The culture of instructional leadership amongst principals: a principal professional learning community\u27s exploration of Understanding by Design

The overloaded role of the principal is a reality in every district (Evans, 1996; Fullan, 2008). Principals are second only to teachers among school-related factors in student learning (Leithwood, Louis, Anderson, & Wahlstrom, 2004) yet professional learning opportunities for principals suffer at the expense of seemingly more important tasks. In order for principals to be successful in the expected role of instructional leadership (NAESP, 2008), districts must create opportunities for both content and leadership learning (Darling-Hammond, Meyerson, LaPointe, & Orr, 2010). Experts are beginning to realize that professional development for principals is essential to a school and distric\u27s success (Darling-Hammond et al., 2010). The participants in this study formed a Principal Professional Learning Community to strengthen their knowledge of Professional Learning Communities (DuFour and Eaker, 1998; Hord & Sommers, 2008), Understanding by Design (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005) and coaching techniques (Kee, Anderson, Dearing, Harris, & Shuster, 2010; Kise, 2006). The Action Research in this mixed methods study advocates for job embedded professional development and provided the elementary principals in Journey Township with horizontal learning opportunities (Blankstein, 2010) that will facilitate the reciprocal accountability (Elmore, 2000) that is needed as districts work to build capacity. Though context specific (Creswell, 2009), this study will help the reader draw conclusions on whether a Principal Professional Learning Community is an effective infrastructure to support individual and organizational learning (Senge, 2006)

The Location of Digital Ethnography

Qualitative researchers interested in digitally-located social and cultural practices have struggled with ways in which to design studies that can account for the digital aspect of cultural practices while also taking into account that those digital practices do not exist as separate (or separable in terms of our research) from other social and cultural practices. As such, one of the primary and ongoing challenges facing internet-based ethnographic research is the question of how to construct the location of a project when the sites, technologically-mediated practices, and people we study exist and flow through a wider information ecology that is neither fixed nor can easily be located as “online” or “offline.” This is as much a methodological challenge as a theoretical one. If one accepts that a rigid distinction between online and offline makes little theoretical sense, then drawing a methodological line between online and offline only reifies such a dualism. While there is a developing body of internet-related ethnographic literature which is attempting to take into account the fluid nature of our information ecology (e.g. Burrell, 2009, Leander and McKim, 2003, Hine, 2007), we continue to operate on shifting ground. This article uses the case of my own work on city-specific discussion forums in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to highlight the complexities of locating digital ethnographic work and also argue for the necessity of accounting for both movement and placed-ness

Blog commenting: A new political information space

Though still a small subsection of the internet, weblogs are becoming an increasingly prominent space for finding and discussing information - in particular political information. But because of their newness, the question remains as to what are the possible implications of political blogs on people's current information reality. As a way to better understand political blogs as a space for gaining political information and also discussing that information, a pilot study was developed whose main focus was to understand the nature of the comments posted to political blogs. There has been much speculation in the popular and scholarly press about the possible democratic implications of people writing blogs, with claims that the medium opens up a new space for deliberation and participation. However, little work has focused on blog commenters - the people who are reading blogs and responding based on what they have read. And yet, to understand the blogosphere as a new deliberative or political information space, it is critical to analyze those who are engaging in the discussion. Therefore, this study focuses not on the principal authors of popular blog sites but the readers who are inspired to post their responses.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/57323/1/14504301305_ftp.pd

Practicing place: Collective experience and difference in an urban online forum

Despite predictions to the contrary, place has assumed a new significance through recent innovations in digital technology. In this paper, we argue that the exchange of information and experience occurring daily on the networked urban forum Phillyblog can be usefully conceptualized as the practice of place. In adopting this terminology, we suggest particular analytic and theoretical lines which hold important implications for the way we think about information and place in online settings. Within the context of Phillyblog, the practice of place (1) publicizes and reinforces collective experiences of the city and (2) plays an active role in constructing the distinctness and diversity of its neighborhoods. In analyzing their regular interactions on Phillyblog, we hope to add to research on information practice, in particular “everyday information practices” (Savolainen, 2008 ), by suggesting their role in the social construction of place. Using this particular case, we explore how information sharing and production, in particular, may play a role in the perception, conception, and experience of place.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78319/1/1450460264_ftp.pd

