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According to the eco-social education paradigm, landscape plays a key role as an identity object of study in the interaction between nature and society. The study seeks to assess a practical experience conducted among trainee teachers consisting in the systematized analysis of local and foreign degraded landscapes in Spain and Colombia, based on environmental, sustainability and global-citizenship literacies--guarantors of eco-social education. A mirror class methodology was implemented among 127 Spanish and Colombian trainee teachers. It comprised an online videocall exchange between different teaching groups. A quasi-experimental research methodology was followed, based on the didactic and statistical analysis of the trainee teachers' reports and a validated questionnaire. The findings reveal a global didactic acquisition of 2.9 points on a 4-scale evaluation range. The learning was higher in didactic tasks related to the landscape analysis and lower in comparative local-global analysis tasks. A statistically significant learning development of +0.8 points was found. The results suggest that the study of local landscapes captures interest and mirror classes easily bring distant realities closer, thus improving the eco-social knowledge and the feeling of an eco-social responsibility for global sustainability. Moreover, the experience in trainee teachers assures a didactic transfer to the wider population.

In times of the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers on all levels have had to adapt to an online or hybrid teaching environment. People in geography, a discipline that traditionally values field trips to connect theory to practice, have had to find online alternatives for educational activities that normally would have taken place in the field. This has led to several innovative practices, which, however, have only to a limited degree been purposively tested for efficacy because of the ad-hoc, enforced nature of the required changes. This project deals with this issue by studying, through student workshops dealing with the creation of online didactic walking routes in two cities, how students can obtain specific geographical competences such as interpreting different historical layers that collectively shape the current urban fabric through online cartography. We found that students reported clear improvements in geographical reasoning skills, regarding both GIS and heritage interpretation. There were no clear patterns regarding the role of familiarity with the studied city for the quality of the produced story maps. On final reflection, we argue that online cartographic exercises are a valuable addition to the geographers' educational toolkit to bounce forward to a more resilient, reflective educational practice after the pandemic.

In present-day educational contexts, the integration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and gamification has been the basis for implementing escape rooms as pedagogical tools. This paper examines the role of virtual escape rooms in boosting History learners' motivation in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) contexts. Twenty-nine first-year undergraduates enrolled in a Classical History module delivered at a Spanish university have participated in this study by playing a virtual escape room game and answering a final survey. The findings reveal that escape rooms may result in highly-motivated students who feel less pressure when communicating in the target language. Therefore, the implementation of escape rooms can be a helpful resource in e-learning environments, fostering oral, collaborative, and critical thinking skills.

The inclusion of students with disabilities in the education system results in content or assessment accommodations to suit the students' special needs and to ensure they have acquired the objectives listed in the curriculum. In this paper, we aim at proposing different ways to accommodate a university English language test to a partially blind student who used text-to-speech tools (TTS) in order to provide them with accurate assessment. To carry out this research, the student has been monitored throughout the course to see which accommodations fit their needs best. All in all, we have observed that read-aloud accommodations lead to a better inclusion of the partially sighted student and better performance.

Several studies have revealed that computer applications offer a vast potential for teaching and learning. Open Educational Resources (OERs) can be especially beneficial to generate innovative abilities in the classroom related to new means of communication and collaboration (Conole and Alevizou, 2010). As regards the teaching of foreign languages, OERs have been acknowledged to be a useful tool for vocabulary acquisition (Barbule?, 2013), for enhancing text reading (Alkahtani, 1999), for writing (Krajka, 2000), and for improving pronunciation (Lee, 2008). Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) programmes as a means of learning-by-playing in the classroom have also proven to facilitate the acquisition of English vocabulary and pronunciation through games (Young & Wang, 2014). This study aims to explore the implementation and use of an online tool such as "Wordclouds" in the English for Psychology classroom at university in order to improve vocabulary retention and the overall learning of English in the specific field of Psychology. By means of exposing students to psychological pathologies, they will be asked to generate vocabulary word clouds to check their vocabulary retention and keyword selections at two different stages, being exposed to specialised texts before and after the reading of those texts later. Computer applications in the ESP classroom are combined here with group work development. Previous research has shown that working collaboratively facilitates learning, primarily through comparative reflection and peer learning (Angehrn & Maxwell, 2009; Evans & Cuffe, 2009). Results have shown that the exploitation of students' background knowledge through the tool "Wordclouds" has definitely aided vocabulary retention of keywords about psychological pathologies as well as improved their English for psychology language accuracy.

