Foundations of a socio-cultural perspective on teacher performance assessment

In this chapter, we are concerned with the theories of learning underpinning models of assessment for preservice teachers in urban contexts. One fundamental premise in this chapter is that teacher performance assessment ought to document teacher learning. In outlining this perspective, we draw specifically on the sociocultural perspectives on learning and development that have grown primarily out of the work of Russian psychologists Vygotsky, Leont’ev, and Luria

Re-imagining initial teacher identity and learning study: final report

The aim of this research, the Re-imagining Initial Teacher Identity and Learning Study (RIITILS) was to continue writing from and to extend the Learning to Teach Study 1 (LETS1). LETS1, funded by the Department of Education and Skills (DES), was the first study of its kind on the Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) in Ireland, and involved the development and implementation of a study of initial teacher education in the PGDE in post-primary education, in one School of Education. Its aim was to identify the individual and contextual dynamics of how student teachers develop curricular and cross-curricular competences during initial teacher education (ITE). Within an overall framework that explored how student teachers develop their skills, competences and identity as teachers, it focused on curricular competences in mathematics, science and language teaching, and on the cross-curricular competences of reading and digital literacy and the development of inclusive teaching practices. LETS1 was the first programme level research on the PGDE, familiarly known to generations of student teachers and teachers as ‘the Dip’ or ‘the HDip’. Similarly, RIITILS involved a programme level study of the ‘Dip’, since renamed the Professional Diploma in Education (PDE). We use LETS 2 to denote data collection on undertaken in this second study. LETS 2 utilised and extends three key findings from Learning to Teach Study 1 (LETS 1): post-primary teachers struggled to enact the meaning of ‘real world’ experiences in maths, had limited understanding of how reading literacy impacted their subject and while they felt ready to teach did not feel able to promote inclusion. Using LETS 1 as a unique data set, LETS 2 updated it by collecting data from the 2012/2013 PDE cohort, and extended it by focusing on student teacher development (through interviews, survey and artefacts) to examine how mathematics student teachers engaging with reform oriented Project Maths, in particular, engage with the ‘real world’, reading literacy and inclusion. Drawing on research on teacher education both in Ireland and internationally, the RIITILS report is divided into four main sections: (i) an introduction and overview of the study, (ii) a summary of RIITILS activities including conferences (one in collaboration with US National Science Foundation-funded FIRSTMATH study; and another on the reform and redesign of initial teacher education through deepening engagement with pedagogy, which featured keynote addresses on Japanese Lesson Study in mathematics), as well as participation in local (Institute for Social Sciences in the 21st Century: ISS21) and international (e.g. US National Science Foundation funded TEDS/FIRSTMATH) networks (iii) findings from the four strands of the research: Teacher education policy, mathematics, literacy in subject areas and school university partnerships, and (iv) a list of publications in the form of book chapters, conference proceedings, articles – both published and in progress - from LETS 1 and this IRC-funded study during 2012-13. The IRC-funded RIITILS provided essential support to bring a large number of co-authored publications to conclusion, as well as initiate a number of others. Prior to this IRC-funded study, in addition to the main report and executive summary, two journal articles based on LETS 1 were published: ‘Novice teachers as invisible learners’ (Long et al, 2012, Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice), ‘Authoring oneself and being authored as a competent teacher’ (Hall et al, 2012, Irish Educational Studies). Publications based on data from LETS 1 and LETS 2 that have been published from work undertaken during the life-cycle of this 2012-13 IRC funded Advanced Collaborative Research Award focus on: a critical discourse analysis of teacher education policy (Conway, 2013; Conway & Murphy, 2013), teacher education programme design (Conway et al, 2012), literacy in initial teacher education (Murphy et al, 2013, in press), teacher identity (Rutherford, et al, 2013, in press), workplace learning and initial teacher education (Conway, Murphy & Rutherford, 2014, in press; Conway & Munthe, 2014, in press), pilot of FIRSTMATH (Conway, et al, 2014, in press). A number of other articles, involving co-authorship by various configurations of LETS 1 and/or LETS 2 researchers, have been submitted for review and focus on: inclusion and ‘othering’ in teacher education (Kitching et al), current practices and future directions in school-university partnerships in initial teacher education (Connolly et al), the changing construction of literacy from LETS 1 to LETS 2 among student teachers (Conway et al), a Bernsteinian analysis of curricular emotions among student teachers of mathematics (Rutherford et al), a case study, employing a Bakhtinian-framework, of one student teacher’s construction of reform-oriented Project Maths (Rutherford et al), an analysis of changing conceptions of adolescent literacy and their significance for initial teacher