The derivation of performance expressions for communication protocols from timed Petri net models

Petri Net models have been extended in a variety of ways and have been used to prove the correctness and evaluate the performance of communication protocols. Several extensions have been proposed to model time. This work uses a form of Timed Petri Nets and presents a technique for symbolically deriving expressions which describe system performance. Unlike past work on performance evaluation of Petri Nets which assumes a priori knowledge of specific time delays, the technique presented here applies to a wide range of time delays so long as the delays satisfy a set of timing constraints. The technique is demonstrated using a simple communication protocol

The evolution of Home Economics as a subject in Irish primary and post-primary education from the 1800s to the twenty-first century

This paper is a historical review, documenting the evolution of Home Economics as a subject in Irish primary and post-primary education from the 1800s to the twenty-first century. In the 1800s and early twentieth-century domestic subjects, including cookery, was widely taught to females in both primary and post-primary schools. The philosophical underpinning of the subject was to enhance the quality of life for families. The subject remained a popular choice for young women up until the establishment of the Irish Free State which, thereafter, witnessed many changes in the teaching of cookery and domestic science in primary and post-primary schools. The core ideology of the subject has remained relevant and it aims to provide students with knowledge, practical skills, understanding and attitudes for everyday life as individuals and as family members. This reflects the richness of the subject from the past and the relevance of the subject in addressing issues of a twenty-first century society

Theorising variation in engagement in professional and curriculum development: performativity, capital, systems and purpose

Increasingly, policymakers seek to improve the quality of teaching through curriculum innovations and continuing professional development (CPD) programmes. However, engagement by schools and teachers varies due to mediating influences of neoliberal policies. In this article, we contribute to understanding how these tendencies affect participation. Problematising the notion of context, we examine ways in which systemic influences interacted with participation in a government-funded mathematics professional and curriculum development programme and also with participants’ purposes. A 3-level clustered Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) and an implementation and process evaluation were augmented by in-depth case studies, cross-case analysis and the application of theoretical constructs to interpret findings. Theories of capital, figured worlds and systemic coupling are utilised to theorise context. Different levels of engagement are partly explainable by: the interaction of schools' relative systemic advantage and disadvantage; their orientation and coupling to performativity regimes; and the alignment or dissonance between continuing professional development or change programmes and the pedagogical and CPD cultures and purposes of the ‘actors’ (schools, departments and teachers). Performativity concerns restricted what were considered legitimate outcomes in some case study schools. This depended on teachers and schools' positioning in terms of relative degrees of systemic privilege or disadvantage - understood as economic, cultural, social and symbolic capital - and also in terms of figured worlds and system coupling. The case studies provide insights into how collaborative professional learning can be fostered more productively. Methodologically, we demonstrate the power of combining methodologies and applying explanatory social theory to augment quasi-experimental paradigms

A queer politics of emotion: reimagining sexualities and schooling

peer-reviewedThis paper draws together Hochschild’s (1979; 1983) concepts of emotional labour and feeling rules with Ahmed’s affective economies (2004a, 2004b; 2008; 2010) and queer phenomenology (2006a, 2006b) as a way to address wider questions about sexuality and schooling. It highlights the value of the everyday politics of emotion for elucidating and clarifying the specificities, pertinence and complementarities of Hochschild’s and Ahmed’s work for reimagining the relationship between sexualities and schooling. The combination of their approaches allows for a focus on the individual, bodily management of emotions while demonstrating the connectedness of bodies and spaces. It enables disruption of ‘inclusive’ and ‘progressive’ educational approaches that leave heterosexuality uninterrupted and provides insight into how power works in and across the bodies, discourses, practices, relations and spaces of schools to maintain a collective orientation towards heterosexuality. It also counters linear narratives of progressive change, elucidating how change is a hopeful but messy process of simultaneous constraint, transgression and transformation. Key moments from a three-year study with LGBT-Q teachers entering into civil partnerships (CP) in Ireland serve as exploratory examples of the theoretical ideas put forward in this paper.ACCEPTEDpeer-reviewe

Institutional Mergers in Ireland

The importance of knowledge as a driver of social and economic growth and prosperity, and the increasingly competitive “global race for knowledge and talent” (Hazelkorn, Higher Educ Manage Policy 21(1):55–76, 2009) have combined to transform the higher education landscape, forcing national governments and higher education institutions (HEIs) to pursue new ways of addressing the challenges of a multi-polar world order. Rising demand for higher education (HE), as part of the broader shift from elite to mass to universal participation, has led to the emergence of new models of provision. At the same time, many governments face restrictions on public resources due to high levels of public and private debt; accordingly, system-level and institutional restructuring has been contemplated as a way to enhance quality, performance and efficiency

