The course scheduling problem at Lufthansa Technical Training

Lufthansa Technical Training GmbH (LTT) performs training courses for Lufthansa Technik AG as well as for several other international airlines. Courses of about 670 different types are offered of which several hundred take place each year. The course scheduling problem faced by LTT is to construct a yearly schedule which maximizes the profit margin incurred while meeting a variety of complex precedence, temporal, and resource-related constraints. A “good” operational schedule should also meet a number of additional subordinate objectives. We formalize the problem and develop a heuristic scheme along with several priority rules, as well as a local search algorithm to determine well-suited weights for weighted composite rules. The operational planning situation of 1996 served as our major test instance; additional test instances were constructed by modifying this data. Several computational experiments were carried out to evaluate the performance of the algorithms. It turned out that the best so-found schedule is substantially better in terms of the profit margin incurred than the solution manually constructed by LTT.     

Following the cat: A preface for the next three papers

The three papers to follow, by Chris Rasmussen and three of his students, build from a task design the authors of this note developed in the 1990s. To introduce these papers, which extend our prior work in new directions, we sketch some background here.     

The young adult patient

The purpose of this paper is to 1) describe the unique issues of voice patients, ages 21–55; 2) outline the knowledge and clinical skills that speech language pathologists should possess to deal with those issues; and 3) provide suggestions for promoting vocal longevity.     

Examining preservice teachers’ noticing of equity-based teaching practices to empower students engaging in productive struggle

Our study examined ways preservice teachers (PSTs) make connections between teaching practices and use of student resources that support productive struggle and promote equity. Our research questions are: (1) How do PSTs notice and describe the equity-based mathematics teaching practice of leveraging student resources to support student struggles? and (2) In what ways do PSTs make connections to and interpret the role student resources play in the resolution of students’ mathematical struggles? The qualitative study examined 39 PSTs in a mathematics content course for PSTs. Data come from a video analysis assignment where PSTs described their mathematical interpretations of the student struggle(s) and teacher’s use of student resources to support the struggle resolution. Findings show that PSTs noticed teacher moves that leveraged student’s mathematical thinking and linguistic funds of knowledge and based the productive level of the struggle on actions built upon peers, linguistic knowledge and prior mathematical knowledge.     

周期表中一些元素的英文名称解读

在化学专业英语的学习过程中,学生最早接触的是元素周期表。本文对一些元素的英文名称采用解读式的教学方法,通过将元素的英文名称同著名科学家、特定地理名称、太阳系中的星球以及神话中的人物相关联,使元素的英文名称不再枯燥乏味,而变得生动形象,这一过程可以使学生更好地体验学习的乐趣。     

Developing collective capacity to improve mathematics instruction: Coaching as a lever for school-wide improvement

Mathematics coaching, as typically practiced in US schools tends to be responsive and individually focused work in which coaches respond to invitations from individual teachers to help them improve their teaching. But what does the work of coaching look like if it is organized instead to engage teachers collectively in service of school-wide improvement? This is the question we take up in this paper through examining the case of one school-based elementary mathematics coach whose work more closely aligned with emerging findings in the field of instructional improvement about the power of coaching for school-wide reform. The coach helped to dramatically transform a recent history of poor performance and deficit-oriented narratives pertaining to the school and its children. Through a fine-grain analysis, we illustrate the coach’s work implicated in supporting groups of teachers to come to mutual understanding around and further development of shared high-quality instructional practices. The components of coaching that help support collective capacity are discussed.     

Novice facilitators’ changes in practices: From launching to managing discussions about mathematics teaching

Novice facilitators of professional development (PD) programs for mathematics teachers often face challenges in leading productive discussions and achieving the goals of these programs. Although research in this area is gradually accumulating, not much is known about how novice facilitators address these challenges and change their practices accordingly. This paper presents case studies of two novice facilitators of PD programs in two different countries. The analyses look at their work over one year, to illustrate the changes in their practices while managing discussions. The results show that although the facilitators operated in different contexts, their practices and their processes of change resembled, suggesting that these processes are not idiosyncratic. We argue that novice facilitators’ changes in practices correspond to changes in their resources, orientations, goals, and identities and that PD program teams can support these changes.