Adrita Ray

Example 1: ON LAW (academic writing with references) Inside a classroom, a teacher is responsible for the well-being and safety of her students, both morally and legally. Legally, the Section 11 of the Children Act 2004 requires teachers to have regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of their pupils when discharging their duties (Childrens Act 2004). There are several ways to reinforce good and safe behaviour, but often it becomes necessary to punish pupils, particularly younger ones, and use negative reinforcement as a tool to instill discipline and values in children. This essay shall explore the rights of the teachers and pupils in a classroom setting, the potential professional and legal ramifications that a teacher could face, and explore alternate management strategies that could be used in imparting discipline and orderly conduct in pupils, particularly of younger ages. It is important to recognize that the law affords the teachers the authority to punish pupils in a manner they deem fit, with several conditions and caveats. To be lawful, the punishment (including detentions) must satisfy the following three conditions according to Section 90 and 91 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 (Education and Inspections Act 2006). 1) The decision to punish a pupil must be made by a paid member of school staff or a member of staff authorised by the head teacher. 2) The decision to punish the pupil and the punishment itself must be made on the school premises or while the pupil is under the charge of the member of staff 3) It must not breach any other legislation (for example in respect of disability, special educational needs, race and other equalities and human rights) and it must be reasonable in all the circumstances. Further in the event of the punishment needing to be assessed to ascertain whether its been meted out fairly, a condition the punishment must satisfy is that the punishment must be proportionate. In determining whether a punishment is reasonable, section 91 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 says the penalty must be reasonable in all the circumstances and that account must be taken of the pupil’s age, any special educational needs or religious sensibilities. In the context of the mentioned scenario, the teacher attempted various means of enforcing discipline. Initially, the teacher verbally reprimanded the pupils and asked the pupils to pick up the currants on the floor, which is well within the teachers legal rights and moral responsibilities. When the situation started to escalate, the teacher noticed it and identified the situation to be one where it could potentially escalate into a situation which could prove hazardous to the health and safety of the pupils. The teacher then proceeded to hold one of the pupils by the arm tightly. That again falls well within her rights, as the government advisory ‘Use of Reasonable Force – advice for school leaders, staff and governing bodies’ issued by the government of the UK states that a member of the school staff can use reasonable force in order to prevent pupils from hurting themselves or others, from damaging property, or from causing disorder, all three of which applies in this case. Although the law is vague on what constitutes ‘reasonable’, it states that the decision rests on the professional judgement of the staff member, and should be judged individually based on the unique circumstances. The law however states that force can never be used as a punishment, and it wasn’t used as punishment in this case. The teacher proceeded to punish the students by depriving them of further participation from the fun activity, and also by setting one hour detention on the following day. The law permits the use of loss of privileges as an acceptable and lawful method of punishing a pupil, thus the actions of the teacher thus far was unquestionably lawful. There are very specific guidelines about detention which schools need to adhere to. Based on a department for education guideline, (Behaviour and discipline in schools, 2016), first and foremost, teachers do indeed have the power to issue detention to pupils (aged under the age of 18). However, it is imperative that schools make clear to pupils and parents that they use detention (including detention outside of school hours) as a form of punishment or sanction. The school has the legal authority to impose a detention on any school day where the student does not have prior permission to be absent. There are important caveats however that schools need to be aware of. The detention must not put the safety of the pupil at risk, and the pupil must be able to arrange for safe transport back to his or her residence post the detention. The school should also consider whether the pupil has known caring responsibilities which would mean that the detention is unreasonable. There is nothing to suggest that the aforementioned conditions applied to the pupils in question, so it suggests that the teacher and the school were within the legal rights to enforce the detention, despite one student having a swimming meeting to attend. It is thus concluded that the teacher and the school were well within their legal rights in carrying out their actions, however legal and professional implications