Potential impacts of future land use and climate change on the Red List status of the Proteaceae in the Cape Floristic Region, South Africa - Bomhard, Bastian; Richardson, David M.; Donaldson, John S.; Hughes, Greg; Midgley, Guy F.; Raimondo, D.; Rebelo, Anthony G.; Rouget, Mathieu; Thuiller, Wilfried (Global change biology (Print), 2005)
Abstract Using spatial predictions of future threats to biodiversity, we assessed for the first time the relative potential impacts of future land use and climate change on the threat status of plant species. We thus estimated how many taxa could be affected by future threats that are usually not included in current IUCN Red List assessments. Here, we computed the Red List status including future threats of 227 Proteaceae taxa endemic to the Cape Floristic Region, South Africa, and compared this with their Red List status excluding future threats. We developed eight different land use and climate change scenarios for the year 2020, providing a range of best‐ to worst‐case scenarios. Four scenarios include only the effects of future land use change, while the other four also include the impacts of projected anthropogenic climate change (HadCM2 IS92a GGa), using niche‐based models. Up to a third of the 227 Proteaceae taxa are uplisted (become more threatened) by up to three threat categories if future threats as predicted for 2020 are included, and the proportion of threatened Proteaceae taxa rises on average by 9% (range 2–16%), depending on the scenario. With increasing severity of the scenarios, the proportion of Critically Endangered taxa increases from about 1% to 7% and almost 2% of the 227 Proteaceae taxa become Extinct because of climate change. Overall, climate change has the most severe effects on the Proteaceae, but land use change also severely affects some taxa. Most of the threatened taxa occur in low‐lying coastal areas, but the proportion of threatened taxa changes considerably in inland mountain areas if future threats are included. Our approach gives important insights into how, where and when future threats could affect species persistence and can in a sense be seen as a test of the value of planned interventions for conservation.
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Strategies for Improving Participation and Performance of Girls in Secondary School Science in Nigeria: Science Teachers\' Opinions - Ogunkola, BJ; Olatoye, Rafiu Ademola (Gender and behaviour, 2005)
This study provides empirical evidence for improvement of participation and performance of girls in secondary school science in Nigeria. A total of 120 science teachers drawn from eight out of the thirteen secondary schools in Ijebu-Ode Local Government Area of Ogun State returned the questionnaires for the study. Data were analysed using simple percentages and t-test. The findings indicate that initiation of awareness programmes on the relevance of science for parents and girls and also making perception and attitudes of teachers vis-à-vis girls in science positive will go a long way in improving girls participation and performance in science. Furthermore, organization of science groups and clubs for girls and adoption of teaching strategies that are attractive to girls by the teachers are favoured by the science teachers for the improvement of girls' participation and performance in science. The opinion of the science teachers is that gender-biased curriculum materials should also be reviewed. However, the science teachers feel that making the standard for promotion of girls from one class to the next class lower than that of the boys will not help in improving girls participation and performance in school science. The study further reveals that there were significant differences between the opinion of male and female science teachers and opinions of experienced and inexperience teachers but there was a significant difference between the opinions of science teachers having degree and NCE certificates. The implications of the revelations are discussed. Gender & Behaviour Vol.3 2005: 453-464
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Use of insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) following a malaria education intervention in Piron, Mali: a control trial with systematic allocation of households - Rhee, Michelle Sang Min; Sissoko, Mahamadou S.; Perry, Sharon; McFarland, Willi; Parsonnet, Julie; Doumbo, Ogobara K. (Malaria Journal, 2005)
Abstract Background Insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) reduce malaria morbidity and mortality, but use is limited. A barrier to ITN use may be lack of knowledge regarding malaria transmission and prevention. This study is a controlled trial comparing ITN use and malaria knowledge levels between households in Piron, Mali, undertaken in 2003. Methods Households received net impregnation services either with or without antecedent education. The main outcome measure was ITN use, defined as impregnation of at least one of the household's existing bednets with insecticide during the study. Knowledge about malaria and prevention practices was assessed pre- and post- educational intervention. Results were analysed by household and by individual. Results Forty-nine percent (34/70) of households who received the educational component impregnated their nets in comparison to 35% (22/62) of households who did not (OR = 1.6 CI = 0.8–3.3, P = 0.19). In individual analysis, ITN use was significantly greater in participants who had received the educational intervention (48%) vs. individuals who did not (33%, OR = 1.9, P = 0.012). Knowledge levels about malaria significantly increased for each individual pre- versus post- educational intervention (average change score = 2.13, standard deviation = 1.97, t = -17.78, P < 0.001), although there was no difference found between educational (change score = 2.14) and control groups (change score = 2.12). Conclusion It is possible to educate individuals about malaria and to implement net impregnation services with limited resources. Greater accessibility to net-impregnation services is necessary but not sufficient to increase ITN use.
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Seismic Signature of Gas Hydrate and Mud Volcanoes of the South African Continental Margin - Ben‐Avraham, Zvi; Reshef, Moshe; Smith, George W. (2005)
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Education in Ethiopia (2005)
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Education in Ethiopia : Strengthening the foundation for sustainable progress - Ruffino, Deidre (2005)
With the end of civil war in 1991, Ethiopia's government launched a New Education and Training Policy in 1994 which, by the early 2000s, had already produced remarkable results. The gross enrollment ratio rose from 20 to 62 percent in primary education between 1993-94 and 2001-02; and in secondary and higher education it climbed, respectively, from 8 to 12 percent and from 0.5 to 1.7 percent. Yet the government can hardly afford to rest on its laurels. Primary education is still not universal, and already there are concerns about plummeting educational quality and the growing pressures to expand post-primary education. Addressing these challenges will require more resources, both public and private. Yet money alone is insufficient. Focusing on primary and secondary education, this report argues for wise tradeoffs in the use of resources-a result that will often require reforming the arrangements for service delivery. These changes, in turn, need to be fostered by giving lower levels of government more leeway to adapt central standards-such as those for teacher recruitment and school construction-to local conditions, including local resource constraints; and by strengthening accountability for results at all levels of administration in the education system.
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A framework for entrepreneurship education training and support for South African architects - Vosloo, Christo (2005)
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STAFF DEVELOPMENT IN SUPPORT OF EFFECTIVE STUDENT LEARNING IN SOUTH AFRICAN DISTANCE EDUCATION - Bitzer, Christine Randelleli (2005)
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G8 increases aid to Africa but moves little on climate change - Wintour, Patrick (The BMJ, 2005)
Health expenditure in Africa, especially cash to fight AIDS, malaria, and poliomyelitis, should grow exponentially in the next five years as a result of decisions taken by leaders of the G8 industrial nations at their disrupted summit in Gleneagles, Scotland. The G8 agreed to increase overseas aid by $50bn (£28bn; €41bn) by 2010 compared with 2004, with half the rise dedicated to sub-Saharan Africa. Tony Blair asked each individual G8 leader to sign as G8 leaders have a long track record of failing to keep their summit commitments. The rotating presidency and lack of permanent G8 bureaucracy allows leaders to escape most come-back. Mr Blair, helped by the lobbying of pop singers Bono and Bob Geldof in the grounds of the Gleneagles Hotel, spent his limited time at the summit negotiating extra cash injections from the Japanese and the Germans. This ensured that he was able to say he had met the commitment set out in the Commission for Africa report to double aid to Africa by 2010 ( BMJ 2005;330: 622, 19 March). Many of the development agencies, less enthused …
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What happens after the catchment caught the storm? Hydrological processes at the small, semi-arid Weatherley catchment, South-Africa - Uhlenbrook, Stefan; Wenninger, Jochen; Lorentz, Simon (Advances in Geosciences, 2005)
Abstract. The knowledge of water flow pathways and residence times in a catchment are essential for predicting the hydrological response to a rain storm event. Different experimental techniques are available to study these processes, which are briefly reviewed in this paper. To illustrate this, recent findings from the Weatherley catchment a 1.5 km2 semi-arid headwater in South-Africa, are reported in this paper. Beside classical hydrometric measurements of precipitation and runoff different experimental techniques were applied to explore flow paths (i.e. soil moisture and groundwater measurements, natural tracers, and 2-D electrical resistivity tomographies (ERT)).
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Pollution and Self-Cleansing of an Urban River in a Developing Country: A Case Study in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania - Mbuligwe, Stephen E.; Kaseva, M.E. (Environmental Management, 2005)
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The Geochemistry of Ultramafic to Mafic Volcanics from the Belingwe Greenstone Belt, Zimbabwe: Magmatism in an Archean Continental Large Igneous Province - Shimizu, Kenji; Nakamura, Eizo; Maruyama, Shigenori (Journal of Petrology, 2005)
The evolution of the late Archean Belingwe greenstone belt, Zimbabwe, is discussed in relation to the geochemistry of the ultramafic to mafic volcanic rocks.Four volcanic types (komatiite, komatiitic basalt, D-basalt and E-basalt) are distinguished in the 2Á7 Ga Ngezi volcanic sequence using a combination of petrography and geochemistry.The komatiites and D-basalts are rocks in which isotopic systems and trace elements are depleted.Chemical variations in komatiites and D-basalts can be explained by fractional crystallization from the parental komatiite.In contrast, komatiitic basalts and E-basalts are siliceous and display enriched isotopic and trace element compositions.Their chemical trends are best explained by assimilation with fractional crystallization (AFC) from the primary komatiite.AFC calculations indicate that the komatiitic basalts and E-basalts are derived from komatiites contaminated with $20% and $30% crustal material, respectively.The volcanic stratigraphy of the Ngezi sequence, which is based on field relationships and the trace element compositions of relict clinopyroxenes, shows that the least contaminated komatiite lies between highly contaminated komatiitic basalt flows, and has limited exposure near the base of the succession.Above these flows, D-and E-basalts alternate.The komatiite appears to have erupted on the surface only in the early stages, when plume activity was high.As activity decreased with time, komatiite magmas may have stagnated to form magma chambers within the continental crust.Subsequent komatiitic magmas underwent fractional crystallization and were contaminated with crust to form D-basalts or E-basalts.
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The Influence of High School Dropout on Substance Use Among African American Youth - Kogan, Steven M.; Luo, Zupei; Brody, Gene H.; Murry, Velma McBride (Journal of Ethnicity in Substance Abuse, 2005)
The role of high school dropout in the onset and rapid escalation of substance use was investigated with 1,762 African American youth participating in the 1990 and 1992 follow-ups of the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88). In 1990, all youth were students; most were in the 10th grade and approximately 16 years old. Path analysis models were used to examine dropout's unique contribution to substance use and its mediational effect on the association of prior problem behavior with later substance use. Compared with students, dropout youth were 1.6 times more likely to smoke cigarettes and 1.3 times more likely to smoke marijuana. Partial mediational effects emerged for problem behavior and use of cigarettes and marijuana.
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A framework for continuous improvement in the South African Higher Education Sector - Ferreira, Marie (2005)
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Language-in-Education Policies and Practices in Africa with a Special Focus on Tanzania and South Africa — Insights from Research in Progress - Brock‐Utne, Birgit (2005)
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Globalisation, Education Reforms and Policy Change in Africa: The Case of Nigeria - Geo‐JaJa, Macleans A. (2005)
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Rethinking Globalisation and the Future of Education in Africa - Geo‐JaJa, Macleans A.; Zajda, Joseph (2005)
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Maternal Mortality At The Queen Elizabeth Central Teaching Hospital, Blantyre, Malawi - Lema, Valentino M.; Changole, Josephine; Kanyighe, C.; Malunga, Eddie (East African Medical Journal, 2005)
Background: Maternal mortality in Malawi continues to increase despite the global SMI and national safe motherhood programme\'s efforts to reduce it. Objectives: To identify the social, demographic and reproductive profiles of women suffering a maternal death, the main immediate causes and the operational factors. Design: A retrospective descriptive survey. Setting: The Gogo-Chatinkha Maternity Unit, Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital, Blantyre, Malawi, from January 1, 1999 to December 31, 2000. Subjects: All women who suffered a maternal death in the unit. Results: There were a total of 204 maternal deaths and 19,859 live births, giving a Maternal mortality ratio (MMR) of 1027.2/100,000 live births. Their ages ranged from 16 to 40 years. Adolescents comprised 20.6%, while the majority, (56.4%), were aged 15 - 24 years. Almost half of the group, (43.4%), were para 1 and less, with a range of 0 to 12. The top five causes of death were puerperal sepsis, (29.4%); postabortal complications, (23.5%); other infectious conditions, (20.1%); obstetric haemorrhage, (10.6%), and eclampsia, (6.4%). Some of the identified operational factors included delay in accessing and receiving emergency obstetric care, poor quality services, HIV infection/ AlDS and unsafe induced abortion following unwanted pregnancy. Conclusion and recommendations: Most of the causes and operational factors for maternal deaths are easily avoidable. The country needs to make more commitment and investments necessary to mitigate these deaths. East African Medical Journal Vol.82(1) 2005:3-9
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Acting to learn: The place of performance in university retention for African Americans, Native Americans and Latinos - Price, Linda Piper (2005)
The purpose of this research is to examine how performance in the arts effects college admission, success, and retention for African Americans, Native Americans and Latino students. For the purposes of the study, the arts are defined as a performative act of culture. The fields of inquiry investigated are: culture and performance, acting and learning, aesthetics and artistic production. This study also examines the cultural indicator used to identify at-risk students; the nature of institutional education; the social and emotional lives of the students while attending school; choice, freedom, and identity in academic study; motivation and self-regulated learning and the empowering and transforming aspect of the arts. The study was conducted primarily during the Fall 2003 and Spring 2004 school terms. A survey in the Spring of 2003 was given to a random sampling of fifty students from the target groups. Seven students were selected from those completed surveys for the study---three African-Americans, two Native Americans and two Latinos. Another group of six students in the target cultures were interviewed once for the purpose of triangulation. I completed the group as researcher-participant bringing the total number of actors in the study to fourteen. All participants currently attend or have attended Southwestern University in New Mexico. This research follows an arts-based qualitative methodology called 'portraiture.' This methodology captures the reflective nature of the arts to magnify human understanding and focuses the study on participant expertise. Acting to Learn explores the roles the arts play in the successful education of people from these three cultures and as a means of self-advocacy at university.
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The use of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) Devices in Nigerian Schools - Tswanya, SK (Information Technologist (The), 2005)
Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) is a relatively new and rapidly evolving academic field that explores the role of information and communication technologies in language learning and teaching. It has rapidly developed over the last forty years. This development can be categorized into three distinct phases: behaviouristic CALL, communicative CALL and Integrative CALL. Despite the numerous advantages that can be made of the computer in language teaching, many language teachers in developing countries can still not benefit from this computer revolution due to inadequate exposure. This paper highlights the numerous uses and approaches that can be made of the computer in English Language teaching by low technologically exposed teachers. Classroom implications and applications for the effective Computer Assisted Language teaching for low technology teachers are suggested. Key words: CALL, Behaviouristic, communicative, Integrative, Internet, Multimedia, Hypermedia, E-mail, Programs. The Information Technologist Vol.2(1) 2005: 33-39
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African Americans in Higher Education: Now for the Good News (Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 2005)
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A palaeomagnetic study of Upper Pliocene volcanic rocks in the area of the Levant Fault near Homs, western Syria - Abou-Deeb, J. M.; Tarling, D. H. (Geofísica Internacional, 2005)
La desmagnetización térmica de 75 sitios en rocas basálticas, la mayor parte a menos de 5 km de la Falla Levante, identifica direcciones de remanencia consistentes en la mayoría de los sitios. Las polaridades identificadas son Normales, Inversas e Intermedias, dominando las Inversas. Los sitios Normales e Inversos están magnetizados similarmente, 5.6Â±5.3 A/m, en tanto que los sitios Intermedios o direcciones indefinidas están algo más fuertemente magnetizados, 11.9Â±9.5 A/m. Las susceptibilidades de campo bajo son consistentes, 30.9Â±15.2 mSI, lo que implica que el campo geomagnético pudo haber sido algo más intenso que durante las polaridades Normales o Inversas. Cuando la media de las direcciones de los sitios Normales se invierten, todos los sitios tienen valores similares de la inclinación media, 48.2° (Î´Inc. = 2.7°), pero la declinación media de las de los sitios muestra un patrón regional. Sitios de 3 regiones al oeste de la zona de Falla Levant (Marmarita, Qalat El-Hossen, Tel Kalakh) tienen declinaciones similares, 186° (Î´Dec. = 5.4°), declinaciones que son consistentes con las esperadas para esta parte de Arabia paraeste tiempo. Sin embargo, todos los sitios al este y cercanos a la zona de Falla Levant (Bahur, W. Ain-Kut, Mzeineh y Buqeia) tienen declinaciones más al este, en promedio de 154.0Â±12.0°. La diferencia de declinación, 37.3°, indica la presencia de bloques rotados adyacentes al lado oriental de la Falla Levante. Tal rotación es consistente con el desplazamiento de 25 km predicho para esta localidad y parece consistente con la subsecuente evolución volcánica y tectónica de la Falla Levante, sugiriendo rotaciones significativas y actividad sísmica durante los últimos 5 Ma.
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Agricultural Extension and Fishery Development: Training for Women in Fish Industry in Lagos State, Nigeria - Adeokun, O. A.; Adereti, F. O. (Journal of Social Sciences, 2005)
This study focused on training for development for women involved in fish industry in Lagos state, Nigeria. Three hundred and fifty (350) women involved in fishery activities were randomly selected from 10 fishing villages purposively selected for the study in the state. Structured interview schedule was used to obtain information from the respondents. This was subjected to face validity and reliability test using split half techniques (r= 0.85). The results indicate high need for training in fish storage, maintenance of equipment, fishing techni-ques, storage and processing. Significant associations were recorded between degree of involvement in fishery activities and frequency of training (χ2 = 36.04, p<0.05), time of training (χ2 23.50, p<0.05) and constraints to training (χ2 = 53.26, p<0.05).
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P-283 Prevalence of smoking among secondary schools students inIle Ife, Nigeria - Adewole, O O; Folorun, S.O.; Obaseki, Daniel O.; Adesina, Ore‐Ofeoluwatomi O; Erhabor, Gregory E. (Lung Cancer, 2005)
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An Assessment of the Academic Achievement of Students in Two Modes of Part-time Programme in Nigeria - Adeyemi, Kola; Osunde, A. U. (The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2005)
This study analyses the academic achievement of students enrolled in part-times studies at on-campus and outreach centres at three dual-mode Nigerian universities, during the 1996/97 to 1998/ 99 academic years. Research subjects in this study were examination and record officers employed by on-campus and outreach institutions. A checklist was prepared to collect students’ grades; these checklists were then transcribed into grade points (GPAs) for data collection purposes. Simple percentage mean (x) and t-test statistic were used for data analysis. Interviews were also conducted with key stakeholders to add qualitative context to the quantitative data collected. This study shows that there was significant difference in the academic performance of students enrolled in the on-campus versus outreach-based, part-time programmes in selected disciplines. Also the average mean (x) performance of students enrolled in the on-campus programme was higher than those students enrolled in the outreach centres. Based on the findings of this study, it is recommended that the government provide adequate funding to increase access individuals seeking higher education in Nigeria. The establishment of functional Open University system is also recommended to provide students with distant learning opportunities and likewise increase access. Several quality improvements are likewise recommended: the use of modern information technology for instructional delivery, recruitment of skilled teachers, improved teaching/ learning facilities, and strict adherence to standardized student admission requirements as specified by the National Universities Commission (NUC). We wrap up with practical suggestions, such as providing orientation sessions for outreach students to learn practical skills such as how to access library materials. Keywords: academic achievement, part-time programmes, on-campus, outreach, distance education, quality assurance, Nigerian universities, students
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Managing Finance and External Relations in South African Schools - Anderson, Lesley; Lumby, Jacky (2005)
List of tables and figures Abbreviations Foreword Preface Section A. Managing Finance and Other Resources 1. Resources for Schooling by Tom Bisschoff and Michael Thurlow 2. Management Styles and Their Impact in Financial and Resource Management by Tony Bush 3. Generating School Funds by David Middlewood and Tom Bisschoff 4. Budgeting by Raj Mestry 5. Using Resources for School Improvement by Connie Moloi, Sarah Gravett and Bruce Nduna Section B. Managing External Relations 6. The Context for Managing External Relations in South Africa by Michael Thurlow 7. Working with the Community by Jacky Lumby 8. Marketing Schools by Lesley Anderson 9. Accountability in Education by Tony Bush 10. The Role ad Responsibility of School Governors by Tony Bush and Jan Heystek 11. Working with the Government in Education by Thandi Ngcobo and Thengani Ngwenya
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Main factors of the changes in the riparian zone of the Mouhoun River near Boromo (Burkina Faso): climate change or anthropogenic damage? - Aurouet, Axel; Devineau, Jean-Louis; Vidal, Max (Science et changements planétaires / Sécheresse, 2005)
L’analyse des donnees geologiques, geomorphologiques et d’occupation des sols fondee sur l’interpretation d’images satellitaires ETM + (Landsat Thematic mapper) ainsi que sur des transects realises sur le terrain met en evidence une erosion hydrique et un colluvionnement forts sur les marges externes des milieux riverains du Mouhoun a Boromo dans l’ouest du Burkina Faso. Des buttes temoins, coiffees des sols de l’ancienne plaine d’inondation et des arbres aux racines denudees, encore vivants, y attestent d’une erosion intense et recente. Le couvert vegetal des « forets » classees de Baporo et des deux Bale qui occupent les milieux extra-riverains, ne parait pas suffisant pour limiter la force du ruissellement a l’origine de cette erosion. Les axes de drainage secondaires qui entaillent les milieux extra-riverains s’architecturent en effet tres certainement sous l’influence des fracturations qui orientent les ecoulements souterrains qui apparaissent determinants dans la dynamique erosive. La baisse du niveau des eaux du fleuve apparait alors comme la cause principale des dynamiques erosives observees notamment de la reprise d’erosion et de dissection du bas glacis.
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Exploring a Distance Education Partnership Between Historically Black Colleges and Universitiesand African Universities - Ayadi, O. Felix; Adekoya, Adeyemi A.; Ikem, Fidelis (Journal of Black Studies, 2005)
This article proposes the formation of time-honored cooperative and educational partnerships between historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the United States and universities in Africa using state-of-the art technology. Emerging electronic communication implements and the availability of information driven by the various campus networks should be key resources to support these collaborative efforts. The potential benefits of the information superhighway for the African continent and participating HBCUs can be immense. An advanced information infrastructure will enable the future African labor force to compete and win in the global economy, generating competitive and gainful employment opportunities for the African people as well as economic development and growth for the continent. Moreover, such a joint venture will, in many ways, provide African Americans with additional opportunities to connect to their roots.
