The thesis focuses on the issue of the assessment of social work students in practice learning settings and draws on multi-disciplinary and international literature. The dissertation considers why practice assessors find it so difficult to fail social work students and what might get in the way of failing a student. The rationale for such an exploration concerns the relatively limited literature from both social work and other disciplines where there is a practice-learning element and what limited literature there is often appears under-theorised. A further rationale to explore this area of professional practice concerns the author‟s own experiences as a social work practitioner, practice assessor and social work educator. Located within a qualitative framework, the methodological influences on the research include: ethnography, life story and narrative approaches as well as practitioner-research paradigms; although it is clear that as the research progressed, practitioner-research paradigms became more influential. Based on twenty in-depth interviews with both new and experienced practice assessors, the research utilises the voice centred relational method to analyse the data. From this narrative process a number of stories emerge, including; “The Angry Story”, “The Dramatic Event Story”, “The Guilty Story”, “The Idealised Learner Story”, “The Internalising Failure So I Couldn‟t Always Failure Them Story”, “The Lack of Reflection Story” and the “What is my Role/Assessment Story”. Psychodynamic frameworks have been employed to theorise and make sense of these various stories as well as transactional analytical perspectives. Differences in approach to practice assessing are also considered, most notably around how practice assessors‟ conceptualise, make use of and understand the assessment process. It is also clear that disability, gender, ethnicity, class and sexuality also impact on the assessment process. For some practice assessors, ultimately the evidence of students' competence appears to rest on hope. It appears that some practice assessors are still giving students “the benefit of the doubt” a phrase coined thirty years ago by Brandon and Davies (1979) in a wide ranging but still very relevant study of the assessment of social work students in practice settings. Practice assessors thus find it difficult to fail students because of: Their lack of reflection about the intense emotions raised; The internalisation of these intense feelings; Lack of support from colleagues, the Higher Education Institute (HEI) and tutors; Lack of understanding about the process of assessment; Difficulties in managing the multifaceted role of the practice educator including the lack of acknowledgment of the gate keeping function.The dissertation concludes that although practice assessors have a very clear understanding of what behaviours might hypothetically cause a student to fail the practice learning opportunity, the reality is that not all practice assessors go on to fail the student. The high emotionality often associated with the process of managing a potentially failing student on placement often obscures the process. The thesis argues the need for practitioners to consider the intense feelings that arise in difficult practice learning opportunity situations in a more reflective, contained and considered manner. A number of ways forward have been suggested in light of these findings, including the need to pilot a reflective toolkit for practice assessors and students alike.

This thesis investigates how secondary school history teachers at the start of their teaching careers view the nature and purposes of their subject and how they think these views impact on their practice. Data were collected through in depth individual qualitative interviews with eleven teachers completing their initial training. These focused on: how these beginning teachers conceived of the nature of their discipline; the rationale they presented for the purposes of their subject in the school curriculum; the origins of their views on the nature and purposes of history; and how they are manifest in what and how they teach. In order to maintain coherence and to represent the richness and complexity of each teacher's own story these were written, analysed and presented as narrative accounts. A summary is given of each the accounts with three presented in full. The accounts show these beginning history teachers' views on the nature of history as reflecting the dominant discourse that characterises history as an academic subject, being largely Constructionist and emphasising the objective analysis of historical evidence. The teachers' rationales for the purpose of history emphasised broader educational, social and moral purposes. More postmodern perspectives are apparent in the emphasis given to the importance of historical interpretations. Family background, lived experiences, literature and the media are significant influences on the teachers' beliefs about the nature and purposes of history. These beliefs seem to impact on classroom practice and pupil learning in the subject. They influence teaching style, choice of learning activities and the areas of historical understanding emphasised, with, for example, views of the past as an uncontested body of knowledge leading to a pedagogy dominated by the transmission of substantive knowledge; and views which emphasise the more constructed nature of history leading to more pupil centred skills based approaches. Teachers' views on the nature and purpose of the subject are a significant influence on their mediation of the National Curriculum. The National Curriculum for History has increasingly provided opportunities for interpretations more sympathetic to the postmodern orientation but research and inspection evidence suggest that these opportunities are often poorly realised in schools. One reason for this is proposed as history teachers' lack of engagement with postmodern perspectives on history. It is important for teachers to engage with such approaches as without further consideration of their implications history teachers are unable to teach aspects of secondary History. Teachers also need to recognise and make explicit different orientations towards history in order to facilitate pupil learning, to engage pupils and to provide them with the skills necessary to be critical consumers of the range of histories presented to them in society. The research has implications for history teaching, pupil learning and the initial training and professional development of teachers. The case is made for further consideration being given to postmodern perspectives on the nature of history in initial and continuing teacher education in order to improve teaching and learning. The initial teacher education of history teachers needs to ensure that those on programmes have the syntactical knowledge necessary to develop effective teaching strategies and approaches, to enable pupil learning, and to develop their own subject knowledge and ability to reflect on their own practice and development. This research also emphasises the need for all those involved in training to critically engage with subject orientations as where beginning teachers' beliefs conflict with the dominant discourse of history teaching this can lead to problematic experiences of teaching and of teacher training.

