Self-study: a developing research approach for professional learning

In this article the authors consider the ‘self-study’ research approach that has been used particularly in teacher education contexts in North America and Australia. They explore the concept of self-study and its use as a research approach for practitioners. They identify its limited, but growing use in Europe and focus on developments in the field of teacher education at the University of Hertfordshire, UK

Once & For All: Placing a Highly Qualified Teacher in Every Philadelphia Classroom

Quality teaching matters - particularly for low-income, inner-city students who perform below grade level. But these students are often taught by the least-qualified and least-experienced teachers. Philadelphia schools will not be able to improve student performance dramatically without more teachers who have the skills, experience, and rich content knowledge needed to help every student achieve high standards.Once & For All: Placing a Highly Qualified Teacher in Every Philadelphia Classroom examines the current status of teacher quality in the city and what the School District of Philadelphia is now doing to ensure that all classrooms have highly trained, motivated, and knowledgeable teachers ready to boost the achievement of the district's 188,000 students.For the first time, thanks to information provided by the School District of Philadelphia, researchers have been able to identify what we know about the qualifications, experience, and school assignment patterns of Philadelphia's 11,700-member teaching force. The study was conducted by a group of scholars who have launched Learning from Philadelphia's School Reform, a three-year research project designed to measure and help the public understand the impact of the 2001 state takeover of the Philadelphia schools, the school management partnerships undertaken with external for-profit and non-profit organizations, and the reforms initiated by the state and city-appointed School Reform Commission (SRC) members and School District of Philadelphia CEO Paul Vallas.Led by Research for Action (RFA), a Philadelphia non-profit, the research team includes investigators from the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education and the Wharton School, the Philadelphia Education Fund, Swarthmore College, Rutgers University, the Consortium on Chicago School Research, and other organization

Transparency in Early Childhood Education: What the West Can Learn from Australia’s Focus on Well-Being

The landscape of early childhood education and care has become unrecognizable in many countries, particularly in the West. There is an increasing pressure to focus on outcomes over process, prescribed curricula, standardized assessments, and unrealistic academic expectations for young learners and the adults who work on their behalf.  This shift in educational practice has become a harsh reality for many young children, families and educators.  The purpose of this paper is to challenge these mounting pressures through an in-depth examination of how early education and care in Australia places well-being as one of the top priorities for young children. Australia was deliberately identified for this analysis because of international acclaim received for its highly praised national early childhood framework as well as the steadfast and visible commitment to education and care for its youngest citizens.  Using multiple contexts and narratives, three key features are described that demonstrate how early education practices in Australia counter Western beliefs about who children are and how they learn. These three features are: (a) a strong sense about holistic well-being, (b) truth about place, and (c) living in harmony with the natural world. Ideas for global education reform are proposed as one way of joining with other voices to protect young children across the world.

Marion Mahony Griffin and The Magic of America: recovery, reaction and re-entrenchment in the discourse of architectural studies

The discourse that defines and supports the discipline of architectural studies has historically focused its attention on the study and veneration of great men and great monuments, a focus that has erased the contributions of many women in the field. By examining the secondary scholarship surrounding one such woman, architect and theorist Marion Mahony Griffin (1871--1961), this paper argues that women are invisible in the history of architecture because they are described in ways that dismiss their contributions, characterize them as essentially different from male architects, and undermine their status as real architects. A long and complex involvement of women in architectural practice has been written out of history because habits of scholarship accept and reassert the culturally received notion that men build while women decorate. This case study reveals the cultural assumptions that inform and reinforce practices of scholarship that habitually ignore women, and their architectural and theoretical work, suggesting this is not a problem that disappeared with the introduction of feminist scholarship to the discipline. In fact, after a decade of scholarly recovery of women\u27s architectural contributions, a strong backlash has swept into the area of Griffin studies, confronting not just the historical figure of Mahony Griffin, but disciplining the scholars whose speculation has attempted to open the field to a wider range of research questions

Understanding the cellular behaviour of the luminescent lanthanide complexes

The design of responsive optical cellular probes remains a key challenge for biology and medicine. Luminescent lanthanide complexes are well suited for this purpose, with their information-rich emission profiles, and long luminescence lifetimes which allow gating out of interfering background signals. In order to design complexes for in cellulo applications, it is important to gain a greater understanding of the cellular behaviour of such complexes. This thesis describes work performed to this end. The studies described herein utilise a broad range of complexes synthesised in Durham. These complexes comprise a Eu(^3+) or Tb(^3+) ion encapsulated in a cyclen macrocycle to which is attached a sensitising chromophore and two or three amide- or carboxylate-based pendant arms. The synthesis and characterisation of one set of such complexes is described. Modification of the pendant arm was shown to result in considerable variation of the complex helicity and structure, but with no alteration in the cellular behaviour. This thesis also describes work which was performed to explore various aspects of cellular behaviour. The range of observed sub-cellular localisations are described, structure-localisation relationships presented and the observation of nucleolar localisation in some cases investigated. Studies of uptake mechanisms indicated that all complexes are transported across the cell membrane by a common pathway of macropinocytosis. Examples of various sub-cellular speciation states are presented, with detailed investigation of one case of reversible protein binding which induces a helicity change in the complex in an enantioselective fashion. Finally, the effect of the complexes on the cellular homeostasis is discussed, with the finding that complexes do not generally perturb the normal function of the cell. This work therefore demonstrates that most luminescent lanthanide complexes do exhibit behaviour which makes them suitable for use as cellular probes. They are generally non-toxic, readily internalised and localise to specific organelles, and have demonstrated utility in reporting on the sub-cellular environment

