Measuring Quality in Initial Teacher Education (MQuITE) Literature Review: Executive Summary

The MQuITE project seeks to involve all stakeholders in the development of a contextuallyappropriate means of measuring quality in initial teacher education in Scotland. It engages with both literature and practice to inform this process. The project runs for six years (tracking graduates over five years) and involves all ITE universities in Scotland, as well as GTCS. It is designed to be developmental in nature, securing, as it does, a sound base for the study of quality in ITE in its initial phases and then testing this in subsequent years. An ongoing feature of the project is the way in which markers of quality are returned to and modified in light of accrued data. In this way the project does not seek to maintain a static representation of quality but rather a dynamic interpretation that is modified in light of progression both of students as they become teachers and the various routes into teaching that now exist in Scotland. This work will contribute significantly to the development of quality teacher education in Scotland, and will also offer a useful perspective to the international debate on measuring quality in ITE

Measuring Quality in Initial Teacher Education (MQuITE) Literature Review: Executive Summary

The MQuITE project seeks to involve all stakeholders in the development of a contextuallyappropriate means of measuring quality in initial teacher education in Scotland. It engages with both literature and practice to inform this process. The project runs for six years (tracking graduates over five years) and involves all ITE universities in Scotland, as well as GTCS. It is designed to be developmental in nature, securing, as it does, a sound base for the study of quality in ITE in its initial phases and then testing this in subsequent years. An ongoing feature of the project is the way in which markers of quality are returned to and modified in light of accrued data. In this way the project does not seek to maintain a static representation of quality but rather a dynamic interpretation that is modified in light of progression both of students as they become teachers and the various routes into teaching that now exist in Scotland. This work will contribute significantly to the development of quality teacher education in Scotland, and will also offer a useful perspective to the international debate on measuring quality in ITE

Deep-Inelastic Inclusive ep Scattering at Low x and a Determination of alpha_s

A precise measurement of the inclusive deep-inelastic e^+p scattering cross section is reported in the kinematic range 1.5<= Q^2 <=150 GeV^2 and 3*10^(-5)<= x <=0.2. The data were recorded with the H1 detector at HERA in 1996 and 1997, and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 20 pb^(-1). The double differential cross section, from which the proton structure function F_2(x,Q^2) and the longitudinal structure function F_L(x,Q^2) are extracted, is measured with typically 1% statistical and 3% systematic uncertainties. The measured partial derivative (dF_2(x,Q^2)/dln Q^2)_x is observed to rise continuously towards small x for fixed Q^2. The cross section data are combined with published H1 measurements at high Q^2 for a next-to-leading order DGLAP QCD analysis.The H1 data determine the gluon momentum distribution in the range 3*10^(-4)<= x <=0.1 to within an experimental accuracy of about 3% for Q^2 =20 GeV^2. A fit of the H1 measurements and the mu p data of the BCDMS collaboration allows the strong coupling constant alpha_s and the gluon distribution to be simultaneously determined. A value of alpha _s(M_Z^2)=0.1150+-0.0017 (exp) +0.0009-0.0005 (model) is obtained in NLO, with an additional theoretical uncertainty of about +-0.005, mainly due to the uncertainty of the renormalisation scale.Comment: 68 pages, 24 figures and 18 table

On the Rise of the Proton Structure Function F2_2 Towards Low x

A measurement of the derivative (d ln F_2 / d lnx)_(Q^2)= -lambda(x,Q^2) of the proton structure function F_2 is presented in the low x domain of deeply inelastic positron-proton scattering. For 5*10^(-5)=1.5 GeV^2, lambda(x,Q^2) is found to be independent of x and to increase linearly with ln(Q^2)

Search for single top quark production in ep collisions at HERA.

A search for single top quark production is performed in collisions at HERA. The search exploits data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 118.3 pb-1. A model for the anomalous production of top quarks in a flavour changing neutral current process involving a coupling is investigated. Decays of top quarks into a b quark and a W boson are considered in the leptonic and the hadronic decay channels of the W. Both a cut-based analysis and a multivariate likelihood analysis are performed to discriminate anomalous top quark production from Standard Model background processes. In the leptonic channel, 5 events are found while 1.31 0.22 events are expected from the Standard Model background. In the hadronic channel, no excess above the expectation for Standard Model processes is found. These observations lead to a cross section at . Alternatively, assuming that the observed events are due to a statistical fluctuation, upper limits of 0.55 pb on the anomalous top production cross section and of 0.27 on the coupling are established at the 95% confidence level