The use of Levelled Assessment Tasks (LATs) in secondary science in England has been increasing over the past five years in response to attempts to encourage more Assessment for Learning (AfL) strategies in the science classroom. This empirical study investigates how LATs are used by teachers and the extent to which such tasks support teaching and learning. An online survey of 106 teachers was used. It showed that teachers did find that the LATs supported their teaching using AfL strategies, but revealed that a majority of teachers do not use the tasks as formatively as they could be used. From the online questionnaire, a descriptive framework for how the LATs support teaching and learning is proposed. Five case studies where teachers used a LAT were observed. The data collected included a post-lesson pupil questionnaire, an interview with a group of pupils and an interview of the teacher. From these cases, a theory seeking approach to educational case studies through fuzzy propositions (Bassey, 1999) was used to develop a model of the relationship between teacher values and pupil values to assessment tasks. The fuzzy generalisations proposed from the case studies were that: (1) Teacher attitudes to the LATs may influence pupil attitudes to the LATs, (2) Teachers with a „big picture of levels‟ may be more likely to use LATs formatively and (3) Teachers who engage pupils with the notion of „levelness‟ may be more likely to improve conceptual development of pupils. The notion of „levelness‟ is explored. This evolves into three issues being explored: whether grades should be shared with pupils, the LATs relationship with summative and formative assessment practices and why such tasks have become popular with science teachers. The latter is considered in the context of the current target-driven culture of schools in England. Finally, the future of assessments like the LATs is discussed in relation to current policy and recommendations for their use and development are considered.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-12T17:36:16Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 arquivo2565_1.pdf: 2503761 bytes, checksum: b0c6a694a5d13636516194de9e330025 (MD5) license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010 / Companhia Energética de Pernambuco / Após as mudanças ocorridas, com a reestruturação do mercado de energia ao final da década de 90, a previsão de mercado veio ganhando destaque cada vez maior, com ênfase nos processos de planejamento do setor, modicidade tarifária e contratação de energia elétrica, onde se estabelece um limite que caso venha a ser rompido, poderá gerar prejuízos às distribuidoras de energia elétrica. Dessa forma, este trabalho visa encontrar o modelo mais adequado à série histórica de Energia Distribuída da CELPE (Companhia Energética de Pernambuco). Foram feitas simulações para curto prazo, com dados mensais no horizonte de doze meses à frente e longo prazo, com dados anuais e horizonte de quatro anos. Para o curto prazo foram testadas as metodologias de Amortecimento Exponencial, Box & Jenkins, Modelos Estruturais e Redes Neurais Artificiais, sendo testados vários modelos para cada aplicação. No longo prazo as metodologias utilizadas foram as de Regressão Dinâmica e o ANFIS. Ao final foram feitas comparações através do MAPE (Erro Médio Absoluto Percentual), sendo o melhor modelo o que obteve o menor valor de MAPE

