Team entitativity and teacher teams in schools: Towards a typology

In this article we summarise research that discusses ‘teacher teams’. The central question guiding this study is ‘What types of teacher teams are there in schools and can they rightfully be called ‘teams’ or are they merely groups?’. We attempted to answer this question by searching literature on teacher teams and comparing what these articles present as being teacher teams. We attempt to further grasp the concept of teacher teams by creating a typology for defining different types of teacher teams. Overall, the literature pertaining to teacher teams appeared to be characterised by a considerable amount of haziness and teacher ‘teams’ mostly do not seem to be proper ‘teams’ when bearing the criteria of a team as defined by Cohen and Bailey (1997) in mind. The proposed typology, characterising the groups of teachers by their task, whether they are disciplinary or interdisciplinary, whether they are situated within or cross grades en by their temporal duration, seems to be a useful framework to further clarify different sorts of teacher ‘teams’.

Effectiveness of rotavirus vaccination in prevention of hospital admissions for rotavirus gastroenteritis among young children in Belgium : case-control study

Objective : To evaluate the effectiveness of rotavirus vaccination among young children in Belgium. Design : Prospective case-control study. Setting : Random sample of 39 Belgian hospitals, February 2008 to June 2010. Participants : 215 children admitted to hospital with rotavirus gastroenteritis confirmed by polymerase chain reaction and 276 age and hospital matched controls. All children were of an eligible age to have received rotavirus vaccination (that is, born after 1 October 2006 and aged >= 14 weeks). Main outcome measure : Vaccination status of children admitted to hospital with rotavirus gastroenteritis and matched controls. Results : 99 children (48%) admitted with rotavirus gastroenteritis and 244 (91%) controls had received at least one dose of any rotavirus vaccine (P= 12 months. The G2P[4] genotype accounted for 52% of cases confirmed by polymerase chain reaction with eligible matched controls. Vaccine effectiveness was 85% (64% to 94%) against G2P[4] and 95% (78% to 99%) against G1P[8]. In 25% of cases confirmed by polymerase chain reaction with eligible matched controls, there was reported co-infection with adenovirus, astrovirus and/or norovirus. Vaccine effectiveness against co-infected cases was 86% (52% to 96%). Effectiveness of at least one dose of any rotavirus vaccine (intention to vaccinate analysis) was 91% (82% to 95%). Conclusions : Rotavirus vaccination is effective for the prevention of admission to hospital for rotavirus gastroenteritis among young children in Belgium, despite the high prevalence of G2P[4] and viral co-infection

A randomized clinical trial indicates that levamisole increases the time to relapse in children with steroid-sensitive idiopathic nephrotic syndrome

Levamisole has been considered the least toxic and least expensive steroid-sparing drug for preventing relapses of steroid-sensitive idiopathic nephrotic syndrome (SSINS). However, evidence for this is limited as previous randomized clinical trials were found to have methodological limitations. Therefore, we conducted an international multicenter, placebo-controlled, double-blind, randomized clinical trial to reassess its usefulness in prevention of relapses in children with SSINS. The efficacy and safety of one year of levamisole treatment in children with SSINS and frequent relapses were evaluated. The primary analysis cohort consisted of 99 patients from 6 countries. Between 100 days and 12 months after the start of study medication, the time to relapse (primary endpoint) was significantly increased in the levamisole compared to the placebo group (hazard ratio 0.22 [95% confidence interval 0.11-0.43]). Significantly, after 12 months of treatment, six percent of placebo patients versus 26 percent of levamisole patients were still in remission. During this period, the most frequent serious adverse event (four of 50 patients) possibly related to levamisole was asymptomatic moderate neutropenia, which was reversible spontaneously or after treatment discontinuation. Thus, in children with SSINS and frequent relapses, levamisole prolonged the time to relapse and also prevented recurrence during one year of treatment compared to prednisone alone. However, regular blood controls are necessary for safety issues

GeneFarm, structural and functional annotation of Arabidopsis gene and protein families by a network of experts

Genomic projects heavily depend on genome annotations and are limited by the current deficiencies in the published predictions of gene structure and function. It follows that, improved annotation will allow better data mining of genomes, and more secure planning and design of experiments. The purpose of the GeneFarm project is to obtain homogeneous, reliable, documented and traceable annotations for Arabidopsis nuclear genes and gene products, and to enter them into an added-value database. This re-annotation project is being performed exhaustively on every member of each gene family. Performing a family-wide annotation makes the task easier and more efficient than a gene-by-gene approach since many features obtained for one gene can be extrapolated to some or all the other genes of a family. A complete annotation procedure based on the most efficient prediction tools available is being used by 16 partner laboratories, each contributing annotated families from its field of expertise. A database, named GeneFarm, and an associated user-friendly interface to query the annotations have been developed. More than 3000 genes distributed over 300 families have been annotated and are available at http://genoplante-info.infobiogen.fr/Genefarm/. Furthermore, collaboration with the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics is underway to integrate the GeneFarm data into the protein knowledgebase Swiss-Pro

GeneFarm, structural and functional annotation of Arabidopsis gene and protein families by a network of experts

