Implementing curriculum reform in Wales: the case of the Foundation Phase

The Foundation Phase is a Welsh Government flagship policy of early years education (for 3 to 7-year old children) in Wales. Marking a radical departure from the more formal, competency-based approach associated with the previous Key Stage 1 National Curriculum, it advocates a developmental, experiential, play-based approach to teaching and learning. The Learning Country: a Paving Document (NAfW 2001) notes that following devolution, Wales intended to take its own policy direction in order to ‘get the best for Wales’. Building on a three-year mixed methods independent evaluation of the Foundation Phase we discuss in detail the aims and objectives of the Foundation Phase, including the context to its introduction, the theory, assumptions and evidence underlying its rationale, and its content and key inputs. We then contrast this with how the Foundation Phase was received by practitioners and parents, how it has been implemented in classrooms and non-maintained settings, and what discernible impact it has had on young children’s educational outcomes. The paper concludes with a critical analysis of the policy process and identifies a number of contextual issues during the inception of the Foundation Phase that has, it could be argued, constrained its development and subsequent impact. We argue that these constraints are associated with an educational policy landscape that was still in its infancy. In order for future education policy to ‘get the best for Wales’ a number of important lessons must be learnt

Evaluating the Foundation Phase: Key findings on practitioner and stakeholder views on the future of the Foundation Phase

The Foundation Phase (introduced in 2008) provides a developmentally appropriate experiential curriculum for children aged 3-7 in Wales. The Welsh Government commissioned independent evaluation (led by WISERD) aims to evaluate how well it is being implemented, what impact it has had, and ways in which it can be improved. The three-year evaluation utilises a range of mixed methods at a national and local scale. This is one of four papers focused on impact. It draws on 239 classroom/setting observations, 341 practitioner interviews, 604 school/setting survey responses, 1,008 parent/carer survey responses, 37 Local Authority interviews and four non-maintained organisation interviews

National Crystallography Service (NCS) Grid Service

Conference poster about the NCS Grid Service.The EPSRC funded National Crystallography Service (NCS) is a facility available to the entire UK academic Chemistry community. The EPSRC funds a team of experts and 'state of the art' instrumentation, based in Southampton University School of Chemistry, to provide this service. This is an exceptionally important service as crystal structure determination is easily the most information rich method of characterisation of a compound and many research papers cannot be published without confirmation of identity by crystal structure analysis

Folic acid in pregnancy and mortality from cancer and cardiovascular disease : further follow-up of the Aberdeen folic acid supplementation trial

Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions. Acknowledgements The authors wish to acknowledge Professor Marion Hall, who set up the original randomised trial of folic acid supplementation. The authors also thank Ms Katie Wilde and the Data Management Team, University of Aberdeen, for their help with the extraction and linking of data and the data analysts from ISD Scotland.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Regional biodiversity of terrestrial Heteroptera and Orthoptera in southwestern Illinois

We conducted a baseline inventory of terrestrial Heteroptera (true bugs) and Orthoptera (grasshoppers, crickets and katydids) at foursites in Monroe and Randolph counties,Illinois in 2014, namely: Mill Creek Natural Area (MCNA); White Rock Nature Preserve (WRNP); Fogelpole Cave Nature Preserve (FCNP); and Kidd Lake State Natural Area (KLSNA).A total of 95 species in the focal taxa were recorded (67 Heteropteraand28 Orthoptera). In addition, a further 96 species of arthropods in groups other than Heteroptera and Orthoptera were also recorded.Heteropteran diversity was found to be typical of that expected for other natural areas in Illinois, though orthopteran diversity was much lower and may be related to structural aspects of the respective habitats.Cluster analysis of our presence/absence data revealed marked differences in site similarity between orthopteran and heteropteran species assemblages.IDNR Division of Wildlifeunpublishednot peer reviewedOpe

Applicability of mechanical tests for biomass pellet characterisation for bioenergy applications

In this paper, the applicability of mechanical tests for biomass pellet characterisation was investigated. Pellet durability, quasi-static (low strain rate), and dynamic (high strain rate) mechanical tests were applied to mixed wood, eucalyptus, sunflower, miscanthus, and steam exploded and microwaved pellets, and compared to their Hardgrove Grindability Index (HGI), and milling energies for knife and ring-roller mills. The dynamic mechanical response of biomass pellets was obtained using a novel application of the Split Hopkinson pressure bar. Similar mechanical properties were obtained for all pellets, apart from steam-exploded pellets, which were significantly higher. The quasi-static rigidity (Young’s modulus) was highest in the axial orientation and lowest in flexure. The dynamic mechanical strength and rigidity were highest in the diametral orientation. Pellet strength was found to be greater at high strain rates. The diametral Young’s Modulus was virtually identical at low and high strain rates for eucalyptus, mixed wood, sunflower, and microwave pellets, while the axial Young’s Modulus was lower at high strain rates. Correlations were derived between the milling energy in knife and ring roller mills for pellet durability, and quasi-static and dynamic pellet strength. Pellet durability and diametral quasi-static strain was correlated with HGI. In summary, pellet durability and mechanical tests at low and high strain rates can provide an indication of how a pellet will break down in a mill

Chatter, process damping, and chip segmentation in turning: A signal processing approach

An increasing number of aerospace components are manufactured from titanium and nickel alloys that are difficult to machine due to their thermal and mechanical properties. This limits the metal removal rates that can be achieved from the production process. However, under these machining conditions the phenomenon of process damping can be exploited to help avoid self-excited vibrations known as regenerative chatter. This means that greater widths of cut can be taken so as to increase the metal removal rate, and hence offset the cutting speed restrictions that are imposed by the thermo-mechanical properties of the material. However, there is little or no consensus as to the underlying mechanisms that cause process damping. The present study investigates two process damping mechanisms that have previously been proposed in the machining literature: the tool flank/workpiece interference effect, and the short regenerative effect. A signal processing procedure is employed to identify flank/workpiece interference from experimental data. Meanwhile, the short regenerative model is solved using a new frequency domain approach that yields additional insight into its stabilising effect. However, analysis and signal processing of the experimentally obtained data reveals that neither of these models can fully explain the increases in stability that are observed in practice. Meanwhile, chip segmentation effects were observed in a number of measurements, and it is suggested that segmentation could play an important role in the process-damped chatter stability of these materials