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Sammy the classroom guinea pig - Berenzy, Alix (2005)
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Learning lessons from Ancient Egypt - Bièvre, Paul De (Accreditation and Quality Assurance, 2005)
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The Politics of Public Discourse: Discourse, Identity and African-Americans in Science Education. - Brown, Bryan A. (The Negro educational review, 2005)
ABSTRACT: This review examines twenty years of research (1985 to 2005) on African-American students in science education. This analysis identified three types of research studies on African-Americans. First, a series of studies provided status reports of African-American students' performance in science. Second, a series of studies highlighted cultural discontinuities that existed between African-American students and the culture of science classrooms. A third series of studies called for the identification of cultural continuities that exist between African-American students' culture and science. The results of this review implicated scholars' failure to thoroughly explore the relationship between students' language, identity, and their influence on science learning. This review concludes with an analysis of how scholarship on African-Americans in science would benefit from incorporating a theoretical perspective that values the influence of African-American students' language practices on science learning. The Verbal Advantage Amid the barrage of negative commentaries regarding the status of education, there is good news. The good news is that those without the verbal skills associated with educational achievement can purchase the verbal advantage needed to obtain intellectual privilege. This insight came in the form of a commercial from Verbal Advantage^sup (TM)1^, a company that offers vocabulary training for those who have the desire to improve their verbal repertoire. They provide a not so subtle implication for language use, by suggesting that those who use more sophisticated words will eventually achieve an image of intelligence. Ultimately, they make the profound argument that acquiring an advanced use of words can change your image and thus, provide you a Verbal Advantage. Can this be true? Can our intelligence and sophistication be measured through our vocabulary? If one can use the evidence of words to judge sophistication and intelligence, then could the use of particular words signal intelligence and sophistication? Could I engage in the game of attempting to appear less intelligent or less sophisticated by selecting the appropriate combination of words? Could I carefully use my words to sound like a particular type of person, simply by selecting the correct set of words? This idea is far from novel and exists at the very edge of our conscious awareness. However, I was impressed that a company would be savvy enough to market and provide consumers with the promise of sophistication and the appearance of intelligence by merely teaching them to use words in a skillful manner. Challenged with these ideas, I felt compelled to visit their website where I encountered this statement: It is our mission to make certain you have the very best tools available in this millennium of Internet communication and digital dialogue. We understand that no matter what the medium, the message always needs words; used correctly, and with clarity and style.2 This excerpt from their mission statement struck a cord with me. I was particularly intrigued with the idea that language has two components that lead to the acquisition of a verbal advantage: clarity and style. The notion that clarity is key to helping individuals achieve a communicative advantage, is based on a theoretical assumption that the speaker and listener share a common understanding. Clarity is connected with two aspects of interpretation. First, the speaker selects signals that she assumes represent the idea. Second, the listener determines what the speaker intended to communicate. When both the speaker and the listener arrive at the same conceptual understanding, clarity is achieved. The style aspect of the communication process extends the notion of clarity by suggesting that the speaker can choose from several ways to communicate the same idea. Baugh's (2001) work on variation explores this phenomenon by noting how the selections of particular genres are more privileged than others. …
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ECOREGIONAL RESEARCH IN AFRICA: LEARNING LESSONS FROM IITA'S BENCHMARK AREA APPROACH - Douthwaite, Boru; Baker, Derek; Weise, Stéphan; Gockowski, J.; Manyong, Víctor M.; Keatinge, J. D. H. (Experimental Agriculture, 2005)
Ecoregional research has the potential to help address some of the huge challenges facing agriculture in developing countries by developing technologies that work under different agro-ecological conditions, and the processes by which these technologies can be adapted to work in other areas with similar conditions. The CGIAR system has been developing ecoregional research as a new paradigm for over a decade. In this paper we evaluate one of the most ambitious of these initiatives called the Benchmark Area Approach (BAA) pioneered by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture. We evaluate the BAA against nine good practice criteria for ecoregional research and finding that the approach is delivering, or has the potential to deliver, on all nine. Many of the lessons learnt from this evaluation will be relevant to current and future attempts to undertake co-ordinated multi-locational research for development.
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African American Father Involvement and Preschool Children's School Readiness - Downer, Jason T.; Smith, Joel (Early Education and Development, 2005)
A developmental ecological model was used to identify child attributes, father characteristics, and familial factors associated with multidimensional father involvement with preschool children enrolled in Head Start. The relations between father involvement and children's school readiness were also investigated. Eighty-five African American fathers and father figures were surveyed about their involvement in child care, home-based educational and school-based educational activities. Children's school readiness competencies were evaluated via teacher report or direct assessment. Father involvement in child care and home-based educational activities were predicted by different contextual factors and child attributes. Fathers were more involved in child care activities when they lived in a child's home and when a child was highly emotional. Fathers who perceived the existence of a strong parenting alliance reported more involvement in home-based educational activities. Father involvement in child care and home-based educational activities was associated with higher levels of children's emotion regulation. Findings are consistent with a contextual, multidimensional perspective of African American fathering and hold policy implications for fatherhood initiatives in the early childhood education field. Efforts to increase father involvement may be most effective when addressing the multitude of influences on fathering behavior and focusing on father-child activities that occur outside of the preschool setting.
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Epidemiological Study Of The Childhood Disabilities: A Household Survey In Four Egyptian Governorates - El-Moselhy, Essam A.; El-Azab, R. M.; Khalifa, Hamed O.; Abd–Allah, Eman; Ebrahim, A. M.; El-Masry, Hosny Mohamed Ahmed; El-Shorbgy, T. S.; Seif, H. S. Abo Seif Abo (The Egyptian Journal of Hospital Medicine (Print), 2005)
This study was conducted on 1403 children from four Egyptian governorates. These governorates were; Alexandria, Al-Behira, Cairo and Al-Giza. The aim of the study was to define
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The evaluation of mental health among Tunisian students - Ellouze, F.; Besbés, C; K, Ben Salah; Ellouze, S.; Z, El Hechemi (Encephale-revue De Psychiatrie Clinique Biologique Et Therapeutique, 2005)
Universal studies are an important source of stressor. Students are at high risk for mental disorders. In this study, we seek for psychological distress among Tunisian students, using GHQ (general health questionnaire).
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Measuring the economic impact of climate change on major South African field crops: a Ricardian approach - Gbetibouo, Glwadys Aymone; Hassan, Rashid M. (Global and Planetary Change, 2005)
This study employed a Ricardian model to measure the impact of climate change on South Africa's field crops and analysed potential future impacts of further changes in the climate. A regression of farm net revenue on climate, soil and other socio-economic variables was conducted to capture farmer-adapted responses to climate variations. The analysis was based on agricultural data for seven field crops (maize, wheat, sorghum, sugarcane, groundnut, sunflower and soybean), climate and edaphic data across 300 districts in South Africa. Results indicate that production of field crops was sensitive to marginal changes in temperature as compared to changes in precipitation. Temperature rise positively affects net revenue whereas the effect of reduction in rainfall is negative. The study also highlights the importance of season and location in dealing with climate change showing that the spatial distribution of climate change impact and consequently needed adaptations will not be uniform across the different agro-ecological regions of South Africa. Results of simulations of climate change scenarios indicate many impacts that would induce (or require) very distinct shifts in farming practices and patterns in different regions. Those include major shifts in crop calendars and growing seasons, switching between crops to the possibility of complete disappearance of some field crops from some region.
Keywords: openalex:import

Measuring the economic impact of climate change on major South African field crops: a Ricardian approach - Gbetibouo, Glwadys Aymone; Hassan, Rashid M. (Global and Planetary Change, 2005)
This study employed a Ricardian model to measure the impact of climate change on South Africa's field crops and analysed potential future impacts of further changes in the climate. A regression of farm net revenue on climate, soil and other socio-economic variables was conducted to capture farmer-adapted responses to climate variations. The analysis was based on agricultural data for seven field crops (maize, wheat, sorghum, sugarcane, groundnut, sunflower and soybean), climate and edaphic data across 300 districts in South Africa. Results indicate that production of field crops was sensitive to marginal changes in temperature as compared to changes in precipitation. Temperature rise positively affects net revenue whereas the effect of reduction in rainfall is negative. The study also highlights the importance of season and location in dealing with climate change showing that the spatial distribution of climate change impact and consequently needed adaptations will not be uniform across the different agro-ecological regions of South Africa. Results of simulations of climate change scenarios indicate many impacts that would induce (or require) very distinct shifts in farming practices and patterns in different regions. Those include major shifts in crop calendars and growing seasons, switching between crops to the possibility of complete disappearance of some field crops from some region.
Keywords: openalex:import

Measuring the economic impact of climate change on major South African field crops: a Ricardian approach - Gbetibouo, Glwadys Aymone; Hassan, Rashid M. (Global and Planetary Change, 2005)
This study employed a Ricardian model to measure the impact of climate change on South Africa's field crops and analysed potential future impacts of further changes in the climate. A regression of farm net revenue on climate, soil and other socio-economic variables was conducted to capture farmer-adapted responses to climate variations. The analysis was based on agricultural data for seven field crops (maize, wheat, sorghum, sugarcane, groundnut, sunflower and soybean), climate and edaphic data across 300 districts in South Africa. Results indicate that production of field crops was sensitive to marginal changes in temperature as compared to changes in precipitation. Temperature rise positively affects net revenue whereas the effect of reduction in rainfall is negative. The study also highlights the importance of season and location in dealing with climate change showing that the spatial distribution of climate change impact and consequently needed adaptations will not be uniform across the different agro-ecological regions of South Africa. Results of simulations of climate change scenarios indicate many impacts that would induce (or require) very distinct shifts in farming practices and patterns in different regions. Those include major shifts in crop calendars and growing seasons, switching between crops to the possibility of complete disappearance of some field crops from some region.
Keywords: openalex:import

Measuring the economic impact of climate change on major South African field crops: a Ricardian approach - Gbetibouo, Glwadys Aymone; Hassan, Rashid M. (Global and Planetary Change, 2005)
This study employed a Ricardian model to measure the impact of climate change on South Africa's field crops and analysed potential future impacts of further changes in the climate. A regression of farm net revenue on climate, soil and other socio-economic variables was conducted to capture farmer-adapted responses to climate variations. The analysis was based on agricultural data for seven field crops (maize, wheat, sorghum, sugarcane, groundnut, sunflower and soybean), climate and edaphic data across 300 districts in South Africa. Results indicate that production of field crops was sensitive to marginal changes in temperature as compared to changes in precipitation. Temperature rise positively affects net revenue whereas the effect of reduction in rainfall is negative. The study also highlights the importance of season and location in dealing with climate change showing that the spatial distribution of climate change impact and consequently needed adaptations will not be uniform across the different agro-ecological regions of South Africa. Results of simulations of climate change scenarios indicate many impacts that would induce (or require) very distinct shifts in farming practices and patterns in different regions. Those include major shifts in crop calendars and growing seasons, switching between crops to the possibility of complete disappearance of some field crops from some region.
Keywords: openalex:import

Measuring the economic impact of climate change on major South African field crops: a Ricardian approach - Gbetibouo, Glwadys Aymone; Hassan, Rashid M. (Global and Planetary Change, 2005)
This study employed a Ricardian model to measure the impact of climate change on South Africa's field crops and analysed potential future impacts of further changes in the climate. A regression of farm net revenue on climate, soil and other socio-economic variables was conducted to capture farmer-adapted responses to climate variations. The analysis was based on agricultural data for seven field crops (maize, wheat, sorghum, sugarcane, groundnut, sunflower and soybean), climate and edaphic data across 300 districts in South Africa. Results indicate that production of field crops was sensitive to marginal changes in temperature as compared to changes in precipitation. Temperature rise positively affects net revenue whereas the effect of reduction in rainfall is negative. The study also highlights the importance of season and location in dealing with climate change showing that the spatial distribution of climate change impact and consequently needed adaptations will not be uniform across the different agro-ecological regions of South Africa. Results of simulations of climate change scenarios indicate many impacts that would induce (or require) very distinct shifts in farming practices and patterns in different regions. Those include major shifts in crop calendars and growing seasons, switching between crops to the possibility of complete disappearance of some field crops from some region.
Keywords: openalex:import; openalex:yes

Measuring the economic impact of climate change on major South African field crops: a Ricardian approach - Gbetibouo, Glwadys Aymone; Hassan, Rashid M. (Global and Planetary Change, 2005)
This study employed a Ricardian model to measure the impact of climate change on South Africa's field crops and analysed potential future impacts of further changes in the climate. A regression of farm net revenue on climate, soil and other socio-economic variables was conducted to capture farmer-adapted responses to climate variations. The analysis was based on agricultural data for seven field crops (maize, wheat, sorghum, sugarcane, groundnut, sunflower and soybean), climate and edaphic data across 300 districts in South Africa. Results indicate that production of field crops was sensitive to marginal changes in temperature as compared to changes in precipitation. Temperature rise positively affects net revenue whereas the effect of reduction in rainfall is negative. The study also highlights the importance of season and location in dealing with climate change showing that the spatial distribution of climate change impact and consequently needed adaptations will not be uniform across the different agro-ecological regions of South Africa. Results of simulations of climate change scenarios indicate many impacts that would induce (or require) very distinct shifts in farming practices and patterns in different regions. Those include major shifts in crop calendars and growing seasons, switching between crops to the possibility of complete disappearance of some field crops from some region.
Keywords: openalex:import

[Tracking of cardiovascular risk factors among school children: a four-year population surveillance in Susa, Tunisia]. - Ghannem, H.; A, Ben Abdelaziz; Limam, K; Gaha, Rafika; Ghedira, A.; Harrabi, Imed; As, Essoussi (PubMed, 2005)
In order to confirm the phenomenon of tracking of cardiovascular risk factors among school children, we undertook in 2003, a prospective survey of a population of 789 pupils aged 13 to 15 years who had participated in a first investigation on cardiovascular risk factors in 1999. We were able to follow and study 453 pupils (57.4% of the initial population). Prevalences of hypertension and obesity were respectively 11.3% and 6.1% without significant difference between sexes. On the other hand, hypercholesterolemia was significantly more elevated among girls than boys (16.1% versus 9.3%, p = 0.039). Children classified initially as hypertensive, obese or having a hypercholesterolemia were identified 4 years later at a subsequent exam as hypertensive, obese or having a hypercholesterolemia in respectively 25%, 48.9% and 59%. The stability of cardiovascular risk factors among children imposes an early screening for a better management and a policy of cardiovascular health promotion since childhood based essentially on prevention of risk factors in order to reduce the cardiovascular disease burden in adulthood.
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Experiences with international online discussions: Participation patterns of Botswana and American students in an Adult Education and Development course at the University of Botswana - Giannini-Gachago, Daniela; Seleka, Geoffrey G. (International journal of education and development using information and communication technology, 2005)
ABSTRACT This paper describes the experiences gathered in a Masters of Adult Education course at University of Botswana (UB), where 26 students of the University of Botswana and the University of Georgia (UGA) engaged in discussions within the University of Botswana Learning Management System WebCT. Individual participation patterns in the discussions varied widely in this course. Based on variables found in the literature, student participation patterns were analysed - both in terms of quantity (messages read and written) and quality (status of conversational moves and level of critical thinking). Results show that culture or membership of a specific group did not seem to influence participation patterns. Gender was the major influencing variable for participation patterns in terms of both quantity and quality. Other influencing variables were course design, assessment of discussions and the presence of a learning community. Keywords: Online discussions, student participation, gender, Botswana, adult education INTRODUCTION In 2002, eLearning was introduced at the University of Botswana (UB) as one strategy to transform teaching and learning. The appropriate use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) at UB reflects a blended approach to teaching and learning, with asynchronous online communication tools, such as email or online discussion forums forming an essential part. Online discussions can be valuable in several ways: they encourage students to actively participate in communication (Im & Lee 2003; Edelstein & Edwards 2002); they can promote students' active participation and enhance students' learning (Fassinger 1995); they may lead to cognitive development (ibid); they allow students time to reflect before contributing to the discussion; (Markel 2001); they promote social interaction which motivates membership and participation in a virtual community (Oren, Mioduser & Nachmias 2002); and they can also be enjoyable for students (Willams & Purry 2002). The usage of online discussions is therefore promoted at UB to encourage students' participation in learning conversations within courses. This paper analyses the participation of students in a Masters of Adult Education at UB, where nine UB students and 17 University of Georgia (UGA) students engaged in international discussions using UB's online Learning Management System, WebCT. This study sets out to identify the factors that influence student participation patterns, which have been anecdotally noted to vary widely. Student participation is analysed and compared both in terms of quantity (messages written and read) and quality (type of conversational moves and critical thinking levels). LITERATURE REVIEW Current research suggests that there are several key variables, which are relevant to understanding the participation patterns of students in online discussions in blended learning academic environments. This literature review briefly reviews four of these: target group (in terms of gender and student type), course design (including assessment), access (to both technology and computer skills) and the presence of a learning community. Target group Gender A detailed knowledge of the target group involved in the learning process is critical in order to use online discussions efficiently. In this study, two descriptors of the target group were considered - gender and student type. Gender in particular is an influencing variable that has been heavily researched, with conflicting results and a lack of consensus to date. A body of research exists to suggest that the online environment offers women possibilities for active engagement. It has been found that women participate more actively and enjoy greater influence in environments where norms of interaction are controlled by an individual entrusted with maintaining order and focus in the group, e.g. where a teacher controls/moderates the interaction (Herring 2000). …
Keywords: openalex:import

Learning from Darfur. Building a Net-Capable African Force to Stop Mass Killing - Gompert, David C.; Richardson, Courtney; Kugler, Richard L.; Bernath, Clifford (2005)
Abstract : In its report on The Power to Protect, Refugees International, an independent nongovernmental organization dedicated to helping embattled and uprooted peoples like those of Darfur, examined what sorts of intervention forces could stop such mass killing and displacement. Noting recent advances in Western military concepts and capabilities that exploit information technology, The Power to Protect sought to determine whether and how these advances can enhance the military's ability to be deployed quickly, capably and with fewer soldiers and therefore with fewer risks and costs to prevent mass killings of civilian populations and, to the degree that this type of force is available, whether leaders will be more likely to decide in favor of combat interventions to stop mass killings. The new factor in considering how to stop mass killing is the advent of net-centric (also called network-centric and net-capable) military forces, endowed with information networks that offer unprecedented battle-space knowledge and permit flexible and distributed yet integrated operations. According to the U.S. Defense Department: Network-centric warfare is an emerging theory of war in the Information Age. It is also a concept that, at the highest level, constitutes the military's response to the Information Age. The term network-centric warfare broadly describes the combination of strategies, emerging tactics, techniques, and procedures, and organizations that a fully or even a partially networked force can employ to create a decisive warfighting advantage.
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Teaching Breast Cancer Screening to African American Women in the Arkansas Mississippi River Delta - Hall, C.; Wimberley, Paige; Hall, Julie; Pfriemer, Judith T.; Hubbard, Evelyn M.; Stacy, Annette; Gilbert, Jacquelyn D. (Oncology nursing forum, 2005)
To determine the effectiveness of a multifaceted, culturally sensitive breast cancer education program for African American women in the Arkansas Mississippi River Delta.Experimental (i.e., posttest only, control group design).African American churches and a county Extension Homemakers Club sponsored through the Arkansas Extension Homemakers council.53 African American women. The experimental group included 30 participants who had a mean age of 56 years, and the control group consisted of 23 participants with a mean age of 51 years.After the presentation of a multifaceted, culturally sensitive breast cancer education program, a variety of instruments were administered to participants in the experimental group that measured dependent variables. Subjects in the control group completed the same instruments in the absence of a viable intervention. Data were analyzed using t tests.Knowledge and beliefs about breast cancer.The experimental group's mean scores were significantly higher than the control group's on the Breast Cancer Knowledge Test and the susceptibility scale of the Breast Cancer Screening Belief Scales. The experimental group also scored significantly higher than the control group on the confidence scale of the Breast Cancer Screening Belief Scales.The multifaceted, culturally sensitive breast cancer education program appeared to be responsible for the differences in scores between the experimental and control groups.Culturally sensitive group educational programs aimed at helping African American women in the rural South become more knowledgeable about breast cancer and early detection clearly are needed. Such efforts also must focus on increasing women's confidence in effectively performing regular breast self-examination as well as their understanding of personal risk. Healthcare professionals play a major role in the development and implementation of these programs.
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Farmers' Perception of Agricultural Extension Agents' Characteristics as Factors for Enhancing Adult Learning in Mezam Division of Northwest Province of Cameroon. - Idowu, Oladele Oladimeji (Australian Journal of Adult Learning, 2005)
The education of farmers would be result oriented if among other things the learning enhancement situations are created. Farmers' receptivity to training largely depends on the use of several educational methods by extension agents to reach farmers in Mezam division of Northwest province of Cameroon. Data were collected from May to August 2000 using Kerlinger's n;30 sampling technique in the division since no definite sampling frame could be obtained. The result indicates that majority are males (62.5%), less than 40 years of age (68.6%), had formal education (81.3%), and can speak and write English language (56.3%). Farm visit is the most used teaching method (37.5%), while office calls (12.5%), group meetings (12.5%), and field days (6.3%) recorded low scores in the study area. The factor that was rated as the most important in enhancing learning of the farmers was that extension agents should be knowledgeable in farming (87.5%). The agent being a farmer and educated (56.3% each) follows this, language came fourth on the importance list (50%).
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Unlocking the Potential of African American Students: Keys to Reversing Underachievement - Jackson, Yvette Rene (Theory Into Practice, 2005)
The potential of many African American students is undetected due to misperceptions about their intellectual ability and achievement. These misperceptions cause inadequate instructional responses, which in turn perpetuate the cycle of underachievement. This article analyzes the bases for many of these misperceptions, explores the impact of culture on learning, and provides guidelines for eliciting and nurturing the potential of African American students for whom race is a factor in school.
