Top quark physics in hadron collisions

The top quark is the heaviest elementary particle observed to date. Its large mass makes the top quark an ideal laboratory to test predictions of perturbation theory concerning heavy quark production at hadron colliders. The top quark is also a powerful probe for new phenomena beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. In addition, the top quark mass is a crucial parameter for scrutinizing the Standard Model in electroweak precision tests and for predicting the mass of the yet unobserved Higgs boson. Ten years after the discovery of the top quark at the Fermilab Tevatron top quark physics has entered an era where detailed measurements of top quark properties are undertaken. In this review article an introduction to the phenomenology of top quark production in hadron collisions is given, the lessons learned in Tevatron Run I are summarized, and first Run II results are discussed. A brief outlook to the possibilities of top quark research a the Large Hadron Collider, currently under construction at CERN, is included.Comment: 84 pages, 32 figures, accepted for publication by Reports on Progress in Physic

Becoming warm demanders: Perspectives and practices of first-year teachers

In the literature on culturally responsive pedagogy warm demanders are teachers who embrace values and enact practices that are central to their students’ success. Few scholars have examined the experience of novice teachers who attempt to enact this stance. In this study of two first-year, female, European American teachers who attempted to be warm demanders for their predominantly African American elementary school students, the authors answer the question, “How do the teachers think about and enact warm demanding?” The teachers’ contrasting experiences have implications for administrators and teacher educators

Elementary Preservice Teachers as Warm Demanders in an African American School

The literature related to warm demanding describes teachers who balance care and authority to create a learning environment that supports a culture of achievement for African American students. Embedded in this stance is sociopolitical consciousness that explicitly links teachers’ care and authority with a larger social justice agenda. Drawing on interviews and online course assignments, we describe two preservice teachers’ conceptions and enactments of warm demanding in full-time elementary school internships in an African American elementary school. Findings reveal that although the preservice teachers communicated similar commitments to warm demanding, they enacted the stance differently, suggesting that while warm demanders share similar commitments, their practice may vary. The two cases highlight the promise of teacher education courses and field experiences to be structured in ways that promote the development of teacher aptitudes for strengthening equity and excellence in the education of an historically marginalized population of students