education (Curtin et al), student teachers’ construction of modern language teaching (McKeon et al). A number of other manuscripts are well developed and are due for submission shortly and are detailed in the report. Like LETS 1, RIITILS is framed within a socio-cultural perspective on learning, and adopted a mixed methods research design. RIITILS involved four work strands: (i) policy analysis of the rapidly changing teacher education landscape in Ireland, (ii) an analysis of student teachers’ understanding and teaching of mathematics (particularly problem solving in the context of reform-oriented Project Maths), (iii) an analysis of student teachers’ understanding and teaching of literacy in their subject area and (iv) one-to-one and focus group interviews with three schools that have well-developed practices for supporting PDE students. Building directly on LETS 1, LETS 2 data collection on the PDE involved a survey of PDE student teachers, as well as interviews. Nine (n=9) students, who first or second subject was mathematics were interviewed at intervals over the course of the PDE programme, a focus group drawn from the wider group of mathematics pedagogy students was held, and one hundred and two students (n=102) responded to and completed a detailed survey on their learning to teach experience which had been distributed to the entire PDE 2012-2013 cohort. Among the dimensions of learning to teach addressed in the findings are the rapidly changing teacher education policy landscape in Ireland (Strand 1), significantly shaped by both new Teaching Council regulations as well as a policy step change in response to the results from the OECD’s PISA 2009. Strand 2 findings on the teaching of mathematics draw on two theoretical frames to present findings on mathematics teaching in an era of reform: (i) a Bernsteinian analysis of the classification and framing of emotions in mediating student teachers’ construction of mathematics pedagogy, and (ii) a Bakhtinian analysis of the discursive construction of problem solving narrated through a detailed case study of one student teacher who though, he ‘knows maths and likes maths’, as the article title indicates1, grapples with teaching Project Maths given the significant leap it represents from his own experience of learning of mathematics as a student at second and third level. This case conveys the vivid manner in which PDE students are typically experiencing the difference between their own experiences of learning mathematics in second and third level compared to what is now expected of them in teaching Project Maths. Strand 3 provides an analysis of how PDE students constructed literacy in their subject teaching, drawing on data from both the 2008-09 and 2012-13 cohorts and suggests both continuity and some important changes over time. In particular, whereas in LETS 1 student teachers typically associated literacy with support for students for whom English was a second language or had literacy difficulties, there was a notable emphasis on, and sense of responsibility by student teachers for, the wider role of literacy in their subject teaching for all - not just some - students. Strand 4 focuses on school university partnerships, a key aspect of initial teacher education, and as with LETS 1, the role of observation, mentoring and support in schools for PDE students was the focus of analysis. There was a significant increase in observation opportunities for student teachers from LETS 1 to LETS 2, and these opportunities, as was the case in LETS 1, were significantly associated with the presence of school level coordination. From LETS 1 to LETS 2, there was a small decline in the presence of school level coordinators, while assigned and sought after mentoring opportunities were similar, and there was a small increase in the number of student teachers that had no mentor, that is, school level, assigned or sought after, available to them in their school. In addition, LETS 2 identified a range of generative practices in some schools including: (i) discussion between cooperating/mentor teacher and PDE student after university tutor visits, (ii) a school resource book for mentor teachers, passed on year-to-year by the staff person designated to provide overall school coordination for PDE students, and (iii) a planning notebook shared between PDE students and their subject mentor teacher. Many of the findings from the Learning to Teach Studies are not unique to the PDE or to UCC but reflect perennial dilemmas and emerging challenges in the changing landscape of initial teacher education in Ireland and internationally. This fact is important in setting a context for the wider dissemination2 of the findings from Learning to Teach Studies 1 and 2. In conclusion, the purpose of this report was to present the main outcomes of the Re-imagining Initial Teacher Identity and Learning Study in terms of focus, activities and publications. In doing so the report presents work completed as well as on-going analysis and writing given the scale of both studies. Four ideas emerged as important in thinking about the implications of this study: (i) connected maths and reconfiguring experiences past and present, (ii) broadening engagement with literacy within subject teaching, (iii) deepening engagement with pedagogy in schools between PDE student and school mentors, and (iv) bridging between school and university and brokerage within both institutions. These four ‘big ideas’ are, we argue, worthy of attention at two levels, that is, both in terms of the redesign of initial teacher education and in the research on those reformed practices

