Incorrect Ways Research Articles

Tenure: An Important Due Process Right or a Hindrance to Change in the Schools?

Teacher tenure is a hotly contested concept in today’s’ school reform battles. Many discussions of tenure, however, use the term in incorrect ways that add little to the concepts that should be debated. Historically, tenure represents due process rights teachers acquire after several years of successful service. Other procedures, such as teacher credentialing, the granting of tenure, and teacher evaluation, if successfully applied, would offer the public adequate protection from less than competent teachers. Future implications and recommendations for legislatures considering reworking tenure laws are given, including extending the term necessary to gain tenure, revamping teacher evaluation procedures, increasing expenditures for supervision, and focusing reform efforts on desired outcomes.

Teens Learn How to Act When Suicide Signs Appear

Teens Learn How to Act When Suicide Signs Appear

Reforming Writing and Rethinking Correctness

L anguage never stands still. It is a living, breathing organism--one that is adorned with human aspirations and intertwined in politics. When we begin to consider the many conventions of language-and paradigms for right and wrong in our classroomswe do so without a map upon which to plan our course. Language correctness, like reality itself, is contingent on context, audience, and power. Instead of ignoring these linguistic verities, the arts teacher should help students appreciate the complexity of reading and writing in many contexts. In my writing class for first-year college students, we try to expunge simplistic rules of right and wrong and begin to define notions of correctness more complexly. Many students who enter a high school or college English class are not aware of the questions and controversies surrounding and notions of correctness. They see reading and writing as objective, dispassionate endeavors that require one to simply follow a set of rather standard rules. Teachers teach because they have learned the rubric-because they have mastered the right way to speak and write. Students listen and try to become proficient in acquiring models of correctness, so that they will be successful in a world that demands a common set of standards. In this scenario, is not fluid and dynamic but stagnant, fixed, monolithic, and impervious to the rhythms of culture and change. There are correct and incorrect ways to use and no need to ponder the social or cultural aspects of the interaction. In reality, we know that is forever contingent on the dynamics of the specific linguistic act. When two people of the same culture write to each other, shared rules of correctness are determined by their relationship and aspirations. When people of different cultures speak, other political dynamics are revealed. The African American who seeks a job from a white manager is quick to articulate the standard dialect that the manager speaks and writes. In contrast, the white applicant seeks a job from the African American employer, there is no chance that the applicant will use the African American Vernacular English (AAVE) that is a familiar part of many African American homes. It would immediately be exposed as being contrived and ingratiating. Interestingly, the African American student uses AAVE in a formal setting, it is deemed inappropriate despite the complexities of the dialect and its clear efficacy as a communication system. Such political dynamics are rarely covered in the grammar and usage books that line the shelves of English departments, but they are critical to an effective, egalitarian pedagogy. See, writes linguist Geneva Smitherman in pondering questions of correctness and the of minorities, when you ... dissin dem, you talkin bout they mommas! (151). Gloria Anzaldfia offers yet another perspective she writes, [slo, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language (59).

Vibration Analysis of Rotors Utilizing Implicit Directional Information of Complex Variable Descriptions

A complex variable description of planar motion incorporates directivity as inherent information which is therefore very convenient in vibration analysis of rotors. This paper proposes to use the directional information explicitly when the equation of motion of a rotor is formulated in complex variables. It is shown that the free vibration solution to the equation of motion formulated as such can be defined as the directional natural mode because it describes not only the shape and frequency but also the direction of the free vibration response. The directional frequency response functions (dFRFs) that have been used recently are obtained as the solution to the forced vibration solution to the equation of motion. Symmetric and anti-symmetric motions of a geometrically symmetric rigid rotor are used as examples to explain these concepts and their practical significances. The proposed approach allows clear understanding and definitions of some unique characteristics of rotor vibrations, such as the forward and backward modes, and forward and backward critical speeds, which have been often used in confusing or incorrect ways.

Understanding all of water’s anomalies with a nonlocal potential

Though water in its liquid state is of central importance to a vast number of problems in the sciences, in engineering, and in health and environmentally related areas, it remains a mysterious and misunderstood material. It seems to violate the very basis of our 20th century scientific training—starting from first principles. For this reason, one of the most important of all scientific problems remains in a chaotic state of understanding, stifling progress in many other fields. Many scientists feel that this old problem must surely have been solved, or for other reasons is simply not worth worrying about, and continue to visualize water in incorrect ways. However, it is noteworthy that not until our own recent work was any one of the roughly ten anomalous properties of this liquid understood at a molecular level. In fact, it is rather easy to show that every intermolecular potential model currently used for water has the same basic flaw—too great a dominance by Coulomb terms. This flaw prevents such models from providing a realistic picture of water’s anomalous properties. Since water is more and more becoming considered not simply a solvent but an integral part of chemical and biological systems, it is now urgent to determine its true character. One has first to create a “working model” that is consistent with water’s anomalies. Next, because the “first principle” understanding of water extends only from the monomer to nanoscale clusters, a new intermolecular potential, whose consequences extend beyond nanoscale, is proposed. The success of this new potential in helping to explain all the anomalies supports the view that our new “working model” can provide a valid molecular-level description of this material.