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Mozambique - Technical and Vocational Education and Training Project : resettlement plan - Kafatia, Kent Consultant (2005)
In connection with the implementation of the Technical and Vocational Education and Training Project for Mozambique, this Resettlement Policy Framework (RPF) for land acquisition, and compensation, is based on field visits and public consultations, and establishes the parameters to appropriately deliver and conduct the relocation of, and compensation to project affected people (PAP). It is based on the country's legal framework regarding resettlement, and the Bank's operational policy on involuntary resettlement. The District Administration shall be responsible for implementing this framework. The general principles guiding this framework include: minimizing resettlement and land acquisition as possible; compensating, relocating, and rehabilitating project affected persons (PAPs); compensating all PAPs for their losses, and/or supporting income rehabilitation without regard to their legal rights; setting compensation at full replacement cost for houses and other structures, agricultural land of equal productive capacity, replacement of residential land at least of equal size, full compensation for crops, trees, and other similar agricultural products at market value; providing transportation assistance and home reestablishment, a dislocation allowance, along with providing residential land and replacement cost of homes; replacing land-for-land as the preferred option, or cash compensations; minimizing the resettlement transition period; and arranging effective and timely internal and external monitoring of the implementation of resettlement measures.
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Teacher ratings of mental health among school children in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo - Kashala, Espérance; Elgen, Irene Bircow; Sommerfelt, Kristian; Tylleskär, Thorkild (European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 2005)
In Africa, little is known about child mental health. This study piloted the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) in Kinshasa, investigated mental health problems and the association between these problems and school performance, demographic factors, illness and nutrition.An epidemiological survey was conducted with 1,187 children, 7-9 years old, recruited from randomly selected schools. Mental health problems were assessed with the SDQ (a behavioural screening tool) administered to teachers. Stability of the factor structure was examined using principal component factor analysis of the SDQ items. The reliability was evaluated using measures of internal consistency of the SDQ scales.Factor analysis yielded five factors, similar to the published SDQ scales. The internal consistency was satisfactory on all of the SDQ scales. Using the 90th percentile, the cut-off scores were somewhat higher than the published cut-off scores in this younger sample. Poor nutrition, low socioeconomic status and illness were found to increase the risk for mental health problems and low school performance.SDQ may be considered useful to describe mental health problems among urban African children in Kinshasa. An association between mental health, school performance, demographic factors, illness and nutrition was found.
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Re-targeting schools, skills and jobs in Kenya: Quantity, quality and outcomes - King, Kenneth (International Journal of Educational Development, 2005)
The article compares the setting of targets in three different domains in Kenya—schools, skills development, and jobs. In political terms, the first of these has proved the most immediately ‘do-able’, and especially once free primary education (FPE) became the target of the new government. The additional numbers entering schools have been dramatic, but major worries remain about sustainability and the impact on quality. In the domain of skills training, target setting has proved much more elusive, as skills development covers multiple ministries, and requires some substantial engagement with employers. The result is that 2 years after the new government took over, there is still no national strategy for skills development. Finally, the political pledge to create half a million jobs a year for 5 years is examined. This proves much more demanding than the offer of FPE to evaluate. In practice, it turns out that the government did not intend to create jobs at all, but merely provide an enabling environment in which they could be created by the private sector. Nor were these to be found in the formal, urban sector of the economy, but in the hitherto much neglected rural informal economy.
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Learning from Asia : Chinese investment inflows to Africa and their possible impact on African management practices - Kuada, John (African Renaissance, 2005)
Asia and Africa make up 72 percent of the world's population and must play a defining role in the development of the world. To do so, the two continents must combine their physical and non-physical resources and inspire each other to greater heights in all aspects of human endeavour. This realisation was brought home very vividly in the speeches delivered by heads of government that met for the Second Asian-African Strategic Partnership (NAASP) summit held in Jakarta, Indonesia on 22-23 April 2005 with participants from 78 countries. The first summit was held half a century ago. The declarations from the summit emphasised, among others, cooperation between the two continents in the areas of direct investment, market access, technical assistance and capacity building programmes, as well as greater private sector interaction. China is one of the key Asian countries that has established extensive collaborative relationships with Africa. Chinese influence on the African economy therefore deserves serious attention, hence the focus of this paper on China.
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Education in Ethiopia: Strengthening the Foundation for Sustainable Progress - Lassibille, Gérard; Tan, Jee‐Peng (RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2005)
With the end of civil war in 1991, Ethiopia's government launched a New Education and Training Policy in 1994 which, by the early 2000s, had already produced remarkable results. The gross enrollment ratio rose from 20 to 62 percent in primary education between 1993-94 and 2001-02; and in secondary and higher education it climbed, respectively, from 8 to 12 percent and from 0.5 to 1.7 percent. Yet the government can hardly afford to rest on its laurels. Primary education is still not universal, and already there are concerns about plummeting educational quality and the growing pressures to expand post-primary education. Addressing these challenges will require more resources, both public and private. Yet money alone is insufficient. Focusing on primary and secondary education, Education in Ethiopia argues for wise tradeoffs in the use of resources a result that will often require reforming the arrangements for service delivery. These changes, in turn, need to be fostered by giving lower levels of government more leeway to adapt central standards such as those for teacher recruitment and school construction to local conditions, including local resource constraints; and by strengthening accountability for results at all levels of administration in the education system.
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African American Students' Perception of Their Preparation for a High-Stakes Mathematics Test. - Lattimore, Randy (The Negro educational review, 2005)
ABSTRACT: Life continues to change for minority children in general and African American children in particular in public schools where federal legislation mandates extensive high-stakes testing. Although high-stakes testing is a prominent element of public schooling in the United States, it has generated serious concerns from one of its primary clientele-the students. Drawing on interviews with students, this study presents an account of six African American students' perceptions of high-stakes testing (HST) in a large inner-city school in Central Ohio with a African American student population. Specifically, the study addresses the following questions: (a) How are students prepared for the mathematics portion of a high-stakes test? and (b) What do students suggest to improve the process? Consequently, students believe instruction and instructional content have changed with the teacher emphasizing materials on the test while narrowing other aspects of learning. Introduction The surge in public schools' emphasis on high-stakes testing has become the source of spirited debates among educational policymakers, researchers, and practitioners, increasingly more serious since No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA), Public Law 107-110, was passed, and in January 8, 2002, signed into law. However, as we move through the 21st Century, the abysmal number of African American children seems destined to occupy a place at the periphery of the high-stakes tests regime. High-stakes tests consist typically of a state-mandated 10th Grade test that students must pass in order to be able to graduate school. They are called high stakes because a student's entire school career rides on this test. If he or she fails the test, it does not matter whether he/she has gotten all As in everything else and had perfect attendance, he/she still cannot graduate. (Spritzler, 2000, p.1). The purpose of this study is to understand six African American students' perspectives of their preparation for a high-stakes examination in mathematics in an inner-city school. This school serves a population of African American learners and is situated in a low-socioeconomic neighborhood. Inner-city African American students traditionally do not do well on high-stakes examinations, yet are the students that testing proponents target under assumptions that high-stakes tests will improve educational quality and academic achievement in their schools (Amrein & Berliner 2002a,b,c; Haney, 2000; McNeil, 2000a,b; Ohanian, 2001; Heubert & Hauser, 1999). Specifically, the purpose of this study is to address the following questions: (a) How are students prepared for the mathematics portion of a high-stakes test? (b) What do students suggest to improve the process? Ohio's High-Stakes Test A review of the legislative objectives relating to the contemporary statewide testing trend reveals a plethora of hopes and expectations that diverge somewhat across states but have many elements in common. Rather than reduce the list to a set of statistics, examples will be used to convey the character of these objectives. Legislation in the State of Ohio is an example, which can help to alleviate the problems already posed by testing. The requirement that students take an Ohio's Statewide Proficiency Test went into effect at the beginning of the 1990-91 academic year. By an action of the State Board of Education, all students who entered the ninth grade prior to the 1990-91 school year, even those who dropped out of school and re-entered after September 1990, must take the Ohio Proficiency Test. The Ohio Proficiency Test, commonly called the OPT is a criterion-referenced test designed to assess competence on a designated minimum in reading, writing, mathematics, science, and citizenship skills. In order to receive a school diploma, students are bound by the policy and must pass all five-skill areas of the examination (i. …
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AGE-SPECIFIC SEROPREVALENCE OF HEPATITIS A AMONG SCHOOL CHILDREN IN CENTRAL TUNISIA - Letaïef, A.; Kaabia, Nawfal; Gaha, Rafika; Bousaadia, Amel; Lazrag, Fatma; Trabelsi, H.; Ghannem, H.; Jemni, L. (The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene, 2005)
Hepatitis A virus (HAV) has different epidemiologic and clinical patterns, depending on the level of endemicity in a given geographic area. Tunisia is considered a region of high endemicity for hepatitis. Improvement of socioeconomic conditions in this country has made a determination of the seroprevalence of this disease advisable. We assessed the seroprevalence of HAV in Sousse in central Tunisia. A total of 2,400 school children 5-20 years of age (mean +/- SD age = 11.7 +/- 3.5 years) were selected by two-stage cluster sampling and tested serologically for IgG antibody to HAV by using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The overall seroprevalence among this population was 60% (44%, in children < 10 years old, 58% in those 10-15 years of age, and 83% in those > 15 years of age. Seroprevalence also varied according to area of residence. At the age of 10, 21.3% of school children living in the urban areas and 87.7% of those living in rural areas had antibodies to HAV. Other factors that increased seroprevalence included non-potable water, crowding, and a low education level of parents with odds ratios of 4.37, 2.96, and 2.62, respectively. This study has shown an increase of seroprevalence with age, suggesting that transmission among younger children has decreased, particularly in urban areas. Programs to prevent hepatitis A may need to be modified based upon the changing age distribution of the disease and mass vaccination program could be indicated if additional incidence and prevalence data confirm the intermediate endemicity of HAV.
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African American Students' Career Considerations and Reasons for Enrolling in Advanced Science Courses. - Lewis, Bradford F.; Connell, Shelley (The Negro educational review, 2005)
ABSTRACT: Extant literature on the underrepresentation of African Americans in science-related careers has identified numerous factors that correlate with students' career considerations. While these correlations provide substantial insight, the tendency to infer cause is problematic. This position paper draws on data from an exploratory study to illustrate that alternative interpretations are probable and to advocate the need for a deeper understanding of the relationship between students' career considerations and known correlates. Data were collected from 87 African American, high school juniors and seniors. These data identify the careers they consider pursuing, their reasons for enrolling in advanced science courses and the influence of the advanced science course on their consideration of science-related careers. Findings suggest that African American students' consideration of science-related careers may precede enrollment in advanced science courses. The underrepresentation of African Americans in science and science-related careers has been a resilient problem. Reports show that since 1977 African Americans have comprised fewer than 2% of practicing Ph.D.-holding scientists (National Science Board, 2000). Even with modest gains in recent years the percentage of African Americans in science careers remains far below the percentage of African Americans in the U.S. population. Researchers studying this phenomenon have identified numerous factors, which correlate with students' career considerations. Among these it has been found that the number of mathematics and science courses taken (Griffin, 1990; Maple & Stage, 1991; Reyes & Stanic, 1985; Thomas, 1984), the reported influence of mathematics or science teachers (Griffin, 1990), reported participation in extra-curricular science activities (Gilleylen, 1993), reported interest in science projects as children (Thomas, 1984), and students' self-confidence in their ability to do mathematics or science (Griffin, 1990; O'Brien, Post, Stewart, & Smith, 1991) all correlate positively with science-related academic majors. In a review of literature on African American underrepresentation Lewis (2003) points out that these and similar findings grow out of a body of research that is highly uniform in both its theoretical and methodological approach. In brief, the research tends to assume deficiencies in the life history of African American students; using survey samples of college students to identify the deficiencies that correlate with race and/or choice of major; and interpret those deficiencies as causal factors affecting career choice. While the uniformity of current research may only be partly responsible, a central shortcoming of underrepresentation literature is the oversimplified explanations put forth to account for African American students' career attainment. In this position paper we focus on one of the many factors known to correlate with students' career considerations: namely the number of mathematics and science courses taken in high school. Our purpose is first, to illustrate that alternative interpretations of correlational data are not only possible but are probable; and second, to encourage scholars studying African American underrepresentation to seek greater depth of understanding of the relationship between students' career considerations and associated factors. To realize this purpose we begin by examining extant literature to identify the general explanation put forth to account for the relationship between the number of high school mathematics and science courses taken and African American students' career considerations. We then present data from an exploratory study of African American students' decisions to enroll in advanced mathematics and science courses. These data, which were collected to provide insight into the relationship between advanced science courses and career attainment, tend to challenge prevailing interpretations of the course quantity/career consideration correlation. …
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Through the magnifying glass: A descriptive theoretical analysis of the possible impact of the South African higher education policies on academic staff and their job satisfaction - Mapesela, M.L.E.; Hay, H.R. (Higher Education, 2005)
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African plant diversity and climate change - McClean, Colin J.; Lovett, Jon C.; Küper, Wolfgang; Lee, Hannah; Sommer, Jan Henning; Barthlott, Wilhelm; Termansen, Mette; Smith, Gideon F.; Tokumine, Simon; Taplin, James (Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 2005)
International goals have been set to protect global plant diversity and limit ecosystem damage due to climate change, but large-scale effects of changing climate on species distributions have yet to be fully considered in conservation efforts. For sub-Saharan Africa we study the shifts in climatically suitable areas for 5197 African plant species under future climate models for the years 2025, 2055, and 2085 generated by the Hadley Center’s third generation coupled ocean-atmosphere General Circulation Model. We use three species distribution models, a “Box model,” a simple genetic algorithm, and a Bayes-based genetic algorithm. The results show major shifts in areas suitable for most species with large geographical changes in species composition. The areas of suitable climate for 81%–97% of the 5197 African plant species are projected to decrease in size and/or shift in location, many to higher altitudes, and 25%–42% are projected to lose all of their area by 2085. In particular, the models indicate dramatic change in the Guineo-Congolian forests, mirroring proposed ecological dynamics in the past. Although these models are preliminary and may overestimate potential extinctions, they suggest that efforts to protect African plant diversity should take future climate-forced distribution changes into account.
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Perceived health status and health-promoting behaviors of African-American and White informal caregivers of impaired elders. - McDonald, Patricia E.; Brennan, Patrícia Flatley; Wykle, May L. (PubMed, 2005)
Caregiving and its consequences are major concerns for nurses. Many studies have examined health-promoting behaviors in general (Duffy, 1993; Walker, Volkan, Sechrist, & Pender, 1988), but few studies have explored health-promoting behaviors of caregivers. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of age, gender, race, and length of caregiving on perceived health status and health-promoting behaviors of African-American and White informal caregivers of impaired elders. Data from a larger study was used to examine a conceptual model linking perceived health status and health-promoting behavior. A sample of 136 (n = 136) African-American and 257 (n = 257) White caregivers was recruited from northeastern Ohio through random digit dialing and interviewed face to face. English-speaking caregivers were selected for study who provided unpaid assistance or care for a minimum of five hours a week to an impaired person 60 years of age or older living in the community. The Health-Promoting Behavior Questionnaire, perceived health status, and a demographic profile were used to measure the study variables. Data were analyzed using hierarchical multiple regression. Findings from this study suggest that the overall fit of the conceptual model was significant, and that moreover, the relationship found between perceived health status and health-promoting behaviors supported Pender's model of health promotion (Pender, 1987). The relationship between perceived health status and health-promoting behaviors has not been documented in prior studies of caregivers, or in studies comparing the two racial groups of African-Americans and Whites.
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Transforming schools into democratic organisations: The case of the secondary schools management development project in Botswana - Monyatsi, Pedzani Perci (International education journal, 2005)
As a democratic country which aims at nurturing and sustaining its envied democracy, organisations in Botswana are expected and encouraged to build and maintain democratic structures and principles. In September 1993, the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Botswana and the then British Overseas Development Agency (ODA) launched an ambitious joint venture, the Secondary Schools Management Development Project (SSMDP) whose main objective was to raise management standards in secondary schools through the democratisation of the structures which had hitherto been authoritarian. This paper is based on a quantitative study undertaken in a number of randomly selected secondary schools from all over the country after a decade of the launch. The paper evaluates the extent to which the SSMDP was effective in transforming the management of secondary schools in Botswana since 1993. However, it first gives a background by reviewing relevant literature in an attempt to showcase the nature of schools as organisations. Transforming schools, management, secondary schools, Botswana
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The Effect of African Culture on African American Students' Achievement on Selected Geometry Topics in the Elementary Mathematics Classroom. - Moses-Snipes, Pamela R. (The Negro educational review, 2005)
ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study was to investigate to what extent studying topics in a cultural context affected African American students' achievement. Mathematics achievement was measured by a pre-assessment and post-assessment. The literature addresses fact that all students can benefit from learning about culture and mathematics. Several educators (Hilliard, 1992; Ladson-Billings, 1997; Snipes, 1997; Strutchens, 1994; Tate, 1995, 1997; Zaslavsky, 1988) have specifically addressed fact that African American students are struggling to find success in mathematics classroom. This study implemented ethnomathematics and multicultural mathematcis activities in an effort to enhance African American students' interest in mathematics and improve their achievement in mathematics. Introduction Davidson and Kramer (1997) stated, the gift of diversity is one of a classroom's most powerful assets no matter what age level (p. 131). Everyone's heritage is precious and worthy of discussion. No one is too young or too old to learn about other peoples' culture. Public school classrooms are made up of diverse people and provide environments in which to promote cultural awareness. The notion of exploring diversity in field of mathematics is motivation for conducting this study. This investigation examined how young African American students' achievement in mathematics is affected by engaging in selected geometry concepts presented within a cultural context. The role of culture is becoming more prevalent in learning of mathematics due to similarity of a great deal of mathematics content across cultures (Geddes & Fortunate, 1993). As students learn about particular mathematics concepts, they should also learn about people who used concepts because numerous peoples made contributions to field of mathematics. Peoples with diverse cultures also had diverse methods of using mathematics in their daily lives, which relates to their attitudes, traditions, and tools. These peoples include people with African, Asian, European, Latino, and Native American backgrounds. The purpose of this study was to investigate to what extent studying topics in a cultural context affected African American students' achievement. There is a growing interest in use of multicultural activities in mathematics classroom as well as National Council of Teachers of Mathematics' (NCTM, 2000) promotion of equity and strong support for all students. Equity, identified as one of principles of NCTM (2000) Principles and Standards for School Mathematics, demands that appropriate and reasonable accommodations be made in order to promote access and attainment for all students regardless of their backgrounds, physical challenges, or personal characteristics. Students must have support to learn and opportunities to study mathematics. The study discussed in this article examined African American fifth grade students' mathematics achievement at a public elementary school in a southeastern city. This study is an excerpt from a larger study that investigated how implementation of African cultural activities related to geometry affected African American students' achievement in geometry and perceptions of mathematics in general. Although larger study's results focused specifically on African American students, a diverse group of students completed activities. African American student achievement will be focus of this article as well and achievement discussion in this article was based on pre-assessment and post-assessment results. African American Student Achievement in mathematics is often used as an indicator of 'how much' mathematics someone knows or possesses (secada, 1992, p. 627). The mathematics achievement of African American students is a serious concern in mathematics education (Anderson, 1990; Clark, 1991; Johnson, 1984; Jones, Burton, & Davenport, 1984; Moore & Smith, 1987; Patterson, 1989; Reyes & Stanic, 1988; secada,1992; Silver, Smith, & Nelson, 1995; Silver, Strutchens, & Zawojewski, 1997; Strutchens, 1994; Strutchens & Silver, 2000; Tate, 1997; Zaslavsky, 1988). …
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The Call: The Importance of Research on African American Issues in Mathematics and Science Education. - Moses-Snipes, Pamela R.; Snipes, Vincent T. (The Negro educational review, 2005)
Today, it has become fashionable to discuss closing the achievement We know that an achievement gap exists. The question is, what can be done to close it? In 2005, approximately 50 years after the first Brown vs. Board of Education court case, we issue the official call for others to join us in researching the mathematics and science education of African American students. It is our aim to encourage researchers, who have a sincere interest in the mathematics and science education of African American students, to sjoin us researching the various educational issues of African American students. There are several pertinent issues that need to be addressed regarding African American students' achievement in mathematics and science. The following discussion suggests various topics that should be included in the process of attempting to close the achievement gap. The topics addressed regarding African American student achievement in mathematics and science are: 1) historical awareness of the education of African Americans, 2) teacher expectations and beliefs, 3) cultural awareness, 4) testing, 5) equity in the classroom, 6) and career selections. In order for a people to plan for their future, they must know their history. The first issue that could be addressed related to African American students' education involves historical implications of their education in the United States before and after desegregation. Before desegregation, separate but had been the in the United States. However, on May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court in, Brown vs. Board of Education recognized that white dominance was being perpetuated in virtually every important facet of life when separation of students by race occurred (Bell, 1983). This court case rescinded the separate but equal policy and impacted every aspect of the daily life of African Americans and whites, not just public education. This court case affected or played a role in the development of the current education system in the United States. Therefore, awareness of the catalyst for change in the public education system is an important factor in African American students' education. It is essential that they know their past in order to prepare for the future. Once one has gained knowledge from their past, they should use this knowledge as motivation to strive for academic excellence. Because education takes place predominantly in a classroom, a second major factor in African American students' achieving academic success, relates to the expectations of the teacher. Most students need teachers who believe they can achieve. If this is not the case, any method implemented in the classroom, such as multiculturalism, technology, or cooperative learning, will have minimal affect if the belief system does not coincide with these approaches (Hilliard, 1989). The third issue one could consider is, what methods should be used to improve African American student achievement. There are several approaches that could be implemented in the classroom. The aforementioned paragraph mentions technology, cooperative learning, and multiculturalism. The first two approaches could be utilized along with culture. Culture should be included in the mathematics classroom because it improves students' academic achievement (Banks, 1989), helps move classrooms towards an equitable learning environment (NCTM, 1989, 2000), helps students have positive beliefs about mathematics (Masingila & King, 1997), and integrates mathematics with other disciplines (Zaslavsky, 1989, 1998). After considering what should be taught in the classroom, the fourth issue relates to testing. The National Assessment of Education Progress reports state that from 1973-1996 African American students made substantially greater gains than white students on traditional mathematical concepts and skills, which narrowed the gap; however, white students scored higher than African American students at all grade levels (Strutchens and Silver, 2000). …
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Evaluation of condom use among students of the El Mina middle school in Nouakchott in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania - Ndiaye, P.; Ho, Abdallahi el; Diedhiou, Alpha; Tal-Día, A; Jp, Lemort (2005)
UNLABELLED This study, intended to contribute to the fight against HIV/AIDS infection, sought to identify the factors limiting condom use among the pupils of the El Mina middle school in Nouakchott, in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania. METHOD This investigation, conducted in May 2004, concerned 711 students aged approximately 12-16 years. The dependent variable was condom use, and two categories of independent study variables were examined: socio-demographic and HIV information. The data were entered, verified, and analyzed with Epi info 6.04 software. RESULTS Overall 40% of the students reported sexual activity; in this group, 41% reported multiple partners and 38% unprotected sexual relations. Condom use was significantly more frequent among boys, married students, students with more than one partner, those who attended educational sessions, those for whom sexuality is a taboo subject, those who knew a source of supply, and those for whom condoms were geographically and financially accessible. DISCUSSION Condom use among sexually active students is insufficient. This underuse is caused by shortcomings in the distribution system and contributes to the multiplication of sexually-transmitted diseases, including HIV, among the pupils. To provide students with the knowledge necessary for the desired behavioral changes, the following steps are necessary: promoting social marketing of condoms, involving other partners in the fight against STDs and AIDS, using peer educator strategies, and integrating units on HIV/AIDS into secondary education. CONCLUSION Given the seriousness and the increasing extension of the HIV infection, condom use should be promoted to improve the sexual and reproductive health of students and thus of the entire population of Mauritania.
