The role of sociocultural mediational tools in EFL teachers’ development: insights from a life history approach

The sociocultural orientation in general education, which has gradually leaked into second language teacher education, argues that teachers usually employ social relations, cultural artefacts, and theoretical concepts to mediate their thinking and practice. Against this background, the present study aimed to explore how three male Iranian English as a foreign language teachers have capitalised on the three sociocultural tools to mediate their development. The findings revealed that not all three mediational tools, though each influential in its own terms, have been available wholesale to the teachers and that different academic and teaching phases have yielded differential access to the tools. The authors indicate that during school as student, human mediation, particularly of apprenticeship, seems to be the dominant tool available for the teachers to mediate their development. Later on, in higher education institutes, although the human apprenticeship is still visible, cultural artefacts and scientific theories start to surface influencing the teachers’ learning and teaching trajectories. The implications for both teachers and teacher educators are discussed.     

Authenticity in teaching and teachers’ emotions: a hermeneutic phenomenological study of the classroom reality

This study probed the conceptualization of authenticity in teaching and its link to teachers’ emotional life through critical emotional praxis because emotions are integral to discovering who we really are (McCarthy, E. D. 2009. “Emotional Performances as Dramas of Authenticity.” In Authenticity in Culture, Self, and Society, edited by P. Vannini, and J. P. Williams, 241–255. London: Ashgate). The participants were 20 Iranian university teachers. Data were collected using interviews, field notes, and observation and were analyzed through the lens of hermeneutic phenomenology. The results revealed that authenticity in teaching consisted of themes of being one’s own self, horizon of significance, and contestation resulted from the sense of responsibility, authentic relations, and de-constructive thinking which confirmed the dialogical nature of authenticity. The emotions connected to authenticity in teaching were Transition-Anger, love, and caring indicating that authenticity in teaching was a practice toward socially just teaching.     

Impact of a Brief Literacy Intervention on Urban Preschoolers

A pre-post study was conducted at an urban child-care center to study the hypothesis that a brief literacy intervention would result in improved receptive vocabulary for preschoolers. Parents attended a series of 4 workshops about reading to children. The children had a significant 7-point increase in their Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test scores at 7-month follow-up. Children of college-educated parents had a higher increase in scores than did children whose parents were not college educated.     

Working as partners for classroom reform

This paper discusses a partnership involving teachers and a teacher educator working together to develop teaching and learning practices in Pakistan. The partnership was established in response to the teachers’ need for support in developing their professional practices within the actual contexts and realities of their schools, after they had attended an in-service training course at a university. Providing case studies, the paper analyses the processes and outcomes of this co-learning partnership. The findings suggest that the collaborative process advances the understanding of teachers’ problems, resolves them on the spot, and provides teachers with the confidence and courage to transcend the constraints of their workplaces while developing professionally.     

Information searching behavior in the Internet age: A users’ study of Aligarh Muslim University

This study reports the results of a survey conducted at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) to determine the extent to which Internet users are aware and make use of the Internet resources and services. The study examines the information searching behavior of Internet users. A questionnaire and follow-up interviews with the postgraduate students, research scholars and academic staff were conducted to collect data. A total of 489 questionnaires were distributed to the selected sample of eight faculties; 405 valid samples were collected. The data were analyzed according to the background of Internet users, Internet information searching behavior, use of Internet resources and services, quality of Internet information, problems of the Internet access and need for Internet literacy. The study found that the majority of respondents had a 5 year history of Internet access. The academic staff spent more time on the Internet than the students and research scholars. Although Internet search engines were the preferred information searching tool, other methods such as databases, gateways and World Wide Web (WWW) were also used. Online journals and databases were the preferred information sources among the Internet users. Respondents chose e-mail, WWW and search engines as important Internet services. About 60% of respondents believed that the good quality of information on the Internet made it a useful tool for education and research. Slow speed, lack of training and information overload were indicated as some of the factors affecting Internet usage. Further, recommendations are made to improve the use of Internet, including a well-planned Internet literacy program and preparation of subject gateways.     

The policy and management of information technology in Jordanian schools

During the past two decades the introduction of personal computers has been a major innovation in the Hashimite Kingdom of Jordan. This new technology continues to offer an exciting challenge to educationalists. This paper reviews the developments of Information Technology (IT) in Jordanian public schools in the period 1984–1998. My contention is that the highly centralised nature of the Jordanian educational system and the comprehensive policy of the Directorate of Educational Computing (DEC) have made the introduction of computers in schools less difficult.     

Student achievement conditioned upon school selection: Religious and secular secondary school quality in Bangladesh

In this paper we present new evidence on the impact of school characteristics on secondary student achievement using a rich dataset from rural Bangladesh. We deal with a potentially important selectivity issue in the South Asian context: the non-random sorting of children into madrasas (Islamic faith schools). We do so by employing a combination of fixed effects and instrumental variable estimation techniques. Our empirical results do not reveal any difference in test scores between religious and secular schools when selection into secondary school is taken into account. However, we document significant learning deficit by gender and primary school type: girls and graduates of primary madrasas have significantly lower test scores even after controlling for school and classroom-specific unobservable correlates of learning.     

Subset selection of best simulated systems

In this paper, we consider the problem of selecting a subset of k systems that is contained in the set of the best s simulated systems when the number of alternative systems is huge. We propose a sequential method that uses the ordinal optimization to select a subset G randomly from the search space that contains the best simulated systems with high probability. To guarantee that this subset contains the best systems it needs to be relatively large. Then methods of ranking and selections will be applied to select a subset of k best systems of the subset G with high probability. The remaining systems of G will be replaced by newly selected alternatives from the search space. This procedure is repeated until the probability of correct selection (a subset of the best k simulated systems is selected) becomes very high. The optimal computing budget allocation is also used to allocate the available computing budget in a way that maximizes the probability of correct selection. Numerical experiments for comparing these algorithms are presented.     

The significance of troponin T and CK-MB release in coronary artery bypass surgery

Measurement of cardiac markers is an index of care standard in the assessment and diagnosis of cardiovascualr disease. Two of the major cardiac markers are Creatine Kinase isoenzyme CK-MB and Troponin T, which are extensively used in the diagnosis of heart disease. The release of Troponin T and creatine kinase isoenzyme (CK-MB) was investigated in 50 coronary artery bypass surgery patients. Measurement of plasma samples was carried out at five different time points, namely before surgery, 1,6,12,24 hours after surgery. The results indicated that CK-MB level were increased by a factor more than four times compared with the upper limit of baseline (befor surgery). Troponin T concentration showed more than six fold over the upper limit of baseline (before surgert) at 1,6,12,24 hours after surgery. In order to assess the significance of the length of the surgical procedure on the release of Troponin T and CK-MB, the surgery patient were divided into two groups according to the length of the surgical procedure: group I was selected on the basis that the surgical procedure they underwent lasted above 90 minutes and group II with a surgical procedure below 90 minutes. Both Troponin T and CK-MB showed a significant increase in-group I compared to group II. To investigate the likelihood that this effect is party due to myocardial infarction during surgery, the patients were divided into two groups: Group A with some sings of myocardial infarction on Q wave of ECG and group B without any change. The results showed approximately a two-fold increase of these markers in-group A compared to group B. Since these markers reach into blood following damage to myocardial their increase in patients with time course surgery of more than 90 minutes and those with a probability of MI during operation, indicating that these patient fall into a high risk group of repeat (MI) after surgery.