Education in and for the Belt and Road Initiative:

Abstract

This paper is an experiment in collective writing conducted in Autumn 2019 at the Faculty of Education at Beijing Normal University. The experiment involves 12 international masters' students reading the course based on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), their professor Michael Peters, visiting professor Petar Jandri?, and a mix of senior Chinese and Western scholars. To successfully complete the course, the students were required to produce a 3000-word paper of publishable quality. As part of this writing process we decided to engage in the experiment of collective writing where we aimed to produce a single paper consisting of the abstracts. This collective paper was developed in 7 steps. (1) Students submitted their 250-word abstracts. (2) Students were introduced into the methodology of collective writing, and 2 student-editors – Ogunniran Moses Oladele and Benjamin Green – volunteered to work on the paper. (3) Michael Peters wrote the introduction. (4) Abstracts were expanded to 500 words and integrated into a single document. (5) Petar Jandri? began to edit the paper and write a conclusion. (6) Students presented their abstracts in the class, where Michael Peters and Petar Jandri? provided direct feedback. (6) Revised abstracts were again integrated into a single document by student editors, and proofread / copy-edited in several exchanges with the instructors (7) The paper was subject to the process of open review, and the reviewer's comments were included in the paper. Resulting from months of collective work, the final paper provides a wide range of views ad perspectives to the question of education as a part of the BRI initiative.     

Scaling up successfully: Lessons from Kenya’s Tusome national literacy program

Many successful piloted programs fail when scaled up to a national level. In Kenya, which has a long history of particularly ineffective implementation after successful pilot programs, the Tusome national literacy program—which receives funding from the United States Agency for International Development—is a national-level scale-up of previous literacy and numeracy programs. We applied a scaling framework (Crouch and DeStefano in Doing reform differently: combining rigor and practicality in implementation and evaluation of system reforms. International development group working paper no. 2017-01, RTI International, Research Triangle Park, NC, 2017. https://www.rti.org/publication/doing-reform-differently-combining-rigor-and-practicality-implementation-and-evaluation) to examine whether Tusome’s implementation was rolled out in ways that would enable government structures and officers to respond effectively to the new program. We found that Tusome was able to clarify expectations for implementation and outcomes nationally using benchmarks for Kiswahili and English learning outcomes, and that these expectations were communicated all the way down to the school level. We noted that the essential program inputs were provided fairly consistently, across the nation. In addition, our analyses showed that Kenya developed functional, if simple, accountability and feedback mechanisms to track performance against benchmark expectations. We also established that the Tusome feedback data were utilized to encourage greater levels of instructional support within Kenya’s county level structures for education quality support. The results indicated that several of the key elements for successful scale-up were therefore put in place. However, we also discovered that Tusome failed to fully exploit the available classroom observational data to better target instructional support. In the context of this scaling framework, the Tusome literacy program’s external evaluation results showed program impacts of 0.6–1.0 standard deviations on English and Kiswahili learning outcomes. The program implemented a functional classroom observational feedback system through existing government systems, although usage of those systems varied widely across Kenya. Classroom visits, even if still falling short of the desired rate, were far more frequent, were focused on instructional quality, and included basic feedback and advice to teachers. These findings are promising with respect to the ability of countries facing quality problems to implement a coherent instructional reform through government systems at scale.     

Contents of Volume 31 2003

Volume Contents

Contents of Volume 31 2003     

Pigeons’ memory for event duration: Intertrial interval and delay effects

The effects of within-session variations in the intertriai interval (ITI) and delay on pigeons’ memory for event duration were studied in delayed symbolic matching-to-sample tasks. Pigeons were trained to peck one color following a long (8 sec) sample and another color following a short (2 sec) sample. In the first three experiments, the baseline conditions included a 10-sec delay (retention interval) and a 45-sec ITI. During testing, the delay was varied from 0 to 20 sec, and the ITI that preceded the trial was varied from 5 to 90 sec. When the ITI and delay were manipulated separately (Experiments 1 and 2), the pigeons displayed a choose-short tendency when the delay was longer than 10 sec or when the ITI was longer than 45 sec, and a choose-long tendency when either the delay or the ITI was shorter than these baseline values. These effects occurred whether the sample was food access or light. When the ITI and delay were manipulated together, the pigeons showed a large choose-long error tendency when the short delay was tested together with a short ITI, and no systematic error tendency when the short delay was tested together with a longer ITI. A very large choose-short error tendency emerged on trials with a long delay and a long ITI; a reduced choose-short tendency was present when the long delay was presented together with a short ITI. In Experiment 4, the baseline conditions were a 0-sec delay and a 45-sec ITI. In this case variations in the ITI had a smaller and unidirectional effect: the pigeons showed a choose-long error tendency when the ITI was decreased, but no effect of ITI increases. Two hypotheses were proposed and discussed: (1) that pigeons judge sample durations relative to a background time composed of the ITI and delay, and (2) that the delay and ITI effects might arise from a combination of subjective shortening and proactive effects of samples from previous trials.     

