Apporti metodologici innovativi attraverso la collaborazione internazionale: l’uso della video analisi per comprendere la progettazione didattica

The purpose of this paper is to propose new directions for research in the use of video analysis to improve teaching and learning design in mathematics. The research directions have been developed through an international collaboration involving researchers from Italy and Australia. The paper includes an outline of these context and the different drivers for research before presenting providing a literature review to support future methodological innovation.L’articolo descrive e approfondisce le nuove direzioni di ricerca in ambito educativo attraverso l’uso della videoanalisi per migliorare la progettazione dei processi di insegnamento-apprendimento della matematica. Le direzioni di ricerca sono state sviluppate attraverso una collaborazione in ter nazionale che ha coinvolto ricercatori italiani e australiani. L’articolo illustra una panoramica dei diversi contesti di ricerca e delinea un’ampia trattazione della letteratura di ambito come quadro teorico d riferimento della proposta metodologica innovativa

English Literature in Qatari English Language Classrooms

This thesis explores views of expatriate male Muslim Arab teachers in regards to the use of English literature, particularly graded English language readers, in the teaching of English as a second or foreign language in Qatari Independent (State) schools (Yrs 1-12). It adopts a phenomenological methodology in analysing the life experiences and perceptions of Arab Muslim English language teachers in Qatar and other Middle Eastern nations. It finds that these teachers have a dual responsibility in supporting local Muslim cultural and religious values while utilizing best practice in using English literature to support English language acquisition. Specific research literature about the impact of western ideas reflected in literature used in ESL programs in Arab Muslim countries is limited. But this thesis takes the funnel approach to research, identifying the research of parallel issues in parallel contexts, and thus providing a broad background to the topic. The discussion is complex, by virtue of the range of views that those bearing the name Muslim can and do espouse, and by the range of subjects, values and worldviews represented in the literature of the English language. Nevertheless, the issue is significant as the event which provided the catalyst for this research demonstrated. The event was a parent/teacher interview at a state high school in Doha, Qatar, where the father of a Year 10 student asked his expatriate Arab teacher of English, "Why is my son reading Western (English) literature in his English class?" This parent objected to the possibility that his son was being exposed to literature reflecting Western values and ideas, which can be offensive to Muslim parents and educators. This research therefore provides a valuable contribution to an important discussion in international education

Novel Rickettsia in Ticks, Tasmania, Australia

A novel rickettsia was detected in Ixodes tasmani ticks collected from Tasmanian devils. A total of 55% were positive for the citrate synthase gene by quantitative PCR. According to current criteria for rickettsia speciation, this new rickettsia qualifies as Candidatus Rickettsia tasmanensis, named after the location of its detection

Adolescent literacies for critical social and community engagement

This thesis aims to describe the literacy practices of adolescents who are engaged actively and critically with their communities. In particular it is concerned to make explicit the semiotic resources adolescents deploy to persuade their multiple audiences to effect social change and to build solidarity within the social spaces they inhabit. The study aims to interpret these semiotic resources within their wider social, socio-political and cultural contexts and to respond to concerns by literacy educators and wider social and political theorists to celebrate and make visible the processes and practices of adolescent active citizenship. Data for the study include texts produced by six adolescents involved in two social movements during 2004 and 2005. These texts represent a range of modalities including speeches and radio interviews, print newspaper commentaries, published essays and online weblogs and magazines. The social contexts of texts were analysed using theories from systemic functional linguistics and new literacy studies. The linguistic construal of persuasion was examined using genre theory and the discourse semantic theories of negotiation and appraisal. These theories were enriched with complementary perspectives from new rhetorical studies. The study found that adolescents draw on a wide range of semiotic resources to persuade multiple audiences in the civic domain. The activists deployed rhetorical strategies valued by mainstream politicians, social commentators and activists as well as those valued within the academic and personal domains of their lives. The choice of semiotic resources was found to be motivated by the complex roles, relationships and social positioning of the young activists in relation to their audiences as well as by the constraints and freedoms of the modalities in which the texts were situated. The intertextual positioning of the texts within larger social semiotic affiliations and sociopolitical environments was also found to have a considerable impact on the reading of the texts

From dot points to disciplinarity: the theory and practice of disciplinary literacies in secondary schooling

