Mejores prácticas de desarrollo profesional docente en Estados Unidos

This paper discusses best practices in teachers’ professional development (PD) in the United States (U.S.). We begin by presenting a conceptual framework for effective professional development, which suggests five key features that make professional development effective—content focus, active learning, coherence, sustained duration, and collective participation. We then describe the findings from recent U.S. research that has tested the five features, with an emphasis on the results of rigorous randomized control trials. We discuss several insights gained from this work and that have helped refine the framework. They are that (a) changing procedural classroom behavior is easier than improving content knowledge or inquiry-oriented instruction techniques; (b) teachers vary in response to the same PD; (c) PD is more successful when it is explicitly linked to classroom lessons; (d) PD research and implementation must allow for urban contexts (e.g., student and teacher mobility); and (e) leadership plays a key role in supporting and encouraging teachers to implement in the classroom the ideas and strategies they learned in the PD. We then examine three major trends in how professional development for teachers is evolving in the U.S.—a move away from short workshops, linking teacher PD to evaluations, and the use of video technology to improve and monitor the effects of PD. Finally, we discuss the challenges faced by districts and schools in implementing effective professional development.Este artículo analiza las mejores prácticas de desarrollo profesional docente (DPD) en los Estados Unidos de América (USA). Comenzamos presentando un marco conceptual sobre DPD, que sugiere la existencia de cinco características clave que favorecen un DPD efectivo: foco en el contenido, aprendizaje activo, coherencia, duración sostenida, y participación colectiva. Continuamos describiendo los resultados de recientes investigaciones que han puesto a prueba dichas cinco características en USA, enfatizando los resultados de rigurosos estudios experimentales aleatorizados. Discutimos las lecciones aprendidas a partir de dichos estudios, que nos han permitido refinar nuestro marco teórico sobre el DPD efectivo. Hemos aprendido que (a) cambiar el comportamiento de los profesores en clase es más fácil que mejorar sus conocimientos disciplinares o las estrategias instruccionales de alto nivel; (b) los profesores varían en respuesta al mismo DPD; (c) DPD es más exitoso cuando está explícitamente conectado con la práctica docente; (d) la investigación y la implementación del DPD debe tener en cuenta las condiciones de las áreas urbanas (e.g., la movilidad de estudiantes y profesores); y (e) los líderes juegan un rol fundamental apoyando y animando a los profesores para que apliquen en sus clases las ideas y estrategias aprendidas en DPD. Después examinamos tres tendencias generales en la evaluación reciente del DPD en USA—un descenso en el uso de cursos y talleres de corta duración, la conexión del DPD con las evaluaciones del profesorado, y el uso de video-tecnología para mejorar y supervisar los efectos del DPD. Finalmente, discutimos las dificultades que los distritos y las escuelas encuentran para implementar DPD efectivo

Studying changes in the practice of two teachers developing assessment for learning

This paper describes changes in the practice of two teachers, observed over an eighteen month period, who were participating in a study intended to support teachers in developing their use of assessment in support of learning. The design of the intervention allowed each teacher to choose for themselves which aspects of their practice to develop. Analysis of lesson observations, journal entries and interviews indicate that both teachers were keen to change their practice, but were concerned about the disruption to their established routines, and in particular about the potential for loss of control of their classes. Both teachers did effect significant changes in their classrooms, but these tended to be developments of existing preferred ways of working, rather than radical innovations. In conclusion, it is suggested that to be most effective, teacher professional development needs to be structured strongly enough to afford teacher growth, but flexible enough to allow different teachers to take their practice in different ways

Pseudo-nitzschia Blooms in a Coastal Upwelling System: Remote Sensing Detection, Toxicity and Environmental Variables

The NW coast of the Iberian Peninsula is dominated by extensive shellfish farming, which places this region as a world leader in mussel production. Harmful algal blooms in the area frequent lead to lengthy harvesting closures threatening food security. This study developed a framework for the detection of Pseudo-nitzschia blooms in the Galician rias from satellite data (MERIS full-resolution images) and identified key variables that affect their abundance and toxicity. Two events of toxin-containing Pseudo-nitzschia were detected (up to 2.5 μg L−1 pDA) in the area. This study suggests that even moderate densities of Pseudo-nitzschia in this area might indicate high toxin content. Empirical models for particulate domoic acid (pDA) were developed based on MERIS FR data. The resulting remote-sensing model, including MERIS bands centered around 510, 560, and 620 nm explain 73% of the pDA variance (R2 = 0.73, p < 0.001). The results show that higher salinity values and lower Si(OH)4/N ratios favour higher Pseudo-nitzschia spp. abundances. High pDA values seem to be associated with relatively high PO43, low NO3− concentrations, and low Si(OH)4/N. While MERIS FR data and regionally specific algorithms can be useful for detecting Pseudo-nitzschia blooms, nutrient relationships are crucial for predicting the toxicity of these blooms

Defining a self-evaluation digital literacy framework for secondary educators: the DigiLit Leicester project

