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- Consiglio, Camila, et al.
(author)
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Immune system adaptation during gender-affirming testosterone treatment
- 2023
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In: Journal of Reproductive Immunology. - : Elsevier. - 0165-0378 .- 1872-7603. ; 159, s. 29-30
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Journal article (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Biological sex impacts human immune responses, modulating susceptibility and severity to immune-related diseases. Female generally mount more robust immune responses than males, resulting in lower infection severity and greater autoimmunity incidence. Here, we addressed the contribution of testosterone to human immune function by analyzing a cohort of subjects undergoing gender-affirming testosterone treatment. We performed systems-level immunomonitoring through mass cytometry, scRNA and scA-TAC-Sequencing, and proteome profiling of blood samples at baseline and following 3 and 12 months of treatment. Testosterone treatment was associated with a low-grade inflammatory profile, evidenced by upregulation of proinflammatory plasma proteome (e.g., EN-RAGE, OSM, TNF), and induction of an inflammatory transcriptional program associated with NFkB signaling, and TNF signaling. Following testosterone treatment, higher NFkB activity was revealed in CD4 T, CD8 T, and NK cells in scATACseq analyses. Further, testosterone increased monocytic inflammatory responses upon bacterial stimulation in vitro. Although testosterone was associated with this inflammatory profile, it also exerted negative effects on antiviral immunity. Firstly, the percentage of plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDC) decreased over transition, with pDC also displaying phenotypic changes associated with lower IFN responses. Secondly, bulk transcriptomics analyses show an overall reduction of IFNa responses. Thirdly, testosterone treatment led to reduced IFNa production upon PBMCs stimulation with a viral agonist. Our results show that testosterone has broad effects on the human immune system, and significantly modulates important players in antiviral immunity and inflammatory response. Identifying pathways involved in immune sexual dimorphism will help define novel targets for effective prevention and treatment of immune-mediated diseases.
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- Granklint Enochson, Pernilla, 1965-, et al.
(author)
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From process to a changed practice - How research questions are processed in a collaborative project
- 2019
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In: NERA 2019. ; , s. 31-32
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In 2017, a regional cooperation project was initiated with four municipalities and Halmstad University, called From Great to Excellence (FGTE), that aimed at reducing the gap between children/pupils capacity and performance. The project is planned to run for five years, and participants are persons active in schools and preschools at different levels within the school practice. Within the FGTE project, the participants perform different development projects in cooperation across the municipal boundaries, where they act as critical friends for each other in order to drive each project forward. Parallel with these activities, follow-up research on the project is conducted that focuses on different parts of the collaborative process. In this study we have concentrated on the participants' work with their respective research processes. The overall aim is to investigate the way in which research questions- and the ability to answer these - are developed by the participants through collaborative projects across municipal boundaries. The question we ask is "How does a (research-) question change through a collaborative process?" School development projects are carried out both at national and international level (e. g. Sales, Moliner & Amat, 2017; Adolfsson & Håkansson, 2015). In this study, the focus is both on regional cooperation and more specifically on the research questions of the participating groups.Theoretical frameworkThe theoretical framework in this study is situated within the socio-cultural field, since much of the focus is around the collaboration between the participants. Conversation is an arena for developing knowledge and by supporting and challenging each other's pronounced thoughts, prerequisites for development of knowledge are given (Vygotsky, 1978).Methodological designThe empirical material for the present study consists partly of the work material from a workshop where the participants' research questions were processed, partly by the participants' final products at the end of their development projects, which was a project report and a poster per project group. The material has mainly been analyzed based on a content analysis perspective (Danielsson, 2017; Denzin & Lincoln, 2003).Expected conclusions/findingsThe analysis is not yet complete, but preliminary results show that the research questions in the projects are not fully answered by the participants. On the other hand, the research questions seems to become more sharp when people from other municipalities are involved in working with the them. It also appears to be problematic to relate to overall, relatively abstract questions, and to make them tangible to their own school practice. Relevance to Nordic educational researchThrough this study, we want to highlight the potential for improvement work in preschool and school practice which lies in developing school activities through a regional cooperation project. This, we mean, are of utmost relevance to Swedish/Nordic as well as international research fields within education.ReferencesAdolfsson, C-H., & Håkansson, J. (2015). Lärande skolor och förskolor i Kalmar kommun - Forskning och lokalt skolutvecklingsarbete i samspel. Rapport. LinnéuniversitetDanielsson, E. (2017). Vetenskaplig teori och metod: från idé till examination inom omvårdnad. Henricson, M. (red.) (Andra upplagan). Lund: Studentlitteratur AB.Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (Eds.). (2003). Collecting and interpreting qualitative materials (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGEVygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. M. Cole, Ed.Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Sales, A., Moliner, L., & Amat, A. F. (2017). Collaborative professional development for distributed teacher leadership towards school change. School Leadership & Management Formerly School Organisation. VOL. 37, NO. 3, 254–266
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- Granklint Enochson, Pernilla, 1965-, et al.