A RMN em baixo campo (RMN-BC) é uma importante ferramenta analítica que vem sendo usada para substituir os métodos clássicos de análise. As principais características da RMN-BC sobre esses métodos são: rapidez da análise, pouca ou nenhuma preparação da amostra, análise não-invasiva e não-destrutiva e não tem descarte de produtos químicos. O presente trabalho avaliou o uso da RMN-BC com sensor (ímã e sonda) unilateral (RMNU). Neste equipamento de baixo custo, a região de análise é projetada para frente do imã, o que permite analisar amostras com grande volume, diferente dos espectrômetros convencionais onde o tamanho da amostra é limitado pelo gap ou bore do ímã. Como o sensor RMNU possui um intenso gradiente de campo magnético é possível investigar o comportamento da amostra em diferentes alturas. Essa propriedade foi explorada para medir a temperatura e a difusividade térmica de sementes de macadâmia em três profundidades. Para isso fez-se uma curva de calibração com o tempo de relaxação transversal (T2) do óleo da semente versus a temperatura. Os resultados obtidos com a RMNU foram coerentes com encontrados na literatura usando sensores invasivos como termopares. Também foram realizadas análises de viscosidade de óleos lubrificantes automotivos dentro das embalagens utilizando a sequência de CPMG. Com o método foi possível discriminar se o óleo base é mineral ou sintético. O sensor RMNU não foi sensível para identificar amostras de diesel com diferentes composição e origem. Para isso usou-se espectrômetro de RMN convencional onde analisou 118 blendas de diesel/biodiesel/óleo vegetal, em que se variou a refinaria, teor de enxofre do diesel (S500 e S10), a origem do biodiesel e do óleo. Os modelos de classificação de análise multivariada apresentaram alta capacidade de distinguir as respectivas blendas. Investigou-se também o uso do acoplamento indutivo para ampliar a região de detecção do sensor a partir da sua superfície. O acoplamento permitiu aumentar da região sensível de 2 mm para 20 mm. Esse sistema foi usado para monitorar a cura de uma amostra de gesso utilizando a sequência de CPMG. / The Low-Field NMR (LF-NMR) is an important analytical tool that has been used to replace the classical methods of analysis. The main features of LF-NMR about these methods are: speed of analysis, little or no sample preparation, non-invasive and non-destructive analysis and no disposal of chemicals. This study evaluated the use of LF-NMR with sensor (magnet and probe) unilateral (UNMR). In this low cost equipment, the region of analysis is projected forward of the magnet, which allows analyzing samples in large volumes, unlike conventional spectrometers where the sample size is limited by the gap or bore of the magnet. As UNMR sensor has an intense magnetic field gradient is possible to investigate the behavior of the sample at different heights. This property has been exploited to measure the temperature and the thermal diffusivity Macadamia seed at three depths. For this became a calibration curve with the transverse relaxation time (T2) of the seed\'s oil versus temperature. The results obtained with the UNMR were consistent with the one found in literature, using invasive sensors such as thermocouples. They were also held viscosity analysis of automotive lubricants in the packaging using the CPMG sequence. With the method it was possible to discriminate whether the base oil is mineral or synthetic. The UNMR sensor was not sensitive enough to diesel samples with different composition and origin. To it was used conventional LF-NMR spectrometer, where 118 blends diesel / biodiesel / vegetable oil, as it the refinery varied, sulfur diesel (S500 and S10), the source of biodiesel and oil were analyzed. The multivariate classification models showed high ability to distinguish their blends. It was also investigated using inductive coupling to expand the sensor detection region from its surface. Coupling allowed to increase the sensitive region of 2 mm to 20 mm. This system was used to monitor the cure of plaster sample using the CPMG sequence.

This study investigated the provision that students with dyslexia receive in Greek state secondary schools in EFL and if it corresponds with the Education Ministry’s policy on dyslexia. A study of the literature on dyslexia in Greece has shown that there is lack of teachers’ training on dyslexia and of teaching resources, collaboration between professionals and seminars for parents (Constantopoulou 2002; Arapogianni 2003; Lappas 1997). Taking a Vygotskian approach to learning, I apply activity theory (Engeström 2001) to understand and analyse the contradictions that inhibit the implementation of provision for students with dyslexia. This is an ethnographic case study involving audio recorded observations and interviews with two head teachers, three teachers, four students with dyslexia and their parents in two Greek state secondary schools. It also involves the collection of students’ work. The analysis shows that contradictions are created when the participants try to achieve their goals for dyslexia support by the lack of teachers’ knowledge and funding, the school timetable, the lack of inter-collegial collaboration and collaboration with parents and the inadequate diagnosis and school and Ministry’s policy. The analysis also shows how the participants try to resolve the contradictions by creating new objects and new tools through individual reflection.

