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In England there are very strong pressures in schools to meet government targets for public examination results. Thus assessment is very ‘high stakes’ as principals and class teachers can lose their jobs if these targets aren’t met. In such a climate many teachers feel that innovation, such as inquiry-based learning involves taking a considerable risk. As a result teachers in England often enact a hybridised form of inquiry in order to manage the risk and this chapter explores three cases of schools in north east England in which hybridisation has occurred. We use Basil Bernstein’s concept of ‘framing’ to analyse the effect of inquiry-based learning on the relationship between the curriculum, teachers and students in these schools. Inquiry, acts as a disruption to the normal ‘convergent’ pedagogy with many positive outcomes for teachers and students but both feel the constraint of the demands of the examination system. Although the agency, or capacity for action, of teachers is increased through exploring inquiry approaches, we conclude that for inquiry to develop further there is a need for a stronger local ‘ecology’ to support teachers and schools in their efforts to innovate. We describe the contribution of Newcastle University to such an ecology.

This paper aims to introduce a generic robot‐programming paradigm for assembly tasks that overcomes the strong coupling between the motion commands and underlying algorithms of programming languages currently on the market. Therefore, it allows an improved method of assembly task programming.

A manipulation primitive (MP) is defined which decouples the programming concept from the algorithms. These primitives can be integrated into existing programming languages and are supported by an intuitive graph‐based language which is introduced in this paper. An open reference architecture to support those primitive‐based programming languages has been designed.

It is possible to describe complex assembly tasks such as manipulation on conveyors or sensor‐integrated compliant motion without abandoning the generality of the programming paradigm. Execution on a reference control system has proven to be successful for several manipulation tasks on different machines.

A complete definition of the MP and a graphical language based on this primitive is given, accompanied by extensive detail information on crucial aspects of the control architecture such as modular trajectory generation, generic interfaces, and real‐time task scheduling.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of mentoring as a workplace process. The mentees are post-graduate student teachers hosted in placement schools. The research aims to explore the experiences of key participants in a policy context where the role and scale of school-based teacher training is expanding rapidly.

This is an interpretative case study of mentoring practices assigned to a secondary level initial teacher training partnership, with the mentors being subject teachers working in school departments which host post-graduate student teachers. The case study was investigated over two years and included focus groups, interviews, questionnaires and content analysis. Participants were student teachers, their mentors and both school-based and university-based tutors.

Positive experiences of mentoring are not universal. Mentoring interacts with the required processes of monitoring and reporting and in some cases the power structures associated with these processes conflict with the less performative aspects. However, when mentors are offered evidence of student teachers’ perceptions and theoretical constructs of mentoring as practice they can start to recognise that it can be enhanced.

The quality of mentoring in initial teacher education will take on even greater significance in jurisdictions, such as England, where the role of workplace learning is strengthened as a result of changes of government policy.

The outcomes of this study will be relevant to policy makers, school-based mentors and system leaders for teacher education – whether school or university based.

This chapter provides an introduction to how the inquiry-based learning (IBL) approach is being used by colleges and universities around the world to improve faculty and institutional development and to strengthen the interconnections between teaching, learning, and research. This chapter provides a synthesis and analysis of all the chapters in the volume, which present a range of perspectives, case studies, and empirical research on how IBL is being used across a range of courses across a range of institutions to enhance faculty and institutional development. This chapter argues that the IBL approach has great potential to enhance and transform teaching and learning. Given the growing demands placed on education to meet a diverse range of complex political, economic, and social problems and personal needs, this chapter argues that education should be a place where lifelong and lifewide learning is cultivated and where self-directed learning is nurtured. To that end, this chapter argues that IBL helps cultivate a learning environment that is more meaningful, responsive, integrated, and purposeful.

This paper aims to investigate the wear behaviour of different materials for cylinder liners and piston rings in a linear reciprocating tribometer with special focus on the wear of the cylinder liner in the boundary lubrication regime.

Conventional nitrided steel, as well as diamond-like carbon and chromium nitride-coated piston rings, were tested against cast iron, AlSi and Fe-coated AlSi cylinder liners. The experiments were carried out with samples produced from original engine parts to have the original surface topography available. Radioactive tracer isotopes were used to measure cylinder liner wear continuously, enabling separation of running-in and steady-state wear.

A ranking of the material pairings with respect to wear behaviour of the cylinder liner was found. Post-test inspection of the cylinder samples by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) revealed differences in the wear mechanisms for the different material combinations. The results show that the running-in and steady-state wear of the liners can be reduced by choosing the appropriate material for the piston ring.

The use of original engine parts in a closely controlled tribometer environment under realistic loading conditions, in conjunction with continuous and highly sensitive wear measurement methods and a detailed SEM analysis of the wear mechanisms, forms an intermediate step between engine testing and laboratory environment testing.