Quality of Teaching and Learning in Science

Quality teaching and learning is linked to the structural and process characteristics of educational systems. Importantly, the role of education policies, of schools and of teachers in promoting high student performance is increasingly recognized (IEA, 2016; Hanushek & Woessmann, 2014). International large-scale surveys (ILSA) such as PISA allow for envisioning what is amenable to change beyond what is determined by culture and to consider reforms that improve learning conditions (Hanushek & Woessmann, 2014). This report focuses on identifying the variation in different teaching practices in the Science classroom and their relation with students’ achievement. Using PISA 2015 data collected in the student and school questionnaires, the report offers an overview of the variations in teaching practices across European Member States (EU MS) and how they relate to students’ Science achievement. For this purpose, we present univariate statistics and we explore the proportion of variance in students’ achievement that can be explained by the use of different teaching practices. More specifically, this report answers the following research question: What is the relationship between teaching practices, the learning environment and students’ achievement in EU MS? A multilevel analysis is used for the available PISA 2015 data including different levels of analysis. These analyses contribute to our understanding of the differences and similarities among countries and provide evidence regarding teaching effectiveness, giving an overview about what works well in the Science classroom in EU MS. This information strengthens the evidence-base and can be used at the EU level to share knowledge about good practices and to inform policy initiatives that focus on high quality teaching (European Commission, 2016). Specific actions in this area are intended to help raise the skills’ levels of pupils and the workforce by improving the effectiveness of education and training systems (European Commission, 2015).JRC.B.4-Human Capital and Employmen

Teacher Costs

The purpose of this technical brief is to assess current methodologies for the collection and calculation of teacher costs in European Union (EU) Member States in view of improving data series and indicators related to teacher salaries and teacher costs. To this end, CRELL compares the Eurydice collection on teacher salaries with the similar Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) data collection and calculates teacher costs based on the methodology established by Statistics Canada as explained in Indicator B7 in Education at a Glance (OECD, 2014). This indicator allows for analysing the different factors that influence teacher costs: teacher salaries, teaching time, instruction hours and student/teacher ratios, as well as class size. The analyses will provide specific information on the contribution of the different factors used to derive the Salary Cost of Teachers per Student (CCS) and how they might depend on the way data for the different factors are collected. On the basis of assessing the different forms of data collection with the same methodology, suggestions for development work that could be undertaken to align the Eurydice and OECD data collections are offered.JRC.DDG.01-Econometrics and applied statistic

Differential Item Functioning (DIF): What Functions Differentlyfor Immigrant Students in PISA 2009 Reading Items?

This analysis focuses on identifying items that present Differential Item Functioning (DIF) between native and immigrant students in the PISA 2009 reading assessment. The findings indicate that thirty-five percent of the 95 items or questions included in the analysis present DIF. This is an important finding because it can help us detect content that is treated differently between different groups of students. In particular, we found that immigrant students perform better than native ones in about half of the items with DIF and that they tend to perform better in questions that relate to situations and types of reading typically done in school settings. Policy measures aimed at ensuring educational achievement for all students can be informed by studies of this kindJRC.G.3-Econometrics and applied statistic

Reading Literacy in EU Countries: Evidences from PIRLS

In this report we used data from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2011 in order to identify the school, class and individual student background factors that explain reading literacy achievement. We aim to identify the factors associated with achievement at different levels of analysis, both at the EU level and at the individual country level using a multilevel model. Additionally, we intend to establish trends in students reading achievement by comparing PIRLS 2006 and PIRLS 2011 cycles. For the data from 2011 we found that our aggregated model explains 37% of the variance in students’ achievement and that the variables with the highest impact on students´ overall reading score relate to home resources and practices, students´ attitudes toward reading and pre-reading knowledge. Moreover, the results of the country-level analysis indicate that the variables with the strongest influence on students’ reading performance are the same, despite of the wide variation across countries in terms of their magnitude due to the characteristics of each country. Furthermore, these findings are in line with the previous analysis performed for PIRLS 2006 (Araújo & Costa, 2012). Our results have important policy implications as they show which factors can be addressed by policy measures to improve students´ achievement.JRC.DDG.01-Econometrics and applied statistic

Conceptual Design of the Cryostat for a Highly Radiation Transparent 2 T Superconducting Detector Solenoid for FCC-ee⁺

The Future Circular Collider electron-positron version (FCC-ee$^{+}$) may be the next step towards a next generation of particle colliders. It may include an Experiment for probing ee$^{+}$ collisions using the IDEA (International Detector for Electron-positron Accelerator), or a similar detector, requiring a solenoid enclosing the inner tracking detector. An innovative 2 T superconducting solenoid with 4 m bore and 6 m long has been accepted as baseline. Positioning the solenoid in between tracker and calorimeter requires an ultra-thin and highly radiation transparent cold mass. Likewise, a thin and radiation transparent cryostat is needed. The set value for the solenoid's maximum radiation length is 1 × X0. The cryostat is designed as a sandwich of thin Aluminum alloy inner and outer shells, eventually locally reinforced, for achieving vacuum tightness, and layers of innovative insulation material providing lowest thermal conductivity and sufficient mechanical resistance. Cryogel Z, a composite blanket of silica aerogel and reinforcing fibers, has a density of 160 kg/m$^{3}$ and would allow a 250 mm cryostat thickness. As an alternative, glass spheres (e.g., K1 type, manufactured by 3M, with a 65μm diameter and a 125 kg/m$^{3}$ density), or similar material, can be dispersed between the vacuum vessel thin-walls providing structural support. Besides the cryostat conceptual design, we outline the setup developed at CERN to represent the real-case cryostat and to measure the heat load transferred through the above-mentioned materials and we present the test results for Cryogel Z