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A critical assessment of the applicability of the public sector reform in Malawi: the case of the free primary education - nordholt, N.G. Schulte; Kalilangwe, M.J.J. (2005)
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Mortality of tetanus at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Nigeria - Ojini, FI; Danesi, Mustapha (Tropical Doctor, 2005)
Records of 349 tetanus patients, aged 10 years and above, admitted to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Nigeria, between 1990 and 1999 were reviewed. The male:female ratio was 1.98:1, and the ages were between 10 and 88 years, with a mean age of 29.8 years. The overall case fatality rate (CFR) of tetanus was 36.96% (33.19% for men and 44.44% for women). The CFR is similar to that previously reported in the hospital, but higher than that reported from Europe and North America. The lowest CFR was in the 10-19-year age group, and there was a trend towards increasing CFR with increasing age. Tetanus patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) had a significantly higher CFR than those in the medical wards. Unlike in developed countries, where management of tetanus in ICU has resulted in a decrease in CFR, the CFR of tetanus at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital has not significantly reduced over the years.
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Physico-chemical characteristics and pollution levels of heavy metals in the rivers in Thohoyandou, South Africa - Okonkwo, Jonathan O.; Mothiba, M. (Journal of Hydrology, 2005)
In this study, trace metal analysis of the surface waters from river Dzindi, Madanzhe and Mvudi in Thohoyandou, South Africa, were conducted with a view to obtain a baseline data of their levels. The physico-chemical forms of the metals as a means of assessing their availability and non-availability for toxicity to aquatic organisms was also investigated. Surface water samples were collected randomly from selected sites in the rivers aforementioned. The samples were analysed for Cd, Cu, Pb and Zn using a Varian flame atomic absorption spectrometer. The concentration range of the metals were: 1.6–9.3, 2.0–3.0, 10.5–20.1 and 2.1–2.5 μg l−1 for Cd, Cu, Pb and Zn, respectively. The concentration ranges of all the metals measured were found to be below the international guidelines and acceptable concentrations for drinking water except the values for Cd and Pb. Also, when compared to the world average of trace elements for unpolluted rivers, the three rivers considered were polluted by Cd and Pb. With the speciation studies, Pb was found predominantly in the particulate fraction, while Cu and Zn were dominant in the non-labile fraction. However, Cd was found in equal distribution between the labile and non-labile fractions. The non-labile fractions of Cd, Cu and Zn were considered unavailable to cause any serious danger to aquatic organisms. However, the labile Cd was considered to be bio-available and therefore, can pose a danger to aquatic organisms.
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Training of Health Care Professionals on the Special Needs of Children in the Management of Disasters: Experience in Asia, Africa, and Latin America - Olness, Karen; Sinha, Madhumita; Herran, Marisa; Cheren, Mark; Pairojkul, Srivieng (Ambulatory Pediatrics, 2005)
Although children are the most vulnerable group in any disaster, limited information exists regarding their unique needs in complex humanitarian emergencies.To review the experiences gained in designing and implementing a training course for international health care professionals in disaster management focused on the needs of children.The format, content, learning objectives, teaching methods, course evaluation, and feedback of a training course on managing complex humanitarian emergencies with a focus on the special needs of children were reviewed.The 5-day course was first conducted at Case Western Reserve University in 1996. Since then, it has been replicated 15 times, annually in the United States, and in 7 overseas venues, including Thailand, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Panama, Syria, and India. Voluntary US and international faculty used a problem-based learning method to train health care workers from developing countries in providing rapid quality care to child disaster victims. The courses were well received in every venue, as evidenced by active participation of local medical professionals, who organized logistics, recruited participants, and led the process of adapting the course to local needs. A remarkable outcome of this training course has been the development of an international group of highly motivated professionals involved in disseminating information to relief workers at a local level and providing a supportive network among themselves.A comprehensive training program targeted for health care professionals, conducted by mutually respectful local and international faculty, is an effective instrument for disseminating information and enhancing competence to help children in disasters.
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Social Mobilization and Communication Training Models for Community Groups in Nigeria - Onabajo, Femi (Studies of Tribes and Tribals, 2005)
This paper examined the concept of social mobilization and guidelines that should be followed in social mobilization programming. It considered issues involved in information dissemination and what should be borne in mind in the designing of development messages. The paper also drew attention to communication training models which are hinged on radio study groups that could be adopted for the mobilization of Nigerians for social development. It recommended an appropriate strategy for planning and implementing effective social mobilization. which should employ a multi media campaign approach.
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The Black Cultural Ethos, Students' Instructional Context Preferences, and Student Achievement: An Examination of Culturally Congruent Science Instruction in the Eighth Grade Classes of One African American and One Euro-American Teacher - Parsons, Eileen Carlton; Travis, Crystall; Simpson, Jamila Smith (2005)
ABSTRACT: The Nation is ill-equipped to meet the future demands for scientists to sustain scientific disciplines and the scientific literacy required in this technological era. In response to this state of affairs, reforms promote quality for all but provide little guidance on how to achieve it. This study describes an approach that uses cultural contexts as conduits for learning. With respect to Black Cultural Ethos (BCE), the study investigated eighth graders' self-reported preferences regarding learning contexts, the nature of the contexts in which instruction actually occurred, and any patterns in student achievement. The quantitative and qualitative findings indicated that more students, particularly African Americans, experienced enhanced achievement in culturally congruent contexts that aligned with their preferences. When demographic realities, national needs, and democratic values are taken into account, it becomes clear that the nation can no longer ignore the education of any students. Race, language, sex, or economic circumstances must no longer be permitted to be factors in determining who does and who does not receive a good education in science, mathematics, and technology. (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1989, p. 214) As denoted in the above quote, quality education for all students is urgently needed. The Nation is inadequately equipped to meet the future demands for a sufficient number of scientists to sustain scientific disciplines and the scientific literacy required of this increasingly complex technological era. In response to this state of affairs, education reform efforts like the National Science Education Standards (NSES) (National Research Council (NRC), 1996) promote quality for but provide little guidance on how to achieve this aim. For example, Teaching Standard B of the NSES (NRC, 1996) emphasizes the importance of responding to diversity and getting all students involved in science, but does not provide suggestions as to how to address it so that student involvement is maximized (Rodriguez, 1997). With regard to science for all, this study addressed the NSES oversight by investigating achievement with respect to culturally congruent instruction. More specifically, the study examined achievement with respect to the Black Cultural Ethos (BCE). In brief, BCE, a construct posited by a notable African American psychologist, consists of several dimensions. These dimensions capture what Nobles (1980) described as a derivation of West African beliefs, values, and traditions that characterize the way blacks perceive, interpret, and interact with the world. As discussed later, the authors acknowledge the association among race and culture due to the physical segregation of ethnic communities in American society, but view culture and race as distinct social constructs. The study targeted culture and addressed two objectives. First, with respect to Black Cultural Ethos (BCE), the study examined eighth grade students' self-reported preferences for instructional contexts. That is, the study investigated the kinds of conditions under which students preferred instruction to occur. Second, with respect to the students' self-reported preferences, BCE, and the nature of the contexts in which instruction actually occurred, the study investigated patterns, if any, in student achievement. These objectives emerged from an earlier examination of the study's data (Parsons, 2005). The previous results focused upon means as indicators of African American and Euro-American student achievement and showed that the achievement gap between the two groups decreased more in instructional contexts culturally congruent with BCE. This examination looks at achievement in relation to how well the students' preferences corresponded with instructional contexts that incorporated and did not incorporate BCE. …
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Changing the 'Landscape' of Learning: The Future of Blended Learning Provision in Newly Merged South African Higher Education Institutions - Paterson, Andrew (International journal of education and development using information and communication technology, 2005)
This article analyses the implications of recent institutional mergers for information systems development and in particular for the provision of blended and collaborative learning in the South African higher education system. The merged institutions are only beginning to address these challenges. The article therefore draws attention to current conditions, key systems integration challenges and strategic decisions that can influence the outcome of information systems integration. Particular emphasis is given to access, equity, competition and cost outcomes of planning, and implementing online blended and collaborative curriculum modalities in the context of the institutional mergers.
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The El Arraiche mud volcano field at the Moroccan Atlantic slope, Gulf of Cadiz - Rensbergen, P. Van; Depreiter, D.; Pannemans, Bart; Moerkerke, G.; Rooij, David Van; Marsset, Bruno; Ахманов, Г.Г.; Blinova, V.; Ivanov, M.K.; Rachidi, M.; Magalhães, Vítor; Pinheiro, Luís Menezes; et al. (Marine Geology, 2005)
The El Arraiche field is a new mud volcano field discovered near the Moroccan shelf edge in the Gulf of Cadiz that consists of 8 mud volcanoes in water depths from 200 to 700 m. The largest mud volcano in the field (Al Idrissi mud volcano) is 255 m high and 5.4 km wide. The cluster was discovered during a survey with the RV Belgica and studied further during Leg 2 of the TTR 12 survey onboard the R/V Prof Logachev. The 2002 surveys yielded detailed multibeam bathymetry over a 700 km2 study area, dense grids of high-resolution seismic data, deep-tow sub bottom profiles, sidescan sonar mosaics over the major structures. Selected video imagery lines, video guided grab samples, dredge samples, gravity cores, and box cores were collected for groundtruthing purposes. Eight mud volcanoes in water depths from 200 to 700 m cluster around two, sub-parallel anticlines and associated active extensional faults. Rock clasts and regional seismic data locate the El Arraiche field over a Late Miocene–Pliocene extensional basin. The onset of mud volcanic activity is estimated at about 2.4 Ma and probably roots in the Cretaceous–Miocene accretionary wedge. Stacked outflows are visible up to a depth of about 500 m below the sea floor. The occurrence of long-lived mud volcanoes bear witness to continued overpressure generation at depth, either by in situ oil and gas generation or by focussed flow and accumulation in the area. Geochemical analyses of pore water from cores demonstrate the presence of thermogenic hydrocarbon processes. The activity of the mud volcanoes is indicated by the thickness of hemi-pelagic sediments covering extruded mud breccia, the occurrence of seep-typical fauna, the degree of mixing between thermogenic and biogenic hydrocarbon processes, or the depth to the base of the sulphate reduction zone. Given its structural setting and the evidence of thermogenic and biogenic hydrocarbons, the area has promising hydrocarbon potential but remains untested.
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Pacific newsroom profiles: media literacy and education in Fiji and Papua New Guinea. - Robie, David (The Australian Journalism Review, 2005)
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A high-resolution geochemical record from Lake Edward, Uganda Congo and the timing and causes of tropical African drought during the late Holocene - Russell, James M.; Johnson, Thomas C. (Quaternary Science Reviews, 2005)
High-resolution analyses of the elemental composition of calcite and biogenic silica (BSi) content in piston cores from Lake Edward, equatorial Africa, document complex interactions between climate variability and lacustrine geochemistry over the past 5400 years. Correlation of these records from Lake Edward to other climatically-forced geochemical and lake level records from Lakes Naivasha, Tanganyika, and Turkana allows us to develop a chronology of drought events in equatorial East Africa during the late Holocene. Major drought events of at least century-scale duration are recorded in lacustrine records at about 850, 1500, ∼2000, and 4100 cal year BP. Of these, the most severe event occurred between about 2050 and 1850 cal year BP, during which time Lake Edward stood about 15 m below its present level. Numerous additional droughts of less intensity and/or duration are present in the Lake Edward record, some of which may be correlated to other lacustrine climate records from equatorial East Africa. These events are superimposed on a long-term trend of increasingly arid conditions from 5400 to about 2000 cal year BP, followed by a shift toward wetter climates that may have resulted from an intensification of the winter Indian monsoon. Although the causes of decade- to century-scale climate variability in the East African tropics remain obscure, time-series spectral analysis suggests no direct linkage between solar output and regional rainfall. Rather, significant periods of ∼725, ∼125, 63–72, 31–25, and 19–16 years suggest a tight linkage between the Indian Ocean and African rainfall, and could result from coupled ocean-atmosphere variability inherent to the tropical monsoon system.
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Untapped Talent and Unlimited Potential: African American Students and the Science Pipeline. - Russell, Melody L. (The Negro educational review, 2005)
ABSTRACT: Historically, lack of access to opportunities has been a constant and unfortunate reality for many African Americans. As a result of tracking and ability grouping many African American students lack the necessary accoutrement for persistence in the sciences. Some critical factors for the persistence and success of African American students in college science degree programs includes parental involvement, teacher expectations, increased numbers of science and mathematics courses, and advanced mathematics and science courses. Educational reform efforts need to be more aggressive towards detracking within schools or African American students in both rural and urban areas will continue to experience a curriculum that prepares them for dead-end, low wage earning jobs with little long-term security or opportunity for upward mobility. Historically, institutions in the United States of America were designed to prepare and educate citizens for intelligent and active participation in the American civic community (Giroux, 1983). Moreover, a brief history on the purpose and design of schools in the United States provides some insight into the reason schools seem to cater to a special cadre of people and limit the opportunities of students from oppressed and marginalized racial/ethnic groups (Brown, 2000). More specifically, African Americans in the United States have been traditionally denied equal access to opportunities as a result of slavery, Crow laws, and institutional racism. The legacies of these practices undergird perceptions that many African Americans are intellectually inferior and adversely impact their opportunities to pursue and persist in science and science-related careers and professions. Scientific racism and segregationist ideologies have adversely impacted African Americans opportunities and access to valuable resources and knowledge necessary to pursue quantitative majors or the hard sciences (i.e., chemistry, physics, and biological sciences) (Bechtel, 1989). In our more contemporary society, we have moved from Jim Crow's de jure (legal) segregation (Patterson, 2001; Irons, 2002) in education that followed the United States Supreme Court decision in Plessy vs. Ferguson 1896 to de facto segregation via tracking and ability grouping (Bowles, 1977; Oakes, 1985; Persell, 1977; Donelan, Neal, & Jones, 1994; Wheelock, 1992), which is often considered a type of educational apartheid in school systems across the United States. At the forefront of much discourse today is the vast and ever-widening between African American students and Anglo-European or white students (Haycock, 2001; Hrabowski, 2002a; Jencks & Phillips, 1998). According to an analysis by Rodriguez (1997) of National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, there is a considerable difference between the performance of African American students and white students. This achievement gap is more pronounced in the academic areas of science and mathematics (College Board, 1999). In addition, white and Asian/Pacific Islanders on average, performed higher on reading and mathematics standardized test in juxtaposition to African American, Latino/a, and other indigenous peoples (National Center for Education Statistics, 2003). Fortunately, there are a number of researchers currently investigating factors that impact and enhance the recruitment, retention and participation of African American students in the fields of science, engineering, and mathematics (SEM) (Atwater, 2000; Brown, 2000; Connell & Lewis, 2003; Hrabowski & Maton, 1995; Hrabowski, Maton, & Greif, 1998; Hrabowski, Maton, Greene, & , Greif, 2002a; Hrabowski, 2002b; Lewis, 2003; Russell & Atwater, in press; Seiler, 2001; Smith & Hausafaus, 1998). Tracking, ability grouping practices, and standardized testing in American institutions today continue to subvert the efforts of curriculum reform and mis-educate many African Americans. …
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Creating the new Egyptian woman: consumerism, education, and national identity, 1863-1922 - Russell, Mona L. (Choice Reviews Online, 2005)
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Perception and attitude to epilepsy among teachers in primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions in middle belt Nigeria - Sanya, E O; Salami, T. A. T.; Goodman, Olayinka; Buhari, O. I. N.; Araoye, Margaret O. (Tropical Doctor, 2005)
Compared with the disability associated with repeated seizures or side-effects of antiepileptic medications, the social stigma associated with epilepsy is often a major handicap to people living with this condition. This study therefore looked at the knowledge, attitude and perception of teachers who see a lot of epileptics, relates on daily bases and have a high influence on students with epilepsy. Self-administered questionnaires were used to obtain information from 460 randomly selected teachers in primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions in Kwara State-middle belt of Nigeria. The response rate was 75%. Almost all of the teachers had heard about epilepsy, but their awareness does not equate with the acceptance and understanding of epilepsy. About 30.5% believed that it could be contracted through the saliva of an epileptic, 27.7% thought it was synonymous with possession with evil spirit, while 10% misunderstood epilepsy for insanity. Close to one-fifth of the teachers were of the opinion that epileptic students have a below average mental capacity compared with other students and so cannot attainment the highest possible education. Negative attitude and bias towards epilepsy is still deeply ingrained among teachers in Nigeria. Apart from formal education, teachers need to have health education courses on common disease conditions such as epilepsy that are prevalent in school age. This might help to reduce prejudice and increase the acceptance of epileptic individuals into the classroom.
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Cover: Satellite detects surface thermal anomalies associated with the Algerian earthquakes of May 2003 - Saraf, A. K.; Choudhury, Swapnamita (International Journal of Remote Sensing, 2005)
On 21 May 2003, Algeria was hit by a powerful shallow focus earthquake of magnitude Mw = 6.8 (http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/bulletin/03_EVENTS/eq_030521/) at 18:44 (UTC) which led to the death of 2276 ...
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Educating Democratic Minds in South African Public Schools: African Teachers' Perceptions of Good Citizenship. - Schoeman, Sonja (Journal of Negro Education, 2005)
The notion that South African public schools have a distinctively civic mission has been recognized in all national education policy documents published since the first democratic election in 1994. The African National Congress (ANC) government immediately began to realize that if the new-found democracy was to survive, education for democratic citizenship had to be taught to every future generation. The purpose of this article is to summarize scholars' views on the attributes of a good citizen and to report the outcomes of a research project on African teachers' perceptions on what factors contribute to being a good citizen. Finding out what African teachers think will provide a reasonable starting point for addressing the issue of education for democratic citizenship in South African public schools. The literature review and the individual interviews revealed that a good citizen in a constitutional democracy is someone who possesses, among others, the following characteristics: communitarian characteristics, public characteristics, and knowledge characteristics. INTRODUCTION South Africa's first democratic election, in late April 1994, stands as a political watershed in the country's history, because it signaled the end of racially based rule and the beginning of a constitutional democracy (Olivier, 2000). Although, according to Evans (1997), it has been argued that the establishment of proper institutions is sufficient to maintain a free and democratic society, world events are there to remind us that even the most well designed institutions are not sufficient. Ultimately, a free and democratic society has to rely on the knowledge, skills, and virtues of its citizens and those they elect to serve in public office on their behalf (Institute for Democracy in South Africa, IDASA, 1999). According to scholars such as De Tocqueville (1969, p. 165), of the mind and the habits of the heart-dispositions that inform the democratic ethosare not inherited. Each new generation has to acquire the knowledge, learn the skills, and develop the dispositions that underlie a constitutional democracy. These dispositions have to be fostered and nurtured by word, study, and by the power of example. Therefore, every democratic society faces the challenge of educating succeeding generations of young people for responsible citizenship (Burchell, 1993; IDASA, 1999). Learners have to be prepared for their future responsibilities as citizens of a democratic society. Many institutions help to develop citizens' knowledge and skills to shape their civic character and commitments: family, religious institutions, the media, and community groups all exert important influences. Schools, however, bear a special and historic responsibility for the development of civic competency and responsibility (Dayton, 1995; Dewey, 1916). As Giroux (1995) reiterated: Citizenship and democracy need to be problematised and reconstructed for each generation. . .public schools must assist in the unending work of preparing citizens for self-governance in an evolving social environment. Through the public schools, learners can be taught the values and skills necessary to administer, protect and perpetuate a free democratic society, (p. 6) Closer scrutiny of the above remarks reveals the existence of a few problem questions: (a) how public schools in South Africa, charged with delivering democratically inspired programs on citizenship, should meet the challenge; (b) how a public school as a whole can work to ensure that education for democratic citizenship is more than an idealistic ambition; and (c) how to accommodate the democratic knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes as set out in national curriculum statements in classroom teaching and learning? The underlying question of this study is how public schools in South Africa, charged with delivering democratically inspired programs on citizenship, should meet the challenge? Prior to 1994, citizenship education was taught, indirectly, using history and subjects, such as, youth preparedness, Inkatha studies, and right living. …
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The politics of mergers in higher education in South Africa - Sehoole, Chika (Higher education (Amsterdam. Print), 2005)
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Availability and (Non-) Use of Technology in and for Mathematics Education in Poor Schools in South Africa. - Setati, Mamokgethi (2005)
In South Africa where poverty defines the lives of the majority, technological resources are not just limited and unequally distributed in schools, but also their availability does not necessarily translate into use. The paper explores issues related to accessibility and (non-) use of technology for mathematics learning and teaching in poor schools in South Africa. A suggestion is made to consider poverty and economic conditions as legitimate and relevant concerns in research on technology in and for mathematics education.
