Strategies in Values Education: Horse or Cart?

This article describes briefly the growing emphasis in Australia on values education as evidenced by the Australian Government’s National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools (2005), and the responses of the respective States and Territories. Arguing that the major approaches to the teaching of values (the trait approach often taught through moral biography; values clarification; the cognitive developmental approach taught typically by discussion of moral dilemmas; and role playing) are markedly different in theory and practice, and that the National Framework is not prescriptive about the nature of teaching, the author suggests that the strategies embedded in the approaches, rather than fully predetermined content, should drive the enterprise of values education. The implications for teacher educators are discussed

Directions and Priorities in Teacher Education

This article identifies directions/priorities in contemporary teacher education in Australia, and indicates the challenges that confront leadership. Examining directions in teacher education programs, research, the conduct of the practicum, relationships with schools, flexible delivery and intemationalisation, a dominant theme is the need for strong, collaborative and symbiotic school-university partnerships in the education of prospective and current teachers

Delivering bad news fairly: the influence of core self-evaluations and anxiety for the enactment of interpersonal justice

What motivates managers to deliver bad news in a just manner and why do some managers fail to treat recipients of bad news with dignity and respect? Given the importance of delivering bad news in a just manner, answering these questions is critical to promote justice in the workplace. Drawing on appraisal theories of emotions, we propose that people with higher core self-evaluations may be less likely to deliver bad news in an interpersonally just manner. This is because these actors are more likely to appraise the delivery of bad news as a situation in which they have high coping potential and are therefore less likely to experience anxiety. However, we propose that anxiety can be important for propelling the enactment of interpersonal justice. We test our predictions across three studies (with four samples of full-time managers and employees). Theoretical and practical contributions include enhancing our understanding of who is motivated to enact interpersonal justice, why they are motivated to do so, and how to enhance justice in the workplace. Our findings also challenge the assumption that negative emotions are necessarily dysfunctional for the enactment of interpersonal justice and instead highlight the facilitative role of anxiety in this context.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Higher quality quit-date goal setting enhances quit attempts among quitline callers

INTRODUCTION At tobacco quitlines, coaching and cessation medications are commonly structured around setting a date for making a quit attempt. However, limited literature evaluating this practice suggests that callers do not routinely set quit-date goals. High quality goal setting may increase the frequency of caller quit attempts. In this study, we examine the quality of quit-date goal setting and its association with in-program quit attempts and the timing of callers' first quit attempt. METHODS Using call recordings, we scored the quality of quit-date goal setting among 90 callers enrolled at Arizona Smokers' Helpline between August and December 2017. The primary exposure was quality of quit-date goal setting assessed using the Lorencatto et al. rating scale. Coding reliability was assessed using Cohen's kappa. Multivariable logistic regression was used to examine the association between quality of goal setting and in-program quit attempts (>24 h tobacco free). RESULTS The mean quality goal setting score was 3.1 (range: -3 to 7). Sixty-nine callers (77%) set a quit date and 39 (43%) made a quit attempt. Compared to callers who experienced low-quality goal setting, the adjusted odds of in-program quitting for high quality goal setting was AOR=3.98 (95% CI: 1.55-10.20) and for making a quit attempt within two weeks OR=6.23 (95% CI: 1.52-25.49). CONCLUSIONS Quit-date goal setting is an important element of quitline services and callers benefit from high quality quit-date goal setting. Quitlines should establish quality improvement measures to ensure that coaches are trained to provide high quality quit-date goal setting opportunities to all callers.Arizona Department of Health Services [ADHS11-007339, ADHS16-106672, ADHS13-026130:5]; NIH-NCI Cancer Center [P30 CA023074]Open access journalThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

The microtubule-associated protein DCAMKL1 regulates osteoblast function via repression of Runx2

Osteoblasts are responsible for the formation and mineralization of the skeleton. To identify novel regulators of osteoblast differentiation, we conducted an unbiased forward genetic screen using a lentiviral-based shRNA library. This functional genomics analysis led to the identification of the microtubule-associated protein DCAMKL1 (Doublecortin-like and CAM kinase–like 1) as a novel regulator of osteogenesis. Mice with a targeted disruption of Dcamkl1 displayed elevated bone mass secondary to increased bone formation by osteoblasts. Molecular experiments demonstrated that DCAMKL1 represses osteoblast activation by antagonizing Runx2, the master transcription factor in osteoblasts. Key elements of the cleidocranial dysplasia phenotype observed in Runx2+/− mice are reversed by the introduction of a Dcamkl1-null allele. Our results establish a genetic linkage between these two proteins in vivo and demonstrate that DCAMKL1 is a physiologically relevant regulator of anabolic bone formation

Ligand-binding site prediction of proteins based on known fragment–fragment interactions

Motivation: The identification of putative ligand-binding sites on proteins is important for the prediction of protein function. Knowledge-based approaches using structure databases have become interesting, because of the recent increase in structural information. Approaches using binding motif information are particularly effective. However, they can only be applied to well-known ligands that frequently appear in the structure databases

Locations and patterns of meiotic recombination in two-generation pedigrees

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Meiotic crossovers are the major mechanism by which haplotypes are shuffled to generate genetic diversity. Previously available methods for the genome-wide, high-resolution identification of meiotic crossover sites are limited by the laborious nature of the assay (as in sperm typing).</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Several methods have been introduced to identify crossovers using high density single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array technologies, although programs are not widely available to implement such analyses.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Here we present a two-generation "reverse pedigree analysis" method (analyzing the genotypes of two children relative to each parent) and a web-accessible tool to determine and visualize inheritance differences among siblings and crossover locations on each parental gamete. This approach is complementary to existing methods and uses informative markers which provide high resolution for locating meiotic crossover sites. We introduce a segmentation algorithm to identify crossover sites, and used a synthetic data set to determine that the segmentation algorithm specificity was 92% and sensitivity was 89%. The use of reverse pedigrees allows the inference of crossover locations on the X chromosome in a maternal gamete through analysis of two sons and their father. We further analyzed genotypes from eight multiplex autism families, observing a 1.462 maternal to paternal recombination ratio and no significant differences between affected and unaffected children. Meiotic recombination results from pediSNP can also be used to identify haplotypes that are shared by probands within a pedigree, as we demonstrated with a multiplex autism family.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Using "reverse pedigrees" and defining unique sets of genotype markers within pedigree data, we introduce a method that identifies inherited allelic differences and meiotic crossovers. We implemented the method in the pediSNP software program, and we applied it to several data sets. This approach uses data from two generations to identify crossover sites, facilitating studies of recombination in disease. pediSNP is available online at <url>http://pevsnerlab.kennedykrieger.org/pediSNP</url>.</p

Active site prediction using evolutionary and structural information

Motivation: The identification of catalytic residues is a key step in understanding the function of enzymes. While a variety of computational methods have been developed for this task, accuracies have remained fairly low. The best existing method exploits information from sequence and structure to achieve a precision (the fraction of predicted catalytic residues that are catalytic) of 18.5% at a corresponding recall (the fraction of catalytic residues identified) of 57% on a standard benchmark. Here we present a new method, Discern, which provides a significant improvement over the state-of-the-art through the use of statistical techniques to derive a model with a small set of features that are jointly predictive of enzyme active sites