The Efficiency of Collective Bargaining in Public Schools.

This paper develops a bargaining model of wage and employment determination for the public sector. the solution to the model generates structural wage and employment equations that are estimated using data from New York State teacher-school district collective bargaining agreements.

"Breaking the Silence: International conference on the Indian residential schools commission of Canada" ; "Briser le silence: Colloque international sur la commission de vérité et de réconciliation sur les pensionnats indiens".

This is the full audio recording of the "Breaking the silence : International conference on the Indian residential schools commission of Canada" that took place at the University of Montreal on September 26-27, 2008. Enregistrement audio complets du colloque "Briser le silence" sur la Commission de vérité et de réconciliation sur les pensionnats indiens, ayant eu lieu à Montréal les 26 et 27 septembre 2008.

The ethical dilemma of lifestyle change: designing for sustainable schools and sustainable citizenship

his paper explores how participation and sustainability are being addressed by architects within the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme in the UK. The intentions promoted by the programme are certainly ambitious, but the ways to fulfil these aims are ill-explored. Simply focusing on providing innovative learning technologies, or indeed teaching young people about physical sustainability features in buildings, will not necessarily teach them the skills they will need to respond to the environmental and social challenges of a rapidly changing world. However, anticipating those skills is one of the most problematic issues of the programme. The involvement of young people in the design of schools is used to suggest empowerment, place-making and to promote social cohesion but this is set against government design literature which advocates for exemplars, standard layouts and best practice, all leading to forms of standardisation. The potentials for tokenistic student involvement and conflict with policy aims are evident. This paper explores two issues: how to foster in young people an ethic towards future generations, and the role of co-design practices in this process. Michael Oakeshott calls teaching the conversation of mankind. In this paper, I look at the philosophy of Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Luce Irigaray to argue that investigating the ethical dilemmas of the programme through critical dialogue with students offers an approach to meeting government objectives, building sustainable schools, and fostering sustainable citizenship.

Ethical Principles as a Guide in Implementing Policies for the Management of Food Allergies in Schools

This article represents a prime example of applied ethics in public health policy development. The article provides guidance on the development of food allergy policies for child care settings based on core ethical principles in bioethics and public health ethics.

Conflict of Interest Policies at Canadian Universities and Medical Schools: Some Lessons from the AMSA PharmFree Scorecard

Article

Elementary School Principals in Low-Socioeconomic-Status Schools: A University-Based Research Program Designed to Support Mandated Reform

This paper presents a reform initiative, the Supporting Montreal Schools Program (SMSP), created by the government of Quebec to assist 184 low socio-economic-status schools in Montreal implement seven reform strategies prescribed by the government. On a regular basis, the professional team of the SMSP engages in reflection and research with universities concerning one or more of the strategies they are charged with helping schools implement or the functioning of the SMSP more generally. The present research programme is part of the team’s ongoing reflection on a component of Strategy 4: professional development of school administrators and the school team. In this paper, we detail results from this initial and subsequent studies on the work of principals in low-performing schools. We also describe our collaborative relationship with the SMSP team, discuss the effectiveness of the SMSP in promoting the implementation of the seven governmentmandated strategies and critique the utility of our partnership with the SMSP and our use of that programme as a vehicle for linking research to practice.

How Principals Exercise Transformative Leadership in Urban Schools in Disadvantaged Areas in Montréal, Canada

This study aims at understanding how elementary school principals in disadvantaged areas implement transformative leadership for social justice. Our previous studies showed that social justice is rarely present in principals’ discourse. Using a transformative leadership framework, we analysed data from the observation of these school principals. Data failed to show evidence of transformative behaviour on the part of principals. Because of some concerns and questions that arose from these findings, we found and interviewed three outstanding elementary school principals who are implementing transformative leadership in their schools. In contrast with our previous data, our present data shows that these principals have a rich view of social justice, that they see instances of inequities in their schools, that they identify situations in which they can implement transformative leadership, and that they report intervening to fight inequities. We also discuss the implications of these results in the follow-up of our research programme.