Laptops initiative for students with dyslexia or other reading and writing difficulties: Evaluation report of early implementation, 2002-2003

This evaluation report presents findings from the early implementation of the Laptops Initiative for students with dyslexia and other reading and writing difficulties during the period December 2000 to September 2003. The report situates the Laptop Initiative in the context of the national and international focus on how best to integrate ICTs into the daily fabric of teaching and learning with a concurrent policy move toward providing support for students with learning difficulties in mainstream settings. These three themes - early implementation, ICT/technology integration, and provision of learning support for students in mainstream settings - are the central themes in the report. The overarching project goal was to identify how laptops and other portable ICT equipment can best be used to support students with dyslexia or other reading and writing difficulties in a manner that facilitates learning, and access to learning, in an inclusive environment.The first phase of the evaluation work on the early implementation involved orientation to the personnel, scope and developments to date in the project (January- March 2003). This phase involved meeting with relevant NCTE and DES personnel (the Director of the NCTE, the Project Coordinator, NCTE's National Coordinator for Special Needs, NCTE's Project Officer for Special Needs, and the DES Inspector providing advice to the project coordination team), meeting teachers in two focus group meetings in March 2003, review of some relevant literature on laptop and ICT initiatives and planning the case study phase of the evaluation. The second phase (April-July 2003) of the evaluation focused on gathering case study data in four selected schools, preparing an initial draft of sections of the report summarising data gathered during the March Focus Group meetings and outlining a framework for the school case studies. The third phase (August-November 2003) of the evaluation involved revisiting the case study schools and the development, administration and analysis of a school survey which was sent to principals. The subsequent report on the early implementation of the Laptops Initiative documents the development of the project from its inception in December 2000 to various strands of development at national, school and classroom levels until end of September 2003. The various interview protocols, survey instruments and other data collection guidelines are contained in the report as appendices.This evaluation of the Laptop Initiative reflects the early development of the project. In many respects the Laptop Initiative could be seen as the SIP of SIPs, (SIP being the acronym for the School Integration Project, one of the three strands in the Schools IT 2000 initiative). That is, the Laptop Initiative provides an opportunity to examine a large-scale school integration pilot project across thirty-one post-primary schools, with a number of supporting conditions such as: the freedom given to each school to design and craft the project according to its locally identified needs and strengths, funding for substitute teacher cover to support participating teachers, an experienced seconded project coordinator supporting the schools, with additional support provided by local ICT advisors, NCTE personnel overseeing and providing further expertise to the project, involvement of principals in national project meetings, in-service days and further training for teachers and principals, and a Laptop Initiative newsletter designed to support teachers in sharing their Laptops Initiative-related teaching practices. There are a number of very positive developments and overarching observations worth reiterating at this point: Teachers, principals, and students alike are generally very positive about the project and see it as having made a worthwhile contribution to literacy learning. They identified significant successes to date, real obstacles to its fuller implementation, as well as areas for future development. Over a thousand students have been using the laptops across the thirty-one schools. Students were positive about their laptop-related learning experiences. The 2002-03 year marked a turning point during which many teachers and principals moved from being somewhat skeptical about the initiative to being strongly committed to its actual benefits and further potential. The Laptops Initiative is well rooted in almost all participating schools. Schools made very significant progress during 2002-03 in purchasing, organising, planning, developing awareness of the project in other schools and distributing the laptops for use across different class and year groups. The dominant approach to provision of support for students with learning difficulties in literacy is withdrawal. Consequently, to date, the laptops have fitted into rather than transformed provision for students with dyslexia and other reading and writing difficulties. As such, dominant organisational and cultural patterns tend to exert a significant and powerful assimilationist pressure on innovations such as the Laptops Initiative. Significantly more boys than girls are involved in the project. The fixed model of laptop deployment (allocating laptops to one location) has been the dominant model for laptop management to date. However, many schools have also used the floating model (allowing students to bring laptops around the school) and a small number have allowed students to occasionally bring a laptop home, that is, use of the fostered model