E-learning is one of the common education types in Turkey elsewhere in the world because it has been a necessity for higher and continuous education of people but what about its quality? There are a diverse number of factors which affect the quality of e-learning education but one of the most important factors is the student. Because students are at the center of education and all of the teaching-learning operations are performed for them, their impressions are very important to gain idea about the quality and improvement of education. In order to obtain information from students about e-learning process, questionnaires applied to 267 students and 203 of them were used for this study. The results showed that students were not able to get adequate support from teachers and success rates of the students were affected negatively by lack of immediate feedback. It was also inferred that learning objectives of the course were shared at the beginning but they were not emphasized throughout the term therefore students did not have enough knowledge about them. Moreover, according to the students almost all of the e-learning courses have similar assessment methods and they were not selected according to the predetermined learning objectives. Lastly, students mentioned that e-learning courses they had taken were not more beneficial than traditional ones but they will continue preferring them in the future. This shows that although there are still problems related with e-learning, students still prefer it because of its advantages for the students.

The concrete maturity method can be utilized to determine in situ strength of concrete. It uses the temperature of concrete to determine a maturity index that can then be used to determine strength of concrete. However, monitoring the concrete temperature using thermocouples brings up a wiring issue, which is not advisable in an equipment and human intensive area like a construction site. One of the ways to get around this wiring issue is to use Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, which is capable of transmitting information wirelessly. Previous research implemented using ultra high frequency RFID tags embedded in fresh concrete found that water could be the impediment for transmitting RFID signal from within concrete during early stages of curing. From literature it was found that lower the frequency, better the chances of the wave penetrating water. The objective of the research was to figure out whether the frequency of RFID tags has any relationship with the readability of RFID tags embedded in fresh concrete. For this investigation, low frequency, high frequency, and ultra high frequency RFID tags were tested within fresh concrete to see any difference between tags in terms of transmitting information. This experiment was carried out in a controlled space to reduce the number of variables affecting the experiment outcome. The low frequency, high frequency, and ultra high frequency RFID tags were placed within 2 in x 3 in x 2 in wooden formwork at a depth of 4 in, 8 in, and 12 in. Ready mix concrete was poured into the formwork and 3 concrete cubes were cast with the tags embedded within them. Readers that could be connected to a laptop were used to monitor and collect the time at which these RFID tags can be detected. The test showed that the RFID signals from the low frequency tags at all depths were detected as soon as concrete was poured. The Ultra High Frequency tags placed at the 4" level could be detected 15 minutes after concrete was poured. The UHF tags at the 8" level could be detected after 30 minutes. The UHF tags at the 12" level took on an average 2 hours to be detected from the vicinity of the formwork. The greater the depth at which the ultra high frequency tag was buried the longer it took for it to be detected. The high frequency tags could be detected only at the 4" level. The reason the performance of the HF card degraded in concrete could be because it uses an aluminum foil antenna which is more susceptible to the environment changing the relative permeability. A copper wire antenna could have fared better in this condition, increasing the chances of detecting the tag. Moreover a passive tag was used. The read range and chances of detection could have been increased had an active tag been used. The power of the reader that was used was also very less which might have contributed to the tag not being detected. Among the tags that were used in the experiment it was found that low frequency tags was the tag that could be detected the earliest after concrete was poured into the forms. However, the maximum read range of the tag observed in the experiment was 20" which is too small a distance to be used on an actual construction site.

No description available.

A European consensus on the centrality of education for the guarantee and promotion of religious freedoms has emerged over the last two decades. Initially articulated in the human rights discourse of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and subsequently elaborated through the Council of Europe’s Recommendations, Declarations, Research Projects and Reference Books, this frame of reference forms a normative and legislative basis for states in Europe. Long national traditions of particular approaches to the ‘protected spaces’ of religion and education, however, render the development of common policies and practices amongst states problematic. This thesis examines the impact of the European framework of freedoms of religion and education on states’ education systems. An important contribution to the scholarship of social constructivism and interpretivist studies, the thesis contextualizes the research question within the conceptual framework of Europeanization. The nature and extent of the Europeanization process are approached through the structured comparative study of two cases: France and Greece. The respective educational provisions towards religion classify these countries as two of the hardest critical cases in this area of Europeanization in seemingly opposing ways. The thesis utilizes discourse analysis of the key documents of national education, including an analysis of the crucial findings of field research that investigates the social reality of religious freedoms in the educational settings of the selected cases. The conclusions denote a discrepancy between a degree of ideational convergence in the national discourse and the discernible divergence that characterizes the practical approaches to religious freedoms in the education systems of France and Greece. The limited and differential impact of the European norms reveals the particular national factors that prove resilient to external forces of normative and policy change in the fields of religion and education. By challenging the views on the transformative impact of the European recommendations, the thesis critically raises the question on the reconsideration of the origins, the objectives and the limitations of the complex of religious rights norms in Europe.