Teacher and child talk in active learning and whole-class contexts : some implications for children from economically less advantaged home backgrounds

This paper reports the experiences of 150 children and six primary teachers when active learning pedagogies were introduced into the first year of primary schools. Although active learning increased the amount of talk between children, those from socio-economically advantaged homes talked more than those from less advantaged homes. Also, individual children experienced very little time engaged in high-quality talk with the teacher, despite the teachers spending over one-third of their time responding to children's needs and interests. Contextual differences, such as the different staffing ratios in schools and pre-schools,may affect how well the benefits of active learning transfer from preschool contexts into primary schools. Policy-makers and teachers should pay particular attention to the implications of this for the education of children from economically less advantaged home backgrounds

A Neutrino Factory Manifesto

A neutrino factory is capable of answering basic questions in the physics of neutrino oscillations, which address fundamental issues in Grand Unified Theories and flavour physics. In addition, the front end of a neutrino factory offers exciting prospects using slow and stopped muons, such as the search for mu to e transitions and the muon electric dipole moment. There are also opportunities to study muonic atoms and in other areas of science. One should also keep in mind the long-term objective of building a muon collider, either for Higgs physics or at the high-energy frontier.Comment: 16 pages, 6 eps figures, talk at the 2001 Venice International Workshop on Neutrino Telescope

π−N\pi-N from an Extended Effective Field Theory

Third order chiral perturbation theory accounts for the $\pi-N$ scattering phase shift data out to energies slightly below the position of the $\Delta$ resonance. The low energy constants are not accurately determined. Explicit inclusion of the $\Delta$ field is favored.Comment: 2 pages latex, working group talk, Chiral Dynamics 2000, Jefferson Lab., VA, July 2000, World Scientific, to be pu

Diversity and inclusivity at university: a survey of the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) students in the UK

The extent to which UK universities are ‘gay friendly’ has received some attention in the press. Whilst there are a number of published studies exploring campus climate for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans (LGBT) students and/or staff, these are primarily localised studies undertaken in State Universities and Baccalaureate Colleges in the US. The present study is a nationwide UK study of campus climate, based on survey data collected from a sample of 291 LGBT students from 42 universities across the UK. The findings show that despite the increased implementation of an equality agenda (e.g. equal access; widening participation) in UK Higher Education, homophobia on campus is still a significant problem and therefore universities are not perceived nor experienced by LGBT students as ‘safe spaces’ in which to be open about sexual orientation/gender identity. The implications of the findings for university policy and practice in relation to LGBT (and indeed all) students is also explored.</p

Flavor Singlet Axial Coupling of the Proton - An Updated Analysis

We present a combined analysis of SESAM and TxL data for the flavor singlet axial coupling G_A^1 of the proton, which is very helpful to stabilize the disconnected signals at small quark masses. From connected and disconnected contributions we use the tadpole improved renormalization constant Z_A and obtain G_A^1=0.21(12).Comment: 3 pages, contribution to LATTICE99 (matrix elements

Basis Independent Measures of R-parity Violation

We construct basis-independent expressions that measure the magnitude of $R$-parity breaking due to possible superpotential terms in the Minimal Supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model, in the absence of soft supersymmetry-breaking terms and spontaneous gauge symmetry breaking. We also discuss briefly their application to a consistent treatment of cosmological constraints on $R$-parity violation.Comment: 13 pages, Late