Cardiovascular disease biomarkers are associated with declining renal function in type 2 diabetes

Aims/hypothesis: We investigated whether biochemical cardiovascular risk factors and/or markers of subclinical cardiovascular disease were associated with the development of reduced renal function in people with type 2 diabetes. Methods: A cohort of 1066 Scottish men and women aged 60–74 years with type 2 diabetes from the Edinburgh Type 2 Diabetes Study were followed up for a median of 6.7 years. New-onset reduced renal function was defined as two eGFRs <60 ml−1 min−1 (1.73 m)−2 at least 3 months apart with a > 25% decline from baseline eGFR. Ankle brachial pressure index (ABI), N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) and high-sensitivity troponin T (hsTnT) were measured at baseline. Pulse wave velocity (PWV) and carotid intima media thickness were measured 1 year into follow-up. Data were analysed using Cox proportional hazards models. Results: A total of 119 participants developed reduced renal function during follow-up. ABI, PWV, NT-proBNP and hsTnT were all associated with onset of decline in renal function following adjustment for age and sex. These associations were attenuated after adjustment for additional diabetes renal disease risk factors (systolic BP, baseline eGFR, albumin:creatinine ratio and smoking pack-years), with the exception of hsTnT which remained independently associated (HR 1.51 [95% CI 1.22, 1.87]). Inclusion of hsTnT in a predictive model improved the continuous net reclassification index by 0.165 (0.008, 0.286). Conclusions/interpretation: Our findings demonstrate an association between hsTnT, a marker of subclinical cardiac ischaemia, and subsequent renal function decline. Further research is required to establish the predictive value of hsTnT and response to intervention

Seasonal variations of glaciochemical, isotopic and stratigraphic properties in Siple Dome (Antarctica) surface snow

Six snow-pit records recovered from Siple Dome, West Antarctica, during 1994 are used to study seasonal variations in chemical (major ion and H202), isotopic (deuterium) and physical stratigraphic properties during the 1988-94 period. Comparison of δD measurements and satellite-derived brightness temperature for the Siple Dome area suggests that most seasonal SD maxima occur within ±4 weeks of each 1 January. Several other chemical species (H2O2, non-sea-salt (nss) SO4 2-, methanesulfonic acid and NO3-) show coeval peaks with SD, together providing an accurate method for identifying summer accumulation. Sea-salt-derived species generally peak during winter/spring, but episodic input is noted throughout some years. No reliable seasonal signal is identified in species with continental sources (nssCa2+ nss Mg2+), NH4 + or nssCl-. Visible strata such as large depth-hoar layers (\u3e5 cm) are associated with summer accumulation and its metamorphosis, but smaller hoar layers and crusts are more difficult to interpret. A multi-parameter approach is found to provide the most accurate dating of these snow-pit records, and is used to determine annual layer thicknesses at each site Significant spatial accumulation variability exists on an annual basis, but mean accumulation in the sampled 10 km2 grid for the 1988-94 period is fairly uniform

Learning to teach (LETS): developing curricular and cross curricular competences in becoming a 'good' secondary teacher: executive summary

