Teacher perspectives of cultivating learning through practitioner enquiry to transform practice

This paper reports on the first year of an innovative Postgraduate Certificate (PGCert) in Advanced Education Practice, designed to meet the specific staff and development needs of one school in the North West of England. The programme is underpinned by three strands of practice based learning: learning about practice (theory), learning in practice (application) and learning through practice (reflection) through critical reflection. This paper considers professional development situated around teaching and learning and outlines a new approach to cultivating learning, both for teachers and educational practitioners through a collaborative learning model with a Higher Education Institute (HEI). A further strand to the research considers transformative impact on practice including references to personal experience and reflections by the participants. Throughout the report it is evident that school leaders were keen to enhance the performance of staff by supporting them in Masters level study to enhance professional practice and impact on learning. Through questionnaires and interviews, an insight into personal and professional impact, challenges, evaluation, details of the progression, next steps in the small scale research study were considered

Writing Verdicts: French And Francophone Narratives Of Race And Racism

Inspired by Didier Eribon\u27s La société comme verdict, this dissertation examines how the novelistic representation of racism and racialization in French-language texts can push back against a collective social verdict in France that stigmatizes non-white peoples as lesser and as other. Though discussing the existence of race is still taboo in France, I show that this stigmatization is in fact a racial verdict, or one that operates through racialization, as opposed to a verdict predicated on sexuality, gender, or class. To do so, I analyze the representation of racial hierarchies and the experience of racism in six novels written in French: Daniel Biyaoula\u27s L\u27Impasse, Gisèle Pineau\u27s L\u27Exil selon Julia, Leïla Sebbar\u27s Le Chinois vert d\u27Afrique, Zahia Rahmani\u27s Musulman roman, Cyril Bedel\u27s Sale nègre, and Bessora\u27s 53 cm. As I argue, these authors resist racial verdicts by writing about and examining the place of the ethnic minority individual in French society. In so doing they also issue counter verdicts that condemn society, individuals, and the state for their complicity in maintaining an unjust status quo. I first demonstrate that the racial hierarchies introduced during the colonial era to justify the exploitation and domination of non-white peoples continue to mark French society, operating as a collective societal verdict that marks those perceived as colored according to the sign of stigma. This judgment is first and foremost tied to phenotype–the inescapable physical body–but also includes fluid markers like religion, speech, dress and culture. Second, I examine this racial verdict through three lenses– blackness, arabness, and whiteness –interrogating both how the authors present its impact on society and individuals–, thus proving its very existence–and how they refute it. Once exposed, verdict is countered through the rehabilitation of stigmatized identities such as blackness, the indictment of the impulse to categorize individuals based on race, the condemnation of the French state for its exclusion of its own citizens, and the revelation that whiteness–the source of the racial hierarchy–is both colored and founded on emptiness

A non-inertial two-phase model of wax transport in a pipeline during pigging operations

The removal of wax deposit from pipelines is commonly accomplished using pigs. In order to avoid the formation of wax plugs in pipes, bypass pigs, which create a liquid jet to disperse the scraped deposit, are employed. Despite many One-Dimensional (1D) models have been developed to predict the dynamics of bypass pigs, the details of the interaction between the liquid jet and the debris have not been investigated numerically yet. In this work the fluid dynamics of a wax-in-oil slurry in front of a moving bypass pig is studied by means of three-dimensional (3D) numerical simulations. A mathematical model which couples the pig and the wax-in-oil slurry dynamics, solved in the pig frame of reference, has been developed. The results show that the pig quickly reaches an equilibrium velocity, and the pig acceleration is proportional to the square of the mixture relative velocity. Comparing the present with previous sealing-pig results it appears that the bypass flow is more effective in deterring plug formation. Moreover, the 3D fields have the advantage of showing the wax distribution in each pipe section whereas the 1D model cannot distinguish between deposited and suspended wax

Longitudinal analysis of NASA public relations and New York Times newspaper articles (1963-2011)

Using Grunig & Hunt’s models of public relations, this thesis provides a longitudinal content analysis of NASA press materials and New York Times newspaper articles from 1963 to 2011 with regards to various sampled crewed and uncrewed spaceflight missions. Additionally, semi-structured interviews with space industry practitioners, including NASA public affairs officers, journalists, and astronauts, were gathered to provide additional insight to content analysis. From the 1960s up until the 1990s, NASA used a public information model to inform journalists about key facts. After the 1990s, NASA public affairs used a mixed motives model, tailoring to their audiences and messages. While in the beginning, NASA could rely on journalists to share their narrative and instead focused on disseminating the scientific results to the press. Present-day NASA has developed strategies and tactics to support their brand narrative and acknowledge their various audiences that interact with the agency.Advertisin

Influence of sulfide on the onset of chloride-induced corrosion of steel reinforcement in alkali-activated slags.

