Global citizenship education: mainstreaming the curriculum?

There has been a resurgence of interest in global education in the UK as global issues are included within the requirements of citizenship education in national curricula. This paper examines the significance attached to global citizenship through Citizenship as a statutory subject at Key Stages 3 and 4 within the National Curriculum for England. Drawing on a web‐based project funded by the UK Department for International Development, the paper analyses a number of secondary school texts designed to support teachers and students in incorporating global perspectives into citizenship education. It seeks to answer the question: in what ways is global citizenship being mainstreamed? It suggests that NGOs and commercial publishers have different but complementary approaches to resources for global citizenship and that there is a strong case for greater collaboration between the two sectors.     

Towards a traditional model for school counselling and care in Nigeria

This paper attempts to present a traditional model that can be used for school counselling in the Nigerian school system.To do this, it discusses beliefs and values in a traditional setting, healing and characteristics of traditional counselling environment and the traditional healing processes. Finally, it gives a discourse on a model for therapy in Nigerian schools.The emphasis of the paper is that it is necessary for school counselling to be marshed with the traditional model as the students schools seek to nurture, ultimately, still go back to tradition for self-realization and self-actualization.     

Age-Dependent Changes in Glutathione-S-Transferase: Correlation with Total Plasma Antioxidant Potential and Red Cell Intracellular Glutathione

The correlation between antioxidant capacity and oxidative damage during aging has been reported in several tissues in different species. Glutathione-S-transferases (GST) can metabolise endogenous and exogenous toxins and carcinogens by catalysing the conjugation of diverse electrophiles with reduced glutathione (GSH). We observe a significant (P < 0.001) increase in plasma GST activity as a function of human age (r = 0.5675). A significant (P < 0.001) positive correlation (r = 0.8979) is observed between GST activity and total plasma antioxidant potential measured as ferric reducing ability of the plasma (FRAP). GST activity and red cell intracellular GSH also show a significant positive correlation (r = 0.7014). We hypothesize that the increased activity of plasma GST is a manifestation of increased generation of ROS and a concomitant decrease in the level of plasma antioxidant capacity during aging.     

Writer identification approach based on bag of words with OBI features

Handwriter identification aims to simplify the task of forensic experts by providing them with semi-automated tools in order to enable them to narrow down the search to determine the final identification of an unknown handwritten sample. An identification algorithm aims to produce a list of predicted writers of the unknown handwritten sample ranked in terms of confidence measure metrics for use by the forensic expert will make the final decision.Most existing handwriter identification systems use either statistical or model-based approaches. To further improve the performances this paper proposes to deploy a combination of both approaches using Oriented Basic Image features and the concept of graphemes codebook. To reduce the resulting high dimensionality of the feature vector a Kernel Principal Component Analysis has been used. To gauge the effectiveness of the proposed method a performance analysis, using IAM dataset for English handwriting and ICFHR 2012 dataset for Arabic handwriting, has been carried out. The results obtained achieved an accuracy of 96% thus demonstrating its superiority when compared against similar techniques.     

Factors affecting attitudes and intentions towards knowledge sharing in the Dubai Police Force

This study contributes to the limited research base on knowledge sharing in public sector organisations, specifically police forces, and organisations in the Middle East through a case study investigation into the factors that affect knowledge sharing in the Dubai Police Force. A questionnaire-based survey was conducted with staff in key departments in the Dubai Police Force. Informed by the literature and by interviews conducted in a previous phase, the core of the questionnaire was a bank of Likert-style questions covering the dependent variables intention to knowledge share, and attitude towards knowledge sharing, and the independent variables, trust, organisational structure, leadership, reward, time, and information technology. Data was analysed using structured equation modelling, in order to test the measurement model using confirmatory factor analysis, and to test the structural model. The structural model suggests a strong relationship between attitude to knowledge sharing, and intention to share knowledge. Hypotheses regarding the influence of leadership, trust, organisational structure, time, and information technology on attitude to knowledge sharing were upheld. Rewards did not to influence attitude to knowledge sharing. Recommendations are offered for practice and further research.     

