Criticality and the practice-based MA: an argument drawn from teaching on the Masters in Teaching and Learning (MTL)

This paper considers the notion of criticality in relation to the Masters in Teaching and Learning (MTL), the Teacher Development Agency (TDA)-funded masters programme for school teachers in England. After the two current cohorts complete the MTL in 2013 one a cohort of Newly Qualified Teachers (NQTs) and one of more senior Teaching and Learning Responsibility holders (TLRs) government funding will not be provided for any subsequent recruitment to the course. In light of this, debates around the MTL may be viewed as redundant, but we do need to acknowledge that there will be a cohort of students who hold a Masters in Teaching and Learning and for whom it is a valid qualification. Beyond this, discussion of what a masters course in education might consist of is still a relevant and urgent matter. Our argument in this paper draws upon our experience of working on the MTL but is, we submit, applicable more generally to the practice-based masters courses that have proliferated in recent years. Our focus is upon criticality as an essential component of masterliness. We consider briefly ways in which critique might be construed and practised before going on to argue that a certain idea of critique, which draws upon historical conceptions of educations role in serving the social good, is essential to educational practice and to claims to mastery in education. We conclude by drawing attention to difficulties that may be presented to teacher-researchers on masters courses that offer themselves as school-based programmes of professional development

Supporting the educational development of Slovak Roma pupils in Sheffield: The Roma Language and Education Tool (RoLET)

This study illustrates the development of the Roma Language and Education Tool (RoLET) as an analytical model for schools, teachers and other professionals working with newly arrived Slovak Roma pupils in the UK. The RoLET is based on the Traveller and Roma Gypsy Education Tool (TARGET), an analytical model developed by Wilkin et al. (2009b; 2010), combined with the findings of an empirical study conducted in a secondary school in Sheffield, as well as drawing on the broader literature on Gypsy Roma Traveller (GRT) and migration research. Based on the findings of the study, this report highlights that the TARGET model designed for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, does not entirely fit the specific situation of newly arrived Eastern European Roma pupils when entering the UK education system. It is argued that the situation of Eastern European Roma communities coming to the UK is different to ‘traditional’ GRT communities and can, rather, be compared with the experience of migrant groups coming from non-English speaking countries to the UK. Therefore, including Eastern European Roma communities under the GRT term is challenged in this study. A key purpose of this research is to support professionals working with newly arrived Eastern European Roma pupils in UK secondary schools by providing them with the RoLET that illustrates influential factors which need to be considered when developing strategies for improving the educational outcomes of Eastern European Roma pupils in the British education system

Language Teachers' Beliefs and Practices: Lessons to Be Learnt for Facilitating Professional Development in Northern Cyprus

The impact of professional development programs on teachers' beliefs is still an exploratory field, with existing research finding both positive and weak impacts of teacher education on teachers' beliefs. Building upon these findings, it is acknowledged that many challenges remain in designing focused professional development programs. This chapter addresses the problem by drawing on a study conducted with Higher Education teachers in North Cyprus. The study aimed to unveil teachers' beliefs about in-class code-switching in teaching a foreign language. Using a qualitative methodology, data in the form of classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, course documents and field notes were collected and analyzed thematically. Findings suggest that cultures of learning, that is teachers' frameworks of expectations about successful teaching and learning, have a significant impact on teachers' beliefs. The authors suggest that an acknowledgement of cultural frames will facilitate appropriate professional development

Slovak Roma Village of Origin and Educational Outcomes: A Critical Evaluation

The immigration of relatively large numbers of Slovak Roma people to Sheffield since 2004 has highlighted some tensions around the settling of the new arrivals into the complex social, linguistic and cultural spaces of this diverse city. Schools have faced particular challenges welcoming the new children who manifest various issues in relation to their language competencies, prior educational experiences, truncated schooling and often lived experiences of social deprivation and marginalization. Based on data from an ongoing ethnographic study and drawing on Bronfenbrenner’s (2005) ‘Process-Person-Context-Time’ (PPCT) framework, this paper presents the context of the two main sender villages of the Roma in Sheffield and forefronts some of the experiences of Slovak Roma children in secondary school as they negotiate prevailing English-only language ideologies and complex curriculum challenges. Findings show that, whilst the Roma pupils are making some headway in terms of school integration, they are often finding academic attainment a step too far, particularly in terms of formal educational outcomes. Furthermore, an analysis of educational attainment data by village of origin raises questions of contextual impacts on educational achievement

Global dynamics above the ground state for the nonlinear Klein-Gordon equation without a radial assumption

We extend our previous result on the focusing cubic Klein-Gordon equation in three dimensions to the non-radial case, giving a complete classification of global dynamics of all solutions with energy at most slightly above that of the ground state.Comment: 40 page

Exo-hydrogenated Single Wall Carbon Nanotubes

An extensive first-principles study of fully exo-hydrogenated zigzag (n,0) and armchair (n,n) single wall carbon nanotubes (C$_n$H$_n$), polyhedral molecules including cubane, dodecahedrane, and C$_{60}$H$_{60}$ points to crucial differences in the electronic and atomic structures relevant to hydrogen storage and device applications. C$_n$H$_n$'s are estimated to be stable up to the radius of a (8,8) nanotube, with binding energies proportional to 1/R. Attaching a single hydrogen to any nanotube is always exothermic. Hydrogenation of zigzag nanotubes is found to be more likely than armchair nanotubes with similar radius. Our findings may have important implications for selective functionalization and finding a way of separating similar radius nanotubes from each other.Comment: 5 pages, 4 postscript figures, Revtex file, To be appear in Physical Review

Effect of interface bonding on spin-dependent tunneling from the oxidized Co surface

We demonstrate that the factorization of the tunneling transmission into the product of two surface transmission functions and a vacuum decay factor allows one to generalize Julliere's formula and explain the meaning of the ``tunneling density of states'' in some limiting cases. Using this factorization we calculate spin-dependent tunneling from clean and oxidized fcc Co surfaces through vacuum into Al using the principal-layer Green's function approach. We demonstrate that a monolayer of oxygen on the Co (111) surface creates a spin-filter effect due to the Co-O bonding which produces an additional tunneling barrier in the minority-spin channel. This changes the minority-spin dominated conductance for the clean Co surface into a majority spin dominated conductance for the oxidized Co surface.Comment: 7 pages, revtex4, 4 embedded eps figure

Measurement of the B0-anti-B0-Oscillation Frequency with Inclusive Dilepton Events

The $B^0$-$\bar B^0$ oscillation frequency has been measured with a sample of 23 million \B\bar B pairs collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric B Factory at SLAC. In this sample, we select events in which both B mesons decay semileptonically and use the charge of the leptons to identify the flavor of each B meson. A simultaneous fit to the decay time difference distributions for opposite- and same-sign dilepton events gives $\Delta m_d = 0.493 \pm 0.012{(stat)}\pm 0.009{(syst)}$ ps$^{-1}$.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, submitted to Physical Review Letter