What do others think is the point of design and technology education?

As a result of a national curriculum review in England (Department for Education [DfE], 2011), a new curriculum for design and technology (D&T) is being taught in secondary schools from September 2014 (Department of Education [DoE], 2013a). This curriculum is compulsory for a decreasing number of schools; two potential consequences are the nature of D&T in secondary schools changing to reflect local perceptions of the subject and maybe D&T being removed from the curriculum completely. The pressure on D&T’s curriculum content is likely to come from different stakeholders such as senior school leaders, D&T teachers, and pupils. D&T school departments could respond to this pressure by adapting the curriculum to popularise the subject or produce high exam results with a consequence that much of the subject’s value is lost. This paper reports on a small research project conducted in two secondary schools where stakeholder representatives were interviewed to identify their values of D&T. These different stakeholders were interviewed using the active interview method (Holstein & Gubrium, 1995), coded following Aurebach and Silverstein’s method (2003) and their values compared to Hardy’s values framework (Hardy, 2013b). Analysis shows most stakeholders believe a key value of D&T is to provide ‘practical life skills’ (Hardy, p.226), whilst only one recognizes that learning in D&T involves ‘identifying problems to be solved’. The outcomes from the research are being used to support critically reflective conversations within both D&T departments (Zwozdiak-Myers, 2012) framing their evaluation of their local curriculum and making changes to their curriculum

The Development of Instruments for Assessment of Instructional Practices in Standards-Based Teaching

We provide a description and rationale for the development of two instruments: 1) a classroom observation protocol; and, 2) a teacher interview protocol—designed to document the impact of reform-based professional development with undergraduate mathematics and science faculty, and its impact on the resultant preparation of teachers. Constructed upon review of the research on teaching and standards documents in mathematics and science, these instruments form the basis for data collection in a three-year longitudinal study of teaching practice among early career teachers as well as undergraduate college faculty. In addition, we suggest further applications of the observation protocol beyond the original purpose of our research study

The social negotiation of fitness for work: tensions in doctor-patient relationships over medical certification of chronic pain

The UK government is promoting the health benefits of work, in order to change doctors' and patients' behaviour and reduce sickness absence. The rationale is that many people 'off sick' would have better outcomes by staying at work; but reducing the costs of health care and benefits is also an imperative. Replacement of the 'sick note' with the 'fit note' and a national educational programme are intended to reduce sickness-certification rates, but how will these initiatives impact on doctor-patient relationships and the existing tension between the doctor as patient advocate and gate-keeper to services and benefits? This tension is particularly acute for problems like chronic pain where diagnosis, prognosis and work capacity can be unclear. We interviewed 13 doctors and 30 chronic pain patients about their experiences of negotiating medical certification for work absence and their views of the new policies. Our findings highlight the limitations of naïve rationalist approaches to judgements of work absence and fitness for work for people with chronic pain. Moral, socio-cultural and practical factors are invoked by doctors and patients to contest decisions, and although both groups support the fit note's focus on capacity, they doubt it will overcome tensions in the consultation. Doctors value tacit skills of persuasion and negotiation that can change how patients conceptualise their illness and respond to it. Policy-makers increasingly recognise the role of this tacit knowledge and we conclude that sick-listing can be improved by further developing these skills and acknowledging the structural context within which protagonists negotiate sick-listin

Asymptotic dynamics of the exceptional Bianchi cosmologies

In this paper we give, for the first time, a qualitative description of the asymptotic dynamics of a class of non-tilted spatially homogeneous (SH) cosmologies, the so-called exceptional Bianchi cosmologies, which are of Bianchi type VI$_{-1/9}$. This class is of interest for two reasons. Firstly, it is generic within the class of non-tilted SH cosmologies, being of the same generality as the models of Bianchi types VIII and IX. Secondly, it is the SH limit of a generic class of spatially inhomogeneous $G_{2}$ cosmologies. Using the orthonormal frame formalism and Hubble-normalized variables, we show that the exceptional Bianchi cosmologies differ from the non-exceptional Bianchi cosmologies of type VI$_{h}$ in two significant ways. Firstly, the models exhibit an oscillatory approach to the initial singularity and hence are not asymptotically self-similar. Secondly, at late times, although the models are asymptotically self-similar, the future attractor for the vacuum-dominated models is the so-called Robinson-Trautman SH model instead of the vacuum SH plane wave models.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Class. Quantum Gra

Asymptotic silence-breaking singularities

We discuss three complementary aspects of scalar curvature singularities: asymptotic causal properties, asymptotic Ricci and Weyl curvature, and asymptotic spatial properties. We divide scalar curvature singularities into two classes: so-called asymptotically silent singularities and non-generic singularities that break asymptotic silence. The emphasis in this paper is on the latter class which have not been previously discussed. We illustrate the above aspects and concepts by describing the singularities of a number of representative explicit perfect fluid solutions.Comment: 25 pages, 6 figure

Exhaust jet wake and thrust characteristics of several nozzles designed for VTOL DOWNWASH suppression. Tests in and out of ground effect with 70 deg F and 1200 deg F nozzle discharge temperatures

Jet wake degradation and thrust characteristics of exhaust nozzles designed for VTOL downwash suppression and fuselage and ground effect