Teachers' attitudes towards (the alignment between) grammar in the L1 language curricula of primary and secondary education

In recent years, Dutch grammar education (L1) in Flemish primary (PE) as well as secondary education (SE) has been the subject of much debate. Research into the grammatical knowledge of students in SE (n=359) suggests that this expertise falls short of the final attainment targets. Additional research now tries to pinpoint the reasons underlying this trend, focusing on the attitude of teachers, which is an 'understudied' aspect of language teaching. This research, centring around L1 teachers of Dutch in SE (n=255) and PE (n=318), applies two methodological instruments: a Likert-scale attitude questionnaire and teacher interviews. Teacher variables include gender, years of classroom experience, school type and school grade. The research in SE reveals that, in general, (1) teachers' attitudes correlate with students' performances, in that 52% of the teachers are rather pessimistic about their students' level of grammatical proficiency, (2) 76% of them believe that the general level of language proficiency has dropped in recent years and (3) 47% of the teachers are of the opinion that grammar education is a poor relation in the Dutch language curriculum, especially with a view to learning foreign languages. The second study conducted in PE shows that, in general, (1) 75% of the teachers think that their students' general level of language proficiency has declined, (2) 71% of them want to spend more time on grammar than the curriculum prescribes, (3) 80% of the teachers believe that Dutch grammar in PE is insufficiently aligned with Dutch grammar in SE and (4) 81% of them are of the opinion that Dutch grammar instruction is out of step with foreign language grammar instruction. One of the major problems this attitude study reveals, concerns the poor alignment between grammar in the Dutch language curricula of PE and SE. The majority (62%) of the teachers in PE, for instance, are completely oblivious to Dutch language expectations in the 1st year of SE. Additionally, 70% of them feel there is little, if any, interaction between teachers in PE and SE about the instruction of Dutch. Supporting this statement, the majority (63%) of the teachers in SE share this opinion. This perceived problematic alignment between grammar in the Dutch language curricula of PE and SE may have major implications for (future) curriculum design

Physiological and transcriptomic evidence for a close coupling between chloroplast ontogeny and cell cycle progression in the pennate diatom Seminavis robusta

Despite the growing interest in diatom genomics, detailed time series of gene expression in relation to key cellular processes are still lacking. Here, we investigated the relationships between the cell cycle and chloroplast development in the pennate diatom Seminavis robusta. This diatom possesses two chloroplasts with a well-orchestrated developmental cycle, common to many pennate diatoms. By assessing the effects of induced cell cycle arrest with microscopy and flow cytometry, we found that division and reorganization of the chloroplasts are initiated only after S-phase progression. Next, we quantified the expression of the S. robusta FtsZ homolog to address the division status of chloroplasts during synchronized growth and monitored microscopically their dynamics in relation to nuclear division and silicon deposition. We show that chloroplasts divide and relocate during the S/G2 phase, after which a girdle band is deposited to accommodate cell growth. Synchronized cultures of two genotypes were subsequently used for a cDNA-amplified fragment length polymorphism-based genome-wide transcript profiling, in which 917 reproducibly modulated transcripts were identified. We observed that genes involved in pigment biosynthesis and coding for light-harvesting proteins were up-regulated during G2/M phase and cell separation. Light and cell cycle progression were both found to affect fucoxanthin-chlorophyll a/c-binding protein expression and accumulation of fucoxanthin cell content. Because chloroplasts elongate at the stage of cytokinesis, cell cycle-modulated photosynthetic gene expression and synthesis of pigments in concert with cell division might balance chloroplast growth, which confirms that chloroplast biogenesis in S. robusta is tightly regulated

Compound A, a selective glucocorticoid receptor modulator, enhances heat shock protein Hsp70 gene promoter activation

Compound A possesses glucocorticoid receptor (GR)-dependent anti-inflammatory properties. Just like classical GR ligands, Compound A can repress NF-kappa B-mediated gene expression. However, the monomeric Compound A-activated GR is unable to trigger glucocorticoid response element-regulated gene expression. The heat shock response potently activates heat shock factor 1 (HSF1), upregulates Hsp70, a known GR chaperone, and also modulates various aspects of inflammation. We found that the selective GR modulator Compound A and heat shock trigger similar cellular effects in A549 lung epithelial cells. With regard to their anti-inflammatory mechanism, heat shock and Compound A are both able to reduce TNF-stimulated I kappa B alpha degradation and NF-kappa B p65 nuclear translocation. We established an interaction between Compound A-activated GR and Hsp70, but remarkably, although the presence of the Hsp70 chaperone as such appears pivotal for the Compound A-mediated inflammatory gene repression, subsequent novel Hsp70 protein synthesis is uncoupled from an observed CpdA-induced Hsp70 mRNA upregulation and hence obsolete in mediating CpdA's anti-inflammatory effect. The lack of a Compound A-induced increase in Hsp70 protein levels in A549 cells is not mediated by a rapid proteasomal degradation of Hsp70 or by a Compound A-induced general block on translation. Similar to heat shock, Compound A can upregulate transcription of Hsp70 genes in various cell lines and BALB/c mice. Interestingly, whereas Compound A-dependent Hsp70 promoter activation is GR-dependent but HSF1-independent, heat shock-induced Hsp70 expression alternatively occurs in a GR-independent and HSF1-dependent manner in A549 lung epithelial cells