Preservice Elementary Science Teachers' Argumentation Competence: Impact of a Training Programme

The recent literature has shown the importance of Preservice Elementary Science Teachers (PESTs) having a deep understanding of argumentation, as this factor may affect the nature of the class activities that are taught and what students learn. A lack of understanding of this factor may represent an obstacle in the development of science education programmes in line with the development of scientific competences. This paper presents the results of the design and implementation of a training programme of 6 sessions (12 hours of class participation plus 8 hours of personal homework) on argumentation. The programme was carried out by 57 Spanish PESTs from Malaga, Spain. The training programme incorporates the innovative use of certain strategies to improve competence in argumentation, such as teaching PESTs to identify the elements of arguments in order to design assessment rubrics or by including peer assessment during evaluation with and without rubrics. The results obtained on implementing the training programme were evaluated based on the development of PESTs’ argumentation competence using Toulmin’s argumentative model. Data collection methods involved two tasks carried out at the beginning and the end of the programme, i.e., pre-test and post-test, respectively. The conclusion of the study is that students made significant progress in their argumentation competence on completing the course. In addition, PESTs who followed the training programme achieved statistically better results at the end than those in the control group (n = 41), who followed a traditional teaching programme. A 6-month transfer task showed a slight improvement for the PESTs of the experimental group in relation to the control group in their ability to transfer argumentation to practice, especially to the extent to which they mentioned argumentation in their practice portfolios.This work is part of the “I+D Excelencia” project “Development and evaluation of scientific competences through context based and modelling teaching approaches” case studies (EDU2013-41952-P), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Finance through its 2013 research call

Discovering developmental trajectories and trends of conversational agent research using dynamic topic modeling

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Histological investigation of experimentally induced diabetes effects on the distribution of transforming growth factor (TGF?), nuclear factor kappa b (NF-?b), heat schock 90? (hsp90?) and e-cadherin proteins in testicular tissue [Investigación histológica de los efectos de la diabetes inducida experimentalmente en la distribución del factor de crecimiento transformante (TGF?), nuclear factor kappa b (NF-?b), y proteinas heat schock 90? (hsp90?) y e-cadherina en tejido testicular]

2-s2.0-85099905964Diabetes is a metabolic disorder characterized by high blood sugar levels and it causes complications in many systems, including the reproductive system. As a result of diabetic conditions, one of the mechanisms that can cause repression of reproductive activity is testicular oxidant stress. The identification of diabetes on the cell signaling molecules axis is still under discussion. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of Transforming Growth Factor (TGF?), Nuclear Factor kappa B (NF-?B), Heat-schock 90? (HSP90?) signal pathways and E-cadherin cell adhesion molecule on infertility in diabetic rat testicular tissue. In our study, includes histological, molecular and biochemical analysis of testicular tissue removed at the end of the 2 weeks experiment period. A total of 14 adult male rats were divided as control and diabetes. No intervention was given to 7 male rats in the control group. For the diabetic group, 7 male rats were injected by intraperitoneal with a single dose of 55 mg/kg streptozotocin (STZ). TGF?, NF-?B, HSP90? and E-cadherin proteins were immunohistochemically studied to investigate possible tissue damage, inflammatory process, cell stabilization and integrity due to diabetes. In order to determine oxidant stress, lipid peroxidation product malondialdehyde (MDA), glutathione (GSH) and glutathione peroxidase (GPx) analyzes were performed. Fibrosis, inflammatory changes and loss of spermatogenetic series are prominent findings in the diabetic group. On analysis of all the samples with immunostaining, in the diabetic group, TGF? and NF-?B immunoexpression significantly increased, while Hsp90? and E-cadherin immunoexpression significantly decreased compared with control groups. Experimental diabetes was found to cause fibrosis, inflammation, disrupting cell adhesion and stabilization in testicular tissue. These results suggest that cellular therapy studies are needed for possible damage. © 2021, Universidad de la Frontera. All rights reserved.Ege Üniversitesi: 14-TIP-014-17061Near East University, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Histology and Embryology, Nicosia, Cyprus. 2 Ege University, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Histology and Embryology, Izmir, Turkey. 3 Manisa Celal Bayar University, Faculty of Medicine, Department of HistologyandEmbryology, Manisa, Turkey. 4 Izmir Tınaztepe University, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Histology and Embryology, Izmir, Turkey. 5Near East University, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Medical Biochemistry, Nicosia, Cyprus. 6 Ege University, Institute of Health Sciences, Department of Basic Oncology, Izmir, Turkey. Support: This research was supported by the Ege University Scientific Research Project Coordination, Izmir (Project No. 14-TIP-014-1706