can be quite different. Complaints lodged by parents often have a negative impact upon the career of a teacher, even if the complaints have no legal basis. It is unfortunately a hazard that teachers have to deal with, and parents in modern times have increasingly unreasonable expectations. Though the teacher did send the pupils to the office to get the uniforms cleaned, one parent alleged that the teacher should have done a better job in managing the situation. In the context of such demands, there are several new behaviour management strategies which are being developed. Classroom behaviour management has been an area of active research for a while now. Studies have established that teacher’s feel most of disruptive activities in classrooms can be traced to difficulties in classroom management (Johansen and Little, 2011). It tends to be a vicious cycle because disruptive behaviour in classrooms on a consistent basis triggers stress and anxiety in teachers, which renders effectively managing a classroom even more difficult, which would manifest inevitably as more disruptive from the students. According the Office for Standards in Education, British teachers stated behaviours such as talking out-of-turn, and other forms of persistent low-level disruption as the most frequent and stress-inducing because of their constantly disruptive effect on both classroom activities and the teaching-learning process. This problem is a universal problem and to address these problems, a number of strategies have been proposed, some of which applies to this case study specifically. Studies such as (Kern and Clemens, 2007) states the following have been proved effective in better management of classrooms:  Clear, simple rules and expectations before and during a class or some activity, which are universally and fairly applied on a consistent basis. In the context of the case study, the teacher could have anticipated that the pupils will throw food on each other, and perhaps could conceivably have set down pre-determined punishments if any pupil tried that.  Disruptive behaviour is often associated with behavioural problems, mental ill-health and learning deficits, the ability of students to carry out instructions faithfully and task difficulty needs to be evaluated before setting of the task or activity. In this context, if certain pupils had a history of engaging in casual low level disruption which escalated fast, they might have been physically separated in terms of seating or allotted in different groups.  Establishing a reward system, by creating a token economy of any kind of point system which would have its own rewards at its end, and possibly penalize repeat offences has been proved to be an effective tool in improving the behaviour of students long term. The fundamental problem in this case study was when the teacher initially tried to step in, the pupils did not stop what they were doing. This implies that sufficient motivation or sufficient fear of the penalties their actions could have was absent. A point system which has attractive rewards or dreaded penalties could have potentially nipped it in the bud. Ultimately, good behaviour reinforcement can largely be categorized into positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement. A lot of teachers underestimate the effectiveness of positive reinforcement and instead prefer to adopt negative reinforcement methods. Some studies (Allday and Pakurar, 2007) found that, for some disruptive pupils less than 14 years of age, teacher greetings at the door upon the pupils entry to class, which included using the pupil’s name and a positive comment, caused an improvement with regards to their on-task behaviour from an average of 45 percent to an average of 75 percent in a relatively short time. The balance of positive and negative reinforcement is a tricky balance to achieve, but when a teacher is struggling to attain command of a class, it is worth evaluating whether the balance has been achieved or not. At the school level, several steps can be taken to reduce disruptive behaviour from the pupils. A teacher performance feedback system was implemented by an experimental study which revealed interesting results (DiGennaro, 2007). In the study, teachers were provided with clear guidelines and strategies for implementing classroom control, along with written performance feedback and the results were graphed out over a period of time. The data conclusively proved that written performance feedback for both the teacher and the students proved to be more effective than just written feedback for students alone. Not only does such feedback provide a powerful incentive for teachers to ensure compliance amongst students, but it also assists the teacher in chalking up strategies targeted to the individual needs of the class. Secondly, schools can look to upgrade infrastructure in order to reduce noise levels. Soundproof rooms, or devices which monitor decibel levels, and a policy to implement some penalty in the event of the noise level exceeding the permissible limit has also been explored. It’s well documented that excess noise levels interfere with a teachers ability to effectively impart a lesson, and increases the stress levels in the teachers, which is further counter-productive to reducing disruption in