'In praise of educational research': formative assessment

In this paper we trace the development of the King’s Formative Assessment Programme (KFAP) from its origins in diagnostic testing in the 1970s, through the graded assessment movement in the 1980s, to the present day. In doing so, we discuss the practical issues involved in reviewing research and outline the strategies we used to try to communicate our findings to as wide an audience as possible (including policymakers and practitioners as well as academics). We then describe briefly how we worked with teachers to develop formative practice in classrooms, and discuss the impact that this has work has had on practice and policy. In the final section, we speculate about some of the reasons for this impact, and make suggestions for how the impact of educational research on policy and practice might be improved

Pre-service teachers developing literacy identities

This paper highlights how individual literacy narratives influence pre‐service teacher literacy identities. Working with a diverse group of future literacy educators provides a challenge in negotiating and making sense of their personal literacy narratives and considering the impact this has on their literacy learning. Going beyond outcome measures and development of creative individuals (Stables, 2003) in their futures as literacy educators, we consider how to develop shared understandings of literacies within a university course context and how 'classroom' interactions and opportunities for dialogue not only develop literacy competencies, but allow for the meta-awareness of the personal literacy narratives that pre-service teachers bring to the teaching/learning context. Further to this, we consider how literacy identities can be developed through dialogue to help pre-service teachers make connections between authoritative pedagogies, pedagogy in the field and their personal literacy narratives to begin creating personal literacy pedagogies for the future

Virtuous Circles: New Expressions of Collective Philanthropy in Asia

This is the third paper of the Entrepeneurial Social Finance in Asia series, and it addresses the Giving Circles, its importance and their context in Asia." The theme of entrepreneurial philanthropy focused largely on the practices of venture philanthropy and impact investing organisations -- institutionalised funds that offer a blend of finance and advisory services to social entrepreneurs in support of their ambitions to strengthen their organisations and grow social impact. We were intrigued by a variant of venture philanthropy whereby individuals pooled their resources and together selected a small number of non-profit organisations to support with grants and advice.Our earlier study profiled several such giving circles in India, Hong Kong and Tokyo but we felt that such an innovation in collective philanthropy will grow in scale and importance in the coming decade to become a key part of the philanthropy landscape in Asia and thus warranted further study. In the next chapter we will look at how research evidence from North America supports a dual objective for the giving circle methodology -- to provide resources for non-profits; and to educate and motivate donors. Giving circles can provide a learning experience for people who want to better understand philanthropy, such as how to create social value by donating their money and skills in a socialised context.When philanthropy is described as a journey that individuals embark upon throughout life, it is not simply about giving more money over time. Giving should be made more intelligently and strategically; it can involve leveraging non-financial resources; and it understands and measures the impact created. Collaborating with others on the philanthropy journey holds the potential to make giving a more impactful and personally fulfilling experience. Giving circles make it easier for individuals to enter into larger scale and more sophisticated philanthropy and share the risks and rewards with others.

Goonhilly Sparklers

Flux monitoring of compact radio quasars has revealed dramatic radio-wave lensing events which challenge our understanding of the interstellar medium. However, the data on these events remain very sparse. Here we consider how the Goonhilly radio astronomical facility can make an impact on this problem by dedicating one or more dishes to flux monitoring for a period of one year. Such an experiment would be able to identify \sim6 new events and study them in detail.Comment: Appearing in the proceedings of "Astronomy with Megastructures" meeting in Crete, 201

Using social robots to study abnormal social development

Social robots recognize and respond to human social cues with appropriate behaviors. Social robots, and the technology used in their construction, can be unique tools in the study of abnormal social development. Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder that is characterized by social and communicative impairments. Based on three years of integration and immersion with a clinical research group which performs more than 130 diagnostic evaluations of children for autism per year, this paper discusses how social robots will make an impact on the ways in which we diagnose, treat, and understand autism

Identifying the Effects of Monetary Policy Shocks on Exchange Rates Using High Frequency Data

This paper proposes a new approach to identifying the effects of monetary policy shocks in an international vector autoregression. Using high-frequency data on the prices of Fed Funds futures contracts, we measure the impact of the surprise component of the FOMC-day Federal Reserve policy decision on financial variables, such as the exchange rate and the foreign interest rate. We show how this information can be used to achieve identification without having to make the usual strong assumption of a recursive ordering.