Encouraging Teachers to Design Their Own Professional Learning Through Inquiry : An Elementary Principal Conducts Practitioner Action Research

Imagine school-based meetings that encourage faculty to design and direct their own professional learning during the course of a school year. This is the type of structure I implemented at Lakeside Elementary School during the 2013-2014 school year. With this practitioner action research study, I seek to add to the research related to the ways inquiry is presented and used as a professional learning structure within schools. I examine the way I, an elementary school principal, established a series of faculty meetings called “Design Your Own Learning” in which teachers were responsible for planning and carrying out professional learning based upon their own inquiry into their daily practices with students. Using a framework that defined inquiry as the many professional interactions within a school that promote processing and questioning of student and school needs, professional knowledge and understanding, as well practices that open a dialogue about ways to address and learn from each, I investigated the core question, “What happens when I (the building principal) implement an inquiry based professional learning structure (Design Your Own Learning) in my school?” I found that the Design Your Own Learning structure provided dedicated time and space for teachers to direct their own learning and reimagine the way a “meeting” structure, such as a typical faculty meeting, could be a space in which to engage in professional inquiry. I came to see myself as a teacher educator, learning how to support my faculty as they engaged in inquiry. This highlighted a challenge between what I (the principal) “understood” about being a principal or educational leader and my emerging conception of a principal as teacher educator. Additionally, I found that the teachers who engaged in Design Your Own Learning gained useful inquiry skills that helped them think critically about their teaching, learn with and from colleagues, and challenge school norms to ask meaningful questions about their practices. This study made clear that teachers do have the willingness and capacity to engage in meaningful and practical inquiry

Effect of Agricultural Practices on Nitrate Leaching

Teagasc wishes to acknowledge with gratitude funding from the 2000-2006 EPA RTDI programme in financing this research project.End of project reportA farm-scale study, carried out at Teagasc, Moorepark (Curtin’s farm), examined the effect of four managements (treatments) on nitrate-nitrogen (NO3-N) leaching over the period 2001-`05. Leaching was measured in these treatments: (T1) plots receiving dirty water and N fertilizer which were grazed; (T2) 2-cut silage and grazing plots receiving slurry and fertilizer N; (T3) grazed plots receiving fertilizer N and (T4) 1-cut silage and grazing plots receiving slurry and fertilizer N. The soil is a free-draining sandy loam overlying Karstic fissured limestone. The mean direct N inputs (kg/ha) for T1-T4 in 2001-`04 were 311, 309, 326, 331, respectively, with stocking rates (LU/ha) of 2.12 - ~2.47. Eight ceramic cups per plot, in 3 replicate plots of each treatment, were used to collect water, on a weekly basis, from 1.0 m deep using 50 kPa suction. There were 33, 37, 26 and 24 sampling dates in the 4 years, respectively. The NO3-N and NH4-N concentrations (mg/l) were determined in the water samples. The annual average and weekly concentration of these parameters was statistically analysed for all years, using a repeated measures analysis. The aggregated data were not normally distributed. There was an interaction between treatment and year (p<0.001). Significant differences (p=0.05) in NO3-N concentrations showed between the treatments in years 1, 2, 4 but not in year 3. For the NH4-N data there was no interaction between treatment and year, p=0.12, or main effect of treatment, p=0.54 but there were differences between years, p=0.01. Mean weekly concentrations were analysed separately for each year. For NO3-N, in years 1, 2 and 4 there was an interaction between treatment and week (p<0.001). With NH4-N, there was an interaction between treatment and week in all 4 years. Dirty water was significantly higher than grazed and 1 cut silage in NO3-N concentrations in year 1; in year 2, dirty water and 2 cut silage were significantly higher than the other treatments while in year 4, dirty water and grazed were significantly higher than the other two treatments. The overall four-year weighted mean NO3-N and NH4-N concentrations were 8.2 and 0.297 mg/l. The NCYCLE (UK) model was adapted for Irish conditions as NCYCLE_IRL. The NCYCLE empirical approach proved to be suitable to predict N fluxes from Irish grassland systems in most situations. Experimental data appeared to agree quite well, in most cases, with the outputs from NCYCLE_IRL. The model was not capable of predicting data from some of the leaching experiments, which suggests that the observed leaching phenomena in these experiments could be governed by non-average conditions or other parameters not accounted for in NCYCLE_IRL. An approach that took into account denitrification, leaching and herbage yield would probably explain the differences found. NCYCLE_IRL proved to be a useful tool to analyse N leaching from grazed and cut grassland systems in Ireland.Environmental Protection Agenc

