发展中国家实现终身学习的障碍与策略

众所周知,教育在社会的可持续发展方面起着关键的作用,它有助于减少贫困,增加收入,发展民主,预防疾病,促进健康和保护环境。教育、消除贫困以及人类发展三者的主要关系可以概括为(CIDA,2001):教育能够发展人力资本和生产力,保持家庭健康和营养,促进个人的发展和社会的发展,所有这些特点都有助于减少贫困;发展人力资本和生产力与社会的发展又有利于整个社会宏观经济的增长和发展。当今,教育、学习、知识获得以及技能的作用变得比以往任何时代都更为重要。无论从宏观还是微观的层次来看,我们应付日益变革的能力将成为成功的关键因素(Khan,1997)。那么,使得学习成为决定我们未来的决定性因素是哪些呢?本文拟就发展中国家的教育来探讨这一主题,作者的基本理论前提是:第一、学习是个人与社会生存的关键;第二、传统的教育体系已无法满足日益强烈的学习需求;第三、必须为大多数人的终身学习提供灵活多样的工具和技术;第四、充分应用现代信息技术帮助人们克服学习     

“Exploring this whole thing of social justice” narrative as a tool for critical sociocultural knowledge development in teacher education

Many teacher education programs provide teachers with opportunities to read, write, and discuss critical pedagogy, with the hope that such work will allow them to develop more equitable and just teaching practices. Yet, there often remains a gap between the theoretical discussions of teaching and learning in teacher education classrooms and the pedagogical practice in those teachers’ K-12 classrooms. In this study, we examine how one teacher, Gabriela, used narratives to make connections between her third-grade classroom and the critical concepts she was exploring in a teacher education course. Embedded within an ethnographic case study of an inservice teacher education program, we used a discourse analytic approach to examine both the sociocultural knowledge and the identities Gabriela constructed through narrative as she engaged with issues of language, race, and power within the course. We consider some of the affordances of narrative in this space, including how it allowed Gabriela to integrate her understandings of multiple course topics, to position herself in multiple ways as a teacher, and to disrupt her existing understandings of race and racism in the classroom. This analysis suggests that critically oriented teacher education programs might more intentionally make space for narrative to connect critical theory and pedagogical practice.     

Extraction of DNA suitable for PCR applications from mature leaves of Mangifera indica L.

Good quality deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is the pre-requisite for its downstream applications. The presence of high concentrations of polysaccharides, polyphenols, proteins, and other secondary me- tabolites in mango leaves poses problem in getting good quality DNA fit for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) applications. The problem is exacerbated when DNA is extracted from mature mango leaves. A reliable and modified protocol based on the cetyl- trimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) method for DNA extraction from mature mango leaves is described here. High concentrations of inert salt were used to remove polysaccharides; Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) and β-mercaptoethanol were employed to manage phenolic compounds. Extended chloroform-isoamyl alcohol treatment followed by RNase treatment yielded 950?1050 μg of good quality DNA, free of protein and RNA. The problems of DNA degradation,contamination, and low yield due to irreversible binding of phenolic compounds and coprecipitation of polysaccharides with DNA were avoided by this method. The DNA isolated by the modified method showed good PCR amplification using simple se- quence repeat (SSR) primers. This modified protocol can also be used to extract DNA from other woody plants having similar problems.     

Additive effects due to biochar and endophyte application enable soybean to enhance nutrient uptake and modulate nutritional parameters

We studied the effects of hardwood-derived biochar (BC) and the phytohormone-producing endophyte Galactomyces geotrichum WLL1 in soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) with respect to basic, macro- and micronutrient uptakes and assimilations, and their subsequent effects on the regulation of functional amino acids, isoflavones, fatty acid composition, total sugar contents, total phenolic contents, and 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH)-scavenging activity. The assimilation of basic nutrients such as nitrogen was up-regulated, leaving carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen unaffected in BC+G. geotrichum-treated soybean plants. In comparison, the uptakes of macro- and micronutrients fluctuated in the individual or co-application of BC and G. geotrichum in soybean plant organs and rhizospheric substrate. Moreover, the same attribute was recorded for the regulation of functional amino acids, isoflavones, fatty acid composition, total sugar contents, total phenolic contents, and DPPH-scavenging activity. Collectively, these results showed that BC+G. geotrichum-treated soybean yielded better results than did the plants treated with individual applications. It was concluded that BC is an additional nutriment source and that the G. geotrichum acts as a plant biostimulating source and the effects of both are additive towards plant growth promotion. Strategies involving the incorporation of BC and endophytic symbiosis may help achieve eco-friendly agricultural production, thus reducing the excessive use of chemical agents.     