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Cereals in Tunisia: production and resistance mechanisms to drought - Slama, A.; Salem, M. Ben; Naceur, M’barek Ben; Zid, Ezziddine (Science et changements planétaires / Sécheresse, 2005)
Cereals have a great importance in agricultural research programs worldwide. As far as Tunisia is concerned, they are all the more vital as the country is seeking to reach a stable production in cereals, especially in durum wheat and barley. However, Tunisian cereal crops are highly dependent on climatic conditions and they have to face frequent droughts. Cereal production under water deficit conditions has been the subject of a number of studies which showed that cereals are equipped with specific resistance mechanisms against climatic constraints which encourage their growth and development, as well as their grain yield. This study discusses some of those drought-resistant mechanisms that appear to play a most important part in the production of cereals in Tunisia.
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The Mathematics Education of African Americans in North Carolina: From the Brown Decision to No Child Left Behind. - Snipes, Vincent T.; Waters, Roderick D. (The Negro educational review, 2005)
ABSTRACT: For several years now, an achievement gap has been in existence between African American students and white students in mathematics. The purpose of this study is to (1) report on an in-depth case study of a former state mathematics consultant to describe his experiences of the mathematics education of African Americans in public high schools in North Carolina from 1950-1980 and (2) to examine North Carolina African American students' progress in mathematics from the Brown vs. the Board of Education Decision to the No Child Left Behind Act Era. The data for this study are analyzed utilizing the critical race theory of education perspective. Introduction In recent years, there has been considerable discussion in the American public about the achievement gap that exists between minority students and White students in the public schools. As a response to this concern, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was passed in 2002 by the federal government to address this achievement gap. However, it may take years to determine whether the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has positively impacted the achievement gap. During the late 1970's, researchers began to examine the status of African Americans and other minorities in the mathematical sciences (Johnson, 1984). Researchers discovered dismal results that indicate there is underrepresentation of African Americans in upper level mathematics courses and mathematics related careers (Quality Education for Minorities in Mathematics, Science, and Engineering Network (MSE Network), 1992; National Science Foundation (NSF), 1993). Only within recent years have there been research studies focusing exclusively on African American mathematics students (Moses-Snipes, 2004; Lattimore, 1996; Chappell, 1991; Cousins, 1995; Strutchens, 1993; Thomas, 1993). In the United States, remedial mathematics classrooms contain large numbers of African American students; however, advanced mathematics classes mainly serve White students (Matthews, 1984; Johnson, 1984; Oakes, 1986b; Oakes, 1990). The students in low-level mathematics courses are mainly African Americans and other non-Asian minority students. Of the total American population, 12%-13% of the people are African American; however, of the population of practicing Ph.D. mathematicians, less than 1% are African American (NSF, 1999; Cooper, 2000). From 1983-2002, just 176 out of 10,486 (1.7%) Ph.D's in mathematics were awarded to African Americans (Nelson, 2002). When students have low test scores on standardized mathematics exams and low grades in the mathematics classroom, it is often referred to as underachievement. African American students have demonstrated poor mathematics performance on numerous standardized tests (National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), 2003; Anick, Carpenter, & Smith, 1981; National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 1992; Reyes & Stanic, 1988). For many years African Americans have not performed as well as their White counterparts on standardized mathematics exams such as the SAT and NAEP exams (Matthews, 1984; Bridglall & Gordon, 2004). There is a relationship between underachievement and underrepresentation. When a student has low test scores, he or she will rarely be placed into upper level mathematics courses. If a student has low grades in the mathematics classes, the student will not usually go on to take many more upper level mathematics classes. If you do not take upper level mathematics courses, you have limited your scientific career options, where opportunities to enter into a mathematical field are drastically decreased. The purpose of this study is to (1) report on an in-depth case study of a former state mathematics consultant who described his experiences of the mathematics education of African Americans in public high schools in North Carolina from 1950-1980 and (2) to examine North Carolina African American students' progress in mathematics from the Brown vs. …
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Defining the Situation: The Continuing Importance of Mathematics Education for African American Students - Stewart, Mac A. (The Negro educational review, 2005)
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Exploring the Evidence-Practice Gap: A Workshop Report on Mixed and Participatory Training for HIV Prevention in Southern Africa - Stewart, Ruth; Wiggins, Meg; Thomas, James; Oliver, Sandy; Brunton, Ginny; Ellison, George T. H. (Education for health, 2005)
The gap between what is known and what is done about public health (the evidence-practice gap) needs addressing. One solution may be through mixed and participatory training in accessing and appraising research.Residential workshops trained policy-makers, practitioners and researchers from seven southern-African countries in evidence-based decision-making for HIV prevention. They included training in accessing, critiquing and summarizing research, whilst remaining responsive to the priorities of the participants.Drawing on the participants' feedback and our observations, we reflected on how these workshops may have addressed the evidence-practice gap. We identified three areas: access to research, understanding of research and the relevance of research. The workshops enabled a small group of people to access relevant research in a timely manner. However, more needs to be done to disseminate research findings appropriately as any long-term impact will be affected by the political and economic context in which participants work. We are confident that the participants went away with increased understanding of the purposes and processes of research, but for research to make a difference, the research community needs to emphasise more the publication of research findings written for potential users. The workshops were most successful in influencing researchers to consider bridging the evidence-practice gap by producing more relevant research, applicable to policy-makers and practitioners.This intensive intervention has the potential to reduce the evidence-practice gap for HIV prevention in southern Africa by training non-researchers to engage with research, whilst providing an opportunity for researchers to engage with policy-makers and practitioners.
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Karl Popper's Views on an Open Society and their Implications for the Democratic Transformation of South African Education - Steyn, Johann; Klerk, J. de (Education As Change, 2005)
Abstract Key questions in this study are (a) whether the philosopher Karl Popper's views of an ‘open society’ can still, after sixty years, have an impact on school education and (b) whether school education in South Africa can play a meaningful role in establishing a democratic and ‘open society’ culture. The specific aims of this article are (a) to identify and understand some essential features of Critical Rationalism and an ‘open society’; (b) to investigate whether these characteristics are reconcilable with democracy; (c) to identify some implications of these features for school education and (d) to link all of this to the democratic transformation of education in South Africa. Typical Critical Rationalism and 'open society' features include the notion of falsifiability and falsification, freedom of thought and the free exchange of ideas and rationality. This article explores the relationship between these features and democracy and concludes that it is compatible with and supportive of democracy. The Popper school clearly demonstrates that it is possible to apply Popperian principles to school education, but it is our contention that these are also applicable in developing countries. The focus of this research is on democratic education and therefore Popper's views on an ‘open society’ are linked to the democratic transformation of education in South Africa. The enemies of an ‘open society’ should be identified, even at school level, and if we are serious about the democratic transformation of education in South Africa the school should play an important role in establishing a more ‘open society’. Keywords: Critical RationalismPopperOpen societyDemocratic education
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Karl Popper's Views on an Open Society and their Implications for the Democratic Transformation of South African Education - Steyn, Johann; Klerk, J. de (Education As Change, 2005)
Abstract Key questions in this study are (a) whether the philosopher Karl Popper's views of an ‘open society’ can still, after sixty years, have an impact on school education and (b) whether school education in South Africa can play a meaningful role in establishing a democratic and ‘open society’ culture. The specific aims of this article are (a) to identify and understand some essential features of Critical Rationalism and an ‘open society’; (b) to investigate whether these characteristics are reconcilable with democracy; (c) to identify some implications of these features for school education and (d) to link all of this to the democratic transformation of education in South Africa. Typical Critical Rationalism and 'open society' features include the notion of falsifiability and falsification, freedom of thought and the free exchange of ideas and rationality. This article explores the relationship between these features and democracy and concludes that it is compatible with and supportive of democracy. The Popper school clearly demonstrates that it is possible to apply Popperian principles to school education, but it is our contention that these are also applicable in developing countries. The focus of this research is on democratic education and therefore Popper's views on an ‘open society’ are linked to the democratic transformation of education in South Africa. The enemies of an ‘open society’ should be identified, even at school level, and if we are serious about the democratic transformation of education in South Africa the school should play an important role in establishing a more ‘open society’. Keywords: Critical RationalismPopperOpen societyDemocratic education
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Modeling of Air Pollution Systems with Chemical Reactions: Application to Gas Flares in Nigeria - Susu, Alfred A.; Abhulimen, Kingsley E.; Adereti, Adedayo B. (International Journal for Computational Methods in Engineering Science and Mechanics, 2005)
The Eulerian model was used for the prediction of air pollutants in some gas flare locations in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. A continuity equation (mass balance) that incorporates second order reaction schemes for the generation of pollutants at source or in the ensuing atmosphere was used to characterize the n species in the fluid element and the finite difference method (the Crank-Nicholson formulation) was applied for the numerical scheme. Thus, the spatial and transient concentration profiles of key contaminants were obtained for the meteorological conditions under consideration. The first series of simulations were carried out at ground level and at altitudes of 30 and 90 m, for a simulation time of 10 min. The second series of simulations were identical to the first, except that the simulation time was 20 min. The third series of simulations were carried out for 50 min at ground level and at an altitude of 30 m. The concentration profiles were parabolic for at least one of the pollutants at the ground level for 10, 20 and 50 min simulation times, and additionally at an altitude of 30 m for a simulation time of 50 min. Other concentration profiles are exponential in nature. The deterministic Eulerian model provided a satisfactory prediction of the spatial and transient concentration profiles for the pollutants in the gas flares.
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Adjusting Inequality: Education and Structural Adjustment Policies in Tanzania - Vavrus, Frances (Harvard Educational Review, 2005)
International economic forces increasingly affect policy at multiple levels and in multiple domains. The interplay of three levels — international, national, and local — are underresearched in the social and educational policy fields, which includes educational policy studies. In this article, Frances Vavrus employs ethnography to investigate how these interactions play out in a Chagga community in the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania. She examines how the lives of secondary students in Tanzanian schools are affected by structural adjustment policies, adopted by Tanzania at the advice of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, in three domains: access to schooling, opportunities for employment, and the risk of HIV/AIDS infection. She makes a convincing case for the importance of understanding the local setting in the development of international and national policy, and for investigating the impact policy change in noneducational sectors has on educational realities. Vavrus's research also provides a glimpse into the multiple local consequences of the policy of user fees for school access that were implemented over the last fifteen years in Tanzania and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. She concludes with a call for the research community to consider the benefits of ethnography in the development and evaluation of policy.
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Community road safety education programmes: the South African case study - Vermaak, Lynn; Groenewald, K.; Makhado, David; Niekerk, E.C. Van (2005)
The study, which took place in the community of Leroro, Mpumulanga, formed part of an international project including four countries (South Africa, Ghana, Bangladesh and India). The initiative was funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and initiated by the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) in the UK, with CSIR Roads and Transport Technology (Transportek) acting as South African project leader, partnered by the Mpumalanga Government Road Safety Division and various other stakeholders. In 2003, there were more crashes involving pedestrians in the rural areas of South Africa, compared to the urban areas. The age group 15-19 years constitute 70% of fatalities and this was also the age group on which the study focused. The project followed the steps of the CSIR’s Community Driven Approach. Various participatory rural appraisal techniques were used along with quantitative techniques to gather information regarding the knowledge, perception and attitudes of this community. One of the most common problems, were drug and alcohol abuse by secondary school learners. Community education programmes can play an integral part of the solution. In Leroro, project specific educational material was used to address this specific problem in the rural community. Evaluation three months after the project, proved the project to be successful. Proceedings of the 24 Southern African Transport Conference (SATC 2005) 11 – 13 July 2005 ISBN Number: 1-920-01712-7 Pretoria, South Africa Produced by: Document Transformation Technologies cc Conference organised by: Conference Planners th
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Rainbow nation or new racism? Theorizing race and identity formation in South African higher education - Walker, Melanie (Race Ethnicity and Education, 2005)
This paper explores both the personal narratives of a group of black and white undergraduate students and the institutional discourse at one historically white and Afrikaans medium university now undergoing its own transformation in post‐apartheid South Africa. It considers how students talk about their actual experiences and the micro‐realties of their personal biographies, what this reveals about how they construct and reconstruct race and identity, and how discourses of race and racialized identities are being reproduced or transformed under new historical and institutional conditions of possibility. The focus is twofold: on the one hand on the contradictions of institutional discourse which both formally admits black students but may subtly work to exclude them as well; and on the other on the friendships that students develop as just one exemplar of how race works itself out biographically and personally. The particular issue is to understand institutional and individual ‘default identities’ which work to erase or obscure the power relations of race and hence to enable race to persist, but also to explore moments of transformation when new identities are made possible. The paper further seeks to contribute to narrative inquiry, following Wright Mills's Mills CW (1959) The sociological imagination New York Oxford University Press [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] notion of the need to consider the intersections of history, biography and society.
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Guardians' attitudes to children with physical disabilities in Malawi - Weston-Simons, J. S.; Lavy, Chris (Tropical Doctor, 2005)
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The historiography of British Imperial education policy, Part II: Africa and the rest of the colonial empire - Whitehead, Clive (History of Education, 2005)
Part II of this historiographical study examines British education policy in Africa, and in the many crown colonies, protectorates, and mandated territories around the globe. Up until 1920, the British government took far less interest than in India, in the development of schooling in Africa and the rest of the colonial empire, and education was generally left to local initiative and voluntary effort. British interest in the control of education policy in Africa and elsewhere lasted only from the 1920s to the 1950s, as territories assumed responsibility for their own internal affairs as a prelude to independence. Nevertheless, critics were not slow to attack British direction of colonial education in the 1930s and thereafter.In retrospect it is clear that colonial education policy was fraught with much confusion of purpose and lack of resources, apathy and hostility. The literature has ranged from close scholarly studies of education policy in individual countries to passionate and more theoretically based critiques of colonial schooling. But as immediate passions surrounding demise of the Empire have receded, alternative analyses have begun to emerge.
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Book Review: Surviving School: Education for Refugee Children from Rwanda 1994—1996 - Williams, James H. (Teachers College Record, 2005)
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Progress in the Desegregation of Schools in South Africa: Experiences of School Principals - Wolhuter, Charl C. (Education As Change, 2005)
The desegregation of schools, which followed the 1954 Brown v Topeka court ruling, was not a reform movement limited to the United States of America, but a worldwide trend. This was also the case in post-1994 South Africa, where it became a cornerstone of governmental education policy and a sine qua non for the provision of equal education opportunities. In an attempt to gather information on a grossly under-researched area of South African education, this paper investigates how principals of schools in KwaZulu-Natal have experienced the course of desegregation in recent years. On the basis of these data, an overall assessment is ventured, problematic areas are identified, and recommendations are made to address these problems. In conclusion, follow-up research is suggested, especially with regard to the problems identified and with regard to deficiencies of the instrument used in this research.
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Information and Communication Technology and Education: Analysing the Nigerian National Policy for Information Technology - Yusuf, Mudasiru Olalere (International education journal, 2005)
This paper presents an analysis of the Nigerian National Policy for Information Technology. The analysis reveals that the policy is inadequate to impact positively on the Nigerian education system, and that the philosophical frame of reference is market driven. The policy places little emphasis on the integration and infusion of ICT in the country’s education system. Policy implications and suggestions are offered to ensure maximum use of ICT potentials in the Nigerian school system. Information technology, education, Nigerian, national policy, technology integration
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English community school teacher education and English as a second language in Papua New Guinea: a study of a practicum - Zeegers, Margaret (Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 2005)
This article explores community (primary) school teacher education in the subject, English, at a Papua New Guinea (PNG) teachers' college as manifested in end‐of‐year English lessons in practicum rounds of pre‐service community school teachers. English is the official language overlaid on 700 indigenous languages in this country where reconstructionism informs policy decisions. Given this, the importance of success in English in schools is not to be underestimated. The research focuses on the implementation the knowledge, skills, strategies and materials acquired by pre‐service English teachers in a coastal province in PNG in the context of a number of public statements on educational policy and practice. It examines the impact of these as indicated in lesson plans and supervisors' reports.
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Parameters of nutrition in school girls in southwestern Nigeria - Fawole, Adeniran O.; Obisesan, K A; Ojengbede, OA; Babarinsa, I A; Ah, Cole; Oi, Fawole; Ao, Arowojolu (East African Medical Journal, 2005)
Objectives: To document trends in parameters of nutrition in south-western Nigerian school girls in comparison with earlier reports and provide baseline data for future comparison. Design: A cross-sectional study. Setting: Fifteen secondary schools from the five local governments in Ibadan, Oyo State in south-western Nigeria. Subjects: One thousand six hundred and seventy five apparently healthy female students aged between nine and twenty three years. Results: One thousand six hundred and seventy three questionnaires were analysed. The mean age, mean height and mean body weight were 15.45 years ±2.06 (SD), 154.98cm ±8.4(SD) and 46.09kg ±8.8 (SD) respectively. The mean body fat was 11.12kg ±4.6 (SD); mean lean body mass (LBM) was 34.96kg ±4.6 (SD); mean total body water (TBW) was 25.17L ±3.3 (SD) and the mean body index (BMI) was 19.07kg/m2 ±2.7 (SD). Girls from upper socio-economic background had significantly higher values of anthropometric measurements and body composition for each age than lower socioeconomic class girls. Compared with their peers from another Nigerian city investigated two decades ago, girls in this study were significantly lighter and shorter. Conclusion: The study revealed a decline in nutritional parameters among adolescents. The implications of these findings for the reproductive health of Nigerian women are discussed. Serial studies to monitor trends in adolescents are recommended. East African Medical Journal Vol.82(4) 2005: 198-202
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A note on disability issues in the Middle East and North Africa - Hakim, Guillermo; Jaganjac, Nedim (2005)
This Note examines disability in the MENA region with respect to prevalence and main causes of disability, economic and social consequences of disabilities, prevention and risk mitigation mechanisms, and policies and strategies to create the enabling environment which permits persons with disabilities full participation in society, including access to education and labor force, and participation in decision making. Its purpose is to take stock of our current knowledge of disability issues in the region, and to open the door to new ideas and initiatives that will help mainstream disability as a theme across sectors.
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Traditional Cultural Teachings on Sex and the Spread of HIV/AIDS: The Case of Puberty Rites for Adolescent Girls in Zambia - Kapungwe, Augustus (Journal of Cultural Studies, 2005)
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Sexuality and Precautionary Behaviour among Secondary School Youth in Botswana - Osei‐Hwedie, Kwaku; Namutosi, Rachel (Journal of Cultural Studies, 2005)
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STUDENTS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA 1995-2005: WITH A FOCUS ON SENEGAL AND ZIMBABWE - Zeilig, Isaac Leo (2005)
This thesis examines students as agents of political change in sub-Saharan Africa. It explores the extent to which students exercise political agency, and the ways in which opportunities for agency are shaped by historical and geographical circumstances. It is argued that in post-colonial Africa students are, in many respects, politically privileged actors. This is attributable to a host of factors including the relative weaknesses of other social groups; the cultural status of education; the small numbers who make it to university; their shared identity with political leadership; the need of the state for graduates and the nature of campus life. 1-lowever, structural factors intervene, shaping a wider political and economic context and the way students exercise agency. These processes are today associated with globalisation and related to the neo-liberal agenda of international financial institutions (IFIs); World Bank pressures on education systems and the role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Within these wider structural changes students do, however, exercise political agency to a varied extent. The two case studies in the thesis are based on interviews with leading student activists and archival research and focus on similar moments of political activism. In the late 1990s both Zimbabwe and Senegal under went important 'transitions'. In Zimbabwe it resulted in the formation of a mass party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), in 1999 after a period of widespread social protests. As the regime regained momentum after the formation of the MDC the 'transition' became increasingly frustrated. Student activists were involved in each stage of this political ferment. Although Senegal did not see mass mobilisation, the country experienced an important 'electoral transition'. The ruling Parti Soda/isle (PS) was overturned for the first time since independence in presidential elections in March 2000 by an opposition coalition. University students played a vital role in the changement polilique that shook Senegal during this period. By focusing on these moments of student activism the research shows how students shape and are shaped by national processes of political change and popular protest and have maintained a role as politically privileged actors.
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STUDENTS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA 1995-2005: WITH A FOCUS ON SENEGAL AND ZIMBABWE - Zeilig, Isaac Leo (2005)
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Lessons from America: the African American Immersion Schools experiment - Pollard, Diane S.; Ajirotutu, Cheryl S. (2005)
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Psychosocial impact of sickle cell disease in children seen at University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital, Ilorin, Nigeria - Tunde-Ayinmode, M F; Adelekan, Moruf L. (East African Medical Journal, 2005)
Background: The increased risk of psychological disorders constitutes one of the complications of sickle cell disease (SCD) in Nigeria. This subject has received insufficient attention. Objectives: To assess the psychosocial impact of SCD on affected children and two control samples. Design: A cross-sectional controlled study. Setting: University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital, Ilorin, Nigeria. Subjects: One hundred children affected with sickle cell disease (SCD children) consituted the study sample, while the controls comprised 75 children consituted the study sample, while the controls comprised of 75 children with bronchial asthma (asthmatics) and 75 with some acute medical illness (AMI). Results: Sickle cell disease (SCD) children (sicklers) were significantly more likely to report social impairment such as restriction in their play and domestic activities, feeling inferior to others, having bad luck, fear of under-achievement in life and fear of potential early death than the control groups. On the Rutter Scale A2, the SCD children were more likely than the controls to report neurotic symptoms but less likely than controls to bully other children. SCD children (30%) were more likely to be identified as probable cases with psychological problems than asthmatics (25%) and AMI children (20%). These differences were, however, not statistically significant. Conclusion: This study further substantiates earlier findings of the link between chronic childhood illnesses such as SCD and psychosocial morbidity. The authors, therefore, recommend that comprehensive and affordable psychosocial care should be provided for children suffering from these conditions. East African Medical Journal Vol.82(2) 2005: 74-79
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The Coming of Western Education to Africa - Ayandele, E.A. (2005)
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A design framework generated from the conceptual framework for the design and development of an interactive multimedia neonatology tutorial, supported by the design experiment methodology, in a South African Higher Education Institution - Diseko, Rabaitse; Westhuizen, Duan van der (EdMedia: World Conference on Educational Media and Technology, 2005)
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Pedagogical Issues in Using Networks for Teachers’ Continuous Professional Development in Egypt - Gouda, Amal; Banks, Frank (EdMedia: World Conference on Educational Media and Technology, 2005)
Professional Networks in education aim to promote the dissemination of good practice and enhance the professional development of teachers (Sliwka, 2003). The Ministry of Education in Egypt established the National Network for Distance Training (NNDT), which became the backbone of teachers’ continuous professional development. Although the network was developed as a part of education reform policy in Egypt, many issues have emerged particularly concerning the pedagogy associated with the training and the role of the network in disseminating good practice. This paper reports on a study that examines the current structure of the Egyptian network and its associated pedagogy, and its role in the building of communities of practice. It also addresses a number of challenges that face trainers and the teachers’ during the training events via the network.
