New ways of being public: the experience of foundation degrees

This article explores the recent development of new spheres of public engagement within UK higher education through an analysis of the foundation degree qualification. These, according to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), were designed to equip students with the combination of technical skills, academic knowledge, and transferable skills increasingly being demanded by employers, and they have been identified as being at the forefront of educational agendas aimed at increasing employer engagement in the higher education (HE) sector. As such, they might be regarded as an expression of the 'increasing privatisation' of HE. However, this article argues that, on the contrary, they have enabled the development of new areas of public engagement relating to the design and delivery of courses as well as providing new opportunities for the pursuit of public policy goals such as widening participation. Such outcomes, it is argued, are the result of a number of factors that explain the 'publicness' of the qualification and that should be sustained to ensure the implementation of the 2006 Leitch Report in a manner that further develops public engagement

A Feasibility Study for Development of a Self-Instructional Training Kit for Teachers of Adult Basic Education: Final Report

Final report on a feasibility study for development of a self-instructional training kit for teachers of Adult Basic Education submitted by John M. Peters on June 30, 1971

SITT-P Series in Reading: Using the Cloze Procedure

Training manual titled SITT-P Series in Reading: Using the Cloze Procedure published by the Training Program in Adult Education at the University of Knoxville

Data-Data: A Model for Practitioner-Researchers

This paper is about planning and conducting action research projects. It is written for practitioners who need a guide for doing a kind of inquiry that was once considered to be the exclusive domain of the academic and academies. It is also for academics who have broadened their concept of knowing, including how knowledge is constructed and whose knowledge it is. The author’s model of action research is described and discussed in terms of how it integrates features of reflective practice and formal research methodology. A special focus is the practitioner’s own involvement in his or her inquiry and the logical necessity of including himself/herself as a subject of their own inquiry. Called DATA-DATA, the model has been used by over 150 individuals who have planned action research projects that span a dozen or more applied fields of practice. Most of the researchers were postgraduate students in the social sciences and various professional fields of study. Examples of planned and/or completed action research projects are discussed

Reflective Practice and a Process Called “Levelising”

The most widely accepted concept of reflective practice depicts a cyclic process of reflection in action and on action. Building on the tradition that begins with Schön’s seminal work, this paper describes an approach to reflective practice that incorporates the perspectives and theories of others whose own views promise to increase the potential of individual reflection on and in practice. Called “Levelising,” the process begins in our routine, unexamined ways of being; from various perspectives that are themselves subject to reflection, we come to know more about what we do as individuals in order to go on together with others. There are four different points of view that individuals or groups can take on their practice when they intend to understand and change some aspect of it, including their own role as practitioner(s). Level one is pre-reflective being; level two is reflective being; level three is framing; and level four is theorizing. It is in the last level that we identify what is new about this approach to reflective practice. Incorporating multiple ways of knowing, Levelising has particular relevancy to collaborative learning, reflective practice, and action research

Toward an improved understanding of the synoptic and mesoscale dynamics governing nocturnal heavy-rain-producing mesocale convective systems

Includes bibliographical references.2015 Summer.In the first stage of this research, rotated principal component analysis was applied to the atmospheric fields associated with a large sample of heavy-rain-producing mesoscale convective systems (MCSs) that exhibited the training-line adjoining stratiform (TL/AS) morphology. Cluster analysis in the subspace defined by the leading two resulting principal components revealed two sub-types with distinct synoptic and mesoscale characteristics, which are referred to as warm-season type and synoptic type events respectively. Synoptic type events, which tended to exhibit greater horizontal extent than warm-season type events, typically occurred downstream of a progressive upper-level trough, along a low-level potential temperature gradient with the warmest air to the south and southeast. Warm-season type events on the other hand occurred within the right entrance region of a minimally-to-anticyclonically curved upper level jet streak, along a low-level potential temperature gradient with the warmest low-level air to the southwest. Synoptic-scale forcing for ascent was stronger in synoptic type events, while low-level moisture was greater in warm-season type events. Warm-season type events were frequently preceded by the passage of a trailing stratiform (TS) type MCS, while synoptic type events often occurred prior to the passage of a TS type system. An idealized modeling framework was developed to simulate a quasi-stationary heavy-rain-producing MCSs. A composite progression of atmospheric fields from warm season TL/AS MCSs was used as initial and lateral boundary conditions for a numerical simulation of this MCS archetype. A realistic TL/AS MCS initiated and evolved within a simulated mesoscale environment that featured a low-level jet terminus, maximized low-level warm air advection, and elevated maximum in convective available potential energy. The first stage of MCS evolution featured an eastward moving trailing-stratiform type MCS that generated a surface cold pool. The initial system was followed by rearward off-boundary development (ROD), where a new line of convective cells simultaneously re-developed north of the surface cold pool boundary. Backbuilding persisted on the western end of the new line, with individual convective cells training over a fixed geographic region. The final stage was characterized by a deepening and southward surge of the cold pool, resulting in the weakening and slow southward movement of the training line. The dynamics of warm season TL/AS MCSs are elucidated through the analysis of the idealized simulation, along with a simulation of an observed case. The environmental conditions external to the MCS contributed to the development of a new convective line west of the initial MCS, and displaced northward of the southwestern flank of the surface OFB. Southwesterly low-level flow was thermodynamically stabilized as it lifted over the southwestern OFB from a pattern of adiabatic cooling below latent heating. This flow traveled 80-100 km northeastward beyond the surface OFB to the point where large-scale lifting sufficiently destabilized the flow for deep convection. These factors explain the geographic offset of the second convective line from the surface OFB left by the forward-propagating MCS. Eventually the surface cold pool became sufficiently deep so that gradual ascent of parcels with moisture and instability over the feature began triggering new convection close to the OFB (rather than 80-100 km away from it), which eventually drove the system southward. These results suggest that large-scale environmental factors were predominantly responsible for the quasi-stationary behavior of the simulated MCS, though upscale convective feedbacks played an important role in the complexity of the convective evolution

Data-Data: A Model for Practitioner-Researchers

This paper is about planning and conducting action research projects. It is written for practitioners who need a guide for doing a kind of inquiry that was once considered to be the exclusive domain of the academic and academies. It is also for academics who have broadened their concept of knowing, including how knowledge is constructed and whose knowledge it is. The author’s model of action research is described and discussed in terms of how it integrates features of reflective practice and formal research methodology. A special focus is the practitioner’s own involvement in his or her inquiry and the logical necessity of including himself/herself as a subject of their own inquiry. Called DATA-DATA, the model has been used by over 150 individuals who have planned action research projects that span a dozen or more applied fields of practice. Most of the researchers were postgraduate students in the social sciences and various professional fields of study. Examples of planned and/or completed action research projects are discussed