Examining the Educator :: Education School Essays

One of the final problems identified in the topic of decreasing educational standards is the lack of educational competency. Educational competency is defined as a measure of excellence in the knowledge of individual educators and the ability of said educators to instruct students so that students are able to apply the knowledge to their own individual abilities; students should gain the ability to forge connections in the subject beyond the curricular base. Research also proposes than an adequate measure of defining excellence does not exist in the current educational system. It has been attempted, through research, to find a new measure - such as a peer critique and corrections system - thereby providing a medium through which a form of field expertise would arise in education. The topic of educational competency can be divided into subdivisions, these being the current institutions, evaluations, and theoretical basis of school systems. By studying literature, guidelines, philosophies, and proposals - which dominate modern education - the goal is to examine the strengths and flaws within the institution and its curriculum. In the end, the body of research examined should be sufficient to suggest the altercation needed in our current educational system. Evaluation Theory A main key to changing a system is finding a method by which to judge positive and negative changes in that system and in components of that system. Editors Donovan Peterson and Annie Ward compiled several articles pertaining to teacher competency and its theories in their book, Due Process in Teacher Evaluation. Boyd Applegarth, an author of one chapter in Due Process in Teacher Evaluation, focuses on a description and explanation of an operational evaluation system that includes classroom activities of teachers and extends to include examples of non-classroom activities that are considered crucial to the evaluation of teachers. Richard Brandt reviews several sources of nondiscriminatory criteria for evaluating teachers in his essay "Teacher Evaluation for Career Ladder and Incentive Pay Programs," in the anthology Teacher Evaluation Policy: From Accountability to Professional Development, edited and compiled by Daniel Duke. Brandt is interested in establishing criterion for a salary and career ladder for teachers based on competency. He addresses several modern systems for evaluating and rewarding teacher performance. Brandt recognizes the difficulty of judging teachers in an impartial way.

Aronson,Marc. Witch-hunt: Mysteries of the Salem Witch Trials. NewYork: Simon And Schuster, 2003

In reviewing the book Witch-hunt: Mysteries of the Salem Witch Trials, I found many new and interesting facts about the Salem witch trials. The book gives a detailed account of the accusers, the accused, the judges, and other key players involved in the hysteria that consumed Salem in 1692. Aronson starts out his book not with 1692, but instead with 1688, a year when the four Goodwin children seemed to be possessed by someone or something that was not of this world. The whole of this story is told by Cotton Mather, a well-respected minister of his day. He and his father, Increase Mather would play an important part in the hysteria was to come. He was the one who established the test for accused witches—that is, the ability to recite the Lord’s Prayer perfectly. Ironically, it would be his voice that would stop the hysteria in late 1692. He then compares the hysteria of 1692 to the post-September 11, 2001 hysteria regarding religious fundamentalists. At times, Aronson is a bit preachy, but the narrative moves along, telling vividly of the trials of the accused, and how many recanted their confessions, and even the histrionics of the alleged victims. The story begins with a group of girls practicing some old divination with a West Indian Slave, Tituba. When the experiment goes horribly wrong, the girls begin having spells of illness, and began going into fits. The girls quickly accuse Tituba of bewitching them, and Tituba does not disappoint, confessing to the crime of witchcraft, naming names, if only to save herself. The accusations fly quickly from there, as does the narrative. Aronson moves quickly, telling of the trials and hangings with vivid clarity. One almost feels as though they are in the courtroom, feeling the accusers’ pains, and hearing the plaintiff’s cries of innocence. Aronson also takes us to the jail cells, telling us of witches that recanted to the stenographers charged with taking their confessions. Aronson then talks of the height of the hysteria, when people were being accused at an alarming rate. He does, however, neglect to mention that a total of 20 people were executed, and many more were imprisoned. Aronson ends the Witchcraft trials with a voice of reason. It is the same voice that ended the hysteria 300 years ago. The reason is voiced by people like Cotton Mather, Increase Mather, Thomas Brattle and other esteemed men of the society. He also ties the whole thing together by placing the events in their historical context and giving reasons for the hysteria and for the end of the reign of terror. Overall, he does an excellent job of taking the available resources and turning it into a gripping tale that would take anyone on a wild ride. I personally read this book in two days, I could not put it down. The contemporary comparisons Aronson makes brings the book to relevance to today’s young person while bringing this fascinating historical period to a satisfying, if unsettling conclusion. Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a better understanding of the Salem Witch Trials and their impact on Massachusetts society. I would also recommend it because after reading it, one gets the sense of what a modern day witch-hunt looks like. Hopefully, by reading about this troubling period in American history, we can avoid repetitions of this type of hysteria in the future.

Different Types Of Naturally Occurring Fracture Networks

2.1 INTRODUCTION It has been long recognized that the presence of naturally occurring fracture network can lead to unpredictable heterogeneity and anisotropy within many reservoirs. In past geophysicists acquired and processed P-wave reflection data at short offset, which automatically implied relatively small angular ray coverage. So seismic anisotropy, which is defined as directional dependence of elastic properties of earth remains unnoticed. But with the advance of methodologies, acquiring long offset and multi-component data become feasible and cost effective, anisotropy showed up. On a smaller scale, stresses in the Earth can cause rock to fracture in a consistent manner. If these fractures are aligned, the rock will be anisotropic with the fast direction parallel to the fractures and the slow direction perpendicular to them. In ideal cases, these observations can provide information on the state of stress in the Earth. Different types of anisotropy have resulted depending on the direction of f racture orientation. A set of parallel vertical cracks embedded in an isotropic background gives rise a transverse isotropic medium with horizontal symmetry axis. Similarly in sedimentary basins orthorhombic symmetry is commonly caused by parallel vertical fractures embedded within a VTI background medium. It may also arise due to two or three mutually orthogonal fracture sets, or due to two identical fracture systems criss-crossing with an arbitrary angle. Such sets of fracturesShow MoreRelatedA Study On Seismic Wave4065 Words   |  17 PagesCHAPTER -2 REVIEW OF LITRETURE 2.1 Introduction Most of today’s producing naturally fractured reservoirs were discovered accidentally, they were found by somebody who are looking for some other type of reservoir. Significant volume of hydrocarbon resides in these reservoirs. 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