Syndrome of frailty and the use of assistive technologies in elderly / Síndrome da fragilidade e o uso de tecnologias assistivas em idosos

Objetivo: analisar a associação entre a síndrome da fragilidade e o uso de tecnologias assistivas em idosos de um ambulatório. Método: pesquisa transversal, com 374 idosos, entre fevereiro de 2016 a fevereiro de 2017. A coleta de dados contemplou instrumento estruturado e Escala de Fragilidade de Edmonton. Para análise utilizou-se o Stata®12, verificou-se a associação por meio dos testes F de Fisher e t de Student (p≤0,05). Resultados: predomínio de mulheres (67,4%), média de idade de 67,9 anos, casados (56,4%), baixa escolaridade (55,1%). Dos participantes, 4,5% utilizavam bengala, 1,3% muleta e 0,3% andador, 29,4% faziam uso de lentes corretivas, 40,1% dos idosos apresentaram algum grau de fragilidade. As análises bivariada e multivariada apontaram associação positiva entre a fragilidade e bengala (p=0,001). Importante do profissional de saúde, realize o rastreio precoce da fragilidade com destaque para os idosos em uso de tecnologias assistivas, pois podem indicar o comprometimento e perda funcional.

Syndrome of frailty and the use of assistive technologies in elderly / Síndrome da fragilidade e o uso de tecnologias assistivas em idosos

Objetivo: analisar a associação entre a síndrome da fragilidade e o uso de tecnologias assistivas em idosos de um ambulatório. Método: pesquisa transversal, com 374 idosos, entre fevereiro de 2016 a fevereiro de 2017. A coleta de dados contemplou instrumento estruturado e Escala de Fragilidade de Edmonton. Para análise utilizou-se o Stata®12, verificou-se a associação por meio dos testes F de Fisher e t de Student (p≤0,05). Resultados: predomínio de mulheres (67,4%), média de idade de 67,9 anos, casados (56,4%), baixa escolaridade (55,1%). Dos participantes, 4,5% utilizavam bengala, 1,3% muleta e 0,3% andador, 29,4% faziam uso de lentes corretivas, 40,1% dos idosos apresentaram algum grau de fragilidade. As análises bivariada e multivariada apontaram associação positiva entre a fragilidade e bengala (p=0,001). Importante do profissional de saúde, realize o rastreio precoce da fragilidade com destaque para os idosos em uso de tecnologias assistivas, pois podem indicar o comprometimento e perda funcional.

QUIXADÁ COM ÊNFASE NA EVASÃO DE PACIENTES NO PROCESSO DO TRATAMENTO

O presente trabalho abordou os casos de sífilis no município de Quixadá-CE, com o intuito de discutir as causas do abandono do tratamento. Diante desse tema, foi proposto o desafio de integrar as disciplinas (Fisiologia Humana, Bioquímica Geral, Anatomia Cardiovascular e Respiratória e Tópicos Teológicos) do segundo semestre do Curso de Enfermagem da Unicatólica. Formaram usados dados da literatura e da vigilância epidemiológica do município em questão como base para integrar as disciplinas do segundo semestre. Dados da Vigilância Epidemiológica da Secretaria Municipal de Saúde de Quixadá, registraram 04 casos de sífilis não especificada, 44 casos em gestante e 20 casos de sífilis congênita, no período de janeiro a dezembro de 2015.

SARS-CoV-2 introductions and early dynamics of the epidemic in Portugal

Genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in Portugal was rapidly implemented by the National Institute of Health in the early stages of the COVID-19 epidemic, in collaboration with more than 50 laboratories distributed nationwide. Methods By applying recent phylodynamic models that allow integration of individual-based travel history, we reconstructed and characterized the spatio-temporal dynamics of SARSCoV-2 introductions and early dissemination in Portugal. Results We detected at least 277 independent SARS-CoV-2 introductions, mostly from European countries (namely the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Italy, and Switzerland), which were consistent with the countries with the highest connectivity with Portugal. Although most introductions were estimated to have occurred during early March 2020, it is likely that SARS-CoV-2 was silently circulating in Portugal throughout February, before the first cases were confirmed. Conclusions Here we conclude that the earlier implementation of measures could have minimized the number of introductions and subsequent virus expansion in Portugal. This study lays the foundation for genomic epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 in Portugal, and highlights the need for systematic and geographically-representative genomic surveillance.We gratefully acknowledge to Sara Hill and Nuno Faria (University of Oxford) and Joshua Quick and Nick Loman (University of Birmingham) for kindly providing us with the initial sets of Artic Network primers for NGS; Rafael Mamede (MRamirez team, IMM, Lisbon) for developing and sharing a bioinformatics script for sequence curation (https://github.com/rfm-targa/BioinfUtils); Philippe Lemey (KU Leuven) for providing guidance on the implementation of the phylodynamic models; Joshua L. Cherry (National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health) for providing guidance with the subsampling strategies; and all authors, originating and submitting laboratories who have contributed genome data on GISAID (https://www.gisaid.org/) on which part of this research is based. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the view of the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Health and Human Services, or the United States government. This study is co-funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia and Agência de Investigação Clínica e Inovação Biomédica (234_596874175) on behalf of the Research 4 COVID-19 call. Some infrastructural resources used in this study come from the GenomePT project (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-022184), supported by COMPETE 2020 - Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation (POCI), Lisboa Portugal Regional Operational Programme (Lisboa2020), Algarve Portugal Regional Operational Programme (CRESC Algarve2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio