Assessment for learning and for self-regulation

Drawing on a research study of formative assessment practices in Irish schools, this paper traces the design, development and pilot of the Assessment for Learning Audit instrument (AfLAi) - a research tool for measuring teachers’ understanding and deployment of formative teaching, learning and assessment practices. Underpinning the paper is an extensive body of international research connecting assessment for learning pedagogy with student self-regulation, mental health and well-being. Reflecting on the potential of the AfLAi as a research tool, an activity systems framework is advanced as a mechanism to engage researchers and teachers in meaningful site-based continuous professional development that supports teachers’ interrogation of aggregated school data derived from their responses to the AfLAi. It is argued that by de-privatising classroom practice in this way and challenging teachers to examine self-reports of their understanding and use of assessment for learning pedagogy, the extent to which students are afforded opportunities to develop as self-regulating learners is laid bare. In turn, the teaching, learning and assessment conditions that serve to create and sustain selfregulation by students emerge. The paper is premised on a commitment to a biopsychosocial approach to mental health and to an inter-disciplinary, multi-lens, research agenda that will yield comprehensive, dynamic insights and understandings to inform future practice.peer-reviewe

Irish pre-service teachers’ expectations for teaching as a career: a snapshot at a time of transition

Recent graduates of teacher education programmes in Ireland are entering their careers at a time characterized by an erosion of teacher autonomy, increased bureaucratic demands, and narrower curriculum specifications. These changes are typical features of what Sahlberg (2011) has termed the global educational reform movement (GERM), and evidence suggests that they can have a negative impact on teacher morale, and on how teaching as a career is perceived. This, in turn, can have detrimental effects on teacher recruitment and retention. This study examined the career expectations of two cohorts of Irish pre-service teachers (n=491) at the point of transition between college and work. The data gathered were also used to investigate if recent changes to the B.Ed. programme are associated with any changes in career expectations. Overall, teachers indicated strong expectations on issues such as doing a worthwhile job, feeling satisfied with pupil achievement and fulfilling personal needs, however, expectations with regard to the adequacy of salaries were low, and appear to have diminished further throughout the period 2014 to 2016

Timing verification of dynamically reconfigurable logic for Xilinx Virtex FPGA series

This paper reports on a method for extending existing VHDL design and verification software available for the Xilinx Virtex series of FPGAs. It allows the designer to apply standard hardware design and verification tools to the design of dynamically reconfigurable logic (DRL). The technique involves the conversion of a dynamic design into multiple static designs, suitable for input to standard synthesis and APR tools. For timing and functional verification after APR, the sections of the design can then be recombined into a single dynamic system. The technique has been automated by extending an existing DRL design tool named DCSTech, which is part of the Dynamic Circuit Switching (DCS) CAD framework. The principles behind the tools are generic and should be readily extensible to other architectures and CAD toolsets. Implementation of the dynamic system involves the production of partial configuration bitstreams to load sections of circuitry. The process of creating such bitstreams, the final stage of our design flow, is summarized

MERIC and RADAR generator: tools for energy evaluation and runtime tuning of HPC applications

This paper introduces two tools for manual energy evaluation and runtime tuning developed at IT4Innovations in the READEX project. The MERIC library can be used for manual instrumentation and analysis of any application from the energy and time consumption point of view. Besides tracing, MERIC can also change environment and hardware parameters during the application runtime, which leads to energy savings. MERIC stores large amounts of data, which are difficult to read by a human. The RADAR generator analyses the MERIC output files to find the best settings of evaluated parameters for each instrumented region. It generates a Open image in new window report and a MERIC configuration file for application production runs

Teacher perspectives on standardized testing of achievement in Ireland

In the years since 2007 the role of standardized testing in Irish primary (elementary schools has become increasingly prominent. All schools are now required to administer tests in English reading and mathematics in 2nd, 4th and 6th grades, and to report aggregated results to their Boards of Management and the Department of Education and Skills (DES). Schools are also required to share the results with parents/guardians at the three mandatory testing points and to do this in written format using end-of-year school reports DES, 2011. As of September 2017, the results are used at national level as part of the process involved in determining the allocation of special educational teaching resources to schools DES, 2017. The research described in this paper represents a collaboration between the Centre for Assessment Research, Policy and Practice in Education (CARPE) based at Dublin City University and the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) - the largest teachers' trade union in Ireland representing 95%+ of all teachers at the elementary level. In examining elementary teachers use of and attitudes to standardized tests at a time when the stakes associated with this form of assessment are growing, the research exemplifies the AERA 2020 conference theme: “The Power and Possibilities for the Public Good When Researchers and Organizational Stakeholders Collaborate.

Queering Belfast: Some thoughts on the sexing of space

In this paper we use data from interviews and focus groups with gay men, lesbians and bisexuals living in Belfast to provide a queer reading of the city. Drawing on the work of queer theory, we argue, contrary to much of the literature on sexuality and space, that space is neither purely encoded as ‘heterosexual’ or ‘gay’. Instead we posit that all space is queered, that the sexing of space is always partial and contested, always in a process of becoming; that heterosexist spatiality, for example, is profoundly unstable, continuously engaged in the process of reproducing itself. Reconceptualising socio-spatial relations in this way, we contend, allows for a more nuanced and differentiated, geographical reading of sexual dissidence, one that acknowledges the fluidity and complexity of individuals’ self-identifications with regard to sexual-orientation and their diverse spatialities, as evidenced in our interviews.

Influence of autoionizing states on the pulse-length dependence of strong-field Ne+ photoionization at 38.4 eV

International audienceUsing the time-dependent R-matrix approach, we investigate ionization of ground-state Ne +, irradiated by laser light with a photon energy of 38.4 eV at intensities 10 13 W cm −2, 2 × 10 13 W cm −2 and 10 14 W cm −2 as a function of pulse length. Although the photon energy is below the threshold for single-photon ionization, we obtain a significant contribution from single-photon ionization to the ionization probability due to the finite duration of the pulse. The two-photon ionization rates deduced from the calculations are consistent with those obtained in R-matrix-Floquet rate calculations. The ionization probability oscillates with pulse length, which is ascribed to population and depopulation of autoionizing states just above the Ne 2+ ground state, reached after absorption of a single photon. At an intensity of 10 14 W cm −2, pulse lengths longer than 50 cycles are required for two-photon ionization to dominate the ionization probability. Letter to the Editor 2 The development of free-electron lasers operating in the VUV and the X-ray domain has given experimentalists new ways of investigating multi-electron dynamics in strong laser fields. These new laser facilities have, for example, enabled experimentalists to investigate two-photon double ionization of Ne in the photon-energy regime where direct two-photon double ionization is energetically allowed, but sequential (Ne → Ne + → Ne 2+) double ionization is energetically not allowed since the photon energy is not sufficient to ionize Ne + with a single photon (eg. Sorokin et al 2007). At larger photon energies, sequential double ionization is allowed, but also in this process one can find signatures of the fact that the two different emission processes are not independent of each other (Fritzsche et al 2008). One of the grand challenges in theoretical atomic physics is the description of multielectron dynamics in complex atoms irradiated by intense laser pulses. Over the last 15 years, great progress has been made in the description of pure two-electron systems in intense laser fields, for example for two-photon double ionization processes (see, for example, Colgan et al 2002, Feng and van der Hart 2003, Laulan et al 2005, Feist et al 2008) as well as for multiphoton double ionization at 390 nm (Parker et al 2006). These calculations require substantial computational resources, such that the direct extension of these techniques to systems with more than two electrons, like Ne, is unfeasible at present. Other approaches are required to describe the behaviour of complex atoms in intense light fields. The most successful approach for the description of complex atoms in intense laser light at present is the R-matrix-Floquet approach. This approach was designed from the outset to treat complex atoms in intense light fields by combining the R-matrix approach with the Floquet Ansatz (Burke et al 1991). It has been applied to a wide range of problems, ranging from strong-field ionization of Ne and Ar at 390 nm, requiring absorption of at least eight and six photons respectively, (van der Hart 2006) to twophoton emission of the inner 1s electron from ground-state Li − (van der Hart 2005). More recently, the R-matrix-Floquet approach has been instrumental in indicating the importance of detailed atomic structure in two-photon ionization of Ne + (Hamonou et al 2008, Hamonou and van der Hart 2008). The theoretical investigation of ionization processes in Ne + is of particular relevance at the moment, due to the large number of strong-field multiple ionization studies on Ne at photon energies in the range between 38 and 50 eV. Ionization yields of various Ne ions were obtained by Sorokin et al (2007) at photon energies below the Ne + ionization threshold and above this threshold. Moshammer et al (2007) obtained detailed recoil momentum spectra for two-photon double ionization of Ne at 44 eV. Rudenko et al (2008) found that these recoil-ion momentum distributions differed strongly from the recoil-ion momentum distributions for two-photon double ionization of He at 44 eV. At 44 eV, sequential double ionization is allowed for Ne, whereas it is not allowed for He. The dominance of sequential double ionization of Ne was demonstrated experimentally by Kurka et al (2009). Whereas in previous work (Hamonou et al 2008, Hamonou and van der Hart 2009)

Unpacking the foundational dimensions of work integration social enterprise: the development of an assessment tool

Purpose The aim of this exploratory, mixed methods study was to develop and test a tool that identifies foundational dimensions of work integration social enterprises (WISEs) for use in empirical studies and enterprise self-assessment. Construction of the initial prototype was based upon a review of the literature and prior qualitative research by the authors. Design/methodology/approach A 20-item question pool with a four-point response scale was constructed to explore WISE business and employment practices and strategies for worker growth and development. Three sequential field tests were conducted with the prototype – the first with 5 Canadian WISEs, the second with 14 WISEs in the UK and the third with 6 Canadian WISEs involved in an outcome study in the mental health sector. Each field test included completion of the questionnaire by persons with managerial responsibility within the WISE and evaluative feedback captured through questions on the applicability and interpretability of the items. Findings Testing of the prototype instrument revealed the inherent diversity in the field and the difficulty in creating questions that both embrace that diversity and produce unidimensional variables definable along a spectrum. A number of challenges with question structure were identified and have been modified throughout the iterative testing process. Research limitations/implications This study identified central domains for inclusion in a multi-dimensional WISE assessment tool. Further testing will help further refine scaling and establish psychometric properties. Originality/value This measure will provide a descriptive profile of WISEs across sectors and identify WISE core dimensions for research and organizational development. </jats:sec