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Gender differences in anaerobic power in Nigerian students - Musa, Danladi Ibrahim (African Journal for Physical, Health Education, Recreation and Dance, 2005)
This study was undertaken in order to determine gender differences in anaerobic power of undergraduate physical education students. An attempt was also made to assess the relationship between selected anthropometric variables and indices of anaerobic power: peak power (PP), Mean power (MP), and fatigue index (FI). The participants were 116 men (n=76) and women (n=40). All participants performed a maximal 30- second anaerobic power test utilizing the force setting of 75g.kgBM-1 on a cycle ergometer. Results indicated significant (p < 0.01) gender differences in PP and MP when expressed in absolute units or relative to body mass. But when expressed relative to lean body mass (LBM), the significant differences attenuated. Similarly, FI did not show any significant (p > 0.01) gender differences. Results of the multiple regression analysis for the combined groups of participants showed that a substantial portion of the variance in both PP and MP were explained by LBM and stature, but this relationship was not consistent across gender. Within the limitations of this study, it was concluded that the gender differences in anaerobic power of participants is a function of LBM, stature, and body mass. Key words: Wingate anaerobic test, peak power, mean power, fatigue index, body composition, gender differences. AJPHERD Vol.11(2) 2005: 163-174
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A Critical Evaluation of Student Support Services provided by the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) - Ogieva, Godwin (2005)
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The University of Mauritius e-Learning Model: Practice, Pedagogies and Tools - Santally, Mohammad Issack; Govinda, Mahen; Senteni, Alain (2005)
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Endemic goiter in School Children in Southwestern Ethiopia - Berhanu, Negalign; Michael, Kifle Wolde; Bezabih, Messele (Ethiopian Journal of Health Development, 2005)
Abstract Background: Iodine deficiency disorder (IDD) is a serious threat to the health and well being of people residing in goiter endemic areas. Objective: To determine the prevalence of iodine deficiency disorders among school children. Methods: A school-based cross sectional survey was conducted in Kafa Zone, Southwestern Ethiopia in January 2003. A total of 1044 students, aged 6 - 15 years, drawn from three Elementary Schools were selected by though the systematic random sampling method. Data on sociodemographic characteristics were collected using a pretested structured questionnaire. Physical examination was conducted to identify the presence or absence of goiter. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 11.0. Results: The prevalence of goiter among the study population was found to be 27.4% {95% CI = (24.7, 30.1)}. The faminine sex was found to be significantly associated with incidence of goiter (P< 0.001). The prevalence of goiter in the three schools was 146 (42.0 %) {95% CI = (36.8, 47.2)} in Shomba kuri, 82 (23.6%) {95% CI = (19.1, 28.1)} in Mera and 58 (16.7%) {95% CI = (12.8, 20.6)} in Abera Yuda primary schools. The prevalence of goiter in Shomba kuri, located at a lower altitude, was significantly higher than that of the other schools (P<0.001). Conclusion: This study showed that IDD is a public health problem in the zone. Goiter was more prevalent among females than males. Continuous, concerted efforts should be exeted to strengthen information, education and communication (IEC) activities in order to create awareness about the detrimental effects of IDD prevention, and encourage iodated salt consumption. [Ethiop.J.Health Dev. 2004; 18(3):175-178]
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Traditional Schools of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church: A Quest for Fresh Methodology - Kenaw, Setargew (Ethiopian journal of the social sciences and humanities, 2005)
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Influence of culture and religion on HIV and sexuality education among South African secondary school teacher - Promtussananon, Supa (African Journal for Physical, Health Education, Recreation and Dance, 2005)
South Africa is characteristically a multi-culture and religious society. It was on this premise that this study sought to investigate the influence of culture and religion on HIV and sexuality education in South African secondary schools. The study was conducted on 150 randomly selected secondary school teachers using semi-structured interview with open-ended questions. The QSR Nvivo computer programme was used for data analysis. Results showed that about half of the teachers (52.6%) indicated that culture and religion did not influence their provision of HIV and sexuality education. These teachers explained that teaching HIV and sexuality education is as normal as teaching other subjects. The teachers added that the advent of HIV/AIDS would have created the prevailing religious and cultural tolerance sexuality education is receiving. Few of the teachers reported that they offered HIV and sexuality education regardless of cultural and religious beliefs. 71 teachers (47.4%) indicated that religion and culture independently or together influenced their HIV and sexuality education exercises. 56.3% of the 71 teachers specified that their teaching was mostly influenced by their students' cultures and religions. The remaining 43.7% of the 71 teachers indicated that their teaching was mainly driven by their own cultural and religious values and beliefs. The major implication of this finding is that culture and religion interfered with the standard HIV and sexuality education protocol in about half of the cases. The influence of such interference was varied. While it remains beyond the scope of this study to establishing the effect of such interference, it remains important to note that such interference poses the risk of compromising the programme. Key words: Teachers, culture, religion, sexuality education, secondary school, HIV, South Africa. AJPHERD Vol.11(1) 2005: 17-32
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Phylogeny and historical biogeography of African ground squirrels: the role of climate change in the evolution of Xerus - Herron, Matthew D.; Waterman, Jane M.; Parkinson, Christopher L. (Molecular Ecology, 2005)
Abstract We used phylogenetic and phylogeographical methods to infer relationships among African ground squirrels of the genus Xerus . Using Bayesian, maximum‐parsimony, nested clade and coalescent analyses of cytochrome b sequences, we inferred interspecific relationships, evaluated the specific distinctness of Cape ( Xerus inauris ) and mountain ( Xerus princeps ) ground squirrels, and tested hypotheses for historical patterns of gene flow within X. inauris. The inferred phylogeny supports the hypothesized existence of an ‘arid corridor’ from the Horn of Africa to the Cape region. Although doubts have been raised regarding the specific distinctness of X. inauris and X. princeps , our analyses show that each represents a distinct well‐supported, monophyletic lineage. Xerus inauris includes three major clades, two of which are geographically restricted. The distributions of X. inauris populations are concordant with divergences within and disjunctions between other taxa, which have been interpreted as results of Plio–Pleistocene climate cycles. Nested clade analysis, coalescent analyses, and analyses of genetic structure support allopatric fragmentation as the cause of the deep divergences within this species.
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School Libraries and the Status of Education in Botswana - Mooketsi, Bojelo Esther (Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Electronic Reserve, 2005)
Abstract Advocacy for resource-based learning calls for provision of adequate resources in schools. This paper will review literature to explore perspectives on the role of the school library in curriculum delivery. The paper will also look into research findings on classroom teacher-student interaction and strategies for performance improvement with emphasis on the use and management of school library resources. Furthermore, some of the conclusions drawn about the quality of education in secondary schools in Botswana are discussed. Specific reference is made to conclusions made by the National Commission on Education in 1993 and the Presidential Task Force in 1996. Focus is placed on the conclusions that emphasise the need to improve the quality of education.
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Updating the Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Values of Northern Algeria with the 21 May 2003 M 6.8 Algiers Earthquake Included - Peláez, José A.; Hamdache, Mohamed; Casado, Carlos López (Pure and Applied Geophysics, 2005)
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A Comparative Reading Gains of African American Students in a Chapter I Pull out Program. - Alawiye, Osman; Williams, Harold H. (2005)
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The House that Race Built: Critical Pedagogy, African-American Education, and the Re-Conceptualization of a Critical Race Pedagogy. - Jennings, Michael; Lynn, Marvin (Educational Foundations, 2005)
pedagogy has been widely characterized as a crucial construct in challenging inequalities that have evolved in context of schooling in U.S. Evidence of this can be found in critical pedagogy's attempt to offer critique of analytic connections between race and education within context of African-American struggle for humanity. In particular, critical pedagogy has functioned as a discourse on schooling and inequality that has developed in tandem with theories of race and pedagogical practice in ways that reflect context of African-American education. This work expounds upon our previous scholarship to offer a broadened conception of critical race pedagogy that incorporates central aspects of critical pedagogy but is drawn from African-American epistemological frameworks. Origins of Pedagogy within Theory pedagogy has maintained its status as an important component of educational research and inquiry since early 1980s when critical educational theorist popularized concept in academic writing (Bennett & LeCompte, 1999; Sleeter & Bernal, 2004). Since that time, these theorists have continued to struggle with central question of critical pedagogy: Whose interests served? (Bennet & LeCompte 1999, p. 250). In answer to this query, Gordon (1995) asserts that Critical theory seeks to understand origins and operation of repressive social structures. theory is critique of domination. It seeks to focus on a world becoming less free, to cast doubt on claims of technological scientific rationality, and then to imply that present configurations do not have to be as they are (p. 190). Not only do critical theorists attempt to discover why oppressive structures exist and offer criticisms of their effects; they also explore ways in which we can transform our society. In this sense, critical theory is not simply a critique of social structures it is an analysis of power relations that asks questions regarding: what constitutes power; who holds power; and in what ways power utilized to benefit those already in power. theory emanated from the Frankfurt under auspices of cultural theorists Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Eric Fromm, and Walter Benjamin) worked together at Institute for Social Science Research originally located in Frankfurt, Germany. The group began to form under leadership of Max Horkheimer in 1930s but later changed location several times throughout 1930s and 1940s. Eventually, group returned to Germany during early 1950s (Giroux, 1997; Bennett & LeCompte, 1999). Although no single or unifying theory emerged from their work, Frankfurt School generated a strong set of critiques arguing that social phenomenon could not be understood solely through use of scientific methods. This was an important challenge because use of scientific methods in analyzing social phenomenon was widely thought to be scientific, objective, and value-free (Bennett & LeCompte, 1999). Instead, Frankfurt School researchers felt that both social phenomenon and scientific research methods used to explore them were tied to social and historical contexts that made neither of them neutral or value-free. Other individual theorists such as Antonio Gramsci, Jurgen Habermas, and Michael Foucault also played important roles in development of critical theory. Antonio Gramsci (1971) was an Italian theorist and activist who explored ways in which individuals were active rather than passive agents in face of even most oppressive conditions. He coined term hegemony to describe complex process that allows dominant groups to establish and maintain control of subordinates by using specific ideologies and particular forms of authority that reproduced via social and institutional practices (Leistyna, Woodrum, & Sherblom, 1996). …
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Impact of Accountability and Ethics on Public Service Delivery: A South African Perspective; Learn How South Africa's Constitution of 1996, by Requiring All Government Departments to Observe Particular Codes of Conduct, Is Attempting to Improve Accountability and Ethics in Public Service Delivery-Specifically at the Local Level - Raga, Kishore; Taylor, Derek (The Public Manager, 2005)
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Comparative Noise Pollution Study Of Some Major Towns In Delta State, Nigeria - Anomohanran, Ochuko; Osemeikhian, J.E.A. (Global Journal of Pure and Applied Sciences, 2005)
Comparative noise pollution studies have been carried out in some major towns in Delta State, Nigeria using a PIONneer 65 noise dosimeter. The noise measurements were taken at ten points within each of the towns at an interval of 30 minutes during the peak period of the day and at the cool of the night. The results obtained indicate that the day time equivalent noise level for Warri exceeded the WHO permissible limit of 90dB. All other locations have an equivalent noise level lower than the WHO limit but within the range of 75dBA to 85dBA. The peak noise measurement for the day time exceeded the WHO permissible limit for all the towns except at Abraka with peak of 76.2dBA. At night, the area exhibits a quiet atmosphere for both the equivalent noise level as well as the peak noise measurements. The reason for the high value of noise in some places was due to automobile plying the road at a slow speed as observed in Warri and other places. Other reasons were due to the use of electricity generators resulting from the persistent public power supply failure, commercial motorcycles, recording houses and those using music to promote sales of their wares. KEY WORDS: Noise, Pollution, Permissible, Annoyance, Protection Global Journal of Pure and Applied Sciences Vol.11(2) 2005: 285-290
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Intestinal Helminthiases Among School Children In Gyawana District, Adamawa State, Nigeria - Chessed, G.; Kwalagbe, B.T.; Furo, N.A. (Global Journal of Pure and Applied Sciences, 2005)
Gastrointestinal helminth infection as a public health problem among primary school children was assessed using Kato-thick smear technique in five schools. Six hundred and thirty two (632) faecal samples were collected, examined and the result analysed. An overall prevalence rate of 32.1% was observed with intestinal helmith parasites in the district. The parasites encountered were: Teania spp (20.7%), hookworm (20.1%), Ascaris lumbricoides (16.1%), Trichuris trichiura (13.9%), Strongyloides stercoralis (6.6%) and Schistosoma mansoni (4.7%). The relationship between rate of infection and school was influenced by age as the 8-10 years age class had the highest infection rate of 39.2%. Boys were more infected (38.5%) than girls (18.9%), although there was no significant difference (P = 0.05). This is because boys are more active and are involved in more outdoor activities than girls. Multiple infections (36.1%) were more common than single infection (24.7%). Control measures that could be intensified to achieve better health standards should include; good sanitation, provision of portable drinking water, health education and hygienic practices, enlightenment campaigns and curative measures by providing good health services to the communities especially and specifically provision of deworming tablets to school children free of charge periodically is stressed. KEY WORDS: Gastrointestinal, helminth, prevalence, hygiene and education. Global Journal of Pure and Applied Sciences Vol.11(2) 2005: 193-196
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The Impacts of Religion and Education on the Self-Esteem of Adolescents from Divorced and Intact Families in Nigeria. - Ofodile, Comfort N. (2005)
A child who is not granted a familial environment that is fundamentally consistent and harmonious will be more than likely to develop inconsistently, primarily psychologically and, perhaps even physically, in comparison to the accepted standards. This would idealistically make for a scenario within which the child grows into an adult who is underdeveloped or rather, has not been given the chance to develop the behavioral and character traits considered as normal or average. It is barely surprising, thus speaking and considering the implications of this, that divorce is an issue that must be addressed as immediately and urgently as possible by all branches of the Nigerian governments. Researchers of self-esteem have debated the effects of parental marital status on the self-esteem of adolescents and children in general, and the results have supported differing points of view. To further investigate this topic, the purpose of this Thesis was to examine the various impacts of religious, educational, and demographic factors on the self-esteem [and self-actualization] of adolescents from divorced and intact families. Some of the factors investigated were parental marital status, traditional norms and customs, gender, tribal affiliation, and age-group. And where necessary and appropriate, the Igbo native laws, customs, and traditions were used for clarification. Findings suggested that there were no significant differences between gender and tribal affiliations on the self-esteem of adolescents from divorced and intact families in Nigeria. Of noteworthy significance was that the Nigerian adolescents from intact and divorced families experienced painful emotional stressors and economic difficulties before and during marriage and, after divorce because of native laws and customs, extended family system, traditional/cultural norms, political influence, religious upbringing, and spousal age at marriage. For obvious reasons, children see divorce as something very traumatic. It is recommended that divorced parents should make time to instill in their child(ren) that both father and mother will still be and act like their parents, discipline them when needed, protect them from harm, follow consistent rules, not lean on the child(ren) for support but will provide support for the child(ren), and love the child(ren) and will remain in their lives. Implications on research and counseling were noted.
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Teaching African American Religions (2005)
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Teaching African American Religions as Learning to Resist Racism - Gathje, Peter R. (2005)
Abstract This chapter discusses two strategies that have proven to be helpful in building trust and creating a transformative understanding of African American religions in relation to resistance to racism. The first strategy helps students to see diversity within African American religion (and thus also the African American experience) by providing methods for analysing arguments, persons, and events from the history of African American religions. The second strategy helps students see how their own experiences and perspectives on racism are related to racism in the United States. Used together, these strategies can empower students in their analysis of racism and the variety of ways African American religions have resisted racism. This, in turn, may help students to consider their own relationship to racism and their resistance to it.
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Incorporating the African American Religious Experience into the Community College Curriculum and Classroom - Horton, Mary Jane (2005)
Abstract This chapter discusses teaching religion and in particular, teaching the African American religious experience. Topics covered include how to create a community of learners by establishing class norms, using classroom activities, and introducing womanist thought in class.
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Teaching African American Religions - Jones, Carolyn M.; Trost, Theodore Louis (2005)
Abstract The variety and complexity of its traditions make African American religion one of the most difficult topics in religious studies to understand. The sheer scope of the subject is daunting to anyone wanting to learn about it, especially if they are not experts in African American religious traditions. Also, the unfamiliarity of the subject matter to the vast majority hoping to investigate the subject makes it difficult to achieve any depth of understanding. The chapters in this book will supply functional, innovative ways to teach African American religious traditions in a variety of settings.
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Teaching African Religions at a Traditionally White Institution in the South - Watkins, Ralph C. (2005)
Abstract Teaching “African American Religions” is an intense experience. Teaching the course calls on the teacher to observe the students changing as the students go through a transition during the course. This course has to be seen as a journey. It must be framed as a process of reunification and reconstruction. The teacher needs to feel compassion as he or she works in the community reconciling students to their roots as they explore the foundations of African American religiosity.
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The Occurrence of Oral Thrush Yeasts Among School Children in Onitsha Urban, Anambra State, Nigeria - Nneka, Umeh Chibuzo; Ebele, Okolocha Mabel (Journal of medical sciences, 2005)
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Ascaris Worms in School-aged Female Children: A Water Based Problem in Rural Eastern Nigeria - Umeh; Nneka, C Okafoagu; Unigwe; Ifeanyi; Ogechukwu, Iloh (Journal of biological sciences (Faisalabad), 2005)
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Energy Requirements, Prediction of Body Fat and Weight Status Analysis of Nursing Students in Gaza Strip - Zabut, Baker M. (Pakistan Journal of Nutrition, 2005)
This study aimed to assess the total daily energy requirements (TDR), body mass index (BMI) , body fat percentage (PBF), and weight status analysis according to body mass of nursing students in Gaza Strip. Study sample consisted of (93) subjects from college of nursing at Islamic university, Gaza, and (61) subjects from Palestine college of nursing, Khan Younus. Systematic random sample was used in this study to select the subjects from both colleges. Average basal metabolic rate (BMR) and approx. total daily energy requirements (TDR) for male students at Islamic university-Gaza (IUG) were 1700 (SD 252) and 2040 Kcal/day respectively. For the female students BMR and TDR were 1506 (SD 213) Kcal/day and 1807 Kcal/day, respectively. Average body mass index (BMI) of the male students at IUG was 23.85 (SD 4.06) Kg/m , and for female students of the same college was 23.97 (SD 4.51) Kg/m . Average body fat percentage 2 2 (PBF) of nursing male students at IUG was 17.21 (SD 4.82) and for females was 27.96 (SD 5.41). About sixty sex (66.1%) percent of male nursing students at IUG had ideal weight whereas, 5.3% and 28.5 % were underweight and overweight respectively. For female students, 73% had normal weight and 27% had overweight. Average BMR and approx. TDR for the male students at Palestine college of nursing (PCN) were 1635 (SD 226) and 1962 Kcal/day respectively. For the female students BMR and TDR were 1470 (SD 152) and 1765 Kcal/day respectively. Average BMI of the male students at PCN was 22.70 (SD 3.25) Kg/m , and 2 female students of the same college was 21.80 (SD 2.93) Kg/m . Average PBF for males at PCN was 15.64 2 (SD 3.90) and for females was 26.30 (SD 3.88). About seventy two (72.2) % of male students at PCN had ideal weight whereas, 5.6% and 22.2 % were underweight and overweight respectively. For female students at the same college, 72 %, 4 %,and 24 % had ideal weight, underweight and overweight respectively.
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Veterinary education in South Africa : the class of 1927 : short historical communication - Bigalke, R.D. (Journal of the South African Veterinary Association, 2005)
Joan Morice, a member of the class of 1927, broke the tradition of male student domination at the Onderstepoort Veterinary Faculty, but it took almost 20 years before other young ladies started following her courageous example. The accompanying photograph is unusual in the sense that the students appear in their then customary white coats instead of graduation regalia and that their dean is absent. Concise descriptions are given of the life histories of the 8 graduates. Their careers show more variation than in previous years. Only 1 of them spent his entire career at the Onderstepoort Research Institute and its Faculty, whereas another left the Institute after several years for a well-known pharmaceutical company in the United Kingdom. Although 1 entered private practice shortly after qualifying, she did not make it her permanent career and sadly died at the early age of 44. Another made the move from the field into private practice fairly late in his productive life. One left South Africa to spend most of his career in the Colonial Service in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and later even joined the FAOin Rome. Two spent their entire careers in the field as state veterinarians - 1 died at the age of only 43 - and a third moved from the field to a locally-based pharmaceutical company.
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Free Primary Education in Malawi: The Practice of Global Policy in Aid-dependent States - Kendall, Nancy (2005)
Malawi's FPE policy is grounded in the history of governance, education, Christianity, and international aid in Malawi. It also is centered in and draws from the global EFA movement.
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Education Decentralization in Africa: Great Expectations and Unfulfilled Promises - Naidoo, Jordan (2005)
Over the past decade most central governments across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have begun to decentralize some fiscal, political, and administrative responsibilities to lower-levels of government, local institutions, and the private sector in pursuit of greater accountability and more efficient service delivery, often in an attempt to solve broader political, social, or economic problems (SARA, 1997). Education, in particular, has been fertile ground for such decentralization efforts. From Ethiopia to South Africa, SSA countries have engaged in some form of education decentralization, though the pace has been quite uneven. Ethiopia, Uganda, Senegal, and South Africa, for example, are proceeding fast, while Ghana, Mali, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe are under way more slowly. Guinea, Niger, Zambia, and Nigeria are at the other end of the continuum. Decentralization of social services, including education appears to be embedded in the political changes occurring in the region. In almost all SSA countries the introduction of decentralized systems are accompanied by popular elections for local councils as part of the general trend of the introduction of or return to democratization.
