Building the foundations of professional expertise: creating a dialectic between work and formal learning

Recent critiques of management and teacher education curricula and teaching pay particular attention to the disconnection between the de-contextualised, formal knowledge and analytical techniques conveyed in university programs and the messy, ill-structured nature of practice. At the same time research into professional expertise suggests that its development requires bringing together different forms of knowledge and the integration of formal and non-formal learning with the development of cognitive flexibility. Such complex learning outcomes are unlikely to be achieved through a 'knowledge transmission' approach to curriculum design. In this article we argue that in many ways current higher education practices create barriers to developing ways of knowing which can underpin the formation of expertise. Using examples from two practice-focused distance learning courses, we explore the role of distance learning in enabling a dialogue between academic and workplace learning and the use of 'practice dialogues' among course participants to enable integration of learning experiences. Finally, we argue that we need to find ways in higher education of enabling students to engage in relevant communities of expertise, rather than drawing them principally into a community of academic discourse which is not well aligned with practice

Understanding advancement

The concept of ‘advancement’ has been central to the debate in relation to the most effective ways of achieving the twin policy goals of high employment alongside high productivity. It is based on how the system looks from the perspective of the individual who often faces multiple barriers in accessing both learning and work. In this way it is linked to the wider agenda of the personalisation of public services. What is different from other approaches is that advancement is also about how support for (and challenge to) the individual is delivered holistically. This involves bringing together what are currently discrete and disparate advice services for: housing, employment, learning, health and benefits/personal finances.This paper explores how the vision of advancement has advanced since first mooted in this context in John Denham’s Fabian Society speech in 2004. It looks at the reform agenda from three perspectives: • The individual; • The workplace; and • The advancement agencies which support them. It concludes by looking at ways of achieving advancement and government’s role in the process through strategic commitments to – segmentation; stimulation; regulation; and capacity building.CF

Convertible arbitrage: risk, return and performance

This study explores the risk and return characteristics of convertible arbitrage, a dynamic trading strategy employed by hedge funds. To circumvent biases in reported hedge fund data, a simulated convertible bond arbitrage portfolio is constructed. The returns from this portfolio are highly correlated with convertible arbitrage hedge fund indices and the portfolio serves as a benchmark o f fund performance. Default and term structure risk factors are defined and estimated which are highly significant in explaining the returns of the hedge fund indices and the returns of the simulated portfolio, and when specified with a convertible bond arbitrage risk factor in a linear factor model, these factors explain a large proportion of the risk in convertible arbitrage hedge fund indices. The residuals of the hedge fund indices estimated from this model are serially correlated, and a lag of the hedge fund index return is specified correcting fo r the serial correlation and the coefficient o f this term is also interpretable as a measure o f illiq u id ity risk. A linear multi-factor model, incorporating several lags o f the risk factors is specified to estimate individual fund performance. Estimates o f abnormal performance from this model provide evidence that convertible arbitrageurs generate abnormal returns between 2.4% and 4.2% per annum. The convertible arbitrage hedge fund indices and individual hedge fund returns used to evaluate performance generally exhibit negative skewness and excess kurtosis. Residual Augmented Least Squares (RALS), an estimation technique which explicitly incorporates higher moments is used to robustly estimate multi-factor models o f convertible arbitrage hedge fund index returns. Functions o f the hedge fund index residuals are specified as common skewness and kurtosis risk factors in a multifactor analysis of individual fund performance. Results from this analysis provide evidence that failing to specify third and fourth moment risk factors w ill bias upward estimates o f convertible arbitrage individual hedge fund performance by 0.60% per annum. Theoretical non-linearity in the relationship between convertible arbitrage hedge fund index returns and default and term structure risk factor is then modelled using Logistic Smooth Transition Autoregressive (LSTAR) models

Gallery Characteristics and Life History of the Ambrosia Beetle Trypodendron betulae (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae) in Birch

Trypodendron betulae Swaine distributed attack entrance holes uniformly over the surface of standing stressed sub-canopy birch trees. Male and female pairs constructed galleries consisting of an entrance tunnel about 20 mm in length and then primary and secondary lateral tunnels averaging between 16 and 23 mm in length into the sapwood. Egg niches were constructed in the lateral tunnels after the symbiotic fungus was established in the galleries. Larvae enlarged the niches into cradles. Pupae and eventually teneral adults developed in the cradles. The sex ratio of resulting progeny adults was approximately one to one, and they emerged from galleries in September to overwinter in the litter

The state of practice in model-driven engineering

Despite lively debate over the last decade on the benefits or drawbacks of model-driven engineering (MDE), there have been very few industry-wide studies of MDE in practice. We present a new study, covering a broad range of experiences and ways of applying MDE: we surveyed 450 MDE practitioners and carried out in-depth interviews with 22 more. Findings suggest that MDE may be more widespread than commonly believed, but developers rarely use it to generate whole systems; rather, they apply it to develop key parts of a system often using domain-specific modeling languages developed specifically for the purpose. Our findings also suggest reasons why some efforts to adopt MDE fail and some succeed. As is usually the case in software engineering, adoption largely depends on social and organizational factors, some of which we describe in this paper

Pairs trading in the UK equity market: risk and return

In this paper, we provide the first comprehensive UK evidence on the profitability of the pairs trading strategy. Evidence suggests that the strategy performs well in crisis periods, so we control for both risk and liquidity to assess performance. To evaluate the effect of market frictions on the strategy, we use several estimates of transaction costs. We also present evidence on the performance of the strategy in different economic and market states. Our results show that pairs trading portfolios typically have little exposure to known equity risk factors such as market, size, value, momentum and reversal. However, a model controlling for risk and liquidity explains a far larger proportion of returns. Incorporating different assumptions about bid-ask spreads leads to reductions in performance estimates. When we allow for time-varying risk exposures, conditioned on the contemporaneous equity market return, risk-adjusted returns are generally not significantly different from zero

Confounding Issues in the Deadweight Loss of Gift-Giving

When a gift is given, someone other than the final consumer makes the consumption choice. Thus there is a possibility that the gift will not match the preferences of the receiver, i.e., the gift will represent a wise use of the money given the gift-giver's tastes but not necessarily a wise use of money given the recipient's tastes. In other words, gift giving can result in a deadweight loss. This paper addresses and clarifies the discrepancy between Waldfogel's (1993) finding of a deadweight loss from gift giving and Solnick and Hemenway's (1996) finding of a deadweight gain from gift giving. It also builds on some of the concerns raised by Ruffle and Tykocinski (2000).