stakeholders who would have an interest in supporting young children or adolescents with autism. Interested participants can reach out to the Juniper Gardens Children’s Project at [email protected] or 913-321-3143.
Additionally, Boyd is leading a $3 million project that will validate a method of measuring changes in social-communication and language skills in children ages 1-5 who have autism spectrum disorder. Juniper Gardens Children’s Project, which is a part of the KU Life Span Institute, and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill will recruit 400 participants for the study.
The measurement tool will be based on the Early Communication Indicator (ECI), which is part of a set of Individual Growth and Development Indicators for infants and toddlers, or IGDIs, which were developed at Juniper Gardens. The grant will verify that the ECI measure can show if a young child with autism spectrum disorder is progressing at the expected developmental rate and determine if they are responding to interventions or treatments.
Currently, there is no tool available that easily allows practitioners, parents and caregivers to monitor progress, visualize data and conduct live scoring for children in this population, Boyd said.
“We already have evidence that this tool can measure early communication progress in young children,” Boyd said. “Our goal is to determine if this tool specifically works or can be used with young children with autism.”
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Contact: Mike Krings, KU News Service, 785-864-8860, [email protected], @MikeKrings
Research explores how speakers use creativity in English as a second language
LAWRENCE — Everyone has found themselves at some point in a conversation in which they have to discuss a “taboo” topic or get creative to make themselves understood. Imagine how much more difficult that is when conversing in a second language. A University of Kansas professor has published research on how people get creative when discussing difficult topics in a second language, part of her larger body of work on everyday creativity.
M’Balia Thomas, assistant professor in KU’s School of Education & Human Sciences, has published a journal article and book chapter on creativity in speaking, teaching and assessment in the teaching of English to speakers of other languages. The work illustrates her efforts in the “real world implications of language on everyday life” and how educators can look beyond prescriptive notions of how language is assessed to become advocates for their students.
Rendering the untellable tellable
In a study published in the journal Narrative Inquiry, Thomas examines how non-native speakers navigate difficult topics in order to save face. She analyzes a conversation at a Bible study group in which she took part in a discussion with a group of women who speak English, but not as their first language. One of the participants told the story of an old friend who becomes pregnant while romantically involved with a married man.
“The study looks at how participants help each other out in the telling of a story when disruptions, like taboo topics, arise,” Thomas said. “We humans observe social rules of engagement when talking and working together to understand each other. What we don’t often get to teach is how we engage and negotiate talk in another language.”
There is a widely held theory of communication, especially in language instruction, that talk is cooperative.
“That cooperation is not always straightforward,” Thomas said. “How in some places is it ambiguously cooperative, or even uncooperatively cooperative?”
The author examines three types of cooperation, including tacit cooperation as shown in laughter or “response cries” such as “oh my goodness,” gasps or telling the storyteller she did the right thing, or that they agree with her. Ambiguous cooperation was expressed through language moves that counter negative messages introduced, either by lowering one’s speech, drawing metaphorical comparisons or aggressively moving against absent parties referred to in the study. Others showed disagreement, but cooperatively through the use of hypothetical and imagined phrases in the telling of the story with claims such as “if it were me, I would have…”
Acknowledging such creativity in the oral and impromptu speech of second language, especially when discussing difficult topics, can empower teachers of English as a second language, Thomas said. Too often, teachers focus only on if a learner is using the language in a grammatically correct way, with the proper vocabulary.
“Those are valid questions, but they erase other ways we can evaluate speaking, the creative ways people use language to build friendships, communicate and save face. Where I use this in teaching is when we look at a student, we have to look at them holistically, and look at their strengths in one area of language and think about how we can parlay them into other areas,” Thomas said. “I’m pushing against prescriptive notions of how we assess creativity and language.”
By taking such an approach, teachers can avoid making students feel limited in how they speak a second language and take them out of “test mode,” in which they feel pressure to speak in a certain way and are less inclined to speak freely, she said.
Culturally responsive pedagogy in teaching English as a second language
Thomas has also co-written a book chapter on culturally responsive pedagogy in teaching English language teaching. The chapter, written with Marta Carvajal-Regidor, KU doctoral candidate education, examines how English language teaching around the world has adopted instructional and curricular approaches to teaching English sensitive to the culture, identity, ethnicity and lived experiences of students more than simply using rote methods to teach the language. The chapter appears in the book “Contemporary Foundations for Teaching English as an Additional Language,” edited by Polina Vinogradova and Joan Kang Shin.
