PROBLEMS OF MATHEMATICAL EDUCATION OF PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS: IDENTIFYING RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CONCEPTS

The purpose of this article is to investigate how the undergraduate students in the primary education programs understand mathematical information (concepts). Having an understanding of the mathematical content allows the teacher to design different approaches to teaching younger students with different learning styles and abilities. The analysis of theoretical studies published in Russian scientific literature has shown that one of the important criteria for understanding information in a particular field of knowledge is to identify logical connections between the concepts of this field. In this article the authors present the results of their study on how undergraduate students studying in the profiles of “Primary Education" and "Psychological and Pedagogical Education” form the links between the concepts used in everyday life versus the connections between mathematical concepts. The results show that other disciplines/ fields of study influence the formation of connections between mathematical concepts. In addition, some specific difficulties in establishing some of these connections were identified. Based on this research, the authors provide recommendations on specific strategies to improve the professional education for future teachers in the area of mathematical knowledge.

Exome, transcriptome and miRNA analysis don’t reveal any molecular markers of TKI efficacy in primary CML patients

Abstract Background Approximately 5–20% of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) patients demonstrate primary resistance or intolerance to imatinib. None of the existing predictive scores gives a good prognosis of TKI efficacy. Gene polymorphisms, expression and microRNAs are known to be involved in the pathogenesis of TKI resistance in CML. The aim of our study is to find new molecular markers of TKI therapy efficacy in CML patients. Methods Newly diagnosed patients with Ph+ CML in chronic phase were included in this study. Optimal and non-optimal responses to TKI were estimated according to ELN 2013 recommendation. We performed genotyping of selected polymorphisms in 62 blood samples of CML patients, expression profiling of 33 RNA samples extracted from blood and miRNA profiling of 800 miRNA in 12 blood samples of CML patients. Results The frequencies of genotypes at the studied loci did not differ between groups of patients with an optimal and non-optimal response to TKI therapy. Analysis of the expression of 34,681 genes revealed 26 differently expressed genes (p < 0.05) in groups of patients with different TKI responses, but differences were very small and were not confirmed by qPCR. Finally, we did not find difference in miRNA expression between the groups. Conclusions Using modern high-throughput methods such as whole-exome sequencing, transcriptome and miRNA analysis, we could not find reliable molecular markers for early prediction of TKI efficiency in Ph+ CML patients