Purpose: The current "Anthropocene" epoch has witnessed an imbalanced global change, but it is an opportunity to design a better and sustainable future. Sustainability criteria need to be fully implemented in political institutions, companies and universities. Moreover, sustainable pedagogies must accompany the process in terms of students' professional competences to overcome crisis situations. This paper aims to evaluate geography degrees in Spain to corroborate whether students and teachers consider that students are prepared to address the challenges of global change. Design/methodology/approach: The research is focused on the sustainable development goals (SDGs), a clear and easily identifiable framework for society that reflects the principles of the UN 2030 Agenda. A statistically validated questionnaire answered by 319 respondents has been used. Data analysis with descriptive and inferential techniques was performed. Findings: The results show that geography degrees do not meet the needs of students, for whom career opportunities will be related to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda; there are significant gaps between the perception of teachers and students; some geographical topics are undervalued; SDGs are more present in optional subjects; and there is a need to "sustain" the curriculum, following this highly valued framework. Originality/value: Geography educative programs had scarcely been empirically evaluated to check a sustainability framework implementation. This research provides innovative and unprecedented self-assessment results from higher education agents, in an empirical and statistically validated way.

In this study, propensity score matching (PSM) was conducted to examine differences in the effectiveness of research mentor training (RMT) implemented using two modes--face-to-face or synchronous online training. This study investigated each training mode and assessed participants' perceived gains in mentoring skills, ability to meet mentees' expectations, and overall quality of mentoring, as well as intention to make changes to their mentoring practices. Additional factors that may contribute to participant outcomes were also examined. In total, 152 mentors trained using a synchronous online platform and 655 mentors trained in in-person workshops were analyzed using the PSM method. Mentors were matched based on similar characteristics, including mentee's career stage, mentor's title, mentor's prior mentoring experience, mentor's race/ethnicity and sex, and mentor's years of experience; results show that both face-to-face and synchronous online modes of RMT are effective. Findings indicated that the training mode did not significantly impact the mentors' perceived training outcomes. Factors associated with the reported training outcomes included dosage (hours of training), facilitator effectiveness, race/ethnicity, and previous mentoring experience. The results of this study demonstrate that mentors' perceived training outcomes are comparable regardless of the training modality used--online versus face-to-face.

"They are the same" is a phrase that teachers often hear from their students in arithmetic and algebra. But what do students mean when they say this? The present paper researches the notion of sameness within algebraic thinking in the context of generating equivalent numerical equalities. A group of Grade 6 Mexican students (10- to 12-year-olds) was presented with tasks that required transforming the given numerical equalities in such a way as to show their truth-value. The students initially indicated this by calculating and demonstrating that the total was the same on both sides. When asked not to calculate, their approaches evolved into more structural transformations involving decomposition so as to arrive at an equality with the same expression on each side. Students used the language of sameness--both visible and invisible--to describe the truth-value of their transformed expressions and equalities. The visible sameness referred to the resulting identical form of each side of the equality and the invisible sameness to the top-down equivalences that they had generated by their decomposing transformations--both types of sameness being characterized by their hidden numerical values. These findings suggest implications for transitioning to the algebraic domain of equations with their similarly hidden values.

Hundreds of thousands of genetic variants have been reported to cause severe monogenic diseases, but the probability that a variant carrier develops the disease (termed penetrance) is unknown for virtually all of them. Additionally, the clinical utility of common polygenetic variation remains uncertain. Using exome sequencing from 77,184 adult individuals (38,618 multi-ancestral individuals from a type 2 diabetes case-control study and 38,566 participants from the UK Biobank, for whom genotype array data were also available), we apply clinical standard-of-care gene variant curation for eight monogenic metabolic conditions. Rare variants causing monogenic diabetes and dyslipidemias display effect sizes significantly larger than the top 1% of the corresponding polygenic scores. Nevertheless, penetrance estimates for monogenic variant carriers average 60% or lower for most conditions. We assess epidemiologic and genetic factors contributing to risk prediction in monogenic variant carriers, demonstrating that inclusion of polygenic variation significantly improves biomarker estimation for two monogenic dyslipidemias.

With the abrupt onset of the global lockdown in spring 2020, teachers had to adjust their teaching mode by using videoconferencing platforms for several months. In the academic year 2020-2021, instruction shifted to a mode of blended learning where face-to-face lessons were prioritized, and remote learning was employed in specific contexts. This study examined the experiences of conservatory and music schoolteachers with videoconferencing software, their preferences, difficulties faced, and conclusions drawn after having taught online. A survey was sent to all conservatories and some music schools in Spain for data collection, eliciting 485 responses. As per the study's findings, most participants preferred face-to-face lessons before and after the lockdown. Zoom, Skype, Google Meet, and WhatsApp were the most frequently used platforms, of which Zoom and Skype were correlated with better student performance and satisfaction. Video calls were generally combined with other asynchronous methods to enhance learning.

This research is predicated on the hypothesis that a fieldtrip project adhering to a CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) philosophy can be effective in promoting learning of both social and linguistic competencies. The main objective was to evaluate the didactic efficacy of a bilingual urban itinerary with teachers in training (from bilingual and non-bilingual groups) to develop geohistorical, didactic and linguistic competencies. Procedural and consolidated learning was assessed, via a dossier of activities and a statistically validated pretest-posttest. High development values were obtained in procedural tasks (average = 8.8/10), as well as a high increase in consolidated acquisition (average = +24.5% students). The greatest growth was observed in language skills (+ 26.4%). The assessed knowledge after the itinerary was significantly higher than before, for all competencies. However, there was no statistically significant difference between students belonging to bilingual or monolingual groups. Students positively valued these results. It is concluded that a local didactic fieldtrip is an effective CLIL strategy to develop social and linguistic competencies, and yet it is rarely discussed in the scientific literature and curricula.

In many EFL classrooms in Colombia, it is evident how students struggle trying to use English to communicate; nonetheless, with the revolution of ICTs that has taken place in the last years, there is a variety of tools available to support English learning autonomously with applications, blogs, and online courses; however, many of these tools were not originally designed for teaching but can be adapted for such purpose. TED is a website and a downloadable application where videos are shared in which you can see a wide variety of English speakers born in many parts around the world speaking in a fun and familiar manner with the audience about various topics of interest that besides, come along with cultural content, which extends the range of accents, words, expressions, and ways of referring to the same topic. In this action research, we propose a reflection on the incidence of TED talks on the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language. The instruments used to collect data were interviews, questionnaires, and teacher journals. The use of these videos provided the students with all the communicative elements that allowed them to use English to express their ideas. This offers a glimpse of how useful authentic videos and subtitles are when encouraging students to learn English.

Dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons process pain signaling through specialized nociceptors located in their peripheral endings. It has long been established low voltage-activated (LVA) CaV3.2 calcium channels control neuronal excitability during sensory perception in these neurons. Silencing CaV3.2 activity with antisense RNA or genetic ablation results in anti-nociceptive, anti-hyperalgesic and anti-allodynic effects. CaV3.2 channels are regulated by many proteins (Weiss and Zamponi, 2017), including KLHL1, a neuronal actin-binding protein that stabilizes channel activity by recycling it back to the plasma membrane through the recycling endosome. We explored whether manipulation of KLHL1 levels and thereby function as a CaV3.2 modifier can modulate DRG excitability and mechanical pain transmission or sensitivity to pain. We first assessed the mechanical sensitivity threshold and DRG properties in the KLHL1 KO mouse model. KO DRG neurons exhibited smaller T-type current density compared to WT without significant changes in voltage dependence, as expected in the absence of its modulator. Western blot analysis confirmed CaV3.2 but not CaV3.1, CaV3.3, CaV2.1, or CaV2.2 protein levels were significantly decreased; and reduced neuron excitability and decreased pain sensitivity were also found in the KLHL1 KO model. Analogously, transient down-regulation of KLHL1 levels in WT mice with viral delivery of anti-KLHL1 shRNA also resulted in decreased pain sensitivity. These two experimental approaches confirm KLHL1 as a physiological modulator of excitability and pain sensitivity, providing a novel target to control peripheral pain.

Protein-coding genetic variants that strongly affect disease risk can yield relevant clues to disease pathogenesis. Here we report exome-sequencing analyses of 20,791 individuals with type 2 diabetes (T2D) and 24,440 non-diabetic control participants from 5 ancestries. We identify gene-level associations of rare variants (with minor allele frequencies of less than 0.5%) in 4 genes at exome-wide significance, including a series of more than 30 SLC30A8 alleles that conveys protection against T2D, and in 12 gene sets, including those corresponding to T2D drug targets (P = 6.1 × 10-3) and candidate genes from knockout mice (P = 5.2 × 10-3). Within our study, the strongest T2D gene-level signals for rare variants explain at most 25% of the heritability of the strongest common single-variant signals, and the gene-level effect sizes of the rare variants that we observed in established T2D drug targets will require 75,000-185,000 sequenced cases to achieve exome-wide significance. We propose a method to interpret these modest rare-variant associations and to incorporate these associations into future target or gene prioritization efforts.