Teachers' Opinions about Inclusion: A pilot study in a Palestinian context

The present study explored teachers' opinions about the inclusion of students with disabilities and special needs in regular primary schools in a Palestinian context, and factors that influenced such opinions. The sample consisted of 90 teachers at six schools. Eighty-seven (97%) of them had students with disabilities or special needs in their classes. Fifty-four (60%) of the teachers were of the opinion that students with disabilities and special needs should have an opportunity to attend public schools. Opinion-related factors were identified and compared to results of previous studies. Eighty-one (90%) of the teachers expressed a need for changes in the public schools in order to meet the needs of students with disabilities and special needs. Their focus of interest for building their own competence was on knowledge and skills that could empower them as teachers, not on knowledge about the students' disabling impairments.     

Temporal expert profiling: With an application to T-shaped expert finding

Cost optimization continues to be a critical concern for many human resources departments. The key is to balance between costs and business value. In particular, computer science organizations prefer to hire people who are expert in only one skill area and have a slight superficial knowledge in other areas that gives them the ability to collaborate across different aspects of project. Community Question Answering networks provide good platforms for people and organizations to share knowledge and find experts. An important issue in expert finding is that an expert has to constantly update his knowledge after being saturated in his field of expertise to still be identified as expert. A person who fails to preserve his expertise is likely to lose his expertise. This work justifies this question that does take the concept of time into account improve the quality of expertise retrieval. We propose a new method for T-shaped expert finding that is based on temporal expert profiling. The proposed method takes the temporal property of expertise into account to mine the shape of expertise for each candidate expert based on his profile. To this end, for each candidate expert, we take snapshots of his expertise trees at regular time intervals and learn the relation between temporal changes in different expertise trees and candidates’ profile. Finally, we use a filtering technique that is applied on top of the profiling method, to find shape of expertise for candidate experts. Experimental results on a large test collection show the superiority of the proposed method in terms of quality of results in comparison with state-of-the-art.     

Windows,Bridges and Mirrors: Building Culturally Responsive Early Childhood Classrooms through the Integration of Literacy and the Arts

This article investigates how instructors can utilize the integration of early literacy skills and the arts to cultivate the appreciation and celebration of cultures in early childhood classrooms. The theoretical framework is developed through three personal accounts establishing a rationale for the importance of a viable home to school connection for young children. Finally, the suggested activities support the transference of theory into classroom practice.     

Bilingual language proficiency: A comparative study

International Review of Education -     

Voices of home and school on democracy and human rights education at the primary level: a case study

The purpose of this research was to investigate the perceptions of home and school concerning ideally implemented primary democracy and human rights education. In this qualitative study, data were collected from six voluntary classroom teachers and 16 parents in a selected school through interviews. The results of the interview yielded five major themes: physical and environmental issues, instructional process, teacher characteristics, assessment practices, and communication patterns for teaching democracy and human rights ideally. Most of the participants also indicated the lack of partnership between home and school. The results showed that there are gaps between the existing and desired conditions of democracy and human rights education in schools.     

Hydro-Alcoholic Cinnamon Extract, Enhances Glucose Transporter Isotype-4 Translocation from Intracellular Compartments into the Cytoplasmic Membrane of C2C12 Myotubes

