BOOK REVIEW: Fear is the Mind Killer. Dr James Mannion & Kate McAllister

Reviewed by Brian Mars

Understanding the Professional Learning of Beginning Teachers: Maximising Learning in a Context of Systemic Contraints

This article considers the processes involved in the professional learning of beginning teachers in England. In discussing the processes involved, this article considers the nature of professional knowledge needed to be learned by beginning teachers and the processes by which they may learn. Representing beginning teacher learning is framed in terms of a learning trajectory in contrast to the Teachers’ Standards (DfE, 2011) which describe a restrictive and technicist perspective. This draws from the novice / expert discourse but with the understanding that while there are a number of typical features in a beginning teacher’s development (Burn, Hagger, & Mutton, 2014) there is variation between individuals. Finally, implications are drawn for those involved in the training of beginning teachers

The evaluation of a university In-School Teacher Education Project in Science (INSTEP)

The university In-School Teacher Education Project in Science (INSTEP) used interactive video technologies to enhance initial teacher education programmes for science trainee teachers. With four Internet Protocol1 (IP) cameras and mounted microphones in school laboratories in six partner schools and the university teaching room, trainees and their tutors had access to live interaction with schools. This was a live feed of video and audio material, relayed from the school classrooms and reproduced on interactive whiteboards at the University. Image and sound processing software enabled users remotely to observe school classrooms and focus on particular features of pupil and teacher activity. Cameras and microphones placed at the University allowed links to function in both directions, enabling a variety of two-way interactions between teacher educators and student teachers at the University and teachers in schools. The INSTEP technology did not simply provide a single connection to a remote classroom: it created a number of opportunities for interaction within the teacher education classroom as the student teacher became part of a network of two-way connections enabling powerful and flexible learning experiences. In the course of university-based sessions structured around the contemporaneous observation of remote classrooms through the INSTEP video and audio links, student teachers were able to interact with classroom practitioners, tutors and with their peers. This thesis presents the findings of the internal evaluation of INSTEP aimed at identifying the benefits for trainee teachers. There has been an increase in the use of video material for teacher training purposes. However, trainee teachers are often intimidated by carefully selected extracts featuring experienced teachers. INSTEP activities are live and capitalise on all the opportunities associated with normal classroom practice. Literature points to INSTEP-type activities having the potential to enhance the development of trainees‘ observation skills, develop reflective thinking, to provide authentic illustrations of classroom practice, enable remote observation and facilitate the linking of theory with practice and the coaching of trainees by mentors. A fourth generation model of evaluation was undertaken with primary data generated by part-structured interviews with university tutors and mentors supported by a questionnaire and group interviews with the trainees. The main findings point to INSTEP 1. Facilitating the link between theory and practice; 2. Enhancing and accelerating the professional knowledge of the trainee teachers through enabling reflective practice, facilitating collaborative learning and supporting the development of the language of pedagogy. Additionally there appears to be a number of missed opportunities, e.g. the recording of lessons, the professional development and training of mentors and the use for continuing professional development in schools that may have enhanced the trainee experience further. There are also issues arising from being an insider-researcher that are considered in this work. The research was undertaken in the context of complex relationships including: 1. Being an internal evaluator working closely with an external evaluator; 2. Role and identity duality – particularly with respect to the university tutor team. 1 An Internet protocol camera, or IP camera, is a type of digital video camera that can send and receive data via a computer network and the Internet

BEGINNING TEACHER LEARNING IN SCHOOL - UNIVERSITY PARTNERSHIPS: UNDERSTANDING THE COMPLEXITIES OF DEVELOPING BEGINNING-TEACHER KNOWLEDGE IN A PARTNERSHIP SETTING

Developing beginning-teacher knowledge in a school-university partnership is both complex and messy. This arises from the debates about (1) what beginning teachers should know and relates to the balance between theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge and (2) where that knowledge should be developed. In considering what type of knowledge beginning teachers should acquire and by reviewing partnership discourse particularly from a sociocultural perspective, suggestions are made for supporting effective beginning-teacher learning

NuSTAR hard X-ray observation of a sub-A class solar flare

We report a NuSTAR observation of a solar microflare, SOL2015-09-01T04. Although it was too faint to be observed by the GOES X-ray Sensor, we estimate the event to be an A0.1 class flare in brightness. This microflare, with only 5 counts per second per detector observed by RHESSI, is fainter than any hard X-ray (HXR) flare in the existing literature. The microflare occurred during a solar pointing by the highly sensitive NuSTAR astrophysical observatory, which used its direct focusing optics to produce detailed HXR microflare spectra and images. The microflare exhibits HXR properties commonly observed in larger flares, including a fast rise and more gradual decay, earlier peak time with higher energy, spatial dimensions similar to the RHESSI microflares, and a high-energy excess beyond an isothermal spectral component during the impulsive phase. The microflare is small in emission measure, temperature, and energy, though not in physical size; observations are consistent with an origin via the interaction of at least two magnetic loops. We estimate the increase in thermal energy at the time of the microflare to be 2.4x10^27 ergs. The observation suggests that flares do indeed scale down to extremely small energies and retain what we customarily think of as "flarelike" properties.Comment: Status: Accepted by the Astrophysical Journal, 2017 July 1

