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Dialogue, horizon and chronotope : using Bakhtin’s and Gadamer’s ideas to frame online teaching and learning
(Springer Nature, 2024-04-05) Rule, Peter
The information explosion and digital modes of learning often combine to inform the quest for the best ways of transforming information in digital form for pedagogical purposes. This quest has become more urgent and pervasive with the ‘turn’ to online learning in the context of COVID-19. This can result in linear, asynchronous, transmission-based modes of teaching and learning which commodify, package and deliver knowledge for individual ‘customers’. The primary concerns in such models are often technical and economic – technology as a cost-effective ‘solution’ to educational challenges. In this paper I argue for the importance of dialogic learning space in teaching and learning by means of Information and Communication Technologies, whether in the form of fully online learning, blended learning or face-to-face encounters using ICT affordances. Although the 20th Century theorists Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975) and Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) produced their seminal works before the advent of ICTs, they were both concerned with the quality and authenticity of human engagement with texts and with other persons and contexts. Besides a shared interest in dialogue as an ontological feature of human life and being, they both used spatiotemporal concepts for understanding and interpreting texts. The article draws on Gadamer’s notions of dialogue and horizon, and Bakhtin’s notions of dialogue and chronotope, to conceptualize dialogic possibilities for online education. Its purpose is to provide a framework, grounded in Bakhtin’s and Gadamer’s ideas, for a dialogic approach to online teaching and learning in higher education.
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Bovine tuberculosis in African buffalo (Syncerus caffer): Progression of pathology during infection
(PLOS, 2022-11-11) Lakin, Hilary Ann; Tavalire, Hannah; Sakamoto, Kaori; Buss, Peter; Miller, Michele; Budischak, Sarah A.; Raum, Kristina; Ezenwa, Vanessa O.; Beechler, Brianna; Jolles, Anna
Background
Bovine tuberculosis (BTB) is a zoonotic disease of global importance endemic in African buffalo (Syncerus caffer) in sub-Saharan Africa. Zoonotic tuberculosis is a disease of global importance, accounting for over 12,000 deaths annually. Cattle affected with BTB have been proposed as a model for the study of human tuberculosis, more closely resembling the localization and progression of lesions in controlled studies than murine models. If disease in African buffalo progresses similarly to experimentally infected cattle, they may serve as a model, both for human tuberculosis and cattle BTB, in a natural environment.
Methodology/Principal findings
We utilized a herd of African buffalo that were captured, fitted with radio collars, and tested for BTB twice annually during a 4-year-cohort study. At the end of the project, BTB positive buffalo were culled, and necropsies performed. Here we describe the pathologic progression of BTB over time in African buffalo, utilizing gross and histological methods. We found that BTB in buffalo follows a pattern of infection like that seen in experimental studies of cattle. BTB localizes to the lymph nodes of the respiratory tract first, beginning with the retropharyngeal and tracheobronchial lymph nodes, gradually increasing in lymph nodes affected over time. At 36 months, rate of spread to additional lymph nodes sharply increases. The lung lesions follow a similar pattern, progressing slowly, then accelerating their progression at 36 months post infection. Lastly, a genetic marker that correlated to risk of M. bovis infection in previous studies was marginally associated with BTB progression. Buffalo with at least one risk allele at this locus tended to progress faster, with more lung necrosis.
Conclusions/Significance
The progression of disease in the African buffalo mirrors the progression found in experimental cattle models, offering insight into BTB and the interaction with its host in the context of naturally varying environments, host, and pathogen populations.
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Scientific selection: A century of increasing crop varietal diversity in US wheat
(National Academy of Science, 2022-12-13) Chaia, Yuan; Pardey, Philip G.; Silverstein, Kevin A. T.
A prevalent and persistent biodiversity concern is that modern cropping systems lead to an erosion in crop genetic diversity. Although certain trait uniformity provides advantages in crop management and marketing, farmers facing risks from change in climate, pests, and markets are also incentivized to adopt new varieties to address complex and spatially variable genetics, environment, and crop management interactions to optimize crop performance. In this study, we applied phylogenetically blind and phylogenetically informed diversity metrics to reveal significant increases in both the spatial and temporal diversity of the US wheat crop over the past century. Contrary to commonly held perceptions on the negative impact of modern cropping systems on crop genetic diversity, our results demonstrated a win-win outcome where the widespread uptake of scientifically selected varieties increased both crop production and crop diversity.
