Beyond evidence : a critical appraisal of global warming as a socio-scientific issue and a reflection on the changing nature of scientific literacy in school

Peer reviewedPostprin

Septins restrict inflammation and protect zebrafish larvae from Shigella infection

Shigella flexneri, a Gram-negative enteroinvasive pathogen, causes inflammatory destruction of the human intestinal epithelium. Infection by S. flexneri has been well-studied in vitro and is a paradigm for bacterial interactions with the host immune system. Recent work has revealed that components of the cytoskeleton have important functions in innate immunity and inflammation control. Septins, highly conserved cytoskeletal proteins, have emerged as key players in innate immunity to bacterial infection, yet septin function in vivo is poorly understood. Here, we use S. flexneri infection of zebrafish (Danio rerio) larvae to study in vivo the role of septins in inflammation and infection control. We found that depletion of Sept15 or Sept7b, zebrafish orthologs of human SEPT7, significantly increased host susceptibility to bacterial infection. Live-cell imaging of Sept15-depleted larvae revealed increasing bacterial burdens and a failure of neutrophils to control infection. Strikingly, Sept15-depleted larvae present significantly increased activity of Caspase-1 and more cell death upon S. flexneri infection. Dampening of the inflammatory response with anakinra, an antagonist of interleukin-1 receptor (IL-1R), counteracts Sept15 deficiency in vivo by protecting zebrafish from hyper-inflammation and S. flexneri infection. These findings highlight a new role for septins in host defence against bacterial infection, and suggest that septin dysfunction may be an underlying factor in cases of hyper-inflammation

Activation of p38MAPK Contributes to Expanded Polyglutamine-Induced Cytotoxicity

The signaling pathways that may modulate the pathogenesis of diseases induced by expanded polyglutamine proteins are not well understood.Herein we demonstrate that expanded polyglutamine protein cytotoxicity is mediated primarily through activation of p38MAPK and that the atypical PKC iota (PKCiota) enzyme antagonizes polyglutamine-induced cell death through induction of the ERK signaling pathway. We show that pharmacological blockade of p38MAPK rescues cells from polyglutamine-induced cell death whereas inhibition of ERK recapitulates the sensitivity observed in cells depleted of PKCiota by RNA interference. We provide evidence that two unrelated proteins with expanded polyglutamine repeats induce p38MAPK in cultured cells, and demonstrate induction of p38MAPK in an in vivo model of neurodegeneration (spinocerebellar ataxia 1, or SCA-1).Taken together, our data implicate activated p38MAPK in disease progression and suggest that its inhibition may represent a rational strategy for therapeutic intervention in the polyglutamine disorders

Reviewing the potential and challenges of developing STEAM education through creative pedagogies for 21st learning: how can school curricula be broadened towards a more responsive, dynamic, and inclusive form of education?

Reviewing the Potential and Challenges of Developing STEAM Education through Creative Pedagogies for 21st Century Learning: how can school curricula be broadened towards a more responsive, dynamic and inclusive form of education? Globally, the term STEAM is used to indicate ways in which the Arts or art-practices (and sometimes more broadly the Humanities and Social sciences) engage with the STEM subjects of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. The number of students choosing post-compulsory study of STEM subjects is seen as being critical to a country’s economic success, yet concerns have been expressed about the way those subjects are currently taught, specifically: a lack of creativity; a need to focus on inter- and multidisciplinary work; a need for a broader conception of science, and STEM’s marginalisation of concerns for society and the environment. Populist accounts may argue for having more creatively-minded scientists, and a more scientifically literate wider population. Instead, the Commission uncovered a much richer and complex set of purposes and possibilities for STEAM education. The arguments for the inclusion of the Arts in STEM in education then are wide-ranging, extending from contributing to making science education more appealing, through to seeding development of more embodied, affective, and interdisciplinary models of school education. For the first time, this BERA Research Commission reviewed STEAM education and gauged the potential for STEAM-like approaches in interesting young people in science. At the same time, the Research Commission also considered the value of STEAM in encouraging a broader understanding of science and technology, encouraging debate about the wider role of science in society, and seeing the value of science as being more than just its contribution to the economy

Posthumanising transdisciplinary pedagogies: New directions for democratising how the arts and sciences can teach creatively together.