The aim of this research, the Learning to Teach Study (LETS), the first of its kind on the Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) in Ireland, funded by the Department of Education and Skills (DES), was to develop and implement a study of initial teacher education in the PGDE in post-primary education, in the School of Education, University College Cork. Its aim was to identify the individual and contextual dynamics of how student teachers develop curricular and cross-curricular competences during initial teacher education (ITE). Within an overall framework that explores how student teachers develop their skills, competences and identity as teachers, it focuses on curricular competences in mathematics, science and language teaching, and on the cross-curricular competences of reading and digital literacy and the development of inclusive teaching practices. LETS is the first programme level research on the PGDE, familiarly known to generations of student teachers and teachers as ‘the Dip’ or ‘the HDip’. Drawing on research on teacher education both in Ireland and internationally, the LETS report is divided into six sections encompassing thirteen chapters. Section 1 includes the review of literature and study aims in Chapter 1 and the research methodology in Chapter 2. Adopting an interpretive approach, LETS involved the collaborative development of three interviews protocols and a survey by the research team. Seventeen (n=17) students were interviewed three times over the course of PGDE programme, and one hundred and thirty three students completed a detailed survey on their learning to teach experience (n=133, i.e. response rate of 62.7% of the 212 students in the PGDE 2008/09 cohort). The four chapters in Section 2 focus on professional identity as a central dimension of learning to teach. Among the dimensions of learning to teach addressed in this section are the role of observation and cultural scripts in becoming a teacher, the visibility/invisibility of PGDE students as learners and the relationships between emotions, resilience and commitment to teaching. The three chapters in Section 3 focus on mathematics, modern languages and science respectively in the context of conventional and reform-oriented visions of good teaching. A number of common as well as subject-specific themes emerged in this section in relation to subject matter teaching. Section 4 focuses on PGDE students’ experience of inclusion (chapter 10) and reading literacy (chapter 11) while learning to teach. Section 5 focuses on a key aspect of initial teacher education, namely, the school-university partnership. The final section provides a summary of the findings, identifies seven key issues emerging from these findings, makes Learning to Teach Study (LETS) recommendations under four headings (system, teacher education institutions, partnerships in ITE and further research) and discusses some implications for research, policy and practice in initial teacher education. Among the main findings emerging from the study are: (i) schools provide valuable support for PGDE students but this typically does not focus on classroom pedagogy, (ii) PGDE students typically felt that they had to be ‘invisible’ as learners in schools to gain and maintain authority and status, (iii) inherited cultural scripts about what it means to be a ‘good’ subject teacher shaped teacher identity and classroom practice, and (iv) as PGDE students begin to feel competent as teachers of maths, modern languages and science, this feeling of competence typically does not include their capacity to teach for inclusion and reading literacy within their subject teaching. In the context of research on teacher education, many of the findings are not unique to the PGDE or to UCC but reflect perennial dilemmas and emerging challenges in initial teacher education. This fact is important in setting a context for the wider dissemination2 of the Learning to Teach Study

Oral activated charcoal prevents experimental cerebral malaria in mice and in a randomized controlled clinical trial in man did not interfere with the pharmacokinetics of parenteral artesunate.

