Suchergebnisse

The public education system in the United States has long been under assault from neoliberal educational reforms. Those reforms have been characterized by anti-democratic and homogenizing assessment methods and systems that reinforce the banking model of education. In this model, students learn to passively and uncritically consume the knowledge transmitted to them in school. In order to counteract the banking model, this research urged first-year, pre-service teachers (PSTs) in an Introduction with Internship in Bilingual/ESL Education college coursework to engage in a dialogic problem-posing pedagogy grounded in a Freirian perspective. PSTs conducted a mini research-based practicum (RBP) that was six weeks long and required a total of 24-hour field observations across local public elementary schools. The RBP framework consisted of a research question, a mini literature review, practicum observations, findings, a group-written report, and a group presentation. In this study, we analyzed the RBP process and data sources that responded to our guiding question: What counts as good teaching according to PSTs? The major findings included: (a) good teaching means relationship building, (b) good teaching starts with understanding the multiple roles of the teacher, and (c) good teaching is inclusive. We discussed the transformative moves that PSTs went through while engaging in a dialogic problem-posing pedagogy. Teacher-educators (TEs) can benefit from this study, as the viability of the transformative effects of a dialogic problem-posing pedagogy, along with its challenges and coping methods, were discussed.

This paper analyzes the urban-rural land-use change of Chongqing and its policy dimensional driving forces from 1995 to 2006, using high-resolution Landsat TM (Thematic Mapper) data of 1995, 2000 and 2006, and socio-economic data from both research institutes and government departments. The outcomes indicated that urban-rural land-use change in Chongqing can be characterized by two major trends: First, the non-agricultural land increased substantially from 1995 to 2006, thus causing agricultural land especially farmland to decrease continuously. Second, the aggregation index of urban settlements and rural settlements shows that local urban-rural development experienced a process of changing from aggregation (1995-2000) to decentralization (2000-2006). Chongqing is a special area getting immersed in many important policies, which include the establishment of the municipality directly under the Central Government, the building of Three Gorges Dam Project, the Western China Development Program and the Grain-for-Green Programme, and bring about tremendous influences on its land-use change. By analyzing Chongqing's land-use change and its policy driving forces, some implications for its new policy of 'Urban-rural Integrated Reform' are obtained. That is more attentions need to be paid to curbing excessive and idle rural housing and consolidating rural construction land, and to laying out a scientific land-use plan for its rural areas taking such rural land-use issues as farmland occupation and rural housing land management into accounts, so as to coordinate and balance the urban-rural development.

Both tea polyphenols (TP) and Lactobacillus rhamnosus have been shown to alleviate obesity, and regulate lipid metabolism. However, the combined effects and their underlying mechanisms of action remain elusive. In the present work, the effects of TP, Lactobacillus rhamnosus R5 (R5), and TP+R5 on blood lipids and the gut microbiota of mice fed with a high-fat diet were compared. Results showed that the combination of TP and R5 effectively increased the serum levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), and decreased total cholesterol (TC) levels, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels, and the atherosclerosis index (AI) in mice fed with a high-fat diet. The combination treatment resulted in a modification of the structure of the gut microbiota in mice, as evidenced by a decrease in the F/B ratio, and an increase in the abundance of beneficial genera, such as Akkermansia muciniphila, Faecalibaculum rodentium, and Ruminococcus_uncultured bacterium. Additionally, the contents of SCFAs (acetic, propionic, and butyric acids) in faeces also increased. These could provide new ideas for anti-obesity methods, and a theoretical basis for the development of foods combining probiotics and tea polyphenols.