Integrating community-based learning (CBL) into graduate education has gained attention in higher education during the past decade because CBL allows students to inculcate professional values and ethics, situate academic knowledge and understanding in contexts, and practice academic citizenship through serving communities with disciplinary knowledge and skills. In a North American higher education context, about half of the graduate student population are international students, who have needs in several areas. However, their experiences in CBL are under-investigated and scarcely documented in existing literature and scholarship in either community-based learning or international education. Drawing on international students' experiences in a graduate program infused with CBL components in Canadian higher education, this mixed methods case study examined the impact of CBL on international students' developments in five areas: academic, sociocultural, personal, professional, and global citizenship. Through discussions on the benefit, barriers, and implications of providing CBL to international graduate students, this article offers recommendations for improved higher education policy, programs, and praxis to make CBL more inclusive and responsive to international graduate students. As an educational philosophy, approach, and pedagogy, community-based learning (CBL) provides students with experiential learning opportunities in community settings and outside of classrooms (Bringle & Clayton, 2012). CBL allows students to gain a deeper understanding of course content, a broader appreciation of the discipline, and an enhanced sense of personal values and civic responsibility through community engagement and services

We examine how kindergarten teachers on Prince Edward Island depict both parent involvement in school and its perceived challenges. Data consisted of written responses to two open-ended survey questions completed by 62 participants or 94% of the kindergarten teachers on PEI. Results showed that teachers recognized parent involvement in traditional forms. Barriers included lack of educator time and unproductive school policies. Extending from Epstein’s parent involvement model, if increasingly rich forms of parent involvement are to actualize, educators must be attuned to family vibrancy — the diverse gifts each family possesses; family vibrancy includes the belief that every parent, regardless of socioeconomic status, language abilities, ethnicity, religion, etc., can and does support his/her child’s education to the best of his/her ability.

Despite 40 years of research indicating that parent involvement is important for student achievement, schools have done little to engage parents across Canada. This study and model recommend strategies to enhance the probability of educational involvement for parents who do not speak the school language. The mixed methods research with surveys (N = 86) and interviews (N = 38) identified the successes and challenges of non-francophone parents with children in French minority-language schools. Parents wanted to help but struggled with French schoolwork and school-community involvement. Parents’ low French proficiency and low school effort to facilitate parent communication and comprehension were some of the barriers that led to a decreased sense of parent autonomy and competency. Policy and practices by educators and parent-groups can encourage involvement and support parents in a French minority-language population as they overcome language and insecurity barriers at home or school. The findings can be generalized to support parent involvement in other multilingual contexts. Keywords: parent involvement, minority-language education, French minority language, differentiated parent support model, enhancing parent engagement

Minimally invasive thermal therapy has been investigated as an alternative treatment modality for solid tumours including breast, liver and prostate. Thermal therapy is typically delivered as a single‐fraction, stand‐alone therapy. It involves heating tissues to greater than 55 C over a period of a few minutes, which results in coagulative necrosis. It can potentially achieve highly conformal 3D coagulation volumes, exhibits sharp demarcation between treated and spared tissues, and tissue effects can be observed and thus potentially controlled in real time. This paper describes a new approach to guiding the progress of thermal therapy using optoacoustics, a technique which combines the high optical contrast and high resolution associated with near‐infrared optical imaging and ultrasound imaging, respectively. In this study, thermal lesions were induced in bovine liver ex vivo via non‐contact single fiber laser heating at 810 nm. Optoacoustic signals were obtained using an optoacoustic imaging system comprised of an Nd:YAG pumped Titanium‐Sapphire laser delivering 6 ns pulses and an annular array of 8, 4 MHz transducers. Optoacoustic signal increased up to 2.5 fold with heating times from 1 to 6 minutes. Furthermore, tissue coagulation was clearly visible in the optoacoustic images compared to the surrounding native tissue. The results demonstrate that optoacoustic signals are sensitive to changes in tissue optical and mechanical properties that occur when tissues are thermally damaged, and, hence, optoacoustic imaging may be a suitable candidate for guiding thermal therapy delivery.

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