Managing change of curriculum development in comprehensive schools: An analysis of the perceptions of some middle-managers' experience in several schools

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This study presents a contextualised analysis of middle management and innovation. As a small-scale investigation, it records how some middle-managers perceive the experience of innovating in comprehensive schools. It analyses their reasons and processes for introducing and maintaining innovation, and examines some related issues. The context is the hierarchical structure in which heads of year, department and faculty exercise horizontally defined responsibilities. It extends earlier case-study research of curriculum development in three comprehensive schools. Data was collected by two qualitative methods: by semi structured interviews with a known and consciously-selected sample from three separate schools in two authorities and by open-ended questionnaires mailed to a self-selecting but anonymous sample in a third authority. Triangulation was also achieved by an eclectic review of existing literature. The findings show that the middle-managers adopted three common, effective and generally applicable approaches, namely, consultation, investigation and training, to introduce their innovations and to increase teacher confidence, skill and competence. To maintain the innovations, they promoted team building to increase co-operation between staff. The purpose of innovating was to improve the quality of pupil learning: an expectation which had been commonly developed as a result of courses, practical experience and professional contact. There was no evidence of any systematic evaluation: it tended to be self-evaluative and intuitive with an emphasis on classroom events. The extent of the head's influence seemed to depend upon the degree of involvement and delegation by the head, the quality of the school's working environment, and the level of commitment of the middle-manager

Transformative Learning through Action Research: A Case Study from South Africa

The paper reports on the results of an action research project, informed by transformative theory. The action research was designed to change faculty perspectives and practices from a teacher-centered to a learning-centered dialogic approach, underpinned by a socio-constructivist epistemology

A Model of Natural Language Dialogue

In this thesis I have a threefold purpose. Firstly, I will attempt to argue that the individual utterances agents make in natural language dialogue stem from specific beliefs, goals, and plans and that these interlock with those of other agents in the production of dialogue. I suggest that agents utilise syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and contextual knowledge in this process. Furthermore, that these elements contribute to the utterances speakers make and hearers interpret in the pursuit of their individual goals, and cannot be treated separately. I will suggest that utterances, being intentional behaviour, are sub-components of plans to achieve specific communicative purposes. Following from this, I will present a descriptive model showing how the beliefs and goals of agents contribute to the composing of a logical form for an utterance prior to its syntactic representation. It is suggested that the logical form of an utterance, is composed of elements relating to the agent's beliefs and goals, and includes pragmatic and contextual elements and that these are present prior to the utterance being made and predispose the choice of eventual syntactic components. I do not attempt to model the syntactic form of the utterances but limit the model of the agents to a display to each other of their logical forms and show how these might be interpreted and elicit responses from the hearer in furtherance of their goals. My third purpose is to present a hand-simulated process of this model, to demonstrate how a particular dialogue might be constructed by two agents. This is attempted by ascribing a set of beliefs to them and providing them with specific goals. In the final chapter, the achievements and inadequacies of this research are summarised, and possible improvements and developments suggested in the context of current and future directions

Ultra-High Field Strength MR Image-Guided Robotic Needle Delivery Device for In-Bore Small Animal Interventions

Current methods of accurate soft tissue injections in small animals are prone to many sources of error. Although efforts have been made to improve the accuracy of needle deliveries, none of the efforts have provided accurate soft tissue references. An MR image-guided robot was designed to function inside the bore of a 9.4T MR scanner to accurately deliver needles to locations within the mouse brain. The robot was designed to have no noticeable negative effects on the image quality and was localized in the MR images through the use of an MR image visible fiducial. The robot was mechanically calibrated and subsequently validated in an image-guided phantom experiment, where the mean needle targeting accuracy and needle trajectory accuracy were calculated to be 178 ± 54µm and 0.27 ± 0.65º, respectively. Finally, the device successfully demonstrated an image-guided needle targeting procedure in situ

Bridging theory and practice in teacher education: teaching schools – a bridge too far?

The study reported on in this article stems from the Integrated Strategic Planning Framework for Teacher Education and Development in South Africa (2011). This framework proposes the establishment of teaching schools to strengthen teacher education. This article reports on a qualitative inquiry into the views of school-based personnel and the teacher education sector on the implementation of teaching schools as sites for teacher education and whether they think teaching schools could enhance the education of student-teachers. The inquiry showed that the participants were positive that teaching schools will enhance teacher education through serving as a bridge between the academic, university-based preparation of student-teachers and the practice demands of the teaching profession. However, they had no clear notion of how such schools could add value to teacher preparation differentiated to schools in which student-teachers are placed for work-integrated learning. We contend that, prior to establishing teaching schools, much deliberation between all stakeholders is required about the purpose and means of integrating teaching schools in teacher education. If not, teaching schools that serve to bridge the gap between the education of student-teachers at universities and the demands that novice teachers face once they enter the teaching profession might remain an elusive ideal

