Technology Integration into Differentiated Mathematics Instruction: Teacher Attitudes

Differentiated instruction (DI) is based on the idea that students differ significantly in their interests, learning styles, and readiness, and teaching strategies and decisions involving content, process, and product should vary accordingly[1]. Grimes and Stevens (2009)[2] reported a positive correlation between students’ academic success, motivation, and self-efficacy with its use. DI has also been found to result in improved test scores on district and state assessments in every subject, at every grade level. Beecher’s (2008) study supports the idea that using a DI approach and enriched learning experiences could help close the achievement gap between culturally and economically diverse groups[3]. The use of technology tools has also been shown to result in significantly improved student achievement, student engagement, peer interaction, collaboration, and communication[4] [5]. The attitudes and perceptions of 17 teachers from the Putnam County, GA school district, who attended a summer workshop: “Technology Integration into Math Engagement (TIME): A Professional Development Workshop Integrating Technology Tools in Differentiated Math Instruction for Elementary Teachers” will be shared with conference participants. Technology tools and strategies for utilizing them as aides in differentiating mathematics instruction were shared with the teachers. Teachers participated in a survey to determine perceptions about the value of the workshop activities for differentiation. Patterns/trends in the data, gleaned from the survey and from ongoing follow-up visits to teachers’ classrooms to determine any lasting effects on their attitudes and perceptions, will be shared. [1] Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom: Responding to the needs of all learners. Alexandria, VA: ASCD [2] Grimes, K., & Stevens, D. (2009). Glass, Bug, Mud: A Self-Assessment System Enables Teachers to Differentiate Elementary Mathematics Instruction, Which Boosts Both Student Learning and Students\u27 Sense of Themselves as Mathematicians. Phi Delta Kappan, 90 (9). Retrieved from http://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-200105549/glass-bug-mud-a-self-assessment-system-enables [3] Beecher, M., & Sweeny, S. (2008). Closing the achievement gap with curriculum enrichment and differentiation: One school\u27s story. [Electronic version]. Journal of Advanced Academics, 19(3), 502-530. [4] Fulton, K. (2012, April). The flipped classroom: Transforming education at Byron High School. THE Journal, 39(3), 18–20. [5] Kolb, L. (2011). Why and How: Teachers Using Mobile Phones in K-12. Education Leadership. February 2011

Technology Integration into Differentiated Mathematics Instruction: Teacher Attitudes

Differentiated instruction (DI) is based on the idea that students differ significantly in their interests, learning styles, and readiness, and teaching strategies and decisions involving content, process, and product should vary accordingly[1]. Grimes and Stevens (2009)[2] reported a positive correlation between students’ academic success, motivation, and self-efficacy with its use. DI has also been found to result in improved test scores on district and state assessments in every subject, at every grade level. Beecher’s (2008) study supports the idea that using a DI approach and enriched learning experiences could help close the achievement gap between culturally and economically diverse groups[3]. The use of technology tools has also been shown to result in significantly improved student achievement, student engagement, peer interaction, collaboration, and communication[4] [5]. The attitudes and perceptions of 17 teachers from the Putnam County, GA school district, who attended a summer workshop: “Technology Integration into Math Engagement (TIME): A Professional Development Workshop Integrating Technology Tools in Differentiated Math Instruction for Elementary Teachers” will be shared with conference participants. Technology tools and strategies for utilizing them as aides in differentiating mathematics instruction were shared with the teachers. Teachers participated in a survey to determine perceptions about the value of the workshop activities for differentiation. Patterns/trends in the data, gleaned from the survey and from ongoing follow-up visits to teachers’ classrooms to determine any lasting effects on their attitudes and perceptions, will be shared. [1] Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom: Responding to the needs of all learners. Alexandria, VA: ASCD [2] Grimes, K., & Stevens, D. (2009). Glass, Bug, Mud: A Self-Assessment System Enables Teachers to Differentiate Elementary Mathematics Instruction, Which Boosts Both Student Learning and Students\u27 Sense of Themselves as Mathematicians. Phi Delta Kappan, 90 (9). Retrieved from http://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-200105549/glass-bug-mud-a-self-assessment-system-enables [3] Beecher, M., & Sweeny, S. (2008). Closing the achievement gap with curriculum enrichment and differentiation: One school\u27s story. [Electronic version]. Journal of Advanced Academics, 19(3), 502-530. [4] Fulton, K. (2012, April). The flipped classroom: Transforming education at Byron High School. THE Journal, 39(3), 18–20. [5] Kolb, L. (2011). Why and How: Teachers Using Mobile Phones in K-12. Education Leadership. February 2011