The Effectiveness of the Responsive Teaching Parent-mediated Developmental Intervention Programme in Turkey: A pilot study

The case study was conducted to examine the feasibility of an early intervention curriculum called Responsive Teaching with two five-year-old children from Turkey who had significant developmental delays. This study determined whether Turkish mothers might be successful in learning to become more responsive to their children, and whether this would result in significant improvements in their children’s development. Both dyads received 28 individual parent–child intervention sessions which were conducted over a four-month period of time. Pre-, mid-, and post-assessments indicated improvements in the mothers’ responsiveness to their children and the children’s levels of engagement with their parents. There were also improvements in the children’s language and personal social development. Mothers reported that Responsive Teaching helped them learn to interact more effectively with their children and that this resulted in longer and more enjoyable interactions with them. Results from this investigation are discussed in terms of their implications for providing developmental services to preschool-aged children with disabilities in Turkey.     

A “research” into international student-related research: (Re)Visualising our stand?

This paper uses Tight (High Educ Res Dev 23(4):395–411, 2004; High Educ Res Dev 31(5):723–740, 2012; High Educ Res Dev 32(1):136–151, 2013)’s journal analysis and review framework to review a sample of 497 journal articles on researches concerning international students over the past 30 years. It was found that a majority of the articles focus on the students’ in-campus, academic and social experience. Even with different conceptualisation of the terms “international student” and “international student mobility”, international students undergo similar challenges throughout their sojourn duration, and much of the responsibilities in managing international students fall on universities and respective faculty members within the institutions. It might seem as if we are going in circles in terms of the issues and concerns in managing international students, but the silver lining out of this observation is the increased ethnical awareness among countries and higher education institutions in hosting and safeguarding the students throughout their international higher education experience, albeit rather slowly. The analysis brings to attention how much have we achieved in internationalisation of higher education in general and international student-related research in particular, and the potential for greater expansion and focus on managing the student population within a comprehensive “life cycle” approach.     

The socioeconomic impact of HIV/AIDS on education outcomes in Uganda: School enrolment and the schooling gap in 2002/2003

Due to high prime-age mortality—a result of the HIV/AIDS scourge, the number of orphans in Uganda continues to rise. Using the 2002/2003 Uganda National Household Survey, this paper investigates how HIV/AIDS orphan status affects schooling enrolment and grade progression. Our results show that HIV/AIDS orphans are not significantly less likely to continue schooling but are by far more likely to fall below their appropriate grade. Furthermore, we find that the schooling gaps decreases at higher levels of household welfare status—poor HIV/AIDS orphans, especially aged 13–17 years, are significantly less likely to continue schooling.     

Evaluating the effect of transformational leadership on knowledge sharing using structural equation modelling: the case of Iraqi higher education

Leadership style has been suggested as an important factor affecting knowledge management in organizations. Transformational leadership has been acknowledged as having a positive general influence on knowledge management. However, there is a lack of empirical studies examining the relationship between transformational leadership and knowledge sharing in higher education within developing countries such as Iraq. This research seeks to evaluate the impact of the four components of transformational leadership, namely idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration, on knowledge sharing (both donating and collecting). Two hundred and fifty usable questionnaires were collected from public higher education institutions in Iraq. Structural equation modelling with AMOS 22 confirms the importance of transformational leadership in encouraging knowledge-sharing culture in higher education. The results reveal that, of the four components of transformational leadership, intellectual stimulation has the strongest effect on both the donating and collecting of knowledge. Guidelines are developed for academics as well as leaders, and evidence is provided in support of the use of transformational leadership to promote knowledge sharing within higher education in developing countries, particularly Iraq. The implications of the findings, along with some potential applications and suggestions for future research, are discussed.