Geometry of screw compressor rotors and their tools

This paper presents a method of general geometrical definitions of screw machine rotors and their manufacturing tools. It describes the details of lobe shape specification, and focuses on a new lobe profile, which yields a larger cross-sectional area and shorter sealing lines resulting in higher delivery rates for the same tip speed. A well proven mathematical model was used to determine the optimum profile, compressor housing size, and compressor ports to achieve the superior compressors.     

Funding,reputation and targets: the discursive logics of high-stakes testing

This paper provides insights into teacher and school-based administrators’ responses to policy demands for improved outcomes on high-stakes, standardised literacy and numeracy tests in Australia. Specifically, the research reveals the effects of the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), and associated policies, in the state of Queensland. Drawing suggestively across Michel Foucault’s notions of disciplinary power and subjectivity, and Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of social fields, the research utilises interviews with teachers and school-based administrators to reveal how high-stakes, standardised testing practices served to discursively constitute performative teacher subjectivities around issues of funding, teacher and school reputation and target-setting within what is described as the ‘field of schooling practices’. The paper argues that the contestation evident within this field is also reflective and constitutive of more educative schooling discourses and practices, even as performative logics dominate.     

‘I’m just a numbers person’: the complexity,nature and effects of the quantification of education

This paper draws upon the sociology of numbers, particularly work by Theodore Porter, to reveal the multifarious ways in which numbers actively constitute practices in schools. Drawing upon a case study of one low-performing school in a low-performing region in the state of Queensland, Australia, and theorising into the sociology of numbers, the research explores the complex ways in which numbers came to constitute and dominate the practices in this school site under a broader national, state and regional policy context demanding rapid improvements in various forms of standardised tests and associated practices. Specifically, the research reveals a strong and simultaneous focus by teachers upon a variety of numeric data collected at national, regional and local levels, and intricate relations between these data; multiple visualisation, triangulation and comparison approaches towards such data in virtual and physical formats; and the enumerative nominalisation of both students and their reading attainment in relation to specific, concretised levels of achievement and various types of scale scores. The research cautions against the sheer volume of such enumerative practices, which, while productive of teachers’ understandings of student capacity against standardised measures of achievement, may also lead to a more reductive view of education, dominated by concerns about achievement in standardised tests (and associated practices) alone.     

Estimation of a Nonlinear Intervention Phase Trajectory for Multiple-Baseline Design Data

A multilevel logistic model for estimating a nonlinear trajectory in a multiple-baseline design is introduced. The model is applied to data from a real multiple-baseline design study to demonstrate interpretation of relevant parameters. A simple change-in-levels (ΔLevels) model and a model involving a quadratic function (Quadratic) for the nonlinear intervention phase data were also estimated. In addition, a simulation study was conducted to assess Markov chain Monte Carlo estimation of the logistic model and compare its trajectory recovery with use of the ΔLevels and Quadratic models. While most of the logistic model's parameter values were recovered well, trajectory recovery was very reasonable using the simpler Quadratic model. Results are discussed along with recommendations for practitioners and directions for future research.     

Education as a ‘risky business’: Theorising student and teacher learning in complex times

This paper employs sociological literature on risk and the commodification of education to explain current schooling practices in a context of increased concerns about students’ behaviour and results on standardised tests of achievement. Drawing upon teacher and student learning practices in three school sites in south-east Queensland, Australia, the article reveals how specific tests, packages and programmes have been employed as technologies of governance to minimise the risk of adverse student behaviour, maximise student outcomes on standardised tests, and provide teachers with discrete learning experiences construed as improving such outcomes. The sum total of these foci is the construction of education as an increasingly ‘risky business’ which employs a myriad of products and tests to manage perceived and actual risks. The paper also reveals how these products and processes constitute student misbehaviour and inadequate teacher and student learning as ‘risk objects’ requiring constant intervention, but which also inhibit inclusion in schooling settings, and challenge teachers’ professionalism.     

Similarities,divergence, and incapacity in the Bologna Process reform implementation by the former-socialist countries: the self-defeat of state regulations

This qualitative analysis describes the socialist legacy in the governance of higher education within the former Soviet-led member countries that entered the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) between 2001 and 2010. In joining the EHEA these countries signed on for the Bologna Process (BP), but are not members of the European Union. The analysis is based on EHEA BP Country Reports and a survey of Western academic literature and sources from the former-socialist region. It is argued that ministries of education are little engaged with academic and civic communities, in large part because policymakers underestimate the depth of the cultural and institutional changes that are necessary for educational reforms. Therefore, deep convergence of the new signatory countries to the EHEA via the BP has not occurred. Concurrently, West European measures intended to empower educational communities operate perversely in the post-socialist region, characterised by low civic and state capacities. The over-emphasis on bureaucratic checks and controls negates two important aspirations of Bologna: on the one side, university autonomy, empowerment of faculty, and development of local communities; and on the other side, the free flow of international knowledge. Without an adjustment of policies, the prospects for effective reforms are dimmed.     

Suprasegmental Phonology Development and Reading Acquisition: A Longitudinal Study

Previous studies implicate suprasegmental phonology in reading acquisition. However, little is known about how suprasegmental sensitivity develops or how it contributes to reading. Here, 130 Spanish primary-school children participated in this 2-year longitudinal study. Nonlinguistic rhythm, lexical-stress sensitivity and metrical-stress sensitivity, along with phonological awareness, vocabulary, nonverbal intelligence, and reading aloud, were assessed on five occasions. Results suggest that prosody abilities have different developmental trajectories and that prosody explains unique variance in reading beyond that explained by other factors. There was some evidence that the contribution of each prosody skill occurred at different phases in reading development. Nonlinguistic rhythm, lexical-stress sensitivity, and metrical-stress sensitivity assessed at the end of kindergarten, the start of Grade 1, and the end of Grade 1, respectively, predicted reading performance 6 months later. Nevertheless, sample size and reliability temper the conclusions that can be made. The implications of prosody skills for literacy development are discussed.