The Professional Development Practices of Two Reading First Coaches

To establish job-embedded, ongoing professional development recent policies and initiatives required that districts appoint school-based coaches. The Reading First Initiative, for example, created an immediate need for coaches without a clear definition of coaches’ responsibilities. Therefore, the purpose of this case study was to investigate how two Reading First coaches interpreted and enacted their professional development responsibilities. Cross-case analyses identified similarities and differences in coaches’ enactments. Findings revealed that while each coach engaged in similar professional development responsibilities (e.g. modeling, observing, and classroom walkthroughs) their approach to these responsibilities differed — collaborative versus expert driven. These differences in approaches indicate that the preparation for coaches should include development of knowledge about how teachers learn and methods and strategies for developing and implementing effective professional development within schools

Understanding Preservice Teachers’ Beliefs and their Constructions of Knowledge for Teaching Reading to Struggling Readers

This study examined six preservice teachers’ beliefs about struggling readers, as well as their constructions of knowledge for how to teach reading. Interview and artifact data were analyzed to relate preservice teacher beliefs to knowledge construction. Analyses revealed that without practical experiences with reading instruction, preservice teachers’ beliefs centered on student and home deficits, and their construction of knowledge consisted of simple solutions. With more practical experiences, however, preservice teachers’ beliefs shifted to focus on the role of teachers and instruction, and their knowledge construction became more sophisticated. Implications for structuring teacher education programs are discussed

The Importance of Self-Esteem to Students Learning Responsibilities and Group Learning Commitment of Physical Education Students

This study aims to examine the relationship between self-esteem and learning responsibility and group learning commitment of physical education students. We used a quantitative approach, with a correlation design. During the research, there were 88 physical education students from semester VI involved. In collecting the data, we used the State Self-Esteem Scale from Heatherton and Polivy (1991), the Personal Responsibility Questionnaire from Mergler (2007), and the Organization Commitment Scale from Allen and Meyer (1990). The research data were analyzed descriptively and used Pearson correlation with the assistance of SPSS. The descriptive test revealed that self-esteem is quite good (67%), responsibility for learning is relatively good (54.6%), and students’ group learning commitment is quite good (65.9%). Whereas, the Pearson test indicated that there is a positive and significant relationship between self-esteem and learning responsibilities (0.468) and the students’ group learning commitment (0.282). This study emphasizes that lecturers and peers need to support, maintain, and develop positive self-esteem through supportive feedback to encourage students’ learning behavior, such as being responsible and committed to group learning in completing various learning tasks

ЛАТЕРАЛЬНЕ МИСЛЕННЯ ЯК ВАЖЛИВИЙ КОМПОНЕНТ КЛІНІЧНОГО МИСЛЕННЯ МАЙБУТНІХ ЛІКАРІВ

The article analyzes the problem of development of lateral thinking as a component of professional clinical thinking and creativity of future doctors. Such aspects of lateral thinking as logical and critical, its role in the formation of clinical thinking and medical intuition of students of medical institutions are considered. The conclusion about necessity of formation of the developed lateral thinking of medical students, which will give the future doctor an opportunity to generate new ideas, to find original ways of solving clinical problems is made.У статті аналізується проблема розвитку латерального мислення як скла­до­вої професійного клінічного мислення та креативності майбутніх лікарів. Роз­гля­да­ються такі аспекти латерального мислення, як логічність і критичність, йо­го роль у формуванні клінічного мислення та лікарської інтуїції студентів меди­ч­них за­кладів. Зроблено висновок про необхідність формування у студентів-ме­ди­ків роз­винутого латерального ми­слення, яке дасть майбут­ньо­му лікарю мож­ли­вість ге­нерувати нові ідеї, знаходити оригінальні способи розв’язання клінічних проблем

