ITE guideline for teacher educators in inquiry-based science teaching

This guideline for teacher educators and their students offers a set of arguments in favour of developing opportunities for more opene ended or investigative type work in science classrooms

Who can you count on? The relational dimension of new teacher learning

The social dimension of human development is nothing new. Even in a professional context, we accept that our relationships with other people matter. We know from experience that this is the case but the importance of the social in professional development is also well supported in the literature, often it seems from a need to strike a balance against models which are overly cognitive in emphasis. Even our small-scale initial explorations into the experience of beginners in teaching revealed the prominent place in that experience of relationships with others. Although no straightforward link to any specific kinds of learning were apparent, it was evident that interaction with others was nevertheless central and that this empirical position was represented more accurately as 'relational' rather than as social, a term often seen as rather amorphous and unconvincing to the more clinically inclined. The relational or social conveys, it seems, a more 'informal' sense of learning, something that is not reducible to the strictly rational and predictable, or indeed cognitive, connecting instead to the emotions as well as the processes and stages of identity formation. This chapter presents our extended exploration of the relational, its connection to the emotions, and what it means in the context of beginning teaching: the people, their roles, informal learning, and what ties it to identity and purpose

Transparency is the foundation of accountability. The government is committed to Freedom of Information and to opening up public authorities to greater scrutiny to allow the public to hold them to account

In its coalition agreement, the government pledged to build on the Freedom of Information Act and “extend transparency to every area of public life”. The Rt Hon Lord McNally, Minister of State for Justice, outlines the next steps that government will be taking to extend Freedom of Information and ensure the public have greater ability to hold them to account

Confidence and loose opportunism in the science classroom : towards a pedagogy of investigative science for beginning teachers

This paper attempts to establish a conceptual basis on which beginning teachers may be introduced to investigative science teaching in a way that accommodates the teacher voice. It draws mainly on preliminary theory from the shared reflections of twenty science teachers, augmented by a more general interview-based study of the experience of early professional learning of eighteen new teachers. Internationally, it is situated in the wider concern in the literature with the nature of science, mainly in initial teacher education. Empirically located within the Scottish context, a grounded epistemological base of teacher knowledge is illustrated and presented as components of confidence in a cycle of professional learning that needs to be set in motion during ITE. It is proposed that, given protected experience in their early attempts to teach investigatively, new teachers can begin to develop a confident pedagogy of loose opportunism that comes close to authentic science for the children they teach

Mechanisms of spindle positioning.

Accurate positioning of spindles is essential for asymmetric mitotic and meiotic cell divisions that are crucial for animal development and oocyte maturation, respectively. The predominant model for spindle positioning, termed "cortical pulling," involves attachment of the microtubule-based motor cytoplasmic dynein to the cortex, where it exerts a pulling force on microtubules that extend from the spindle poles to the cell cortex, thereby displacing the spindle. Recent studies have addressed important details of the cortical pulling mechanism and have revealed alternative mechanisms that may be used when microtubules do not extend from the spindle to the cortex

Program for calculating laminar and turbulent boundary layers in arbitrary pressure gradients

Computer program predicts growth of boundary layers along any surface where air is flowing. Two integral methods, Cohen-Reshotko and Sasman-Cresici, calculate laminar boundary layers and turbulent boundary layers, respectively; Schlichting-Granville method predicts transition from laminar to turbulent flow

Divestment and Climate Change

In January of 2016, a number of Laurier faculty signed a letter (hereafter “The Letter”) urging the University to divest from fossil fuel companies in all endowment funds and the employee pension.1 This research note addresses a number of issues related to the divestment strategy—in particular, the stranded asset thesis, financial strategy alternatives, implementation challenges and the financial effects of divestment strategies. This note does not consider alternative strategies for decarbonizing the economy. The Letter itself does not explain why divestment is superior to alternatives like promoting research into clean energy generation, renewable energy sources, climate science, and environmental economics. The Letter articulates two goals. The first part of The Letter argues that, “Sooner or later, the world is going to get serious about regulating carbon emissions and when it does assets will likely be stranded.” This argument supports a risk management goal: that portfolio managers should hedge the risk of stranded assets. The second goal, articulated later in The Letter, is more revolutionary. In particular, that “the present generation…have a duty to help decarbonize the global economy as rapidly as possible.” Establishing the goal is important because the goal informs the optimal financial strategy. If the goal is to hedge stranded asset risk, then the best risk management strategies are: 1) diversification; or 2) portfolio reweighting. If the goal is to decarbonize the economy, then diversification and reweighting will have little effect. The financial strategy with the most potential to influence corporate behavior is full divestment. The remainder of this note is organized as follows. The second section defines the stranded asset thesis and contrasts it to another thesis. The third section defines two alternative financial strategies: divestment and reweighting. The fourth section discusses the challenge of using GHG emissions data to implement divestment or reweighting. The fifth section presents the financial theory of divestment and empirical evidence on the impact of divestment on risk and return. The sixth section concludes

FORTRAN program for generating a two-dimensional orthogonal mesh between two arbitrary boundaries

Computer program is described which computes and plots coordinates for two-dimensional orthogonal mesh for channel containing solid body, about which flow passes and which spans channel from one wall to the other

'Excellence in cities'.

The government's Excellence in Cities policy has improved the educational outcomes for secondary school pupils in disadvantaged areas, according to new economic research by Stephen Machin, Sandra McNally and Costas Meghir. But the study also shows that the educational benefits are not equally distributed: the most disadvantaged schools benefit and the effect is concentrated among pupils of medium to high ability.

In Brief: Every child matters?

Sandra McNally and colleagues provide the first comprehensive evaluation of 'special educational needs' programmes.