Month: September 2014
The Educator Fraud Paradigm and Implications for Educators and Academia
In response to the USA Today and Atlanta Journal Constitution articles indicating massive educator cheating, states have been under intense pressure to develop initiatives to detect, deter and investigate educator cheating. In spite of increased public scrutiny, there has been limited guidance from the federal government. Added to this, reductions in state tax collections have …
Minimizing Perceptual Mismatches – Re-Arranging the Lens
Miscommunication or being misconstrued is indeed an old story of the English language classrooms. Chances of miscommunication further escalate when the learner is the second or third language speaker of a target language. Mostly teachers and learners don’t look at the same classroom event as a potential learning event and mismatches exist between teacher perceptions …
Using Dna Barcoding as a Pedagogical Tool to Teach Genetics to Undergraduates at Queensborough Community College
Over the past five years, the author has noticed that students who take the Biotechnology (lecture/lab) first, do better in the Molecular Genetics course than those who do not. This is especially true for the part that explains the central dogma of DNA, Restriction Enzymes, PCR amplification, Gel electrophoresis and DNA sequencing. The author strongly …
Transformative Education: A Tool for Sustainable Educational Development in Nigeria
Education is the key to human development and progress; an indispensable tool for a nations’ growth and overall development. In order to proffer workable solutions to some contending issues in our educational sector; this study examined the concept of transformative education for sustainable development and the role it plays if properly implemented in our educational …
Dancing with the Trees: A New Way to Learn Science with Classical Values
Science education has undergone a sea of change with different approaches and methodologies. But value oriented science education has not been given much thought. Drawing from thinkers like Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Judith Butler,and Louis Althusser, this paper seeks to posit methods of inculcating values through construction of knowledge, transformative pedagogies and how educational institutions …
Impacts of Educational Macro-Policies on Developing Creativity in Iran
Many educational and training approaches aim at improving creativity in students. In today’s world, tremendous need for individuals who can adapt to rapid changes, and also help bring rapid developments into their societies have made educational systems place more importance on creativity. However, developing creative minds may lead to criticism of the status quo, which …
Storytelling As a Form of Academic Discourse Engaging English Language Learners in the United States Standards-Based Classroom
Academic discourse is the pattern of speech and writing that exists in academic settings. In the American school system, academic discourse is driven by discussion-based instruction that expects students to ask clarification questions, build on each other’s ideas, and above all, demonstrate evidenced-based reasoning. Academic discourse understood as such calls for cognitive and language demands …
A Goals-Based Evaluation Regarding a Contrasting Analysis of Profession Growth and Evaluation Programs
This goals-based evaluation analyzes and compares several professional growth and evaluation programs among selected states in the United States and including a few countries internationally in order to determine if an ideal model of common variables constituting an effective professional evaluation system can be designed. Both inter-state and international comparisons will rely on data sets …
Sustainability in the Curriculum and Teaching of Economics: Transforming Introductory Macroeconomics
Sustainability is arguably the outcome of a holistically integrated economic system. However, when the marketplace fails to assess the “true” cost of production, inclusive of resource regeneration, waste creation and disposal, and unexpected externalities and when simultaneously, consumption forms the basis of evaluating progress, the outcome of an economic system can fall significantly short of …
Concept Deficiency: Remediation for Masters’ Theses and Dissertations
Throughout graduate departments in the United States, students and teachers report significant difficulty in forming concepts and framing subjects chosen for thesis and dissertation work. Professors focused on guiding students through this conceptualizing and framing work have reported student difficulty in writing and reading complex multi-level and pluralistic subjects. Despite the report that over a …
Is it Cheating If Nobody’s Watching? Conflicting Beliefs about Dishonesty in Online Learning
This paper addresses part of an extensive study investigating faculty and student perceptions of academic integrity in online courses. This analysis compares the quantitative responses to the qualitative responses of a survey sent to three institutions asking 1800 faculty and students their beliefs about cheating in online courses. The conclusions drawn from this analysis of …
Complexity, Accuracy, Fluency: A New Paradigm for Language Education and Cross-Cultural Communication
A complexity-accuracy-fluency triad has emerged as a dynamic L2 proficiency assessment tool in TESL/TEFL. This paper takes the position that this conceptualization and application overlooks the potential for complexity, accuracy and fluency to be organized and applied as a meta-linguistic communication model that, while guiding effective communication, also contributes to language development in an instructional …
International Service-Learning in Nicaragua for Japanese Medical Students.
