Universal primary education in Nepal: Fulfilling the right to education

With the net enrollment ratio in primary education in Nepal at 94%, most children are in the school system, but the system fails to ensure that all enrolled children will continue in school cycle and complete primary education of acceptable quality. Given the system’s poor internal efficiency, Nepal is not likely to achieve the MDG and EFA goals of universal primary education by 2015. This article examines the status of universal primary education in Nepal in the light of legal provisions, enrollment and completion trends, and the quality, and management, of education, including financing. It highlights progress made, issues encountered, and some key lessons learned during the past decade. It examines the efforts to make primary education inclusive in terms of social and gender equity. The review of progress toward Education for All underscores that fulfilling the right to education in terms of adequate quality of services and learning outcomes requires sustained efforts and commitment from the government and local community in several priority action areas related to policies, achieving quality with equity, and educational management.     

Bhabha’s contributions to elementary particle physics and cosmic rays research

Bhabha’s scientific research contributions are descibed in the context of his life and contemporary science. During the Cambridge period (1927–1939), he worked in positron theory (Bhabha scattering), cosmic rays (Bhabha-Heitler theory of cosmic ray showers, prediction of heavier electrons) and meson theory. In Bangalore during 1939–1945, he worked on classical relativistic spinning particles (Bhabha-Corben equations), meson theory and initiated experimental work in cosmic rays in India. He then founded Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in 1945 at Bombay and moved there. Here he started work on relativistic wave equations (Bhabha equations.). He also initiated India’s nuclear energy programme in 1948 and this was his main preoccupation later.     

Quantitative Assessment of Expression of Lactate Dehydrogenase and its Isoforms 3 and 4 may Serve as Useful Indicators of Progression of Gallbladder Cancer: A Pilot Study

We have studied the expression of lactate dehydrogenase and its isoforms in gall bladder cancer, cholelithiasis and chronic cholecystitis. Quantitative and qualitative assays of lactate dehydrogenase and its various isoforms were carried out in the blood sera of patients and healthy controls along with parallel estimation of various liver function test enzymes. Statistical analysis was done using the software Graph Pad Prism. Significantly high expression of lactate dehydrogenase along with alkaline phosphatase and total bilirubin (P ≤ 0.05) was observed in all the three clinical conditions as compared to controls. LDH showed an increasing trend from stage I to stage IV of GBC indicating a significant positive association with the disease progression. The levels of LDH 3 and 4 isoforms appeared significantly more elevated in GBC than cholelithiasis or chronic cholecystitis. We suggest that a careful estimation of total LDH and its isoforms 3 and 4 alone or along with alkaline phosphatase and total bilirubin during different clinical stages, like chronic cholecystitis, cholelithiasis and GBC, may prove to be a potentially useful biomarker in the prognostic management of gall bladder diseases, specifically GBC.     

Tolerant Inclusion: racialised experiences of Asian Australian pre‐service teachers

In this paper we examine the educational experiences of Asian Australian women enrolled in a Faculty of Education in an urban university. We argue that the everyday social relations of pre‐service teacher education are constituted by discourses of liberal tolerance which call for a celebration of difference and diversity. This celebratory discourse suppresses, and thereby denies, the unequal power relations between the Anglo‐Celtic majority and ethnic, racialised minority groups. Discourses of liberal tolerance position the Anglo‐Celtic majority to be either tolerant or intolerant of its ethnicised and racialised Other(s). However, social interactions cannot be simply analysed in terms of a binary logic of tolerance or intolerance of the Other. Social interactions between members of majority and minority groups are complex; inherently contradictory and ambivalent. In this paper we explore these complex dynamics in the everyday experiences of Asian Australian women enrolled in a teacher‐education course     

Bourdieu’s lessons for internationalising Anglophone education: declassifying Sino-Anglo divisions over critical theorising

To ratify possibilities for worldly linguistic connectivities and critical theorising there is a need to forgo the exclusionary preoccupation with English and Western critical theories. The debates informing the international circulation of Bourdieu’s (1977, 1993, 1999, 2004) ideas provide methodological lessons for moving from critical sociology of education to educational research for critique. This study reports on the use of Chinese metaphors to critically theorise evidence of Australian education. It provides an analysis of the translation of Chinese metaphors, their use as theoretical tools and the preempting of the antagonistic reception of Chinese metaphors by Western Anglophone educators. A worldly education of linguistic connectivities and critical theorising is shown to engage in the reflexivity necessary for making Chinese research students’ bi- or multilingual competence a presence in Australian teacher-researcher education. At the, same time they are articulating claims for reconfiguring its internationalisation.     

How Many Ways Can We Define Online Learning? A Systematic Literature Review of Definitions of Online Learning (1988-2018)

ABSTRACT

Online learning as a concept and as a keyword has consistently been a focus of education research for over two decades. In this paper, we present results from a systematic literature review for the definitions of online learning because the concept of online learning, though often defined, has a range of meanings attached to it. Authors and scholars use the term to mean very distinct, if not contradictory concepts. We conducted systematic literature for over the last 30 years (1988 to 2018) to investigate the number and content of definitions of online learning. We collected 46 definitions from 37 resources and conducted a content analysis on these sets of definitions. Content analysis of the collected definitions led to an understanding of the core elements for defining online learning, the confusion surrounding the terms and the synonyms used for online learning. An evolution of the definition of the concept of online learning was also mapped to the evolution of technology in the last three decades.     

Educational practice in India and its foundations in Indian heritage: a synthesis of the East and West?

The paper examines education practice in India in terms of the division between indigenous cultures on the one hand, and the formal culture of learning and knowledge systems inherited from colonial times on the other. These ‘two Indias’ are still reflected in the modern educational system in India, seen in the vast differences between the formal school system, whose benefits reach only a minority of the population, and the millions of crafts-persons working in India's informal sector, many without education or training. The paper looks at reasons for these divisions within the culture and history of India's formal, non-formal and informal systems of education and training. The paper also throws light on the aspirations to unite these divided cultures of learning by looking at some of the writings of J.P. Naik, the famous educationist and secretary of the first Report of the Education Commission (1964–66) after India's independence. The analysis needs to be seen against the background of international educational thought which is improving the value, relevance and quality of non-formal and informal learning, as key pillars for building lifelong learning systems.