ICT in Science Education: A quasi‐experimental study of achievement,attitudes toward science,and career aspirations of Korean middle school students

The Seventh School Curriculum Reform in Korea was introduced in 2000 to prepare school‐aged Koreans for an information and knowledge‐based society. The reform effort emphasises information and communication technology (ICT) in the K–12 curriculum and a learner‐centred pedagogy. This study examines the contributions of ICT, specifically, computer‐assisted instruction (CAI), in Korean science classrooms. A sample of 234 Korean middle school students was categorised into five achievement groups. Data were collected from pre‐ and post‐achievement test scores and pre‐ and post‐questionnaires for attitudes toward science, future courses, and career aspirations in science. Findings include: (1) the lowest achievement group showed the most significant improvement after CAI (p=.000); (2) an improvement in student achievement in science significantly influenced students’ attitudes toward science (p=.019), future course selections, and career aspirations related to science (p=.000); and (3) boys tended to perform better with CAI than girls. This research provides evidence that CAI has the potential to help lower achieving students in Korean science classes and may encourage enrolment in science.     

Effectiveness of ontology-based learning content generation for preschool cognitive skills learning

During early childhood, children start developing their cognitive, social, emotional, and behavioural skills, laying the foundation for life-long learning. Cognitive skills are usually taught in traditional classrooms through the use of textbooks and worksheets. The learning content in these textbooks and worksheets is static pre-authored content that is repeatedly used for teaching and learning. This repetition jeopardises the child's learning of individualised and cognitive skills. Preschool cognitive skills learning content comprises facts of everyday life. Similarly, the Semantic Web attempts to model these facts through ontologies. From this, a relationship appears between preschool cognitive skills learning content and the ontologies. The present work focuses on the stated problem and presents the theoretical and development details of a child-friendly tutoring application that dynamically generates cognitive skills learning content using ontologies as domain knowledge. The proposed application was evaluated in a preschool environment for its learning effectiveness and the correctness of the generated content. Three groups of preschool children participated in the study for preschool cognitive skills learning through the use of the proposed application. The first group learned the cognitive skills through the traditional method with textbooks and the teacher's teaching. The second group learned the skills through the proposed application at school in classroom sessions. The third group experienced the proposed application both at school and at home, along with regular classroom sessions. The results show significant gains by the third group over the other two groups, and hence support the use of the proposed application in practice. However, the enhanced learning by the third group disappears if the additional application usage time is removed. Moreover, the results of the expert evaluation show that a great deal of the learning content was correctly generated, thus justifying the true modelling of the domain ontology.     

Construction of nationhood through education in Malaya: revisiting the Barnes and Fenn-Wu Reports

This article provides an analysis of two colonial reports, the Barnes and the Fenn-Wu Reports on education in the British colony of Malaya. The popular stance on the Barnes and the Fenn-Wu Reports is that one is an effect or reply to the other. We argue on the contrary that the two reports construct a common argument on nation-building which becomes apparent through a dialogic reading of the reports. We show how the two reports, written in the 1950s, reflect the anxiety of the colonial rulers in constructing a nation and the ethnic communities (the Malays and the Chinese) in pre-independent Malaya. These communities were constructed not without their inherent antagonism as well as their reciprocal vulnerabilities in a future political state. This act of articulation is predominantly a political act constructed through a complex web of interdiscursivity and intertextuality. The spectres of the Barnes and the Fenn-Wu Reports continue to surface in education and nation-building discourse in modern-day Malaysia.     

Oxidatively Damaged DNA: A Possible Antigenic Stimulus for Cancer Autoantibodies

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are cytotoxic at higher concentration resulting in cell death, mutations, chromosomal aberrations or carcinogenesis. In this study DNA was modified by singlet oxygen and superoxide anion radicals generated by illumination of riboflavin under 365 nm UV-light. The modified DNA induced high titre antibodies in experimental animals. In enzyme immunoassay, serum antibodies from cancer patients (n = 34) showed a higher recognition of the modified DNA, as compared to the native form. This was further confirmed by the gel-shift assay. Immune IgG were used as a probe to detect oxidative lesions in the DNA of cancer patients. DNA isolated from lymphocytes of cancer patients proved to be an appreciable inhibitor of the experimentally induced antibodies against the ROS-DNA. This indicates the presence of oxidative lesions in the DNA obtained from cancer patients. The results show that ROS induced oxidative damage to DNA in cancer patients generate neo-epitopes that are alien for the immune system, resulting in autoantibody formation.