This study examined the impact of teacher professional development aimed at improving the capacity of primary teachers in disadvantaged schools to strengthen children's expressive and receptive oral language skills and early literacy success in the first 2 years of school. Fourteen low-SES schools in Victoria, Australia were randomly allocated to a research (n = 8) or control arm (n = 6), resulting in an initial sample of 1254 students, (n = 602 in research arm and n = 652 in control arm). The intervention comprised 6 days of teacher and principal professional development (delivered by language and literacy experts), school-based continuing contact with the research team and completion by one staff member of each research school of a postgraduate unit on early language and literacy. Schools in the control arm received standard teaching according to state auspiced curriculum guidelines. Full data were available on 979 students at follow-up (time 2). Students in the research arm performed significantly better on Test of Language Development: Primary (Fourth Edition) sub-tests (p ≤ .002) and the Reading Progress Test (F = 10.4(1); p = .001) than students in the control arm at time 2. Narrative scores were not significantly different at time 2, although students in research schools showed greater gains. Findings provide "proof of concept" for this approach, and are discussed with respect to implications for teacher professional development and pre-service education concerning the psycholinguistic competencies that underpin the transition to literacy.

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Scalings of the central rotation in non-gettered, co-injected ISX-B discharges have been measured as a function of beam power, electron density and plasma current. Extensive studies are made possible by exploiting charge-exchange excitation (CXE) of 0 VIII lines to measure Doppler shifts. The rotation velocity, vϕ(0), tends to saturate at (1.0 − 1.2) × l07 cm·s−1 when Pb≅0.5 MW, showing little further increase up to the maximum input of 2 MW; vϕ(0) is independent of ne and Ip. Momentum confinement times in quasi-steady plasmas are 10–16 ms for n̄e = 4.5 × 1013 cm−3. Counter-injection discharges always disrupt, but before this event vϕ(0) is the same as for co-injection plasmas. The addition of a third beam line, permitting injection of up to 2 MW of balanced neutral-beam power, has allowed comparisons of the energy and particle confinement in rotating and non-rotating plasmas with the same total neutral-beam input. In those cases where impurity buildup can be avoided, it is found that the ISX-B empirical scaling of energy confinement time is reproduced with balanced injection. Thus, the unfavourable dependence of is not the result of rotation. Studies of impurity behaviour under differing injection conditions have been extended to include fully stripped low-Z ions. The results are consistent with previous investigations of metallic elements which revealed strong dependences on the sense (co versus counter) of injection. The potentials calculated from momentum balance, using measured rotation profiles and typical plasma density and temperature profiles, are in qualitative agreement with the potentials measured directly for various combinations of co- and counter-injection.

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