The authors examine several approaches to how English is taught in Anglophone and non-Anglophone countries, as well as the social and cultural challenges these contexts face in teaching English across educational levels.
“We want to honor the fact that English language education is not a socially neutral process; while people learn languages for very practical and purposeful reasons, there is conflict, issues of power, domination, equity and access that complicates the teaching and learning of English as an international language,” Thomas said.
The chapter shares the history of culturally responsive pedagogy in teaching English, its roots in multicultural education in the United States and its evolution to shape English language teaching globally.
The authors share examples of higher educational institutions such as one in Spain where English language instruction in subject areas competes with instruction in the local Spanish and Basque languages. Another institution in Tajikistan teaches students English, but they found the students wanted to read texts in English that reflected cultures, populations and values similar to their own, such as “The Kite Runner” or “The Pursuit of Happyness.”
The main goal of the chapter is to share success stories of how schools around the world have adopted pedagogy that is responsive and sustaining of students’ language and cultural backgrounds, as well as the implications of languages in education policy and how teachers can be creative in reaching their students.
“We tend to think of culturally responsive pedagogy as a Black and brown issue in the U.S. However, once this practice leaves U.S. soil, it evolves in the local context, adapting to the local experiences of marginalization and the need for educational empowerment,” Thomas said. “One benefit of documenting the evolution of culturally responsive pedagogy around the world is you can learn more about cultures and languages, the impact of English education on these communities and the everyday creative ways teachers serve as advocates for their students in these space programs.
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Contact: Cody Howard, School of Engineering, 785-864-2936, [email protected], @kuengineering
Aerospace engineering students earn acclaim in international design competition
LAWRENCE — Three student teams from the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Kansas have won prestigious design awards from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), adding to KU’s rich history of recognition in AIAA competition.
Students in the program have won more first-, second- and third-place aerospace design awards in the competition than at any other university in the world.
“This is fantastic,” said Ron Barrett-Gonzalez, professor of aerospace engineering, who advised the winning teams. “First of all it’s visibility — we’re visible on the international stage. But it’s also the mark of an extremely high level of quality our program maintains.”
This year’s honorees won awards in competitions for graduate students.
Team Road Runner won second place in the missile design competition. The teams were challenged to design a supersonic aerial target drone capable of representing a variety of supersonic airborne cruise missile threats — a tool to aid the U.S. military in its training exercises. Historically, similar missiles have required booster rockets for ground launch; Team Road Runner proposed using a rail-based launch system instead. The team was led by Max Johnson and included Jacob Gorman, Justin Matt, Steven Meis, Andrew Mills and Nathan Sunnarborg.
Team FREEDOM (Fast Response Enemy Emulating Defense Operations Missile) took third place in the same category. The proposed design featured a two-stage missile to be launched from the trailer of a truck. Team members were Nicholas Stefan, who served as leader, as well as Mehdi Pedari, Jacquelyn Rech, Kylie Crawford and Kyle Herda.
Team Super Aerial Bros won third place in the aircraft design competition. Competitors were tasked with designing a general aviation training aircraft to train the next generation of airline pilots. Team members were Grant Godfrey, Brio Ratzlaff, Francisco Caceres, Thomas Kennedy, and Tyler Schwallie.
Over the past decade, KU aerospace engineering students have won more than three dozen international AIAA aerospace awards. Students typically participate in the competitions as part of a “capstone” project at the end of their academic careers.
Barrett-Gonzalez said students benefit from the program’s relationships with other departments on KU campus — picking up design skills, for example, from the School of Architecture & Design — and proximity to major aerospace manufacturing hubs in Wichita, Overland Park and Olathe. Students on the winning teams made trips to Wichita for a firsthand look at the aircraft production process.
“It’s the state’s largest manufacturing industry — two-thirds of the aircraft made in the western world are made in Kansas,” Barrett-Gonzalez said. “Many Kansans don’t even realize how important the aerospace industry is to us.”
KU aerospace engineering students have been winning awards at AIAA competition since 1969.
“It’s not just the strength of one adviser or one class but that the entire program has maintained a high level of quality through the years,” Barrett-Gonzalez said. “This indicates the strength of all the faculty members in our department. This is not just a one-off event.”
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