Electroconvective instability with a stabilizing temperature gradient. 2 - Experimental results

Threshold voltage measurements on electric field instability in fluid with stabilizing temperature gradien

Electrohydrodynamic Rayleigh-Taylor bulk instability

Stability criterion for initially static, stratified fluid subject to electrical stres

Implementation of the National SAM Innovation Project: A Comparison of Project Designs

Compares increases in principals' instructional time and other benefits of hiring school administration managers specifically for the position to help principals with time management and of assigning the task to those who hold other school positions

Districts Taking Charge of the Principal Pipeline

Six urban school districts received support from The Wallace Foundation to address the critical challenge of supplying schools with effective principals. The experiences of these districts may point the way to steps other districts might take toward this same goal. Since 2011, the districts have participated in the Principal Pipeline Initiative, which set forth a comprehensive strategy for strengthening school leadership in four interrelated domains of district policy and practice:Leader standards to which sites align job descriptions, preparation, selection, evaluation, and support.Preservice preparation that includes selective admissions to high-quality programs.Selective hiring, and placement based on a match between the candidate and the school.On-the-job evaluation and support addressing the capacity to improve teaching and learning, with support focused on needs identified by evaluation.The initiative also brought the expectation that district policies and practices related to school leaders would build the district's capacity to advance its educational priorities. The evaluation of the Principal Pipeline Initiative has a dual purpose: to analyze the processes of implementing the required components in the participating districts from 2011 through 2015; and then to assess the results achieved in schools led by principals whose experiences in standards-based preparation, hiring, evaluation, and support have been consistent with the initiative's requirements. This report addresses implementation of all components of the initiative as of 2014, viewing implementation in the context of districts' aims, constraints, and capacity

Cultivating Talent through a Principal Pipeline

This report, the second in a series, describes early results of Wallace's Principal Pipeline Initiative, a multi-year effort to improve school leadership in six urban school districts. The report describes changes in the six districts' practices to recruit, train and support new principals. It also offers early lessons for other districts considering changes to their own principal pipelines

Achievement Trends in Schools With School Administration Managers (SAMs)

Compares student achievement trends over two years in schools with school administration managers helping principals increase the time they spend on instruction and schools without SAMs. Explores links between principals' time and student performance

Electroconvective instability with a stabilizing temperature gradient. 1 - Theory

Perturbation theory for predicting electric field induced instability in fluid with stabilizing temperature gradient

Bourdieu, networks, and movements: Using the concepts of habitus, field and capital to understand a network analysis of gender differences in undergraduate physics

Current trends suggest that significant gender disparities exist within Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education at university, with female students being underrepresented in physics, but more equally represented in life sciences (e.g., biology, medicine). To understand these trends, it is important to consider the context in which students make decisions about which university courses to enrol in. The current study seeks to investigate gender differences in STEM through a unique approach that combines network analysis of student enrolment data with an interpretive lens based on the sociological theory of Pierre Bourdieu. We generate a network of courses taken by around 9000 undergraduate physics students (from 2009 to 2014) to quantify Bourdieu's concept of field. We explore the properties of this network to investigate gender differences in transverse movements (between different academic fields) and vertical movements (changes in students' achievement rankings within a field). Our findings indicate that female students are more likely to make transverse movements into life science fields. We also find that university physics does a poor job in attracting high achieving students, and especially high achieving female students. Of the students who do choose to study physics, low achieving female students are less likely to continue than their male counterparts. The results and implications are discussed in the context of Bourdieu's theory, and previous research. We argue that in order to remove constraints on female student's study choices, the field of physics needs to provide a culture in which all students feel like they belong.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figures, 1 tabl

Six Districts Begin the Principal Pipeline Initiative

This first report of an ongoing evaluation of The Wallace Foundation's Principal Pipeline Initiative describes the six participating school districts' plans and activities during the first year of their grants. The evaluation, conducted by Policy Studies Associates and the RAND Corporation, isintended to inform policy makers and practitioners about the process of carrying out new policies and practices for school leadership and about the results of investments in the Principal Pipeline Initiative. This report is based on collection and analysis of qualitative data, including the districts' proposals, work plans, and progress reports and semi-structured interviews in spring 2012 with 91 administrators employed by districts and their partner institutions. Leaders in all districts report wanting to enlarge their pools of strong applicants for principal positions and to identify and cultivate leadership talent as early as possible in educators' careers.Districts are actively working on allrequired pipeline components: (1) with stakeholder participation, they have developed standards and identified competencies for principals, which they plan to use to guide principal training, hiring, evaluation, and support; (2) they are initiating or strengthening partnerships with university training programs; (3) for hiring, they have standard performance tasks and are developing systems to capture data on candidates' experience; (4) they have diagnostic evaluation tools and are working to build the capacity of principals' supervisors and mentors to support principals' skill development. In addition, all are also bolstering district-run training programs for graduates of university training programs who aspire to become principals

Fabrication of free-standing ordered fluorescent polymer nanofibres by electrospinning

The authors are grateful to the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for financial support.We demonstrate a static fabrication approach to make free-standing ordered arrays of fluorescent nanofibres through control of the transverse electrospinning field. The alignment and the density of the nanofibre arrays are optimised by careful design of both the source and collector electrode geometries which can control the transverse electric field over the full path of the jet. In doing so, we fabricate suspended fluorescent nanofibres with an aspect ratio of 10(4), and with a substantially increased density and order parameter (by a factor of similar to 10 compared to random deposition). Electrostatic modelling suggests that the field distribution of the component is the main contribution to the ordering between the plates. This method offers increased efficiency for the creation of ordered fibres collected over a small area and the characterisation of their photoluminescent properties.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe