Creative and Performativity Policies in Primary Schools

Primary schools face a new situation, one in which policies promoting creativity no longer have to be fought for but are being promoted at government and national educational level alongside policies that focus on the assessment of school performance in inspections and national tests and encourage target setting. We sought to ascertain how these policy discourses, the contents of which have been perceived as conflicting (Jeffrey and Woods 1998), were affecting primary school management, teachers and learners. In this climate of accountability schools appeared to embrace performance and act innovatively and creatively. Our professional primary school teachers were team players who contributed to the presentation of the school as a unified, creative, inclusive and effective managerial organisation. The merging of the two policies was not pervasive across schools or within schools but there were some examples involving cross-curricular projects. More prominent was a ‘bolt on’ activity of creative teaching and learning such as special creative curriculum weeks or days. Schools found it necessary to ensure success in national tests by institutionalising lengthy SATS preparation for, in some cases, the whole of the Spring term. However, performativity as a progression from one achievement to the next was valued. Teachers, learners and parents considered it beneficial to have information about levels because, in a spirit of openness, all knew what to expect. Professional Identities The stress levels found in the 1990s, (Menter, Muschamp et al. 1997; Osborn, McNess et al. 2000; Troman and Woods 2001) appear to have dissipated along with any resistance from teachers who appeared to be more focused on coping strategies such as team building and appropriating testing and target setting for their own professional benefit. The performativity imperatives were internalised and sometimes generated guilt if they were unrealised but teachers sought to ameliorate these tensions or to resolve them. Where resolution was not possible they accepted the tension and lived with it, (Jones, Pickard et al. 2008) facing daily dilemmas, tensions and constraints but acting creatively with colleagues to manipulate the situation. Conclusion The creativity and performativity policies were integrated at an organisational level through the construction of a school culture of performance and institutional positioning in an open market but less integrated at the level of pedagogy. Where the merging of the two pedagogies did take place – as in 'smart teaching' - teaching creatively was the preferred form over teaching for creativity. The progression narrative was a major feature around which curriculum and pedagogies were organised but where external performativity dominated such as national testing creative teaching was marginalised to ‘bolt on’ fun time slots

Ranking Large Temporal Data

Ranking temporal data has not been studied until recently, even though ranking is an important operator (being promoted as a firstclass citizen) in database systems. However, only the instant top-k queries on temporal data were studied in, where objects with the k highest scores at a query time instance t are to be retrieved. The instant top-k definition clearly comes with limitations (sensitive to outliers, difficult to choose a meaningful query time t). A more flexible and general ranking operation is to rank objects based on the aggregation of their scores in a query interval, which we dub the aggregate top-k query on temporal data. For example, return the top-10 weather stations having the highest average temperature from 10/01/2010 to 10/07/2010; find the top-20 stocks having the largest total transaction volumes from 02/05/2011 to 02/07/2011. This work presents a comprehensive study to this problem by designing both exact and approximate methods (with approximation quality guarantees). We also provide theoretical analysis on the construction cost, the index size, the update and the query costs of each approach. Extensive experiments on large real datasets clearly demonstrate the efficiency, the effectiveness, and the scalability of our methods compared to the baseline methods.Comment: VLDB201

Incorporating Organizational Culture into a Decision Framework for Identifying and Selecting Knowledge Management Projects

Knowledge management is an emerging business practice throughout commercial industry and is becoming more recognized as a valuable concept in the Department of Defense and the Federal government. In March 2001, Captain William Bower completed a research effort that proposed a framework model for guiding the identification and selection of knowledge management initiatives within the Air Force. The members of the Delphi committee that participated in the original research to develop the decision framework recommended that organizational culture be more emphasized. Therefore, this research effort evaluated the decision framework proposed by Captain Bower and adapted the framework by including organizational culture. To incorporate organizational culture into the framework, this research identified cultural factors that can be assessed to determine whether or not a given organizational culture is ready to implement knowledge management initiatives. An additional step was then added to the original decision framework; this step is focused on determining whether or not an organizations culture is knowledge friendly

