On the pervasive effects of Federal Reserve settlement regulations

To manage their reserve positions, depository institutions in the United States actively buy and sell deposits at the Federal Reserve Banks via the federal funds market. Beginning in 1991, the Eurodollar market also became an attractive venue for trading deposits at the Federal Reserve Banks. Prior to 1991, the Federal Reserve’s statutory reserve requirement on Eurocurrency liabilities of U.S. banking offices discouraged use of Eurocurrency liabilities as a vehicle for trading deposits at the Federal Reserve. This impediment was removed in December 1990. Beginning in January 1991, the overnight instruments in the federal funds market and in the Eurodollar markets, except for minor differences in risk, became similar vehicles for exchanging deposits at Federal Reserve Banks. Because the risk characteristics of the instruments differ, the law of one price need not hold precisely across the two markets. Yet, the authors hypothesize that, beginning in 1991, the two trading instruments became close enough substitutes that price pressures in one market began to show through to the other. Herein, the authors examine overnight LIBOR for U.S. bank settlement effects. During the period when the federal funds market and Eurodollar markets are similar venues for trading deposits at Federal Reserve Banks, they find strong settlement effects in overnight LIBOR. However, during the period when Eurocurrency liabilities carry a reserve tax, they find no evidence of a settlement effect in overnight LIBOR. Their results suggest that (i) the microstructure of the federal funds market spills over into the markets for substitute assets and (ii) Federal Reserve rules have implications beyond U.S. borders.Federal funds market (United States) ; Euro-dollar market ; Money market funds

Teacher Agency and Curriculum Development

First paragraph: Recent curriculum policy in the UK and elsewhere (e.g. Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence, Successful Futures in Wales, and the New Zealand Curriculum Framework) marks a significant departure from previous directions (see Priestley & Biesta, 2013); a particular change in focus has been the renewed emphasis on the role of the teacher as an active developer of the curriculum and an agent of change. Such policy is now acknowledging the importance of teachers’ professional agency (for an overview see https://www.bera.ac.uk/blog/teacher-agency-what-is-it-and-why-does-it-matter; a more detailed account is provided by Priestley, Biesta & Robinson, 2015).Output Type: Blog pos

Curriculum for Excellence: making the transition from policy intention to classroom practice

First paragraph: Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), which seemed so radical in its early days, is now part of the educational landscape in Scotland. It seems odd to reflect that its inception in policy began as long ago as 2004, and we are shortly to enter the seventh year of its implementation phase. Moreover, CfE looks as if it is here to stay, for the foreseeable future at least. The 2015 OECD report (www.oecd.org/edu/school/improving-schools-in-scotland.htm), while offering criticism of the curriculum’s implementation, was broadly supportive of the general direction taken by CfE. Other countries are following suit (e.g. Junior Cycle reforms in Ireland, Successful Futures in Wales, and the New Zealand Curriculum Framework), and this approach to specifying national curricula, which marks a significant departure from previous directions (see Priestley & Biesta, 2013), is now the predominant approach for curriculum innovation in many countries. A particular change in focus – one that is very welcome in our view – has been the renewed emphasis in policy on the role of the teacher as an active developer of the curriculum and an agent of change. Such policy is now acknowledging the importance of teachers’ professional agency (for an overview see www.bera.ac.uk/blog/teacher-agencywhat-is-it-and-why-does-it-matter; a more detailed account is provided by Priestley, Biesta & Robinson, 2015)

Teachers as agents of curriculum change: closing the gap between purpose and practice

Many modern curricula position teachers as autonomous developers of the curriculum (Priestley & Biesta, 2013). Yet, arguably, teachers in many countries have lost much of the craft knowledge necessary for school-based curriculum development, following over two decades of prescriptive teacher proof curricula (input regulation), and heavy-duty accountability (output regulation) (Kuiper & Berkvens, 2013; Kneyber & Evers, 2015). A particular issue is a widening gap between educational purposes and educational practices, as curriculum development is often reduced to the ticking off of outcomes and the implementation of techniques, and as teachers lose sight of the big ideas of the curriculum (Drew, Priestley & Michael, 2016). This paper focuses on an initiative in Scotland, which sought to enhance teachers’ capacity for curriculum-making through the methodology of Critical Collaborative Professional Enquiry. This process explicitly engaged teachers with the big ideas of the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence, framing subsequent curriculum development in terms of fitness-for-purpose – that is fit-for-purpose knowledge content and fit-for-purpose pedagogy. The teachers were supported by university researchers, who opened a critical communicative space (Eady, Drew & Smith, 2014) betwixt school and university, where the teachers could engage in challenging conversations about theories and practices and develop skills of enquiry. The researchers acted as critical colleagues and provided access to pertinent cognitive resources, including research articles, to devise the conceptual frameworks the teachers used to develop innovative pedagogical practices. In the paper, we illustrate, using an ecological understanding of teacher agency (Priestley, Biesta & Robinson, 2015), how teachers’ agency in curriculum-making increased as their confidence and professional knowledge grew, as they developed supportive and focused professional networks, and as their contexts for curriculum development were tailored to explicitly encourage sustainable innovation. The paper draws upon qualitative data generated from three cohorts of participating teachers, including artefacts from the programme, programme evaluations and one-to-one interviews

The Mechanochemical synthesis of magnesium hydride nanoparticles

A mechanochemical method was used to synthesise magnesium hydride nanoparticles with an average crystallite size of 6.7 nm. The use of a reaction buffer was employed as a means of particle size control by restricting agglomeration. Increasing the amount of reaction buffer resulted in a decrease in crystallite size, as determined via X-ray diffraction, and a decrease in particle size, evidenced by transmission electron microscopy

Characterisation of mechanochemically synthesised alane (AlH3) nanoparticles

A mechanochemical synthesis process has been used to synthesise alane (AlH3) nanoparticles. The alane is synthesised via a chemical reaction between lithium alanate (LiAlH4) and aluminium chloride (AlCl3) at room temperature within a ball mill and at 77K within a cryogenic mill. The reaction product formed consists of alane nanoparticles embedded within a lithium chloride (LiCl) by-product phase. The LiCl is washed with a solvent resulting in alane nanoparticles which are separated from the by-product phase but are kinetically stabilised by an amorphous particle surface layer. The synthesis of a particular alane structural phase is largely dependent on the milling conditions and two major phases (α, α′) as well as two minor phases (β, γ) have been identified. Ball milling at room temperature can also provide enough energy to allow alane to release hydrogen gas and form aluminium metal nanoparticles. A comparison between XRD and hydrogen desorption results suggest a non-crystalline AlH3 phase is present in the synthesised samples