A Course or a Pathway? Addressing French as a Second Language Teacher Recruitment and Retention in Canadian BEd Programs

Institutions strive to offer programs that address both the needs of the educational system and incorporate current pedagogical research. Creating a program that is relevant, inspiring, and accessible to aspiring French as a Second Language (FSL) teachers, while also equipping them with the skills and knowledge deemed necessary by the education system, is a delicate balancing act. This study reviewed 44 FSL teacher education programs that lead to professional certification across Canada. Environmental scans drew information from the program websites related to admission requirements, program structure and content, practicum, and graduation criteria. Follow-up interviews with program stakeholders were conducted to verify or clarify the data. The results highlight the inconsistencies that exist among programs for developing FSL educators. We position the ways in which Canadian faculties of education might provide a more holistic “pathway” approach to recruiting, preparing, and retaining emerging FSL teachers.Les établissements qui préparent les futurs enseignants de français langue seconde (FLS) s’efforcent d’offrir des programmes qui répondent à la fois aux besoins du système éducatif et qui intègrent les recherches pédagogiques actuelles. Créer un programme à la fois pertinent, inspirant et accessible aux futurs enseignants de FLS, tout en les dotant des compétences et des connaissances jugées nécessaires par le système scolaire, est un exercice d’équilibre délicat. Cette étude a examiné 44 programmes de formation des enseignants de FLS qui mènent à la certification professionnelle au Canada. Des analyses de l’environnement ont permis de tirer des informations des sites Web des programmes concernant les conditions d’admission, la structure et le contenu du programme, les stages et les critères d’obtention du diplôme. Des entrevues de suivi avec des intervenants des programmes ont été menées pour vérifier ou clarifier les données. Les résultats mettent en évidence les incohérences qui existent entre les programmes de formation des futurs enseignants de FLS. Nous proposons des moyens par lesquels les facultés d’éducation canadiennes pourraient offrir une approche plus holistique de « parcours » pour recruter, préparer et retenir les nouveaux enseignants de FLS

The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics' resources: focus on curated databases

The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (www.isb-sib.ch) provides world-class bioinformatics databases, software tools, services and training to the international life science community in academia and industry. These solutions allow life scientists to turn the exponentially growing amount of data into knowledge. Here, we provide an overview of SIB's resources and competence areas, with a strong focus on curated databases and SIB's most popular and widely used resources. In particular, SIB's Bioinformatics resource portal ExPASy features over 150 resources, including UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot, ENZYME, PROSITE, neXtProt, STRING, UniCarbKB, SugarBindDB, SwissRegulon, EPD, arrayMap, Bgee, SWISS-MODEL Repository, OMA, OrthoDB and other databases, which are briefly described in this article

A Critical Re-imagining of French-Language Teacher Learning and Professional Identities

As an official bilingual country, Canada depends on French as a Second Language (FSL) teachers to promote bilingualism. However, FSL programs suffer from what I call ‘FSL teacher flight’: FSL teachers who enter the profession do not remain in it, they either leave or transition out of teaching French. FSL teachers report feeling disenfranchised, marginalized and isolated in their practice (Macfarlane Hart, 2002; E. M. Richards, 2002). One way to address these issues is to offer FSL teachers the opportunity to participate in Computer-supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) networks (Hollins-Alexander, 2013; Kitsantas Dabbagh, 2010; Kreijns Kirschner, 2004). These blended (i.e., online and face-to-face) professional learning networks, based on the principles of learning as a social and transformational process, make teachers agents of their professional learning and help them negotiate the complexity of their practice, and develop their professional identity and well-being through shared discursive practices. This longitudinal multiple case study is a unique in-depth look into the professional learning and identity formation of two core French teachers over the course of four years (2011-2015). The data consist of 40 monthly two-hour group meeting discussions video recorded during a full release-day for site-based research, over 150 posts and essays shared in an online forum, open-ended survey responses and extensive field notes. Findings reveal that FSL teachers use a wide range of complex and interrelated discursive practices to help them negotiate their professional learning and identity formation. Their research inquiries were highly contextualized, based on their local needs. They also reported that the learning experience in the CSCL network helped them feel supported and engage in their practice in new and creative ways. The re-professionalization (Kooy, 2015) of FSL teachers’ practice through their learning experiences reveals the potential contribution of this study to address the issue of FSL teacher retention. The study provides a much-needed deeper understanding of what happens when FSL teachers actively participate in professional learning networks. It also re-imagining the narratives around FSL teachers so as to provide a model for long-term FSL teacher learning that promotes collaborative professionalism (Fullan Hargreaves, 2016) and teacher well-being.Ph.D

Characterization of electrical conduction and nature of charge carriers in mixed and ionic conductors

International audienc

Study of the formation of the apatite-type phases La 9.33þx (SiO 4 ) 6 O 2þ3x/2 synthesized from a lanthanum oxycarbonate La 2 O 2 CO 3

