Civic engagement in adolescence contributes to the positive development of young people and to the health of communities and societies. The present study examined how an open classroom climate and ...adolescent students' citizenship self-efficacy can promote their expectations to participate in civic activities. Multilevel Structural Equation Modelling techniques were used to examine data from a nationally representative sample of 3,352 Italian eighth-graders, controlling for students' socio-economic status. The results revealed that students' willingness to participate in civic activities, both at the individual level and at the classroom level, was positively influenced by an open classroom climate and that this influence was mediated by students' citizenship self-efficacy. Our findings suggest that an open classroom climate can help students to become civically and politically involved by fostering their citizenship self-efficacy. The results of the present study extend our understanding of civic engagement in adolescence and inform policies that aim to promote it.
•The mediation model explained 48% of the variability in students' civic engagement.•The model accounted for 73% of the variability in civic engagement between classes.•Open classroom climate had a positive influence on students' civic engagement.•Citizenship self-efficacy meditated the influence of open classroom climate.•The mediation effect was found at student and classroom level controlling for SES.
This study uses data from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study 2016 (ICCS 2016) conducted in four Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden (students, N=18,962; ...teachers, N=6,119; school principals, N=630). We look at students’ attitudes, awareness, and behavior in relation to the educational goals and pedagogical means of teachers and school leaders working toward environmental citizenship. Drawing on the pragmatic framework of John Dewey and the contemporary experiential learning model, we identify some key school conditions and pedagogical approaches to education for environmental citizenship education. Based on the whole-school approach to environmental education, we seek to understand in what ways school environment and educational practices may positively affect student attitudes and behaviors that promote environmental citizenship. The objective is to identify the extent to which the school environment and citizenship educational activities are efficacious in fostering environmental citizenship attitudes and behaviors in students.
Abstract
Cross-national comparisons of educational achievement rely upon each participating country collecting nationally representative data. While obtaining high response rates is a key part of ...reaching this goal, other potentially important factors may also be at play. This paper focuses on one such issue—exclusion rates—which has received relatively little attention in the academic literature. Using data from 20 years of international large-scale assessment data, we find there to be modest variation in exclusion rates across countries and that there has been a relatively small increase in exclusion rates in some over time. We also demonstrate how exclusion rates tend to be higher in studies of primary students than in studies of secondary students. Finally, while there seems to be little relationship between exclusion rates and response rates, there is a weak negative association between the level of exclusions and test performance. We conclude by discussing how information about exclusions—and other similar issues—might be more clearly communicated to non-specialist audiences.
The ongoing international movement to phase out mercury, mainly led by the Minamata Convention on Mercury, raises concerns about illegal intercountry trade, including smuggling. This study aims to ...detect the existence of illegal intercountry mercury trade under the social mercury phase-out movement, focusing on discrepancies in each country’s trade statistics. To analyze the trends by year and country for discrepancies in intercountry mercury trade, an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was applied to the mirrored exports and imports from trade statistics of each country provided by the UN Comtrade. The year-based ICC analysis identified a tendency to reduce the detection of discrepancies in the reported mirrored exports and imports for mercury at the intercountry level under the recent mercury phase-out movement. Through an ICC analysis focusing on exporting and importing countries, the validity of the ICC analysis was verified as a way to detect illegal intercountry trade of mercury. Our analyses detecting the illegal trade of related countries contribute to the effectiveness evaluation and custom capacity building required in the Minamata Convention by offering a data-driven method to enable the effective detection of illegal mercury trade.
We used logistic regression to investigate whether the risk of an Irish cattle herd undergoing a bovine tuberculosis (bTB) breakdown increased with the size of the Ingoing Contact Chain (ICC) of ...previous herd to herd cattle movements, in a sequence up to eight moves back from the most recent, direct, movement into the herd. We further examined whether taking into account the bTB test history of each herd in the chain would improve model fit. We found that measures of cattle movements directly into the herd were risk factors for subsequent bTB restrictions, and the number of herds that animals were coming from was the most important of these. However, in contrast to a previous study in Great Britain, the ICC herd count at steps more remote than direct movements into the herd did not result in better fitting models than restricting the count to direct movements. Restricting the ICC counts to herds which had previously or would in the future test positive for bTB resulted in improved model fits, but this was not the case if only the previous test status was considered. This suggests that in many cases bTB infected animals are moving out of herds before being identified through testing, and that risk-based trading approaches should not rely solely on the previous test history of source herds as a proxy for future risk. Model fit was also improved by the inclusion of variables measuring bTB history of the herd, bTB in neighbouring herds, herd size, herd type, the movement network measures “in strength” and “betweenness”, altitude, modelled badger abundance and county. Rainfall was not a good predictor. The most influential measures of bTB in nearby herds (a proxy for neighbourhood infection) were the proportion of herds with a history of bTB whose centroids were within 6 km, or whose boundaries were within 4 km, of the index herd. As well as informing national control and surveillance measures, our models can be used to identify areas where bTB rates are anomalously high, to prompt further investigation in these areas.
•We modelled bTB in Irish Cattle herds, including Ingoing Contact Chains of movements as predictors.•Direct moves into herds were the most important.•Past and future test history of trading herds was the best predictor.•Other predictors were TB in nearby herds, herd size and type, In strength, betweenness, modelled badger density and altitude.
•Results are based on data from IEA ICCS in Mexico, Colombia and Chile.•Decision trees and cluster robust logistic regressions are used to analyse the data•Students’ attitudes are associated with ...schools’ resilience to violence.•Structured participation activities promote schools’ resilience to violence.•To a lesser extent, civic knowledge promotes school resilience to violence too.