A Probe for Conformational Change of Hsc70 in Mammalian Cells under Stress Conditions

Hsc70 is a constitutively expressed member of the heat shock protein family. It has an important role in proteostasis and can stabilise nonnative proteins before being further matured in refolding, disaggregation, and degradation processes. Hsc70 switches between ATP and ADP bound states, and the hydrolysis of ATP drives the reaction for folding of the unfolded peptide. Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) was used to report this conformational shift. Creation of the FRET probe used variant 3T of Hsc70, which has three cysteines. One is buried in the conformation, and two are surface exposed on different domains. Maleimide Alexa Fluor (AF) dyes were applied to make covalent additions to the reduced cysteines, and conformational change was tracked by FRET. A luciferase refolding assay showed that although these mutations do not interfere with conformational change, they hinder refolding capabilities with substrate peptides. Double labelled Hsc70 3T was transduced into HEK293 cells with varying conditions. It was found that unfiltered samples, imaged with Opti-MEM in the wells, and at the suggested PULSin concentration by the manufacturer was enough to detect fluorescence of AF488 and AF594. Heat shock can be used to determine how these conformations differ under stress and has been observed in live cell microscopy. This makes FRET a suitable technique to study conformational change of Hsc70 3T under cellular stress. All steps to establish a method to study FRET in live cells were optimised and could be done if a confocal microscope were available

Variable Engagement Model for the Design of Fibre Reinforced Concrete Structures

In this paper a model is developed to describe the behaviour of randomly orientated discontinuous fibres in reinforced composites subject to uniaxial tension. The model is built by integrating the behaviour of single, randomly oriented, fibres over 3D space and is capable of describing the peak and post-peak response of fibre-cement-based composites in tension. The model is used to form a constitutive law for use in finite element analysis of reactive powder concrete members with a prestressed reactive powder beam failing in shear analysed. A good correlation between the theoretical and experimental results attained

Annotating patient clinical records with syntactic chunks and named entities: the Harvey corpus

The free text notes typed by physicians during patient consultations contain valuable information for the study of disease and treatment. These notes are difficult to process by existing natural language analysis tools since they are highly telegraphic (omitting many words), and contain many spelling mistakes, inconsistencies in punctuation, and non-standard word order. To support information extraction and classification tasks over such text, we describe a de-identified corpus of free text notes, a shallow syntactic and named entity annotation scheme for this kind of text, and an approach to training domain specialists with no linguistic background to annotate the text. Finally, we present a statistical chunking system for such clinical text with a stable learning rate and good accuracy, indicating that the manual annotation is consistent and that the annotation scheme is tractable for machine learning

Promoting Physical Activity with Hard-to-Reach Women: An Iterative and Participatory Research Study

Approximately half of all UK women are insufficiently physically active, with the lowest activity rates among ‘Hard-to-Reach’ or unreached women. In this article, Kathryn Brook, Dr Andy Pringle FRSPH, Dr Jackie Hargreaves and Dr Nicky Kime of Leeds Beckett University outline their research into developing methods to assess and meet the needs of ‘Hard-to-Reach’ women in needs-led and person-centred interventions

Practitioner Review: effectiveness and mechanisms of change in participatory arts-based programmes for promoting youth mental health and well-being – a systematic review

