ON THE ROLE OF CENTRAL AGENCIES

Central agencies of Jewish education, like any organization or institution, can benefit from a review of new conditions. This will determine whether it should carry on with established approaches or institute alterations in goals and practices. A look at central agencies is especially apt at this time because of community ferment about Jewish education.     

Three secondary school teachers implementing student-centred learning in Iraqi Kurdistan

In Iraqi Kurdistan, the educational system is going through significant changes. The educational system influences the students’ attitudes, and one wants the educational system to support the young democracy. In this study, student-centred learning (SCL) is seen as a first step to learning, but also to participation and engagement as a citizen. Three secondary school teachers worked with researchers from Norway and Kurdistan to implement SCL strategies in their daily teaching. Teachers experienced changes in their roles when emphasizing the importance of students’ participation in the learning processes. They could not lecture most of the time; they needed to make more space for the students’ activities and allow them to become more active. They acted more as mentors for their students. The content of the teaching also changed. When the teachers lectured it was about their subject. When the students were expected to be more active, the teachers also had to teach the students how to be more active. The traditional way of furnishing the classrooms in Kurdistan has been rows of benches and desks for the children and a desk by the board for the teacher. This way of furnishing was described as a hindrance when organising for students’ participation. The teachers’ experiences were of main interest in this action research project. Their responses to interview questions were validated by classroom observations. Also, a group of researchers with very different cultural and scientific background collaborated. This was in itself an interesting side effect in this action research study.     

Design and optimization of an instrument for measuring bughole rating of concrete surfaces

Bugholes are surface imperfections that appear as small pits and craters on concrete surface after the casting process. Bugholes are cosmetic surface imperfections and do not affect the structural integrity of the concrete structure. However, existences of these imperfections increase cost since bugholes require additional surface preparations before painting or finishing the concrete surface. Additionally, these surface imperfections cause secondary problems by decreasing the cover on RC making incretion of salts into the reinforcement bars inside RC. In this paper, authors discuss development of a new device to measure “bughole” rating of concrete surface. The innovative technique used in design enables us to manufacture a compact instrument, which is physically small, lightweight and practical. The paper explains the design principles of the device and the procedure used for optimization of design parameters for the best performance. Last section of the paper gives simulation results to compare the performance of the device to current state of the art methods used for bughole rating in industry.