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Background: DNA methylation (DNAm) profiling has emerged as a powerful tool for characterizing the placental methylome. However, previous studies have focused primarily on whole placental tissue, which is a mixture of epigenetically distinct cell populations. Here, we present the first methylome-wide analysis of first trimester (n=9) and term (n=19) human placental samples of four cell populations: trophoblasts, Hofbauer cells, endothelial cells, and stromal cells, using the Illumina EPIC methylation array, which quantifies DNAm at >850,000 CpGs.Results: The most distinct DNAm profiles were those of placental trophoblasts, which are central to many pregnancy-essential functions, and Hofbauer cells, which are a rare fetal-derived macrophage population. Cell-specific DNAm occurs at functionally-relevant genes, including genes associated with placental development and preeclampsia. Known placental-specific methylation marks, such as those associated with genomic imprinting, repetitive element hypomethylation, and placental partially methylated domains, were found to be more pronounced in trophoblasts and often absent in Hofbauer cells. Lastly, we characterize the cell composition and cell-specific DNAm dynamics across gestation.Conclusions: Our results provide a comprehensive analysis of DNAm in human placental cell types from first trimester and term pregnancies. This data will serve as a useful DNAm reference for future placental studies, and we provide access to this data via download from dbGAP (phs002013.v1.p1), through interactive exploration from the web browser (https://robinsonlab.shinyapps.io/Placental_Methylome_Browser/), and through the R package planet, which allows estimation of cell composition directly from placental DNAm data.

As guest editors for this special issue of History of Education we are delighted to be able to introduce a range of specially selected articles based on the theme of ‘Politics, Professionals and Pr...

Though there is a well-established body of research in the field of teacher professional development, it is characterised by a real dearth of any detailed historical analysis. This paper seeks to address this gap, by offering a new historical analysis of a case study of the evolution of organised teacher professional development in England and Wales during the twentieth century. Its approach is hoped to open up the wider debate and to contribute to a fuller understanding of the basis for those questions and dilemmas about teacher professional development that have long exercised teachers, professional educators and policy-makers – questions which turn on fundamental issues of priorities and purpose, funding, scale of teacher engagement, control and reach. The paper is in three main parts. Firstly, the scope of the case study is outlined with key stages in the evolution of teacher professional development in England and Wales identified. Secondly, four themes from the data which characterised this evolutio...

by Gary McCulloch, London, Routledge, 2011, 140 pp., £85.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-415-56534-9; £24.99 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-415-56535-6 Three responses to this book were given at its launch at t...

The Common Core State Standards and a Response to Intervention framework are movements sweeping the nation. Speech-language pathologists are uniquely positioned to play a pivotal role in supporting successful implementation of these movements. This article explores the assessment tools speech-language pathologists SLPs will need to identify and progress monitor critical language/literacy skills such as listening comprehension and oral narratives skills. Foundational research demonstrates that communication units, total words spoken, and major story components are measures that will discriminate between students with adequate language skills and language disorders and are curriculum-based, sensitive to change, and useful to determine the effectiveness of language/literacy interventions. Speech-language pathologist can broaden the impact of their knowledge and skills to improve outcomes for all students.

Each summer between 1922 and 1938, up to 500 elementary school teachers from across Britain, and some from overseas, joined together in London for a two-week residential vacation course. Organised by Evans’ Brothers Publishers and patronised by leading educationists, politicians and policy-makers, the City of London Vacation Course came to be regarded as an important annual educational institution and a cutting-edge exemplar of teacher professional development. In spite of this apparent fame, it appears to have been entirely overlooked in the history of teacher education. This paper seeks to recover the lost story of the City of London Vacation Course and documents its educational and professional focus and its social and cultural function. Locating it within a wider educational, economic and political climate, the paper also examines how the City of London Vacation Course somehow captured and embodied the promise of an emergent new professionalism for elementary teachers during that period.

This chapter outlines the prevailing model of gifted and talented education in England and to analyze the challenges and opportunities it faces. The English model was formulated in 1999, and implementation effectively started in 2002 with the establishment of the government funded National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth at the University of Warwick. The approach used to deliver gifted education in England is intended to be integrated in two ways; gifted education is an integral part of general education policy, and the approach used integrates pupils with their chronological peers as much as possible. In the English model, special attention is paid to those from underrepresented groups. The English model presents itself as radical in that it is systemic: It is embedded in the national system and therefore dependent for effective implementation on the involvement of the whole education profession.

