Teacher induction: personal intelligence and the mentoring relationship

This article is aimed at probationer teachers in Scotland, their induction supporters, and all those with a responsibility for their support and professional development. It argues that the induction process is not merely a mechanistic one, supported only by systems in schools, local authorities and the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS), but a more complex process where the relationship between the new teacher and the supporter is central to its success. In particular, the characteristics and skills of the induction supporter in relation to giving feedback are influential. This applies to feedback in all its forms – formative and summative, formal and informal. The ability of the probationer to handle that feedback and to be proactive in the process is also important

Health and physical education 2013

In 2013 the National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement assessed student achievement in two learning areas of the New Zealand Curriculum–health and physical education, and mathematics and statistics. This report focuses on health and physical education. Summary The National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement–Wānangatia Te Putanga Tauira–is designed to assess and understand student achievement across the New Zealand Curriculum at Year 4 and Year 8 in New Zealand’s English-medium state schools. The main purposes of National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement are: • to provide a snapshot of student achievement against the New Zealand Curriculum; • to identify factors that are associated with achievement; • to assess strengths and weaknesses across the curriculum; • to measure change in student achievement over time; and • to provide high quality, robust information for policy makers, curriculum planners and educators. National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement assessed achievement inhealth and physical education in two ways: by using a measure of Critical Thinking in Health and Physical Education; and descriptive reporting of students’ understanding of well-being, and the demonstration of a range of movement and strategic action skills within the contexts of games, and movement sequences. The Critical Thinking in Health and Physical Education achievement measure was aligned to the levels of the New Zealand Curriculum.Other data related to students’, teachers’ and principals’views of  teaching and learning in health and physical education were also collected via questionnaires. &nbsp

Valuing All Languages in Europe

The VALEUR project (2004-2007) took as its focus the 'additional' languages of Europe. These are defined as all languages in use in contexts where they are not 'national', 'official', or 'dominant' languages. They include 'migrant' languages, 'regional/minority' languages, sign languages and 'non-territorial' languages of diasporas such as Yiddish and Romani. The project team brought together a range of expertise in sociolinguistics and language pedagogy, planning and research from Finland, Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the UK. We took as our starting point Council of Europe policies on plurilingualism and the desirability of promoting linguistic diversity both for individual citizenship and for social cohesion in Europe. Our aim was to map provision for additional languages in Europe, in a more systematic and inclusive way than ever before. We looked at provision at school level for different languages in different contexts in order to identify good practices to be shared. In order to achieve our objectives we drew on the good will and enthusiasm of workshop participants, who provided a wealth of information and insights from 21 of the Council of Europe member states. Our work is not definitive: its purpose is awareness-raising and to stimulate further activity to support the learning of all Europe's languages

Perinatal mental health : preparing the future nursing workforce

Perinatal mental health (PMH) problems occur during pregnancy and up to a year after giving birth. They can have a significant effect on the mother and family, and can affect the social, emotional and cognitive development of the child. PMH nursing is gaining increasing recognition in national policy; additional funding has been announced to align national perinatal services with agreed standards and the perinatal workforce has been identified as an area of growth. The PMH competency framework published by Health Education England and the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, London, is aimed at training staff to deliver high-quality care to women who experience mental health problems during the perinatal period. However, the framework does not address the competencies required from the emerging workforce: nursing students. The pre-registration nursing curriculum must align with PMH competencies to ensure that nursing students become competent practitioners who are adequately prepared to care for the PMH needs of the mother and family

Can grey ravens fly? Beyond Frayling's categories

This paper analyses the effect of Christopher Frayling's (1993) categorisation of artistic research ‘research into art and design, research through art and design and research for art and design’ on the debate surrounding the efficacy of studio-based artistic research as being valid within the university. James Elkins (2009:128) describes this as ‘the incommensurability of studio art production and university life’. Through an exploration of the positive and negative responses to Frayling this paper seeks to explore the influence that these initial definitions have come to have on framing the scope of the debate. The paper presents a range of responses and analyses them and focuses especially on the alternative frameworks that have been suggested and examines why they have so far not created a coherent and uncontested frame-work for practice-led research in the art and design field especially in relation to fine art

Using network centrality measures to manage landscape connectivity

We use a graph-theoretical landscape modeling approach to investigate how to identify central patches in the landscape as well as how these central patches influence (1) organism movement within the local neighborhood, and (2) the dispersal of organisms beyond the local neighborhood. Organism movements were theoretically estimated based on the spatial configuration of the habitat patches in the studied landscape. We find that centrality depends on the way the graph-theoretical model of habitat patches is constructed, although even the simplest network representation, not taking strength and directionality of potential organisms flows into account, still provides a coarse-grained assessment of the most important patches according to their contribution to landscape connectivity. Moreover, we identify (at least) two general classes of centrality. One accounts for the local flow of organisms in the neighborhood of a patch and the other for the ability to maintain connectivity beyond the scale of the local neighborhood. Finally, we study how habitat patches with high scores on different network centrality measures are distributed in a fragmented agricultural landscape in Madagascar. Results show that patches with high degree-, and betweenness centrality are widely spread, while patches with high subgraph- and closeness centrality are clumped together in dense clusters. This finding may enable multi-species analyses of single-species network models

Charter of the International Council for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF)

Charter establishing ICRAF, signed January 27, 1979, headquartered in Kenya

Social work training or social work education? An approach to curriculum design

Population ageing, economic circumstances, and human behaviour are placing social welfare systems under great strain. In England extensive reform of the social work profession is taking place. Training curricula are being redesigned in the context of new standards of competence for social workers – the Professional Capabilities Framework (PCF). Students must be equipped on qualifying to address an extensive range of human problems, presenting major challenges to educators. Critical theory suggests an approach to tackle one such challenge – selecting the essential content required for areas of particular practice. Teaching on social work with older people is used to illustrate this. Habermas’ theory of cognitive interests highlights the different professional roles served by the social work knowledge base - instrumental, interpretive, and emancipatory. Howe’s application of sociological theory distinguished four social work roles corresponding to these. It is suggested that curriculum design decisions must enable practitioners to operate in each. When preparing students to work with older people, educators therefore need to include interpretive and emancipatory perspectives, and not construct social work purely as an instrumental response to problems older people present. This approach provides one useful rationale for curriculum design decisions, which is applicable to other areas of practice, and to contexts outside England