Despite the growing interest in digital literacy within educational policy, guidance for secondary educators in terms of how digital literacy translates into the classroom is lacking. As a result, many teachers feel ill-prepared to support their learners in using technology effectively. The DigiLit Leicester project created an infrastructure for holistic, integrated change, by supporting staff development in the area of digital literacy for secondary school teachers and teaching support staff. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how the critique of existing digital literacy frameworks enabled a self-evaluation framework for practitioners to be developed. Crucially, this framework enables a co-operative, partnership approach to be taken to pedagogic innovation. Moreover, it enables social and ethical issues to underpin a focus on teacher-agency and radical collegiality inside the domain of digital literacy. Thus, the authors argue that the shared development framework constitutes a new model for implementing digital literacy aimed at transforming the provision of secondary education across a city

An RNA-seq Based Machine Learning Approach Identifies Latent Tuberculosis Patients With an Active Tuberculosis Profile.

A better understanding of the response against Tuberculosis (TB) infection is required to accurately identify the individuals with an active or a latent TB infection (LTBI) and also those LTBI patients at higher risk of developing active TB. In this work, we have used the information obtained from studying the gene expression profile of active TB patients and their infected -LTBI- or uninfected -NoTBI- contacts, recruited in Spain and Mozambique, to build a class-prediction model that identifies individuals with a TB infection profile. Following this approach, we have identified several genes and metabolic pathways that provide important information of the immune mechanisms triggered against TB infection. As a novelty of our work, a combination of this class-prediction model and the direct measurement of different immunological parameters, was used to identify a subset of LTBI contacts (called TB-like) whose transcriptional and immunological profiles are suggestive of infection with a higher probability of developing active TB. Validation of this novel approach to identifying LTBI individuals with the highest risk of active TB disease merits further longitudinal studies on larger cohorts in TB endemic areas

Geodesics and the competition interface for the corner growth model

We study the directed last-passage percolation model on the planar square lattice with nearest-neighbor steps and general i.i.d. weights on the vertices, out- side of the class of exactly solvable models. Stationary cocycles are constructed for this percolation model from queueing fixed points. These cocycles serve as bound- ary conditions for stationary last-passage percolation, solve variational formulas that characterize limit shapes, and yield existence of Busemann functions in directions where the shape has some regularity. In a sequel to this paper the cocycles are used to prove results about semi-infinite geodesics and the competition interface

The Cyclic AMP Cascade Is Altered in the Fragile X Nervous System

Fragile X syndrome (FX), the most common heritable cause of mental retardation and autism, is a developmental disorder characterized by physical, cognitive, and behavioral deficits. FX results from a trinucleotide expansion mutation in the fmr1 gene that reduces levels of fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP). Although research efforts have focused on FMRP's impact on mGluR signaling, how the loss of FMRP leads to the individual symptoms of FX is not known. Previous studies on human FX blood cells revealed alterations in the cyclic adenosine 3′, 5′-monophosphate (cAMP) cascade. We tested the hypothesis that cAMP signaling is altered in the FX nervous system using three different model systems. Induced levels of cAMP in platelets and in brains of fmr1 knockout mice are substantially reduced. Cyclic AMP induction is also significantly reduced in human FX neural cells. Furthermore, cAMP production is decreased in the heads of FX Drosophila and this defect can be rescued by reintroduction of the dfmr gene. Our results indicate that a robust defect in cAMP production in FX is conserved across species and suggest that cAMP metabolism may serve as a useful biomarker in the human disease population. Reduced cAMP induction has implications for the underlying causes of FX and autism spectrum disorders. Pharmacological agents known to modulate the cAMP cascade may be therapeutic in FX patients and can be tested in these models, thus supplementing current efforts centered on mGluR signaling

Effects of degree and timing of social housing on reversal learning and response to novel objects in dairy calves

Rodents and primates deprived of early social contact exhibit deficits in learning and behavioural flexibility. They often also exhibit apparent signs of elevated anxiety, although the relationship between these effects has not been studied. To investigate whether dairy calves are similarly affected, we first compared calves housed in standard individual pens (n = 7) to those housed in a dynamic group with access to their mothers (n = 8). All calves learned to approach the correct stimulus in a visual discrimination task. Only one individually housed calf was able to re-learn the task when the stimuli were reversed, compared to all but one calf from the group. A second experiment investigated whether this effect might be explained by anxiety in individually housed animals interfering with their learning, and tested varying degrees of social contact in addition to the complex group: pair housing beginning early (approximately 6 days old) and late (6 weeks old). Again, fewer individually reared calves learned the reversal task (2 of 10 or 20%) compared to early paired and grouped calves (16 of 21 or 76% of calves). Late paired calves had intermediate success. Individually housed calves were slower to touch novel objects, but the magnitude of the fear response did not correlate with reversal performance. We conclude that individually housed calves have learning deficits, but these deficits were not likely associated with increased anxiety