Cultivating Teachers When the School Doors Are Shut: Two Teacher-Educators Reflect on Supervision, Instruction, Change and Opportunity During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Seven weeks into our Spring 2020 semester, the Covid-19 pandemic was wreaking havoc on the world. The pandemic caused immediate shutdowns to schools and universities fundamentally changing how we plan for, teach, guide, and work with students. This paper explores how two first-year Assistant Professors navigated the challenges we faced and the learning opportunities we embraced while continuing our work as teacher educators amid a pandemic-induced shutdown. We employed collective self-study to examine our experiences while transitioning to remote learning with pre-service teachers using Moore\u27s (2012, 1993, 1989) transactional distance theory as an analytical framework to review our work as teachers in an online setting. We found that educators need to be open to continuous enhancements of instructional practices, there is a need to develop ways to equalize positions between the instructor and students, and we need to be conscious of opportunities students have to demonstrate creativity in their work. As part of this review, we developed and used a Four R\u27s Professional Inquiry Model (Recognition, Reflection, Reaction, Results) based on Moore\u27s work to help make meaning of our findings and recommendations for other practitioners

Does Senior High School Strand Matter in Nursing Students’ Academic Self-Regulated Learning and Academic Performance?

The Philippines recently adopted the K to 12 program in basic education. Under this program, students can choose their track and strand relative to their interests or career choices when they reach senior high school. However, issues surfaced when the K to 12 graduates were admitted to the college courses not aligned with the strand they have completed. This cross-sectional study was conducted to determine the difference in the academic self-regulated learning and performance of the STEM (Science and Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and non-STEM graduates in senior high school among freshmen nursing students in a city-subsidized college in the Philippines. The Academic Self-Regulation Learning Scale and grades of students in the first semester were used and analyzed in this study. Results showed that there was a significant difference in the academic self-regulated learning (p=0.045) and academic performance (p=0.000) of freshmen nursing students when grouped according to their senior high school strand.  The STEM graduates had significantly higher academic self-regulated learning and academic performance than the non-STEM completers. Unfortunately, no significant relationship was established between academic self-regulated learning and academic performance (p=0.559). Students who are graduates of the STEM strand from senior high school appear to be better prepared to take up the nursing course. Colleges of nursing may consider the academic strand of students in senior high school when admitting students in the nursing program

Leaching of N compounds from swards used for dairying that are N based and irrigated with dirty water/slurry.

End of Project ReportA study was carried out to investigate nitrate leaching on a dairy farm in Co. Cork. The farm had a history of high nitrate-N in borehole waters and the study aimed to elucidate the causative factors for this. Physical and chemical data regarding the soils, the hydrology, and the N input/output balances were determined and collated. Results showed that nitrate-N concentrations > the EU maximum allowable concentration (MAC) of 11.3 mg/l for drinking water occurred in soil drainage from the light textured soils studied due to a large imbalance between N inputs and outputs. High fertiliser N usage, animal manure and dirty water applications, atmospheric N depositions and soil organic N mineralisation in combination produced these results . While it is recognised that nitrate leaching will vary in amount from year to year the lessons from the study are clear - light textured soils that are used for intensive dairying and which receive high inputs of N are prone to release drainage water high in nitrate.European Union Structural Funds (EAGGF

Fidelity enhancement by logical qubit encoding

We demonstrate coherent control of two logical qubits encoded in a decoherence free subspace (DFS) of four dipolar-coupled protons in an NMR quantum information processor. A pseudo-pure fiducial state is created in the DFS, and a unitary logical qubit entangling operator evolves the system to a logical Bell state. The four-spin molecule is partially aligned by a liquid crystal solvent, which introduces strong dipolar couplings among the spins. Although the system Hamiltonian is never fully specified, we demonstrate high fidelity control over the logical degrees of freedom. In fact, the DFS encoding leads to higher fidelity control than is available in the full four-spin Hilbert space.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure