Social justice: The missing link in school administrators’ perspectives on teacher induction

Critical scholars view schooling as one piece of a larger struggle for democracy and social justice. We investigated 41 school administrators‟ perceptions about the role and importance of equity, diversity and social justice in new teacher induction in the province of Ontario. Interviews reveal that principals were interested in shaping teacher induction programming in their schools and school districts, but that they regularly prioritized technical issues like classroom management and pedagogy over systemic issues like equity and social justice. When asked directly about equity, principals spoke about learning styles, special needs and differentiated instruction, but they regularly ignored new teachers‟ abilities to counter systemic oppression—racism, sexism, and classism. Our findings suggest that without an explicit focus on equity and social justice in provincial policy documents, teacher induction programming runs the risk of reproducing a transmission model of new teacher education

The Hidden Curriculum of Veterinary Education: Mediators and Moderators of Its Effects

The “hidden curriculum” has long been supposed to have an effect on students' learning during their clinical education, and in particular in shaping their ideas of what it means to be a professional. Despite this, there has been little evidence linking specific changes in professional attitudes to the individual components of the hidden curriculum. This study aimed to recognize those components that led to a change in students' professional attitudes at a UK veterinary school, as well as to identify the attitudes most affected. Observations were made of 11 student groups across five clinical rotations, followed by semi-structured interviews with 23 students at the end of their rotation experience. Data were combined and analyzed thematically, taking both an inductive and deductive approach. Views about the importance of technical competence and communication skills were promoted as a result of students' interaction with the hidden curriculum, and tensions were revealed in relation to their attitudes toward compassion and empathy, autonomy and responsibility, and lifestyle ethic. The assessment processes of rotations and the clinical service organization served to communicate the messages of the hidden curriculum, bringing about changes in student professional attitudes, while student-selected role models and the student rotation groups moderated the effects of these influences

Genome-wide association analyses for lung function and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease identify new loci and potential druggable targets

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is characterized by reduced lung function and is the third leading cause of death globally. Through genome-wide association discovery in 48,943 individuals, selected from extremes of the lung function distribution in UK Biobank, and follow-up in 95,375 individuals, we increased the yield of independent signals for lung function from 54 to 97. A genetic risk score was associated with COPD susceptibility (odds ratio per 1 s.d. of the risk score (∼6 alleles) (95% confidence interval) = 1.24 (1.20-1.27), P = 5.05 × 10‾⁴⁹), and we observed a 3.7-fold difference in COPD risk between individuals in the highest and lowest genetic risk score deciles in UK Biobank. The 97 signals show enrichment in genes for development, elastic fibers and epigenetic regulation pathways. We highlight targets for drugs and compounds in development for COPD and asthma (genes in the inositol phosphate metabolism pathway and CHRM3) and describe targets for potential drug repositioning from other clinical indications.This work was funded by a Medical Research Council (MRC) strategic award to M.D.T., I.P.H., D.S. and L.V.W. (MC_PC_12010). This research has been conducted using the UK Biobank Resource under application 648. This article presents independent research funded partially by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the UK Department of Health. This research used the ALICE and SPECTRE High-Performance Computing Facilities at the University of Leicester. Additional acknowledgments and funding details can be found in the Supplementary Note

'Siting' voice in stories of conflict: Bounding conflict in place and time through social memory and acts of remembering

This chapter takes the idea of ‘voice’ as it communicates stories of conflict and trauma, and reimages place as the ‘site’ from which voice emanates: a complex entanglement of social, political, material, human and non-human forces that differs across the voice of history, the collective voice of a community and voice as emerging from the site of an individual life. Focusing specifically on conflict stories obtained from fieldwork in Aceh, Indonesia, the chapter argues that history and collective remembering may function as Mazzei’s (2016) ‘voice without subject.’ However, in listening to individuals’ stories, ethnographers and oral historians participate in the formation of a voice that is localized at the site of the individual’s life and constructs a new ethical-political relation between storyteller and listener