The Experience of African American Hospice Patient/Family with Board Certified Music Therapy as a Component of their Plan of Care

No Abstract Availabl

High resolution optical analysis of Nav1.6 localization and trafficking

2015 Summer.Voltage-gated sodium (Naᵥ) channels are responsible for the depolarizing phase of the action potential in most nerve cell membranes. As such, these proteins are essential for nearly all functions of the nervous system including thought, movement, sensation, and many other basic physiological processes. Neurons precisely control the number, type, and location of these important ion channels. The density of Naᵥ channels within the axon initial segment (AIS) of neurons can be more than 35-fold greater than that in the somatodendritic region and this localization is vital to action potential initiation. Dysfunction or mislocalization of Naᵥ channels is linked to many diseases including epilepsy, cardiac arrhythmias, and pain disorders. Despite the importance of Naᵥ channels, knowledge of their trafficking and cell-surface dynamics is severely limited. Research in this area has been hampered by the lack of modified Naᵥ constructs suitable for investigations into neuronal Naᵥ cell biology. This dissertation demonstrates the successful creation of modified Naᵥ1.6 cDNAs that retain wild-type function and trafficking following expression in cultured rat hippocampal neurons. The Naᵥ1.6 isoform is emphasized because it 1) is the most abundant Naᵥ channel in the mammalian brain, 2) is involved in setting the action potential threshold, 3) controls repetitive firing in Purkinje neurons and retinal ganglion cells, 4) and can contain mutations causing epilepsy, ataxia, or mental retardation. Using single-molecule microscopy techniques, the trafficking and cell-surface dynamics of Naᵥ1.6 were investigated. In contrast to the current dogma that Naᵥ channels are localized to the AIS of neurons through diffusion trapping and selective endocytosis, the experiments presented here demonstrate that Naᵥ1.6 is directly delivered to the AIS via a vesicular delivery mechanism. The modified Naᵥ1.6 constructs were also used to investigate the distribution and cell-surface dynamics of Naᵥ1.6. Somatic Naᵥ1.6 channels were observed to localize to small membrane regions, or nanoclusters, and this localization is ankyrinG independent. These sites, which could represent sites of localized channel regulation, represent a new Naᵥ localization mechanism. Channels within the nanoclusters appear to be stably bound on the order of minutes to hours, while non-clustered Naᵥ1.6 channels are mobile. Novel single-particle tracking photoactivation localization microscopy (spt-PALM) analysis of Naᵥ1.6-Dendra2 demonstrated that the nanoclusters can be modeled as energy wells and the depth of these interactions increase with neuronal age. The research presented in this dissertation represents the first single-molecule approaches to any Naᵥ channel isoform. The approaches developed during the course of this dissertation research will further our understanding of Naᵥ1.6 cell biology under both normal and pathological conditions

Discovery and Development of KDM4B Inhibitors to Target Periodontal Disease Progression

Periodontal disease (PD) affects nearly half of the adult United States population and is characterized by bacterial-driven inflammatory bone loss. Traditional and emerging treatments for periodontitis management do not typically target the host immune response, which is the major source of tissue damage. The demethylation activity of lysine-specific demethylase 1 (KDM1A) at histone 3 lysine 4 leads to a decrease in pro-inflammatory cytokine transcription. By contrast, lysine specific demethylase 4B (KDM4B) is a histone demethylase that specifically demethylates histone 3 trimethyllysine 9 (H3K9me3). Interestingly, previous data has shown that cross talk between these two enzymes leads to a balanced system wherein lysine 9 methylation serves as a prerequisite to lysine 4 demethylation by KDM1A. The studies outlined in this dissertation will exploit this crosstalk for the design of new potential therapies for PD. The central hypothesis of this dissertation is that promotion of KDM1A activity by introduction of a specific KDM4B inhibitor will alleviate PD by controlling the overactive immune system in diseased areas, enabling the host to better manage the disease. This hypothesis was tested through completion of the following Specific Aims: Specific Aim 1: To mechanistically define the role of KDM4B in periodontal inflammation; Specific Aim 2: To design a novel inhibitor of KDM4B for adjunctive treatment of PD inflammation, and Specific Aim 3: To evaluate novel and known KDM4B inhibitors for in vivo activity as anti-inflammatory agents. KDM4B inhibition prevented the A.a-induced immune response in vitro and in vivo. KDM4B inhibition also reduced osteoclast formation in vitro and bone loss in vivo. KDM4B activity is heightened in periodontal disease in clinical tissues as well as in murine calvarial tissue sections treated with A.a. KDM4B inhibition mediated immunosuppression relies on the concurrent overactivation of KDM1A. Computational chemical screens identified several hit scaffolds, one of which was optimized using phenotypic screen guided binary QSAR. From an extensive in silico derivative library, 25 novel derivatives were synthesized, 8 of which caused significant immunosuppression