1,721,733 research outputs found
Pupil mobility: using students' voices to explore their experiences of changing schools
No full textThis article explores the ways in which students' voices can be used to analyse the process of moving schools, at a time outside of those that young people normally change schools. The paper is based on a study in a secondary school and uses qualitative data collected by researchers and student co-researchers. Two areas were raised by students as important about being at a new school: the perceived challenges and their perceptions of learning in a new environment. It is argued that to respond to issues that arise due to mobility, an engagement with students' views is necessary. Furthermore, this can facilitate policy-makers, school leaders and educators in providing more effective support for those young people
Districts and schools as a context for transformed counseling roles
No full text1 online resource (PDF, 11 pages)Seashore, Karen; Jones, Lisa M.; Barajas, Heidi. (2001). Districts and schools as a context for transformed counseling roles. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/180281
Oneself as an Author
No full text In his discussions of life as narrative, and identity as narrative identity, Paul Ricoeur has claimed that we learn to become narrators and heroes of our own stories, without actually becoming the authors of our own lives. This idea, that we cannot be the author of our own life-story in the same way that the author of fictional narrative is the author of that story, seems at first incontestable, given that we are caught up within the enactment of the narrative that is our life, unlike the author of a fictional story who also has an independent existence outside that story. This asymmetry leads Ricoeur to pronounce that an ineradicable difference exists between fictional and life narratives. But is this difference in fact ineffaceable, or is there a sense in which we can be said to be the authors of our own lives? In this article I suggest that there are more points of similarity than Ricoeur explicitly recognizes between what authors do in writing fictional narratives and what we do in figuring, prospectively, our lives. These similarities are brought to light by a revision of the naïve, received concept of author and, once acknowledged, serve to bridge the purportedly ‘unbridgeable gap’ between fictional narratives and life narratives. I then consider how bridging this gap — establishing ourselves as authors as well as narrators — has ethical implications with regard to creating our own lives: a creation which authoring implies, but which is — given the revised notion of author — limited, both by the reciprocity of the other as co-author and by those events in life which the life-author is not fully able to plot. </jats:p
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
The Influence of early life vitamin D deficiency on offspring skeletal muscle development, structure and function
No full textVitamin D deficiency (VDD) is highly prevalent in pregnant women, and may impair early life skeletal muscle development, and consequently influence muscle structure and function in adulthood and its rate of decline with aging. The profound decline in muscle mass and strength with age (sarcopenia) is associated with an increased risk of morbidity and mortality. Vitamin D status is determined by dietary intake, sunlight exposure and a deficiency in vitamin D is associated with obesity in humans. There is very little research on how VDD during pregnancy impacts the offspring’s skeletal muscle development, structure and function across the life course. Thus, this thesis aimed to test the hypothesis that pregnancy VDD will impair offspring skeletal muscle development, structure and function across its life course, and this was investigated in animal models of obesity and dietary specific VDD.In the first study, female C57BL/6J mice were fed a control (C; 7% kcal fat) or high-fat obesogenic (HF; 45% kcal fat) diet 6 weeks prior to mating and throughout pregnancy until weaning. Offspring were fed the C or HF diet postnatally. At 30 weeks of age, offspring isometric muscle contractile parameters, myofibre structure and mRNA levels of genes associated with muscle growth, contraction and insulin signalling were evaluated. In the second study, female C57BL/6J mice were fed a control (C; 1 IU/g vitamin D3) or VDD (0 IU/g vitamin D3) diet from 6 weeks prior to mating until weaning. All offspring were then weaned onto the C diet. At 15-weeks, offspring isometric muscle contractile force, grip strength, overall strength and open-field activity was assessed. In the third study, Welsh mountain ewes were fed a control (C, 2000 IU/kg vitamin D3), or a vitamin D deficient (VDD, 0 IU/kg vitamin D3) diet 17 days prior to conception until 127 days of gestation. In the late-gestation fetus, skeletal muscle radiolabelled glucose uptake, myofibre structure and mRNA levels of insulin signalling genes were quantified.A pre-weaning obesogenic diet was associated with some effects on muscle contractile peak force and potential fatigability in the adult offspring, and vitamin D homeostasis was affected by maternal obesity. A gestational VDD diet did not alter the skeletal muscle peak force, grip strength or overall strength in the young adult mouse, or glucose uptake in the fetal muscle. However, activity levels were reduced in the VDD mouse adult offspring. Fetal muscle structure did not change following a VDD diet, but some changes to skeletal muscle mass were observed in adulthood in the VDD mouse model.Overall, the results suggest that VDD during pregnancy is not as detrimental to the offspring’s skeletal muscle as hypothesised at the outset of this thesis. However, reduction in activity levels following a prenatal VDD diet may predispose the offspring to health complications such as obesity and metabolic disorders in later life. Considering there are some changes in muscle mass of offspring following a prenatal VDD diet, determining any myofibre structural changes is required. These data are a novel addition to a small pre-existing body of evidence for a role of pregnancy vitamin D on later life skeletal muscle function, and pave the way for future analysis with the aim to understand how the underlying mechanisms in the offspring muscle are influenced following a VDD diet during pregnancy
- …
