The new inset: a transformation scene

The work of Lawrence Stenhouse strongly promoted the view that curriculum development was dependent upon teacher development and as such, has had a great impact on the in‐service education of teachers. Such a teacher‐centred model is now called in question by recent DES moves in relation to the funding and control of INSET. By exploiting the mechanisms of categorical funding, as refined by the MSC, it seems likely that the Department will be able to impose a conception of ‘curriculum led staff development’, which originated in Further Education. Such a conception assumes that curriculum is a given and that the development needs of teachers may be deduced from it, thus increasingly restricting them to the business of execution and not of conception.     

Post-secondary Science Students’ Explanations of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Randomness</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Variation</Emphasis> and Implications for Science Learning

The concepts of randomness and variation are pervasive in science. The purpose of this study was to document how post-secondary life science students explain randomness and variation, infer relationships between their explanations, and ability to describe and identify appropriate and inappropriate variation, and determine if students can identify sources of variation. An instrument designed to test statistical concepts was administered to 282 college students from three universities, ranging from introductory non-science majors to science graduate students. Students readily distinguished between causes of variation. A naïve no-pattern concept of randomness persisted from first-year non-science majors to senior-level science majors, contributing to incorrect responses on the variation instrument. Students’ expressions of randomness were better predictors of performance on the variation instrument than their expressions of variation. It is argued that inclusion of everyday language uses of randomness in instruction can bridge the gap between vernacular and scientific uses of this term.     

Methodology in Sports History: Learning from Legal Scholarship?

The brief note aims to illustrate how historical context has contributed to my writing on modern sports law and principally through two pieces of work – the first relating to the historical, sui generis origins of the legality of combat or fighting sports, which continues to stretch the boundaries of core principles of criminal law, such as reasonable consent to bodily harm, to their utmost; and second, and more generally, the ‘historicalegal’ influences on the development of modern sport in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. Before that is done, it is best to give some account of research methodologies in legal scholarship and principally as they apply to legal history.     

Cognitive Empathy and the Transition to Independent Graduate Study in Mathematics

Thirteen Ph.D. students took part in interviews focussed on the nature of their own learning of mathematics. In analysing these interviews an unexpected category emerged concerning the students awareness of others as having particular types of learning goal. In this paper we explore the three levels which we discerned within this category and link them to the notion of cognitive empathy. We suggest that differences in ones own cognitive style are linked to differences in the ability to empathise with those who have alternative learning goals. We also consider how these two features – cognitive style and cognitive empathy – may come to be linked.     

Novel model reference adaptive control laws for improved transient dynamics and guaranteed saturation constraints

In classical model reference adaptive control (MRAC), the adaptive rates must be tuned to meet multiple competing objectives. Large adaptive rates guarantee rapid convergence of the trajectory tracking error to zero. However, large adaptive rates may also induce saturation of the actuators and excessive overshoots of the closed-loop system’s trajectory tracking error. Conversely, low adaptive rates may produce unsatisfactory trajectory tracking performances. To overcome these limitations, in the classical MRAC framework, the adaptive rates must be tuned through an iterative process. Alternative approaches require to modify the plant’s reference model or the reference command input. This paper presents the first MRAC laws for nonlinear dynamical systems affected by matched and parametric uncertainties that constrain both the closed-loop system’s trajectory tracking error and the control input at all times within user-defined bounds, and enforce a user-defined rate of convergence on the trajectory tracking error. By applying the proposed MRAC laws, the adaptive rates can be set arbitrarily large and both the plant’s reference model and the reference command input can be chosen arbitrarily. The user-defined rate of convergence of the closed-loop plant’s trajectory is enforced by introducing a user-defined auxiliary reference model, which converges to the trajectory tracking error obtained by applying the classical MRAC laws before its transient dynamics has decayed, and steering the trajectory tracking error to the auxiliary reference model at a rate of convergence that is higher than the rate of convergence of the plant’s reference model. The ability of the proposed MRAC laws to prescribe the performance of the closed-loop system’s trajectory tracking error and control input is guaranteed by barrier Lyapunov functions. Numerical simulations illustrate both the applicability of our theoretical results and their effectiveness compared to other techniques such as prescribed performance control, which allows to constrain both the rate of convergence and the maximum overshoot on the trajectory tracking error of uncertain systems.     

Clinical librarians,a new tribe in the UK: roles and responsibilities

Aims: The aims of this research were to determine the background, education, training experience, roles and responsibilities of practising Clinical Librarians (CL) in the UK. This paper reports the findings of a survey undertaken in 2007 at the third Clinical Librarian conference. This research builds on research undertaken by Harrison and Sargeant in 2002 and Ward in 2004, and can be considered as part of a longitudinal study of the role of the CL in the UK. Objectives: The objectives of the research were to define and gain a broad understanding of the role of the CL in the UK highlighting similarities and differences amongst the professionals and provide evidence for a baseline of skills and activities for the CL role. The type of sampling used was Judgemental. Results/analysis: Results/analysis detail the skills and activities undertaken by CLs. Searching for information for Clinicians was the activity most frequently undertaken. Developing good relationships with other healthcare professionals was considered essential. Two‐thirds of the respondents held a postgraduate library qualification. Conclusions: Crucially a new model for the UK CL role is derived drawing on the findings of this study and the existing literature.