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Teacher Retention and Quality in the Four-Day School Week
Get PDFThe four-day school week is a school calendar that has become increasingly common following the COVID-19 pandemic. Proponents of the calendar often claim that offering teachers a regular 3-day weekend will help schools better retain existing teachers and recruit new teachers to their district without incurring additional costs due to higher salaries or other pecuniary benefits. However, there is scant empirical evidence assessing these claims. I use difference-in-differences and synthetic difference-in-differences models to assess the impact of four-day school week calendars on teacher retention and teacher quality in Arkansas. I find evidence that the calendar may help retain teachers who otherwise would have moved to another school and suggestive evidence that retention in non-adopting schools may be harmed by the four-day school week adoption in nearby districts. Results examining changes in teacher quality are inconclusive. These results have significant implications given the rapid growth in four-day school week calendars in recent years
Arkansas Corn and Grain Sorghum Research Studies 2023
Get PDFThe 2023 edition of the Arkansas Corn and Grain Sorghum Research Studies Series includes research results on topics pertaining to corn and grain sorghum production, including weed, disease, and insect management; economics; irrigation; agronomics; soil fertility; mycotoxins; cover crop management; and research verification program results. Our objective is to capture and broadly distribute the results of research projects funded by the Arkansas Corn and Grain Sorghum Board. The intended audience includes producers and their advisors, current investigators, and future researchers. The Series serves as a citable archive of research results
Exploring Children\u27s Culture Through Tactile Experiences: Kindergarten Children\u27s Intra-Active Encounters in the Art Classroom
Get PDFThis study aims to document and investigate kindergarten students’ cultural and social practices relative to the intra-active relationships they encounter when they engage in a tactile experience using clay. By considering emergent tactile experiences involved in kindergartener’s play-based art experiences, I call attention to nuances and intra-active moments embedded in children’s culture. More specifically, I argue that the art classroom is an ecological system in which young people and materials co-shape each other; a system that is essential to the formation of knowledge within an artmaking space. Employing an ethnographic approach, I situate myself as researcher, co-facilitator, and art educator in the rural school at which I am employed. At this location, I pay attention to kindergarteners’ intra-active encounters with earthenware clay to better understand the formation of their tactile experiences, emergent encounters, and play-based practices within an art-class environment. Data consisting of video recordings, photographs, and written vignettes are presented to portray kindergarten students’ distinctive cultural practices within the classroom space. The following questions are considered: How are intra-active relationships entangled in kindergarteners’ play practices? How do students use these intra-active relationships to create knowledge and social realities when engaged in a tactile experience
How Do Demographic Characteristics of Homeschooling Households Influence the Way Homeschooling is Practiced?
Get PDFThe legitimization of homeschooling during the COVID-19 pandemic and the emergence of new schooling models (i.e., hybrid homeschooling) potentially change the composition of homeschooling families and the way homeschooling is practiced. This study establishes pre-pandemic trends of the demographic composition of U.S. households who homeschool their children. This study also articulates a theory that the way families practice homeschooling is based on practical constraints imposed by household demographic characteristics and, to a lesser extent ideological reasons. These theories are empirically tested using the 2012, 2016, and 2019 waves of the National Household Education Survey and a sample of 1,468 homeschooling families. Findings indicate that homeschooling families demographically differ from other families in key ways such as a greater likelihood of one parent not participating in the labor force. However, homeschoolers are demographically similar to other families in many other ways. Findings also indicate that specific household characteristics such as family structure, labor force participation, and parents’ educational background are associated with how long a child is homeschooled and the resources families use to homeschool their children. Implications for more accurately describing the composition of homeschooling families and how they practice homeschooling are discussed
Essays on Membership Retailing in Omnichannel World
No full textThe retail industry in the United States has experienced significant and sustained growth, with sales surpassing $7 trillion in 2022, reflecting a dynamic and competitive landscape. This growth has been particularly evident in the evolution of retail formats over the past four decades, marked by a decline in the market share of grocery stores and a corresponding increase in the dominance of supercenters and membership clubs. Membership club stores such as Sam’s Club, Costco, and BJ’s have emerged as key players, offering consumers access to large quantities of goods at lower prices, albeit requiring an annual membership fee. This dissertation focuses on the membership retail format, particularly exploring the dynamics of subscription choices offered by retailers. While prior studies have extensively examined various retail formats, research on membership stores remains limited. In the first essay, critical managerial issues related