First national survey of practitioners with early years’ professional status

The first national survey of practitioners who have achieved Early Years Professional Status (EYPS) set out to ascertain: • more detailed demographic information about their backgrounds and experience • their views on their ability to carry out their role since gaining EYPS • information about career trajectories including their intentions to change setting, role or career • an overview of their professional development activities and plans • an assessment of the impact of obtaining EYPS on professional identity • their views on the difficulty of achieving change in their settings. This survey is part of a three year longitudinal study investigating the role and impact of early years professionals (EYPs) in their working environments (settings) and also investigating practitioners’ personal career development and aspirations. There are two main parts to the study: • a survey of all EYPs, asking about their career development needs and aspirations • case studies in 30 settings across the country, looking at how EYPs have an impact on the quality of education and care available to children. The survey, with slight modifications, will be repeated in year three of the study. The intention was to make the survey accessible to all who have achieved EYPS, with the aim of generating responses from approximately 10-15 per cent of respondents. The survey went live between January and February 2010 and by the close of the survey some 1,045 completed questionnaires had been generated, representing nearly 30 per cent of the total number of practitioners with EYPS. This sample was broadly representative of the total population of practitioners with EYPS based on gender, ethnicity, geographical distribution and the pathway they had followed to achieve EYPS

Apollo guidance, navigation and control - Design survey of the Apollo inertial subsystem

Design, development, and testing of inertial guidance and navigation systems for Apollo projec

Voice initiation and voice offset patterns in normal females: investigated by high speed digital imaging

This preliminary study investigated the voice initiation period (VIP) and voice offset period (VOP) using high-speed digital imaging. The purpose of the study was to obtain preliminary data on VIP and VOP patterns of normal voice and to investigate the variability in VIP and VOP patterns in young female subjects within and between recording sessions. VIP was segmented into 3 phases: VIPa, VIPb, and VIPc. Results of the analysis of the data demonstrated that VOP is a more consistent measure than VIP and that VIPa is the most consistent phase of VIP. This study also suggested that changes in fundamental frequency and intensity may affect the number of glottic cycles necessary to complete VIP segments but not the VOP

From fragmentation to multiplexity: Decentralisation, localism and support for school collaboration in England and Wales

Decentralisation and localism have become increasingly common drivers and outcomes of policy changes in many education systems in recent years, often supported by an emphasis on collaboration. This paper uses research into three collaborative initiatives in England and Wales to explore these changes. Informed by insights from network theory, it reveals a number of issues and tensions relating to decentralisation and localism and ends with a call to move away from a deficit perspective in order to use the multiplexity of current systems as a starting point for future developments in policy and research

Case study as a means of evaluating the impact of early years leaders: Steps, paths and routes

The paper argues that case study will need to play an increasingly important role in the evaluation of leadership development programmes as both formal and substantive theories of leadership place greater emphasis upon the role played by organizational context on leaders ability to bring about change. Prolonged engagement within a case study provides researchers with opportunities to capture the dynamics between leaders and their organisational contexts. However, adopting a case study approach is no substitute for inadequate theorization of the link between leadership approaches and leadership effects. The paper argues for the use of inclusive and expansive theoretical notions of leadership and its relationship to organisational context. The evaluation used to illustrate these arguments was based on a longitudinal multi-site case study methodology. The case studies ran over a three-year period and tracked the effect of 42 leaders on the quality of provision in some 30 early years settings. Both individual and collective theoires of leadership were used to trace leaders’ steps, paths and routes to improvement. Three overlapping theoretical lenses were used to study the dynamics of these leaders interactions with a key aspect of their organisational contexts - the existing formal and informal leadership structures – and how these affected their attempts to improve the quality of provision of their settings. The analysis, and related findings, were tiered in order to provide progressively more detailed descriptions of the relationships between leaders’ approaches and changes in their settings’ quality of provision. Each layer of analysis operated with a causal logic that became gradually less general and linear and increasingly more ‘local’ and complex