Production Inefficiency in Fed Cattle Marketing and the Value of Sorting Pens into Alternative Marketing Groups Using Ultrasound Technology

The cattle industry batch markets animals in pens. Because of this, animals within any one pen can be both underfed and overfed. Thus, there is a production inefficiency associated with batch marketing. We simulate the value of sorting animals through weight and ultrasound measurements from original pens into smaller alternative marketing groups. Sorting exploits the production inefficiency and enables cattle feeding enterprises to avoid meat quality discounts, capture premiums, more efficiently use feed resources, and increase returns. The value of sorting is between $15 and$25 per head, with declining marginal returns as the number of sort groups increases.cattle feeding, production efficiency, simulation, sorting, value-based marketing, ultrasound, Agribusiness, Livestock Production/Industries, Marketing, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, C15, D21, D23, Q12,

RETURNS TO SORTING AND MARKET TIMING OF ANIMALS WITHIN PENS OF FED CATTLE

This research examines returns to cattle feeding operations that sort animals prior to marketing using ultrasound technology. The returns to sorting are between $11 and$25 per head depending on the number of groups the pens into which cattle can be sorted. Sorting faces declining returns. These returns can also be viewed as the costs imposed by institutional constraints that limit co-mingling of cattle. Through sorting, cattle feeding operations are able to reduce meat quality discounts, increase meat quality premiums, increase beef carcass quality characteristics, more efficiently use feed resources, and increase profits.Livestock Production/Industries,

“Teen Views of Sex:” Inter-animation of dialogues in a radio feature story produced by Mexican immigrant youth

This paper proposes an analysis of dialogical processes in the creation of a radio feature story titled “Teen Views of Sex,” co-produced by Mexican immigrant high school students in the context of a Youth Radio and Radio Arts program. After describing the socio-cultural and curricular context of the program, I apply Zittoun and Grossen’s (2013) semiotic approach to dialogicality to describe the kinds of dialogue that took place during the interviews and subsequent reflections upon the feature story and production process. The types of dialogue examined include: actual dialogue, distant dialogue, auto-dialogue, dialogue between situations, and dialogue with material objects, or non-human actants. I explore how the inter-animation of these forms of dialogue gave rise to dialogic tensions, which may have created openings for shifts in identity positioning and an enhanced sense of agency for the youth in their personal and public lives

Higher Education Exchange: 2009

This annual publication serves as a forum for new ideas and dialogue between scholars and the larger public. Essays explore ways that students, administrators, and faculty can initiate and sustain an ongoing conversation about the public life they share.The Higher Education Exchange is founded on a thought articulated by Thomas Jefferson in 1820: "I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education."In the tradition of Jefferson, the Higher Education Exchange agrees that a central goal of higher education is to help make democracy possible by preparing citizens for public life. The Higher Education Exchange is part of a movement to strengthen higher education's democratic mission and foster a more democratic culture throughout American society.Working in this tradition, the Higher Education Exchange publishes interviews, case studies, analyses, news, and ideas about efforts within higher education to develop more democratic societies

Band Distributions for Quantum Chaos on the Torus

Band distributions (BDs) are introduced describing quantization in a toral phase space. A BD is the uniform average of an eigenstate phase-space probability distribution over a band of toral boundary conditions. A general explicit expression for the Wigner BD is obtained. It is shown that the Wigner functions for {\em all} of the band eigenstates can be reproduced from the Wigner BD. Also, BDs are shown to be closer to classical distributions than eigenstate distributions. Generalized BDs, associated with sets of adjacent bands, are used to extend in a natural way the Chern-index characterization of the classical-quantum correspondence on the torus to arbitrary rational values of the scaled Planck constant.Comment: 12 REVTEX page