The politics of mourning in Cyprus and Israel: educational implications

This paper suggests the need for a critical analysis of the nationalization of mourning and its educational implications, especially in conflict‐ridden areas. Our thoughts are grounded in a comparative study on mourning that has been conducted as part of our long‐standing ethnographic research in schools in Cyprus and Israel during the last 10 years. Through this study on mourning, we highlight two ideas. First, we want to show how a comparison of our studies in Cyprus and Israel highlights the difficulties for alternative interpretations to be translated into educational policies and teacher practices in the absence of changes in political structures. Second, we want to show that despite the forces that nationalize mourning, there are educational openings for alternative interpretations about mourning and the encouragement of reconciliation pedagogies. To this end, the education literature on teaching controversial issues and examples of pedagogies for reconciliation might be relevant to provide concrete ideas for education theory, policy and practice on issues of mourning.     

A Conceptual Analysis of State Support for Higher Education: Appropriations Versus Need-Based Financial Aid

In this paper, we use economic concepts to examine the choice that states make between giving appropriations to public colleges or need-based financial aid to students. We begin by reviewing the economic justification for state support for higher education. Next, we introduce a simple economic model for comparing and contrasting appropriations and need-based aid for supporting higher education. We then provide a graphical depiction of the model and simulate the effects of each policy on access to higher education. We show that it is in the best interest of states to provide need-based aid and not appropriations. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of the factors that complicate the reallocation of state funding away from appropriations and towards need-based aid.     

The "geography" of child maltreatment in Israel: Findings from a national data set of cases reported to the social services

OBJECTIVES: This article examines the "geography" of reported cases of child maltreatment in Israel by determining its frequency and rates according to nationality, area of residence, and size and type of locality. METHOD: The study collected data at the local level in Israel based on reports to social services of cases of child maltreatment during 2000; locality is the unit of analysis. RESULTS: The rate of reported cases of child maltreatment was 17.8 per 1,000 children in Israel in 2000. The rates varied, however, among different localities. They were lower in Arab localities (9 per 1,000 children) than in the Jewish ones (20 per 1,000), higher in large cities and other socioeconomic affluent localities (19 per 1,000), and varied according to the geographic area. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates considerable variation in rates of reported cases of child maltreatment by locality and by population makeup. Thus, to fulfill the Israeli legislation of mandatory reporting of any reasonable suspicion of child maltreatment, the state should better develop policies and services that encourage reporting of child maltreatment among the Arab and ultraorthodox populations and in smaller or socioeconomic disadvantaged localities. Furthermore, the social services must build a bridge to the minority populations in Israel, developing their trust in these services and increasing their propensity to use them.     

ISPCAN Child Abuse Screening Tool Children's Version (ICAST-C): Instrument development and multi-national pilot testing

ObjectiveTo develop a child victimization survey among a diverse group of child protection experts and examine the performance of the instrument through a set of international pilot studies.MethodsThe initial draft of the instrument was developed after input from scientists and practitioners representing 40 countries. Volunteers from the larger group of scientists participating in the Delphi review of the ICAST P and R reviewed the ICAST C by email in 2 rounds resulting in a final instrument. The ICAST C was then translated and back translated into six languages and field tested in four countries using a convenience sample of 571 children 12–17 years of age selected from schools and classrooms to which the investigators had easy access.ResultsThe final ICAST C Home has 38 items and the ICAST C Institution has 44 items. These items serve as screeners and positive endorsements are followed by queries for frequency and perpetrator. Half of respondents were boys (49%). Endorsement for various forms of victimization ranged from 0 to 51%. Many children report violence exposure (51%), physical victimization (55%), psychological victimization (66%), sexual victimization (18%), and neglect in their homes (37%) in the last year. High rates of physical victimization (57%), psychological victimization (59%), and sexual victimization (22%) were also reported in schools in the last year. Internal consistency was moderate to high (alpha between .685 and .855) and missing data low (less than 1.5% for all but one item).ConclusionsIn pilot testing, the ICAST C identifies high rates of child victimization in all domains. Rates of missing data are low, and internal consistency is moderate to high. Pilot testing demonstrated the feasibility of using child self-report as one strategy to assess child victimization.Practice implicationsThe ICAST C is a multi-national, multi-lingual, consensus-based survey instrument. It is available in six languages for international research to estimate child victimization. Assessing the prevalence of child victimization is critical in understanding the scope of the problem, setting national and local priorities, and garnering support for program and policy development aimed at child protection.     

Developing online learning resources: Big data,social networks,and cloud computing to support pervasive knowledge

Utilizing online learning resources (OLR) from multi channels in learning activities promise extended benefits from traditional based learning-centred to a collaborative based learning-centred that emphasises pervasive learning anywhere and anytime. While compiling big data, cloud computing, and semantic web into OLR offer a broader spectrum of pervasive knowledge acquisition to enrich users’ experience in learning. In conventional learning practices, a student is perceived as a recipient of information and knowledge. However, nowadays students are empowered to involve in learning processes that play an active role in creating, extracting, and improving OLR collaborative learning platform and knowledge sharing as well as distributing. Researchers have employed contents analysis for reviewing literatures in peer-reviewed journals and interviews with the teachers who utilize OLR. In fact, researchers propose pervasive knowledge can address the need of integrating technologies like cloud computing, big data, Web 2.0, and Semantic Web. Pervasive knowledge redefines value added, variety, volume, and velocity of OLR, which is flexible in terms of resources adoption, knowledge acquisition, and technological implementation.     

An autonomous mobile agent-based distributed learning architecture: a proposal and analytical analysis

Current distance learning systems are increasingly packing highly data‐intensive contents on servers, resulting in the congestion of network and server resources at peak service times. A distributed learning system based on faded information field (FIF) architecture that employs mobile agents (MAs) has been proposed and simulated in this work. The learning contents are decentralised in the proposed system, and these are dynamically distributed around the main education site server on different nodes in response to network congestion and server overload. The system simulation results have been presented and analysed. The proposed system holds the potential to address the network congestion and server‐overload problems in distance learning systems.