Our global community is at a pivotal juncture caught between a future of environmental and social instability on the one hand, and one of technological and technocratic determinism on the other. Such state of affairs require us to rethink how we understand, articulate and action democracy and creativity in society as well as in education. The movement from STEM to STEAM across education policy and practice highlights the interaction between the sciences and the arts and the potential of transdisciplinary creativity to excite, inspire and deepen our understanding of who we are and how we make sense of the world. But the benefits of STEAM education remain undertheorised and inequitably distributed, for STEAM education remains a complex and highly contested construct. This article provides a case for repositioning STEAM education as democratised enactments of education, where arts and sciences are not separate or even separable endeavours. The article draws upon the critical knowledges and creativities of scientists, artists and educators, working in industry and education, utilising both the human and non-human, to make a case for posthumanist transdisciplinary pedagogy. The case. How can we move from the detailed knowledge accumulated by the singular disciplines, to the breadth of understanding and the long-term perspective of ecological and evolutionary thinking? Allowing for a multiplicity of ways of knowing is essential to dealing with the complexity of a world in transformation, whereby no single perspective is valid all of the time, but rather, a plurality of legitimate perspectives in dialogue is needed (Carrozza, 2015). Petrie (1992) writes: “The notion of transdisciplinarity exemplifies one of the historically important driving forces in the area of interdisciplinarity, namely, the idea of the desirability of the integration of knowledge into some meaningful whole” (p. 230). While advocating integration, transdisciplinary thinking does not exclude disciplinary thinking. However, transdisciplinarity seeks to de-couple the specific language of a discipline from its original context, opening up new possibilities for viewing and experiencing the same phenomenon. In order for transdisciplinarity to come into being a different professional stance is needed, one which Perry (2020) refers to as ‘pluriversality’, referring to the ‘surplus’ of meanings and ways of learning which may be generated to enable the complexity of a changing world to come into the realms of our experience. We take this as a generative point of departure for reformulating the purpose of STEAM education as democratising education. In making this case we draw upon Deleuzian ontology with its attention to the forces of life (and creativity) as multiplicities, and Braidotti (2019) on renewing the mechanisms of knowledge production in the educational discourse. Transdisciplinarity involves a new orientation, one that is not anchored in binary logic, but rather recognises that knowledge(s) is/are always only ever partial and are not static or separable from the living and non-living world; instead the multiplicity of subjects are reconfigured together differently, with ideas, elements or systems that are continually intertwining. This enables a more fluid exploration of the multiplicities and meetings of sciences and arts as ‘ways of being’ located within learners’ socio-cultural, economic and political conditions. In this view, transdisciplinary creativity will be evidenced through diffraction, used both as a methodological and as a pedagogical tool. Diffraction troubles humans’ epistemic arrogance of locating knowledge, and meaning making only in the human subject and the human mind. Rather, diffraction resists the ‘epistemic violence’ (Braidotti 2019, p. 39) done by humanism to reinstate learning and experience as fundamentally relational. As opposed to simple ‘acquisition of concepts’, transdisciplinary creativity and creative learning nurture new understandings of our dependence on others, humans and non-humans. The evidence. We will present three empirical studies as evidence. One study will feature the diffractive analysis of a sample of 200 ‘mathartworks’ created by secondary school students. This example will bring into focus the contribution of transdisciplinary creativity to the experiences of learners whose school curricula is not fit to deal with widening social inequities and mounting environmental crises. In the second project, in a very different context, primary school children re-define the politics of space in the school grounds through a food-growing project. Diffractive analysis of curricular discourses vis a’ vis children’s experiences uncovers the underlying problem of how to justify this as an activity of value for both children and teachers. This is the essence of a STEAM garden project: a place where the emphasis shifts from powerful to living knowledge. In the third project, working with music student teachers, we identify and theorise a posthuman transdisciplinary pedagogy of ‘making with’. Exploring ‘teaching as improvising’ challenged habitual relationships, ways of knowing and disciplinary views of instruments and materials. Deterritorialising the term ‘improvisation’ allowed science and music to meet, and ‘making’ to be done differently. Enacting policy and practice reform: Everyday posthumanist transdisciplinary practices. How far do the ideas and practices analysed here serve to democratise knowledge but, most importantly, to ‘expertise democracy’ (Carrozza, 2015) through Creative Educational Experiences (CEE) that make up the stuff of our everyday life? How can we push the boundaries of human-centred thinking towards new territories of transdisciplinary combining of subject disciplines? Importantly, we seek to inquire into not only how arts and sciences purposefully connect, but how they stimulate different forms of logics, rationality and affect; how they become part of an inquiry that is embedded within posthumanist times, the new normal of a COVID-19 world, and the democratisation of education. References Braidotti, R. (2019). A theoretical framework for the critical posthumanities. Theory, Culture & Society, 36(6), 31–61. Carrozza, C. (2015). Democratizing expertise and environmental governance: Different approaches to the politics of science and their relevance for policy analysis. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 17(1), 108-126. Perry, M. (2020). Pluriversal literacies: Affect and relationality in vulnerable times. Reading Research Quarterly. Advance online publication. doi:10.1002/rrq.312 Petrie, H. G. (1992). Interdisciplinary education: Are we faced with insurmountable opportunities? Review of Research in Education, 18, 299-333