Peer Observation of Teaching & Staff Development

Peer Observation of Teaching (POT) is a little used way of stimulating reflection on and improvement of teaching. It is an unusual form of staff development [SD] that emphasises continuous processes and peer feedback rather than course attendance. This paper describes the principles and practice of POT, including potential benefits and drawbacks and discusses the conditions necessary for it to flourish in departments and institutions. It argues that POT overcomes the problem of staff ownership'of SD by connecting with peer culture but may be promoted, implemented and supported by SD functions linked to personnel departments. Thus SD functions may play a more substantial role in their organisations'development than hitherto.     

Data integrity boards: Institutional innovation and congressional oversight

This article is a preliminary analysis of the first few years of the Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act of 1988 (CMPPA). The act requires Federal agencies to establish Data Integrity Boards (DIBs) with responsibility to approve written agreements for computer matches in which their agencies are involved. Information for this analysis was collected from the annual reports on computer matching submitted by agencies to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for 1990 and 1991 and from 108 matching agreements. The secretaries of several DIBs were also interviewed. The effectiveness of DIBs and matching agreements are analyzed using McCubbins and Schwartz's distinction between “police-patrol” and “fire- alarm” oversight. The article concludes that more active and direct oversight, which would occur through an independent data protection or privacy board, is necessary.     

Book reviews

^cAbd al‐Malik b. Habib. Kitāb al‐Ta'rij (La historia). Edición y estudio por Jorge Aguadé. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas & Instituto de Cooperación con el Mundo Arabe, 1991 (Fuentes Arabico‐Hispanas, 1). 163 + 224 pp. [Arabic title: Kltāb al‐Ta'tikh]

Kedar, Benjamin Z., ed. The Horns of Hattin. Jerusalem and London: Yad Izhak Ben‐Zvi, Israel Exploration Society and Variorum 1992. 368 pp., 12 plates; $74.75 (cloth).

Köprülü, Mehmed Fuad. The Seljuks of Anatolia: Their History and Culture According to Local Muslim Sources. Translated and edited by Gary Leiser. Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 1992. xi +101 pp., $22.00 (cloth).

Cameron, Averil and Conrad, Lawrence I., eds. The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East: Problems in the Literary Source Material (Papers in the First Workshop on Late Antiquity and Early Islam). Princeton: The Darwin Press, 1992. xiv + 428pp., 12 plates; $29.25 (cloth).

Vereno, Ingolf. Studien zum ältesten alchemistischen Schrifttum. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1992 (Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, 155). 414pp.

Tolan, John. Petrus Alfonsi and his Medieval Readers. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 1993. xv + 288pp., $34.95 (cloth), $16.95 (paper).

Lassner, Jacob. Demonizing the Queen of Sheba: Boundaries of Gender and Culture in Postbiblical Judaism and Medieval Islam. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1994. 281 pp., $19.95 (paper), $49.95 (cloth).

Menocal, María Rosa. Shards of Love: Exile and the Origins of the Lyric. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1994. xv + 295pp., $34.95 (cloth), $14.95 (paper).

Massignon, Louis. The Passion of al‐Hallāj, Mystic and Martyr of Islam. Translated and edited by Herbert Mason. Abridged edition, Bollingen Series XCVIII. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. xxxi + 293pp.

Viguera Molins, Maria Jesús. El Islam en Aragón. Saragossa: Caja de Ahorros de la Inmaculada, 1995 (Colección “Mariano de Pano y Ruata”, 9), 174 pp., 182 ills. in colour, maps, diagrams, charts etc No price stated.     

Adjacency matrix concepts for the analysis of the interconnection of networks

A mathematical theory is developed for an imagined device termed a “junctor”. A junctor could be used to interconnect two n-terminal networks giving rise to another n-terminal network. Actually a junctor is itself a simple network with three banks of n-terminals internally connected in some fashion by perfectly conducting wires. Adjacency matrices are formulated to analyze various junctors and their current flows. The main problem treated concerns conditions which would ensure that the junctor operation is associative.