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We consider the theory and evidence supporting learning styles, and contrast these with the related concepts of learning preferences and student choice. Although the theory of learning styles remains popular in the field of education as one guidepost teachers might use to maximize the effectiveness of instruction for individual students, including students with learning and behavioral disabilities, a review of the evidence supporting a learning styles approach suggests that it offers little benefit to students with disabilities. In contrasting learning styles with the related concept of learning preferences, we posit that interventions based on student choice may offer a more parsimonious and evidence-driven approach to enhancing instruction and improving outcomes for students with learning and behavioral disabilities.

In addressing positive general education teaching practices for use with students with or at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD), the chapter emphasizes teacher behavior change research that has been informed by applied behavior analytic (ABA) principles. Its central theme is that general education teachers can access research informed by ABA in developing prosocial instructional and management practices. Highlighted teaching practices include fostering correct academic responses from students, increasing active student response, and using contingent praise with regularity. The chapter also discusses functional behavioral assessment, positive behavioral interventions and supports, and controversial behavior change issues surrounding seclusion and restraints and medication, topics related to teaching students with or at risk for EBD in general education settings.

By the mid-1990s the potential and usefulness of microsimulation models for researching tax-benefit systems had found widespread acceptance. Nevertheless, models were not widely available for independent or academic research in all countries of the European Union (EU). Even more important, carrying out consistent comparative tax-benefit microsimulation analysis was still an apparently impossible task. The time seemed ready for a European-Union-wide tax-benefit microsimulation model. Such a model, EUROMOD, is now available.

This chapter is devoted to a short introduction to EUROMOD, including the reasons why it was built, its added value compared to existing models, the trade-offs faced by its builders and lessons that have been learnt from developing such an integrated model. Moreover, it aims to provide an insight into the wide range of possible applications of EUROMOD, underlined by summarizing some indicative findings of studies, which have used the model.

This chapter describes a neurodynamic modeling approach which may be useful for dynamically assessing teamwork in healthcare and military situations. It begins with a description of electroencephalographic (EEG) signal acquisition and the transformation of the physical units of EEG signals into quantities of information. This transformation provides quantitative, dynamic, and generalizable neurodynamic models that are directly comparable across teams, tasks, training protocols, and team experience levels using the same measurement scale, bits of information. These bits of information can be further used to dynamically guide team performance or to provide after-action feedback that is linked to task events and team actions.

These ideas are instantiated and expanded in the second section of the chapter by showing how these data abstractions, compressions, and transformations take advantage of the natural information redundancy in biologic signals to substantially reduce the number of data dimensions, making the incorporation of neurodynamic feedback into Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) achievable.

Purpose: Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) young adults smoke at rates much higher than the general population. Young adults, in general, are less likely to seek medical help for smoking cessation and LGB individuals are less likely to seek health care generally. Alternative methods to encourage smoking cessation are necessary. This research seeks to establish whether LGB young adults in California would be willing to use social media for smoking cessation.

Approach: We conducted 41 qualitative interviews among LGB young adults in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles in Fall 2014.

Findings: The results suggest that our participants were interested in a LGB-focused social media intervention, as long as the intervention was private or anonymous and moderated. Further, across topical areas our participants spoke extensively about the import of social connections. We may be able to leverage these connections to encourage cessation.

Research Limitations: This is a qualitative, non-generalizable dataset from a fairly limited geographic area.

Public Health Implications: Online smoking cessation interventions aimed at young adults would benefit from further testing with LGB young adults to ensure efficacy among this population. In addition, states and localities concerned about young adult LGB smoking might benefit from investing in an online socially mediated cessation forum. Online interventions could be scalable and might be useful for other groups who regularly face discrimination, stigma, or other stressors that make successful smoking cessation difficult.

This chapter integrates both structural and symbolic interactionist perspectives used in the study of collective behavior to provide a thorough examination of the campus culture and student–police interactions that precipitated a riot near James Madison University (JMU). While the analysis is anchored by Smelser’s (1971 [1962]) “value-added” model, it also accounts for cultural conditions common on college campuses. Importantly, the dynamics associated with this case may be similar to other riots – at sporting events, at religious processionals, etc. – occurring when authorities disrupt gatherings that have strong cultural resonance among participants. In these cases, attempts at disruption may be seen as an assault on norms strongly associated with a group’s identity. The study also used a unique data source – 39 YouTube videos posted of the riot event – that made it possible to capture the interactive and emergent quality of rioting behavior in real time from multiple vantage points.

In this chapter, we theorize about online freelancers’ approaches to work flexibility. Drawing from an ongoing digital ethnography of US-based online freelancers pursuing work on digital platforms, our data question the common conceptualizations around the flexibility of online freelancing. We posit that the flexibility of where to work, not when to work, is the most important attribute of their work arrangement. Our data show (1) the online freelancers in our study prefer the stability and sustainability of full-time work over freelancing when both are offered as remote options; (2) full-time remote employment increases these workers’ freelancing control / flexibility; (3) these workers keep freelance work options open even as they transition to more permanent full-time work arrangements. We discuss how these findings relate to workplace culture shifts and what this means for contemporary working arrangements. Our insights contribute to the discourses on knowledge-based gig work and for what it means to study individuals online.