a class. In addition, the evolution of modern classrooms has bought about other significant challenges for teachers. Since modern curriculum encourages group activities that involve active participation, active discussion, sharing of tools and equipment, on average a modern classroom tends to be noisier and more active than ever before. Since a modern teacher has to deal with larger groups of students, and the students themselves have more diverse skills and behaviour patterns which require more individual attention, a modern teacher’s ability to directly control behaviour class-wide is proving to be more challenging than ever. A recent innovation which is being tried in many places if trained experts provide live guidance and counseling to teachers real time. In a study, experts relayed guidance via webcam and earphones to new teachers, and the data gathered conclusively showed that it helps improve performance. In conclusion, the modern classroom presents challenges for a teacher to establish control and discharge their duty of care to the highest degree possible. While a teacher may be legally insulated from repercussions, complaints from parents of the students can negatively impact the career trajectory of a teacher. In the specific case study, the teacher acted well within her legal rights, but arguably could have controlled the class better as the pupils did not listen to her when she asked them to stop throwing food around and to pick up the food. Hence both at an individual level for teachers, and at the school level, several alternate strategies have been proposed which would lead to a better imparting of learning objectives for children while keeping them safer. References Allday, R., Bush, M., Ticknor, N. and Walker, L., 2011. USING TEACHER GREETINGS TO INCREASE SPEED TO TASK ENGAGEMENT. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 44(2), pp.393-396. DiGennaro, F., Martens, B. and Kleinmann, A., 2007. A COMPARISON OF PERFORMANCE FEEDBACK PROCEDURES ON TEACHERS' TREATMENT IMPLEMENTATION INTEGRITY AND STUDENTS’ INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR IN SPECIAL EDUCATION CLASSROOMS. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 40(3), pp.447-461. GOV.UK. 2020. Behaviour And Discipline In Schools. [online] Available at: [Accessed 29 July 2020]. Johansen, A., Little, S. G., & Akin-Little, A. (2011). An examination of New Zealand teachers’ attributions and perceptions of behaviour, classroom management and the level of formal teacher training received in behaviour management. Kairaranga, 12(2), 3-12. Kern, L. and Clemens, N., 2006. Antecedent strategies to promote appropriate classroom behavior. Psychology in the Schools, 44(1), pp.65-75. Legislation.gov.uk. 2020. [online] Available at: [Accessed 31 July 2020]. Legislation.gov.uk. 2020. Education And Inspections Act 2006. [online] Available at: [Accessed 31 July 2020]. Example 2: (Statement of Purpose) Graduation, at any level, is one that should be recognized as an immense milestone of significance, as it’s a major step in the journey of one’s life. It’s not only a bittersweet exhibition of personal dedication, gratification, but a confirmation of self-identity. My time in McCombs was nothing short of extraordinary, and as I survey the faces that have accompanied me over the last two years, I can hardly believe it’s already over. I arrived at McCombs pursuing formal marketing and administrative training, however, I was accompanied by an unrelenting amount of uncertainty regarding my social, occupational, and fiscal future following the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, adjusting to a business-based curriculum proved challenging, having come from a background in molecular and computational sciences. Nevertheless, my initial fears were placated by a welcoming cohort, and countless resources available to assist with my philosophical academic transition. In fact, by the end of our first semester, I couldn’t help but be in awe at just how large and distinguished the University of Texas brand and Alumni network is, in addition to the sheer number of national/global opportunities accessible to us already. By my second year, I had made a name for myself within the cohort due to my strong interpersonal communication skills and high level of achievement in a number of our previous spring and summer courses applicable to analytics, economics, and marketing. I can attribute this level of academic achievement to the Harvard Business School’s CORe program, a preparatory MBA course, I enrolled in prior to my matriculation into McCombs. As was previously mentioned, UT’s brand and Alumni network are second to none in the state of Texas and renowned worldwide. Now with a solid grasp of the time management necessary to manage my studies, I was able to more frequently attend seminars and events, as well as take part in the MBA + program, where I was trained by top business coaches on my admittedly unexceptional leadership skills. Similarly, I continued it to expand my education beyond the classroom by becoming a member of the Consulting Club, Investment Club, and McCombs Ambassador Committee. By the time graduation arrived, I had taken on multiple roles of leadership, possessed numerous job offers in my desired field, and started my own business. The