Leadership roles and sustainable public–private partnership between technical universities and industry in Ghana

Tertiary Education and Management - Public–private partnership (PPP) between Technical Universities (TUs) and industry is important for development. Although the typologies, benefits and the...     

Can young students understand the mathematical concept of equality? A whole-year arithmetic teaching experiment in second grade

European Journal of Psychology of Education - Ensuring students correctly understand the notion of equality is a fundamental problem in teaching mathematics. Is it possible to teach arithmetic in...     

What Type of Internet Development Programme in Cameroon?

Everyone is trying to reap the extraordinary benefits of international networks, but without bothering to find out whether it is safe to do so. This paper echoes some questions being raised by the Cameroonian, and indeed the African, community. What will become of countries or social groups which do not get on to the Internet in time? Would the majority of the world population thus be cut off from a small group? What is the position regarding equality of conditions of access, freedom to communicate and interactivity facilities, understood as a network of exchanges? The programme for the development of the Internet in Cameroon is intended as a pilot experiment in a developing country, that could be taken up in other countries of the region.     

Teachers' emotional intelligence as a predictor of their attitude,concerns and sentiments about inclusive education: teacher professional-related factors as control variables

Our study determined the impact of emotional intelligence (EI) on teachers' attitudes, concerns and sentiments about inclusive education while controlling for teachers' professional-related factors. This is predicated on the increasing influence of EI on teacher effectiveness. The sample size consisted of 508 regular classroom teachers. Using hierarchical regression analysis, our findings revealed that teacher EI was significantly associated with attitude and concerns about inclusive education after controlling teacher professional-related factors. There was no significant relationship between EI and teachers' sentiments about inclusive education, and teachers' professional-related factors did not account for individual contributions to the variances in teachers' sentiments. It was concluded that teachers' EI, may be a crucial factor that can impact aspects of teachers' perception of inclusive education such as attitude, and concerns about inclusive education but may not be able to erase teachers' deep-seated beliefs on inclusion. Implications of the study were highlighted.     

Pre-service teachers’ views about the use of digital educational games for collaborative learning

Education and Information Technologies - Digital educational games (DEGs) constitute an effective teaching approach, particularly when they are used in combination with collaborative learning...     

Content and language integrated learning in OpenSimulator project. Results of a pilot implementation in Greece

The study presents the results of a pilot implementation of the Content and Language Integrated Learning in OpenSimulator Project-CLILiOP. Content and Language Integrated Learning together with constructivism provided the theoretical basis of the project. A multi-user virtual environment was developed using Opensimulator, which entailed a tour of the students’ avatars on a virtual island where they viewed and exchanged information in the English language regarding geographical terms and concepts. The project’s duration was ten weeks. A total of 105 students participated, divided into three groups: one used the application, the second was taught the same cognitive material using a conventional teaching method, but still under the scope of CLIL, while the third was conventionally taught. Results indicate that the learning outcomes of CLILiOP were better compared to the other two teaching methods, but also underline the need to further investigate the uses of 3D multi-user virtual environments in second language learning.     

The level of awareness and understanding of copyright laws and policies among academic librarians in Ghana

Awareness and understanding of copyright laws are critical in the proper administration of copyright in academic libraries. Data from 38 library staff and 4 head librarians was used in a sequential explanatory mixed methods approach to assess the level of awareness and understanding of copyright laws among library staff with regards to balancing user rights with rightsholder rights in academic libraries in Ghana. The data was collected using questionnaires and qualitative interviews. Though awareness of all the copyright laws, which was not influenced by the educational status of staff was high, the level of understanding was lower. Work experience, schedule of work and current position of staff significantly influenced the level of understanding. The generally moderate level of understanding of copyright laws for library staff; particularly for fair use and creative commons licensing, is a worrying development for copyright administration in academic libraries in Ghana.     

Project DyAdd: Implicit learning in adult dyslexia and ADHD

In this study of the project DyAdd, implicit learning was investigated through two paradigms in adults (18–55 years) with dyslexia (n?=?36) or with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD, n?=?22) and in controls (n?=?35). In the serial reaction time (SRT) task, there were no group differences in learning. However, those with ADHD exhibited faster RTs compared to other groups. In the artificial grammar learning (AGL) task, the groups did not differ from each other in their learning (i.e., grammaticality accuracy or similarity choices). Further, all three groups were sensitive to fragment overlap between learning and test-phase items (i.e., similarity choices were above chance). Grammaticality performance of control participants was above chance, but that of participants with dyslexia and participants with ADHD failed to differ from chance, indicating impaired grammaticality learning in these groups. While the main indices of AGL performance, grammaticality accuracy and similarity choices did not correlate with the neuropsychological variables that reflected dyslexia-related (phonological processing, reading, spelling, arithmetic) or ADHD-related characteristics (executive functions, attention), or intelligence, the explicit knowledge for the AGL grammar (i.e., ability to freely generate grammatical strings) correlated positively with the variables of phonological processing and reading. Further, SRT reaction times correlated positively with full scale intelligence quotient (FIQ). We conclude that, in AGL, learning difficulties of the underlying rule structure (as measured by grammaticality) are associated with dyslexia and ADHD. However, learning in AGL is not related to the defining neuropsychological features of dyslexia or ADHD. Instead, the resulting explicit knowledge relates to characteristics of dyslexia.