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In sports, youth are coached to see persistence and hard work as important paths to personal improvement and success. They come to understand through practice that mistakes are tools to help them improve and that collaboration and teamwork are keys to success in team sports (Kovács & Szakál, 2024; Rottensteiner et al., 2015). These ideas about the importance of effort, persistence, mistakes, and collaboration are important components of a growth mindset, the belief that ability is not fixed but can be improved through effort (Dweck & Yeager, 2020). People with a growth mindset view challenges and mistakes as opportunities to learn; they believe that success depends on effort and practice. Further, research shows that a growth mindset is associated with learner persistence and has positive effects on learning in school and beyond, including in sports (Biddle et al., 1996; Blackwell et al., 2007; Dweck 2006). However, young people who have a growth mindset in sports may not extend it to subjects such as mathematics and science (Chan et al., 2022; Kyler & Moscicki, 2024). In this paper, we describe a strategy of combining growth mindset principles, mathematics concepts, and sports examples to support students in shifting their mindsets about their own abilities. We share outcomes from implementing these activities at five out-of-school settings. 

J. Integer Seq. 27 (2024), no. 7, Art. 24.7.7, 18 pp. 

Growing Mathletes is an NSF-funded program that is developing a curricular model to successfully integrate growth mindset principles, baseball, and math and science concepts for youth in grades 3 to 8 in out of school learning settings. Using a Design-Based Implementation Research framework for implementing, testing, and revising a curriculum and professional learning model, we are working on best practices to support youth learning and confidence as well as facilitator training and support in both afterschool and summer programs. We present youth outcomes as evidence of successes in how the program has integrated growth mindset with other content as a way to support youth’s productive mindset in their own learning along with content gains. 

One long-standing technical problem affecting the accuracy of eddy correlation air–sea CO2 flux estimates has been motion contamination of the CO2 mixing-ratio measurement. This sensor-related problem is well known but its source remains unresolved. This report details an attempt to identify and reduce motion-induced error and to improve the infrared gas analyzer (IRGA) design. The key finding is that a large fraction of the motion sensitivity is associated with the detection approach common to most closed- and open-path IRGA employed today for CO2 and H2O measurements. A new prototype sensor was developed to both investigate and remedy the issue. Results in laboratory and deep-water tank tests show marked improvement. The prototype shows a factor of 4–10 reduction in CO2 error under typical at-sea buoy pitch and roll tilts in comparison with an off-the-shelf IRGA system. A similar noise reduction factor of 2–8 is observed in water vapor measurements. The range of platform tilt motion testing also helps to document motion-induced error characteristics of standard analyzers. Study implications are discussed including findings relevant to past field measurements and the promise for improved future flux measurements using similarly modified IRGA on moving ocean observing and aircraft platforms. 

Improving team interactions in engineering to model gender inclusivity has been at the forefront of many initiatives in both academia and industry. However, there has been limited evidence on the impact of gender-diverse teams on psychological safety. This is important because psychological safety has been shown to be a key facet for the development of innovative ideas, and has also been shown to be a cornerstone of effective teamwork. But how does the gender diversity of a team impact the development of psychological safety? The current study was developed to explore just this through an empirical study with 38 engineering design student teams over the course of an 8-week design project. These teams were designed to be half heterogeneous (either half-male and half-female, or majority male) or other half homogeneous (all male). We captured psychological safety at five time points between the homogenous and heterogenous teams and also explored individual dichotomous (peer-review) ratings of psychological safety at the end of the project. Results indicated that there was no difference in psychological safety between gender homogenous and heterogenous teams. However, females perceived themselves as more psychologically safe with other female team members compared to their ratings of male team members. Females also perceived themselves to be less psychologically safe with male team members compared to male ratings of female team members, indicating a discrepancy in perceptions between genders. These results point to the need to further explore the role of minoritized groups in psychological safety research and to explore how this effect presents itself (or is covered up) at the team level. 

Polarization aberrations are found in most optical components due to a materials differing response to s- and p-polarizations. This differing response can manifest either as diattenuation, retardance, or both. Correction of polarization aberrations, such as these, are critical in many applications such as interferometry, polarimetry, display, and high contrast imaging, including astronomy. In this work, compensators based on liquid crystal polymer and anti-reflection thin-films are presented to correct polarization aberrations in both transmission and reflection configurations. Our method is versatile, allowing for good correction in transmission and reflection due to optical components possessing differing diattenuation and retardance dispersions. Through simulation and experimental validation we show two designs, one correcting the polarization aberrations of a dichroic spectral filter over a 170nm wavelength band, and the other correcting the polarization aberration of an aluminum-coated mirror over a 400nm wavelength band and a 55-degree cone of angles. The measured performance of the polarization aberration compensators shows good agreement with theory. 

There is growing evidence on the importance of psychological safety, or how comfortable participants feel in sharing their opinions and ideas in a team, in engineering team performance. However, how to support it in engineering student teams has yet to be explored. The goal of this study was to investigate whether a video intervention with assigned roles could foster psychological safety in student engineering teams. In addition, we sought to explore the impact of the frequency of the videos and the utility of the roles on the self-efficacy of students and the perceived psychological safety of the team. Specifically, this study introduces video interventions and the four lenses of psychological safety (Turn-Taking Equalizer, Point of View Shifter, Affirmation Advocate, and Creativity Promoter), and seeks to determine their effectiveness at increasing psychological safety self-efficacy and individual levels of psychological safety. A pilot study was completed with 54 participants (36 males, 17 females, 1 non-binary/third gender) enrolled in a cornerstone engineering design course. Over 10 weeks, data was collected at 5 time points. The results present four key findings. Most notably, 1) a video educating all students about psychological safety in general was effective in improving psychological safety self-efficacy and students retained this information to the end of the project;2) intervention groups taught to use the four lenses did not have a statistically significant higher level of psychological safety than non- intervention groups; and 3) intervention groups perceived the use of the lenses to increase psychological safety. These results provide a baseline understanding that is needed to support psychological safety including: when to intervene, how to intervene, and how frequently to intervene.