The role of the Initial Teacher Training Coordinator in the school based element of partnership: to what extent does the Co-ordinator undertake supervision of aspects of quality assurance?

Over the last 14 years, Universities and colleges have organised school placements and award qualifications whilst teachers, acting as mentors take the lead in guiding, supervising and assessing students on lengthy teaching placements. Partnership developed quickly in response to legislation and Sheffield Hallam University was among the first of the Universities to 'sign up' to the new partnership model in 1992. The Partnership Survey 2006 reported on in this paper has focussed on the Senior Liaison Tutor with a view to finding out their views on their role, and perceived contributions to the quality assurance of the partnership. The survey focussed on some of the key issues identified in previous studies and meetings of the Partnership Management Board.</p

The role of the initial teacher training co-ordinator: secondary headteachers' and ITT co-ordinators' perspectives

The roles of ITT co-ordinator (ITTC) and CPD co-ordinator have become well established in secondary schools in England. However there is usually a separation of responsibilities for these areas within schools. The introduction of a new Standards Framework and other government policies such as the remodelling of the workforce in schools (DfES, 2003, TDA, 2007a) provide schools with opportunity to revisit these roles. A consequence of remodelling has been a rapid expansion of support staff in schools to assist teachers and one aspect of this contractual change is that support staff are taking on administrative tasks, formerly done by teachers. A further aspect is that CPD Coordinators now have responsibility for staff development cross the wider workforce. During 2007, Schools have used remodelling as an opportunity to review their management structures throughout the school including the organisation of staff development and how the school is contributing to the training of new teachers. In this paper we consider how the role of the ITTC is changing using data from interviews with Head Teachers and ITTCs from a sample of secondary schools that are in partnership with Sheffield Hallam University. Data collection took place in April and May 2007.</p

HST/STIS Imaging of the Host Galaxy of GRB980425/SN1998bw

We present HST/STIS observations of ESO 184-G82, the host galaxy of the gamma-ray burst GRB 980425 associated with the peculiar Type Ic supernova SN1998bw. ESO 184-G82 is found to be an actively star forming SBc sub-luminous galaxy. We detect an object consistent with being a point source within the astrometric uncertainty of 0.018 arcseconds of the position of the supernova. The object is located inside a star-forming region and is at least one magnitude brighter than expected for the supernova based on a simple radioactive decay model. This implies either a significant flattening of the light curve or a contribution from an underlying star cluster.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures, AASTeX v5.02 accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

Look at Me Now: What Attracts U.S. Shareholders?

This paper investigates the underlying determinants of home bias using a comprehensive data set on U.S. investors' aggregate holdings of every foreign stock. Among those foreign stocks that are not listed on U.S. exchanges, which account for more than 96 percent of our usable data sample, we find that U.S. investors prefer firms with characteristics associated with greater information transparency, such as stronger home-country accounting standards. We document that a U.S. cross-listing is economically important, as U.S. ownership of a foreign firm roughly doubles upon cross-listing in the United States. We explore the cross-sectional variation in this "cross-listing effect" and find that the increase in U.S. investment is greatest for firms that are from weak accounting backgrounds and are otherwise informationally opaque, suggesting that the key effect of cross-listing is improvements in disclosure that are valued by U.S. investors. By contrast, cross-listing does not increase the appeal of stocks from countries with weak shareholder rights, suggesting that U.S. cross-listing cannot substitute for legal protections in the home country. Nor does the cross-listing effect appear to be driven simply by increased "familiarity"� with the stock or lowered cross-border transactions costs.

U.S. International Equity Investment

U.S. investors are the largest group of international equity investors in the world, but to date conclusive evidence on which types of foreign firms are able to attract U.S. investment is not available. Using a comprehensive dataset of all U.S. investment in foreign equities, we find that the single most important determinant of the amount of U.S. investment a foreign firm receives is whether the firm cross-lists on a U.S. exchange. Correcting for selection biases, cross-listing leads to a doubling (or more) in U.S. investment, an impact greater than all other factors combined. We also show that our firm-level analysis has implications for country-level studies, suggesting that research investigating equity investment patterns at the country-level should include cross-listing as an endogenous control variable. We describe easy-to-implement methods for including the importance of cross-listing at the country level.

Vibrational branching ratios and hyperfine structure of 11^{11}BH and its suitability for laser cooling

The simple structure of the BH molecule makes it an excellent candidate for direct laser cooling. We measure the branching ratios for the decay of the ${\rm A}^{1}\Pi (v'=0)$ state to vibrational levels of the ground state, ${\rm X}^{1}\Sigma^{+}$, and find that they are exceedingly favourable for laser cooling. We verify that the branching ratio for the spin-forbidden transition to the intermediate ${\rm a}^{3}\Pi$ state is inconsequentially small. We measure the frequency of the lowest rotational transition of the X state, and the hyperfine structure in the relevant levels of both the X and A states, and determine the nuclear electric quadrupole and magnetic dipole coupling constants. Our results show that, with a relatively simple laser cooling scheme, a Zeeman slower and magneto-optical trap can be used to cool, slow and trap BH molecules.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures. Updated analysis of A state hyperfine structure and other minor revision

Local dynamics in high-order harmonic generation using Bohmian trajectories

We investigate high-order harmonic generation from a Bohmian-mechanical perspective, and find that the innermost part of the core, represented by a single Bohmian trajectory, leads to the main contributions to the high-harmonic spectra. Using time-frequency analysis, we associate this central Bohmian trajectory to an ensemble of unbound classical trajectories leaving and returning to the core, in agreement with the three step model. In the Bohmian scenario, this physical picture builds up non-locally near the core via the quantum mechanical phase of the wavefunction. This implies that the flow of the wavefunction far from the core alters the central Bohmian trajectory. We also show how this phase degrades in time for the peripheral Bohmian trajectories as they leave the core region.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures; the manuscript has been considerably extended and modified with regard to the previous version

Another weak first order deconfinement transition: three-dimensional SU(5) gauge theory

We examine the finite-temperature deconfinement phase transition of (2+1)-dimensional SU(5) Yang-Mills theory via non-perturbative lattice simulations. Unsurprisingly, we find that the transition is of first order, however it appears to be weak. This fits naturally into the general picture of "large" gauge groups having a first order deconfinement transition, even when the center symmetry associated with the transition might suggest otherwise.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figure

Investigating people: a qualitative analysis of the search behaviours of open-source intelligence analysts

The Internet and the World Wide Web have become integral parts of the lives of many modern individuals, enabling almost instantaneous communication, sharing and broadcasting of thoughts, feelings and opinions. Much of this information is publicly facing, and as such, it can be utilised in a multitude of online investigations, ranging from employee vetting and credit checking to counter-terrorism and fraud prevention/detection. However, the search needs and behaviours of these investigators are not well documented in the literature. In order to address this gap, an in-depth qualitative study was carried out in cooperation with a leading investigation company. The research contribution is an initial identification of Open-Source Intelligence investigator search behaviours, the procedures and practices that they undertake, along with an overview of the difficulties and challenges that they encounter as part of their domain. This lays the foundation for future research in to the varied domain of Open-Source Intelligence gathering

Developing enterprise culture in a northern educational authority in the UK: involving trainee teachers in learning-orientated evaluation

In this paper we discuss our use of innovative methods - at least in the context of regeneration evaluation - to help evaluate an enterprise project in northern England, paying particular attention to the involvement of trainee teachers. We discuss the methods used and critically appraise the methods and methodology, present some emerging findings from the trainee teachers strand and conclude by discussing the place of what might be termed 'learning-orientated evaluation' in relation to the currently dominant output-focussed evaluation paradigm.</p