PurposeAn adapted version of lesson study (peer micro-teaching lesson study: PMLS) was used in a one-year initial teacher education (ITE) programme for prospective secondary school teachers of geography, history, citizenship and social science in England. The aim was to support student-teachers through an opportunity to share knowledge, skills and practice from their first teaching placements. Design/methodology/approachIn cross-curricular groups (of 3 or 4), student-teachers co-designed lessons that focused on developing thinking skills when teaching Advanced level content. Two "research lessons" were designed following the use of an initial questionnaire. Feedback from student-teachers was sought through a post-PMLS questionnaire. Participants' discussions were recorded between the two "research lessons" to capture references to subject knowledge, placement experiences and exploratory talk. FindingsPrincipal findings to emerge from the project were: cross-curricular PMLS helped to support student-teachers' development between their two school environments. The collaborative process allowed them to build on their first school experiences by sharing and reflecting on their placements, learning from each other's pedagogical practice and by improving subject knowledge both within and outside of their own specialism. Originality/valueThe work is the first known use of PMLS in ITE in the United Kingdom, demonstrating that it can be used as a bridge between the first and second school placements. It elaborates a cross-curricular collaborative vision for the use of modified forms of LS in the preparation of new teachers in programmes that are now largely school-led.

The present study describes a contemporary behavior-analytic model of emergent simulated slot machine gambling. Three laboratory experiments investigated the conditions under which stimuli correlated with different slot machine payout probabilities come to have new, emergent functions without those functions being trained directly. After a successful test for verbal relations (A1-B1-C1 and A2-B2-C2), gamblers and nongamblers were exposed to a task in which high- and low-payout probability functions were established for two slot machines labeled with members of the derived relations (B1 and B2). In Experiment 1, participants provided ratings and chose between concurrently presented slot machines labeled with indirectly related stimuli (C1 and C2). In Experiments 2 and 3, participants made ratings and chose under conditions of nonreinforcement and matched payout probabilities, respectively. Across all three experiments, it was predicted that participants would make more selections of, and give higher liking ratings to, the slot machine indirectly related to the trained high-payout probability machine (C2) than the slot machine indirectly related to the trained low-payout probability machine (C1). Findings supported these predictions. The implications for behavior-analytic research on gambling and the development of verbally based interventions for disordered gambling are discussed.

The crystal structure of penta­fluoro­benzo­nitrile, C7F5N, has been determined by in‐situ crystal growth from the liquid at 268 K. The structure is identical to that of the isocyanide, crystallizing in Cmca with the mol­ecule lying on a mirror plane bisecting the C6F5 ring and the cyano group. CN⋯F interactions are not observed in the structure.

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A key feature of recent curriculum reform in post‐industrialised liberal economies has been the ascendancy of outcomes‐based education policies. A 1995 review conducted in Western Australia (WA) recommended an outcomes‐based approach, and in response, the Curriculum Framework (CF) was released in 1998. The same year, the WA State government mandated that all schools, both non‐government and government, demonstrate compliance with the outcomes‐based CF for Years K–10 by 2004. This article compares case‐studies of non‐government and government schools in analysing assessment and reporting issues in relation to the enactment of outcomes‐based curriculum policy in the mid‐2000s. With significantly different localised contexts, including different degrees of institutional autonomy and different approaches to curriculum, assessment and reporting, interesting contrasts and commonalities arose as each school engaged with the new policy. The research draws on a hybrid approach to policy analysis, incorporating both critical theory and post‐structuralism with their different conceptualisations of power relationships. In‐depth semi‐structured interviews were conducted to examine and analyse the views of participants at each site. Although there is no intention to generalise from individual case‐studies, cross‐case analysis reveals the emergence of meta‐level themes – such as market choice, accountability and teacher professionalism – which are associated with ‘bigger picture’ issues of power and which may well provide insights for explorations of curriculum reform in other contexts.