Spending the pupil premium : what influences leaders’ decision-making?

Introduced in England in 2011, the pupil premium policy was an ambitious reform aimed at tackling the persistent attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their more affluent peers. The policy provides school leaders with the professional autonomy to determine how pupil premium funding should be used. This article examines the decision-making processes and influences involved in the use of these additional resources. We conducted interviews with 21 school leaders from different contexts across the Midlands in order to investigate the approaches, perceptions and experiences that influenced their engagement with the pupil premium policy. The findings highlight the range of strategies employed to determine how the funding should be used and the factors that influence the decisions made. Our data also indicate the tensions and challenges that are experienced by school leaders in relation to effective use of the funding. We conclude with recommendations for policymakers and practitioners in relation to the requirement for high-quality, accessible information to support pupil premium use, the role of accountability mechanisms and the need for wider societal reform in order to tackle social disadvantage

The concept of "character" in Dirichlet's theorem on primes in an arithmetic progression

In 1837, Dirichlet proved that there are infinitely many primes in any arithmetic progression in which the terms do not all share a common factor. We survey implicit and explicit uses of Dirichlet characters in presentations of Dirichlet's proof in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with an eye towards understanding some of the pragmatic pressures that shaped the evolution of modern mathematical method

The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and Foundation

The internship report contains an analysis of The Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation as applied to the author\u27s internship with the non-profit organization from January through May 2010. Included are a brief organizational history and a description of the intern\u27s duties as assistant to both the gallery director and development associate. An analysis of the Foundation will be discussed as well as researched best practices for similar festivals, non-profit professionals, and other art organizations. The report will conclude with recommendations for organizational growth and improvement

Do mathematical explanations have instrumental value?

Scientific explanations are widely recognized to have instrumental value by helping scientists make predictions and control their environment. In this paper I raise, and provide a first analysis of, the question whether explanatory proofs in mathematics have analogous instrumental value. I first identify an important goal in mathematical practice: reusing resources from existing proofs to solve new problems. I then consider the more specific question: do explanatory proofs have instrumental value by promoting reuse of the resources they contain? In general, I argue that the answer to this question is "no" and demonstrate this in detail for the theory of mathematical explanation developed by Marc Lange

Intellectual generosity and the reward structure of mathematics

Prominent mathematician William Thurston was praised by other mathematicians for his intellectual generosity. But what does it mean to say Thurston was intellectually generous? And is being intellectually generous beneficial? To answer these questions I turn to virtue epistemology and, in particular, Roberts and Wood's (2007) analysis of intellectual generosity. By appealing to Thurston's own writings and interviewing mathematicians who knew and worked with him, I argue that Roberts and Wood's analysis nicely captures the sense in which he was intellectually generous. I then argue that intellectual generosity is beneficial because it counteracts negative effects of the reward structure of mathematics that can stymie mathematical progress

The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and Foundation

The internship report contains an analysis of The Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation as applied to the author\u27s internship with the non-profit organization from January through May 2010. Included are a brief organizational history and a description of the intern\u27s duties as assistant to both the gallery director and development associate. An analysis of the Foundation will be discussed as well as researched best practices for similar festivals, non-profit professionals, and other art organizations. The report will conclude with recommendations for organizational growth and improvement