This thesis explores the disciplinary literacies of Business Studies and Music, with a focus on the written component of the HSC examination in the final year of schooling in New South Wales. The syllabus contains dot points of topics to be covered in the course but these offer little guidance for teachers or students in how to compose an answer to an HSC examination question and they obscure relations between different aspects of disciplinary knowledge. To help teachers move beyond syllabus dot points, this thesis aims to illuminate the distinctive literacy demands of Business Studies and Music. This is achieved by using analytical frameworks from Systemic Functional Linguistics and Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis to explore the features of successful HSC writing in these two subjects. Analysis reveals that successful writing in Business Studies explains patterns of cause and effect with profit as the main motive. In contrast, successful HSC writing in Music describes musical events in terms of concepts of music and principles of musical composition. In the analysis, concepts of music are systematised as networks and taxonomies to reveal the relations within and between concepts. The analysis also includes a typology of images (graphic notation and non-traditional notation) used to represent music to enable an investigation of how image and written text are interrelated in successful HSC responses

Artful Thinking: Critical and Creative Thinking in Primary and Secondary Visual Arts Education

This study is an investigation into critical and creative thinking in visual arts education. It is often claimed that the development of critical and creative thinking amongst students is a central concern of arts education. Moreover, it is frequently assumed that critical and creative thinking result naturally from arts education because the discipline is innately creative. However, educational research suggests otherwise; namely, a more deliberate teacher-directed approach is required to foster these thinking skills amongst students. While a number of studies have highlighted the value of arts learning in promoting these kinds of higher order thinking skills, little has been documented about the educational approaches or strategies used to foster them. This thesis begins to fill this gap in the research by documenting perspectives and practices associated with critical and creative thinking in the visual arts classroom. The study explores the perspectives and practices of four experienced and competent art teachers and their students. Specifically, ethnographic case study methods are used to gather, analyse and triangulate significant data. Four different cases – two in primary and two in secondary school – are included in the study. Data was collected through observation records and interviews with teachers and students in these case groups. Through field-based data collection and subsequent data analyses, a series of descriptive portraits are created that illustrate different pedagogical approaches to teaching critical and creative thinking through the visual arts. These portraits reflect teacher practitioners' theories and the value they ascribe to training critical and creative thinking through art. In addition, they reflect the ways these teachers' theories and beliefs impact on education practices in their classrooms. While the four case studies could not possibly represent the realities of the broader field of art education, they are able to capture some of the diversity that exists in art teaching practices

Teaching and Learning Functional Grammar in Junior Primary Classrooms

The teaching and learning of grammatics ('knowledge about grammar') with young school children is the focus of this study. Historical literature on the teaching of grammar is widely believed to show that a knowledge of grammar is not effective for improving students' literacy outcomes, usually specified in terms of writing. Under-scrutinised in this research are two issues which bear strongly on questions of effectiveness: the affordances of the kind of grammatical description taught, and the quality of pedagogy deployed in the teaching of grammatics. The thesis explores both these issues. Specifically, it investigates the teaching and learning of aspects of systemic functional grammar (developed by M.A.K. Halliday) within a pedagogic framework based on sociocultural constructivist theory (L.S. Vygotsky). The data for the project are drawn from two case studies conducted in Year 2 classrooms. 'Slices' of the case study data are used to analyse and interpret: ways in which to begin the study of a functional grammatics with young novices; benefits from knowledge about verbal Processes for children's improvement in expressive oral reading and punctuation of direct speech; the application of grammatical and genre knowledge in developing a critical reading of a narrative; and early moves in using the grammatics of Theme in one specific aspect of writing. A significant contribution is the project's incorporation of transcribed classroom talk, which is used to illuminate situated practices in teaching and learning grammatics, including the ways in which teacher talk and class discussion mediate the learning of grammatical concepts. Evidence is provided for the accessibility and utility of a grammatics drawn from systemic functional grammar, with the grammar's orientation to meaning in language being central to its potential. Attention to pedagogic design is also argued to be integral to the development of a productive grammatics for schools. The thesis recommends the principled design of forms of semiotic mediation used to teach grammatical concepts (including teacher talk), and the thoughtful and meaningful integration of grammatics with other dimensions of the English/literacy curriculum so that grammatics is taught 'in context' but also with a view to longer term development of a flexible, systematic understanding

