Please understand me : effective leadership practices and strategies that increase graduation rates

x, 160 leaves ; 29 cm.The primary purpose of this study was to examine how leadership strategies and practices contribute to student retention and sustained improvement in student graduation rates. The issue of students' success and graduation is important because educational attainment is positively correlated with every single important life outcome, and high school completion is widely regarded as the minimum education qualification needed to be able to earn an adequate income in the labour market (Levin, 2006). The conceptual framework of the study was built on Leithwood's transformational leadership model: setting direction (visions, goals and higher expectations), developing people (individualized support, intellectual stimulation and modeling), and redesigning the organization (culture, structure, policy and community relationships). Nine principals, were interviewed from four zone six Alberta school jurisdictions with significantly larger than provincial average three and five-year completion data, to determine how these formal leaders relate or support leadership strategies and Leithwood's Leadership practices to positively effect retention and graduation. Although many of the factors that impact on educational outcomes lie entirely outside the scope and responsibility of the school system, school leaders can utilize Leithwood's transformational leadership practices to increase the commitment of teachers to boost graduation rates. Leaders can and should seek to engage the support of teachers for this vision for the school and to enhance their capacities to contribute to achieving this goal. In general, leaders need to recognize the multi-faceted nature of the concept of at-risk and its affect on retention and graduation rates, and need to develop broad, multi-faceted prevention strategies and practices

Isolation and identification of genes expressed during diapause in horn fly, Haematobia irritans (L.)

xii, 92 leaves : ill. ; 28 cm.There is a discrepancy in the current literature concerning the stage of development in which horn flies arrest during pupal diapause. A study was therefore conducted to describe the morphologies of horn fly pupae and its central nervous system (CNS) throughout nondiapause pupal development and diapause. Morphologies of diapausing pupae and CNS indicated that developmental arrest occured early in pupal development during the interval between head eversion and pupal-adult apolysis. Morphological descriptions are necessary for defining compariable tissues between nondiapausing insects and diapausing insects. These tissues can then be used for molecular differential analysis to determine genes specific to either diapause or nondiapause. One such differential analysis technique, subtractive hybridization, was used to isolate putative diapause up-regulated genes from the horn fly. Seven different cDNAs were closed and partially sequenced. Comparisons of the cDNA sequences with known DNA and protein sequences indicated homology with transferrin, cytochrome oxidase I, Kunitz family serine protease inhibitor, tyrosine hydroxylase (TH), and carboxylensterase. Two cDNAs did not have homology to entries in DNA and protein databases. Northern blot analyses were used to study expression of each gene by probing total RNA extracted from whole pupae throughout nondiapause pupal development and diapause. Expression of TH was also determined in total RNA extracted from CNS tissue of nondiapausing and diapausing pupae. Cytochrome oxidase was equally expressed in nondiapause and diapause destined pupae, and therefore not considered to be a diapause up-regualted gene. Expression patterns differed slightly for each of the remaining clones; however, expression tended to be highest in diapause destined pupae during pupation compared to nondiapausing pupae. These genes and their products are involved in many aspects of insect phsiology including metamorphosis, melanization and sclerotization of the puparium and cellular defense. The possible functions of these genes and products are discussed in the context of the diapause process

Chemical markers for rumen methanogens and methanogenesis

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Divergent functional isoforms drive niche specialisation for nutrient acquisition and use in rumen microbiome