Cinnamon has been used as an anti-diabetic agent for centuries but only in recent few years its mechanism of action has been under investigation. Previous studies showed that cinnamon might exert its anti-diabetic effect via increasing glucose transporter isotype-4 (GLUT4) gene and glycoprotein contents in fat cells. To study if hydro-alcoholic cinnamon extract (HACE) enhances GLUT4 translocation from intracellular compartments of nuclear or endoplasmic reticulum membranes (N/ER) into the cytoplasmic membrane (CM). C2C12 myoblastic cell line were seeded in DMEM plus 20 % FBS and differentiated to myotubes using 2 % horse serum. After myotubes formation, 100 or 1,000 μg/ml HACE, as intervention, and as control 1 % DMSO were added for 3 h. Cells were washed and homogenized followed by ultracentrifuge fractionation, protein separation by SDS-PAGE and GLUT4 detection using semi-quantitative Western blotting. Data analysis was done by two-independent samples t test for comparison of mean ± SD of GLUT4 percent in categories. GLUT4 contents were higher in CM of groups 100 and 1,000 μg/ml HACE and lower in 1 % DMSO treated myotubes (CI = 0.95, P < 0.05). For N/ER reverse results were obtained (CI = 0.95, P < 0.05). As our results have shown HACE induces GLUT4 translocation from intra-cell into cell surface. We conclude that cinnamon maybe a choice of type-2 diabetes mellitus treatment because its extract enhances GLUT4 contents in CM where it facilitates glucose entrance into the cell. However it is necessary to trace the signaling pathways which are activated by HACE in muscular tissue.     

A Community-Driven Metadata Framework for Describing Cultural Resources: The Digital Library North Project

This article describes the Digital Library North (DLN) project, a collaboration among researchers at the University of Alberta, staff at the Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre, and communities within the Inuvialuit Settlement Region (ISR) to develop a culturally appropriate metadata framework for a digital library of cultural resources. It will discuss gathering of data to inform the first iteration of the metadata framework and digital library prototype, as well as revisions made to both the framework and the digital library based on feedback obtained through community interaction with the prototype.     

ASSESSING CHEMISTRY-LEARNING COMPETENCIES OF STUDENTS IN ISOLATED RURAL SENIOR HIGH SCHOOLS BY USING THE NATIONAL EXAMINATION: A CASE STUDY OF SIMEULUE ISLAND,INDONESIA

This study explored learning competency based on the Indonesian National Examination focusing especially on chemistry performance and the circumstances of senior high school students and teachers in rural areas of Simeulue Island, Indonesia. The National Examination total score and chemistry score for students in rural areas were consistently lower than students in urban areas during 2008–2010. The majority of rural students were failing to master key chemistry concepts. Their low performance on laboratory-based questions appeared to indicate that the associated practical work was not done as part of the chemistry courses. Some chemistry topics were not taught due to insufficient time, student weaknesses, insufficient textbooks, and other reasons. The issues of low competency of teachers, poverty for the majority of students, low enrollment in schools, and low competition among students in these rural senior high schools appeared to be common problems across rural settings. The local government has recommended providing a consolidated rural high school with qualified chemistry teachers, laboratories, and transportation to address factors negatively influencing student achievement. Furthermore, local rural school officials need to recruit and retain qualified teachers in these isolated areas, provide effective textbooks and instructional resources, and facilitate the professional development of chemistry teachers.     

Indigenous innovations in higher education: Local knowledge and critical research

International Review of Education -     

The impact of organizational factors on management information system success: An investigation in the Iran's agricultural extension providers

Information system success has been widely discussed in the past two decades. As systems and technologies are being improved and developed, discussions on their effectiveness and evaluation on their success have been continuously debated by researchers, scholars and practitioners throughout the years. Besides the major concern of IS effectiveness, factors influencing IS effectiveness are also important. One of these factors is the organizational factor. Using perceptual measures, this study aims to investigate the influence of organizational factors on MIS success. Survey questionnaires were gathered from 132 Extension Managers from Iran's Agricultural Extension Providers. Seven items were identified to influence MIS success. They are IS department structure, top management support, management style, managerial IT knowledge, goal alignment, resources allocation and IS infrastructure. The study also identified five MIS success dimensions; systems quality, information quality, perceived Ease of use, organizational impact and individual impact. The study found that the MIS success variables are significantly and highly correlated. The study also found all the organizational factors are significantly correlated to the five IS success factors investigated; the system quality, information quality, perceived ease of use, organizational impact and individual impact. Multiple regression analyses also found goal alignment as the highest predictor of IS success, followed by IS department structure, IS infrastructure and management style.