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Project REEL (Resources for Early Educator Learning) was a quasi-experimental, delayed-treatment professional development (PD) design to provide training, coaching, and materials to 220 early childhood educators (ECEs) in 85 diverse, high-needs settings (family, group, and center-based) across Tennessee. Its two primary goals were to (1) increase the frequency of research-based classroom learning experiences that promote language/literacy, numeracy, and social/emotional development among diverse early learners through training and coaching to ECEs and (2) improve the language/literacy, numeracy, and social/emotional readiness of children in low-income areas through research-based training of ECEs and parents. Even with differences in ECEs’ educational backgrounds and diverse settings, teachers in both treatment groups improved and maintained their knowledge and skills in response to the intervention. Preschool children in two cohorts showed significant improvements in most language and literacy measures over the course of an academic year, and improvements were often beyond that due to maturation (using age-controlled measures). Given the amount of improvement seen across a wide array of measures, there is substantial convergent evidence that the Project REEL PD approach was successful in promoting long-lasting improvements in the practices of ECEs in diverse settings and from diverse backgrounds. This chapter follows the development, implementation, and results of two literacy-related modules (“Print Awareness” and “Book Strategies”) for directors and teachers of three- and four-year-olds. These modules are representative of our training design, with its intensive focus on coaching in the diverse settings, and will provide the most beneficial model for other ECE professional developers to follow.

The purpose of this book is to open a conversation on the idea of information experience, which we understand to be a complex, multidimensional engagement with information. In developing the book we invited colleagues to propose a chapter on any aspect of information experience, for example conceptual, methodological or empirical. We invited them to express their interpretation of information experience, to contribute to the development of this concept. The book has thus become a vehicle for interested researchers and practitioners to explore their thinking around information experience, including relationships between information experience, learning experience, user experience and similar constructs. It represents a collective awareness of information experience in contemporary research and practice. Through this sharing of multiple perspectives, our insights into possible ways of interpreting information experience, and its relationship to other concepts in information research and practice, is enhanced. In this chapter, we introduce the idea of information experience. We also outline the book and its chapters, and bring together some emerging alternative views and approaches to this important idea.

As sociologists we all try to make a contribution to our field. Having completed our comprehensives and dissertations we have read in depth in several areas, have focused on an area that interests us, and have learned the research process whether it uses quantitative or qualitative methodology. We all make our contributions available to the field, but occasionally one among us makes a startling discovery, has an unusual idea or a way to approach a problem, starts examining a new problem at just the right moment, or has an insight into a specific conceptual problem with unusual alacrity. A few among us combine all that skill and happenstance and lead the way into new sociological insights, new areas of research and provide a notable foundation or advancement to an area of knowledge. Saad Nagi is one of those contributors with vision, insight, and skill to see ahead of his time. This paper attempts to bring together in one place his major contributions to the disability knowledge base in sociology.

The approach used in this paper is an in depth review of all of Nagi’s published works in the area of disability. The published literature is grouped into the five areas in which Nagi made major contributions, including major research of the Social Security Disability Insurance process; development of a framework for the disability process; epidemiological definitions and research; development of a coherent set of disability measures; and an examination of the social problem, policy, and program process as developed and practiced in this country.

Nagi made a large and significant contribution in all the areas listed above and much of the measurement, and process examination is still relevant and useful in current research. His framework is still the basis for the very newest models of disability which dominate disability research today.

Researchers need to go back to find Nagi books and articles written in the 60s, 70s, and 80s to ground their work in the originals rather than to take the interpretations of others on this material. The ICF and the Social Model did not originate in Europe alone, but much of the work began in the states in the early 60s with the work of Nagi, Haber, and others and should not be overlooked or ignored.

The impact of climate disasters (e.g., floods, storms, or landslides), which are generally of low intensity and high frequency, should not be overlooked in developing countries. Global experiences related to the damage due to these disasters indicate that such events can be devastating in communities that are vulnerable to hazardous impacts. Cumulative effects of climate disasters are a sign of a potential catastrophe. Moreover, the recent increase in these events poses additional issues that increase the cost of local public administration, including emergency operation and infrastructure recovery. This chapter explains key problems related to climate disasters that are increasing, particularly in the local area of developing countries, and clarifies the need to incorporate climate disaster risk reduction into public development planning and practice. The chapter also provides descriptions of the research location, approaches of the study, and the structure of this book.

Our investigation of the emerging issue of teacher entitlement is viewed from the perspective of researchers trying to make sense of the concept with the intention of exploring its links to inclusive educational practice, teacher education and research. This chapter is therefore mainly conceptual, focusing on the limits and possibilities offered by the extension of the concept of entitlement, first relating to students, now extended to the teaching profession. The concept of entitlement is gaining currency principally in the Anglo-Saxon literature but should also be reconsidered in relation to contextual influences. In the educational field, debates denote several ‘displacements of concepts’, as shown in the extensive reviews and analyses of the concept of entitlement attitudes we undertake in this work. We first discuss developments and interpretations of the concept of entitlement specific to different disciplines in the literature. Then we undertake a contextual reframing based on a redefinition of the concept drawing on input from empirical research data, which emphasizes the challenges encountered when dealing with the phenomena of social cohesion, ethics and cultural diversity in education. The findings highlight the potential benefits of integrating the concept of teacher entitlement into valid strategies for implementing an inclusive and ethical educational process.

For centuries, the Hispanic population has been proving itself as an emerging majority in the United States. The United States census shows that the Hispanic population more than doubled from 1970 to 1980 and from 1980 to 1990. However, despite these data, libraries have not adapted their library services to meet the needs of this population, despite their knowledge that Hispanics do not feel welcome in libraries. Authors from 1970 to 2001 have highlighted the long-standing problem of Hispanic under-utilization of libraries and have provided recommendations for the library community regarding adapting their services in a culturally sensitive manner. Despite these publications, there is still literature in 2001 reporting that Hispanics do not feel welcome in libraries. The purpose of this study is to examine the current status of three facets of librarianship: (1) outreach efforts to Hispanics; (2) specialized training for Hispanics in bibliographic and information literacy; and (3) current attitudes of Hispanics toward public libraries.