International audiencea b s t r a c t Lanthanum silicated apatites with nominal composition La 9.33þx (SiO 4) 6 O 2þ3x/2 (À0.2 < x < 0.27) have been successfully synthesized by solid state reaction using a new reagent La 2 O 2 CO 3 and amorphous SiO 2 precursors. The formation mechanism of La 2 O 2 CO 3 reagent, which cannot be purchased, has been fol-lowed by in-situ temperature depend XRD of La 2 O 3 under CO 2 atmosphere. The stability of this reagent during the synthesis step allowed to limit the formation of secondary phase La 2 Si 2 O 7 and made the weighting of the reagent easier. High purity powders could be synthesized at the temperature of 1400 C. Dense pellets (more than 98.5%) were obtained by isostatic pressing of powders calcined at 1200 C and then sintered at 1550 C. Traces of La 2 SiO 5 secondary phase present in synthesized powder disappeared after densification and pure oxyapatite materials were obtained for all the compositions. Electrical measurements confirmed that conductivity behaviors of the sintered pellets were dependent to the oxygen over-stoichiometry. Indeed, a relatively high conductivity of 1 Â 10 À2 S cm À1 was exhibited at 800 C for the nominal composition La 9.60 (SiO 4) 6 O 2.405 with low activation energy around 0.79 eV. The ionic conductivity properties were comparable with that of the earlier obtained materials

Synthesis and electrochemical characterization of lanthanum silicates as ionic conducting materials for fuell cells applications

International audienc

Phase relationships between orbital forcing and the composition of air trapped in Antarctic ice cores

International audienceOrbital tuning is central for ice core chronologies beyond annual layer counting, available back to 60 ka (i.e. thousands of years before 1950) for Greenland ice cores. While several complementary orbital tuning tools have recently been developed using δ 18 O atm , δO 2 /N 2 and air content with different orbital targets, quantifying their uncertainties remains a challenge. Indeed, the exact processes linking variations of these parameters, measured in the air trapped in ice, to their orbital targets are not yet fully understood. Here, we provide new series of δO 2 /N 2 and δ 18 O atm data encompassing Marine Isotopic Stage (MIS) 5 (between 100 and 160 ka) and the oldest part (340–800 ka) of the East Antarctic EPICA Dome C (EDC) ice core. For the first time, the measurements over MIS 5 allow an inter-comparison of δO 2 /N 2 and δ 18 O atm records from three East Antarctic ice core sites (EDC, Vostok and Dome F). This comparison highlights some site-specific δO 2 /N 2 variations. Such an observation, the evidence of a 100 ka periodicity in the δO 2 /N 2 signal and the difficulty to identify extrema and mid-slopes in δO 2 /N 2 increase the uncertainty associated with the use of δO 2 /N 2 as an orbital tuning tool, now calculated to be 3–4 ka. When combining records of δ 18 O atm and δO 2 /N 2 from Vostok and EDC, we find a loss of orbital signature for these two parameters during periods of minimum eccentricity (∼ 400 ka, ∼ 720–800 ka). Our data set reveals a time-varying offset between δO 2 /N 2 and δ 18 O atm records over the last 800 ka that we interpret as variations in the lagged response of δ 18 O atm to precession. The largest offsets are identified during Terminations II, MIS 8 and MIS 16, corresponding to periods of destabilization of the Northern polar ice sheets. We therefore suggest that the occurrence of Heinrich–like events influences the response of δ 18 O atm to precession

On the use of a new 800 ka Total Air Content record to improve the dating of the EPICA Dome C ice core

Accurate absolute chronologies of ice cores are crucial to interpret paleoclimatic records and to decipher their relationship to external and internal forcings. The chronology of the deeper part of Antarctic ice cores is mainly constrained by orbital age markers inferred from tracers measured in air trapped in ice. In particular, age markers deduced from the alignment of the Total Air Content of the ice (TAC) on a local integrated summer insolation curve were used to constrain the AICC2012 chronology of the EPICA Dome C (EDC) ice core over the past 440 ka. However, a full understanding of the physical processes influencing TAC variations is still missing together with a quantitative estimate of the age uncertainties attached to TAC-based age makers. Here, we present new TAC measurements on EDC at a ~2 ka resolution extending the published record back to 800 ka. First, we investigate the imprint of orbital periodicities in the 800 ka TAC record using spectral analyses. We identify that the last 500 ka of the record is characterised by a dominant period related to obliquity but its strength decreases significantly in the oldest part. Second, we investigate the most relevant orbital tuning target to infer age markers based on a comparison between the TAC record and a selection of local summer insolation curves, and our understanding of how the insolation signal could get imprinted in TAC. Third, we quantify the age errors attached to TAC-based markers considering sources of uncertainties related to (i) the choice of the orbital target, (i) the filtering band for TAC, (iii) the record alignment method and (iv) the loss of visual resemblance between variations in TAC and its orbital target. Age uncertainties vary from ~2 ka to more than 6 ka. The comparison of a TAC-based chronology with the AICC2012 chronology over the last 600 ka suggests ages differences of 1.4 ka on average and they vary within the stated AICC2012 age uncertainties. Finally, we compare the TAC dating constraints with those deduced from O2/N2 and we discuss implications for a joint use of these orbital tools in order to date old ice