Geochemical, Sedimentological And Remote Sensing Studies Of Kayamkulam Estuary, South West Coast Of India- A Gis Approach

In this study, an attempt has been made to find the textural, geochemical, sedimentological characteristics of sediments and water phases of the kayamkulam estuary located in the Southwest coast of Kerala, besides the impact of gas based thermal power plant located at the northern part of the estuary. Estuaries are an important stage in the transport of the solid weathering product of the earth’s crust. These weathered products or sediments are complex mixtures of a number of solid phases that may include clays, silica, organic matter, metal oxides, carbonates, sulfides and a number of minerals. Studies on the aquatic systems revealed the fact that it posses severe ecological impairments due to heavy discharge of sediments from 44 rivers, the continued disposal of pollutants rich materials from industries, sewage channels, agricultural areas and retting yards

Multichannel Remote Data Acquisition and Analysing Systems For Fisheries / Environmental Investigations

Remote Data acquisition and analysing systems developed for fisheries and related environmental studies have been reported. It consists of three units. The first one namely multichannel remote data acquisition system is installed at the remote place powered by a rechargeable battery. It acquires and stores the 16 channel environmental data on a battery backed up RAM. The second unit called the Field data analyser is used for insitue display and analysis of the data stored in the backed up RAM. The third unit namely Laboratory data analyser is an IBM compatible PC based unit for detailed analysis and interpretation of the data after bringing the RAM unit to the laboratory. The data collected using the system has been analysed and presented in the form of a graph. The system timer operated at negligibly low current, switches on the power to the entire remote operated system at prefixed time interval of 2 hours.Data storage at remote site on low power battery backedupRAM and retrieval and analysis of data using PC are the special i ty of the system. The remote operated system takes about 7 seconds including the 5 second stabilization time to acquire and store data and is very ideal for remote operation on rechargeable bat tery. The system can store 16 channel data scanned at 2 hour interval for 10 days on 2K backed up RAM with memory expansion facility for 8K RAM.

Drought Climatology of Indo-Gangetic Region of India Using Remote Sensing and Crop Growth Simulation Models

Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Cochin University of Science and Technology

Remote Sensing the Signatures of Upwelling in South Eastern Arabian Sea

In this thesis, a variety of available satellite data products have been made use of to bring out a synergistic analysis on the upwelling phenomenon in SEAS. Basic concepts of remote sensing, upwelling and linked oceanography topics have been dealt in this work .Auxiliary data products utilized in this study are described in chapter 2. The climatological monthly variability of the upwelling signatures are detailed under chapter 3. Chapter 4 presents the forcing factors that trigger the upwelling process in SEAS. Chapter 5 describes the oceanic response to the forcing factors with respect to the SST cooling and CHLA blooms. Chapter 6 presents the heat budget of the region and the variability of heat budget terms with respect to upwelling. Chapter 7 describes the inter-annual variability of upwelling intensity in SEAS and the influence of climatic events on upwelling.

Spatio-Temporal Changes in the Wetland Ecosystem of Cochin City using Remote Sensing and GIS

Urban developments have exerted immense pressure on wetlands. Urban areas are normally centers of commercial activity and continue to attract migrants in large numbers in search of employment from different areas. As a result, habitations keep coming up in the natural areas / flood plains. This is happening in various Indian cities and towns and large habitations are coming up in low-lying areas, often encroaching even over drainage channels. In some cases, houses are constructed even on top of nallahs and drains. In the case of Kochi the situation is even worse as the base of the urban development itself stands on a completely reclaimed island. Also the topography and geology demanded more reclamation of land when the city developed as an agglomerative cluster. Cochin is a coastal settlement interspersed with a large backwater system and fringed on the eastern side by laterite-capped low hills from which a number of streams drain into the backwater system. The ridge line of the eastern low hills provides a welldefined watershed delimiting Cochin basin which help to confine the environmental parameters within a physical limit. This leads to an obvious conclusion that if physiography alone is considered, the western flatland is ideal for urban development. However it will result in serious environmental deterioration, as it comprises mainly of wetland and for availability of land there has to be large scale filling up of these wetlands which includes shallow mangrove-fringed water sheets, paddy fields, Pokkali fields, estuary etc.Chapter 1 School 4 of Environmental Studies The urban boundaries of Cochin are expanding fast with a consequent over-stretching of the existing fabric of basic amenities and services. Urbanisation leads to the transformation of agricultural land into built-up areas with the concomitant problems regarding water supply, drainage, garbage and sewage disposal etc. Many of the environmental problems of Cochin are hydrologic in origin; like water-logging / floods, sedimentation and pollution in the water bodies as well as shoreline erosion

Ecological studies of the Parambikulam Tiger Reserve in the Western Ghats of India, using Remote Sensing and GIS

mbikulam Tiger Reserve of Western Ghats using Geospatial technology. The major objectives of the study are Land use land cover mapping (LULC) and Phytodiversity analysis. Satellite data was used to map the land use / land cover using supervised classification techniques in Erdas imagine. The change for a period of 32 years was assessed using the multi-temporal satellite datasets from Landsat MSS (1973), Landsat TM (1990), and IRS P6 LISS III (2005). A geospatial approach was used for the land cover analysis. Digital elevation models, Satellite imageries and SOI topo sheets were the data sets used in the analysis. Vegetation sampling plots distributed over the different forest types were enumerated and studied for Phytodiversity analysis.