In alkali-activated slags (AAS), where ground granulated blast furnace slag is used as the main precursor, the presence of reduced sulfur species yields a highly reducing pore solution environment. This study investigates the influence of sulfide on steel passivation in alkali-activated slag mortars immersed in alkaline (1 M NaOH) and alkaline chloride-rich (1 M NaOH with 5 M NaCl) solutions, and the dependency of chloride-induced pitting on the immersion time and the concentration of sulfide in simulated alkali-activated slag pore solutions (containing 0.80 M OH- and 0 M, 0.01 M and 0.45 M HS- ) by means of electrochemical techniques. Surfacesensitive X-ray photoelectron spectroscopic (XPS) and Raman spectroscopic analysis of the corrosion products formed on the steel surfaces, both in alkali-activated slag mortars and in simulated pore solutions, shows that sulfide has a very important influence in altering – but not necessarily in a deleterious way – the characteristics of the steel surface under these conditions

Eye on the ID

The Gilbert family has ranched in northwestern South Dakota for over one hundred years. We run a commercial Angus cow herd of approximately 900 mother cows. Our emphasis is on replacement heifers and feeder steers. The hot iron brand has been and is the method of identification used on Gilbert Angus cattle within the brand inspection area of Western South Dakota. The first brand was registered in the late 1800’s according to the brand papers held by Frank Gilbert. The Cross J Bar brand was the identification used to distinguish Gilbert cattle then and is still used today. As the fifth generation enters the business, we have added other individual brands but use the original for the corporation cattle. In addition to hot iron brands, we ear tag every cow with individual numbers and ear tag their offspring with corresponding numbers on day of birth. This information is stored in a CowSense™ database. The replacement females retained within the herd receive an ear tag indicating year and genetic ID

Integration of primary health services: being put together does not mean they will work together

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited.Background This paper reports on an Australian experience of co-locating a range of different primary health services into one building, with the aim of providing integrated services. It discusses some of the early challenges involved with moving services together and reasons why collaborative and integrated working relationships to improve the clients’ journey, may remain elusive. Methods Ethnographic observational data was collected within a GP plus site as part of day-to-day interactions between the research officer and health professionals. This involved observations of team processes within and across teams at the site. Observations were thematically analysed using a social anthropological approach. Results Three main themes arose from the analysis: Infrastructural impediments to collaboration; Territorialism; and Interprofessional practice (IPP) simply not on the agenda. The experience of this setting demonstrates that dedicated staff and resources are needed to keep IPP on the agenda of health service organisations. This is especially important where organisations are attempting to implement new models of collaborative and co-located services. Furthermore, it shows that establishing IPP within newly co-located services is a process that needs time to develop, as part of teams building trust with each other in new circumstances, in order to eventually build a new cultural identity for the co-located services. Conclusions Co-located health service systems can be complex, with competing priorities and differing strategic plans and performance indicators to meet. This, coupled with the tendency for policy makers to move on to their next issue of focus, and to shift resources in the process, means that adequate time and resources for IPP are often overlooked. Shared interprofessional student placements may be one way forward

Responses of the Circumpolar Boreal Forest to 20th Century Climate Variability

We examined relationships between tree ring-width and climate at 232 sites around the circumpolar boreal forest to explore variability in two types of response to temperature: a browning response characterized by inverse correlations between growth and temperature, and a greening response characterized by positive correlations between growth and temperature. We used moving-window correlation analysis for eight 30-year time windows, lagged by 10 years, to characterize the climate response at each site from 1902 to 2002. Inverse growth responses to temperature were widespread, occurring in all species, all time periods, and in nearly all geographic areas. The frequency of the browning response increased after 1942, while the frequency of the greening response declined. Browning was concentrated in five species (Picea abies, Picea glauca, Picea mariana,Picea obovata and Pinus banksiana), and occurred more frequently in the warmer parts of species\u27 ranges, suggesting that direct temperature stress might be a factor. In some species, dry sites were also more likely to experience browning; moisture stress might thus be an additional explanation in some cases. As inverse responses to temperature are widespread, and occur in a broad array of species, there is unlikely to be any single explanation for their occurrence