Genomic projects heavily depend on genome annotations and are limited by the current deficiencies in the published predictions of gene structure and function. It follows that, improved annotation will allow better data mining of genomes, and more secure planning and design of experiments. The purpose of the GeneFarm project is to obtain homogeneous, reliable, documented and traceable annotations for Arabidopsis nuclear genes and gene products, and to enter them into an added-value database. This re-annotation project is being performed exhaustively on every member of each gene family. Performing a family-wide annotation makes the task easier and more efficient than a gene-by-gene approach since many features obtained for one gene can be extrapolated to some or all the other genes of a family. A complete annotation procedure based on the most efficient prediction tools available is being used by 16 partner laboratories, each contributing annotated families from its field of expertise. A database, named GeneFarm, and an associated user-friendly interface to query the annotations have been developed. More than 3000 genes distributed over 300 families have been annotated and are available at http://genoplante-info.infobiogen.fr/Genefarm/. Furthermore, collaboration with the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics is underway to integrate the GeneFarm data into the protein knowledgebase Swiss-Prot

Turning points during the life of student project teams: A qualitative study

In this qualitative study a more flexible alternative of conceptualising changes over time in teams is tested within student project teams. The conceptualisation uses turning points during the lifespan of a team to outline team development, based on work by Erbert, Mearns, & Dena (2005). Turning points are moments that made a significant difference during the course of the collaboration as a team. In this study, they are tracked by means of team interviews and reflection papers of team members. A method of coding was created to collect all information about the turning points, their causes and consequences. By means of a thorough analysis of these coded data an overview of their nature and their effects on the rest of the team process as perceived by the team members themselves is provided. Results show that the development paths of the three teams were differentiated in terms of turning points that occurred and, especially, in the order in which the turning points occurred. However four types of turning points (two at the task level en two at the interpersonal level) were remarkable due to their occurrence in all three project teams

Team's anatomy - Exploring changes in teams

Summary Change over time in teams is one of the fundamental aspects of teamwork. However, until now, most research on different topics of teamwork does not take into account that teams are susceptible to expected and unexpected influences from in-and outside of the team. These influences can trigger changes in the team’s way of collaborating and approaching the task. This doctoral dissertation was set up to explore changes in team learning processes and team emergent states over time taking the dynamic nature of teamwork and the unique path of individual teams into account. Those changes were examined within a specific type of team that is commonly used in contemporary organisations, namely project teams. Project teams are a type of knowledge work team. Knowledge work teams are set up to focus on tasks that use cognitive skills of team members. Project teams consist of members with different expertise and are composed with a specific, unique task. This doctoral project entails four studies that each have an individual contribution to the overall goal. Nevertheless, two sub-goals are distinguishable. Study 1 and study 2 were focussed on examining changes over time in the occurrence of team learning behaviours by means of studying the actual verbal interaction between team members. Study 3, a systematic review study, and study 4 addressed a search to implement more flexibility in the conceptualisation of team development and the operationalization of changes in emergent states over time. In chapter 1, the first study was set up to explore the characteristics of team learning behaviours within project teams more in-depth. As an outcome of studying the actual team interactions, several characteristics and interrelations between the different types of team learning behaviours were described. In chapter two, the gathered knowledge about the characteristics of team learning behaviours was used as an input to study the occurrence of team learning behaviours over time. Differences in the occurrence of different types of learning behaviours in teams are mainly attributable to the scope of the meetings observed in terms of the stage of the tasks occupying the teams. Chapter three consists of a review study with the goal to give an overview of all the existing team development models applicable to knowledge work teams. By means of conducting a thematic analysis, three facets for which the identified models differ in their flexibility towards conceptualising changes over time in teams were identified. The identified models were categorised on these three facets ranging them from the least to the most flexible models on the three facets. This created input for the design of an operationalisation of changes in emergent states over time that allows outlining the development of individual teams with respect to their unique path. In chapter four, this new conceptualisation of team development was applied to the studied teams. The turning points during the lifespan of the teams as perceived by the team members of the teams were studied in-depth. This method confirmed the individual nature of the development paths of the three teams in terms of turning points that occurred, their causes, consequences and their position within the lifespan of the teams. In addition, four types of turning points could be identified that occurred within the four teams.status: publishe

Entrainment of Free Tropospheric Aerosols as a Regulating Mechanism for Cloud Condensation Nuclei in the Remote Marine Boundary Layer

Abstract not availableJRC.(IRSA)-Institute For Remote Sensing Application

Turning points during the life of student project teams: A qualitative study

In this qualitative study a more flexible alternative of conceptualising changes over time in teams is tested within student project teams. The conceptualisation uses turning points during the lifespan of a team to outline team development, based on work by Erbert, Mearns, & Dena (2005). Turning points are moments that made a significant difference during the course of the collaboration as a team. In this study, they are tracked by means of team interviews and reflection papers of team members. A method of coding was created to collect all information about the turning points, their causes and consequences. By means of a thorough analysis of these coded data an overview of their nature and their effects on the rest of the team process as perceived by the team members themselves is provided. Results show that the development paths of the three teams were differentiated in terms of turning points that occurred and, especially, in the order in which the turning points occurred. However four types of turning points (two at the task level en two at the interpersonal level) were remarkable due to their occurrence in all three project teams.status: publishe

Team learning in teacher teams: Team entitativity as a bridge between teams-in-theory and teams-in-practice

status: accepte