Background: Participatory arts-based (PAB) programmes refer to a diverse range of community programmes involving active engagement in the creation process that appear helpful to several aspects of children's and young people's (CYP) mental health and well-being. This mixed-methods systematic review synthesises evidence relating to the effectiveness and mechanisms of change in PAB programmes for youth. Method: Studies were identified following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses approach. Eleven electronic databases were searched for studies of PAB programmes conducted with CYP (aged 4–25 years), which reported mental health and well-being effectiveness outcomes and/or mechanisms of change. A mixed-methods appraisal tool assessed study quality. A narrative synthesis was conducted of effectiveness and challenges in capturing this. Findings relating to reported mechanisms of change were integrated via a metasummary. Results: Twenty-two studies were included. Evidence of effectiveness from quantitative studies was limited by methodological issues. The metasummary identified mechanisms of change resonant with those proposed in talking therapies. Additionally, PAB programmes appear beneficial to CYP by fostering a therapeutic space characterised by subverting restrictive social rules, communitas that is not perceived as coercive, and inviting play and embodied understanding. Conclusions: There is good evidence that there are therapeutic processes in PAB programmes. There is a need for more transdisciplinary work to increase understanding of context–mechanism–outcome pathways, including the role played by different art stimuli and practices. Going forward, transdisciplinary teams are needed to quantify short- and long-term mental health and well-being outcomes and to investigate optimal programme durations in relation to population and need. Such teams would also be best placed to work on resolving inter-disciplinary methodological tensions

Evaluating Acupuncture and Standard carE for pregnant women with Back pain (EASE Back): a feasibility study and pilot randomised trial.

BACKGROUND: Many pregnant women experience low back pain. Acupuncture appears to be a safe, promising intervention but evidence is needed about its clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. OBJECTIVES: To assess the feasibility of a future large randomised controlled trial (RCT) testing the additional benefit of adding acupuncture to standard care (SC) for pregnancy-related back pain. DESIGN: Phase 1: a questionnaire survey described current care for pregnancy-related back pain. Focus groups and interviews with midwives, physiotherapists and pregnant women explored acceptability and feasibility of acupuncture and the proposed RCT. Phase 2: a single-centre pilot RCT. Participants were identified using six methods and randomised to SC, SC plus true acupuncture or SC plus non-penetrating acupuncture. PARTICIPANTS: Phase 1: 1093 physiotherapists were surveyed and 15 midwives, 21 physiotherapists and 17 pregnant women participated in five focus groups and 20 individual interviews. Phase 2: 125 women with pregnancy-related back pain participated. INTERVENTIONS: SC: a self-management booklet and onward referral for one-to-one physiotherapy (two to four sessions) for those who needed it. SC plus true acupuncture: the self-management booklet and six to eight treatments with a physiotherapist comprising true (penetrating) acupuncture, advice and exercise. SC plus non-penetrating acupuncture: the self-management booklet and six to eight treatments with a physiotherapist comprising non-penetrating acupuncture, advice and exercise. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Pilot RCT outcomes included recruitment rates, treatment fidelity, follow-up rate, patient-reported pain and function, quality of life and health-care resource use. Birth and neonatal outcomes were also assessed. Staff overseeing outcome data collection were blind to treatment allocation. RESULTS: Phase 1: 629 (57.5%) physiotherapists responded to the survey, 499 were experienced in treating pregnancy-related back pain and reported 16 advice and 18 treatment options. Typical treatment comprised two to four individual sessions of advice and exercise over 6 weeks. Acupuncture was reported by 24%. Interviews highlighted the impact of back pain and paucity of effective interventions. Women and midwives strongly supported a RCT and expressed few concerns. Physiotherapists' concerns about acupuncture in pregnancy informed a training programme prior to the pilot RCT. Phase 2: We recruited 125 of 280 potentially eligible women (45%) in 6 months and randomised 41 to SC and 42 each to the SC plus true acupuncture and SC plus non-penetrating acupuncture arms. Analysis was conducted with 124 participants (41, 42 and 41, respectively) as one participant was randomised in error. Three of six recruitment methods were the most successful. In total, 10% of women (n?=?4) randomised to SC alone accessed one-to-one physiotherapy and received an average of two treatments. The average number of treatments was six for both SC plus true acupuncture and SC plus non-penetrating acupuncture. Treatments were in line with protocols. Eight-week follow-up was 74%. Patient-reported outcomes (pain, function and quality of life) favoured the addition of acupuncture. There was no evidence of serious adverse events on mothers or birth and neonatal outcomes. The Pelvic Girdle Questionnaire was found to be an appropriate outcome measure for a future trial. CONCLUSIONS: A future main RCT is feasible and would be welcomed by women and clinicians. Longer-term follow-up and further follow-up efforts are recommended for a main trial. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN49955124. FUNDING: This project was funded by the National Institute of Health Research Health Technology Assessment programme and will be published in full in Health Technology Assessment; Vol. 20, No. 33. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information