Many microbes in complex competitive environments share genes for acquiring and utilising nutrients, questioning whether niche specialisation exists and if so, how it is maintained. We investigated the genomic signatures of niche specialisation in the rumen microbiome, a highly competitive, anaerobic environment, with limited nutrient availability determined by the biomass consumed by the host. We generated individual metagenomic libraries from 14 cows fed an ad libitum diet of grass silage and calculated functional isoform diversity for each microbial gene identified. The animal replicates were used to calculate confidence intervals to test for differences in diversity of functional isoforms between microbes that may drive niche specialisation. We identified 153 genes with significant differences in functional isoform diversity between the two most abundant bacterial genera in the rumen (Prevotella and Clostridium). We found Prevotella possesses a more diverse range of isoforms capable of degrading hemicellulose, whereas Clostridium for cellulose. Furthermore, significant differences were observed in key metabolic processes indicating that isoform diversity plays an important role in maintaining their niche specialisation. The methods presented represent a novel approach for untangling complex interactions between microorganisms in natural environments and have resulted in an expanded catalogue of gene targets central to rumen cellulosic biomass degradation

The rumen microbial metagenome associated with high methane production in cattle

Acknowledgements The Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health and SRUC are funded by the Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services Division (RESAS) of the Scottish Government. The project was supported by Defra and the DA funded Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Inventory Research Platform, the Technology Strategy Board (Project No: TP 5903–40240) and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC; BB/J004243/1, BB/J004235/1). Our thanks are due to the excellent support staff at the SRUC Beef and Sheep Research Centre, Edinburgh, and to Silvia Ramos Garcia for help in interrogating the data. MW and RR contributed equally to the paper and should be considered as joint last authors.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The Complexity of Mobilizing Knowledge: Putting What We Know into Action

Governments have increasingly been embarking on substantial waves of educational reform in an attempt to develop more effective school systems and raise levels of student learning and achievement. Some jurisdictions appear to be more successful than others at shifting their professional learning focus onto research-informed practice to create and apply new knowledge and expand teachers’ repertoires of instructional practices within their complex knowledge-producing and knowledge-disseminating systems. The following study, an exploratory multi-case study of four high-performing Alberta school divisions, as determined by provincial accountability pillars, offers insight into how leaders mobilize knowledge to align research and learning practice within their complex social systems. The findings lend credence to the notion that a systems or complexity approach can play a role in understanding the unpredictability of organizational change and thereby enhance the mobilization of knowledge regarding the alignment of research and learning practice. Through a grounded theory approach, a conceptual framework emerged, built upon the complex interplay of three facets: (1) enhancing student learning, (2) ensuring best practice and research, and (3) establishing relational trust. These three facets are brought to fruition through a focus on five key dimensions: (1) efficaciously decentralizing: attending to both redundancy and diversity, (2) explicitly focusing: identifying sites of redundancy, (3) enacting expectations: implementing strategies for redundancy, (4) engaging expertise: identifying sites of diversity, and (5) ensuring efficacy: implementing strategies for diversity. The framework, while not definitive, contributed to the emerging picture of knowledge mobilization and the role that complexity theory can play in understanding and enhancing knowledge mobilization, a complex emergence phenomenon, with regard to aligning research and practice within self-organizing, self-maintaining, adaptive, learning systems such as school jurisdictions. By attending to both redundancy and diversity, leaders are able to prompt the emergence of a social collective intelligence within distinguishable but intimately intertwined networks and displace the individual as the sole site of learning, and intelligence creativity

Mobilizing the CASS Framework for School System Success

Educational research is increasingly focused on the role that leaders play in the improvement of teaching and learning. Although there is little disagreement concerning the belief that school jurisdiction leaders have an impact on the lives of school based leaders, teacher, and students, the nature and degree of impact continues to be debated. There is recognition that the interplay is complex and context sensitive. The intent of this paper is to explore the work the College of Alberta School Superintendents (CASS) is doing to building system leadership capacity within Alberta's political landscape of reform in order to facilitate mobilizing knowledge for the purpose of improving student learning. I begin with identifying the Alberta educational context that has led to the commencement of this work. Next, I explore the four dimensions of the CASS framework. The paper concludes with how CASS and system leaders can mobilize leadership knowledge and best practice to improve student learning

Pathological interactions between campylobacter jejuni and the intestinal epithelium

Bibliography: p. 116-132Some pages are in colour