Teacher education and problem based learning: exploring the issues and identifying the benefits

Problem Based Learning has been used with increasing frequency in Higher Education settings since it was first conceived by Barrows and Tamblyn during the 1980’s. Since this time PBL has been used in medical, engineering and education faculties to support pre-service students in the acquisition of skills and content relevant to their professions. This paper explores the perceptions pre-service teachers held of a unit of study conducted using the PBL approach. The paper explores the frustrations they experienced in participating in the unit as well as noting the perceived benefits for the students. The paper indicates that the students’ frustrations should be acknowledged and steps taken to alleviate these in order to support students working within a PBL scenario. Opportunity for further research in this area is also described

Environmental profiles of construction materials, components and buildings for the UK

A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology for construction products has been established with UK construction materials producers. The method provides "level-playing field" LCA for all types of construction materials. Environmental Profiles provide a consideration of materials as part of building elements, including maintenance and replacement. A software tool called ENVEST TM uses this data to analyse the whole building. This gives the impact of the structure and operational impacts of a design over a set lifetime, in UK Ecopoints. The use of Ecopoints for life cycle assessment results enables environmental issues to be integrated into life cycle design alongside financial costs

The UK stand together trial: protocol for a multicentre cluster randomised controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of KiVa to reduce bullying in primary schools

Background Reducing bullying is a public health priority. KiVa, a school-based anti-bullying programme, is effective in reducing bullying in Finland and requires rigorous testing in other countries, including the UK. This trial aims to test the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of KiVa in reducing child reported bullying in UK schools compared to usual practice. The trial is currently on-going. Recruitment commenced in October 2019, however due to COVID-19 pandemic and resulting school closures was re-started in October 2020. Methods Design: Two-arm pragmatic multicentre cluster randomised controlled trial with an embedded process and cost-effectiveness evaluation. Participants: 116 primary schools from four areas; North Wales, West Midlands, South East and South West England. Outcomes will be assessed at student level (ages 7–11 years; n = approximately 13,000 students). Intervention: KiVa is a whole school programme with universal actions that places a strong emphasis on changing bystander behaviour alongside indicated actions that provide consistent strategies for dealing with incidents of bullying. KiVa will be implemented over one academic year. Comparator: Usual practice. Primary outcome: Student-level bullying-victimisation assessed through self-report using the extensively used and validated Olweus Bully/Victim questionnaire at baseline and 12-month follow-up. Secondary outcomes: student-level bullying-perpetration; student mental health and emotional well-being; student level of, and roles in, bullying; school related well-being; school attendance and academic attainment; and teachers’ self-efficacy in dealing with bullying, mental well-being, and burnout. Sample size: 116 schools (58 per arm) with an assumed ICC of 0.02 will provide 90% power to identify a relative reduction of 22% with a 5% significance level. Randomisation: recruited schools will be randomised on 1:1 basis stratified by Key-Stage 2 size and free school meal status. Process evaluation: assess implementation fidelity, identify influences on KiVa implementation, and examine intervention mechanisms. Economic evaluation: Self-reported victimisation, Child Health Utility 9D, Client Service Receipt Inventory, frequency of services used, and intervention costs. The health economic analysis will be conducted from a schools and societal perspective. Discussion This two-arm pragmatic multicentre cluster randomised controlled trial will evaluate the KiVa anti-bullying intervention to generate evidence of the effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and scalability of the programme in the UK. Our integrated process evaluation will assess implementation fidelity, identify influences on KiVa implementation across England and Wales and examine intervention mechanisms. The integrated health economic analysis will be conducted from a schools and societal perspective. Our trial will also provide evidence regarding the programme impact on inequalities by testing whether KiVa is effective across the socio-economic gradient

Patient-specific cancer genes contribute to recurrently perturbed pathways and establish therapeutic vulnerabilities in esophageal adenocarcinoma

Abstract: The identification of cancer-promoting genetic alterations is challenging particularly in highly unstable and heterogeneous cancers, such as esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC). Here we describe a machine learning algorithm to identify cancer genes in individual patients considering all types of damaging alterations simultaneously. Analysing 261 EACs from the OCCAMS Consortium, we discover helper genes that, alongside well-known drivers, promote cancer. We confirm the robustness of our approach in 107 additional EACs. Unlike recurrent alterations of known drivers, these cancer helper genes are rare or patient-specific. However, they converge towards perturbations of well-known cancer processes. Recurrence of the same process perturbations, rather than individual genes, divides EACs into six clusters differing in their molecular and clinical features. Experimentally mimicking the alterations of predicted helper genes in cancer and pre-cancer cells validates their contribution to disease progression, while reverting their alterations reveals EAC acquired dependencies that can be exploited in therapy

BRE methodology for environmental profiles of construction materials, components and buildings

Reliable and independent environmental information about building materials and components is in high demand. Environmental Profiles provide a useful way of providing this information. To assist the working architect, client or building specifier, this information must be produced according to an agreed methodology. This is a standardised way of identifying and assessing the environmental effects of building materials over their entire life cycle, through their extraction, processing, construction, use and maintenance and their eventual demolition and disposal

Everyday environmental education experiences: the role of content in early childhood education

In recent years discussions surrounding early childhood curriculum have focused on the movement from developmental to sociocultural theory. A further area worthy of investigation involves the role of content in early childhood education, specifically the relationship between content, context and pedagogy. The article draws on teacher vignettes to consider how environmental education can be represented as a content area in early years education. Issues associated with environmental education as an emerging area of importance in early childhood education are also discussed. Environmental education provides a context by which children and teachers can construct everyday knowledge and offers a useful basis for examining issues associated with content in early childhood education. From this perspective, highly authentic learning experiences can be utilised to examine how teachers conceive content in early childhood education and how content knowledge is intersected with pedagogical knowledge to achieve intended environmental education outcomes with young children

Beyond “killing, screaming and being scared of insects”: learning and teaching about biodiversity in early childhood education

Learning about sustainability is now understood to be an important part of early childhood education. An important knowledge area associated with sustainability is biodiversity. Learning about biodiversity helps young children understand the importance of relationships between living and non-living things and local habitats. This type of knowledge is a necessary basis for the formation of attitudes that are respectful of the environment. In this paper we share the findings from research that examined three different types of play-based learning, including open-ended play, modelled play and purposefully framed play. We look at how these play types were understood by teachers to support learning and teaching about biodiversity in early childhood education. We define play-based learning using Wood and Attfield’s concept of pedagogical play, and consider which of these play types connects most strongly with the Vygotskian-inspired idea that content provides a context for broadening children’s learning experiences in meaningful ways