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[Protein profile and vitamin A in children of school age in Ivory Coast]. - Yapi, Houphouët Félix; Ahiboh, H. T.; Ago, K; Aké, Michèle; Monnet, Dominique (PubMed, 2005)
The purpose of this transverse prospective study was to determine blood nutritional, immunity and inflammatory proteins change in vitamin A deficiency in children of school-age (262 children, aged 7 to 15 years). Blood vitamin A has been determined by HPLC with UV detection. Proteins have been measured by radial immunodiffusion according to Mancini. Results showed that 96 children (36.6%) presented a vitamin A deficiency (vitamin A < 200 microg/L with a retinol binding protein/transthyretin molar ratio = 0.29 +/- 0.06) while 166 (63.3%) children presented normal blood concentrations of vitamin A (vitamin A > or = 200 microg/L with a Retinol Binding Protein/Transthyretin molar ratio = 0.40 +/- 0.08). This study showed that the retinol binding protein and the immunoglobulin A are lower in children with vitamin A deficiency. On the other hand, an isolated increase of alpha-1 glycoprotein acid has been observed in boys with vitamin A deficiency. The vitamin A deficiency observed in this survey is due to a micronutrients deficiency in the diet which is essentially based on glucides. The positive correlation between vitamin A and immunoglobulin A concentrations might be the result of the vitamin A inductive effect during immunoglobulins A synthesis. The isolated increasing of alpha-1 glycoprotein acid in boys with vitamin A deficiency has been assigned to the ecosensitiveness of the unfavourable environment. We therefore concluded that, in Ivorian primary-school-aged children with vitamin A deficiency, nutritional, immunity and inflammatory proteins which are modified are respectively retinol binding protein, immunoglobulin A and alpha-1 glycoprotein acid.
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A proposal for partnership with Makerere University towards addressing fading interest in science education in rural western Uganda - Idowu, Peter; Duda, Frank; Lauffer, Douglas (2005 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition: The Changing Landscape of Engineering and Technology Education in a Global World, 2005)
In the summer of 2004 three electrical engineering faculty members from Pennsylvania went on a study tour of western Uganda in response to an invitation from community leaders in the Bunyoro-Kitara region. The goal of the visit was to assess needs and challenges in science education. The team visited secondary schools, elementary schools and two universities, and identified a significant number of impediments to the advancement of science education. Follow-up visits and dialogues with Makerere University faculty lead to exploration of strategies for addressing the challenges, as well as initiation of a number of action plans. This paper discusses the challenges identified and the action plans proposed to bring about improvements in the current situation.
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Attitude Of Extension Personnel To Training And Visit Extension System In Benue And Plateau States, Nigeria - Ilevbaoje, Isaac E (Journal of Agriculture and Social Research, 2005)
This study was undertaken to find out the attitudes of extension workers to the training and visit (T&V) extension system as a complimentary step to specify if this extension approach is on course in Nigeria. Results obtained indicate that about 10.8, 65.8 and 23.3% of the extension personnel in Benue and Plateau states hold poor, moderately favourable and high favourable attitudes to T&V system respectively. Although the mean attitude scores for the various levels of extension staff were not found to be significantly different at 5 percent level of probability, the mean score for the project headquarters staff (106.25) was highest while that of the zonal extension officers (79.0) was lowest. In order to make the attitudes of extension workers more affirmative, the paper recommended, inter alia, staff motivation, minimizing political and administrative interference in staff work and a reasonable reduction in the work load of extension staff. Key words: attitude, extension personnel, training and visit Journal of Agriculture and Social Research Vol.4(1) 2004: 1-12
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School Effectiveness and School Change in Developing Countries: Example Cape Verde - Reviere, Rodney (2005)
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Learning how to do things differently: challenges in sharing tacit knowledge for agricultural and rural development (with examples from India and Namibia) - Adolph, B. (2005)
Learning alliances (LAs) are considered to be a more sustainable alternative for sharing than research projects, because they enable flexible partnerships between a larger range of organisational levels, combine local adaptations with sharing of experience in a wider community, and are less constrained by project time horizons. This paper argues that, even though LAs have a number of advantages over projects, effective sharing and creation of innovations can only happen if there is a strong element of action research involved, which enables alliance partners to share the tacit embedded in technologies and innovations. Innovations both build on existing knowledge, and generate new knowledge. This can be either explicit (i.e. it can be codified and transmitted in a generally understood form, such as text) or implicit/ tacit (i.e. embodied in individuals and their skills and experiences). The tacit component of innovations is harder to share and scale up than those components that can be codified - leading to an inconsistency in transfer. In agricultural development, most innovations are nowadays about things differently, including new ways of interacting and organising, rather than different things, such as growing new crop varieties. These innovations have a very high component of tacit knowledge. While some authors have argues that tacit can be transferred into explicit knowledge, this paper argues that some forms of tacit can only be shared through knowledge in action, e.g. doing things together. Therefore action research projects provide a valid component of learning alliances. The paper illustrates this with two cases from agricultural research that involved multi-agency, multi-disciplinary teams.
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Democratizing Higher Education Policy: Constraints of Reform in Post-Apartheid South Africa - Sehoole, Chika (2005)
1. Introduction 2. Struggling apartheid education 3. From resistance to reconstruction: preparing to govern 4. Assuming the power of the state 5. Bureaucratic past and democratic future 6. Change commissioned 7. The state assumes control 8. Policy literacy and organisational learning 9. Conclusion
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Higher Education in Pre-Revolution Ethiopia: Relevance and Academic Freedom - Asgedom, Amare (2005)
This paper presents the history of Ethiopian higher education (HE) before the 1974 Ethiopian Revolution. By giving a historical account, it concluded that the then Haile Selassie I University was dependent on Western models in its staffing, curriculum, duration, timing, philosophy and ideology. It combined the American experience of a research university, which itself borrowed from the Girman idealism of the Humbolditan University that favoured a combination of teaching and research. The absence of a graduate program, and the Newmansque ethic of a teaching method, characterized by the philosophy of cultivating the cognitive domain of the learner with what they call the disputation techniques of critiquing and debating, in the context of an environment characterized by values of monarchy and autocracy, lack of tolerance and the rule of law, the Addis Ababa University destroyed itself as a result of a context produced by the disharmony of the alien culture with the indigenous one. It had completely missed the disharmonizing discourses of the West and the East and was swallowed in a political turmoil that had still made it difficult to get ride of. Academic freedom, teacher or institutional autonomy did not help in a context characterized by limited local or national capabilities (Sen, 2001).
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Ensuring the Quality of Ethiopian Higher Education in the Face of the Challenges of the 21st Century - Kassaye, Mekasha (2005)
Cognizant of the decisive role education plays to speed up the overall socio-economic progress of the country, the government of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia has given a high priority to education in its strategy of capacity building and economic development. Since the issuance of the Education and Training Policy, efforts have been made to improve higher education in quality and accessibility. Undergraduate and postgraduate programmes have been strengthened and expanded. Student enrolment has increased in the nation as a result of the opening of four new government universities in various regional states. These activities and plans of actions by themselves should be seen optimistically. More important, however, is the contents‟ package. The contents and the nature of higher education curricula should be redefined within the context of the emerging local and global political, economic and social factors. It seems that at the dawn of the 21st century, more than ever before, the contemporary world history is being dramatically affected by demographic pressure, scientific and technological progress. This dramatic upheaval of resultant factors from all angles thus calls for Ethiopian educators to think about their higher education quality seriously. The aim of this paper is to provoke thinking on this admittedly complex area - ensuring quality of higher education curricula to meet the needs of the Ethiopian generation, contemporary, or beyond. By doing so, it might contribute to the enrichment of higher Education policies and capacity building programmes, which have been put in place by the Federal Government of Ethiopia. Drawing data from both primary and secondary sources, informed attempts are made to envisage the colour Ethiopian higher education have had in the century, especially the curricula. This in turn is believed to raise the awareness of the concerned parties to react in time.
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Information Seeking by Nurses in the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital, Nigeria - Ajayi, N. A. (Information Development, 2005)
Examines the information-seeking behaviour and information needs of professional nurses at Obafemi Awolowo University Hospitals Complex, Ile-Ife, Nigeria and the adequacy of the information sources used. Five hundred practising nurses were used as respondents in the study, conducted between January and March, 2004. The study revealed that nurses were aware of their needs for current information for effective professional practice. Attending meetings, seminars, conferences etc., library facilities, colleagues and computers were sources capable of supplying most of their information needs. A high proportion of the respondents attended conferences, seminars, workshops etc. to keep abreast of the latest develoment in their profession. It was clear that the library was not highly rated by the respondents because of the inadequate library facilities provided in the hospital. Recommends that a well-equipped nursing library that will adequately meet the information needs of nurses be provided.
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Evaluating the Role of Brown vs. Board of Education in School Equalization, Desegregation, and the Income of African Americans - Ashenfelter, Orley; Collins, William J.; Yoon, Albert (2005)
In this paper we study the long-term labor market implications of school resource equalization before Brown and school desegregation after Brown.For cohorts born in the South in the 1920s and 1930s, we find that racial disparities in measurable school characteristics had a substantial influence on black males' earnings and educational attainment measured in 1970, albeit one that was smaller in the later cohorts.When we examine the income of male workers in 1990, we find that southern-born blacks who finished their schooling just before effective desegregation occurred in the South fared poorly compared to southern-born blacks who followed behind them in school by just a few years.
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Evaluating the Role of Brown vs. Board of Education in School Equalization, Desegregation, and the Income of African Americans. NBER Working Paper No. 11394. - Ashenfelter, Orley; Collins, William J.; Yoon, Albert (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2005)
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Screening maize for drought tolerance in the Guinea savanna of West and Central Africa - Badu‐Apraku, B.; Fakorede, M. A. B.; Menkir, Abebe; Kamara, Alpha Y.; Dapaah, Sylvester Samuel (Cereal Research Communications, 2005)
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Empowerment Groups for Academic Success: An Innovative Approach to Prevent High School Failure for At-Risk, Urban African - Bemak, Fred; Chung, Rita Chi‐Ying; Siroskey-Sabdo, Linda A. (2005)
Twenty-first-century urban schools face unique challenges in being culturally responsive and providing quality education to culturally diverse and low-income students. The academic achievement gap for low-income and ethnic youth poses the need for new and innovative interventions by educational institutions. School counselors are in a unique position in schools to assume leadership roles in reducing academic disparity. This article discusses the experience of urban youth identified as being at risk as well as some of the realities facing African American students in inner-city public education, and it describes the need for school counselors to emphasize a group counseling approach from a multicultural perspective. The article presents the Empowerment Groups for Academic Success approach that aims at preventing high school dropout and improving academic performance for youth identified as being at risk. ********** Today's urban schools face significant challenges in being culturally responsive and providing quality education for culturally diverse urban youth (Bemak, Murphy, & Kaffenberger, 2004; Locke, 2003). The growing academic achievement gap with lower success rates for inner-city impoverished youth has been clearly documented and is associated with fewer educational opportunities, a poor quality of education (College Board, 1999a, 1999b; Education Trust, 1998; House & Martin, 1998), high dropout rates as a result of cultural misunderstandings, negative stereotyping (Jackson, 1999), and Sewer resources (Education Trust). Although youth problems stem from a wide range of both internal and external forces (Atkinson, Thompson, & Grant, 1993), oftentimes students having problems in school are preoccupied with concerns outside the school setting. This is evident when youth are faced with challenges from social problems, such as poverty, violence, and racism, and may result in disruptions in family and community life that can hinder the emotional, social, and academic growth and development of children and youth (Bauer, Sapp, & Johnson, 2000). The aim of this article is to present an innovative group counseling approach called Empowerment Groups for Academic Success (EGAS), which was implemented in a Midwest inner-city high school that was experiencing high rates of expulsion and suspension, teenage pregnancies, absenteeism, poverty, and poor academic records. In an attempt to work with students who were identified by teachers, counselors, and administrators as being at the highest levels of risk for suspension, academic failure, and school dropout, we established an innovative group counseling intervention approach with the goal of resolving the difficult personal and interpersonal issues faced by these students. The group intervention would serve as a means of improving academic performance and attendance. It is important to note that this article is not an evaluation of the approach, but rather a description of a potentially effective intervention strategy to work with a very difficult population, an approach that may be replicated by other school counselors. The group was composed of seven African American girls in 10th grade, all of whom were identified as being at the highest level of risk. The first author, as a principal investigator of one of the six national Transforming School Counseling Initiative DeWitt Wallace--Reader's Digest grants awarded through the Education Trust, developed the EGAS approach and worked closely with a school counselor to implement the group intervention in an urban school identified as having students at the highest level of risk for academic failure. Before we present the EGAS approach, it is important to briefly present information that will assist the reader in understanding the difference between the EGAS approach and more traditional interventions and the relevance of EGAS in addressing the unique challenges of urban youth. …
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School Counselors Collaborating with African American Parents - Bradley, Carla; Johnson, Phillip D.; Rawls, Glenda; Dodson-Sims, Arlana (2005)
Parent participation has been strongly linked to student success. Yet, in urban schools, African American parents often are uninvolved. This article presents eight strategies that school counselors can use to better collaborate with African American parents. ********** The changing demographics of students in public schools have been a catalyst for reexamining the role of school counselors in the 21st century. Many writers have acknowledged that in order to effectively attend to the needs of students of color, school counselors need to be culturally competent and culturally responsive (e.g., Evans & Carter, 1997; Holcomb-McCoy & Myers, 1999; Paisley & McMahon, 2001). It is important to note, however, that the role of a school counselor is not just to work with students. School counselors also must be multiculturally competent to work with parents for the benefit of students' academic and developmental success. Many studies have strongly linked parent participation to improved student achievement, accountability, and attendance (Samaras & Wilson, 1999; U.S. Department of Education, 1994, 1995). Yet, in urban schools, African American parents often are uninvolved (Gardner & Miranda, 2001; Troutman, 2001). Moreover, Abrams and Gibbs (2002), in their study of parent- school relationships, found that African American parents often are more alienated from public school institutions than are White American parents. Further, several studies have revealed that African American parents who question or challenge the authority of teachers and administrators or who do not mirror White middleclass norms often are made to feel unwelcome within the educational system (Harry, Rueda, & Kalyanpur, 1999; Samaras & Wilson, 1999). Although moments of inclusion occur when African American parents are encouraged to participate in school activities such as parent/teacher conferences and athletic events, interaction with African American parents often does not occur outside of these traditional invitations. Gardner and Miranda (2001) have contended that this break in communication between schools and parents prevents the two stakeholders from understanding the requirements and expectations of the two environments (home and school) where the student must function. Numerous scholars (Harry et al., 1999; House & Martin, 1998; Troutman, 2001) have posited that African American parent involvement also may be inhibited by the fact that many school personnel, who are mainly White American, middle-class women, receive limited or virtually no pre-service training with African American families. For example, the wide adoption of multicultural counseling as a critical component of school counselor preparation is fairly recent, and the effectiveness of its training efforts has yet to be evaluated (Holcomb-McCoy & Myers, 1999; Paisley & McMahon, 2001). Moreover, Bradley and Fiorini (1999), in their study of counseling programs accredited by the Council on the Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs, found that the majority of programs did not require multicultural training before practicum and only 18% of counseling programs required students to counsel clients from ethnic minority populations. It is important to note that researchers (Abrams & Gibbs, 2002; Denby & Alford, 1996; Gardner & Miranda, 2001; Troutman, 2001) have found that African American parents value the educational success of their children. Because educators have found parental involvement to be a predictor of academic achievement, African American parents have become recognized actors in narrowing the achievement gap associated with African American children. School counselors are ethically bound to make the academic environment more accessible to families and communities (American School Counselor Association, 2000). Yet, a review of articles published in Professional School Counseling revealed virtually no information on the interaction between school counselors and African American parents. …
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Global Patterns, Local Options? Some Implications for South Africa of International Changes in Higher Education. - Bundy, Colin (Perspectives in Education, 2005)
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Global patterns, local options? Some implications for South Africa of international changes in higher education : research article : general - Bundy, Colin (Perspectives in Education, 2005)
This article, firstly, analyses changes in higher education internationally since about 1980. It shows that essentially similar shifts - massification, marketisation and managerialism, overseen by the regulatory state - emerged with striking synchronicity in advanced capitalist societies. Secondly, it argues that since 1994 these international trends have impacted substantially on higher education practices and policies in South Africa. It asks whether such impact has compromised policies designed to transform higher education provision and outcomes. Can local priorities and principles withstand what is in effect an overall policy package - ideologically coherent, internationally endorsed - shaping policy choices elsewhere?
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Popular Participation in Contentious Policy Areas: Education Policy in Mauritius - Bunwaree, Sheila; Carroll, Barbara Wake; Carroll, Terrance (Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 2005)
Mauritius, like many developing countries, has a need for educational reform. Education is a contentious policy area where it is difficult to build consensus. Mauritius has a well-established procedure, the civic network, for involving the public in policy making, and building state legitimacy and capacity. Yet, in recent attempts at educational reform, the civic network has been avoided. Instead, they have relied upon technocratic policy making which, in political terms, has had limited success. We explain why this happened and conclude that, in Mauritius and similar participatory societies, a participatory policy procedure probably is essential to the successful development and implementation of reforms in contentious policy areas like education.
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Perceptions of African American Faculty in Kinesiology-Based Programs at Predominantly White American Institutions of Higher Education - Burden, Joe W.; Harrison, Louis; Hodge, Samuel R. (Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 2005)
The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of African American faculty on their organizational socialization in kinesiology-based (i.e., sport pedagogy, exercise physiology, motor behavior, sport management/history) programs at predominantly White American1 institutions of higher education (PW-IHE). Participants were 9 African American tenure-track faculty members from various kinesiology-based programs at PW-IHE. Data were gathered via interviewing and analyzed within the framework of critical race theory (Ladson-Billings, 2000). Findings are presented using storytelling and thematic narratives. Interviews with the participants revealed four major recurring themes with regard to: (a) resources, opportunities, and power structures; (b) programmatic neglects and faculty mentoring needs; (c) social isolation, disengagement, and intellectual inferiority issues; and (d) double standards, marginalization, and scholarship biases. This study suggests that faculty and administrators at PW-IHE should develop sensitivity toward organizational socialization issues relevant to faculty of color.
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Tuberculin reaction among healthy BCG vaccinated primary school, children in Nnewi, south eastern Nigeria. - CC, Ifezulike; Ezechukwu, CC; Egbonu, I; Chukwuka, JO (Nigerian Journal of Clinical Practice, 2005)
Objective: To assess the Mantoux test reaction pattern in healthy BCG vaccinated Primary School Children aged 6 -10 years in Nnewi, South–East Nigeria. Materials and methods&#58Four Primary Schools were randomly selected out of 43 government owned primary schools in the town. The entire BCG vaccinated pupils in each school were the sample frame. Mantoux test was administered in 662 pupils that met the inclusion criteria and had their results read 72 hours later. Results&#58 Three groups of children were identified: First group of 470 (75.6%) were negative, 76 (12.2%) had intermediate reaction, while 76 (12.2%) had positive Mantoux test. Increasing age, sex, presence of BCG scar and age at vaccination did not affect the pattern of Mantoux test reaction. Conclusion: The result indicates that the use of Mantoux test in the diagnosis of Tuberculosis may not be affected by BCG vaccination at birth and therefore, BCG vaccination at birth should be continued. Key Words : BCG vaccination, Mantoux test Nigerian Journal of Clinical Practice Vol 8(1) 2005: 4-9
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A new species of stream frog, genusStrongylopus(Anura: Ranidae) from Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, with comments on a ‘northern volcanic mountains group’ within the genus - Clarke, Barry T.; Poynton, J. C. (African Journal of Herpetology, 2005)
Abstract A new species of Stream frog, genus Strongylopus, is described. The new species is similar to its northern Tanzanian congener S. kitumbeine, but may be distinguished from that species by its facial markings, smaller tympanum, minor differences in head and snout shape, nostril closer to tip of the snout than to the eye, dorsal colour pattern, longitudinal skin folds, immaculate abdomen and slightly reduced webbing on the foot. It is suggested that there is a ‘northern volcanic’ group of species within Strongylopus. The phylogenetic grade of the ‘volcanic’ Strongylopus species is uncertain. If they are relatively plesiomorphic then the phylogeography of the genus is more complex than has hitherto been assumed. Should there turn out to be two widely separated plesiomorphic groups within the genus, then its evolutionary‐biogeographical relationships would be of considerable interest and merit further investigation. The conservation status of the new species is uncertain but it might be threatened by the effects of ongoing climate change on Mt Kilimanjaro.
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Strengthening Education Through Culture: A Case for the Integration of Cultural Traditions into Modern African Education - Claxton, Mervyn (Présence africaine, 2005)
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The Uses of Information and Communication (ICT) in Teaching and Learning in South African Higher Education Practices in the Western Cape. Research: Information and Communication Technologies. - Czerniewicz, Laura; Brown, Cheryl (Perspectives in Education, 2005)
Numerous South African policy documents support the use of ICTs in education, claiming that they can be beneficial to education, in a variety of ways. This article seeks to understand how ICTs are used in practice as part of teaching and learning, since access to ICTs alone does not ensure use, nor automatically add value. Through a regional study conducted in five higher education institutions in the Western Cape, we describe how and to what extent academic staff and students are using ICTs as part of teaching and learning events. Using an analytical framework adapted from Laurillard, we are able to provide more complex descriptions of how ICTs are being used, and to describe how specific staff and student groupings use ICTs differently. We confirm that ICTs are certainly being used as part of teaching and learning, most frequently as part of discovery and creation events. We also identify areas where the specific possibilities and affordances of ICTs are not being exploited. In addition, we identify anomalies in use in terms of age, and disciplinary domain. We find too that students report using ICTs to support their learning activities even when it is not required of them to do so. This evokes questions about staff-student interactions, and has implications for institutional staff development strategies.
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Education in South Africa - what have ICTs got to do with it? : editorial - Czerniewicz, Laura; Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl (Perspectives in Education, 2005)
Extracted from text ... Perspectives in Education, Volume 23(4), December 2005 vii Editorial Education in South Africa - what have ICTs got to do with it? LAURA CZERNIEWICZ AND CHERYL HODGKINSON-WILLIAMS Introduction This Special Issue of Perspectives in Education set out to publish empirical, research-based studies that examine reflective practice and the theoretical framing of information communication technologies (ICTs) in South African education. In the call for papers we expressed a particular interest in the exploration of local contexts and the ways that local practitioners and researchers investigate and understand the particularities of their experiences in relation to the debates in the broader ..
