Second language teacher education community has become increasingly interested in the pedagogical knowledge base of teachers as a window into practitioners' mental lives. The present study was conducted to document likely differences between the pedagogic thoughts of experienced and less experienced teachers. Eight teachers participated in the project. Data were collected through the use of stimulated recall. The analysis of the data shows that there are differences both in the number and the order of the thoughts teachers produced in different groups. Experienced teachers produced an average of five pedagogical thoughts per minute, while their less experienced counterparts produced 3 thoughts. The top thought category for less experienced teachers was Language Management, while for the experienced teachers Self-Reflection ranked first. Some thought categories were also absent in the report of less experienced practitioners.
This study relied on the reflections of 12 novice English language teachers and 3 supervisors to explore the status quo of teacher training in 3 private language institutes with headquarters in Tehran and about 420 language schools throughout the country. Extensive data collection was done through semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and teacher diaries as well as informal peer interviews and observation of occasional meetings of supervisors and teachers. To analyze data, an inductive analysis procedure was used. Findings revealed that current language teacher training courses in the context of concern may require different types of improvements with regard to theory-practice gap, supervised in-service workshops, reflective teaching skills, use of technology, and teachers' experiential learning.
Background: Organophosphate (OP) pesticides are one of the most extensively used chemical compounds all over the world.
Objective: The aim of this study is to determine whether occupational exposure of the formulators to the OP pesticides, under normal working conditions, is associated with any hematotoxic, hepatotoxic, nephrotoxic, neurotoxic, and respirotoxic responses among them.
Methods: 28 OP formulation plant workers and 17 office workers participated in this cross-sectional study as the exposed and control groups, respectively. Blood and urine samples were collected to measure hematological, biochemical, and urinalysis parameters. American thoracic society questionnaire and spirometry tests were employed to assess the function of their respiratory system. Q16 questionnaire was also used to investigate the prevalence of neurobehavioral symptoms. The data were analyzed by SPSS v.22 software using Kolmogorov–Smirnov, T-test, Mann–Whitney U, Chi-square, Fisher, Pearson, and Spearman tests.
Results: No statistically significant difference was found in hematological, biochemical, urinalysis (except in specific gravity), spirometry parameters, as well as respiratory and neurobehavioral symptoms between the exposed and the control groups. For the exposed group, however, the means of spirometry parameters were significantly lower among the smokers.
Conclusions: In this study, the expected adverse health effects due to exposure to OP pesticides were not observed among the formulators; however, the risk of developing respiratory dysfunction was found to be more considerable among smoker subjects than the non-smoker ones. Further investigations are required to determine whether formulators’ occupational exposures to OP pesticides result in certain adverse health effects.
Keywords: Pesticides; Organophosphorus Compounds; Blood; Urine; Lung.
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