Fostering teacher community development: A review of design principles and a case study of an innovative interdisciplinary team

To deal with recent reforms and the accompanying complexity of work in secondary education, ongoing collaboration between teachers has become more important. A community is seen as a promising learning environment to support and embed collaboration into the culture of the school. However, community theory for the design of teacher communities seems underdeveloped. Therefore, this study aims to formulate a set of design principles to foster the development of teacher communities in secondary education. The set of design principles is based on a review of literature, as well as on a best-practice case. The case study was used to validate design principles from the literature in the target context. The resulting design principles were based on context-intervention-mechanismoutcome logic that takes into account the context-dependency of interventions as well as the mechanisms that help with understanding of how interventions produce certain outcomes. Implications for practice relate to ownership and co-design of the arrangement. The set of design principles provides a practical basis for teachers and administrators aiming to facilitate community building in their school. Future research is recommended on testing the effectiveness of the arrangement in the target context by means of a multiple case study.NWO-pro

Epithelial cancers in the post-genomic era: should we reconsider our lifestyle?

The age-related epithelial cancers of the breast, colorectum and prostate are the most prevalent and are increasing in our aging populations. Epithelial cells turnover rapidly and mutations naturally accumulate throughout life. Most epithelial cancers arise from this normal mutation rate. All elderly individuals will harbour many cells with the requisite mutations and most will develop occult neoplastic lesions. Although essential for initiation, these mutations are not sufficient for the progression of cancer to a life-threatening disease. This progression appears to be dependent on context: the tissue ecosystem within individuals and lifestyle exposures across populations of individuals. Together, this implies that the seeds may be plentiful but they only germinate in the right soil. The incidence of these cancers is much lower in Eastern countries but is increasing with Westernisation and increases more acutely in migrants to the West. A Western lifestyle is strongly associated with perturbed metabolism, as evidenced by the epidemics of obesity and diabetes: this may also provide the setting enabling the progression of epithelial cancers. Epidemiology has indicated that metabolic biomarkers are prospectively associated with cancer incidence and prognosis. Furthermore, within cancer research, there has been a rediscovery that a switch in cell metabolism is critical for cancer progression but this is set within the metabolic status of the host. The seed may only germinate if the soil is fertile. This perspective brings together the different avenues of investigation implicating the role that metabolism may play within the context of post-genomic concepts of cancer