Service-learning aims to match subject content with social need to give practical meaning to student learning. This international service-learning trip to Nicaragua paired medical English, and other medical skills students were learning, with the need for medical care by underserved people in San Ramon, Nicaragua. One purpose of the trip was to provide a venue …
When an Adjective Behaves like a Verb: Adjectival Verbs in Mandarin Chinese Maternal Input
The distinction between adjectives and verbs in Mandarin Chinese is not as clear as that in English. Adjectives in Mandarin share more similarities than differences with verbs, and most of them may function as verbs (Tang, 2012; Chu, 2010). Thus, they are termed adjectival verbs, which are translated into adjectives in English (e.g., zhe4hai2zhi cong1ming2, …
Supervision as an Educational Activity in Clinical Psychology Training Programs: Conceptions on Its Core Characteristics and Implementation
During the first stage of a broader educational evaluation study, a qualitative exploration has been conducted on conceptions that clinical supervisors hold in regard to: 1) the characteristics of clinical supervision as an educational activity; and 2) input, activities and results related to the implementation of supervision as a formative component in clinical psychology training …
Experiencing the Perspective of the Other: Stanley Milgrams Cyranic Method as a Means of Exploring Alternative Identities
Barriers to understanding and cooperation arise when we fail to take the perspective of the other people in our lives. But there are certain fundamental limits regarding the extent to which it is possible to take an alternative perspective or imagine someone else�s first-person point-of-view. As much as we can empathise with others on the …
Understanding Antisocial Behaviors: The Roles of Sensation Seeking and Subtypes of Empathy
There is limited research on how subtypes of empathy predict subtypes of antisocial behaviors and the role of sensation seeking traits in it. Therefore the current study used an online survey with 17-25 years old N= 540 undergraduate students to investigate the relationship between three subtypes of empathy (emotional reactivity, cognitive empathy and social skills) …
The effect of social exclusion on color preference
The current study examined the effects of social exclusion on color preference. Previous researches have suggested that people are more likely to choose hot food when they feel lonely than to choose cold food when they feel sociable. We hypothesized that participants who recalled social exclusion experiences are more likely to prefer warm colors than …
Influence of Normative Models on Social Representations
Our research fit into social representations’ framework (Moscovici, 1961), defined by Jodelet (1997) as “modalities of practical thought orientated towards the communication, comprehension and control of the social, material and conceptual environment”. We are especially interested in the influence of normative models in the field of social representations (Flament, 1999; Gaymard, 2009). To the demand …
The Influence of Affordance on Cognitive Workload
In the study, it was demonstrated that whether there was a difference between an affordance condition and a no-affordance condition in the aspect of negative compatibility effect and cognitive workload. In case of the negative compatibility effect, even though the object’s orientation and arrow’s orientation are corresponded, when a prime object is displayed very briefly …
Teacher Factors in Enhancing Quality Assurance in Physics Education: A Panacea for Transforming Physics Education for Sustainable Development
The study employed a descriptive survey to investigate Senior Secondary Three ( SSS3) Physics students’ perception of the teacher factor in enhancing quality assurance in the teaching and learning of physics in Umuahia Education Zone of Abia State of Nigeria. A sample of one hundred and ninety- eight (198) SSS3 physics students from Senior Secondary …
Assessing the Effectiveness of Applying a Tailored Time Management Course in Reducing Wasting-Time Attitude of University Students in the Field of Clothing Technology
The purpose of the present study was to apply a tailored time management course on fourth year students at the Home Economics Department, Women Faculty for Art, Science, and Education at University of Ain Shams, Egypt, to improve their planning and productivity in the field of clothing technology. During this study, the time consumed in …
Malcolm Lowry the Russian Connection
