Literacy as numbers: The efficacy, merits and validity of transnational literacy assessment programmes.

Debates about the nature of literacy and how to account for the diversity of learning are far from resolved. A new book, Literacy as Numbers, looks at how literacy itself is being reframed around globalized assessment regimes. Camilla Addey delves into how these comparable numbers, now so heavily relied on in national policy, are produced, and how they are shaping our understanding of the meanings and purposes of literacy

Mice lacking C1q or C3 show accelerated rejection of minor H disparate skin grafts and resistance to induction of tolerance

Complement activation is known to have deleterious effects on organ transplantation. On the other hand, the complement system is also known to have an important role in regulating immune responses. The balance between these two opposing effects is critical in the context of transplantation. Here, we report that female mice deficient in C1q (C1qa(−/−)) or C3 (C3(−/−)) reject male syngeneic grafts (HY incompatible) at an accelerated rate compared with WT mice. Intranasal HY peptide administration, which induces tolerance to syngeneic male grafts in WT mice, fails to induce tolerance in C1qa(−/−) or C3(−/−) mice. The rejection of the male grafts correlated with the presence of HY D(b)Uty-specific CD8(+) T cells. Consistent with this, peptide-treated C1qa(−/−) and C3(−/−) female mice rejecting male grafts exhibited more antigen-specific CD8(+)IFN-γ(+) and CD8(+)IL-10(+) cells compared with WT females. This suggests that accumulation of IFN-γ- and IL-10-producing T cells may play a key role in mediating the ongoing inflammatory process and graft rejection. Interestingly, within the tolerized male skin grafts of peptide-treated WT mice, IFN-γ, C1q and C3 mRNA levels were higher compared to control female grafts. These results suggest that C1q and C3 facilitate the induction of intranasal tolerance

Literacy assembled as global in ILSAs. The danger of a single story

This paper seeks to understand how literacy is operationalized in International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSAs) and how this has transformed the way literacy is now conceptualised. Although there was a shift in the 1980s away from literacy understood as autonomous from its social context to an understanding of literacy as a social practice dependent on its social, cultural and institutional contexts of practice, this paper shows how ILSAs have brought an autonomous understanding of literacy back. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies and Adichie\u27s \u27The Danger of the Single Story\u27, this paper analyses the literacy assessment diagram - the backbone of OECD\u27s literacy assessment framework for ILSAs - which describes the logical steps through which literacy is made a quantifiable fact. The paper shows how literacy is organized, chosen, measured, made legitimate and interpreted inside the laboratory and then made to hold as it is returned to the big, wild world. The paper argues that the operationalization of literacy in ILSAs pays lip service to the social practice conceptualization of literacy and assembles a single story of literacy as global - a universal skill that is autonomous of all social, cultural and institutional contexts of practice. The parallels with Adichie\u27s story highlight the danger of this global, assembled literacy becoming the single framework of interpretation and action. (DIPF/Orig.)Dieser Artikel befasst sich mit der Frage, wie Literalität in Internationalen Large-Scale-Assessments (ILSAs) operationalisiert wird und wie dies die Konzeptualisierung von Literalität heute verändert. Obwohl sich das Verständnis von Literalität in den 1980er Jahren verschoben hat, weg von einer vom Kontext unabhängigen Literalität, hin zu Literalität als einer sozialen Praxis, die von ihren sozialen, kulturellen und institutionellen Praxiskontexten abhängt, zeigt dieser Artikel, wie die ILSAs ein autonomes Verständnis von Literalität zurückgeholt haben. Auf der Grundlage von Science and Technology Studies und Adichie\u27s "The Danger of the Single Story" analysiert dieser Artikel das Diagramm zur Erfassung von literaler Kompetenz - das Rückgrat des OECD-Rahmens zur Bewertung von literaler Kompetenz für ILSAs -, in dem die logischen Schritte beschrieben werden, durch die Literalität zu einer quantifizierbaren Tatsache gemacht wird. Der Beitrag zeigt, wie Literalität im Labor organisiert, ausgewählt, gemessen, als rechtmäßig erklärt und interpretiert wird, um sie dann in der großen, unübersichtlichen Welt zu verankern. Der Beitrag argumentiert, dass die Konzeptualisierung der ILSAs von Literalität als sozialer Praxis ein bloßes Lippenbekenntnis ist. Literalität wird in den ILSAs als globale und universelle Fähigkeit zusammengefasst, die in der Praxis unabhängig von sozialen, kulturellen und institutionellen Kontexten ist. Die Parallelen zu Adichie\u27s Geschichte verdeutlichen die Gefahr, dass das globale und universelle Verständnis von Literalität zum alleinigen Interpretations- und Handlungsrahmen werden kann. (DIPF/Orig.

Why do countries join international literacy assessments? an actor-network theory analysis with case studies from Lao PDR and Mongolia.