business, a home health agency responsible for facilitating the care of disabled university students, is one that I wished was available during my undergraduate tenure. Furthermore, I don’t believe the development of this business would have been possible without the education and connections I received at McCombs. I am eternally grateful to UT and everybody involved in my journey. Hook’Em! Example 3: Movie Review Dunkirk (2017): A Movie review Dunkirk is a war movie directed by Christopher Nolan, which hit the screens in 2017. Some people would argue that in addition to the World War 1 setting, the movie also represents a war on conventions of storytelling or filmmaking. This essay will attempt to delve deeper into what makes the movie so uniquely different from other similar movies and what makes it an objective success (in terms of box office revenue and accolades) and subjective success in the average movie goers eyes with an emphasis on the narration, music and cinematography employed. There are many war movies, and indeed many of them based on World War one, mostly armed (no pun intended) with recurrent tropes of a group of heroes performing herculean feats with courage and skill (Takacs), but what sets this movie apart from the others amongst many other things is its non-linear storytelling. The film is set during the famous Dunkirk extraction, where almost 400,000 British troops were miraculously extracted from the beach of Dunkirk in France in the face of German aggression and is shown from three perspectives. The first perspective we are introduced to is that of the “land”, through the eyes of a British and a French (posing as a British) soldier stranded on the beach of Dunkirk, hoping for rescue. The second one represents the “sea”, featuring a civilian boat answering a call for the rescue operation. The final one represents the “air” through the eyes of two British pilots of fighter aircraft providing air support to the troops. These threads are later interwoven together right at the very end to show us the bigger picture. Multiple narratives are not uncommon in movies, but what makes Nolan’s storytelling unique is the timelines are different in each of the perspective, and the extent of which is only understood in the latter half. While the land perspective stretches for a week, the sea perspective lasts for a day and the air perspective lasts for an hour, and the audience later realises the interplay of the timelines, when the characters meet. All in all, the complete picture is delivered only at the very end for the audience. It is trademark Christopher Nolan in that there is a never a linear sequence of events in the movie (The Prestige, The Dark Knight, Inception, and The Dark Knight Rises are just some of the examples.) In addition to the novel approach of a multi-dimensional and multi timeline based narrative, the soundtrack of the movie, developed by Hans Zimmer is also central to building the themes of the movie. He uses an auditory trick called a Shepards tone, which is basically an ingenious auditory illusion which makes the viewer believe that the pitch of the sound is continuously increasing until a crescendo which never comes to artificially create a sense of increasing alarm in the minds of the audience. (Lin et al.). The purpose it serves during the movie is that it accentuates the tension of the scenes which have imminent danger, and brings forth the central theme of the movie, which is essentially survival. It therefore comes as no surprise that Hans Zimmer won a golden globe award for composing the music, and the movie also received the Oscar award for the best sound editing and sound mixing and a nomination for best original score (IMDb). In addition to the aforementioned is the unusual use of special effects (or lack thereof). Normally a war movie contains a lot of CGI and visual effects, but in an interview with Business Insider, Christopher Nolan revealed it was a conscious effort on the part of his team to minimise the special effects used. He says “We didn't want anything to go fully CG and I'm very proud to be able to say that of my films this is the first time when we've been able to make a film that I actually can't remember which of the shots are visual effects and which aren't in some of the sequences.” (Business insider) This has the effect of creating a seamless visual experience, where not even for a moment does the audience sense the discontinuity which typically occurs as a result of overambitious use of visual effects and CGI in movies, especially war movies, making the experience even more engrossing for the audience. In conclusion, the box office revenues of 569 million $ and accolades such 3 Oscars, 3 Golden Globes, a BAFTA award and a whole host of nominations, are hard to argue against. It is not just a wholesome movie experience for the audience but it is also regarded as one of the pioneering pieces of cinema in terms of a different approach to film making with all its unique elements. One can only hope we can say that it is not the last time Nolan has outdone himself. Example 4: Academic Writing excerpt - Business Introduction The West Coast Transit Case Study is a classic example of Team conflict in a competitive business environment, and helps one study the case of teamwork, behavioural