The Biot-Savart Law: From Infinitesimal to Infinite

In this paper, we discuss a simple apparatus and accompanying class activity that we have developed to illustrate the Biot-Savart law. Since students in introductory electricity and magnetism courses often find this law a mathematical mystery, we feel that a simple experiment such as this will provide the students a better understanding of the concepts introduced. By collecting data from several finite segment lengths, students are able to infer the 1/r2 distance dependence of the magnetic field for infinitesimal segments and the 1/r dependence for infinite wires

Measurements of noise in Josephson-effect mixers

We present new heterodyne receiver results obtained at 100 GHz using resistively-shunted Nb and NbN tunnel junctions. In addition, we have carried out accurate measurements of the available noise power of these devices at the L-band (1.5 GHz) IF frequency. Both the heterodyne and the output noise measurements show that the noise of these devices can be a factor of five or more higher than that predicted by the simple current-biased RSJ model. The noise approaches the appropriate thermal or thermal and shot noise limits for bias voltages where the nonlinearity is not strong (i.e., V>ICRN), but as expected from the RSJ model, can be significantly higher at the low voltages where the mixers are typically biased. The bias voltage dependence of the noise shows structure which is associated with resonances in the RF embedding circuit. Surprisingly, we find that changes in the high-frequency (100 GHz) impedance presented to the junction can dramatically affect the magnitude and voltage dependence of the low-frequency (1.5 GHz) noise. This emphasizes the necessity of very closely matching the junction to free space over a wide frequency range

Computational design of natural laminar flow wings for transonic transport application

Two research programs are described which directly relate to the application of natural laminar flow (NLF) technology to transonic transport-type wind planforms. Each involved using state-of-the-art computational methods to design three-dimensional wing contours which generate significant runs of favorable pressure gradients. The first program supported the Variable Sweep Transition Flight Experiment and involves design of a full-span glove which extends from the leading edge to the spoiler hinge line on the upper surface of an F-14 outer wing panel. Boundary-layer and static-pressure data will be measured on this design during the supporting wind-tunnel and flight tests. These data will then be analyzed and used to infer the relationship between crossflow and Tollmein-Schlichting disturbances on laminar boundary-layer transition. A wing was designed computationally for a corporate transport aircraft in the second program. The resulting wing design generated favorable pressure gradients from the leading edge aft to the mid-chord on both upper and lower surfaces at the cruise design point. Detailed descriptions of the computational design approach are presented along with the various constraints imposed on each of the designs. Wing surface pressure distributions, which support the design objective and were derived from transonic three-dimensional analyses codes, are also presented. Current status of each of the research programs is included in the summary

Interpreting Force Concept Inventory Scores: NormalizedGain and SAT Scores

Preinstruction SAT scores and normalized gains (G) on the force concept inventory (FCI) were examined for individual students in interactive engagement (IE) courses in introductory mechanics at one high school (N=335) and one university (N=292), and strong, positive correlations were found for both populations (r=0.57 and r=0.46, respectively). These correlations are likely due to the importance of cognitive skills and abstract reasoning in learning physics. The larger correlation coefficient for the high school population may be a result of the much shorter time interval between taking the SAT and studying mechanics, because the SAT may provide a more current measure of abilities when high school students begin the study of mechanics than it does for college students, who begin mechanics years after the test is taken. In prior research a strong correlation between FCI G and scores on Lawson\u27s Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning for students from the same two schools was observed. Our results suggest that, when interpreting class average normalized FCI gains and comparing different classes, it is important to take into account the variation of students\u27 cognitive skills, as measured either by the SAT or by Lawson\u27s test. While Lawson\u27s test is not commonly given to students in most introductory mechanics courses, SAT scores provide a readily available alternative means of taking account of students\u27 reasoning abilities. Knowing the students\u27 cognitive level before instruction also allows one to alter instruction or to use an intervention designed to improve students\u27 cognitive level