Meeting Report: Moving Upstream—Evaluating Adverse Upstream End Points for Improved Risk Assessment and Decision-Making

Background Assessing adverse effects from environmental chemical exposure is integral to public health policies. Toxicology assays identifying early biological changes from chemical exposure are increasing our ability to evaluate links between early biological disturbances and subsequent overt downstream effects. A workshop was held to consider how the resulting data inform consideration of an “adverse effect” in the context of hazard identification and risk assessment. Objectives Our objective here is to review what is known about the relationships between chemical exposure, early biological effects (upstream events), and later overt effects (downstream events) through three case studies (thyroid hormone disruption, antiandrogen effects, immune system disruption) and to consider how to evaluate hazard and risk when early biological effect data are available. Discussion Each case study presents data on the toxicity pathways linking early biological perturbations with downstream overt effects. Case studies also emphasize several factors that can influence risk of overt disease as a result from early biological perturbations, including background chemical exposures, underlying individual biological processes, and disease susceptibility. Certain effects resulting from exposure during periods of sensitivity may be irreversible. A chemical can act through multiple modes of action, resulting in similar or different overt effects. Conclusions For certain classes of early perturbations, sufficient information on the disease process is known, so hazard and quantitative risk assessment can proceed using information on upstream biological perturbations. Upstream data will support improved approaches for considering developmental stage, background exposures, disease status, and other factors important to assessing hazard and risk for the whole population

Assessment of data quality in a multi-centre cross-sectional study of participation and quality of life of children with cerebral palsy

BACKGROUND: SPARCLE is a cross-sectional survey in nine European regions, examining the relationship of the environment of children with cerebral palsy to their participation and quality of life. The objective of this report is to assess data quality, in particular heterogeneity between regions, family and item non-response and potential for bias. METHODS: 1,174 children aged 8–12 years were selected from eight population-based registers of children with cerebral palsy; one further centre recruited 75 children from multiple sources. Families were visited by trained researchers who administered psychometric questionnaires. Logistic regression was used to assess factors related to family non-response and self-completion of questionnaires by children. RESULTS: 431/1,174 (37%) families identified from registers did not respond: 146 (12%) were not traced; of the 1,028 traced families, 250 (24%) declined to participate and 35 (3%) were not approached. Families whose disabled children could walk unaided were more likely to decline to participate. 818 children entered the study of which 500 (61%) self-reported their quality of life; children with low IQ, seizures or inability to walk were less likely to self-report. There was substantial heterogeneity between regions in response rates and socio-demographic characteristics of families but not in age or gender of children. Item non-response was 2% for children and ranged from 0.4% to 5% for questionnaires completed by parents. CONCLUSION: While the proportion of untraced families was higher than in similar surveys, the refusal rate was comparable. To reduce bias, all analyses should allow for region, walking ability, age and socio-demographic characteristics. The 75 children in the region without a population based register are unlikely to introduce bias