Advanced skills teachers: professional identity and status

The teaching profession continues to struggle with defining itself in relation to other professions. Even though public opinion positions teachers second only to doctors and nurses in terms of their professional status and prestige research in the UK suggests that teachers still believe that they have much lower status than other professions. With teacher job satisfaction considerably lower today than the past and on-going issues with teacher recruitment and retention, new government policies have set out to enhance the status of teachers both within and outside of the profession. The Advanced Skill Teacher (AST) grade was introduced in 1998 as a means to recognise and reward teaching expertise and was framed as a way of also raising the status of the teaching profession. As to what a teaching professional should look like, the AST was in many ways positioned as the embodiment. Using survey data from 849 ASTs and in depth interviews with 31, this paper seeks to explores the ways that the AST designation impacts or not on teachers’ perceptions of their professional identity. In particular, the paper considers whether such awards contribute in positive ways to a teacher’s sense of professional identity and status. The results from the research suggest that teaching grades that recognise and reward teaching excellence do contribute in important ways to a teachers’ professional identity via an increased sense of recognition, reward and job satisfaction. The results from this research also suggest that recognising the skills and expertise of teachers is clearly important in supporting teacher retention. This is because as it allows highly accomplished teachers to remain where they want to be and that is the classroom.

Vocabulary is important for some, but not all reading skills

Although there is evidence for a close link between the development of oral vocabulary and reading comprehension, less clear is whether oral vocabulary skills relate to the development of word-level reading skills. This study investigated vocabulary and literacy in 81 children aged 8 to 10 years. In regression analyses, vocabulary accounted for unique variance in exception word reading and reading comprehension, but not text reading accuracy, decoding, or regular word reading. Consistent with these data, children with poor reading comprehension exhibited oral vocabulary weaknesses and read fewer exception words correctly. These findings demonstrate that oral vocabulary is associated with some, but not all, reading skills. Results are discussed in terms of current models of reading development.

Orthographic facilitation in oral vocabulary acquisition

An experiment investigated whether exposure to orthography facilitates oral vocabulary learning. A total of 58 typically developing children aged 8-9 years were taught 12 nonwords. Children were trained to associate novel phonological forms with pictures of novel objects. Pictures were used as referents to represent novel word meanings. For half of the nonwords children were additionally exposed to orthography, although they were not alerted to its presence, nor were they instructed to use it. After this training phase a nonword-picture matching posttest was used to assess learning of nonword meaning, and a spelling posttest was used to assess learning of nonword orthography. Children showed robust learning for novel spelling patterns after incidental exposure to orthography. Further, we observed stronger learning for nonword-referent pairings trained with orthography. The degree of orthographic facilitation observed in posttests was related to children's reading levels, with more advanced readers showing more benefit from the presence of orthography.

‘Superteachers’, saints and solitaires: an investigation into advanced skills teachers of drama

This paper reports on a survey conducted in 2010 among ASTs who identified themselves as being specialists in, or having responsibility for, the subject of drama. The survey endeavoured to explore the professional backgrounds and experiences of these ASTs and gain insights into what they enjoyed about the role. It was especially concerned to address the following questions: 1. What general skills do ASTs in drama think they need to possess? 2. What subject specific knowledge and skills do they feel are needed to satisfy the demands of their role? In addition, insights were sought into what training and support had been afforded them, how they regarded themselves and were regarded by others in the role.

Deal size, acquisition premia and shareholder gains

This study examines the contradictory predictions regarding the association between the premium paid in acquisitions and deal size. We document a robust negative relation between offer premia and target size, indicating that acquirers tend to pay less for large firms, not more. We also find that the overpayment potential is lower in acquisitions of large targets. Yet, they still destroy more value for acquirers around deal announcements, implying that target size may proxy, among others, for the unobserved complexity inherent in large deals. We provide evidence in favor of this interpretation.

The use of drama to teach social skills in a special school setting for students with autism.

For children with autism, social challenges may be both part of the disability and a barrier to accessing education. This paper reports on a project which used drama to address such challenges by drawing on the social skills of non-autistic peers in a special school setting. The paper demonstrates how drama’s flexibility may be harnessed in order to help students support each other’s development of creative and communicative skills. Focusing on two children in particular, specific examples are given to illustrate how they participated in group work, made imaginative contributions to verbal and physical representations, and engaged with abstract ideas. The project’s outcomes suggest, given a concrete structure and an invitation to collaborate, drama can be a powerful learning medium for children with ASD. The conclusion reflects on the diverse meaning of inclusive practice which can be achieved within specialist settings.

Lexical access, story re-telling and sequencing skills in adults who clutter and those who do not

Cluttering is a rate-based disorder of fluency, the scope of whose diagnostic criteria currently remains unclear. This paper reports preliminary findings from a larger study which aims to determine whether cluttering can be associated with language disturbances as well as motor and rate based ones. Subtests from the Mt Wilga High Level Language Test (MWHLLT) were used to determine whether people who clutter (PWC) have word finding difficulties, and use significantly more maze behaviours compared to controls, during story re-telling and simple sequencing tasks. Independent t tests showed that PWC were significantly slower than control participants in lexical access and sentence completion tasks, but returned mixed findings when PWCs were required to name items within a semantic category. PWC produced significantly more maze behaviour than controls in a task where participants were required to explain how to undertake commonly performed actions, but no difference in use of maze behaviour was found between the two groups when retelling a story from memory. The implications of these findings are discussed