Children's Book Awards in Australia: Their Effects on the Literary Marketplace

This study explores the outcomes resulting from the formal recognition of selected children's literature in Australia for six stakeholder cohorts. For the purposes of this research, the recognition was in the form of a children's or young adult literary award. The process leading to an award is documented in policies, reports and handbooks and some publicity is evident in the media, journals, online sources and popular literary magazines. However, the outcomes of this personal, corporate, organizational, social, cultural and economic activity have not been examined to date and this research project addresses the question of exactly what happens to the selected stakeholders after the winning announcement is made. Out of the general focus question there arose subsidiary questions relating to the strength of the impacts, the longevity of the impacts, the current knowledge of a range of awards and responses in terms of income or impressions of award related promotional activity. Selecting meaningful and relevant populations to survey and to clarify relevance and vocabulary in questioning involved a pilot study and resulted in a survey structure of six cohorts to represent the affected field. The survey method involved mailed questionnaires. In the construction of the questionnaires it was apparent that cohort-specific questionnaires would be necessary for there were very few avenues of questioning which were common across all cohorts. As these questionnaires were developed the research design evolved into six mini-projects which had some elements in common but also unique features and perspectives. The evolution of book awards over time is explored in this work. Recognition and dedicated publishing of Australian children's literature slowly developed out of children's literature published in Great Britain, the mother country. This thesis briefly follows this growth and development of literary works for children and the awarding of prizes for exceptional quality, revealing the shifts in perception of the nature of the child reader and society's perception of what constitutes a quality child's book in Australia. Book awards for children's literature did not arise spontaneously but were an expression of interest, respect and maturity in the development of Australian literature

The antisaccade task as an index of sustained goal activation in working memory: modulation by nicotine

The antisaccade task provides a laboratory analogue of situations in which execution of the correct behavioural response requires the suppression of a more prepotent or habitual response. Errors (failures to inhibit a reflexive prosaccade towards a sudden onset target) are significantly increased in patients with damage to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and patients with schizophrenia. Recent models of antisaccade performance suggest that errors are more likely to occur when the intention to initiate an antisaccade is insufficiently activated within working memory. Nicotine has been shown to enhance specific working memory processes in healthy adults. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We explored the effect of nicotine on antisaccade performance in a large sample (N = 44) of young adult smokers. Minimally abstinent participants attended two test sessions and were asked to smoke one of their own cigarettes between baseline and retest during one session only. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Nicotine reduced antisaccade errors and correct antisaccade latencies if delivered before optimum performance levels are achieved, suggesting that nicotine supports the activation of intentions in working memory during task performance. The implications of this research for current theoretical accounts of antisaccade performance, and for interpreting the increased rate of antisaccade errors found in some psychiatric patient groups are discussed

Prolyl-4-hydroxylase Α subunit 2 (P4HA2) expression is a predictor of poor outcome in breast ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS)

© 2018, Cancer Research UK. Background: Extracellular matrix (ECM) plays a crucial role in tumour behaviour. Prolyl-4-hydroxlase-A2 (P4HA2) is a key enzyme in ECM remodelling. This study aims to evaluate the prognostic significance of P4HA2 in breast ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). Methods: P4HA2 expression was assessed immunohistochemically in malignant cells and surrounding stroma of a large DCIS cohort comprising 481 pure DCIS and 196 mixed DCIS and invasive carcinomas. Outcome analysis was evaluated using local recurrence free interval (LRFI). Results: High P4HA2 expression was detected in malignant cells of half of pure DCIS whereas its expression in stroma was seen in 25% of cases. Higher P4HA2 expression was observed in mixed DCIS cases compared to pure DCIS both in tumour cells and in stroma. High P4HA2 was associated with features of high risk DCIS including younger age, higher grade, comedo necrosis, triple negative and HER2-positive phenotypes. Interaction between P4HA2 and radiotherapy was also observed regarding the outcome. High P4HA2 expression was an independent prognostic factor in predicting shorter LRFI. Conclusion: P4HA2 plays a role in DCIS progression and can potentially be used to predict DCIS outcome. Incorporation of P4HA2 with other clinicopathological parameters could refine DCIS risk stratification that can potentially guide management decisions