Critical Reflections in STEM Education

The purpose of this course is to foster abilities to teach, assess, and critically reflect on STEM learning that supports authentic engagement in interdisciplinary design and inquiry. Students will engage in making connections to STEM research literature with learning and teaching practice. Field placement in a K-5 learning environment is required for this course, which is typically fulfilled through a candidate’s full time teaching position. Other arrangements are permitted but not provided. This placement is the responsibility of the candidate

Learning to Teach Elementary Students to Construct Evidence-Based Claims of Natural Phenomena.

Engaging in science practices integrated with content facilitates deeper learning of science and is called for by new reforms. Supporting this science learning requires complex teaching that is not common in U.S. classrooms. Given this complexity, beginning elementary teachers need support in learning to engage students in science practices such as constructing evidence-based claims about natural phenomena. A practice-based approach to teacher education, focused on making teaching practice core to professional learning, has been suggested to support beginning teacher development. This approach has shown potential in supporting secondary science teachers’ learning, yet little is known about how it might support preservice elementary teachers’ learning over time. This dissertation addresses this gap by investigating the change in preservice teachers’ teaching practices and knowledge for supporting elementary students in constructing evidence-based claims during a practice-based elementary teacher education program. Using longitudinal qualitative methodology, this study drew on video-records, lesson plans, class assignments, and surveys from one cohort of 54 interns enrolled in a two-year coherent practice-based teacher education program. A subset of five focal interns was followed closely throughout the program. The preservice teachers grew in their ability to support elementary students to construct evidence-based claims incrementally by adding components of the teaching practice over time. Specifically, the teachers typically developed the ability to support students to analyze data earlier than they developed the ability to support students to justify their claims. However, they faced challenges during student teaching in consistently supporting students to construct evidence-based claims. These challenges may be due to the removal of scaffolding in the face of the complexity of fulltime teaching. The findings highlight the potential of a coherent practice-based approach to teacher education. For example, the preservice teachers seemed to draw on courses from across the program in developing their teaching practice. These findings also provide new insights into how teachers learn a teaching practice over time and the factors that influence this learning, such as tools for planning science lessons. The analyses underscore the need for development of and research on tools and scaffolds that might continue to support beginning teaching over time.PhDEducational StudiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113423/1/aarias_1.pd

A confusion matrix for evaluating feature attribution methods

© 2023 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.The increasing use of deep learning models in critical areas of computer vision and the consequent need for insights into model behaviour have led to the development of numerous feature attribution methods. However, these attributions must be both meaningful and plausible to end-users, which is not always the case. Recent research has emphasized the importance of faithfulness in attributions, as plausibility without faithfulness can result in misleading explanations and incorrect decisions. In this work., we propose a novel approach to evaluate the faithfulness of feature attribution methods by constructing an ‘Attribution Confusion Matrix’, which allows us to leverage a wide range of existing metrics from the traditional confusion matrix. This approach effectively introduces multiple evaluation measures for faithfulness in feature attribution methods in a unified and consistent framework. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on various datasets, attribution methods, and models, emphasizing the importance of faithfulness in generating plausible and reliable explanations while also illustrating the distinct behaviour of different feature attribution methods.This work is conducted within the NL4XAI project which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 860621. This work is also supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (grants PID2021-123152OB-C21, TED2021-130295B-C33 and RED2022-134315-T) and the Galician Ministry of Culture, Education, Professional Training and University (grants ED431G2019/04 and ED431C2022/19). These grants were co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF/FEDER program). This work is also supported by the European Union-Horizon 2020 Program under the scheme “INFRAIA-01-2018-2019 - Integrating Activities for Advanced Communities”, Grant Agreement n.871042, “SoBigData++: European Integrated Infrastructure for Social Mining and Big Data Analytics” (http://www.sobigdata.eu) and by the Departament de Recerca i Universitats of the Generalitat de Catalunya under the Industrial Doctorate Grant DI 2018-100.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A Confusion Matrix for Evaluating Feature Attribution Methods

