Bringing Teacher Assistance and Evaluation Up to PAR: First-Year Teachers' Responses to Supervision in Peer Assistance and Review

Peer Assistance and Review (PAR), a program initiated by teachers' unions to place teachers in charge of promoting teaching quality, rotates high-performing veteran teachers (called consulting teachers, or CTs) out of the classroom to assist and evaluate all first-year teachers, as well as any veteran teachers who fail to meet district performance standards. This study examines the experiences of five, first-year high school English teachers who worked with consulting teachers in a large, suburban school district during the 2001-02 school year. Data from interviews, documents, classroom observations and conference observations address (a) how the district introduced PAR to the first-year teachers, (b) how the relationship between the CTs and the first-year teachers developed, (c) how the first-year teachers experienced PAR as evaluation, support, and/or professional development, (d) how the first-year teachers used school-based supervisors for assistance and (e) how participating in PAR informed the first-year teachers' practices. Findings indicate that some first-year teachers were apprehensive about working with a CT at the outset of the school year. As the year progressed, six elements influenced the relationship between the first-year teachers and the CTs: (1) the frequency of the CTs' visits, (2) the nature of the CTs' feedback, (3) the CT's assistance with instructional planning and materials, (4) how the CTs defined their evaluative roles, (5) the CTs' abilities to identify with the first-year teachers and (6) how the CTs shared the supervisory function with school-based supervisors. The data, which were analyzed using Sergiovanni's (1992) model for sources of supervisory authority, suggest that when CTs supervised using mostly bureaucratic and technical-rational sources of authority, the first-year teachers' practices were narrowed, and they tended to express more negative sentiments about PAR or about their interactions with their CTs. However, when CTs drew more from professional sources of authority, they established a relationship with the first-year teachers that lent itself to promoting teacher growth. How the CT negotiated the school context also influenced whether first-year teachers expanded or narrowed their practices. Coordinated supervision is suggested as a means of increasing the likelihood that first-year teachers in PAR will expand their instructional repertoires

Association of Body Mass Index with DNA Methylation and Gene Expression in Blood Cells and Relations to Cardiometabolic Disease: A Mendelian Randomization Approach

Background The link between DNA methylation, obesity, and adiposity-related diseases in the general population remains uncertain. Methods and Findings We conducted an association study of body mass index (BMI) and differential methylation for over 400,000 CpGs assayed by microarray in whole-blood-derived DNA from 3,743 participants in the Framingham Heart Study and the Lothian Birth Cohorts, with independent replication in three external cohorts of 4,055 participants. We examined variations in whole blood gene expression and conducted Mendelian randomization analyses to investigate the functional and clinical relevance of the findings. We identified novel and previously reported BMI-related differential methylation at 83 CpGs that replicated across cohorts; BMI-related differential methylation was associated with concurrent changes in the expression of genes in lipid metabolism pathways. Genetic instrumental variable analysis of alterations in methylation at one of the 83 replicated CpGs, cg11024682 (intronic to sterol regulatory element binding transcription factor 1 [SREBF1]), demonstrated links to BMI, adiposity-related traits, and coronary artery disease. Independent genetic instruments for expression of SREBF1 supported the findings linking methylation to adiposity and cardiometabolic disease. Methylation at a substantial proportion (16 of 83) of the identified loci was found to be secondary to differences in BMI. However, the cross-sectional nature of the data limits definitive causal determination. Conclusions We present robust associations of BMI with differential DNA methylation at numerous loci in blood cells. BMI-related DNA methylation and gene expression provide mechanistic insights into the relationship between DNA methylation, obesity, and adiposity-related diseases

Формирование эмоциональной культуры как компонента инновационной культуры студентов

Homozygosity has long been associated with rare, often devastating, Mendelian disorders1 and Darwin was one of the first to recognise that inbreeding reduces evolutionary fitness2. However, the effect of the more distant parental relatedness common in modern human populations is less well understood. Genomic data now allow us to investigate the effects of homozygosity on traits of public health importance by observing contiguous homozygous segments (runs of homozygosity, ROH), which are inferred to be homozygous along their complete length. Given the low levels of genome-wide homozygosity prevalent in most human populations, information is required on very large numbers of people to provide sufficient power3,4. Here we use ROH to study 16 health-related quantitative traits in 354,224 individuals from 102 cohorts and find statistically significant associations between summed runs of homozygosity (SROH) and four complex traits: height, forced expiratory lung volume in 1 second (FEV1), general cognitive ability (g) and educational attainment (nominal p<1 × 10−300, 2.1 × 10−6, 2.5 × 10−10, 1.8 × 10−10). In each case increased homozygosity was associated with decreased trait value, equivalent to the offspring of first cousins being 1.2 cm shorter and having 10 months less education. Similar effect sizes were found across four continental groups and populations with different degrees of genome-wide homozygosity, providing convincing evidence for the first time that homozygosity, rather than confounding, directly contributes to phenotypic variance. Contrary to earlier reports in substantially smaller samples5,6, no evidence was seen of an influence of genome-wide homozygosity on blood pressure and low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, or ten other cardio-metabolic traits. Since directional dominance is predicted for traits under directional evolutionary selection7, this study provides evidence that increased stature and cognitive function have been positively selected in human evolution, whereas many important risk factors for late-onset complex diseases may not have been

Association of body mass index with DNA methylation and gene expression in blood cells and relations to cardiometabolic disease: A Mendelian randomization approach

Background The link between DNA methylation, obesity, and adiposity-related diseases in the general population remains uncertain. Methods and Findings We conducted an association study of body mass index (BMI) and differential methylation for over 400,000 CpGs assayed by microarray in whole-blood-derived DNA from 3,743 participants in the Framingham Heart Study and the Lothian Birth Cohorts, with independent replication in three external cohorts of 4,055 participants. We examined variations in whole blood gene expression and conducted Mendelian randomization analyses to investigate the functional and clinical relevance of the findings. We identified novel and previously reported BMI-related differential methylation at 83 CpGs that replicated across cohorts; BMI-related differential methylation was associated with concurrent changes in the expression of genes in lipid metabolism pathways. Genetic instrumental variable analysis of alterations in methylation at one of the 83 replicated CpGs, cg11024682 (intronic to sterol regulatory element binding transcription factor 1 [SREBF1]), demonstrated links to BMI, adiposity-related traits, and coronary artery disease. Independent genetic instruments for expression of SREBF1 supported the findings linking methylation to adiposity and cardiometabolic disease. Methylation at a substantial proportion (16 of 83) of the identified loci was found to be secondary to differences in BMI. However, the cross-sectional nature of the data limits definitive causal determination. Conclusions We present robust associations of BMI with differential DNA methylation at numerous loci in blood cells. BMI-related DNA methylation and gene expression provide mechanistic insights into the relationship between DNA methylation, obesity, and adiposity-related diseases