Marking parties for marking written assessments: A spontaneous community of practice.

In programmes of assessment with both high and low-stakes assessments, the inclusion of open-ended long answer questions in the high-stakes examination can contribute to driving deeper learning among students. However, in larger institutions, this would generate a seemingly insurmountable marking workload. In this study, we use a focused ethnographic approach to explore how such a marking endeavour can be tackled efficiently and pragmatically. In marking parties, examiners come together to individually mark student papers. This study focuses on marking parties for two separate tasks assessing written clinical communication in medical school finals at Southampton, UK. Data collected included field notes from 21.3 h of marking parties, details of demographics and clinical and educational experience of examiners, examiners' written answers to an open-ended post-marking party questionnaire, an in-depth interview and details of the actual marks assigned during the marking parties. In a landscape of examiners who are busy clinicians and rarely interact with each other educationally, marking parties represent a spontaneous and sustainable community of practice, with functions extending beyond the mere marking of exams. These include benchmarking, learning, managing biases and exam development. Despite the intensity of the work, marking parties built camaraderie and were considered fun and motivating.

Inclusive education: The case for early identification and early intervention in assistive technology.

This paper starts by presenting the argument that inclusive education for learners with disabilities is often not possible without their access to fit-for-purpose assistive technology (AT), as the barriers to their education are often environmental.The paper will argue that, if assistive technology is an enabler for learning, then the processes by which children with disabilities are identified as users of assistive technology must take place as early as possible in the lifecycle. Mechanisms associated with Early Identification and Early Intervention (EI/EI) must be outfitted with all necessary resources for identifying and addressing the unique assistive technology needs of each individual child, but also have a prospective view of the use of the assistive technology in order to ensure school-age children start benefiting from assistive technology as early as possible.A further argument will be made that, when adequate identification of the need for assistive technology has not taken place early, education systems must be prepared to - in collaboration with other ministries or departments - identify, assess and provide the necessary assistive technology not only as it relates to education use, but to all-inclusive and holistic use. The argument will be made for adequately resourcing "support services for inclusion" and creating transdisciplinary teams of professionals that can effectively ensure equitable access and participation of all children with disabilities in inclusive education.Throughout, some examples of good practices will support the narrative, and the paper will close with recommendations for stakeholders involved in developing policies and practices for inclusive education.

Quantitative rate constants for the reaction of dyes and alkenes with alpha-hydroxyalkyl radicals, measured by laser flash photolysis.

Rate constants are measured for the addition reactions of 1-hydroxy-1-cyclohexyl (1HC) and 2-hydroxy-2-propyl (2HP) radicals to 7 alkenes and for the 1-electron reduction of 16 organic dyes by 1HC, and a subset of 5 of these dyes by 2HP. This was done to determine to what extent the many reported rate constants for reactions of 2-hydroxy-2-propyl radicals (2HP) may be used to predict the rates of reactions of other tertiary alpha-hydroxy-alkyl radicals, and to give a better understanding of the factors that control dye reduction. The dyes were chosen to represent a wide range of dye types (azo, anthraquinone, phthalocyanine, triaryl-methane, indocyanine and azine dyes). Radicals were produced by laser flash photolysis of the corresponding tertiary alpha-hydroxyketone giving carbonyl and tertiary alpha-hydroxy-alkyl radicals. Control experiments with a bis-acylphosphine oxide were carried out which clearly demonstrated that the carbonyl radicals did not interfere with the kinetics. On average the addition and reduction rate constants for 1HC are only 20% lower than for 2HP. Larger decreases are observed for sterically congested alkenes due to the increased steric bulk of 1HC. The rate constants for 1-electron reduction of the dyes are in the range 4 x 10(7) to 6 x 10(9) mol-1 1 s-1 and may be predicted, reasonably well using the Marcus equation with a reorganisation energy, lambda = 182 kJ mol-1.

Quantitative rate constants for radical reactions in the nanopores of cotton.

The understanding of radical reactions in nanostructured materials is important for developing new synthetic procedures and controlling degradation reactions. To develop this area, an easy method for measuring quantitative rate constants of some radical reactions in nanostructures is required. A simple method for measuring the rate constant of dye bleaching, kdye, by organic radicals in such materials is introduced, involving the measurement of microsecond bleaching kinetics by diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, following laser flash creation of the radicals. Using wet and dry cotton as model substrates, we obtained kdye of 2-hydroxy-2-propyl and 1-hydroxy-1-cyclohexyl radicals with reactive red 3 and reactive orange 4 and compared them to solution-phase values. Surprisingly, the reactions in cotton follow simple liquid-phase kinetics and are diffusion-controlled. A cage effect in cotton is also found.