Curriculum Evaluation Models : Practical Applications for Teachers

The scope and focus of evaluation generally, and of curriculum evaluation in particular, has changed markedly over recent times. With the move towards school-based curriculum development attention has shifted away from measurement and testing alone. More emphasis is now being placed upon a growing number of facets of curriculum development, reflecting the need to collect information and make judgements about all aspects of curriculum activities from planning to implementation. While curriculum theorists and some administrators have realized the significanee of this shift many teachers still appear to feel that curriculum evaluation activities are something which do not directly concern them

On using a Lagrangian model to calibrate primary production determined from in vitro incubation measurements

This paper discusses an observing system simulation experiment which reveals the difference in primary production of (i) phytoplankton moving freely in the turbulent mixed layer of the upper ocean and (ii) a sample of the same population held in a bottle at fixed depths. The results indicate the tendency of incubation measurements to overestimate phytoplankton production rates by up to 40%. Differences in primary production depend to a first approximation on the vertical extent of mixing and on water turbidity. A simple model was constructed leading to a non-linear calibration function which relates the difference in primary production to surface irradiance, mixing depth and to the depth of the euphotic zone. This function has been applied to calibrate the production rates simulated at fixed depths, and the corrected values were verified by comparisons with productivities in the turbulent environment. The calibration function was found to be capable of reducing the differences significantly

Modelling oligotrophic zooplankton production: seasonal oligotrophy off the Azores

One of the critical issues in large-scale physical/biological coupled models is the survival of zooplankton in a water column circulating an anticyclonic gyre. Survival is most at risk in regions where the phytoplankton food supply is low due to environmental stress by light-limitation (deep mixing in winter) or nutrient limitation (oligotrophy). To investigate this problem we simulated the ecosystem in a 1 m2 cross-section water column, using the Lagrangian Ensemble method in which plankton are treated as particles following independent trajectories through the changing environment. In this first part of a two-part article we report the results of simulating the ecosystem in a water column located off the Azores, where winter mixing reaches 200 m and there is seasonal, but not permanent oligotrophy. The model features diatoms and herbivorous copepods subject to carnivorous predation, with remineralization of carbon and nitrogen by bacteria attached to detritus and faecal pellets. The copepods become extinct after failing to reproduce in years of low food supply. We show that the risk of extinction can be reduced by allowing cannibalism or by reducing carnivorous predation; we discuss other possibilities: enhancing the food supply by adding new guilds of phytoplankton, and relaxing oligotrophy by allowing other sources of nitrogen injection into the euphotic zone

Majority and Minority Reports and Testimony taken by the Rowan County Investigating Committee made to the General Assembly of Kentucky

Majority and Minority Reports and Testimony taken by the Rowan County Investigating Committee made to the General Assembly of Kentucky on March 16, 1888. Scanned from microfilm

Sustaining Grass-Legume Pastures for Cow-Calf Herds: A Case Study

An on-going pasture demonstration study has been used since 1988 to demonstrate methods to improve pasture production for small beef cow-calf herds. Many cattle enterprises are not economically viable because poor management decisions lead to excessive stocking rate, ineffective fertilisation programmes etc., leading to a dependence on hay purchases. The initial objective, continued until 2001, was to maintain one cow- calf pair per ha without purchasing forage or grain produced off farm. More recently, reducing the dependence on harvested forage has been added as an objective