International assessments are a growing educational phenomenon around the world, increasingly picking up in lower and middle income countries and entering the space of global educational governance (Fenwick et al. 2014). Following the success of the OECD’s first international assessments, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) set out in 2003 to develop the Literacy Assessment and Monitoring Programme (LAMP) to measure adult literacy levels across lower and middle income countries in a context-sensitive way. As international organizations rationalize international assessments as essential tools for policy (Rizvi and Lingard 2010) target lower and middle income countries, researching the rationales behind these countries’ participation becomes an urgent area of investigation. In this thesis I enquire into what drives lower-middle income countries to join international assessment programmes through case studies of LAMP in the Lao PDR and Mongolia. Setting my research in the emerging field I define as International Assessment Studies, I argue that Lao PDR and Mongolia join international assessments for reasons that go beyond the need to inform policy (as stated by the UIS and the OECD) and to access foreign aid (Lockheed 2013). Different, and often contradictory interests are being played out through heterogeneous alliances (Latour 1996) which include human and non-human actors (including standardized testing instruments). Through the application of Actor-Network Theory, the data generated in my fieldwork suggests countries are joining the recent phenomenon of international assessments as a global ritual of belonging, comparing the gap with reference societies, and ‘scandalizing’ and ‘glorifying’ (i.e. statistically eliminating problems) with international data. The thesis suggests that understandings of governmentality need to be revised in light of the international and comparative character of educational governance. My findings have implications for understanding the politics of reception of international assessments, but also for the upcoming Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for Development which the OECD is in the process of developing – in a similar manner to LAMP – for lower and middle income countries

Troubling the Golden Thread: a post-qualitative inquiry into the tacit dimension

My thesis constitutes a body of work positioned between post-qualitative inquiry and new materialist approaches to research-creation (Manning 2016). Sparked by a marker dream, my research grapples with the tacit dimension of knowledge or the factual position from which "we can know more than we can tell" (Polanyi 2009, 4). In the context of human conscious/unconscious consciousness, tacit knowledge is qualified as unspecifiable knowledge, which is differentiated from the explicit and implicit dimensions of knowing. My thesis functions as a linguistic bridge to make meaning of tacit knowledge by utilising selected psychoanalytical and new-materialist concepts to trouble my marker dream’s tacit dimension. In my writing, symbolising and dreaming thereof, I expand the conceptions of Polanyi’s (2009) tacit dimension of knowledge, Bion’s (1962) contact-barrier, and Jung’s (2019) individuation process, illustrating how these terms relate to each other and my chosen research topic. As research knowledge, my writing amplifies the felt tensions, symbols, and relationships created between dreams and texts, troubling their affective impact on the psyche. Here, I purpose my marker dream as a vehicle of tacit-knowing orientated toward the encounter with its contact-barrier that differentiates my marker dream’s explicit, implicit and other dimensions from its tacit dimension of knowledge. This process explores how writing and reading establish relational bridges between pre conceptual felt sense (Gendlin 1997), language symbols and theoretical conceptions. These affective bridging states are posited as relational encounters tracing instances of tacit-knowing. By writing into these relationships, I performatively create the waking dream of my thesis. My research question inquires: "How is the tacit dimension of knowledge encountered through dreaming and writing?

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Antibiotic Switch therapy is defined by the switch of intravenous antibiotic therapy to oral form. This research aimed to learn about the relationship of switch therapy toward the value of wound healing, lenght of stay and the antibiotic expenditure. The data of this cross sectional study was collected from medical record and by direct investigation to patients for their macroscopis the wound healings value. T-test was used to compared the relationship of the patient wound healings value, lenght of stay and the antibiotic expenditure between the those with and accurate switch therapy and those without it. The result showed that there was no different of wound healing value between those groups of patients (P>0,1). On the other hand, lenght of stay and antibiotic expenditure of the patient with the accurate switch therapy was cuted on the patient with the accurate switch therapy. These indicated that accuracy of switch therapy will proceed a benefit outcome to the patient with appendicitis, especially to there lenght of stay and antibiotic expenditure as well

Value Chain Analysis of the Broiler Industry in the Southern Sector of Ghana

The livestock subsector especially broiler production plays a significant role in the livelihood and food security in Ghana. Several researchers in developing nations have employed value chain methodologies to investigate the linkages and the interactions of the various actors in the poultry sector. However, none of these studies comprehensively captured each actor’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, as well as the governance structure and profitability of the broiler industry. This paper fills this gap by analyzing the governance structure, value addition, determinants of profitability and prospect of the broiler industry using 290 respondents (180 broiler producers, 65 distributors and 45 retailers) from the Greater Accra, Ashanti and Bono Regions of Ghana. The study adopted the scoring analytical technique, net farm income (NFI), the modified Cobb-Douglas function and the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) matrix for the analyses. The results revealed producers as the key governors with the highest value addition and return on investment. Distributors and processors on the other hand form informal cartels to monopolize their activities to increase bargaining power. Whilst credit access, education, business training, age and feed type influenced profitability, the broiler industry is threatened by high importation of frozen chicken, high taxes, lack of capital access and high cost of operation. The study recommends that the government should pursue measures to minimize the cost of operations through input-tax exemptions and reduce the importation of chicken products. Stakeholders should invest in input supply, processing technologies and transportation facilities to boost local production for profit gains