16,967 research outputs found
Designing Place-sensitive Professional Development: A Critical Ethnography of Teaching and Learning Argumentative Writing
The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the experiences of teachers participating in a two-year professional development program designed by the National Writing Project and funded by a U.S. Department of Education Investing in Innovation (i3) grant. Informed by New Literacy Studiesâ ideological model of literacy as a Social practice and rural literaciesâ notion of pedagogies of sustainability, this study employs critical ethnography and discourse analysis to analyze the discourse of teachers participating in the College-Ready Writers Program (CRWP) in order to understand how professional development might be adjusted to re-empower teachers. Data sources included field notes, interviews, lesson plans, student writing samples, and reflective vignettes, collected between March of 2013 and January of 2016. Data were analyzed in order to examine how teachersâ identities and epistemologies of literacy influenced their resistance or appropriation of the argumentative writing practices targeted by the CRWP professional development series.
Analysis resulted in the identification of three essential themes in the discourse: (1) participating teachers who identified as writers and believed in their own instructional efficacy were more likely to successfully integrate argumentative writing into their curricula than teachers who did not identify readily as writers or had a generally low sense of instructional efficacy; (2) teachers who identified themselves as agents of change articulated and acted on beliefs in the expectancy-value theory, resulting in higher goals and higher expectations for studentsâ writing; and (3) for English language arts teachers working from epistemologies of literacy shaped by the understanding of literacy as a state of grace, the argumentative writing focus of the CRWP was outside of their disciplinary content area, a positioning that made integration challenging. These findings provide supporting evidence for the argument that professional development should invest in teachersâ empowerment through the exploration of their identities and epistemologies as a foundational step in the professional learning process
Unraveling quantum dissipation in the frequency domain
We present a quantum Monte Carlo method for solving the evolution of an open
quantum system. In our approach, the density operator evolution is unraveled in
the frequency domain. Significant advantages of this approach arise when the
frequency of each dissipative event conveys information about the state of the
system.Comment: 4 pages, 4 Postscript figures, uses RevTe
Zero temperature phase diagram of the square-shoulder system
Particles that interact via a square-shoulder potential, consisting of an
impenetrable hard core with an adjacent, repulsive, step-like corona, are able
to self-organize in a surprisingly rich variety of rather unconventional
ordered structures. Using optimization strategies that are based on ideas of
genetic algorithms we encounter, as we systematically increase the pressure,
the following archetypes of aggregates: low-symmetry cluster and columnar
phases, followed by lamellar particle arrangements, until at high pressure
values compact, high-symmetry lattices emerge. These structures are
characterized in the NPT ensemble as configurations of minimum Gibbs free
energy. Based on simple considerations, i.e., basically minimizing the number
of overlapping coronae while maximizing at the same time the density, the
sequence of emerging structures can easily be understood.Comment: Submitted to J. Chem. Phy
The Age Evolution of the Radio Morphology of Supernova Remnants
Recent hydrodynamical models of supernova remnants (SNRs) demonstrate that
their evolution depends heavily on the inhomogeneities of the surrounding
medium. As SNRs expand, their morphologies are influenced by the non-uniform
and turbulent structure of their environments, as reflected in their radio
continuum emission. In this paper, we measure the asymmetries of 96 SNRs in
radio continuum images from three surveys of the Galactic plane and compare
these results to the SNRs' radii, which we use as a proxy for their age. We
find that larger (older) SNRs are more elliptical/elongated and more mirror
asymmetric than smaller (younger) SNRs, though the latter vary in their degrees
of asymmetry. This result suggests that SNR shells become more asymmetric as
they sweep up the interstellar medium (ISM), as predicted in hydrodynamical
models of SNRs expanding in a multi-phase or turbulent ISM.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, accepted by ApJ; sample expanded from 22 to 96
source
Magnetic Fields in Star-Forming Molecular Clouds I. The First Polarimetry of OMC-3 in Orion A
The first polarimetric images of the OMC-3 region of the Orion A filamentary
molecular cloud are presented. Using the JCMT, we have detected polarized
thermal emission at 850 microns from dust along a 6' length of the dense
filament. The polarization pattern is highly ordered and is aligned with the
filament throughout most of the region. The plane-of-sky magnetic field
direction is perpendicular to the measured polarization. The mean percentage
polarization is 4.2% with a 1 sigma dispersion of 1%. This region is part of
the integral-shaped filament, and active star formation is ongoing along its
length. The protostellar outflow directions do not appear to be consistently
correlated with the direction of the plane-of-sky field or the filament
structure itself. Depolarization toward the filament center, previously
detected in many other star-forming cores and protostars, is also evident in
our data. (abstract abridged)Comment: 9 pages plus 2 figures (1 colour); accepted for publication in the
March 10, 2000 issue (vol. 531 #2) of The Astrophysical Journa
The Causal Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and The Singularity Problem in Quantum Cosmology
We apply the causal interpretation of quantum mechanics to homogeneous
quantum cosmology and show that the quantum theory is independent of any
time-gauge choice and there is no issue of time. We exemplify this result by
studying a particular minisuperspace model where the quantum potential driven
by a prescribed quantum state prevents the formation of the classical
singularity, independently on the choice of the lapse function. This means that
the fast-slow-time gauge conjecture is irrelevant within the framework of the
causal interpretation of quantum cosmology.Comment: 18 pages, LaTe
Comments on the Quantum Potential Approach to a Class of Quantum Cosmological Models
In this comment we bring attention to the fact that when we apply the
ontological interpretation of quantum mechanics, we must be sure to use it in
the coordinate representation. This is particularly important when canonical
tranformations that mix momenta and coordinates are present. This implies that
some of the results obtained by A. B\l aut and J. Kowalski-Glikman are
incorrect.Comment: 7 pages, LaTe
GRB Afterglows from Anisotropic Jets
Some progenitor models of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) (e.g., collapsars) may
produce anisotropic jets in which the energy per unit solid angle is a
power-law function of the angle (). We calculate light
curves and spectra for GRB afterglows when such jets expand either in the
interstellar medium or in the wind medium. In particular, we take into account
two kinds of wind: one () possibly from a typical red
supergiant star and another () possibly from a Wolf-Rayet
star. We find that in each type of medium, one break appears in the late-time
afterglow light curve for small but becomes weaker and smoother as
increases. When , the break seems to disappear but the afterglow decays
rapidly. Thus, one expects that the emission from expanding, highly anisotropic
jets provides a plausible explanation for some rapidly fading afteglows whose
light curves have no break. We also present good fits to the optical afterglow
light curve of GRB 991208. Finally, we argue that this burst might arise from a
highly anisotropic jet expanding in the wind () from a red
supergiant to interpret the observed radio-to-optical-band afterglow data
(spectrum and light curve).Comment: 12 pages + 10 figures, accepted by Ap
AN INTRODUCTION TO SPATIAL MODELING IN FISHERIES ECONOMICS
Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,
- âŠ