ESOL teachers' identities in flux : identity transformations throughout a career : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Education, Massey University, Manawatu, Aotearoa New Zealand

This study investigates how experiences of ESOL (English for Speakers of other Languages) teachers informed and transformed their professional identities over the course of their careers. This is important because to improve education we need to understand how teachers experience their work. The study uses narrative inquiry to enable an understanding of participants’ perspectives on their lived experience and construction of identities. Research participants were four ESOL teachers who have worked in various cultural and institutional contexts. In interviews teachers were asked simply to talk about their TESOL career, revealing what the important issues were for them. Short narrative excerpts were identified from individual interviews for analysis. Findings revealed that the teachers drew on various sources, from both individual and social realms, to construct their professional identities. Professional learning was found to emerge from everyday practice on the job and from dealing with the challenges of being involved in diverse contexts. The need for autonomy was another important factor shaping how teachers felt about their work. Teachers also held particular beliefs about good practice, which could lead to positive or negative outcomes depending on whether they were able to operationalize these beliefs. Social sources identified in the data were teachers’ connections with their students and with other teachers, cross-cultural dimensions in TESOL settings, and issues to do with the low status of TESOL. The teachers’ professional identities were found to change according to varying influences over the course of their career trajectories. The study concludes with implications and recommendations for teachers and institutions to increase the level of professionalism and to raise the status of the field of TESOL

Bar Rat

My main influences are usually the people who surround me, and the experiences that I face because of those people. Working as a bartender has directly impacted my art. Faces, expressions, emotions and behaviors intrigue me. Bartending allows me to be a participant in and observer of many unique human interactions and social codes that I use as material for my work. I often photograph the people I interact with, especially while bartending, to use as source material. For a while I was focusing on extreme emotions such as grief, but I have become more interested in the nuances of people’s underlying feelings and behaviors. An example of this is a moment of introspection that flashes across a man’s face, or a hand gesture that a woman makes when telling a funny story. These instantaneous seconds of unguarded display are difficult to capture on camera and they are so ubiquitous that we rarely recognize them while they are happening. For me, work is most satisfying and deliberate when I am driven by specific psychological content, and the images I collect at the bar have been propelling me in this direction. I have been working mainly with oil paints for the last few years, but more recently I have been experimenting with other media including ink, gesso, pastels, acrylics, and collaged paper. Working with the materials I have on hand to create a compelling composition is a challenge I relish. I feel as though I am solving a problem when I use the tools I have nearby to make an interesting piece. There is an unfinished quality that flows through all of my pieces, regardless of how carefully considered they are. I am attracted to the rawness that is created by this unadorned formal practice. In my work, I cultivate a compositional playfulness and spirited mark-making

C.R. Xllle Colloque Européen d'Arachnologie, Neuchâtel, 2 - 6 septembre 1991 [Rezension]

Das 13. Europäische Arachnologische Kolloquium fand vom 2.-6. September 1991 in Neuchâtel (Schweiz) statt. Die in Neuchâtel vorgetragenen wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse liegen nun gedruckt als Tagungsbericht vor

Learning-based Analysis on the Exploitability of Security Vulnerabilities

The purpose of this thesis is to develop a tool that uses machine learning techniques to make predictions about whether or not a given vulnerability will be exploited. Such a tool could help organizations such as electric utilities to prioritize their security patching operations. Three different models, based on a deep neural network, a random forest, and a support vector machine respectively, are designed and implemented. Training data for these models is compiled from a variety of sources, including the National Vulnerability Database published by NIST and the Exploit Database published by Offensive Security. Extensive experiments are conducted, including testing the accuracy of each model, dynamically training the models on a rolling window of training data, and filtering the training data by various features. Of the chosen models, the deep neural network and the support vector machine show the highest accuracy (approximately 94% and 93%, respectively), and could be developed by future researchers into an effective tool for vulnerability analysis

Childhood and Marketing: A Briefing

The 
present
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 overviews
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 samples
 a 
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 childhood
 and 
business
 marketing

Cooperative Radar and Communications Signaling: The Estimation and Information Theory Odd Couple

We investigate cooperative radar and communications signaling. While each system typically considers the other system a source of interference, by considering the radar and communications operations to be a single joint system, the performance of both systems can, under certain conditions, be improved by the existence of the other. As an initial demonstration, we focus on the radar as relay scenario and present an approach denoted multiuser detection radar (MUDR). A novel joint estimation and information theoretic bound formulation is constructed for a receiver that observes communications and radar return in the same frequency allocation. The joint performance bound is presented in terms of the communication rate and the estimation rate of the system.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, to be presented at 2014 IEEE Radar Conferenc

Development of a wind shear performance envelope

It is quite important that the airplane performance during a continuing headwind loss be understood. Lack of consideration of this characteristic can result in assuming almost twice the performance than that which the airplane actually has during severe wind shear at high descent rates. The example data relates to the Boeing 727-200, but the characteristics are applicable to any airplane

An investigation into the effects of different housing and feeding systems on behaviour and milk production of dairy ewes in mid and late stages of lactation : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Animal Science at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand

The following have been removed for copyright reasons, but may be accessed via their source listed in the references: Figures 1.1 p. 9 (=Fig 2, p. 2715), 1.2 p. 10 (=Fig A p. 86), 1.3 p. 15 (=Fig 2 p. 261), 1.4 p. 16 (=Fig 2 BCS p. 36), 1.6 p. 18 (=Fig 1 p. 1303), 1.10 p. 28 (=Fig 2 p. 1859) & Table 1.2 p. 11 (=Table 3 p. 1304).Comparisons of different New Zealand dairy sheep farm systems are currently lacking. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of different management systems on the behaviour and milk production of East Friesian cross-bred sheep at different stages of lactation. Two study groups were evaluated. In study group 1, a mob of 479 mixed-age, mid-lactation ewes were housed 24 h/day, and a separate mob of 473 mixed-age, mid-lactation ewes were managed in a hybrid system (housed between morning and afternoon milkings; grazed lucerne overnight). Both received a total mixed ration (TMR) indoors. In study group 2, a mob of 604 mixed-age, late-lactation ewes grazed pasture 24 h/day, and a separate mob of 452 mixed-age late-lactation ewes were in a hybrid system, grazing pasture overnight. For both study groups, individual milk yield, walking distance, lying time, ambient temperature, live weight, and body condition score (BCS) were recorded.--Shortened abstrac

Critical Condition: A Historian's Prognosis on Canada's Aging Healthcare System

Canada, public healthcare, universality, financial need, Canada's healthcare system