General Education Teachers in the United Arab Emirates and Their Acceptance of the Inclusion of Students with Disabilities

In this article, Dr Emad M. Alghazo and Dr Eman El. Naggar Gaad, both assistant professors at the Department of Special Education in the United Arab Emirates University, report on their research into the attitudes of mainstream teachers towards the inclusion of students with disabilities. The research took place in the Emirate of Abu-Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, and set out to explore the extent to which general education teachers there accept the inclusion of students with disabilities in mainstream classrooms. The research process incorporated a questionnaire survey, analysed quantitatively, and a series of interviews with teachers to follow up on a range of issues. The analysis of the results takes account of a number of variables, including the gender of the respondents; number of years' experience as a teacher; and type of learner disability. Emad Alghazo and Eman Naggar Gaad report that there is more work to be done on the development of an 'inclusion culture' among teachers in the United Arab Emirates. They close their article by making a series of recommendations for future practice focusing on initial teacher education, continuing professional development and attitudinal change.     

Information technology and public policy: a socio-human profile of Indian digital revolution

The paper describes the role of information and Information Technology (IT) and discusses the infrastructure, human resources, telecommunications, and research and development in IT within the Indian context. It highlights the features of the liberalization of the Indian government software policy of 1986, including developments in networking and the growth of the IT industry in the country, and documents the proliferation and application of IT in India in various fields. It provides a detailed look at the socio-human dimensions of IT in terms of its impact on the socioeconomic conditions of the people, especially in the countryside. The paper describes the limitations of the Indian digital revolution in reaching out to the general masses and the various factors responsible for the lopsided character of the information revolution.     

Childhood Problems in a Sudanese City: A Comparison of Extended and Nuclear Families

The relation between emotional and social development and family structure in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, was examined. Children between the ages of 4 and 9 living in extended and nuclear families were compared on mothers' ratings of a range of childhood problems. Analysis revealed that children in nuclear families had more conduct, emotional, and sleep problems, poorer self-care, and were more likely to be overdependent than those living in extended families. They were also less likely to be breast fed, to be weaned later, and to have grandmothers involved in child care. Linear multiple regression revealed that, of these 3 childcare factors, grandmother's involvement was the strongest predictor of normal social and emotional adjustment. The possible protective characteristics of the extended family are discussed in relation to the importance of the grandmother as maternal advisor, social support, and socialization agent.     

An On-Demand and Cloud-Based Digital Scholarship Applications Dashboard

Building on the findings of a 2013 NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up funded project, in early 2016 we began working on an IMLS Sparks! funded project: Digital Scholarship Applications Dashboard. The project is a collaborative initiative between University IT and the Library's Center for Digital Scholarship. We are currently evaluating an efficient and user-friendly dashboard solution that will allow faculty and student to easily choose, configure, deploy, and evaluate any of a set of common web applications in a shared and virtual hosting environment. The service is similar to those offered by commercial hosting providers for deployment of popular web applications, but our Scholars Dashboard service will focus on tools more relevant to digital scholarship and digital humanities. The prototype leverages OpenNebula, an open source cloud-computing platform for managing distributed data center environments, and Amazon Web Services for deploying virtual machines. In this article, we will describe the work we have done in the last year and further discuss the role of digital scholarship teams within academic libraries in providing cloud-based infrastructure for digital scholarship and research.     

The Effect of “Living Values: An Educational Program” on Behaviors and Attitudes of Elementary Students in a Private School in Lebanon

The study examines the effect of the “Living Values Educational Program” (LVEP) on certain behaviors and attitudes related to personal intelligences (Intrapersonal & Interpersonal) in elementary school students in a private school in Lebanon. A sample of 76 second and third grade students was randomly selected. A pre-post experimental control group design was used. Students in the treatment group followed lessons from three of the program’s value units, namely: Peace, Respect and Love, in addition to the regular school curriculum for a whole school year, while the control group continued with the school’s regular curriculum. Both groups were pre tested prior to the implementation of the program and then post tested using the following instruments: Harter’s Perceived Competence Scales, Teachers’ Rating Scale, and the BarOn Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i:YV (S)). Data was analyzed using t-tests and qualitative teacher parent interviews. Significant treatment effects were found on students’ self-perceptions in the Scholastic, Cognitive and Social domains of the Harter Scale, as compared to the control group. Also, significant differences in the Teachers Rating Scale posttest measures, in favor of the treatment group were also found, but not on the EQ-i:YV (S) subscales and total EQ post test mean scores. Results were discussed and explanations were provided with recommendations for future research.     

文本到底是什么？

文本在计算机上的表示方式影响着文本创作者与其他用户使用文本的方式。现有的电子文档模型还有很多不足和局限。笔者认为文本最好的表示模型是有序的分层内容对象模型(OHCO),这种模型揭示了文本到底是什么这一根本问题。OHCO 模型符合 SGML 等新兴标准,且有利于作者、出版商、研究者等不同用户。本文介绍了该层次模型以及未来如何将文档作为一种数据库、超文本、网络来加以利用和重用。     

Turkish grade 10 students' and science teachers' conceptions of nature of science: A national study

This study aimed to assess grade 10 Turkish students' and science teachers' conceptions of nature of science (NOS) and whether these conceptions were related to selected variables. These variables included participants' gender, geographical region, and the socioeconomic status (SES) of their city and region; teacher disciplinary background, years of teaching experience, graduate degree, and type of teacher training program; and student household SES and parents' educational level. A stratified sampling approach was used to generate a representative national sample comprising 2,087 students and 378 science teachers. After establishing their validity in the Turkish context, participants were administered a questionnaire comprising 14 modified “Views on Science‐Technology‐Society” (VOSTS) items to assess their views of certain aspects of NOS. A total of 2,020 students (97%) and 362 teachers (96%) completed the questionnaire. Participant responses were categorized as “naïve,” “have merit,” or “informed,” and the frequency distributions for these responses were compared for various groupings of participants. The majority of participants held naïve views of a majority of the target NOS aspects. Teacher views were mostly similar to those of their students. Teacher and student views of some NOS aspects were related to some of the target variables. These included teacher graduate degree and geographical region, and student household SES, parent education, and SES of their city and geographical region. The relationship between student NOS views and enhanced economic and educational capitals of their households, as well as the SES status of their cities and geographical regions point to significant cultural (specifically Western) and intellectual underpinnings of understandings about NOS. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 1083–1112, 2008     

South African Counsellors' Attitudes Towards Cognitive Behavioural Techniques to Ameliorate Trauma: Effects of a Training Workshop

Despite its successes in the United States and Europe, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) has a short history in South Africa. Local cultural realities and social conditions have been cited as obstacles to the implementation of CBT at community health centres. Yet, CBT's successes in ameliorating a variety of psychological conditions, including symptoms of PTSD, necessitate examination of its relevance and applicability in South African communities. The present study reports on counsellors' attitudes and opinions to CBT for the treatment of psychological trauma. We presented a two-day workshop on CBT and assessed counsellors' opinions and attitudes prior to and following the workshop. Results are discussed in the context of the high rate of traumatic events that occur in South African communities.