In Under the Volcano (1947) Malcolm Lowry (1909-57) presents us with a Faustian image of a British ex-Consul tormented by inner turmoil between his divided self and the socio-political environment which has alienated him. A would-be visionary, Geoffrey Firmin undergoes a shamanic journey to exorcise the phantoms of his past by striving towards a higher …
The Individual and the Arts in a Globalised Society
The topic for this presentation would be to make use of the social and political agendas in the Arts in a manner that would highlight the transformational nature of identity, difference and belonging in an increasingly globalised and multicultural society. This in turn has changed the way we approach and relate to people based on …
Rape Culture in Music: Lyrics that Provide a Step-by-step Guide to Sexual Assault
The evolution of gender relations has brought women to the forefront of social functions. However, these roles have come with a price as women have often been labeled by society as nothing more than sexual objects for the taking regardless of their profession, and especially in public forums. This research seeks to impose upon the …
Effects of Cinema Sounds on the Perception of the Motion Picture
A big number of studies have investigated the mechanisms of the human nervous system that receive environmental stimuli in order to create what we understand as “reality”. Taking into account the importance of both audition and vision in constructing a common audiovisual reality, it is of great importance to identify the relation and interactions between …
The Representation of Ethnic Youth Gangs in “The Combination”
In December 2005, Sydney was subject to one of its worst racial riots in history. Thousands of White-Anglo Australians lined Cronulla Beach in preparation for ‘Leb and Wog bashing day’. Anyone believed to be Arab, Muslim or of Middle Eastern appearance was subject to racial and physical abuse. These riots were mediated internationally and painted …
Multiplicity and Difference: Pluralities of Identity
The main objective of this paper is to discuss the idea of cultural identity its tendency become the overriding or singular affiliation. While exploring individualism as a pluralistic notion of constant movement and becoming as opposed to monistic substance, the discussion will emphasize on the importance of parallel multiplicity and difference as a critical, yet …
The Concept of Ghostwriting from Literature to Film Music: The Moacir Santos Case of Study
In most cases, the concept of ghostwriting in film music is related to bigger budget industrial movies. It happens mainly because of the amount of simultaneous productions and the agility that the cinema market achieved. Ghostwriters was needed for the first time in a more systematical way during the “golden age” of Hollywood film music, …
1+1=1; An Exploration of Bakhtinian Minimum for Existence in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia
Mikhail Bakhtin’s emphasis upon the constructedness of language and consciousness, the essential connectedness of individuals to each other, and the co-creation of un-finalized beings in the course of inter-subjective utterances of a dialogue have come to the aid of a great many people to defy subjugation and confinement. By depicting the anti-authoritarian spirit of the …
The Power of Pretty: Re-Appropriating the Gaze and Feminine Agency in “Spring Breakers”
When Mulvey (1975) posited the marginalization of female characters in film as passive, powerless figures that advance the narrative only in the sense that they drive male characters to act, she became one of the key figures of second-wave feminist film theory. Her analysis of scopophilic pleasure and the male gaze has long been a …
Okinawa: “The Land of Courtesy” in a Conflict of Linguistic Interests
UNESCO has listed Ryukuan, the language of the ancient Ryukyu Kingdom, now Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture, as severely endangered. That means there are few people who speak it as a home language, apart from the very old and those brought up on Okinawa’s smaller islands. This is the result, not of a popular rejection of the …
Interpreting Poems, Interpreting Worlds – on Poetry Translation
Li Bai’s poems are appreciated and enjoyed by people all over the world, which shows the universal aspect of language and mind. However, as the physical being and environment of a poet are often very different from those of his/her translator(s), one can not but wonder if the translation can really be embodied with the …
Socio-Philosophical Evaluation of Conflict Resolution and Synergy: A Path to History