The expanding bipolar shell of the helium nova V445 Puppis

From multi-epoch adaptive optics imaging and integral field unit spectroscopy, we report the discovery of an expanding and narrowly confined bipolar shell surrounding the helium nova V445 Puppis (Nova Puppis 2000). An equatorial dust disc obscures the nova remnant, and the outflow is characterized by a large polar outflow velocity of 6720 +/- 650 km s(-1) and knots moving at even larger velocities of 8450 +/- 570 km s(-1). We derive an expansion parallax distance of 8.2 +/- 0.5 kpc and deduce a pre-outburst luminosity of the underlying binary of log L/L-circle dot = 4.34 +/- 0.36. The derived luminosity suggests that V445 Puppis probably contains a massive white dwarf accreting at high rate from a helium star companion making it part of a population of binary stars that potentially lead to supernova Ia explosions due to accumulation of helium-rich material on the surface of a massive white dwarf

Microflare Heating of a Solar Active Region Observed with NuSTAR, Hinode/XRT, and SDO/AIA

NuSTAR is a highly sensitive focusing hard X-ray (HXR) telescope and has observed several small microflares in its initial solar pointings. In this paper, we present the first joint observation of a microflare with NuSTAR and Hinode/XRT on 2015 April 29 at ~11:29 UT. This microflare shows heating of material to several million Kelvin, observed in Soft X-rays (SXRs) with Hinode/XRT, and was faintly visible in Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) with SDO/AIA. For three of the four NuSTAR observations of this region (pre-, decay, and post phases) the spectrum is well fitted by a single thermal model of 3.2-3.5 MK, but the spectrum during the impulsive phase shows additional emission up to 10 MK, emission equivalent to A0.1 GOES class. We recover the differential emission measure (DEM) using SDO/AIA, Hinode/XRT, and NuSTAR, giving unprecedented coverage in temperature. We find the pre-flare DEM peaks at ~3 MK and falls off sharply by 5 MK; but during the microflare's impulsive phase the emission above 3 MK is brighter and extends to 10 MK, giving a heating rate of about $2.5 \times 10^{25}$ erg s$^{-1}$. As the NuSTAR spectrum is purely thermal we determined upper-limits on the possible non-thermal bremsstrahlung emission. We find that for the accelerated electrons to be the source of the heating requires a power-law spectrum of $\delta \ge 7$ with a low energy cut-off $E_{c} \lesssim 7$ keV. In summary, this first NuSTAR microflare strongly resembles much more powerful flares.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. 14 pages with 12 figures and 1 tabl

Torsion and temulence in the work of Emmanual Lévinas: a critical examination of the staging and regulation of ethical space

This study engages the problem of ethical space in the work of Emmanuel Levinas by situating the 'production' of what Levinas will term the 'face' (/e visage) against the horizons of its institution. It is against these horizons, it will be maintained, horizons apt for phenomenological reconstitution, that the face is revealed qua face. Through a broadening of such Levinasian explicata as 'filiality,' 'fecundity,' 'fraternity,' 'teaching' and 'maternity,' the heritability of the face will be deduced and the face placed within the context of its imperative milieu - the ethical circumstances of its signification. This injunctive environment, the staging or mise-en-scene for the face-to-face relation Levinas assays, will, pace Levinas, be exhibited upon the ground of its constitution and its provenance scrutinized, in order that the legacy of the face might be complicated, and its putative non-historical status, challenged. It will be argued that Levinas limits, unnecessarily, the ambit of what he permits to signify as a face, and thus that tacitly deposited suppositions regulate the composition and configuration of the face within his work. These posita will be worked loose from their situs and critically examined with a view to assessing their influence upon the development of Levinas' thought. Through recourse to the phenomenologies of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Levinas' presentation of ethical space (the espacement of ethics) will be appraised in the light of the phenomenologies it purportedly interrupts. The cogency of Levinas' proto-ethical insight will be evaluated in relation to the cultural and religious illustrations to which he appeals. The tension, or torsion, between Levinas' self-styled 'confessional' and 'philosophical' works will be laid bare, and their underlying confluence mooted. Effort has been made to delineate the overall trajectory of Levinas' thought and to treat the Levinasian project as a whole, such that the chosen problematic might be addressed more adequately