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Intact neurological survival after emergency Caesarean delivery for pathological fetal heart rate tracings at term- is it time to rethink ‘fetal distress’ interpretation of cardiotocography in South African cerebral palsy lawsuits?
(2023-03) Van Rooyen, Donée; Gebhardt, Gabriel Stephanus
Objective: The aim of this descriptive study was to critically review the CTG tracings that informed the decision to do an urgent Caesarean delivery (CD) in cases where there was a good neonatal outcome.
Method: This was an observational cross-sectional study using data collected from records at Tygerberg Academic Hospital reviewing women >36 weeks gestation who delivered by emergency caesarean section with the indication of “fetal distress” or “pathological CTG” and had normal neonatal outcomes.
Results: The mean time from decision to do a CS to the delivery of the baby was 113 minutes and the mean time from the removal of the CTG from the patient (or the last CTG available to review in the folder) to the start of surgery was 46 minutes. The mean duration of abnormal tracings (from diagnosis to recovery or last CTG taken if there was ongoing abnormal CTG) was 72 minutes, ranging from 30 to 355 minutes. Eighty percent of women still had pathological changes on the CTG at the time of transport to theatre.
Conclusion: This audit showed that in most babies with pathological CTG tracings, neither prolonged periods of abnormal tracing nor delays in delivery necessarily leads to a bad outcome. In litigation cases for term hypoxic brain injury, there are other underlying conditions of the fetus and mother that needs to be considered and not only a focus on CTG interpretation and management, before negligence is inferred.
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Quality of systematic reviews in African emergency medicine : a cross-sectional methodological study
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2023-03) Van Niekerk, Hendrik Jacques; McCaul, Michael; Rohwer, Anke; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. Dept. of Global Health. Epidemiology and Biostatistics.
ENGLISH SUMMARY: Introduction: Reliable systematic reviews are essential to inform clinical practice guidelines, policies and further research priorities in Africa. For systematic review findings to be trustworthy, they need to be conducted with methodological rigour and reported transparently. We assessed the methodological quality of systematic reviews published in African emergency medicine journals, comparing them to those published in international emergency medicine journals. Additionally, we describe the types of review literature published in the African journals.
Methods: We performed a cross-sectional methodological study of systematic reviews published in selected African and international emergency medicine journals from 2012 to 2021. Studies were eligible for inclusion if they were i) published in one of the top five emergency medicine journals in the African region or internationally, ii) a review article on an emergency medicine topic and iii) published between January 2012 and December 2021 in English or French. We searched PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus databases and hand-searched selected journals. Two authors screened titles, abstracts and full texts independently and in duplicate to select reviews for inclusion. Data extraction was performed by one reviewer, using a standardised form, after completing a calibration exercise. We described the characteristics of systematic reviews and assessed methodological quality using AMSTAR II.
Results: We identified 34 (37%) African and 511 (54%) international systematic reviews from 92 and 948 review articles respectively across 10 journals. We included all 34 African and a random sample of 100 international systematic reviews. Methodological quality was low or critically low for all the African systematic reviews (n=34, 100%) and all but three international systematic reviews (n=97, 97%). The median number of critical domain weaknesses was 4 (IQR 4;5) and 2 (IQR 2;4) for African and international systematic reviews respectively. The most common weaknesses across both African and international systematic reviews were i) not establishing a priori review protocols, ii) unclear selection of study designs iii) not providing a list of excluded studies and iv) unclear reporting on funding sources for included studies.
Conclusion: Emergency medicine systematic reviews published in African and international journals are lacking in methodological quality. Reporting an a priori protocol, developing a comprehensive search strategy, appropriate evidence synthesis and adequate assessment of the risk of bias, heterogeneity and evidence certainty will improve the quality of systematic reviews.