Developing interactive discourse in the classroom: moving beyond teacher as expert.

In this article I describe the collaborative research undertaken by a group of high school teachers and an English adviser. The teachers were keen to find ways of breaking the teacher-dominated discourse pattern within their classrooms. They wanted to see whether, when offered a variety of teacher audiences beyond that of 'expert-examiner', students would engage in the kind of exploratory talk, described by the National Oracy Project (1992), as a feature of investigative learning. I examine the teachers' belief that discourse patterns are affected by students' understanding of contextual conditions. I illustrate the importance of students’ shared understanding of collaborative discourse and discuss how their conception of learning contexts is influenced by the kinds of audiences teachers project

Writing is more than 'exciting': equipping primary children to become reflective writers

This article describes work undertaken as part of a partnership programme initiated to encourage collaborative research between teachers and university tutors. In the Teaching Reading and Writing Links project (TRAWL) primary school teachers, working as research partners, explored ways of developing children as reflective writers. The research group wanted to know whether, through examining how texts are crafted by expert writers during literacy sessions, children might be encouraged to pay more attention to compositional rather than secretarial aspects of narrative writing during writing workshops. The overall writing achievement of 338 children was monitored over one school year and narrative writing from 60 case study children was evaluated at the beginning and end of the research period. In this article the impact on achievement is illustrated, some examples of writing are analysed and evidence of development in children's metacognition and confidence as writers is discussed

Group discussion and the importance of a shared perspective: learning from collaborative research.

Student-led discussion during small group work is now a familiar feature in many schools. However, simply organising students in small groups does not mean they will automatically participate in collaborative discussion. In this article I report on a small-scale research project in the UK which examined the discourse patterns of Year 8 (13-14 year old students) as they worked in discussion groups during English lessons. Using a multi-case study approach, video recordings were made in four high schools over a one-year period and qualitative analysis was undertaken. For illustrative purposes I focus on two transcripts which are representative of discussions from a full range of 40 video recordings and illustrate common and recurrent patterns of discourse. The findings suggest that students' interpretations of tasks are influenced by an orthodox perception of teaching and learning which emphasises independent and individualised working practices in schools. The importance of explicit and unambiguous teacher guidance is highlighted, and the apparent paradox of encouraging critical and open discussion of texts within a structured framework is examined

Progress through partnership

The National Literacy Strategy Framework (DfEE, 1998) requires primary children to, 'become increasingly conscious of the writer's intentions' (p.7) and The National Curriculum for English (1999) states that children should, ‘use and adapt the features of a form of writing, drawing on their reading’ (p.28). Developing a process approach to writing, where children are supported as they draft and redraft texts, was the aim of a university funded school-partnership project between Sycamore Junior School, in the City of Nottingham, and Nottingham Trent University. The article describes how Years 3 and 4 children developed an understanding of narrative structure and became reflective writers, as they responded to each other’s work, during writing workshops

Incapacity Benefit Reforms Pilot: Findings from a longitudinal panel of clients

The Incapacity Benefit reforms were introduced in October 2003 and aim to increase the number of incapacity benefit recipients who move towards and into paid work. The package of measures that comprise the reforms is being Piloted in seven areas of England, Scotland and Wales. This report is based on research conducted by the Social Policy Research Unit, the National Centre for Social Research and the Policy Studies Institute in 2004/05 and presents findings from the first cohort of a longitudinal qualitative study of the views and experiences of incapacity benefit recipients who have taken part in the Pilots

On duality of Drell-Yan and J/psi production processes

It is studied the model on J/psi production allowing to extract parton distribution functions (PDFs) from the combined analysis with both data on Drell-Yan and J/psi production processes. It is shown that this, so attractive from theoretical point of view, model, can be safely used in the low energy region E<100 GeV. The significance of gluon contributions to the J/psi cross-sections is investigated. The obtained results in the high energy region occur to be rather surprising

2-[(E)-(5-Amino-2,3-diphenyl­quinoxalin-6-yl)imino­meth­yl]-4-chloro­phenol

The title Schiff base compound, C27H19ClN4O, features two intra­molecular O—H⋯N and N—H⋯N hydrogen bonds involving the hydr­oxy and amino groups to generate S(6) and S(5) ring motifs, respectively. In the crystal structure, weak inter­molecular N—H⋯O and C—H⋯N inter­actions, together with π–π contacts [centroid–centroid distances = 3.6294 (11)–3.6881 (11) Å], link neighboring mol­ecules

2-[(E)-(5-Amino-2,3-diphenyl­quinoxalin-6-yl)imino­meth­yl]-4-bromo­phenol

The title compound, C27H19BrN4O, is a mono-anil Schiff base ligand. Three intra­molecular O—H⋯N and N—H⋯N hydrogen bonds involving the hydr­oxy and amino groups generate S(6) and S(5) ring motifs, respectively. In the crystal structure, weak inter­molecular N—H⋯O and C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds together with π–π inter­actions [centroid–centroid distances = 3.628 (3)–3.729 (3) Å] link neighboring mol­ecules

New Deal for Disabled People: Third synthesis report - key findings from the evaluation

The New Deal for Disabled People (NDDP) is the major national employment programme available to people claiming incapacity-related benefits, and it is an important part of the Government’s welfare to work strategy. NDDP is a voluntary programme that provides a national network of Job Brokers to help people with health conditions and disabilities move into sustained employment. This synthesis report highlights key findings from a large-scale, comprehensive and multi-method evaluation of NDDP. It covers the programme over the period July 2001 to November 2006 and is based on all of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) published evaluation reports on NDDP as well as analysis of administrative data using the DWP NDDP database. The findings also include a wealth of information pertaining to more general issues around employment of disabled people, beyond the NDDP programme itself, and are therefore of substantial interest to future policy development in this area