variability, communication, conflict and their resolution, motivation and task leadership. In this essay we study each facet of the aforementioned qualities in detail and discuss the different possibilities and modalities. Effective Team/Group work The three criteria for evaluating team effective team are task performance, member satisfaction, and team viability. (Uhl-Bien, Schermerhorn, & Osborn, 2014). Teams are established for diverse purposes, some of which may be formal or informal and they are made up of members who have diverse personalities and capabilities. Therefore, for a group to be effective, it must satisfy certain criteria. One of the criteria is task performance. An effective team should be able to exhibit satisfactory task performance. In addition, a team should be able to attain the specific goals within the stipulated timelines and be able to deliver quality and quantity in the outcomes (Uhl-Bien et al., 2014). In this case, the West Coast team should be able to deliver a fool proof marketing strategy within the six-week turnaround time. Pete Denson is tasked to form the team and work on the solution in a very small time frame, which while challenging in itself, it is compounded by the fact that each of the members he brings together has his or her own professional and personal issues to sort out first before proceeding to the team project in hand. This severely affects their task performance. The second criterion is member satisfaction. Member satisfaction largely influences team performance in terms of motivation, commitment, trust, collaboration, and synergy. An effective team features high levels of member satisfaction (De Dreu & Weingart, 2003). When members are satisfied, they tend to be highly motivated in contributing towards the attainment of the team objectives. Member satisfaction also signifies that the members are satisfied with the tasks allocated to them and they have good interpersonal relationships with other team members (Uhl-Bien et al., 2014). In the West Coast case, it is evident that there was no team satisfaction. The short turnaround time of six weeks and lack of overtime pay were pointed out as sore sticking points for the disinterest and dissatisfaction. Jon Mahoney and Katarina Tanney were particularly not satisfied to work in such challenging conditions. Tanney particularly had family issues arising from excess work hours only, and was also in therapy. The third criterion is team viability. For a team to be viable, it has to include members who work well together, complement each other and bring synergies to the workflow. The team leader should also be capable of handling issues and conflicts, and bring out the optimal team performance. Here Pete Denson forms a team, which was certainly not viable to work in such pressure and timeframe. Mahoney had a negative outlook towards the goals the team was set to achieve, and Tanney had serious personal issues arising out of work. Analysing the above it can be concluded that the team put together by Bernie Hollis and Pete Denson was not effective. Group Formation The formation of a group or team takes time, as they metamorphose from being just co workers or strangers, to a cohesive workforce striving towards a common goal. Psychologist Bruce Tuckman first came up with the memorable phrase "forming, storming, norming, and performing" in his article, "Developmental Sequence in Small Groups." (Tuckman, 1965) Thus Forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning came to be knowns as Tuckman’s five stages of group formation. In the forming stage of team development, members get to know each other. “Members are interested in getting to know each other and discovering what is considered acceptable behavior, in determining the real task of the team, and in defining group rules.” (Uhl-Bien, Schermerhorn, & Osborn, 2014, page 151) The storming stage deals with group tensions and defining group tasks. It is a period of high tension and infighting, and needs to be tackled tactfully by the group leader. Efforts should be made to chalk out team goals while satisfying interpersonal needs. The norming stage is the stage in which the team stats to come together as a unit and work together towards the common goal. It is a stage of building relationships and working together. In the performing stage the whole team matures and starts to work together as a unit to work out the common goal. They are now able to handle complex tasks maturely and amicably. The final stage of team development, adjourning is when the team disintegrates after meeting its stated objectives. In the West Coast case, the four membered team is in the forming and initial storming stage of team development. After the managerial team is formed, they find out that they have many personal and professional issues in carrying out the assignment and are ‘storming’ out their issues. Example 5: Blog Writing Vacate Cleaning in Modern Times When you are leaving your old rented home or a property you had on lease, you have to abide by some rules. Otherwise, you may have trouble getting back the deposit or the bond money. One of the universal rules is turning the house over as clean as it was the day you moved in. Hence it is of upmost importance, both for the tenant and a prospective landlord do a thorough