At Last: Practitioner Inquiry and the Practice of Teaching: Some Thoughts on \u3cem\u3eBetter\u3c/em\u3e

One would think, given the public representation of teachers and teaching, the steady proliferation of top-down policies and mandates, and the dismal views of public education, that teacher research would be on life support. The fact that the field is actually alive and well surprises even — or maybe especially — those who have been closest to the work over time. Teacher researchers aim not primarily to do research, but, rather, to teach better. The large and rapidly growing literature written by and with practitioners attests in myriad ways to the possibilities for positive change in education. Much practitioner inquiry remains radical and passionate, deeply personal and profoundly political — richly embedded in situations where teachers have agency around their own practice and where their commitments to educational access and equity remain clear in spite of these trying times. The persistence of the practitioner inquiry movement broadly, however, is nevertheless confounded by the fact that the practice of teaching is widely misunderstood and misinterpreted. Disturbingly absent from the public representations of teachers and teaching is knowledge of how the practice of teaching involves complex struggles teachers engage on behalf of what my colleague Judy Buchanan refers to as improving the life chances of students. And there are powerful and painful ironies in the ongoing reauthorization crisis around No Child Left Behind and, indeed, what and who are being left behind. Particularly distressing to me has been the rapidly disappearing notion in the public discourse of teaching as a professional practice with the capacity for and the commitment to improving itself

A Geochemical Study of a Marsh Environment

The goal of this study was twofold: 1) chemically to characterize a specific salt marsh, the sediments and associated biota and 2) to establish clear relationships between the chemical substances residing in the sediments and similar or identical substances occurring in the biological specimens. In this particular study it was felt that the hydrocarbons would yield the most significant organic geochemical information. These compounds are ubiquitous but minor components of all organisms. Though their function is not entirely understood, it is known that they are concentrated in the waxy coatings of plants and most likely aid in the protective mechanisms of plants. Among the several classes of biochemical materials, the hydrocarbons exhibit probably the greatest resistance to biological and chemical degradation and therefore may be preferentially concentrated and preserved in sedimentary environments. An extreme variety of specific hydrocarbons occurs naturally in plants and hence the possible combinations and distributions of these hydrocarbons are limitless. The stability and unique distributions of hydrocarbons ranks them as a very important tool in the correlation of biolipids and geolipids

A Geochemical Study of a Marsh Environment

The goal of this study was twofold: 1) chemically to characterize a specific salt marsh, the sediments and associated biota and 2) to establish clear relationships between the chemical substances residing in the sediments and similar or identical substances occurring in the biological specimens. In this particular study it was felt that the hydrocarbons would yield the most significant organic geochemical information. These compounds are ubiquitous but minor components of all organisms. Though their function is not entirely understood, it is known that they are concentrated in the waxy coatings of plants and most likely aid in the protective mechanisms of plants. Among the several classes of biochemical materials, the hydrocarbons exhibit probably the greatest resistance to biological and chemical degradation and therefore may be preferentially concentrated and preserved in sedimentary environments. An extreme variety of specific hydrocarbons occurs naturally in plants and hence the possible combinations and distributions of these hydrocarbons are limitless. The stability and unique distributions of hydrocarbons ranks them as a very important tool in the correlation of biolipids and geolipids

EC74-860 Corn Conditioning and Storage Systems...Characteristics and Costs

Extension Circular 74-860 is about corn conditioning and storage systems...characteristics and costs