More than Just a Teacher”: Anticipatory Advocacy as Vision and Defense in Urban High-need Schools

Specialized teacher preparation programs are graduating teachers with commitments to advocacy. This expanded definition of teaching stands in opposition to traditional expectations for the role of teachers that have developed during the history of U.S. education into organizational and social frames that reinforce tradition and work against reform. These influences constitute forces of professional weathering that may wear down teachers’ visions and actions for their work. This multicase study focused on four graduates from an intensive two-year teacher preparation program that included initial certification along with induction support in the second year of the program as they completed master’s degree requirements. The inquiry sought to understand how they envisioned their roles as teacher advocates and how they enacted and sustained their visions, resisting traditional teacher roles. Participants were graduates of the same cohort of the preparation program who were completing their second year of teaching in urban high-need schools and who had been nominated and confirmed as effective teachers of diverse students by faculty members of the university program and of local schools. Program materials were analyzed as background material to establish context. Primary data that were inductively and iteratively analyzed included extant course assignments, three individual interviews with each participant, three school-related observations, and three focus group interviews. Findings provide insight into the ways in which the teachers enacted a vision of anticipatory advocacy. Anticpatory advocacy includes intervening actions that are the result of a dual awareness of students’ immediate and future needs and have implications beyond boundaries of time and space in an effort to positively influence students’ lives in the immediate as well as distant future. The teachers, each of whom held beliefs that aligned with the culturally relevant foundations of the program prior to their selection, employed tools related to responsive classroom management, ambitious teaching strategies, and professional collaboration that they acquired and honed during their program. By working backward from the classrooms of effective teachers, the study links classroom practices with teacher preparation, providing direction for stakeholders concerned with the development and retention of high quality teachers for all children, especially in challenging school contexts

Array Processing of Rayleigh Waves for Shear Structure

Site response to earthquakes is strongly dependent on shallow shear wave velocity structure β(z), and evidence suggests that soil strength and liquefaction potential depends on it as well. We have determined β(z) at several sites by inversion of dispersion data from Rayleigh waves recorded on linear arrays of geophones using artificial sources. Improved methods have been developed for extracting phase and group velocities that lead to significantly more stable and accurate inversion results

Increased climate seasonality during the late glacial in the Gebel Akhdar, Libya

Oxygen isotope analysis (δ18O) of caprine and bovine tooth enamel carbonates from the Haua Fteah cave (Gebel Akhdar massif, northeast Libya) reveals significant differences in palaeoseasonality during the last c. 70 ka. Data indicate different phases of human occupation of the region occurred under notably different climatic conditions. During the last glacial period, prior to the Last Glacial Maximum, a gradual increase in climate aridity occurred. This was followed in the late glacial (c. 16.6–14.7 ka) by considerably more arid conditions and much greater climate seasonality, which was likely produced by changing winter precipitation amounts and a strengthening of arid summer air masses. The high seasonality in the late glacial coincides with a period when human activity at the Haua Fteah greatly intensified. Significant changes in subsistence strategies and the seasonal exploitation of food resources also occurred at this time. The results presented here suggest that changes in the seasonal climate may have affected the seasonal supply of floral and faunal resources available to local human populations at the time, which resulted in changing subsistence practices

Pleistocene and Holocene palaeoclimates in the Gebel Akhdar (Libya) estimated using herbivore tooth enamel oxygen isotope compositions

The palaeoclimate of the Gebel Akhdar massif, in Cyrenaica, northeast Libya, is investigated using the stable oxygen isotope ratio (δ18O) of herbivore tooth enamel from the archaeological faunal assemblages of the Haua Fteah and Hagfet ed Dabba caves. Samples accumulated through human activity at the sites, thus climatic interpretations are in direct chronological association with periods of human presence in the local landscape. Wild Ammotragus lervia (Barbary sheep) and Bos sp. (auroch), and domestic Ovis sp. and Capra sp. from the Levalloiso-Mousterian (≥73.3–43.5 ka) to the Neolithic (∼9.3–5.4 ka) cultural phases are analysed. Results indicate that the most arid environment represented by the samples occurred at ∼32 ka, when populations associated with Dabban lithic assemblages were present within the region. Climatic instability increased during oxygen isotope stage 2. Consistent with other palaeoenvironmental investigations in the Gebel Akhdar, there is no evidence for hyper-arid events during the last glacial and surface water, most probably in the form of local springs, was available throughout the time periods considered. Overall, results indicate that different cultural groups occupied the Gebel Akhdar landscape under different climatic conditions, but that climate variations appear to have been of lower magnitude than those that occurred at inland North African locations. These reconstructions provide further support to the theory that the Gebel Akhdar may have served as a refugium for human populations in North Africa during times of global climatic extremes