and effective job of cleaning the property. If you are a landlord, you may find that you need to compete against many others in your local area. A nice way to stand out is making sure that your property is going to be nice and clean at all times. A prospective tenant will usually be turned off immediately if the property looks as though it is not well taken care of. The benefits to a sparkling clean property are twofold- firstly, not only does it improve occupancy rates but more importantly it sets expectations of what you consider “clean”. This is one reason a sloppy paint job or a cheaply executed repair leads to increased tenant damage and even less desirable tenants because they see these poor repairs or sloppy paint jobs as a sign you look the other way. Moving out is a busy period, with several formalities to complete, and amongst those, cleaning is most often a highly cumbersome, tiring, and sometimes even hazardous task. There are several reasons why it is much easier, more practical and safe to leave it in the hands of professionals. The primary reason to hire a professional cleaning company is by attempting to clean difficult surfaces without having proper knowledge and training, you could end up making errors which would prove to be costly in the long run. To avoid the trouble and the hazards (elaborated further in this article) of cleaning the property yourself, many people are turning to hiring professionals, some of whom specialise in vacate cleaning services. The added benefit of hiring professional vacate cleaners is that they use hi-tech and latest equipment which increases efficiency, minimises risk and does a more thorough job of cleaning for you in a timely fashion. The hazards of cleaning are often underestimated amongst people in general. According to Safe Works Australia, cleaning is often more hazardous than construction work. (link to the study) In the process of cleaning, a person is subjected to several major hazards. From innocuous micro-organisms, that causes a range of diseases to hazardous chemicals and injuries resulting from manual handling or electrical injuries, there’s a lot that can go wrong while attempting to self-clean. According to a study conducted by the Health and Safety Authority, a cleaner can be exposed to many different germs while cleaning hard to reach places. Leptospirosis from rodents and their droppings, Legionnaire’s disease from contaminated water (typically in air conditioning units), Asbestosis from exposure to asbestos which is typically found in pipe lagging, insulation boards, ceilings and tiles are just some of the diseases which a person is exposed to while undertaking a thorough cleaning of the house. Physical injuries are also more common than what one might assume. Even the simple art of vacuuming leads to injuries, as a study by Alison Bell (2011) pointed out. Ultimately cleaning is a strenuous activity, which involves lifting, lowering, moving and manipulating potentially heavy objects, so it should not come as a surprise that many injuries happen during the process of cleaning rapidly before shifting. There have been a lot of studies regarding the potentially hazardous substances in cleaning compounds. According to a study conducted by Gerster FM (2014) on several Swiss professional cleaning companies, more than half of the chemicals used during the process of cleaning are hazardous to the human body. Some studies recently published in American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine claims that regularly using house cleaning products could be as bad as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Added to the aforementioned, is the omnipresent concern with using electrical equipment, which presents hazards of its own, and especially in the context of places which are rented/leased frequently, the possibility of getting injured by discarded sharp objects and needles left by the previous tenant/ landlord etc. In light of these, consulting professionals to clean the property is the safest way to go, because not only do they use the latest technology so as to remove the dirt in hard to use places, unburden you of the several hazards associated with cleaning, deliver the service in a timely manner with an interactive customer service, most of them also come with guarantees about you getting the bond money back from the landlord. Perth Home Cleaners, one of the professional cleaning service providers based in Perth promises to easily rid your properties from all the nasty spots, grime, grease and dirt, so that you can receive back your bond money, and move on to the next property without any worry. Meanwhile, you might be able to sell your property at a much higher and reasonable price. (The website is https://perthhomecleaners.com.au/lease). In conclusion, in the modern age time and energy is a luxury very few of us have. We live in an era where it is of upmost importance to leave the property spotless for a tenant, or keep a property squeaky clean for a landlord. Not only do we overestimate our ability to clean thoroughly and effectively but we underestimate the risks, the cost and energy it takes for a thorough cleaning, which is a massive logistical task. It is thus we turn to professional cleaning services so that we can sit back and take a breather.