Personal Practical Knowledge of Graduate Spanish-Teaching Assistants: An Issue of Experience

The significant role of Graduate Spanish-Teaching Assistants (GSTAs) in Spanish as a foreign language programs at North American universities has not been matched by the development and support efforts of those programs. That is, GSTAs are at the forefront of the introductory and intermediate Spanish courses while receiving very limited support. At the same time, and in spite numerous research focused on graduate teaching assistants, efforts to explore what these novice teachers know, the sources of their knowledge, and how such knowledge may be informing their teaching practices, have been minimal. The purpose of the present study was, therefore, to gain further understanding of the personal practical knowledge (PPK) of inexperienced GSTAs as compared to that of experienced GSTAs. The categories of PPK found in the data were: knowledge of self, knowledge of students, knowledge of instruction, knowledge of subject matter, knowledge of purpose, and knowledge of context. The project consisted of eight case studies (four experienced GSTAs and four inexperienced GSTAs), with a qualitative approach to the collection of data. The sources of data were: semi structured interviews, classroom observations, reflective journals, and stimulated recall. Findings revealed that the PPK of experienced and inexperienced GSTAs is complex, contextual, interconnected, experiential, and constantly evolving. Knowledge of students was consistently the most salient and influential area of the PPK of all participants, and it informed more pedagogical choices than the remaining areas. The knowledge of instruction of the experienced GSTAs was found to be more developed than that of the inexperienced group, and they also relied more on experience than their new counterparts. However, the first-time GSTAs were able to work collaborative and thus accelerated the development of their knowledge of instruction while aiding their teaching practice

High-energy neutrino follow-up search of gravitational wave event GW150914 with ANTARES and IceCube

We present the high-energy-neutrino follow-up observations of the first gravitational wave transient GW150914 observed by the Advanced LIGO detectors on September 14, 2015. We search for coincident neutrino candidates within the data recorded by the IceCube and Antares neutrino detectors. A possible joint detection could be used in targeted electromagnetic follow-up observations, given the significantly better angular resolution of neutrino events compared to gravitational waves. We find no neutrino candidates in both temporal and spatial coincidence with the gravitational wave event. Within ±500  s of the gravitational wave event, the number of neutrino candidates detected by IceCube and Antares were three and zero, respectively. This is consistent with the expected atmospheric background, and none of the neutrino candidates were directionally coincident with GW150914. We use this nondetection to constrain neutrino emission from the gravitational-wave event.by Anand Sengupta et al