A therapeutic model of adult education in Canada: skills and academic upgrading programs in the Province of Alberta

This article reports research findings of a comparative research project, supported by a generous grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). We studied adult education policy implementation in the Province of Alberta, Canada; in Mexico City and a rural district of the State of Mexico; and urban and rural districts of Dar‐Es‐Salaam in Tanzania, East Africa. The study was conducted between 1987‐1991 by three research groups coordinated internationally by Carlos Alberto Torres. Interviews were conducted in the three countries with 50 policy‐makers, 155 adult education teachers, and 447 adult learners. Policy‐makers and teachers wer interviewed using structured, in‐depth interviews, and students were surveyed twice, at the beginning of the programs in 1988‐89 and 15 months later. Only public programs in adult education, skill upgrading, and literacy training were selected, including Alberta Vocational Centers (AVC) and Community Vocational Colleges (CVC); seven different public programs in Mexico, and Folk‐Development Colleges and adult literacy programs from the Institute of Adult Education in Tanzania. Rural and urban programs were studied in Northern and Central Alberta, in the Federal District (Mexico City) and a rural district outside Mexico City, and in a rural municipality and the urban area of Dar‐Es‐Salaam in Tanzania. Two types of programs were studied in the three research settings: academic upgrading programs (consisting of literacy training and adult basic education) and skill upgrading programs Although this article reports specific research findings for the province of Alberta, it benefits from the findings of the international study and from criticisms and analyses made by members of the international teams. Hence, the authors are grateful to Suleman Sumra and Yosiah Bwatwa from the University of Dar‐Es‐Salaam, Raj Pannu and M. K. Bacchus from the University of Alberta, and Sylvia Schmelkes, Carlos Muñoz Izquierdo and Susan Street from the Center for Educational Research in Mexico, for their many contributions to this research.     

Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations

This paper relates and analyses the experience of various Brazilian institutions organized in a consortium with the aim of providing integration and unified access, via a web gateway, to full-text electronic theses already available at different Brazilian universities. The rise and impact of free electronic academic publishing on scientific communication and the development of science is analyzed. The results of a pilot programme, developed under the coordination of IBICT, as well as technical and technological aspects of information system models adopted, are presented. Aspects such as metadata sets and formats, protocols for automatic gathering of metadata, union catalogue databases, user interfaces and integration with other Brazilian STI systems, are analyzed. Finally, future developments and the enlargement of the Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations are discussed.     

Influence of leg preference on bilateral muscle activation during cycling

The purpose of this study was to investigate asymmetry of muscle activation in participants with different levels of experience and performance with cycling. Two separate experiments were conducted, one with nine cyclists and one with nine non-cyclists. The experiments involved incremental maximal and sub-maximal constant load cycling tests. Bilateral surface electromyography (EMG) and gross and net muscle efficiency were assessed. Analyses of variance in mixed linear models and t-tests were conducted. The cyclists in Experiment 1 presented higher gross efficiency (P < 0.05), whereas net efficiency did not differ between the two experiments (21.3 ± 1.4% and 19.8 ± 1.0% for cyclists and non-cyclists, respectively). The electrical muscle activity increased significantly with exercise intensity regardless of leg preference in both experiments. The coefficient of variation of EMG indicated main effects of leg in both experiments. The non-preferred leg of non-cyclists (Experiment 2) presented statistically higher variability of muscle activity in the gastrocnemius medialis and vastus lateralis. Our findings suggest similar electrical muscle activity between legs in both cyclists and non-cyclists regardless of exercise intensity. However, EMG variability was asymmetric and appears to be strongly influenced by exercise intensity for cyclists and non-cyclists, especially during sub-maximal intensity. Neural factors per se do not seem to fully explain previous reports of pedalling asymmetries.     

The effect of social programs and exposure to professionals on the educational aspirations of the poor

Investment in human capital is an important tool for reducing poverty. However, the poor may lack the capacity to aspire, which often results in underinvestment in their children's education. This paper studies the effect of a social program on the educational aspirations poor parents have for their children, and explores the role of exposure to educated professionals as a possible channel for increasing these aspirations. First, using differences-in-differences, we show that the Mexican antipoverty program PROGRESA raises the educational aspirations of beneficiary parents for their children of a third of a school year. Then, exploiting PROGRESA's mandated differential exposure to professionals, using triple differences, we find evidence suggesting that educational aspirations for children from high-exposure households are almost half of a school year higher six months after the start of the program. Finally, we show that there is a positive correlation between parental aspirations and children's educational attainment.