Professionalism: What is it and are we teaching for it?

With rising accountability standards and the need for content specialists within education, the qualifications of mathematics teachers have become increasingly scrutinized. For over three decades, within the parameters of educational reform, the need for the professionalization of teaching has reoccurred (Carnegie Task Force, 1986). When examining the nature of teacher professionalism, no concise definition within the educational community exists (Noddings, 1992). The purpose of this study was to take characteristics defined by the medical and law fields and use them to develop a definition of professionalism within mathematics education. Once a clear set of characteristics was identified, the study then looked to reveal the nature of which those characteristics were instilled within mathematics teacher education programs at higher education institutions. Current mathematics teachers and mathematics teacher educators were surveyed and the set of characteristics rated as to their importance in defining professionalism with mathematics education. A second part to the survey asked mathematics teacher to rate the extent they felt prepared within those same characteristics. Mathematics teacher educators were asked to reflect upon their curriculum with respect to the same set of characteristics. The results were compared with similarities and differences among the two groups presented. The results from this study can be used by higher educational institutions in shaping current and future teachers’ set of professional characteristics. Current teachers can examine the results of this study with the intent to evaluate themselves as professionals

Cognitively Engineering a Virtual Collaboration Environment for Crisis Response

Crisis response situations require collaboration across many different organizations with different backgrounds, training, procedures, and goals. The Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004 and the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts in 2005 emphasized the importance of effective communication and collaboration. In the former, the Multinational Planning Augmentation Team (MPAT) supported brokering of requests for assistance with offers of help from rapidly deployed military and humanitarian assistance facilities. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the National Guard Soldiers and active component Army Soldiers assisted other state, federal, and non-government organizations with varying degrees of efficiency and expediency. Compounding the challenges associated with collaboration during crisis situations is the distributed nature of the supporting organizations and the lack of a designated leader across these military, government, nongovernment organizations. The Army Research Laboratory is collaborating with the University of Edinburgh, University o

Tame kernels and further 4-rank densites

There has been recent progress on computing the 4-rank of the tame kernel $K_2(\mathcal{O}_F)$ for $F$ a quadratic number field. For certain quadratic number fields, this progress has led to "density results'' concerning the 4-rank of tame kernels. These results were first mentioned in \cite{CH} and proven in \cite{RO}. In this paper, we consider some additional quadratic number fields and obtain further density results of 4-ranks of tame kernels. Additionally, we give tables which might indicate densities in some generality.Comment: 20 page

The Process-Structure-Property-Performance of AISI 1020​

AISI 1020 is widely used in many different industries due to its high strength, high ductility, high machinability, and good weldability. AISI 1020 has a number of applications. Low carbon steel can be used on a macroscale to build bridges, and low carbon steel can be used on smaller scales such as Lawnmower blades. Low carbon steel is the material of choice for lawn mower blades because of its ability to bend before it breaks. The ductile attribute of low carbon steel also has many other benefits.https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/metallurgy/1018/thumbnail.jp

Bus Analysis in Montgomery County, Maryland

Optimizing public transit is an important issue in the 21st century. This research project was focused on the run time performance of the Ride On bus system in Montgomery County, MD. Through a focus group, field observations, and interviews we were able to create a set of comprehensive recommendations targeting addressable issues such as bus boarding, traffic signal idle time, and scheduling. Besides recommending common solutions, such as smartcards and transit signal prioritization, we developed an innovative scheduling paradigm

Algal Blooms in Arkansas Streams, Ponds, and Lakes

Did you know that algae are a natural part of ponds, lakes, streams, and rivers? These organisms grow in the water (plankton) and on rocks, plants, and other surfaces (periphyton) and sometimes periphyton slough off into the water (seston). Most of the time these algae are hardly noticeable in waterbodies; however, sometimes they can form very noticeable algal blooms