Improving Campus Climate to Support Faculty Diversity and Retention: A Pilot Program for New Faculty

We report on a series of pilot programs that we developed and carried out to support the success and satisfaction of new faculty, particularly faculty of color. We hope that others committed to retaining and supporting underrepresented faculty can apply our learning from this pilot project, as a whole or in part.Fred P. Piercy, Ph.D. (University of Florida), M.Ed. (University of South Carolina), B.A. (Wake Forest University) is the Department Head of the Department of Human Development at Virginia Tech. His professional interests include family therapy education, HIV social science research and prevention, and family intervention for adolescent drug abusers. Valerie Giddings, Ph.D., M.S. (Virginia Tech), B.S. (Bennett College) is the Associate Vice Chancellor for Lifelong Learning at Winston-Salem State University. Her professional interests include anthropometry and apparel fit, cultural aesthetics for apparel, and diversity issues in higher education. Katherine R. Allen, Ph.D., M.A. (Syracuse University), B.S. (University of Connecticut) is a Professor in Human Development at Virginia Tech. Her interests include family diversity over the life course, adult sibling ties in transition, and persistence of women and minorities in IT majors. Benjamin Dixon, Ed.D. (University of Massachusetts), M.A.T. (Harvard University), B.Mus.Ed. (Howard University) is the Vice President for Multicultural Affairs at Virginia Tech. His interests include diversity, multicultural education, ethical pluralism, and equity and inclusion issues related to organizational management and development. Peggy S. Meszaros, Ph.D. (University of Maryland), M.S. (University of Kentucky), B.S. (Austin Peay State University) is the William E. Lavery Professor of Human Development and the Director of the Center for Information Technology Impacts on Children, Youth, and Families at Virginia Tech. Her interests include positive youth development, leadership issues, female career transitions, and mother/daughter communication. Karen Joest, Ph.D. (Virginia Tech), M.S. (Chaminade University), B.S. (Indiana State University) is an Assistant Professor of Child and Family Studies at the State University of New York, College at Oneonta. Her interests include adolescents exposed to domestic violence, use of qualitative research, and use of technology and feminist pedagogy     

Comprehensive Sexuality Education for Adolescents in Zambia via the Mobile-Optimized Website TuneMe: A Content Analysis

Abstract

Adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa encounter high risks associated with sexuality and reproduction, yet face numerous barriers in obtaining appropriate health services and information. Mobile phones provide a unique opportunity to provide youth with this critical sexual and reproductive health information need. Designed from the United Nations Comprehensive Sexuality Education framework, the mobile-optimized app TuneMe aims to provide adolescents living in eight sub-Saharan African countries—Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Lesotho, South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia—with sexual and reproductive health information, and to promote uptake and use of sexual and reproductive health services. To assess the scope and appropriateness of TuneMe’s sexuality education content, we conducted a directed content analysis of the 299 articles published on the Zambia-specific TuneMe site between October 2015 and June 2017. Results from this analysis indicate that the greatest information provided by TuneMe was on sexual and reproductive health and HIV, followed by relationships, sexual rights, and citizenship. There was substantially less information that focused specifically on matters of pleasure, violence, diversity, and gender. Content was situated within relatable and culturally-relevant contexts, but gave mixed, and often problematic, depictions of gender norms. This assessment is central to understanding current and future mobile-based sexuality education programming.     

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不少摄影爱好者拍摄相片后，都习惯先用软件将数码相片作“后期改良”，然后才将经过“改良”的相片公布。大家熟悉的图像处理软件非Photoshop莫属，不过除了这个软件外，其实还可找到一些小工具，能替“色友”们进行特定的相片修改工作，使用起来很方便，比起那些大型软件来效果还毫不逊色，T3严重推荐!     

Global channels of evidence for learning and assessment in complex game environments

In this paper, we take a designer's look at how the activities and data of learning and assessment can be structured in immersive virtual game environments called Massively Multi‐Player Online Games (MMOG). In doing so, we examine the channels of evidence through which learning and assessment activities are derived in MMOGs, offering examples of how multiple evidence channels in operation through game‐based activities can be utilised to construct rich data trails for assessment.     

Relationships between functional movement screen scores,maturation and physical performance in young soccer players

The purpose of this study was to examine relationships between functional movement screen scores, maturation and physical performance in young soccer players. Thirty males (11–16 years) were assessed for maturation, functional movement screen scores and a range of physical performance tests (squat jump, reactive strength index protocol and reactive agility cut). Older players significantly outperformed younger participants in all tests (P < 0.05; effect sizes = 1.25–3.40). Deep overhead squat, in-line lunge, active straight leg raise and rotary stability test were significantly correlated to all performance tests. In-line lunge performance explained the greatest variance in reactive strength index (adjusted R² = 47%) and reactive agility cut (adjusted R² = 38%) performance, whilst maturation was the strongest predictor of squat jump performance (adjusted R² = 46%). This study demonstrated that variation of physical performance in youth soccer players could be explained by a combination of both functional movement screen scores and maturation.