CO2 Emission Factors for Coals

Za izračunavanje emisije ugljikova dioksida zbog izgaranja ugljena, emisijski faktor CO2 važan je ulazni parametar. Referentni emisijski faktori prema Uputama Međuvladinog tijela za klimatske promjene iz 2006. godine (engl. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC) specificirani su prema stupnju pougljenja (coal rank), ali se pri izradi nacionalnog izvješća o stakleničkim plinovima preporučuje primjena nacionalnih emisijskih faktora. Sadržaj ugljika najvažnije je svojstvo ugljena i pokazatelj je stupnja pougljenja (karbonizacije). Međutim mnoga svojstva ugljena vrlo su specifična (npr. sadržaj sumpora, pepela, vlage i macerala) te emisijski faktori CO2 ugljena ne ovise samo o stupnju pougljenja već i o njegovu geografskom porijeklu. U preliminarnom istraživanju, temeljem podataka dobivenih analizom goriva, izračunati su emisijski faktori CO2 za ugljene i treset s područja Livna, BiH: 147,9 t TJ−1 za treset, 109,5 t TJ−1 za lignit i 98,7 t TJ−1 za smeđi ugljen, što odgovara sljedećim donjim ogrjevnim vrijednostima (Hd): 3,6 MJ kg−1, 11,5MJ kg−1 i 20,6 MJ kg−1. Razlika u ogrjevnoj vrijednosti može se djelomično objasniti različitim udjelom ukupne vlage u ispitivanim uzorcima. Usporedba izračunatih emisijskih faktora s referentnim vrijednostima, pokazala je najveća odstupanja kod treseta (39,5 %), potom kod lignita (8,2 %) i smeđeg ugljena (4,3 %).Emission factors are used in greenhouse gas inventories to estimate emissions from coal combustion. In the absence of direct measures, emissions factors are frequently used as a quick, low cost way to estimate emissions values. Coal combustion has been a major contributor to the CO2 flux into the atmosphere. Nearly all of the fuel carbon (99 %) in coal is converted to CO2 during the combustion process. The carbon content is the most important coal parameter which is the measure of the degree of coalification (coal rank). Coalification is the alteration of vegetation to form peat, succeeded by the transformation of peat through lignite, sub-bituminous, bituminous to anthracite coal. During the geochemical or metamorphic stage, the progressive changes that occur within the coal are an increase in the carbon content and a decrease in the hydrogen and oxygen content resulting in a loss of volatiles. Heterogeneous composition of coal causes variation in CO2 emission from different coals. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has produced guidelines on how to produce emission inventories which includes emission factors. Although 2006 IPCC Guidelines provided the default values specified according to the rank of the coal, the application of country-specific emission factors was recommended when estimating the national greenhouse gas emissions. This paper discusses the differences between country-specific emission factors and default IPCC CO2 emission factors, EF(CO2), for coals. Also, this study estimated EF(CO2) for two different types of coals and peat from B&H, on the basis fuel analyses. Carbon emission factors for coal mainly depend on the carbon content of the fuel and vary with both rank and geographic origin, which supports the idea of provincial variation of carbon emission factors. Also, various other factors, such as content of sulphur, minerals and macerals play an important role and influence EF(CO2) from coal. Carbonate minerals (calcite and siderite) directly contribute CO2 when they decompose during coal combustion. Variations in the maceral content can also influence CO2 emissions; high inertinite contents increase CO2 emissions. Sulphur in coal reduces EF(CO2). Fuel analysis is very important when estimating greenhouse gas emissions and emission factors. In this preliminary study, based on the results of the fuel analysis, CO2 emission factors for coals and peat from Livno, B&H have been calculated. EF(CO2) is defined as the amount of carbon dioxide emission per unit net calorific values of the fuel. Net calorific value (the lower heating value) corresponds to the heat produced by combustion where total water in the combustion products exists as water vapour. The EF(CO2) obtained for sub-bituminous coal, lignite and peat were: 98.7, 109.5, and 147.9 t TJ−1, respectively, which correspond to the following net calorific values: 20.6, 11.5 and 3.6 MJ kg−1. The heating value is generally known to increase with the increase in carbon content (this parameter is connected with the degree of coalification, coal age). The other indispensable parameters are hydrogen, which has a positive effect on the net calorific value, and oxygen and water which impact the net calorific value negatively. The differences in net calorific values can be explained in part by the difference of total moisture content among the different fuel types. The CO2 emission factors calculated in this study were compared with those of IPCC. A significant difference was observed for peat (39.5 %), followed by lignite (8.2 %) and sub-bituminous coal (4.3 %)

Gene expression profiling of the dorsolateral and medial orbitofrontal cortex in schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a complex polygenic disorder of unknown etiology. Over 3,000 candidate genes associated with schizophrenia have been reported, most of which being mentioned only once. Alterations in cognitive processing - working memory, metacognition and mentalization - represent a core feature of schizophrenia, which indicates the involvement of the prefrontal cortex in the pathophysiology of this disorder. Hence we compared the gene expression in postmortem tissue from the left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC, Brodmann's area 46), and the medial part of the orbitofrontal cortex (MOFC, Brodmann's area 11/12), in six patients with schizophrenia and six control brains. Although in the past decade several studies performed transcriptome profiling in schizophrenia, this is the first study to investigate both hemispheres, providing new knowledge about possible brain asymmetry at the level of gene expression and its relation to schizophrenia. We found that in the left hemisphere, twelve genes from the DLPFC and eight genes from the MOFC were differentially expressed in patients with schizophrenia compared to controls. In the right hemisphere there was only one gene differentially expressed in the MOFC. We reproduce the involvement of previously reported genes TARDBP and HNRNPC in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia, and report seven novel genes: SART1, KAT7, C1D, NPM1, EVI2A, XGY2, and TTTY15. As the differentially expressed genes only partially overlap with previous studies that analyzed other brain regions, our findings indicate the importance of considering prefrontal cortical regions, especially those in the left hemisphere, for obtaining disease-relevant insights