Violence in schools is one of the main concerns in Latin American countries and is one of the main threats for schools to be effective in providing high-quality education. For this work, data from ICCS 2016 is used to fit decision trees and cluster robust logistic regression models to explore how some schools immersed in violent environments manage to be resilient to violence. Our results show that the variables most consistently associated with higher probabilities of a school being resilient to violence are those related to the students’ attitudes and to a lesser extent, students’ civic knowledge and family background. The paper concludes by discussing the possible policy and practice implications in the context of each of the countries analysed.
Hva slags medborger? Emil Sætra; Janicke Heldal Stray
Nordic Journal of Comparative and International Education,
03/2019, Letnik:
3, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
In this article, we explore teachers’ ideas about teaching for democratic citizenship. In short, we want to understand “what kind of citizen” teachers aim to educate. We ground our study in three ...ideal types that represent different ways of understanding what education for democratic citizenship education revolves around: politically informed citizenship (politisk informert medborgerskap), rational autonomous citizenship (rasjonelt autonomt medborgerskap), and socially intelligent citizenship (sosialt intelligent medborgerskap). A first finding is that teacher emphasize that students should acquire knowledge that they can make use of as democratic citizens. Teachers are preoccupied with making students politically informed. A second finding is, however, that teachers understand democratic citizenship education as something more than just knowledge acquisition. One purpose that holds high priority with the teachers is that students should learn how to think critically; to become rationally autonomous. The pedagogical implication of this view is that students should acquire knowledge, skills, and attitudes that helps realize this ambition. This interpretation of what democratic citizenship is moves beyond being able to make an informed choice between different alternatives or representatives. In the last part of the article education for democratic citizenship is discussed in light of the third category; the socially intelligent citizen. We find that while teachers put much emphasis on knowledge and critical thinking, there is little emphasis on participation in democratic practices. We thus conclude that teachers talk about schooling as a tool for democracy much more than they talk about democracy as an ideal or model for schooling.
Background
N6‐methyladenosine (m6A) is the most prevalent methylation modification of eukaryotic RNA, and methyltransferase‐like 3 (METTL3) plays a vital role in multiple cell functions. This study ...aimed to investigate the role of m6A methylase METTL3 in slow transit constipation (STC).
Material and Method
The expression of METTL3 and DGCR8 was measured in STC tissues and glutamic acid‐induced interstitial cells of Cajal (ICCs). The effects of METTL3, miR‐30b‐5p, and DGCR8 on the biological characteristics of ICCs were investigated on the basis of loss‐of‐function analyses. Luciferase reporter assay was used to identify the direct binding sites of miR‐30b‐5p with PIK3R2.
Results
The results showed that the METTL3, DGCR8, miR‐30b‐5p, and the methylation level of m6A were significantly increased in STC tissues and glutamic acid‐induced ICCs. Silencing of METTL3 and miR‐30b‐5p inhibited apoptosis, autophagy, and pyroptosis of glutamic acid‐induced ICCs. Moreover, overexpression of miR‐30b‐5p reversed the cytoprotection of METTL3 knockdown in glutamic acid‐induced ICCs. Besides, DGCR8 knockdown could facilitate cell growth and decrease apoptotic glutamic acid‐induced ICCs. Mechanically, we illustrated that METTL3 in glutamic acid‐induced ICCs significantly accelerated the maturation of pri‐miR‐30b‐5p by m6A methylation modification, resulting in the reduction of PIK3R2, which results in the inhibition of PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway and ultimately leads to the cell death of STC.
Conclusions
Collectively, these data demonstrated that METTL3 promoted the apoptosis, autophagy, and pyroptosis of glutamic acid‐induced ICCs by interacting with the DGCR8 and successively modulating the miR‐30b‐5p/PIK3R2 axis in an m6A‐dependent manner, and METTL3 may be a potential therapeutic target for STC.
Aurantii Fructus
Immaturus
total flavonoids (AFIF) is the main effective fraction extracted from AFI, which has a good effect on promoting gastrointestinal motility. This study aimed to investigate ...AFIF which regulates miR-5100 to improve constipation symptoms in mice by targeting Frizzled-2 (Fzd2) to alleviate interstitial cells of Cajal (ICCs) calcium ion balance and autophagy apoptosis. The constipated mouse model was induced by an antibiotic suspension, and then treated with AFIF. RNA-seq sequencing, luciferase assay, immunofluorescence staining, transmission electron microscopy, ELISA, flow cytometry, quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and Western blot were applied in this study. The results showed that AFIF improved constipation symptoms in antibiotic-induced constipated mice, and decreased the autophagy-related protein Beclin1 levels and the LC3-II/I ratio in ICCs. miR-5100 and its target gene Fzd2 were screened as key miRNAs and regulator associated with autophagy. Downregulation of miR-5100 caused increased expression of Fzd2, decreased proliferation activity of ICCs, increased apoptotic cells, and enhanced calcium ion release and autophagy signals. After AFIF treatment, miR-5100 expression was upregulated and Fzd2 was downregulated, while autophagy-related protein levels and calcium ion concentration decreased. Furthermore, AFIF increased the levels of SP, 5-HT, and VIP, and increased the expression of PGP9.5, Sy, and Cx43, which alleviated constipation by improving the integrity of the enteric nervous system network. In conclusion, AFIF could attenuate constipation symptoms by upregulating the expression of miR-5100 and targeting inhibition of Fzd2, alleviating calcium overload and autophagic death of ICCs, regulating the content of neurotransmitters, and enhancing the integrity of the enteric nervous system network.
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