Poetic song of Hester. Secondary infertility: Losing infants, inheriting a child

The aim of the article was to explore the narrative of Hester, a black South African woman, who is living with secondary infertility. The perspective is that of postfoundational practical theology, feminist theology and social constructionist narrative methodology. Fertility, as one of the most intimate areas of human existence, lies at the heart of life itself. Within the African tradition, motherhood is seen as almost sacred. Despite Hester’s multiple identities, one which is that of adoptive mother, the absence of biological children causes her to be regarded as a ‘childless’ woman. That identity not only disproportionately defines her, but also stigmatises her as shameful and an outsider. Within the traditional African worldview being healthy (including being fertile) is seen as being in harmony with the societal order and systemic, spiritual and religious environment. Hester’s social construction of her ‘self’ is that of helplessness, reflected in her near illiteracy, low economic status, socio-cultural position and lack of skills. Her childlessness reinforced her helplessness. Her ‘woundedness’ was perpetuated by the fact that she could not share her painful story openly. In the article Hester’s story is presented as a poem, titled: ‘the thing that doesn’t want to come out’. The article concludes with Hester’s reconstruction of ‘self’ as a woman, although poor, also blessed.Keywords: African feminist theology; infertility within the African context;issues of death; mutual embracement; secondary infertilit

Endocrine-Immune Interactions in Pregnant Non-Human Primates With Intrauterine Infection

Preterm birth remains the most common cause of perinatal mortality. Although the causes of preterm labor are multifactorial and vary according to gestational age, preterm labor and term labor share common cellular and molecular mechanisms, including stimulation of the fetal hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and endocrine/immune system interactions. We have developed a non-human primate experimental model for intrauterine infection and preterm labor using chronically instrumented rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) with timed gestations. We have documented the temporal and quantitative relationships among intrauterine infection, the synthesis and release of proinflammatory cytokines, prostaglandins, and fetal-placental steroid biosynthesis in this model. Infection-induced preterm parturition is characterized by significant elevations in amniotic fluid proinflammatory cytokines and by increases in fetal adrenal steroid biosynthesis, but not by corresponding increases in placental estrogen biosynthesis characteristic of spontaneous parturition. This suggests that activation of the fetal HPA axis by the stress of infection is accompanied by placental dysfunction and also that infection-induced preterm parturition is not dependent upon the increased estrogen biosynthesis observed in spontaneous parturition. These different endocrine and immune responses have important diagnostic and therapeutic implications in the management of preterm labor

Ant colony optimisation-based algorithms for optical burst switching networks

This research developed two novel distributed algorithms inspired by Ant Colony Optimisation (ACO) for a solution to the problem of dynamic Routing and Wavelength Assignment (RWA) with wavelength continuity constraint in Optical Burst Switching (OBS) networks utilising both the traditional International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Fixed Grid Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) and Flexible Spectrum scenarios. The growing demand for more bandwidth in optical networks require more efficient utilisation of available optical resources. OBS is a promising optical switching technique for the improved utilisation of optical network resources over the current optical circuit switching technique. The development of newer technologies has introduced higher rate transmissions and various modulation formats, however, introducing these technologies into the traditional ITU Fixed Grid does not efficiently utilise the available bandwidth. Flexible Spectrum is a promising approach offering a solution to the problem of improving bandwidth utilisation, which comes with a potential cost. Transmissions have the potential for impairment with respect to the increased traffic and lack of large channel spacing. Proposed routing algorithms should be aware of the linear and non-linear Physical Layer Impairments (PLIs) in order to operate closer to optimum performance. The OBS resource reservation protocol does not cater for the loss of transmissions, Burst Control Packets (BCPs) included, due to physical layer impairments. The protocol was adapted for use in Flexible Spectrum. Investigation of the use of a route and wavelength combination, from source to destination node pair, for the RWA process was proposed for ACO-based approaches to enforce the establishment and use of complete paths for greedy exploitation in Flexible Spectrum was conducted. The routing tuple for the RWA process is the tight coupling of a route and wavelength in combination intended to promote the greedy exploitation of successful paths for transmission requests. The application of the routing tuples differs from traditional ACO-based approaches and prompted the investigation of new pheromone calculation equations. The two novel proposed approaches were tested and experiments conducted comparing with and against existing algorithms (a simple greedy and an ACO-based algorithm) in a traditional ITU Fixed Grid and Flexible Spectrum scenario on three different network topologies. The proposed Flexible Spectrum Ant Colony (FSAC) approach had a markably improved performance over the existing algorithms in the ITU Fixed Grid WDM and Flexible Spectrum scenarios, while Upper Confidence Bound Routing and Wavelength Assignment (UCBRWA) algorithm was able to perform well in the traditional ITU Fixed Grid WDM scenario, but underperformed in the Flexible Spectrum scenario. The results show that the distributed ACO-based FSAC algorithm significantly improved the burst transmission success probability, providing a good solution in the Flexible Spectrum network environment undergoing transmission impairments

Beyond publish or perish – exploring the multi-faceted benefits of academic writing

The phrase ‘publish or perish’ suggests that the purpose of academic writing is in and of itself to be published. Drawing on qualitative research into academic writing practices, Marion Heron, Karen Gravett and Nadya Yakovchuk suggest that the ‘publish or perish’ concept obscures much of the value in academic writing that resides in writing as a process, and the opportunities it presents academics to individually and collaboratively develop and innovate