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Alarm over literacy
Audit finds inconsistency in training methods for teaching reading during early education.
An audit of literacy teaching in early education has called for sweeping changes in the way universities and other providers train teachers.
The NSW Board of Studies and Educational Standards( BOSTES) released
Researchers find immune receptors may be key to helping patients stomach chemotherapy. the report, Literacy Learning in the Early Years, recently. It was based on data from 14 education providers – including 11 universities. The report states that the audit revealed a“ lack of clarity about approaches to the teaching of reading”.
“ Consultation with providers somewhat clarified approaches taken; however, the extent to which providers take the integrated, explicit and systematic approach to the teaching of reading as recommended by international and national research evidence remains unclear,” the report states.“ There is considerable variation across providers in the amount of course time spent on literacy components and in the emphasis on reading assessment and remediation strategies.
“ The balance between theory and practice is also unclear.”
The report’ s authors expressed“ significant concerns regarding the knowledge, understanding and skills for the explicit and systematic teaching of literacy / reading in the early years of current primary teachers”.
“ This impacts their capacity to provide adequate guidance to practicum students,” they wrote.
In its recommendations, the report calls for a boost to resources, mentoring and assessment tasks for trainees, in order to better prepare them to teach early literacy in kindergarten to Year 2.
“ To ensure a consistent state-wide approach to the preparation of graduate teachers to teach literacy, guidelines that explicate current course approval requirements and identify essential content, expected depth of treatment, balance of theory to practice and range of evidencebased approaches, should be developed and communicated to providers,” the report states.
Authors called for programs to incorporate substantial study on how to teach reading and for the establishment of a new entity that would be charged with overseeing the implementation and progress of the report’ s recommendations. The report has already caused some controversy. The NSW education minister, Adrian Piccoli, has said the document indicates inadequacies in current accreditation processes for training courses in teaching early literacy.
NSW Council of Deans of Education president professor Chris Davison argued that as the minister was responsible for signing off on the accreditation process, Piccoli had, in effect, been“ fouling his own nest”. ■
Gut check on cancer
Better management of the body’ s immune receptors could help doctors reduce the severity of side effects and pain resulting from chemotherapy treatments for cancer, University of Adelaide researchers have found.
A paper recently published in the journal Cancer Treatment Reviews has reported that when isolating an immune receptor known as Toll-like receptor 4( TLR4) researchers found notable improvements in markers of gut toxicity known to be associated with chemotherapy treatment as well as reduced pain.
PhD researchers Hannah Wardill and Ysabella Van Sebille – who co-authored the paper – said that with 60 to 80 per cent of patients being treated with chemotherapy experience debilitating side effects in the gut, approaches centred on the management of immune receptors may eventually help vast numbers of cancer sufferers.
“ Treatment for these symptoms is limited and often not effective,” Wardill said.“ Side effects of chemotherapy can cause multiple, co-existing health problems that greatly reduce the patient’ s quality of life and [ affect ] the long-term outlook for patients.
“ In our laboratory studies, we found that TLR4 sets up an inflammatory response that is exacerbated by chemotherapy. By knocking out the TLR4 receptor, we saw improvements across all key markers of gut toxicity, as well as signs of reduced pain.”
Van Sebille said the ultimate aim of the studies was“ to help find a way to mitigate the adverse health problems caused by chemotherapy, which could lead to improved overall care for cancer patients”.
“ Toxicities associated with chemotherapy are a major concern within the field of supportive care in cancer, but we still don’ t understand the full extent of the problem,” she said.“ Our research has highlighted the potential to treat multiple side effects of chemotherapy by targeting TLR4, which if successful could streamline symptom management.
“ So far, TLR4 seems to be a promising target for further research.” ■
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