Ganga Bahadur’s books: landmark proletarian novels and the Nepali communist movement

Based on literary research and interviews conducted in Kathmandu, this article takes as its starting point the contents of a bookcase belonging to an ex-Maoist combatant now living in retirement in Kathmandu and the “syllabus” promulgated by the then Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) for the ideological training of its cadres. It goes on to chronicle the process by which a number of “landmark ‘proletarian novels’” (Denning 2007 Denning, Michael. 2007. “The Novelists’ International.” In The Novel, edited by Franco Moretti. Princeton: Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar], 706) came to be translated into Nepali from Russian and Chinese, and the ways in which Maoist cadres were inspired and influenced by these works during the course of the “People’s War” in Nepal between 1996 and 2006. Finally, the discussion moves to a consideration of the relationship between the impact of these translated texts in the Nepali context and broader conceptualizations of “world literature.”     

Construct Validation of the Self-Efficacy Teaching and Knowledge Instrument for Science Teachers-Revised (SETAKIST-R): Lessons Learned

Described herein is the academic lineage and independent validation of the Self-Efficacy Teaching and Knowledge Instrument for Science Teachers-Revised (SETAKIST-R). Data from 334 K-12 science teachers were analyzed using Partial Credit Rasch models. Principal components analysis on the person-item residuals suggest two latent dimensions: Knowledge and Teaching Self-Efficacies. Item-fit statistics were used to select items for each subscale. Person and item separation (reliability) indices were quite low, and we noted disordered response patterns on the person-item maps that revealed problems with item content and/or scaling for both subscales. These issues include the presence of: verbal negatives, ambiguous modifiers, counter-intuitive scaling, and an “undecided/uncertain” option. The SETAKIST-R, in its current form, cannot be recommended as a measure of science teacher self-efficacy.