Conjunct Agreement and Gender in South Slavic: From Theory to Experiments to Theory

Agreement with coordinated subjects in Slavic languages has recently seen a rapid increase in theoretical and experimental approaches, contributing to a wider theoretical discussion on the locus of agreement in grammar (cf. Marušič, Nevins, and Saksida 2007; Bošković 2009; Marušič, Nevins, and Badecker 2015). This paper revisits the theoretical predictions proposed for conjunction agreement in a group of South Slavic languages, with a special focus on gender agreement. The paper is based on two experiments involving speakers of Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS) and Slovenian (Sln). Experiment 1 is an elicited production experiment investigating preverbal-conjunct agreement, while Experiment 2 investigates postverbal-conjunct agreement. The data provide experimental evidence discriminating between syntax proper and distributed-agreement models in terms of their ability to account for preverbal highest-conjunct agreement and present a theoretical mechanism for the distinction between default agreement (which has a fixed number and gender, independent of the value of each conjunct) and resolved agreement (which computes number and gender based on the values of each conjunct and must resolve potential conflicts). Focusing on the variability in the gender-agreement ratio across nine combinations, the experimental results for BCS and Sln morphosyntax challenge the notion of gender markedness that is generally posited for South Slavic languages

When linearity prevails over hierarchy in syntax

Hierarchical structure has been cherished as a grammatical universal. We use experimental methods to show where linear order is also a relevant syntactic relation. An identical methodology and design were used across six research sites on South Slavic languages. Experimental results show that in certain configurations, grammatical production can in fact favor linear order over hierarchical structure. However, these findings are limited to coordinate structures and distinct from the kind of production errors found with comparable configurations such as “attraction” errors. The results demonstrate that agreement morphology may be computed in a series of steps, one of which is partly independent from syntactic hierarchy

РОЗВИТОК ЕМПАТІЙНИХ ЗДІБНОСТЕЙ У СТУДЕНТІВ-МЕДИКІВ

The aim of the work – to study the problem of empathy among medical students, cognitive and emotional direction of empathy. The main body. The study of empathy issues in psychology is of rather long history. The empathy is defined as the human ability to respond emotionally to the worries of another person, animal or any anthropomorphized subject; as an exceptionally emotional phenomenon representing the process of mutual worries – sympathy – internal perception; as realization of emotional state of another person, penetration into the worries of another man; as an ability to touch to emotional life of another person sharing his/her worries; as “transformation” into the position of another man, ability to fell in his/her position; as a sensation reproducing moral unity. In order to study possible relations between empathy and experiencing fault and shame, the empirical research was conducted involving 37 fourth-year students from Bukovyna State Medical University applying the methods of V. V. Boiko to diagnose empathy and J. Tangney to assess feelings of fault and shame. Conclusion. The necessity to investigate the level of empathy abilities of medical students and their continuous development is stipulated by the time as an important constituent of high professional and humane qualities of a modern doctor.Мета роботи – вивчити проблему емпатійності у студентів-медиків, когнітивний та емотивний напрямки емпатій. Основна частина. Вивчення проблеми емпатії в психології має досить тривалу історію. Емпатія визначається як здатність людини емоційно відгукуватися на переживання іншої людини, тварини чи будь-якого антропоморфізованого предмета; як суто емоційний феномен, що репрезентує процес співпереживання – співчуття – внутрішнього прийняття; як осягнення емоційного стану  іншого, як проникнення в переживання іншої людини; як здатність прилучатися до емоційного життя іншого, розділяючи його переживання; як “учуття” в позицію іншого, вміння поставити себе на його місце; як почуття, що передає духовне єднання. Ми провели емпіричне дослідження, у якому вибіркою стали 37 студентів ІV курсу Чернівецького медичного університету і використовувалися методики В. В. Бойка для діагностики емпатії та Дж. Тангней для вимірювання почуття провини та сорому. Здатність до емпатії разом з розвитком таких базових і загальнолюдських моральних за характером почуттів, як провини та сорому, що визначають етичну спрямованість самосвідомості особистості, є професійно важливими якостями для представників допомагаючих професій, зокрема медика. Висновок. Велінням часу є необхідність дослідження рівня емпатійних здібностей студентів-медиків та їх постійний розвиток як важлива складова частина високих професійних і медичних якостей сучасного лікаря