ESL Teachers’ Knowledge of and Experience with Written Corrective Feedback

University of Minnesota D.Ed. dissertation. April 2017. Major: Education, Curriculum and Instruction. Advisors: Jean Stevenson, Lynn Brice. 1 computer file (PDF); xiv, 170 pages.ABSTRACT Written Corrective Feedback (WCF) in writing classes is fundamental to interactions between teachers and students about students’ writing and to help students further improve their writing. As one of the main feedback sources, teachers’ cognition (e.g., teachers’ thoughts, knowledge, and beliefs) needs to be probed to properly understand teachers and their teaching (Borg, 2006). Currently, there is little research regarding teachers’ cognition and their practice of offering WCF in mainland China. The purpose of this study was to explore ESL teachers’ knowledge of, experience with and practice of WCF, and to investigate the connection among these aspects. The participants were teachers of English from a major normal university. The phenomenological methodology was used to explore teachers’ cognition and practice of WCF when teaching writing to undergraduate and graduate students. The study employed a triangulated approach that included a questionnaire administered to 55 teachers, interviews with two teachers and a study of the two teachers’ feedback responses to 68 students’ papers/journal entries, which were collected to further explore the interviewees’ practice of WCF. Questionnaire data was statistically aggregated and tabulated. The interview data was analyzed using Hycner’s 15 steps. The teachers’ responses on students’ papers were analyzed according to WCF types (direct CF, indirect CF, metalinguistic, focus of feedback, electronic CF, and reformulation) and error types (organizational errors, stylistic errors, and linguistic errors) and the results were tabulated. Findings indicated that ESL teachers possessed different levels of knowledge concerning WCF and used a varying number of WCF types to target error types. Most teachers were not well trained or provided with opportunities to be equipped with the necessary skills, to further improve their cognition and practice of providing feedback. Differences existed between teachers’ perceptions of the employment of WCF and their actual practice of it. The findings are an indication that administrators should consider employing multiple strategies to better equip teachers of writing to teach and provide feedback more effectively and efficiently. The future of providing WCF on writing in mainland China is dependent upon a workforce that excels in feedback cognition and practice

A Need-based Perspective for Assessing Public Project in China

Public project plays a key role in our daily life. The assessing of public projects is a task of growing importance. This paper arose from problems faced by Agencies, Authorities and other Government bodies in China in assessing public project. This paper proposes a method to identifying stakeholders of public project and their needs. The method is consisted of five steps: (a) identifying the phase of public project, (b) defining the goal/objectives, output, activities, and inputs, (c) selecting the appropriate classification model(s), (d) selecting the appropriate tools, and (5) identifying needs of stakeholders. In addition, we found that the problems in assessing public project are mainly caused by bad needs management. Key words: Public Project; Need-based; Assessing; Stakeholde

Effect of Service-Learning on the Multicultural Competence of Teacher Candidates: From a Doing With Community Framework

This article details the findings of a study investigating the effect of service-learning with a Doing With Community framework on teacher candidates’ multicultural attitudes and competence. Fifty-one teacher candidates participated in the research: 27 in an experimental condition and 24 in a comparison classroom. In order to transform the conventional service-learning experience into one incorporating the Doing With framework, a Dialogue with Diverse Families component was included in the experimental condition. A mixed-methods design was employed; specifically, a quasi-experimental design was utilized to obtain quantitative data from measures on multicultural attitudes and competence, and a phenomenological method was used to collect qualitative data from the students’ reflections on project experiences. The service-learning project with the Dialogue With Diverse Families component had a significant effect on teacher candidates’ multicultural competence but not on their multicultural attitudes. This article argues that the Doing With framework of service-learning contributes to teacher candidates’ multicultural competence and civic responsibility

Superconductivity in trilayer nickelate La4Ni3O10 under pressure

Nickelates gained a great deal of attention due to their similar crystal and electronic structures of cuprates over the past few decades. Recently, superconductivity with transition temperature exceeding liquid-nitrogen temperature is discovered in La3Ni2O7, which belong to the Ruddlesden-Popper (RP) phases Lan+1NinO3n+1 with n = 2. In this work, we go further and find pressure-induced superconductivity in another RP phase La4Ni3O10 (n = 3) single crystals. Our angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) experiment suggest that the electronic structure of La4Ni3O10 is very similar to that of La3Ni2O7. We find that the density-wave like anomaly in resistivity is progressively suppressed with increasing pressure. A typical phase diagram is obtained with the maximum Tc of 21 Kelvin. Our study sheds light on the exploration of unconventional superconductivity in nickelates.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure

EXERCISE WITHIN LOWER BODY NEGATIVE PRESSURE AS AN ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY COUNTERMEASURE

Current exercise systems for space, which attempt to maintain performance, are unable to generate cardiovascular and musculoskeletal loads similar to those on Earth [1, 2]. The purpose of our research is to evaluate the use of lower body negative pressure (LBNP) treadmill exercise to prevent deconditioning during simulated microgravity

Innate Immune Response of Human Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cells to Poxvirus Infection Is Subverted by Vaccinia E3 via Its Z-DNA/RNA Binding Domain

Plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) play important roles in antiviral innate immunity by producing type I interferon (IFN). In this study, we assess the immune responses of primary human pDCs to two poxviruses, vaccinia and myxoma virus. Vaccinia, an orthopoxvirus, was used for immunization against smallpox, a contagious human disease with high mortality. Myxoma virus, a Leporipoxvirus, causes lethal disease in rabbits, but is non-pathogenic in humans. We report that myxoma virus infection of human pDCs induces IFN-α and TNF production, whereas vaccinia infection does not. Co-infection of pDCs with myxoma virus plus vaccinia blocks myxoma induction effects. We find that heat-inactivated vaccinia (Heat-VAC; by incubating the virus at 55°C for 1 h) gains the ability to induce IFN-α and TNF in primary human pDCs. Induction of IFN-α in pDCs by myxoma virus or Heat-VAC is blocked by chloroquine, which inhibits endosomal acidification required for TLR7/9 signaling, and by inhibitors of cellular kinases PI3K and Akt. Using purified pDCs from genetic knockout mice, we demonstrate that Heat-VAC-induced type I IFN production in pDCs requires the endosomal RNA sensor TLR7 and its adaptor MyD88, transcription factor IRF7 and the type I IFN feedback loop mediated by IFNAR1. These results indicate that (i) vaccinia virus, but not myxoma virus, expresses inhibitor(s) of the poxvirus sensing pathway(s) in pDCs; and (ii) Heat-VAC infection fails to produce inhibitor(s) but rather produces novel activator(s), likely viral RNA transcripts that are sensed by the TLR7/MyD88 pathway. Using vaccinia gene deletion mutants, we show that the Z-DNA/RNA binding domain at the N-terminus of the vaccinia immunomodulatory E3 protein is an antagonist of the innate immune response of human pDCs to poxvirus infection and TLR agonists. The myxoma virus ortholog of vaccinia E3 (M029) lacks the N-terminal Z-DNA/RNA binding domain, which might contribute to the immunostimulating properties of myxoma virus

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival