Teachers’ views of teaching sex education: pedagogies and models of delivery

This paper is based on a study of 17 secondary schools in an inner-city area of England deemed to have very high levels of teenage pregnancies. The New Labour Government argued that academic achievements and effective labour-market participation are inhibited by early or 'premature' parenthood (Social Exclusion Unit 1999). It therefore set in place policies to address these issues efectively in schools, through a revised school achievement agenda and a revised Sex & Relationship Education (SRE) programme. In this paper, we concentrate on the role and views of personal, social and/or health education coordinators charged with the delivery of SRE in secondary schools. We consider the way a broad-based, inclusive curriculum and pastoral programme fits into the subject-based and assessed curriculum of secondary schools for 11-16 where there is no tradition of open discussion of sexual matters. The legitimacy of teaching about sex and relationships in school has been hotly contested. The question of how to deal with teenage pregnancy and sexuality remains politically charged and sensitive and the teacher's role is thus contentious. We present a range of views about the professional or other pressures on schools, especially teachers, discussing difficulties within each of the main models of delivery. Teachers reprt considerable anxiety about SRE as a subject and its low status inthe curriculum, committed though they are to teaching it. This links with what is now seen as an overarching culture of anxiety regarding sex in contemporary society. Many teachers think that attending to young people's personal and social development - and especially their sexual identities - could help their education careers and academic achievement. Thus, from the teachers' accounts, we argue that there are important links between the revised sex education curriculum and the new emphasis on the achievement agenda in secondary schools in the UK

On the M\"obius Function and Topology of General Pattern Posets

We introduce a formal definition of a pattern poset which encompasses several previously studied posets in the literature. Using this definition we present some general results on the M\"obius function and topology of such pattern posets. We prove our results using a poset fibration based on the embeddings of the poset, where embeddings are representations of occurrences. We show that the M\"obius function of these posets is intrinsically linked to the number of embeddings, and in particular to so called normal embeddings. We present results on when topological properties such as Cohen-Macaulayness and shellability are preserved by this fibration. Furthermore, we apply these results to some pattern posets and derive alternative proofs of existing results, such as Bj\"orner's results on subword order.Comment: 28 Page

The economics of defence in France and the UK

France and the UK face similar geostrategic circumstances: both were once Great Powers and still retain their positions among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. During the Cold War both were dwarfed by the super-powers and were thus extremely sensitive about their status: what the French called their grandeur and the British called their seat at the top table. Despite their strategic similarities, they have differed in many of their defence policy choices and in particular how they balanced their strategic aspirations with their limited financial resources. Thus a comparison of British and French defence policies provides a revealing case study of military choices

A Hubble Space Telescope Survey of X-ray Luminous Galaxy Clusters: Gravitationally Lensed Arcs and EROs

We are conducting a systematic lensing survey of X-ray luminous galaxy clusters at z~0.2 using the Hubble Space Telescope and large ground-based telescopes. We summarize initial results from our survey, including a measurement of the inner slope of the mass profile of A383, and a search for gravitationally lensed Extremely Red Objects.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. To appear in "A New Era in Cosmology" (ASP Conference Proceedings), eds. T. Shanks and N. Metcalf

Monitor assures availability and quality of communication channels

System monitors a communication channel for proper circuit parameters and energizes an alarm if these parameters do not fall within allowable limits. It comprises a monitor-signal transmitter at the transmitting end of the channel and a monitor-signal receiver at the receiving end

Intervals of Permutations with a Fixed Number of Descents are Shellable

The set of all permutations, ordered by pattern containment, is a poset. We present an order isomorphism from the poset of permutations with a fixed number of descents to a certain poset of words with subword order. We use this bijection to show that intervals of permutations with a fixed number of descents are shellable, and we present a formula for the M\"obius function of these intervals. We present an alternative proof for a result on the M\"obius function of intervals $[1,\pi]$ such that $\pi$ has exactly one descent. We prove that if $\pi$ has exactly one descent and avoids 456123 and 356124, then the intervals $[1,\pi]$ have no nontrivial disconnected subintervals; we conjecture that these intervals are shellable

On the M\"obius Function of Permutations With One Descent

The set of all permutations, ordered by pattern containment, is a poset. We give a formula for the M\"obius function of intervals $[1,\pi]$ in this poset, for any permutation $\pi$ with at most one descent. We compute the M\"obius function as a function of the number and positions of pairs of consecutive letters in $\pi$ that are consecutive in value. As a result of this we show that the M\"obius function is unbounded on the poset of all permutations. We show that the M\"obius function is zero on any interval $[1,\pi]$ where $\pi$ has a triple of consecutive letters whose values are consecutive and monotone. We also conjecture values of the M\"obius function on some other intervals of permutations with at most one descent