An additional deep-water mass in Drake Passage as revealed by 3He data

We present 3He data froma repeat section across Drake Passage, fromthree sections off the South American continent in the Pacific, at 28?S, 35?S, and 43?S, and fromthree sections in the Atlantic, eastward of the Malvinas, close to 35?W, and near the Greenwich Meridian. In Drake Passage, a distinct high-3He signal is observed that is centered just above the boundary of the Lower and the Upper Circumpolar Deep Water (LCDW, UCDW), and is concentrated towards the northern continental slope. 3He concentrations in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) upstream of Drake Passage (World Ocean Circulation Experiment section P19 at 88?W) are markedly lower than those found in Drake Passage, and a regional source of primordial helium in the path of the ACC that might cause the high-3He feature can be ruled out. We explain the feature by addition of high-3He waters present at the 43?S Pacific section. This supports a previous, similar interpretation of a low-salinity anomaly in Drake Passage (Naveira Garabato et al., Deep- Sea Research I 49 (2002) 681), that is strongly related to the high-3He feature. Employing multiparameter water mass analysis (including 3He as a parameter), we find that deep waters as met at the 43?S Pacific section, flowing south along the South American continental slope, contribute substantially to the ACC waters in Drake Passage (fractions exceed 50% locally). Lesser, but laterally more extended contributions are found east of the Malvinas, and still smaller ones are present at 35?W and at the Greenwich Meridian. Using velocity measurements from one of the two Drake Passage sections, we estimate the volume transport of these waters to be 7.071.2 Sv, but the average transport may be somewhat lower as the other realization had a less pronounced signal. The enhanced 3He signature in Drake Passage is essentially confined north of the Polar Front. Further downstreamthe signature crosses this front, to the extent that at 35?W the contributions south and north of it are of similar magnitude. At the same time, the 3He levels north of the front are reduced due to a substantial admixture of low-3He North Atlantic Deep Water, such that 3He becomes highest south of the front. The flow of Southeast Pacific deep slope waters entering the ACC constitutes the predominant exit pathway of the primordial helium released in the deep Pacific, and represents a considerable fraction of the deep water return flow fromthe Pacific into the ACC. Therefore and also because the density range of the added deep slope waters is intermediate between those of UCDW and LCDW, they must be considered a distinct water mass. r 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

A Quantitative, Non-Destructive Methodology for Habitat Characterisation and Benthic Monitoring at Offshore Renewable Energy Developments

Following governments' policies to tackle global climate change, the development of offshore renewable energy sites is likely to increase substantially over coming years. All such developments interact with the seabed to some degree and so a key need exists for suitable methodology to monitor the impacts of large-scale Marine Renewable Energy Installations (MREIs). Many of these will be situated on mixed or rocky substrata, where conventional methods to characterise the habitat are unsuitable. Traditional destructive sampling is also inappropriate in conservation terms, particularly as safety zones around (MREIs) could function as Marine Protected Areas, with positive benefits for biodiversity. Here we describe a technique developed to effectively monitor the impact of MREIs and report the results of its field testing, enabling large areas to be surveyed accurately and cost-effectively. The methodology is based on a high-definition video camera, plus LED lights and laser scale markers, mounted on a “flying array” that maintains itself above the seabed grounded by a length of chain, thus causing minimal damage. Samples are taken by slow-speed tows of the gear behind a boat (200 m transects). The HD video and randomly selected frame grabs are analysed to quantify species distribution. The equipment was tested over two years in Lyme Bay, UK (25 m depth), then subsequently successfully deployed in demanding conditions at the deep (>50 m) high-energy Wave Hub site off Cornwall, UK, and a potential tidal stream energy site in Guernsey, Channel Islands (1.5 ms−1 current), the first time remote samples from such a habitat have been achieved. The next stage in the monitoring development process is described, involving the use of Remote Operated Vehicles to survey the seabed post-deployment of MREI devices. The complete methodology provides the first quantitative, relatively non-destructive method for monitoring mixed-substrate benthic communities beneath MPAs and MREIs pre- and post-device deployment

Carbon isotope signatures from land snail shells: Implications for palaeovegetation reconstruction in the eastern Mediterranean

In this studywecompare carbon isotope values inmodern Helix melanostoma shell carbonate (d13Cshell) from the Gebel al-Akhdar region of Libya with carbon isotope values in H. melanostomabody tissue (d13Cbody), local vegetation (d13Cplant) and soil (d13Csoil). All vegetation in the study area followed the C3 photosynthetic pathway. However, the d13Cplant values of different species formed two distinct isotopic groups. This can be best explained by different water use efficiencies with arid adapted species having significantly more positive d13Cplant values than less water efficient species. The ranges and means of d13Cbody and d13Cplant were statistically indistinguishable from one another suggesting that d13Cbody was primarily a function of local vegetation composition. H. melanostoma d13Cshell reflected the d13Cplant of local vegetation with a positive offset between body/diet and shell of 14.5± 1.4‰. Therefore, in the Gebel al-Akhdar where only C3 plants are present, highermeand13C shell values likely reflect greater abundances ofwater-efficientC3 plants in the snails diet and therefore in the landscape, whilst lower mean d13Cshell values likely reflect the consumption of less water-efficient C3 plants. The distribution of these plants is in turn affected by environmental factors such as rainfall. These findings can be applied to archaeological and geological shell deposits to reconstruct late Pleistocene to Holocene vegetation change in the southeast Mediterranean