The increasing use of deep learning models in critical areas of computer vision and the consequent need for insights into model behaviour have led to the development of numerous feature attribution methods. However, these attributions must be both meaningful and plausible to end-users, which is not always the case. Recent research has emphasized the importance of faithfulness in attributions, as plausibility without faithfulness can result in misleading explanations and incorrect decisions. In this work., we propose a novel approach to evaluate the faithfulness of feature attribution methods by constructing an ‘Attribution Confusion Matrix’, which allows us to leverage a wide range of existing metrics from the traditional confusion matrix. This approach effectively introduces multiple evaluation measures for faithfulness in feature attribution methods in a unified and consistent framework. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on various datasets, attribution methods, and models, emphasizing the importance of faithfulness in generating plausible and reliable explanations while also illustrating the distinct behaviour of different feature attribution methods

Examining student work for evidence of teacher uptake of educative curriculum materials

The purpose of this study was to identify evidence in student work of teachers' uptake of educative features in educative curriculum materials. These are features in curriculum materials designed with the specific intent of supporting teacher learning and enactment. This study was prompted by previous work on educative curriculum materials and the need to determine how teachers' use of educative curriculum materials can influence student learning. Student work from two fourth‐grade teachers' enactment of an electric circuits unit was analyzed for evidence of teachers' uptake of educative features, which included characteristics of quality for particular science practices. Findings from the student work revealed that the teachers used many of the supports in the educative curriculum materials, especially those that could be used directly with students. The student work also reflected characteristics of high‐quality science practices, which were only supported within the educative features. This study supports and extends other work related to how teachers' use of educative curriculum materials may influence student learning and has implications for supporting teachers' productive engagement in teaching that supports the integration of science content and scientific practices, as emphasized in current reform efforts. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 52: 816–846, 2015.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/112188/1/tea21220-sup-0001-SuppFig_S3.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/112188/2/tea21220-sup-0001-SuppFig_S2.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/112188/3/tea21220.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/112188/4/tea21220-sup-0001-SuppFig_S1.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/112188/5/tea21220-sup-0001-SuppFig_S4.pd

Barley-ß-glucans reduce systemic inflammation, renal injury and aortic calcification through ADAM17 and neutral-sphingomyelinase2 inhibition

In chronic kidney disease (CKD), hyperphosphatemia-induced inflammation aggravates vascular calcification (VC) by increasing vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) osteogenic differentiation, ADAM17-induced renal and vascular injury, and TNFα-induction of neutral-sphingomyelinase2 (nSMase2) to release pro-calcifying exosomes. This study examined anti-inflammatory β-glucans efficacy at attenuating systemic inflammation in health, and renal and vascular injury favoring VC in hyperphosphatemic CKD. In healthy adults, dietary barley β-glucans (Bβglucans) reduced leukocyte superoxide production, inflammatory ADAM17, TNFα, nSMase2, and pro-aging/pro-inflammatory STING (Stimulator of interferon genes) gene expression without decreasing circulating inflammatory cytokines, except for γ-interferon. In hyperphosphatemic rat CKD, dietary Bβglucans reduced renal and aortic ADAM17-driven inflammation attenuating CKD-progression (higher GFR and lower serum creatinine, proteinuria, kidney inflammatory infiltration and nSMase2), and TNFα-driven increases in aortic nSMase2 and calcium deposition without improving mineral homeostasis. In VSMC, Bβglucans prevented LPS- or uremic serum-induced rapid increases in ADAM17, TNFα and nSMase2, and reduced the 13-fold higher calcium deposition induced by prolonged calcifying conditions by inhibiting osteogenic differentiation and increases in nSMase2 through Dectin1-independent actions involving Bβglucans internalization. Thus, dietary Bβglucans inhibit leukocyte superoxide production and leukocyte, renal and aortic ADAM17- and nSMase2 gene expression attenuating systemic inflammation in health, and renal injury and aortic calcification despite hyperphosphatemia in CKD.A grant to A.S.D. and M.J.M. from IRBLleida and Agrotecnio Research collaborative projects from the Consell Social at Lleida University supported initial work, Instituto de Salud Carlos III and co-funded by European Union (ERDF/FEDER) (FIS PI11/00259, PI14/01452, PI17/02181), Plan de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación 2013–2017 y 2018–2022 del Principado de Asturias (GRUPIN14-028, IDI-2018-000152), RedInRen from ISCIII (ISCIII-RETIC REDINREN RD16/0009). Investigator support included: NC-L by GRUPIN14-028 and IDI-2018-000152, LM-A by GRUPIN14-028, SP by FICYT; MVA and PV by Educational Grant 2 A/2015 from ERA-EDTA CKD-MBD Working Group; PV and AC by ERA-EDTA fellowships 2011 and 2012; JR-C by MINECO (“Juan de la Cierva” program, FJCI-2015-23849); A.S.D. by Asociación Investigación de Fisiología Aplicada. A.S.D. and M.J.M. are members of the Campus Iberus (Ebro Valley Campus of International Excellence)

Hàbitat en cova i espai pels ramats ca.6200-6000 BP:La Cova Colomera (Prepirineu de Lleida) durant el Neolític Antic.

En aquest treball es presenten les dades referents a la Cova Colomera (Sant Esteve de la Sarga, Pallars Jussà) durant el Neolític cardial final. A partir de diferents sondejos duts a terme des de l'any 2005, s'ha pogut observar la varietat d'usos i funcionalitats del jaciment en moments potencialment sincrònics. Per una banda,una zona on predominen les estructures de caire domètic (fogars, fosses i forats de pal)que ens mostren les dades entorn a l'hàbitat al jaciment; i per altra banda, un gran sector de la cavitat dedicat a l'estabulació dels ramats amb sediments de tipus fumier i probablement també a l'emmagatzematge. Tot això succeix en unes datacions d'entre 6180 +/- 40 i 6020 +/- 510BP. Aquestes dades es contextualitzen amb les d'altres jaciments de la zona pirinenca, un àmbit que sempre ha estat definit en la bibliografia com un espai de pas entre diferents biòtops ecològics, de les plantes fèrtils a les pastures de l'estiu

Neoadjuvant Intratumoral Immunotherapy with Cowpea Mosaic Virus Induces Local and Systemic Antitumor Efficacy in Canine Mammary Cancer Patients

The lack of optimal models to evaluate novel agents is delaying the development of effective immunotherapies against human breast cancer (BC). In this prospective open label study, we applied neoadjuvant intratumoral immunotherapy with empty cowpea mosaic virus-like particles (eCPMV) to 11 companion dogs diagnosed with canine mammary cancer (CMC), a spontaneous tumor resembling human BC. We found that two neoadjuvant intratumoral eCPMV injections resulted in tumor reduction in injected tumors in all patients and in noninjected tumors located in the ipsilateral and contralateral mammary chains of injected dogs. Tumor reduction was independent of clinical stage, tumor size, histopathologic grade, and tumor molecular subtype. RNA-seq-based analysis of injected tumors indicated a decrease in DNA replication activity and an increase in activated dendritic cell infiltration in the tumor microenvironment. Immunohistochemistry analysis demonstrated significant intratumoral increases in neutrophils, T and B lymphocytes, and plasma cells. eCPMV intratumoral immunotherapy demonstrated antitumor efficacy without any adverse effects. This novel immunotherapy has the potential for improving outcomes for human BC patients

Challenges for climate change adaptation in Latin America and the Caribbean region

The limited success of international efforts to reduce global warming at levels established in the Paris Agreement, and the increasing frequency and strength of climate impacts, highlight the urgent need of adaptation, particularly in developing countries. Unfortunately, current levels of adaptation initiatives are not enough to counteract the observed impacts and projected risks from climate change in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). In this paper, we review and highlight relevant issues that have limited the capacity to transform climate knowledge and parties’ ambitions into action in the region. Current vulnerabilities and climatic impact-drivers in LAC are diverse, complex, and region-specific and their effects are expected to be exacerbated by climate change. However, the advancement of regional and domestic climate agendas has been hindered by scientific gaps, political support, institutional capacity, and financial, technical, human, and economic limitations that are common to many LAC countries. Transforming climate data into multidimensional metrics with useful thresholds for different sectors and understanding their contribution for feasible adaptation strategies are delayed by regional and local conundrums such as lack of inclusive governance, data availability, equity, justice, and transboundary issues. We discuss ways to move forward to develop local and regional climate resilient development actions and a more sustainable future in LAC. The climate science community in LAC needs to strengthen its local, national, and international connections and with decision/policymakers and society to establish a three-way engagement by proposing suitable adaptation actions and international negotiations to reduce the risks and vulnerability associated with climate extremes, climate variability and climate change in the region. The discussions and insights presented in this work could be extrapolated to other countries in the Global South