Boundaries and Bridges: the influence of James Cooksey Culwick on the development of the teaching and learning of music in nineteenth century Ireland

James Cooksey Culwick (1845-1907) was born in England. Trained as chorister and organist in Lichfield Cathedral, he moved to Ireland at twenty- one and remained until his death in 1907. Although his reputation as scholar, musician and teacher was acknowledged widely during his lifetime - he received an honorary doctorate from University of Dublin (1893) - little is known about the contribution he made to music education. This paper addresses this gap in the literature and argues that it was Culwick's singular achievement to pay attention to music pedagogy at secondary level, by recognizing that music could be seen as a serious career option for girls, and by providing resources for teachers which emphasised the development of an 'art-feeling' in pupils of all abilities. In addition, he considered Irish music as an art which had significance as music first, and Irish music second, and advocated a 'laudable tolerance' for opposing views on matters of cultural identity to Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century

Analysing the present: drawing on the legacy of Vere Foster in public policy debate on futures of schools

This paper sets out a framing analysis for a public policy debate on the future of schools that resonates with practitioners in teaching and teacher education on the island of Ireland, north and south, but also in other countries. This is informed by a democratic impulse to facilitate public policy debates, particularly on the ways schools and higher education institutions are directed and constrained by budget cuts and the shrinking of public funding in this age of austerity and gross inequalities. This is also informed by a need for policy learning about global neoliberal agendas, free-market capitalism and its push towards profit-making schools in systems that are deregulated but experience tighter centralized control, which can result in the domination and control of teachers’ work by politicians, corporate-funded think-tanks, entrepreneurs and business managers. Even though Ireland boasts checks and balances in the form of current structures and education legislation in both jurisdictions, the global financial crisis and the collapse of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ together with the ‘troika’ bail-out and Ireland’s exit from the troika in tandem with the unravelling of the common economic model built up over the last three decades have troubled the constituent social and political settlements with regard to teaching and teacher education. The authors also take inspiration from Vere Foster (1819–1900), an Anglo-Irish gentleman, philanthropist and ‘social worker’ with the poor in post-famine Ireland, as well as a significant social campaigner renowned for his contribution to emigration and education. His ideas, generated at a time of great social upheaval, can be reworked to be appropriate in the Ireland of today to address the neoliberal agenda that has brought the Republic of Ireland economy to the brink of disaster. It is argued that imaginative responses about future possibilities for teaching and teacher education, their form, regulation and accountability are but a few of the terms needed for public policy debate that engages the profession on the type of schooling that would best meet the needs of Irish society now and into the future

Neonatal imitation predicts infant rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) social and anxiety-related behaviours at one year

The identification of early markers that predict the development of specific social trajectories is critical to understand the developmental and neurobiological underpinnings of healthy social development. We investigated, in infant rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta), whether newborns’ capacity to imitate facial gestures is a valid predictive marker for the emergence of social competencies later in development, at one year of age. Here we first assessed whether infant macaques (N = 126) imitate lipsmacking gestures (a macaque affiliative expression) performed by a human experimenter in their first week of life. We then collected data on infants’ social interactions (aggression, grooming, and play) and self-scratching (a proxy indicator of anxiety) at 11–14 months when infants were transferred into a new enclosure with a large social group. Our results show that neonatal imitators exhibit more dominant behaviours, are less anxious, and, for males only, spend more time in play at one year old. These findings suggest that neonatal imitation may be an early predictor of infant sociality and may help identify infants at risk of neurodevelopmental social deficits

Engagement Across Developmental Periods

The goal of this chapter is to provide a cohesive developmental framework and foundation for which to understand student engagement across early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence. Guided by the bioecological theory of human development and the person-environment fit perspective, this chapter extends Finn\u27s participation-identification model of engagement by mapping student engagement within a larger developmental sequence. This chapter discusses student engagement within specific developmental periods that are tied to the developmental tasks, opportunities, and challenges unique to early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence. Student engagement is found to be a nuanced developmental outcome, and the differences may be a result of the maturation of biological, cognitive, and socioemotional developmental tasks and the changing contextual landscape for the children and adolescents. Recommendations for future research as well as policy implications are also discussed