BACKGROUND: Safe, cheap and effective adjunct therapies preventing the development of, or reducing the mortality from, severe malaria could have considerable and rapid public health impact. Oral activated charcoal (oAC) is a safe and well tolerated treatment for acute poisoning, more recently shown to have significant immunomodulatory effects in man. In preparation for possible efficacy trials in human malaria, we sought to determine whether oAC would i) reduce mortality due to experimental cerebral malaria (ECM) in mice, ii) modulate immune and inflammatory responses associated with ECM, and iii) affect the pharmacokinetics of parenteral artesunate in human volunteers. METHODS/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We found that oAC provided significant protection against P. berghei ANKA-induced ECM, increasing overall survival time compared to untreated mice (p<0.0001; hazard ratio 16.4; 95% CI 6.73 to 40.1). Protection from ECM by oAC was associated with reduced numbers of splenic TNF(+) CD4(+) T cells and multifunctional IFNgamma(+)TNF(+) CD4(+) and CD8(+) T cells. Furthermore, we identified a whole blood gene expression signature (68 genes) associated with protection from ECM. To evaluate whether oAC might affect current best available anti-malarial treatment, we conducted a randomized controlled open label trial in 52 human volunteers (ISRCTN NR. 64793756), administering artesunate (AS) in the presence or absence of oAC. We demonstrated that co-administration of oAC was safe and well-tolerated. In the 26 subjects further analyzed, we found no interference with the pharmacokinetics of parenteral AS or its pharmacologically active metabolite dihydroartemisinin. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: oAC protects against ECM in mice, and does not interfere with the pharmacokinetics of parenteral artesunate. If future studies succeed in establishing the efficacy of oAC in human malaria, then the characteristics of being inexpensive, well-tolerated at high doses and requiring no sophisticated storage would make oAC a relevant candidate for adjunct therapy to reduce mortality from severe malaria, or for immediate treatment of suspected severe malaria in a rural setting. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Controlled-Trials.com ISRCTN64793756

A sentence completion procedure as an alternative to the Autobiographical Memory Test for assessing overgeneral memory in non-clinical populations

Overgeneral memory (OGM) has been proposed as a vulnerability factor for depression (Williams et al., 2007) or depressive reactivity to stressful life-events (e.g., Gibbs & Rude, 2004). Traditionally, a cue word procedure known as the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT; Williams & Broadbent, 1986) is used to assess OGM. Although frequently and validly used in clinical populations, there is evidence suggesting that the AMT is insufficiently sensitive to measure OGM in non-clinical groups. Study 1 evaluated the usefulness of a sentence completion method to assess OGM in non-clinical groups, as an alternative to the AMT. Participants were 197 students who completed the AMT, the Sentence Completion for Events from the Past Test (SCEPT), a depression measure, and visual analogue scales assessing ruminative thinking. Results showed that the mean proportion of overgeneral responses was markedly higher for the SCEPT than for the standard AMT. Also, overgeneral responding on the SCEPT was positively associated to depression scores and depressive rumination scores, whereas overgeneral responding on the AMT was not. Results suggest that the SCEPT, relative to the AMT, is a more sensitive instrument to measure OGM, at least in non-clinical populations. Study 2 further showed that this enhanced sensitivity is most likely due to the omission of the instruction to be specific rather than to the SCEPT's sentence completion format (as opposed to free recall to cue words)

Seasonal Variations of Glaciochemical, Isotopic and Stratigraphic Properties in Siple Dome (Antarctica) Surface Snow

Six snow-pit records recovered from Siple Dome, West Antarctica, during 1994 are used to study seasonal variations in chemical (major ion and H2O2), isotopic (deuterium) and physical stratigraphic properties during the 1988-94 period. Comparison of dD measurements and satellite-derived brightness temperature for the Siple Dome area suggests that most seasonal dD maxima occur within ±4 weeks of each 1 January. Several other chemical species (H2O2, non-sea-salt (nss) SO42-, methanesulfonic acid and NO3-) show coeval peaks with dD, together providing an accurate method for identifying summer accumulation. Sea-salt-derived species generally peak during winter/spring, but episodic input is noted throughout some years. No reliable seasonal signal is identified in species with continental sources (nssCa2+, nssMg2+), NH4+ or nssCl-. Visible strata such as large depth-hoar layers (\u3e5 cm) are associated with summer accumulation and its metamorphosis, but smaller hoar layers and crusts are more difficult to interpret. A multi-parameter approach is found to provide the most accurate dating of these snow-pit records, and is used to determine annual layer thicknesses at each site. Significant spatial accumulation variability exists on an annual basis, but mean accumulation in the sampled 10 km2 grid for the 1988-94 period is fairly uniform

A new fireworm (Amphinomidae) from the Cretaceous of Lebanon identified from three-dimensionally preserved myoanatomy

© 2015 Parry et al. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. The attached file is the published version of the article