to membership retention and upgrading/downgrading decisions are addressed through a proposed discrete choice model. Empirical testing of this model, utilizing individual-level data from a leading national retailer, reveals insights into customer behavior regarding membership programs, highlighting the challenges associated with premium memberships and the importance of promoting membership usage to enhance consumer engagement. In the second essay, the factors driving the trial and adoption of mobile checkout are investigated. Mobile checkout technology, increasingly popular among retailers, offers customers convenience and efficiency in their shopping experience. Utilizing the theoretical framework of transaction cost economics and store transaction data from a major US retailer, the study identifies key factors influencing the trial and adoption of mobile checkout. Insights into customer segments and adoption patterns provide valuable guidance for retailers seeking to enhance the adoption of mobile checkout and improve overall customer satisfaction. Overall, this dissertation contributes to the understanding of membership retail formats and offers practical insights for retailers aiming to optimize subscription choices and adopt emerging technologies to enhance the shopping experience. The findings underscore the importance of customer-centric strategies in navigating the evolving retail landscape and driving sustainable growth in the competitive market environment
Supply Chains Shocks, Network Linkages, and Economic Outcomes
Get PDFOne prominent consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic was the disruption of critical parts of the global supply chain. In the U.S., delays at ports and shortages of critical inputs such as semiconductors have negative ripple effects across the economy. This situation prompts a surge of interests from academics, business leaders, and policy makers alike. However, the evidence of the quantification of supply chain disruptions’ impact and its drivers on economic variables are still scant. In this essay, I investigate the extent of the impact of supply chain shocks on the U.S. economy and the mechanisms through which they affect economic outcomes. I exploit a buyer-supplier production networks model where industries trade intermediate inputs directly and indirectly with each other. This framework allows me to distinguish the upstream and downstream channels through supply chains can propagate. My finding suggests that that a 1% increase in the container logistics disruption induces a 20 basis point decline of the manufacturing output. I also find that a one standard deviation improvement to the productivity in the U.S. semiconductor industry would induce a 0.76% increase to U.S. GDP in ten years and a 2.1% increase to the real labor productivity the manufacturing sector. My study contributes to the understanding of the role of input output linkages in the transmission of technological change. It also provides useful insights that could help policy-makers in their effort to build a resilient supply chain and a long term economic growth
Fostering Community Among Women Mountain Bikers
Get PDFAlthough women have shown growing interest in mountain biking in recent years, a disproportionate number of men and women participate, with women representing only one-third of overall riders (The National Sporting Goods Association, 2023). Many women describe feeling insecure and intimidated by what they perceive to be the traditional mountain biking culture (Bordelon & Ferreira, 2019; Carpiet, 2014; Huybers-Withers, 2015; McCormack, 2020; Nash & Moore, 2021). This research is concerned with fostering a sense of belonging and opportunities for community-building to reduce barriers of entry in mountain biking for self-identified women in Northwest Arkansas. Northwest Arkansas has a highly active cycling community and a well-connected trail system, making it an ideal location to study community-building activities in mountain biking. Extreme sports such as mountain biking have great potential to build connections amongst participants (McCormack, 2017). However, when these sports are exclusive, they prevent women from receiving the proven social, mental, and physical health benefits that mountain biking can provide. Using a mixed-methods research approach and a feminist systems investigative framework, this research demonstrates that design has the potential to bridge the gap between digital and physical spaces to support community-building (Davis, 2018). Data collected are used to inform the design of a digital app and an in-person workshop, which collectively aim to increase participation and camaraderie for women in Northwest Arkansas who are interested in or are already mountain biking through virtual interactions that support agency and forming relationships, as well as in-person interactions that facilitate knowledge-sharing and community-building
Fire Potential in Arkansas through the Lens of the Keetch-Byram Drought Index
Get PDFVegetation fires are a complicated phenomenon to predict both the occurrence and intensity. In the United States, fire behavior has been widely studied in high-risk regions such as in the American West, but fires also occur regularly in states that receive greater levels of precipitation, such as Arkansas. Fires are an expensive and dangerous environmental problem. As climate trends caused by global warming continue to progress, quantifying the extent to which climate factors influence their occurrence in Arkansas would be useful for land management, public safety, public health, agriculture, urban development, and to advance the science of fire-climate dynamics in the American South. In this study, fires are evaluated using the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer (VIIRS) monthly active fires dataset, which is used to determine fire season peak. Land use/land cover (LULC) classifications in the state of Arkansas are analyzed to determine whether the climate-fire relationship varies according to predominant land covers. Finally, this study will explore the relationships between fire occurrence and climate variables using the Keetch-Byram Drought Index (KBDI) that incorporates temperature and precipitation to provide an outlook of fire risk. KBDI is commonly used for fire risk assessment in the US, but it’s unclear if the index can be relied on to assess fire risk in Arkansas or whether it provides different levels of reliability according to predominant landscape. KBDI in this study was calculated using Google Earth Engine in JavaScript, which facilitates consultation of daily KBDI estimates for Arkansas to the public
