College of Behavioral & Social Sciences

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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..

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    Understanding the Knowledge and Data Landscape of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation in the Chesapeake Bay Region: A Systematic Review
    (MDPI, 2020-04-17) Teodoro, Jose Daniel; Nairn, Bruce
    Climate change is increasingly threatening coastal communities around the world. This article reviews the literature on climate change impacts and adaptation in the Chesapeake Bay region (USA). We reviewed both climate impacts and adaptation literature (n = 283) published in the period 2007–2018 to answer the questions: (i) how are indicators of climate impacts measured and reported by different types of authors (e.g., scientists, government, and NGOs), document types (e.g., academic articles or reports), and geographic focus (e.g., State, region, county, or municipal level)? (ii) what are the current approaches for measuring the most pressing climate impacts in the Chesapeake Bay? We found that scientists produce the most amount of data but are increasingly shifting towards engaging with practitioners through reports and online resources. Most indicators focus on the Chesapeake Bay scale, but data is most needed at the local level where adaptive policies are implemented. Our analysis shows emerging approaches to monitoring climate hazards and areas where synergies between types of authors are likely to increase resilience in the 21st century. This review expands the understanding of the information network in the Chesapeake Bay and explores the institutional landscape of stakeholders involved in the production and consumption of environmental and social change data. The analysis and insights of this review may be extended to similar regions around the planet experiencing or anticipating similar climate hazards to the Chesapeake Bay.
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    Spirituality in the Laboratory: Negotiating the politics of knowledge in the psychedelic sciences
    (2010) Corbin, Michelle Dawn; Kestnbaum, Meyer; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    In this study I argue that psychedelic substances served as a doorway through which spirituality entered the scientific laboratory to an unprecedented degree given their traditionally demarcated relationship by making spirituality more amenable to scientific paradigms and accessible to scientific methodologies. I conduct a feminist discourse analysis of the politics of knowledge enacted in this unique intersection of spirituality and science in the psychedelic sciences. I draw on feminist theories of science and knowledge which conceptualize science as a dominant knowledge constituted through and productive of the intersecting and historically hierarchical systems of power of race, class, gender and nation. Using discourse analysis techniques, I analyze a documentary archive I created through a theoretically driven sampling of the psychedelic sciences of spirituality from the 1930's to the present. In Chapter 2, I analyze how spirituality was brought forward and negotiated in these sciences. I argue that psychedelic scientists utilized a range of what I call tactics of legitimation to justify the scientific study of these peculiar substances and the spirituality with which they are associated vis-à-vis dominant scientific knowledges and I analyze the attendant epistemological costs of this assimilation. In Chapter 3, I analyze the efforts to integrate psychedelic substances and the spiritual experiences they induce into western therapeutic assumptions and practices. I argue that their efforts to scientifically determine the mysticality of mystical experiences and their pursuits of scientific liturgical authority over the administration of psychedelic sacraments resulted in the emergence of a would-be psychiatric clerical authority. In Chapter 4, I analyze the efforts to integrate and develop indigenous spiritual psychedelic knowledges and practices across each step of a bioprospecting model from plant identification to the determination of mechanisms of action and finally to drug development studies. I argue that in each step indigenous spiritual knowledges were assimilated into dominant scientific assumptions and practices reifying western scientific authority over indigenous knowledges and practices and reinforcing historically hierarchical colonial relationships despite the `good intentions' of these psychedelic scientists. In the final chapter of this study I discuss future sociological and feminist projects analyzing these peculiar psychedelic sciences and spiritual substances.
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    Teacher In-service Training for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): Influence on Knowledge about ADHD, Use of Classroom Behavior Management Techniques, and Teacher Stress
    (2006-08-24) Jones, Heather; Chronis, Andrea M.; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) evidence many problems in the classroom, including difficulty staying seated and trouble with organizational tasks. Such behaviors cause impairment for the child in their academic functioning and place a burden upon their teachers. Despite the large evidence base for classroom behavioral interventions, teachers often lack specific training on and accurate knowledge about ADHD. Teacher in-service training is routinely utilized to inform school professionals about a number of special topics. However, the efficacy of such training for ADHD has not been established. The present study examined the efficacy of brief in-service training in improving teacher knowledge about ADHD, use of behavior management techniques, and levels of stress related to teaching a child with ADHD. Six schools in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area participated. Teachers at these schools were randomly assigned to receive in-service training immediately or to a waitlist control group that received in-service training one month later. Teacher ratings of ADHD knowledge, use of behavior modification techniques, and stress were measured pre in-service intervention and 1 month post in-service intervention. Behavioral observations of behavior modification strategies were gathered on a random subset of teachers from each school at each time point. Mixed model analyses of variance were used to examine the effects of the intervention on ADHD knowledge, use of behavior modification techniques, and teacher stress. A Treatment Group X Time interaction was found for teacher-reported ADHD knowledge, such that the immediate in-service group reported significantly increased knowledge from pre to post in-service intervention while the waitlist control group did not. Teacher use of reported behavior modification techniques appeared to change for special education teachers only. Stress did not change as a result of the intervention. Observational data did not correlate highly with teacher self-report data. Limitations of this study include the use of a newly- developed measure of ADHD knowledge that requires psychometric testing and the lack of observations of child behavior. Future studies should examine ways to better measure and promote actual behavior change among teachers of children with ADHD.