Facilitating the Acquisition of Critical Writing Skills? An exploration of Pedagogical Practices at a New University in the UK

This case study of writing practices at a Business School at a “new university” attempts to ascertain whether a constructivist and dialogic pedagogical approach is utilised in order to facilitate the acquisition of critical writing practices among predominantly undergraduate non-traditional students. Constructivist learning theory assumes that knowledge is constructed by individuals through a phenomenological subjective interpretation of experience. Hence learning is a dialectic process resulting from a synthesis between preconceived ideas and reflections on experience. It is assumed that a student-centred dialogic approach to teaching is likely to facilitate learning and the acquisition of the higher critical skills within the disciplinary context. Therefore, dialogic feedback plays a crucial role in the learning process and guidance on the pre-writing tasks of selecting and evaluating source material, planning, feedback and disciplinary interpretations of criticality are likely to have an impact on the production of academic texts. The research triangulated semi-structured interviews with academics and students and incorporated an examination of educational artifacts. The paper concludes that assumptions of the unidirectionality of student-teacher relationships and a perception that the acquisition of critical skills is external to disciplinary practice may have mitigated against a truly dialogic approach to facilitate critical writing. In addition, the increasing marketisation of higher education and promotion of generic attributes to produce employable graduates has seemingly led to an emphasis of reproducing institutional normative perspectives and writing practices, thus blurring the distinction between education and training

Identifiability and Unmixing of Latent Parse Trees

This paper explores unsupervised learning of parsing models along two directions. First, which models are identifiable from infinite data? We use a general technique for numerically checking identifiability based on the rank of a Jacobian matrix, and apply it to several standard constituency and dependency parsing models. Second, for identifiable models, how do we estimate the parameters efficiently? EM suffers from local optima, while recent work using spectral methods cannot be directly applied since the topology of the parse tree varies across sentences. We develop a strategy, unmixing, which deals with this additional complexity for restricted classes of parsing models

Fungal Diseases Occurring on Trees of Namibia

During the past few years, disease symptoms in many Acacia trees in the Windhoek Municipality area and the rest of Namibia have been observed. This observation triggered the investigation of phytopathological aspects that are reported in this chapter. The importance of indigenous trees of the Namibia flora is apparent considering that Namibia has two old deserts within its borders: the Namib Desert and the Kalahari Desert. Nambia’s tourism and meat industry are dependent on the indigenous trees of Nambia flora. The trees are the primary source of vegetation land cover (attracting tourists), and they provide browsing food matter to domestic livestock and wild animals (sources of meat). Hence, it is important to ensure that a healthy vegetation is maintained in this area.. This survey is the first dedicated step to find ways of protecting them from disease-causing agents. The aim of this survey is to investigate the possible causes of disease symptoms in trees. It is important to understand the biology of the pathogenic agents to propose a possible method to control the diseases. The survey involved sampling leaves, stems and roots from dying trees that show symptoms such as branch girdling, gum oozing and defoliation, suspicious general twig wilting and die-back. The survey was carried out in places where symptoms were observed. The tree surveys were done on Aloe zebrina, Tylosema esculentum, Syzygium and Acacia species. Primary isolations from plant material and then single-spore pure cultures were made for identification. In this chapter, we report isolation and identification of Microsphearopsis sp., Dreschelra sp., Botryosphearia spp., Acremonium spp., Coniothyrium sp., Phellinus spp., Cytospora sp., Fusarium sp., Scytalidium sp., Phoma spp., Gliomastix sp., Trichoderma koningii, Peacilomyces variotii, Alternaria citri and Curvularia palescens from the diseased trees. This work is still ongoing. This study paves way for proper designing of control methods to protect crops, trees and their biodiversity. The protection of plant biodiversity ensures better reaping of food products and other ecosystem services and products. Without knowledge of the identity of these disease-causing agents, it is not possible to accurately identify and manage threats to food production and threats to the native botanical biodiversity of Namibia

Alternative Methods Used by States to License Technology Education Teachers to Fill Shortages of Teachers at the Secondary School Level

With the purpose of determining if alternative methods are used by states to license technology education teachers, this study was developed with three goals in mind. They were: Which states were using alternative methods to prepare licensed technology education teachers? What alternative methods were used by states to license technology education teachers? Were the alternative methods used judged adequate in preparing teachers for the classroom

The Percy Roope Papers

Percy M. Roope was a Professor of Physics at Clark University from 1921 to 1967. He was a student of Robert H. Goddard and was present at Goddard\u27s first successful launch in 1926. His papers consist of interviews with him concerning Dr. Goddard and correspondence with him

Total syntheses of conformationally-locked difluorinated pentopyranose analogues and a pentopyranosyl phosphate mimetic

Trifluoroethanol has been elaborated, via a telescoped sequence involving a metalated difluoroenol, a difluoroallylic alcohol, [2,3]-Wittig rearrangement, and ultimately an RCM reaction and requiring minimal intermediate purification, to a number of cyclooctenone intermediates. Epoxidation of these intermediates followed by transannular ring opening or dihydroxylation, then transannular hemiacetalization delivers novel bicyclic analogues of pentopyranoses, which were elaborated (in one case) to an analogue of a glycosyl phosphate

One-pot near-ambient temperature syntheses of aryl(difluoroenol) derivatives from trifluoroethanol

Difluoroalkenylzinc reagents prepared from 1-(2’-methoxy-ethoxymethoxy)-2,2,2-trifluoroethane and 1-(N,N-diethylcarbamoyloxy)-2,2,2-trifluoroethane at ice bath temperatures, underwent Negishi coupling with a range of aryl halides in a convenient one pot procedure. While significant differences between the enol acetal and carbamate reagents were revealed, the Negishi protocol compared very favourably with alternative coupling procedures in terms of overall yields from trifluoroethanol