In the enlarged human society, the human person has always emerged out of struggle and conflict. Conflict and struggle are integral parts of human development. The human person, devoid of this essential human condition ceases to be in a state of human nature, thereby losing his basic feature as a creature. One of the hallmarks …
An African Theory of Moral Conflict Resolution: A Kwesi Wiredu’s Paradigmatic Model
This paper interrogates Kwesi Wiredu’s theory of “Ethical Consensus” as a method of moral conflict resolution in indigenous African societies. It is an exercise in critical and comparative philosophy. Conflict is inevitable,based on differences in values, attitudes and belief systems. The African societies are today,bedeviled with moral crises and conflicts,characterized by group criminality,widespread violation of …
An Architectural Reading of Islamic Virtue
O children of Adam, We have bestowed upon you clothing to cover your private parts and as an adornment, but the clothing of taqwa, that is the best. (Quran,7:26) Islamic theology privileges the disposition of taqwa as a pivotal component of ethics (Quran,49:13). Taqwa is normally translated by `piety’, which makes the term a difficult …
Christian Conservatives and the LGBTQ Community in a Pluralistic World
Conservative Christians and the LGBTQ community are seldom bedfellows with a common cause. The former often lashes out publicly against the latter with the latter occasionally lashing back. The debate over gay marriage is a bitter source of conflict between these two groups. Nevertheless, the persistent presence of conservative religionists is unlikely to abate in …
The Use of Teaching Aids in the Teaching of French as a Foreign Language in Nigeria
Language is said to be the fulcrum of human development as well as instruments for unification of people and nations. This probably explains why Nigeria declared French as the nation’s second official language. However, the teaching of French language cannot be effective without the use of teaching aids. The use of teaching aids in the …
Eliot’s Notion of Tradition and Its Significance in the Age of Multimedia
Our world today is being remade through the continuous spread of multimedia. We are actually living in what is called ‘New Times’. Multimedia has changed our life enormously. Despite the fact that some technological advances have caused some negative developments in our modern times: some people are being distracted, overly stressed, feeling qualitatively empty, alienated, …
Hello Kitty’s Popularity and Its Change of Representation
Since it was introduced in the market in 1974, Hello Kitty, a fictional white cat, became a Japanese cultural icon and has been attributed as being ��kawaii�� (��cute��). Characters of Kitty have been used in a myriad of ways like iPods, PCs, Nintendo 3DS, Play Station, games, telephone, televisions, buses, jewelries, coins, and etc. Many …
Pakistan, Its Youth and Social Media
Pakistan has faced some serious problems in recent years. It has a tarnished international image, but there is optimism in the country. The much needed bearers of new hope are the young guns of Pakistan who are vocal, active, and as informed as any. They like to express themselves on different social media platforms. The …
Israel through the Lenses of Oscar-Nominated Documentary Film ‘Promises’
Film is a significant tool of (re)shaping, (re)constructing, (re)presenting and (re)structuring realities. According to Edelman (1993) the social world is like a kaleidoscope of potential realities (p. 232). Media plays an active role in determining when and how to evoke certain realities depending on which observations are framed and categorized. The concept of media as …
The Learning of the Photograph in the Young People
In this paper we will explain how a group of young people of three communities in Lisbon (Bairro Padre Cruz, Bairro Alta de Lisboa and Bairro da Boavista), learned about photography and how they used their knowledge’s in practice. All communities had the same orientations and the same lessons with various professionals’ photographers, and they …
Models of European Integration Enlargement or Neighbourhood
MODELS OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION: ENLARGEMENT OR NEIGHBOURHOOD The European Union is set up with the purpose of ending the wars between neighbours, which culminated in the Second World War. Because of the political and economic situations, the six founders have decided to expand the community. At the begining, there were only two important point to …