Contextualising the career pathways of women principals in Hong Kong: a critical examination

The fields of gender and educational leadership have been enriched recently by analyses of national case studies from non-western contexts. By contextualising women’s career development, these studies highlight the importance of including experiences other than those generated from Anglo-American-Australian contexts, thus broadening our knowledge base for more nuanced theorisation in the field. This paper contributes a close examination of the career histories of eight female primary school principals in Hong Kong. Our analyses identify a range of facilitators, including the expansion of promotion opportunities, strong values placed on education and training, professional encouragement and support and help in relieving family responsibilities. Valuable these factors may be, but we argue that they are incidental, informal, familial and individual, and incur the costs of burn-out and guilt. The discussion not only underlines the significance of case study and cultural and contextual specificities, it also provides a nuanced understanding of Chinese patriarchy.     

The Place of Religion in the Jewish Schools of Palestine

This article notes a profound connection between the philosophy of Jewish law (halakhah) and the research of meta-halakah on the one hand and the philosophy of education on the other hand. The connection is, in principle, exemplified through an encounter between the educational philosophy of Joseph Schwab and the Jewish law (halakhic responsa literature). Following an elucidation of Schwab's deliberative model, the article examines the extent of the linkage between that model and halakhic thought. It considers three halakhic genres and provides illustrations of how Schwab's insights can contribute to an analysis of the responsa literature.     

Dynamic behavior of a hydraulic crane operating a freely suspended payload

We describe an investigation of the dynamic behavior of a hydraulically driven crane with a freely suspended payload during luffing and slewing motions. To simplify the task, the two movements are considered separately. Taking into account only one motion at a time, the crane is regarded as a three-link kinematic chain with revolute joints. The forward dynamics problem is solved for a crane with three rotational degrees of freedom, two of which describe the load swinging. In both the cases studied, the links are driven by a torque applied via a hydraulic drive, i.e., a linear actuator for the luffing case and a rack and pinion mechanism for the slewing motion. To compose the set of differential equations for the forward dynamics problem, a method based on a general Newton-Euler algorithm is used. From these simulations the time histories of various parameters, namely the swinging angles, hydraulic pressures, and joint forces, are determined. The results obtained via simulations are confirmed experimentally and a good agreement between the two outputs is observed. The results also show that a hydraulic drive system using fast opening flow direction control valves increases the load swing and imposes extensive inertial forces and problems of fatigue and reliability.     

Determining the level of inquiry in teachers' questions

The purpose of this investigation was to determine if an instrument, originally designed to classify levels of teachers' questions on the basis of logical operations, could be utilized to measure the level of inquiry present in a classroom discussion and to determine if the inquiry questioning behavior of the teacher influenced student achievement. The results of the study show that the modified classification scheme could accurately and reliably measure the inquiry level of teachers' classroom questions. The data also indicated that teachers who ask a greater proportion of high inquiry questions cause a greater change in students as measured by an achievement examination.