This paper traces the origins of the concept of personalisation in public sector services, and applies it to school education. The original conceptualisation stressed the need for ‘deep’ rather than shallow, personalisation, if radical transformation of services were to be achieved. It is argued that as the concept has been disseminated and implemented through policy documents, notably the 2005 White Paper, it has lost its original emphasis on deep personalisation. The focus in this article is particularly upon gifted and talented students whose education provides the best case example of how the theory of personalisation might work in practice. Two examples of the lessons in a sixth form college are used to illustrate the character of personalised pedagogy in practice. The implications for theory and practice are discussed.

The English education system has been shown over a long period to be catering poorly for the educational needs of gifted and talented students. In the last five years, however, a national policy and an associated strategy have been established, distinctively attempting to embed core provision for gifted and talented students in the mainstream school system. A major thrust of this ‘English model’ is to identify and support students from those lower socio-economic groups, and ethnic minorities, which historically have been under-represented in higher education. This social inclusivity dimension to the national policy raises substantive challenges for policy research and development. This paper provides a detailed geo-demographic analysis of over 37,000 gifted and talented students admitted to the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth in England in 2003/2005. The analysis shows that the National Academy, whilst having a student membership skewed towards groups with high levels of cultural and economic capital, had nonetheless reached significant numbers of students in the poorest areas, something over 3000 students, and 8% of students identified as gifted and talented at this stage. Possible explanations for the profile of gifted and talented students’ social origins are raised, and an intervention project arising from the analysis is outlined.

Following the Second World War, programmes of in-service training for teaching became increasingly well-established. From 1948 the Ministry of Education began to fund ‘special advanced courses for experienced serving teachers’ which were aimed at a small, elite group of teachers whose potential as school leaders, teacher trainers or educational administrators was recognised as worthy of investment.

Drawing exclusively on the oral history testimony generated for the research which underpins the book, this chapter considers how participants described their experiences of professional development at different times in their careers. For the most part, stories of professional development were very much associated with formal, structured opportunities broadly categorized as ‘going on courses’.

In the period 1920–40 a variety of models of in-service training was developed nationally, with residential summer vacation courses being a popular way of bringing groups of teachers together for professional, intellectual and personal refreshment in the school holidays. Vacation courses were organised by a variety of providers, including the Board of Education, LEAs as well as private and voluntary organisations.

This chapter outlines the chronology of the national policy map of teacher professional development in England and Wales 1920–2000. It identifies the range of opportunities offered to serving teachers, largely through formal courses of various types and considers issues of funding, organisation, access and control.

This chapter explores the relationship between the experience of professional development and ideas of teacher professional identity, status and community. It considers the idea of professional learning as something much more fluid and greater than that confined to formal professional development opportunities for teachers and examines the blurring of boundaries between personal and professional development.

Base sur The Woman Teacher's World, cet article tente a travers l'etude de la presse pedagogique du debut du XXe siecle, de reconstituer l'identite professionnelle des enseignantes decrites dans ces ouvrages qui s'attachaient a souligner le caractere feminin et a eviter tout stereotype culturel, tout en degageant un nouvel ideal professionnel. Ce journal avait pour objectif premier de creer un reseau de professionnelles de l'enseignement interessees par la pratique pedagogique mais aussi par des sujets traditionnellement feminin, tels que la mode, la couture ou le shopping.

(2003). Measuring teachers' performance: A case for differentiation. Education 3-13: Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 4-8.

This paper offers an overview of the 20th century historiography of the 1902 Education Act. The Act and its educational consequences have been systematically reflected upon by historians of education in every decade since the 1950s. Eaglesham's ground-breaking and detailed study of the Act roughly marked its half-centenary. In the mid-1970s, its three-quarters centenary was marked by an important debate within the annual conference proceedings of the British History of Education Society, between Simon and Cruickshank. In the 1980s, the work of Reeder pushed this debate forward and later in the 1990s, Daglish offered new insights into the political background of the period. This article is concerned with how the story of the 1902 Education Act has been told by historians of education, how this story differs, and whether, in the light of more recent research, any new versions of the story might contribute a further dimension to our historical understanding.

This paper highlights just one aspect of the highly gendered nature of nineteenth century pupil teaching and focuses on how the female pupil teacher was constructed as a ‘problem’. The paper consists of two broad sections and draws extensively upon the experience of female pupil teachers who attended pupil teacher centres during the school board period. First, to set the scene and contextualise the ‘problem’, a brief account of the feminisation of teaching and what this meant for the female pupil teacher and pupil teaching in general is explored, with particular reference to the complexities of female pupil teachers’ working life and the issue of mixed centre organisation. Secondly, there follows an analysis of how attempts were made to solve or contain the perceived ‘problem’ of the female pupil teacher through the simultaneous exercise of: moral control; protection and concern with physical and mental well‐being; moulding through the medium of ‘healthful recreation’.