Stakeholder views of teacher training routes

In recent years there has been a move away from Initial Teacher Training (ITT) taking place predominantly in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to becoming schools led. The two main routes undertaken by graduates wishing to teach are the Post Graduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) and Schools Direct (SD). Both routes offer opportunities to spend time in more than one school. A small case study was undertaken in one HEI to compare and contrast these routes in the light of government policy initiatives and reforms towards increasingly school-led ITT. Seven main themes emerged from the data collected: recruitment, placement, growing your own, support and mentoring, facilities and research, peer groups and communities of practice and reflection. Both routes offer benefits to both trainee and provider and both offer the opportunity to spend an extended time in placement schools. However, there is a danger that the underlying pedagogical understanding of teaching and learning could be lost if the push towards schools led ITT is maintained and HEIs continue to withdraw from teacher educatio

Animal escapology I: theoretical issues and emerging trends in escape trajectories

Escape responses are used by many animal species as their main defence against predator attacks. Escape success is determined by a number of variables; important are the directionality (the percentage of responses directed away from the threat) and the escape trajectories (ETs) measured relative to the threat. Although logic would suggest that animals should always turn away from a predator, work on various species shows that these away responses occur only approximately 50–90% of the time. A small proportion of towards responses may introduce some unpredictability and may be an adaptive feature of the escape system. Similar issues apply to ETs. Theoretically, an optimal ET can be modelled on the geometry of predator–prey encounters. However, unpredictability (and hence high variability) in trajectories may be necessary for preventing predators from learning a simple escape pattern. This review discusses the emerging trends in escape trajectories, as well as the modulating key factors, such as the surroundings and body design. The main ET patterns identified are: (1) high ET variability within a limited angular sector (mainly 90–180deg away from the threat; this variability is in some cases based on multiple peaks of ETs), (2) ETs that allow sensory tracking of the threat and (3) ETs towards a shelter. These characteristic features are observed across various taxa and, therefore, their expression may be mainly related to taxon-independent animal design features and to the environmental context in which prey live – for example whether the immediate surroundings of the prey provide potential refuges