(author)
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Processing professional research questions : a collaborative development in schools?
- 2020
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Research topic/aim: The focus of this study is how professional research questions work as information between different levels across the school organization. The different questions aim to develop the children and students’ knowledge through the teachers and headmaster’s capacity building in a collaboration project. These questions are processed in a hierarchy from the regional overarching question, the municipalities’ to interpret the overarching question to a professional research questions and finally the schools create concrete professional research questions. At the school level are the final question processed and researched. Theoretical framework: The project is based on how to steer an organist through professional research question. Leadership is important and a challenge in a changing process in an organization (eg. Kotter, 1995). Moreover, a good communication between the participants are important if it shall be a development in the organization (eg. Harris & Jones 2015; Leithwood et al. 2017). The empirical data in this study are analyzed thought two theoretical frameworks in the border between the socio-cultural and the socio- constructivism. Within the socio-cultural field, since much of the focus is around participant in the school collaboration (Hornscheidt & Landqvist 2014, Vygotsky, 1978). However, the percipients must construct their understanding through interactions with the outside world (Ausubel, 1968; Leach & Scott, 2003; Piaget, 1964), when they interpret the question from the regional and municipality level. Methodology/research design: Empirical data was the focus of the meeting with the region and municipality. The participants’ final reports and final posters were collected at school level. Some of the data from meetings where schools collaborated with their critical friends were recorded and transcribed. All the questions on the tree (regional, municipal, school) different level were analyzed, and the issues in questions from the hierarchically high to the low levels were considered. This paper is an analysis from the first year of a 5-year project. It provides a longitudinal study of a project with yearly reports. Some results from year two will be presented at the conference Findings: Findings demonstrate ambitious questions without clear definitions and focus on outcomes. Discussions between the various groups involved in the research demonstrates the need for precise clarifications and definitions in expression and communication. The result is that the question from the municipality steering committees focuses on an inventory of situation in the various municipality schools. Another point of view is that the perspective of the students’ perspectives is missing in the questions in most of the groups. The schools and preschool level are also more focused on their own practice, than the question that were given from the hierarchy above them. Relevance to Nordic educational research: The aim in the study is to develop the knowledge among the teachers so that they can support every child and student to even more develop their capacity to perform in the school, from good to better. The overall aim is to develop the schools through collaboration between municipality’s schools in the region.
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- Johnsson, Annette
(author)
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Dialogues on the Net - Power structures in asynchronous discussions in the context of a web based teacher training course
- 2009
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The general aim of this thesis is to investigate the interaction processes that occur in group dialogues when teacher students work in small groups, using net based asynchronous dialogues to solve a problem in the area of environmental sustainability. More specifically, the interest is to determine whether students’ net based dialogues give rise to patterns of dominance/subordination similar to those observed in face-to-face situations. Research focus included an interest in the significance of group composition. The questions posed were whether interaction processes depend on a) certain background characteristics of the students and/or b) are affected by group composition: whether the majority/minority of the group members are male/female; have parents with high or low parental educational attainments; speak Swedish or another language at home; and if they are born in our outside of Sweden. From the investigation, involving 147 students in 29 groups, it appears that not only do the individual student's background characteristics play an important part with respect to communication patterns; the composition of the group with respect to these background characteristics was also found to influence the communication patterns. When the study group was analysed as a whole, older students were found to be more active in the discussion than younger. Students born outside Sweden and students speaking another language than Swedish at home played a more secluded part in the discussion than students with a Swedish background. When group composition was included in the analysis, it was found that the presence of more males in a group seemed to influence women’s contributions negatively. Female students sent fewer postings and fewer words in total the higher the share of males in the group. The discussion style was also affected; more agreements and supportive remarks were made in groups that had a higher the share of males. In groups with a larger proportion of students who were born in Sweden and in groups with a high share of students speaking Swedish at home, more but shorter contributions were posted. The group composition with respect to students with a Swedish background was also found to affect the use of disagreements; in groups with a high share of students born in Sweden or speaking Swedish at home, fewer disagreement remarks were sent than in groups with a lower share of this category of students.
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