Giving TESOL change a chance: supporting key players in the curriculum change process

The language of ‘western’ planned and managed TESOL curriculum change aid projects of the 1980–1990s continues to have a strong influence on the terms in which the objectives of 21st century, nationally planned TESOL curriculum change projects are expressed. It is apparently assumed that teachers worldwide will be able to make the cultural and professional adjustments necessary to enable such objectives to be achieved. Many 20th century TESOL aid projects achieved their stated objectives only partially, if at all. The same remains true of much nationally planned and managed TESOL curriculum change today. One important reason for such limited success, is change planners’ failure to adequately consider what support classroom teachers will need, when, and for how long, if they are to be helped to make the above adjustments. This paper does not intend to make value judgements regarding the beliefs about teaching and learning underlying any particular culture, or the classroom behaviours that these give rise to. It represents a pragmatic attempt to present some questions that those responsible for planning TESOL curriculum change might ask, before finally deciding on the objectives of such change in their own contexts. Answers to these questions can, it is suggested, help provide information about how key players (classroom teachers) are likely to experience the implementation of objectives. Based on this information, planners can try to establish systems that will support teachers during the critical first few years of the change process, so making it more likely that the process will ultimately begin to achieve its hoped-for outcomes

Developing a capacity to make "English for Everyone" worthwhile: Reconsidering outcomes and how to start achieving them

Past decades have seen a growing assumption worldwide that national governments should provide ‘English for Everyone’ (EFE) as a core component of their school curricula. Personal and national benefits expected from such English provision are generally expressed in terms of developing learners’ abilities to communicate in English. Despite enormous financial and human investment, actual outcomes are often disappointing. One reason for this, in many contexts, is policy makers’ wholesale appropriation of ‘native speakerist’ (Holliday, A., 2005. The Struggle to Teach English as an International Language. Oxford University Press, Oxford). EFE curriculum rhetoric and teaching-learning outcomes, without adequate consideration of the demands made on English teachers’ existing professional understandings and practices. A new phase of international activity is urgently required in which national EFE curriculum outcomes are readjusted to more closely ‘fit’ existing contextual realities and priorities, and teacher educator capacity is developed in a manner that will enable most classroom teachers to help most learners feel that their language-learning efforts are worthwhile

TESOL initial teacher training and TESOL curriculum goals: making the connection

APEC countries represent , in TESOL terms, two very different groups. Firstly there are the English L1 countries (US, Canada, Australia, NZ) where the English proficiency of the majority can be taken for granted and where English needs to be taught only as a second language or additional language to people arriving in the countries from overseas. In the second group, the majority of APEC countries, English is a foreign language, and if a government feels it to be an important aspect of the wider curriculum, systems need to be established to provide English teaching to all pupils in all schools. These are very different TESOL environments and what is appropriate and helpful in one, is not necessarily of relevance to the other. The paper that follows focuses on the EFL context typical of the majority of APEC members, although at times it draws from literature deriving from the English native speaker members also

One-step model of photoemission for non-local potentials

The one-step model of valence-band photoemission and inverse photoemission from single-crystal surfaces is reformulated for generalized (non-local, complex and energy-dependent) potentials. Thereby, it becomes possible to account for self-energy corrections taken from many-body electronic-structure calculations. The original formulation due to Pendry and co-workers employs the KKR multiple-scattering theory for the calculation of the initial state. This prevents a straightforward generalization of the one-step model to non-local potentials. We therefore consider the Dyson equation which is set up within a muffin-tin-orbitals representation as an alternative to obtain the initial-state Green function. This approach requires a revision of the transition-matrix elements which is carried out in detail. The final state is considered as a time-reversed LEED state as usual. The proposed generalization of the one-step model allows to distinguish between the bare photocurrent reflecting the (quasi-particle) band structure and the secondary effects due to the (dipole) selection rules and due to the wave-vector and energy dependence of the transition-matrix elements.Comment: Revtex, 20 pages, no figures, phys. stat. sol. (b) 203 (in press

Superior sperm competitors sire higher-quality young

The evolution of polyandry remains controversial. This is because, unlike males, in many cases multiple mating by females does not increase fecundity and inevitably involves some costs. As a result, a large number of indirect benefit models have been proposed to explain polyandry. One of these, the good sperm hypothesis, posits that high-quality males are better sperm competitors and sire higher-quality offspring. Hence, by mating multiply, females produce offspring of superior quality. Despite being potentially widely applicable across species, this idea has received little attention. In a laboratory experiment with yellow dung flies ( Scathophaga stercoraria ) we found that males that were more successful in sperm competition also had offspring that developed faster. There was no relationship between paternal success in sperm competition and the ability of offspring to survive post-emergence starvation. Since faster development times are likely to be advantageous in this species, our data provide some support for polyandry evolving as a means of producing higher-quality offspring via sperm competition

NASA OBPG Field Program and SeaBASS Updates

Calibrating ocean color satellite instruments and validating their data products requires temporal and spatial abundances of high quality in situ oceanographic data. To this end, the Ocean Ecology Laboratory (OEL) maintains two entities that are engaged in field data collection and archival. First, the OEL houses a Field Support Group to collect in situ oceanographic measurements, execute laboratory analyses, revise community-vetted protocols for conducting these exercises, and host community training events. Second, the OEL maintains the SeaWiFS Bio-optical Archive and Storage System (SeaBASS) as the permanent archive for all in situ data collected under the auspices of the NASA Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry Program (OBB; Dr. Paula Bontempi, Program Manager). This talk provides the OBB community and interested researchers their annual update on both the Field Support Group and SeaBASS