Guaraní Sexuality and Contestations over the Old Way of Being
No full textThe Jesuits in seventeenth century Guairá attempted to shift the sin of adultery and polygyny away from Guaraní men, and onto Guaraní women in their process of evangelization in Paraguay. The Jesuits did so because Guaraní men, as influential patriarchs within the missions, would revolt against the Jesuits or flee the Jesuit missions in response to Jesuit indoctrination that denounced the practice of polygyny. This is evident through two works of the Jesuit Antonio Ruiz de Montoya: one lexical, the Tesoro, and the other narrative, the Conquista. Montoya was directly involved in the founding and maintenance of the Guaraní missions, and in the Conquista, he clearly identifies polygyny as a practice of Guaraní men. However, in the Tesoro, Montoya places the blame for illicit sexual behavior on Guaraní women. This dichotomy reveals that while Jesuits identified polygyny as facilitated by Guaraní men evident in the narrative of the missions, the Tesoro reflects Jesuit interests in focusing their attention to the sexual behavior of Guaraní women. This is because Guaraní women lacked the social and political status of Guaraní men, so Jesuits saw they could promote Guaraní women to do the work of getting Guaraní men to abandon polygyny for them. The Tesoro was both a product and producer of colonial discourse and was meant to purify linguistic Guaraní of un-Christian values. There are 14 emic phrases in the Tesoro related to sexuality, and 13 of them are given in the female voice. Of these, Guaraní men are given to be the primary agent behind sex in only 2 of these phrases, while the Guaraní woman is the primary agent in four. In the Conquista, there are dozens of sexual encounters between Guaraní men and women, and only in 2 are Guaraní women depicted as the primary agents in initiating these encounters. This stark contrast between which gender initiates the sexual encounter between the two works reveals that the Jesuits acknowledged Guaraní men as the perpetrators of illicit sexual behavior, seen in the Conquista, but in the Tesoro, the Guaraní women shoulder the blame for sexual behavior. The Conquista is permeated with passages where Guaraní men revolt against the Jesuits in response to preaching against polygyny, and that Montoya explicitly states he stayed quiet on enforcing the Augustinian 6th Commandment, which forbade polygyny, to avoid these revolts. In the Conquista, men are overwhelmingly the primary agents for sexual encounters with Guaraní women. These caricatures of Guaraní men in Montoya’s Conquista contrast with the emic phrases pertaining to sexuality in the bilingual dictionary named the Tesoro, where all but 1 emic phrases related to sexuality is ascribed the female voice. It was in the Tesoro where Montoya directly inserted Jesuit prerogatives of rejecting polygyny through the form of emic and example phrases. The Conquista is a narrative of evangelization, while the Tesoro was a tool for evangelization. The differences in portraying sexual behaviors depicted in the two sources reveal Jesuit prerogatives in assigning blame for illicit sex to Guaraní women
Temporal Trends and Dental Metric Variation in the Macaca sylvanus Lineage
Get PDFThe extensive collection of fossil macaques from Europe, spanning from the Late Miocene to the Late Pleistocene period, is believed to be of the species Macaca sylvanus. However, there has been a prolonged discussion regarding the classification of these specimens into a single taxonomic group as the existing dental sample exhibits a large amount of morphological and metric variation. Specifically, researchers have attempted to identify multiple subspecies based on chronological data of the paleontological locality and, secondly, based on dental metric variation. In this study, I assess temporal trends in the fossil record of Macaca sylvanus and compare overall variation in the extinct sample to variation in extant species and subspecies of cercopithecids and hominoids. Results indicate a slight decrease in the mesiodistal length or buccolingual breadth of the upper and lower molars from the Plio-Pleistocene sample compared to the extant sample of M. sylvanus, but found mixed results between the Early/Middle Pleistocene samples that do not support a directional temporal trend. Instead, models indicate a spatial trend where buccolingual breadth of the lower third molars decreased from the west to the east of the continent. Moreover, the overall variation in the complete fossil sample is so high that the possibility of multiple subspecies is plausible. However, metric variation in the subsamples is contradictory, showing higher variation in the Late Pliocene-Early Pleistocene sample and lower variation in the Middle-Late Pleistocene sample. Through this study, I highlight how metric data of cercopithecines only help to differentiate individuals widespread geographically, as the North African and European fossils. Temporal variation is considered secondarily. In the case of European fossil macaques, the lack of crania from different time periods and geographic regions will keep the debate about the accuracy of chronological subspecies open