Knowledge acquisition in supply chain partnerships: the role of power

Knowledge is recognised as an important source of competitive advantage and hence there has been increasing academic and practitioner interest in understanding and isolating the factors that contribute to effective knowledge transfer between supply chain actors. The literature identifies power as a salient contributor to the effective operation of a supply chain partnership. However, there is a paucity of empirical research examining how power among actors influences knowledge acquisition and in turn the performance of supply chain partners. The aim of this research is to address this gap by examining the relationship between power, knowledge acquisition and supply chain performance among the supply chain partners of a focal Chinese steel manufacturer. A structured survey was used to collect the necessary data. Two conceptually independent variables – ‘availability of alternatives’ and ‘restraint in the use of power’ – were used to assess actual and realised power, respectively. Controlling for contingencies, we found that the flow of knowledge increased when supply chain actors had limited alternatives and when the more powerful actor exercised restraint in the use of power. Moreover, we found a positive relationship between knowledge acquisition and supply chain performance. This paper enriches the literature by empirically extending our understanding of how power affects knowledge acquisition and performance.

(In)Complete acquisition of Turkish among Turkish German bilinguals in Germany and Turkey: an analysis of complex embeddings in narratives

Although most researchers recognise that the language repertoire of bilinguals canmvary, few studies have tried to address variation in bilingual competence in any detail. This study aims to take a first step towards further understanding the way in which bilingual competencies can vary at the level of syntax by comparing the use of syntactic embeddings among three different groups of Turkish�German bilinguals. The approach of the present paper is new in that different groups of bilinguals are compared with each other, and not only with monolingual speakers, as is common in most studies in the field. The analysis focuses on differences in the use of embeddings in Turkish, which are generally considered to be one of the more complex aspects of Turkish grammar. The study shows that young Turkish� German bilingual adults who were born and raised in Germany use fewer, and less complex embeddings than Turkish�German bilingual returnees who had lived in Turkey for eight years at the time of recording. The present study provides new insights in the nature of bilingual competence, as well as a new perspective on syntactic change in immigrant Turkish as spoken in Europe.

Representing the acquisition and use of energy by individuals in agent-based models of animal populations

Summary 1. Agent-based models (ABMs) are widely used to predict how populations respond to changing environments. As the availability of food varies in space and time, individuals should have their own energy budgets, but there is no consensus as to how these should be modelled. Here, we use knowledge of physiological ecology to identify major issues confronting the modeller and to make recommendations about how energy budgets for use in ABMs should be constructed. 2. Our proposal is that modelled animals forage as necessary to supply their energy needs for maintenance, growth and reproduction. If there is sufficient energy intake, an animal allocates the energy obtained in the order: maintenance, growth, reproduction, energy storage, until its energy stores reach an optimal level. If there is a shortfall, the priorities for maintenance and growth/reproduction remain the same until reserves fall to a critical threshold below which all are allocated to maintenance. Rates of ingestion and allocation depend on body mass and temperature. We make suggestions for how each of these processes should be modelled mathematically. 3. Mortality rates vary with body mass and temperature according to known relationships, and these can be used to obtain estimates of background mortality rate. 4. If parameter values cannot be obtained directly, then values may provisionally be obtained by parameter borrowing, pattern-oriented modelling, artificial evolution or from allometric equations. 5. The development of ABMs incorporating individual energy budgets is essential for realistic modelling of populations affected by food availability. Such ABMs are already being used to guide conservation planning of nature reserves and shell fisheries, to assess environmental impacts of building proposals including wind farms and highways and to assess the effects on nontarget organisms of chemicals for the control of agricultural pests. Keywords: bioenergetics; energy budget; individual-based models; population dynamics.

The effects of word exposure frequency and elaboration of word processing on incidental L2 vocabulary acquisition through reading

Research on incidental second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition through reading has claimed that repeated encounters with unfamiliar words and the relative elaboration of processing these words facilitate word learning. However, so far both variables have been investigated in isolation. To help close this research gap, the current study investigates the differential effects of the variables ‘word exposure frequency’ and ‘elaboration of word processing’ on the initial word learning and subsequent word retention of advanced learners of L2 English. Whereas results showed equal effects for both variables on initial word learning, subsequent word retention was more contingent on elaborate processing of form–meaning relationships than on word frequency. These results, together with those of the studies reviewed, suggest that processing words again after reading (input–output cycles) is superior to reading-only tasks. The findings have significant implications for adaptation and development of teaching materials that enhance L2 vocabulary learning.

Scheduling satellite-based SAR acquisition for sequential assimilation of water level observations into flood modelling

Satellite-based Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) has proved useful for obtaining information on flood extent, which, when intersected with a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of the floodplain, provides water level observations that can be assimilated into a hydrodynamic model to decrease forecast uncertainty. With an increasing number of operational satellites with SAR capability, information on the relationship between satellite first visit and revisit times and forecast performance is required to optimise the operational scheduling of satellite imagery. By using an Ensemble Transform Kalman Filter (ETKF) and a synthetic analysis with the 2D hydrodynamic model LISFLOOD-FP based on a real flooding case affecting an urban area (summer 2007,Tewkesbury, Southwest UK), we evaluate the sensitivity of the forecast performance to visit parameters. We emulate a generic hydrologic-hydrodynamic modelling cascade by imposing a bias and spatiotemporal correlations to the inflow error ensemble into the hydrodynamic domain. First, in agreement with previous research, estimation and correction for this bias leads to a clear improvement in keeping the forecast on track. Second, imagery obtained early in the flood is shown to have a large influence on forecast statistics. Revisit interval is most influential for early observations. The results are promising for the future of remote sensing-based water level observations for real-time flood forecasting in complex scenarios.