Analysis of dispersed, conducting-system frequency-response data

Abstract Widely used equations for the analysis of dispersive relaxation data for conducting materials, developed by Moynihan and associates more than two decades ago, are shown to be require correction. Corrected equations which can differ appreciably in their consequences from those of Moynihan et al. are derived and used to justify the empirical Barton, Nakajima, Namikawa (BNN) formula satisfied by much frequency-response data for disordered materials. The conductive-system frequency-response analysis described in the paper and the corrected Moynihan approach both allow arbitrary fitting models to be used. It is shown that, for one class of models, the two fitting approaches are identical and yield maximum information while, for other models, the fit information is intrinsically more limited and inaccurate. Improved methods for inverting transient-response data to yield the associated distribution of relaxation times and frequency response are compared with the approach Moynihan et al. used for the fractional-exponential fitting model (KWW), and a misconception in their work is corrected. Correct and incorrect ways to invert frequency-response data that include the effects of a high-frequency-limiting dielectric constant are illustrated for KWW response. The conventional KWW model yields physically unrealizable time and frequency responses, but a modification which restores realizability is developed. Analysis approaches are described which allow one to identify the type of dispersed behavior present in the data: either conductive- or dielectric-system response. Weighted, complex-non-linear-least-squares analyses of frequency-response data for Li2OAl2O32SiO2 glass at 24°C using an approximate KWW fitting model are compared with earlier fitting results of the same data obtained by Moynihan and others using the Moynihan et al. equations and fitting approach. Excellent fits were obtained over the entire measured frequency range when the fitting model included elements accounting for electrode polarization effects in the data. These effects are shown to make non-negligible contributions at both extremes of the frequency-response range. Such contributions, and the past use of the Moynihan approach, probably explain most previously unexplained excess losses found present in the high frequency region, ones which Moynihan and associates characterized as endemic to the vitreous state.

Teaching Standard English: Whose Standard?

When I was in the ninth grade, Mrs. Delaney, my English teacher, wanted to demonstrate the correct and incorrect ways to pronounce the English language. She asked Helen Draper, whose father owned several clothing stores in town, to stand and say Then she asked me, whose father owned a bar, to stand and say Everyone burst into laughter at my pronunciation. What did Mrs. Delaney accomplish? Did she make me pronounce lawyer correctly? No. I say attorney. I never say lawyer. In fact, I've found substitutes for every word my tongue can't get around and for all the rules I can't remember.

The statistical treatment of correlated bilateral traits in the analysis of cranial material.

At present there is no standardized method to derive frequencies from bilateral non-metric traits. In this paper the commonly used methods are evaluated in light of statistical considerations and degree of sample preservation. In particular, we explore the question of dependence between sides for the bilateral traits. Several workers have tested for bilateral trait correlation in incorrect ways, confusing tests for differences in side frequencies with tests for independence. An easy method to test for independence, using the chi-squared test, is recommended. This test is used on 16 bilateral traits in a large sample of prehistoric carnia from Central California and significant dependence is found for all 16 of these traits. We suggest the traditional method of deriving frequencies be used. Both sides of the cranium should be considered, dividing the number of times the trait occurs by the number of sides available for observation. This method can be used even in poorly preserved samples. Side to side correlation may be compensated for by modifying the constants subtracted in the mean measure of divergence and in the expression for the approximate variance of the mean measure of divergence when the samples are drawn from identical populations.

Kuhn's impossibility proof and the moral element in scientific explanations

Thomas S. Kuhn and others have arrived at the conclusion that at certain stages of investigation scientists cannot have recourse to criteria by which to justify their choices and actions. From this they have inferred that the choices made at these stages cannot be justified, leaving the impression that scientists may not be responsible for acting in some (sound, right, correct) as opposed to other (wrong, unsound, incorrect) ways in those circumstances. Kuhn's judgment is that in the last analysis it is so called subjective aesthetic considerations that will determine the actions taken. In this paper I argue that Kuhn fails to consider criteria of justification not provided by some field of science itself. He appears even to reject the possibility of invoking such “field-invariant” (S. Toulmin's term) criteria. He also seems to reject recourse to metaphysical first principles, without even giving these a polite perusal. Finally he does not allow for any possible moral element within these types of human activities - i.e., people faced with dilemmas in or out of science. I end by indicating how we might approach the Kuhnean type of choices and actions from within a moral perspective. The notion of acting as guided by moral rules is rejected since in “stress” cases the same problems occur here as do with paradigm selections namely we are left without rules. I suggest that the moral element consists, broadly, in exerting the effort needed to find solutions, in moral integrity, conscientiousness or the like. Mainly, however, I argue that how this moral element is to be characterized (identified) will in such cases have to await the occurrence of the dilemma and its solution. That is its uniqueness. But it does not exclude the possibility that once these cases have emerged, they should be discovered to require a given approach, not another. This, in turn, allows that the actions to be taken be justifiable and even that those who face the situation are responsible to discover how to act under the circumstances.

New Testament Perspectives

In recent years Biblical criticism has been assuming a new shape, or perhaps rather an old shape encompassing new contents. The contents are the data revealed by researches undertaken according to scientific method, and the shape is formed according to a desire to regain unity in place of diversity, theological understanding in place of a disconnected series of critical facts. It is felt, and felt rightly, that while our ancestors were led through ignorance into arbitrary, and even incorrect ways of regarding the Bible as a whole, at least it must be laid to their credit that they did set out to see it as a whole; moreover that we after their example should attempt to move from analysis to synthesis, from piecemeal examination of detail to a synoptic view of that structure into which the details will be seen to fit. Such a movement is in full flow, being assisted by many an able hand.