Fasting Gastric Acidity Evidential Effect on Esophageal Mucosal Damage

Gastric substances that potentially increase the esophageal mucosal damage are: gastric acid, pepsin, bile salts, and pancreatic enzymes. From all of these substances, the highest potential for reflux damage is gastric acid. Although the main cause of clinical symptoms of GERD is acid reflux, it has been known that there are subgroups with typical reflux symptoms that do not provide sufficient response or not responsive to PPI treatment. Despite the improvement of esophagitis, there is no clinical improvements in reflux symptoms of 30% respondents. Therefore, this study was designed to determine fasting gastric acidity with endoscopic findings in patients with GERD. A comparative-analysis study, which determine the fasting gastric acidity from endoscopic findings in patients with GERD. Samples recruited using consecutives sampling technique and divided into groups of esophagitis and non-esophagitis reflux. A total of 40 samples involved in this study. The Mann-Whitney test, was used for analyzing the difference between fasting gastric acidity from endoscopic findings of esophagitis lesions in patient with GERD. The median value for fasting gastric acidity in the esophagitis reflux group was 1.88 (0.82-4.84), whereas the median value for fasting gastric acidity in the non-esophagitis reflux group was 2.49 (0.68-5.97). The Mann-Whitney test result was p=0.298 (p>0.05). This study shows that there is no significant difference of fasting gastric acidity from endoscopic findings between esophagitis and non esophagitis reflux groups in patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). This study shows that esophagitis lesions are not affected by gastric acidity.

Effect of Feedback on Studen Engagement and Achievement in Mathematics in Secondary Schools

Feedback is the key to improve the quality of teaching in mathematics classroom. There are different practices in teaching and learning in mathematic classroom throughout the world. In Pakistan a number of ways have been introduced to increase students‘ engagement and achievement in mathematics but the impact of these programs is considered marginal. The purpose of this study was to assess ―effect of feedback on students‘ engagement and achievement in mathematics in secondary schools‖. This study provides the empirical support that how feedback enhances students‘ engagement in mathematics classroom and how feedback support students to improve their achievement in mathematics. The ultimate effect of this feedback is on students engagement and achievement and consequently, as improved students‘ mathematics learning. The sample of the study was 87 students who were studying Mathematics in grades 9. There were 43 students in control group and 44 students in experiment group.Groups were matched on students‘ results in Mathematics in grade 8 to ensure the equivalence of both groups. Then pretest was conducted to compare both groups equivalence. Modified lesson plans with feedback strategies and techniques along with independent practice assignments for intervention were developed. Researcher employed different techniques and strategies of feedback while teaching mathematics to experiment group. Special emphasis was given to ‗questioning based discourse‘ following the initiation, response follow up (IRF) format, either in written or verbal form. At the end of intervention the participants of this study were post tested. The collected data was analyzed by SPSS 15 version. According to the nature of data and to address the research questions by considering the number of participants, parametric techniques were applied on students‘ engagement in mathematics classroom scale and mathematics achievement test separately. The major findings of the study are: The idea that traditional teaching in mathematics classroom is sufficient for mathematics learning should be reconsidered. The traditional teaching in mathematics is lacking in quality teaching to mathematics students because of the limitation of their usual teaching style. A comparison of pretest and posttest scores of control and experiment group has shown significant effect of feedback on students‘ achievement in mathematics. Therefore, there is need to introduce new teaching and learning approaches in mathematics classrooms. When engagement in mathematic classroom of the participants was compared on pretest and posttest it showed that there was significant increase in engagement in mathematics classroom of students in experiment group. Understanding mathematical concepts and expanding students‘ engagement in mathematics is only possible by introducing appropriate feedback techniques and methods in teaching mathematics. Similarly, different dimensions of engagement in mathematic classroom of the participants were compared based on pretest and posttest, it showed that each dimension of engagement was better in experiment group than control group. Feedback given to mathematics students in classroom not only contributes to improve engagement of students but also expands the understanding of the mathematics which causes increase in achievement. There was a significant co relation of feedback with engagement and achievement of participants in intervention group. Also, three construct of engagement along with their different dimensions were found to be correlated with each other. Another interesting finding was that low and average ability students were most beneficiary of the intervention. This limited success within engagement and achievement in mathematics can be increased by expanding this intervention with long intervals. Students are benefited from feedback in mathematics content, which consequently resulted in efficient engagement by using feedback given to them on selected topics. Therefore, feedback given to the student in the relevant topic can engage students in mathematics learning. The feedback on specific content from the textbooks to be taught in mathematics classroom is a desired element of teaching and learning of mathematics. In the changing scenario of education policies and curriculum change, training on feedback is needed for novice and in-service teachers, because in our context a teacher has to taught mathematics in limited time and according to given examples of mathematics textbook. In this situation, the concepts of mathematics textbook of grade 9 can be addressed in an appropriate manner by giving feedback to the students of mathematics.