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Computers and African Languages in Education: An ICT Tool for the Promotion of Multilingualism at a South African University. Conversations. - Dalvit, Lorenzo; Murray, Sarah; Mini, Buyiswa M.; Terzoli, Alfredo; Zhao, Xiaogeng (Perspectives in Education, 2005)
This article describes a web-based application designed to provide meaningful access to the study of Computer Science to speakers of an African language who have limited experience of using English for academic purposes. Our research is focused upon students of Computer Skills in the Extended Studies Programme at Rhodes University who have studied English as a second language for the matriculation examination. The intervention involves the cooperative production and sharing of multilingual support material in both English and the students' home languages. The article illustrates how the use of computers has the potential to solve some of the problems traditionally associated with the use of African languages as additional media of instruction in tertiary education (i.e. lack of terminology and resources in the African languages, stigma attached to their use, etc.). We maintain that learning about computers partly in their stronger language (i.e. their home language) could give students increased and more meaningful access to an educationally and economically empowering field of study.
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Teacher Shocks And Student Learning : Evidence From Zambia - Das, Jishnu; Dercon, Stefan; Habyarimana, James; Krishnan, Pramila (2005)
A large literature examines the link between shocks to households and the educational attainment of children. The authors use new data to estimate the impact of shocks to teachers on student learning in mathematics and English. Using absenteeism in the 30 days preceding the survey as a measure of these shocks they find large impacts: A 5 percent increase in the teacher's absence rate reduces learning by 4 to 8 percent of average gains over the year. This reduction in learning achievement likely reflects both the direct effect of increased absenteeism and the indirect effects of less lesson preparation and lower teaching quality when in class. The authors document that health problems-primarily teachers' own illness and the illnesses of their family members-account for more than 60 percent of teacher absences; not surprising in a country struggling with an HIV/AIDS epidemic. The relationship between shocks to teachers and student learning suggests that households are unable to substitute adequately for teaching inputs. Excess teaching capacity that allows for the greater use of substitute teachers could lead to larger gains in student learning.
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Training Needs of Secondary School Mathematics Teachers in the Yemen Republic - Dawod, Abdulhameed Ahmed (2005)
There is a need to conduct a research on identifying the training needs, which is considered one of the most essential components of a staff development programme. The present status of planning in-service training programmes and workshops for Mathematics teachers in Yemen lacks appropriate methodology and a systematic and comprehensive assessment of the trainees' needs. In addition, no attention has been paid to systematically identify in-service needs for Mathematics teachers of secondary schools in Yemen. The purpose of this study was to identify the training needs of secondary schools Mathematics teachers in two urban cities Sana'a and Amran. The study focused on training needs as perceived by secondary school Mathematics teachers, supervisors and school administrators and identified the teachers' current practices of Mathematics teaching in secondary schools.The sample of the study was a sample six hundred and twelve consisting of 389 Mathematics teachers, 34 supervisors and 189 school administrators using a stratified random sampling technique. To obtain the data two instruments were used: (i) the new questionnaire was designed by the researcher. The questionnaire classified in-service training needs (59 items) into five categories which include: implementing of Mathematics instruction, planning of Mathematics instruction, evaluation of students in Mathematics instruction, diagnosing students7 needs in Mathematics instruction and classroom management. (ii) The observation instrument was modified and developed by Shian Leou (1998) which consisted of 35 items covering four domains, teaching skills, material organization and presentation, management of the learning environment and teaching attitudes. The observation was conducted among 30 secondary school Mathematics teachers in the classes and a video camera was used to record the lessons. Data were analyzed using the SPSS computer programme. The means, standard deviations, frequency and percentages were computed for the criteria indicators and independent one-way ANOVA and t-test were computed to determine significant differences between the means of the groups. The findings of the study revqaled that all the training needs represented necessary needs for Mathematics teachers in secondary schools and the teacher's current practice of Mathematics teaching was generally weak. These findings indicated highest needs in implementing of Mathematics instruction, followed by planning of Mathematics instruction, evaluation of students in Mathematics instruction, diagnosing students' needs in Mathematics instruction and classroom management. The One-way ANOVA revealed that there are no significant differences in perceptions of training needs between teachers, supervisors and school administrators in all domains. As for the variable of experience, a significant difference was found in the domains of classroom management and evaluation of students in Mathematics instruction. The effect of the t-test showed that there is no significant difference between male and female teachers in all domains. However, a significant difference was found between a variable of with educational and without educational background in the domain of evaluation of students in Mathematics instruction. The results of this study were consistent with previous findings in other specialization studies; therefore, it is recommended that a future study should do a comparative study on the training needs among Mathematics teachers in secondary schools and primary schools. A future replication of this study with comparison with other countries is necessary.
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Clay mineralogy and chemical composition of bentonites from the Gourougou volcanic massif (northeast Morocco) - Ddani, Mohamed; Meunier, Alain; Zahraoui, Mohamed; Beaufort, Daniel; Wartiti, M. El; Fontaine, Claude; Boukili, Boubker; Mahi, Benacer El (Clays and Clay Minerals, 2005)
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Merging right : questions of access and merit in South African higher education reform, 1994-2002 : research article - Elliott, John (Perspectives in Education, 2005)
The dismantling of South Africa's apartheid-controlled education system after 1994 brought with it unprecedented policy complications, among them the question of how best to integrate the desiderata of access and merit in school education and tertiary sectors. For the higher education sector, institutional mergers became an increasingly visible policy tool with the advent of the Asmal Ministry in 1999. Mergers promise better quality programs with improved access, accelerated integration, and - most importantly - greater resource efficiency. The fact that mergers played an initially muted role in South African education policy and planning is due in large part, I argue, to the failure of an anticipated massification in the late 90's. This unexpected result forced out the need for a quick and decisive economic streamlining of the higher education system. As before, the goals of merit and access were energetically proclaimed. Now, however, the driving principle seemed increasingly to be one of demand-side cost efficiency. This reshuffling of the policy deck tells us something important about the respective stages of education policy, planning, and implementation, but also provides a link between post-apartheid school education and tertiary reform in the Republic. Both higher education mergers and school education local control measures enact a form of centralized decentralization. Policymakers concentrate power all the more effectively by appearing to share its benefits among all relevant stakeholders in matters of equity and merit for South African education.
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Book Review: Education and Independence: Education in South Africa, 1658-1988 - Fataar, Aslam (Journal of Asian and African Studies, 2005)
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Civic Education in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Alternative Paths to the Development of Political Knowledge and Democratic Values - Finkel, Steven E.; Ernst, Howard R. (Political Psychology, 2005)
Despite the proliferation of civic education programs in the emerging democracies of Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe, there have been few recent evaluations of the effectiveness of civics instruction in achieving changes in democratic orientations among student populations. We present findings from a study conducted in 1998 that examined the impact of democratic civic education among South African high school students. Using a battery of items to gauge democratic orientations, including measures of political knowledge, civic duty, tolerance, institutional trust, civic skills, and approval of legal forms of political participation, we find that civic education had the largest effects on political knowledge, with the magnitude of the effect being approximately twice as large as the recent Niemi and Junn (1998) finding for the United States. Exposure to civic education per se had weaker effects on democratic values and skills; for these orientations, what matters are specific factors related to the quality of instruction and the use of active pedagogical methods employed by civics instructors. Further, we find that civic education changed the structure of students’ orientations: a “democratic values” dimension coalesces more strongly, and in greater distinction, from a “political competence” dimension among students exposed to civic education than among those with no such training. We discuss the implications of the findings for our theoretical understanding of the role of civic education in fostering democratic attitudes, norms, and values, as well as the practical implications of the results for the implementation and funding of civic education programs in developing democracies in the future.
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The establishment of sperm morphology satellite training laboratories in Africa - Franken, D. R.; Dada, Olukayode A. (Andrologia, 2005)
Summary Discrepancies in the results of semen analysis can be caused by a variety of factors, for example, a microscope for semen analysis can be situated in the practice of an urologist, cytologist or microbiologist, or even in a health care office in the countryside in a developing country. The study aimed to evaluate the (i) sperm morphology assessment skills of the participants who attended WHO seminology workshops and (ii) to appraise the possibility of using trained technologists to set up satellite training facilities in their own area. The Centre for Research in Reproductive Health, Ogun State University Teaching Hospital (Nigeria) initiated training sessions in their area. Subsequently, 16 technologists were trained in three sessions. Papanicolaou-stained slides, supplied by Tygerberg were used as test material. Pre- and post-training results were used to calculate the mean percentage of normal cells as well as the percentage deviation from the reference laboratory. The mean percentage normal spermatozoa recorded by the Nigerian trainees during pre-training evaluations differed by 38% from the reference value, compared with a post-training difference of 16% (P < 0.001). Tertiary academic hospitals can play an important educational role in the region. The present results underline the power of long distance educational programmes. Similar laboratories are currently being set up in Kenya and Zambia.
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The perceptions of students and lecturers of some factors influencing academic performance at two South African universities - Fraser, William; Killen, Roy (Perspectives in Education, 2005)
This article presents the results of two recent empirical investigations at universities in South Africa (University of Pretoria and University of South Africa) where an attempt was made to identify the pre- and post-enrolment factors that lecturers and students perceived as having the most important influence on students' success in their university studies. The opinions of lecturers were compared with those of various groups of undergraduate students within and across the two universities. Different genders, different years of study, different home languages, different languages of instruction, and different modes of study (contact and distance education) were considered. The investigations revealed a strong level of agreement between lecturers and students concerning most factors that were identified as being likely to contribute to students' academic success. However, there was considerable diversity in the opinions of lecturers and students concerning the factors that were identified as being likely to contribute to students' failure at university. These differences were more pronounced at the distance education institution than at the contact university.
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Progression of stunting and its predictors among school-aged children in western Kenya - Friedman, Jennifer F.; Phillips-Howard, Penelope A.; Mirel, Lisa B.; Terlouw, Dianne J.; Okello, N; Vulule, John; Hawley, William A.; Nahlen, Bernard L.; Kuile, Feiko O. ter (European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2005)
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Libraries: tools for education and development in post‐conflict Sierra Leone - Gorvie, Mary (Library review (Glasgow), 2005)
Purpose To describe the state of the library system in Sierra Leone in the recent period after the civil war, and its part in post‐conflict reconstruction. Design/methodology/approach A descriptive account with some historical, social and geographical contextual information. Findings The paper demonstrates how libraries have an essential role to play in the recreation of a nation's civil fabric following a period of destruction and social disintegration. Research limitations/implications This account of library reconstruction during a period of post‐conflict stability describes a situation, the future development of which is dependent on a number of external variables. It is difficult to predict how those factors will in fact play out, but there is reason for cautious optimism. Practical implications This paper describes the pragmatic steps and policy commitments needed to restore library services in a period following a breakdown in civil order. Originality/value The paper gives an important insight into library work in a difficult and traumatic setting and provides ample evidence of how librarianship has an invaluable contribution to make in such environments.
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Reflections from University Students in a South African Gay and Lesbian Society - Graziano, Kevin J. (International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling, 2005)
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Bacterial indicators of faecal pollution in the waters of the El‐Kabir River and Akkar watershed in Syria and Lebanon - Hamzé, Monzer; Hassan, Siba; Thomas, R. L.; Khawlie, Mohamad; Kawass, Issam (Lakes & Reservoirs: Science, Policy and Management for Sustainable Use, 2005)
Abstract Water samples for bacterial analyses were taken, when possible, at 41 sites in Lebanon and Syria in the El‐Kabir River watershed. Samples were analysed for total coliform (TC), faecal coliform (FC) and faecal streptococcus. The Lebanese samples also were analysed for the presence of sulphate‐reducing bacteria. The TC and FC concentrations were extremely high throughout the watershed, rendering the water unfit for any human uses. The origin of the bacteria is the untreated sewage waste from the numerous settlements situated throughout the watershed. This primary origin is supported by high ratios of FC/faecal streptococcus, although impacts from animal wastes also were observed. The bacterial levels were higher in summer than in winter, indicating a high winter river flow that dilutes a relatively constant source of human sewage discharged to the system. Spring waters also exhibited elevated levels of bacteria, implicating surface land use and waste disposal practices upstream of the springs. The data clearly shows that human health is at a high risk and that strategies for improving water quality and protecting spring water must be expeditiously implemented.
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Bending Tradition to the Changing Times: The Use of Video as an Empowerment Tool in Nonformal Adult Education in Zimbabwe - Hausmann, Christine (2005)
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[Practical health care in African villages--good bedside-medicine training]. - Hedström, Sven Åke; Järhult, Bengt (PubMed, 2005)
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[Treatment of hyperthyroidisms in Brazzaville Teaching Hospital, Congo]. - Hg, Monabeka; Bouenizabila, É.; Ondzotto, G (PubMed, 2005)
Between January 1994 and December 2003, a total of 118 patients (MIF = 1/13) with thyrotoxicosis was studied at the endocrine and metabolic diseases unit of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Brazzaville, in Congo. 72 patients (61%) had Graves' hyperthyroidism, 23 (19.6%) had toxic multinodular goitre while the rest had toxic adenoma (7.6%), and thyroiditis (4.2%). The mean age was 26.6 +/- 7.9 years for Graves' cases and 49.4 +/- 9.3 years for toxic multinodular goitre cases. The clinical presentation was similar to other reported series. Thirty-seven patients (31.3%) did not return after the first admission. All patients responded to carbimazole therapy and no major side-effect was recognized. Ten patients (8.5%/) underwent subtotal thyroidectomy, among them one developed hypothyroidism a year later. The result of this study shows that thyrotoxicosis is not a rare condition in Congo.
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Return to the Source: The Role of Service-Learning in Recapturing the “Empowerment” Mission of African-American Studies - Jones, Charles E.; Dixon, Patricia; Umoja, Akinyele O. (The Black Scholar, 2005)
(2005). Return to the Source: The Role of Service-Learning in Recapturing the “Empowerment” Mission of African-American Studies. The Black Scholar: Vol. 35, Brown, Black & Beyond: African American Studies in the 21st Century, pp. 25-36.
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Conservation and Education in Murchison Falls Conservation Area, Uganda. - Jordahl, Mark D. (2005)
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Conservation and Education in Murchison Falls Conservation Area, Uganda. - Jordahl, Mark D. (2005)
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445: Prevalence of Asthma and Respiratory Symptoms Reported by African American High School Students: A Population-Based Study - Joseph, C.L.M.; Stringer, Sonja; Peterson, Edward L.; Johnson, Carl N.; Pallonen, Unto E.; Strecher, Victor J. (American journal of epidemiology, 2005)
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Social Networks’ Influence on Tobacco use among Students in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania - Kaduri, Pamela; Gilreath, Tamika D.; King, Gary; Mbwambo, Jessie; Kilonzo, Gad P.; Flisher, Alan J.; Matthews, Stephen A. (Promotion & Education, 2005)
FrenchSpanish; CastilianI Plusieurs études ont identifié les réseaux sociaux comme déterminants du tabagisme chez les adolescents, mais peu d'entre elles se sont penchées sur les pays africains en voie de développement où l'uSAGE du tabac se répand de plus en plus rapidement chez les jeunes. A Dar es Salaam, en Tanzanie, on a utilisé un échantillonnage à plusieurs niveaux pour sélectionner des étudiants. Les adolescents ont complété eux-mêmes un questionnaire qui comprenait des questions sociodémographiques ainsi que des questions sur leur consommation de tabac. Sur les 3816 jeunes ayant participé à cette étude, 310 (soit 8,1 %) ont déclaré être fumeurs, parmi lesquels environ 67 % étaient des garçons, 64,8 % avaient commencé à fumer à l'âge de 12 ans, et 70 % avaient fumé au cours des 30 derniers jours. On a utilisé la régression logistique pour déterminer des indices significatifs sur le profil de ceux qui fumaient, l'âge des premières cigarettes et le fait d'avoir fumé au cours des 30 derniers jours. Les résultats de la régression logistique (RL) ont montré que les étudiants dont le père (OR=2.7,p<.001), la mère (OR=2.8,p<.001) ou un ami proche (OR=4.8,p<.001) utilisaient des produits du tabac avaient beaucoup plus de chances de devenir fumeurs. Les étudiants dont le père était indépendant (OR=3.8, 95 % CI-1.2–11.9) risquaient bien plus de commencer à fumer à l'âge de 12 ans, ou même plus tôt, que ceux dont le père était absent. Les étudiants dont le père était salarié (OR=3.5, 95 % CI=1.2–10.7) ou indépendant (OR=4.0, 95 % CI=1.2–13.0) étaient bien plus susceptibles d'avoir fumé au cours des 30 derniers jours que les étudiants dont le père était absent. Les étudiants dont le père était non-fumeur (OR=.42, 95 % CI=18–.97) étaient moins susceptibles d'avoir fumé au cours des 30 derniers jours que ceux dont le père était fumeur. Les résultats de cette étude peuvent être utiles pour développer des programmes de prévention communautaires, axés sur l'influence du réseau social sur l'uSAGE du tabac chez les adolescents.Diversos estudios han descubierto que las redes sociales son determinantes en el consumo de tabaco entre los adolescentes, pero pocos se han centrado en los países en vías de desarrollo del continente africano, donde la prevalencia de fumadores entre los jóvenes aumenta rápidamente. Se utilizó un modelo de muestreo de varias fases para realizar la selección de alumnos de Dar Es Salaam (Tanzania). Los alumnos contestaron a un cuestionario autoadministrado en el que se incluían preguntas demográficas y sobre consumo de tabaco. De los 3.816 alumnos que abarcó el análisis, 310 (8,1%) habían fumado alguna vez. De ellos, cerca del 67% eran varones y 64% habían fumado a los 12 años, y 70,6% habían fumado en los últimos 30 días. Mediante regresión logística se determinaron los indicadores significativos de haber fumado, de la edad de iniciación al consumo y del consumo en los últimos 30 días. Los resultados de la regresión logística (RL) mostraron que los alumnos cuyo padre (OR1=2,7, p<0,001), madre (OR-2,8, p<0,001) o amigo íntimo (OR=4,8, p<0,001) consumían productos del tabaco tenían muchas más probabilidades de haber fumado alguna vez. Los alumnos cuyo padre trabajaba por cuenta propia (OR=3,8, 95% IC2=1,2–11,9) tenían muchas más probabilidades de haber fumado a la edad de 12 años o inferior, que aquellos cuyo padre estaba ausente. Aquellos cuyo padre era trabajador asalariado (OR=3,5, 95% IC=1,2–10,7) o autónomo (OR=4,0, 95% IC=1,2–13,0) tenían muchas más probabilidades de haber fumado en los últimos 30 días que aquellos alumnos cuyo padre estaba ausente. Los alumnos hijos de padre no fumador (OR=0,42, 95% IC=0,18–0,97) tenían muchas menos probabilidades de haber fumado en los 30 días anteriores que aquellos cuyo padre era fumador. Los resultados de este estudio pueden ser útiles para elaborar programas de prevención de base comunitaria, centrados en la influencia de las redes sociales en el consumo de tabaco por parte de los adolescentes.
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Welfare and education in British colonial Africa and South Africa during the 1930s and 1940s - Kallaway, Peter (Paedagogica Historica, 2005)
Contemporary educational policy discourse in South Africa that seeks to serve the poor and address equity issues needs to engage with the roots of twentieth‐century social reform debates if it is meet its goals. One of the weaknesses of the templates for reform at the present time is that they often fail to engage with progressive traditions which have a long history. Present‐day reforms look to agency recommendations or comparative examples of “successful” emergent economies, but often fail to recognize the value and significance of previous initiatives which sought to address these issues. The long debate over the need for social welfare and educational reform in British colonial Africa has some significance in this regard. The period between 1930 and 1950 marked a key turning point in such policy in colonial Africa, and significant reform initiatives in South Africa from the early years of the Second World War provide the benchmarks for such investigations. The social welfare policies and the educational policy initiatives of the United Party government during the 1940s provide important signposts for such policies. This article attempts to investigate that legacy.
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An evaluation of the staff appraisal practices at the Lesotho College of Education (LCE) - Khachane, Palo Gabriel (2005)
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Engaging African American Parents in the Schools: A Community-Based Consultation Model - Koonce, Danel A.; Harper, Walter (Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation, 2005)
Although it has been well established that parental involvement in school is linked to positive outcomes for children, there are a myriad of issues that make it challenging for some African American families to engage school personnel in collaborative problem solving (e.g., Hill & Craft, 2003). Some of the barriers that decrease involvement include parents' poor school experiences, intimidation by school personnel, and inconvenient meeting times. When parents' initial advocacy efforts are not effective, we must seek alternative methods. A recommended method is the collaborative efforts of community-based social service agencies and school consultants to engage African American families in mutually beneficial partnerships with schools to facilitate successful academic careers for their children (Witty, 1982). In this article, we discuss the barriers that African American families face when attempting to collaborate with schools and describe a multiphase model for engaging African American families with school to effectively advocate for their children's needs. A case study is presented describing the use of this model with a student exhibiting behavior problems in school.
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Engaging African American Parents in the Schools: A Community-Based Consultation Model - Koonce, Danel A.; Harper, Walter (Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation, 2005)
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The changing nature of research management at higher education institutions: a comparative study of South Africa, the Czech Republic and The Netherlands - Kulati, Tembile; Rip, Arie (2005)
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Gender and race distribution of dental graduates (1985-2004) and first year dental students (2000-2005) in South Africa. - Lalloo, Ratilal; McMillan, Wendy; Gugushe, Tshepo Sipho; Ligthelm, A. J.; Evans, WG; Moola, M.H. (PubMed, 2005)
This paper, written at the close of a decade of democracy in South Africa, sets out to analyse the demographic profile of dental graduates from 1985-2004 at the five Faculties/Schools of Dentistry in South Africa. A comparison of the profiles for the pre-democracy (1985-1994) and post-apartheid (1995-2004) periods has been made. The demographic profile of first year dental students from 2000-2005 is also presented. From 1985-1994, most dental graduates were male (79%), but this changed substantially from 1995-2004, with females comprising 46% of those graduating. In the pre-democracy period, more than three-quarters of all graduates were White (78%), decreasing to 46% in the post-apartheid period under review. Black graduates increased from 6% to 24% across the two study periods. Amongst the first year dental student intake from 2000-2005, females comprised 57%. There was an almost equal distribution across the White, Black and Asian groups. Dental faculties/schools have made important strides in transforming the demographic profile of their students. The percentage of Black graduates, however, needs to be significantly increased if it is to reflect the national population. Faculties/schools must further ensure that able students from working class background are identified and considered for acceptance into the undergraduate dental programme, and should then be offered the necessary academic and mentoring support to enable success.
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Disability Rights Commission (DRC) Research Report - Experiences of disabled students and their families: Phase 1 - