IMPACT OF PRACTICAL EDUCATION NETWORK ON STUDENTS AND TEACHERS IN THE GHANAIAN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM

The Ghanaian education system has a pervasive teacher-centered pedagogy, lack or absence of laboratory materials, poor-quality teacher training, and minimal support systems for teachers. Practical Education Network is an organization which addresses these problems by training science teachers through workshops about how to utilize locally-available, affordable materials in order to teach topics in the national curriculum in an inquiry-based manner. Three hundred and twenty-four students in six different Junior High Schools in the Greater Accra Region participated in a year-long, quasi-experimental study in order to test the impact that the PEN approach has on students\u27 classroom environment, critical thinking skills, attitudes towards science, and standardized test scores. Additionally, teachers’ ability to setup materials, facilitate the lesson, and deliver the objective was also examined. The data indicates that the PEN approach had a beneficial impact on students\u27 classroom environment, attitudes towards science, and standardized test scores. The data also suggests that teachers were most comfortable with setup of materials, and least comfortable with delivery of the objective

Impact of Practical Education Network on Students in Selected Ghanaian Junior High School Science Classrooms

Within the science education community, it is widely accepted that quality science instruction is focused on knowledge construction and inquiry. The Ghanaian education system has many hallmark issues that inhibit such instruction, however, including a pervasive teacher-centred pedagogy, lack of laboratory materials, and minimal support systems for teachers. The Practical Education Network (PEN) is an organisation that has been working to address these problems by training science teachers to utilise locally available, affordable materials to teach topics in the national science curriculum in a hands-on manner. To study the impact that the use of the PEN approach to hands-on learning has on students’ critical thinking skills, attitudes towards school science and standardised test scores, over 300 students in six Junior High Schools in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana participated in a year-long, quasi-experimental study. The data from comparison and experimental groups consisted of scores on a national standardised test, a pre/post-test simulating the national examination, and a pre/post student survey. The data were analysed for any differences between the two student groups over time. The findings indicated that the PEN approach had a beneficial impact on students’ attitudes towards school science and standardised test scores. There was inconclusive evidence of the impact of the PEN approach on critical thinking skills. The findings suggest that the PEN approach may positively impact science instruction

Plant Functional Biodiversity is Influenced by Soil Moisture and Spatial Scaling

Color poster with text and graphs.Community assembly is the result of ecological selection processes, dispersal processes, and random drift processes. Selection processes can cause coexisting species to be more similar or more different in traits, depending on the strength of environmental filtering or resource partitioning. Differences in functional traits is also known as functional diversity. The “stress-dominance hypothesis” suggests that environmental stress causes environmental filtering and trait similarity, and a lack of stress causes greater resource partitioning and trait dissimilarity. While there have been some investigations of this in plants, there are very few if any studies of this in invertebrates. We sampled vegetation at three spatial grain sizes (0.1 m2, 1 m2, and 10 m2) to investigate how grain size may influence our conclusions about community assembly.University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire Office of Research and Sponsored Program

Spider Functional Biodiversity is Positively Correlated with Plant Functional Biodiversity

Color poster with text, diagrams, and graphs.Community assembly is the result of ecological selection processes, dispersal processes, and random drift processes. Selection processes can cause coexisting species to be more similar or more different in traits, depending on the strength of environmental filtering or resource partitioning. Differences in functional traits are also known as functional diversity. The “stress-dominance hypothesis suggests that environmental stress causes environmental filtering and trait similarity; and a lack of stress causes greater resource partitioning and trait dissimilarity. While there have been some investigations of this in plants, there are very few, if any, studies of this in invertebrates. We chose spiders because they are readily found in every terrestrial habitat and because they exhibit a high degree of functional diversity in body size, body shape, eyes, and mouthparts.University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire Office of Research and Sponsored Program

Age and frailty are independently associated with increased COVID-19 mortality and increased care needs in survivors: results of an international multi-centre study

Introduction: Increased mortality has been demonstrated in older adults with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), but the effect of frailty has been unclear. Methods: This multi-centre cohort study involved patients aged 18 years and older hospitalised with COVID-19, using routinely collected data. We used Cox regression analysis to assess the impact of age, frailty and delirium on the risk of inpatient mortality, adjusting for sex, illness severity, inflammation and co-morbidities. We used ordinal logistic regression analysis to assess the impact of age, Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS) and delirium on risk of increased care requirements on discharge, adjusting for the same variables. Results: Data from 5,711 patients from 55 hospitals in 12 countries were included (median age 74, interquartile range [IQR] 54–83; 55.2% male). The risk of death increased independently with increasing age (>80 versus 18–49: hazard ratio [HR] 3.57, confidence interval [CI] 2.54–5.02), frailty (CFS 8 versus 1–3: HR 3.03, CI 2.29–4.00) inflammation, renal disease, cardiovascular disease and cancer, but not delirium. Age, frailty (CFS 7 versus 1–3: odds ratio 7.00, CI 5.27–9.32), delirium, dementia and mental health diagnoses were all associated with increased risk of higher care needs on discharge. The likelihood of adverse outcomes increased across all grades of CFS from 4 to 9. Conclusion: Age and frailty are independently associated with adverse outcomes in COVID-19. Risk of increased care needs was also increased in survivors of COVID-19 with frailty or older age.</p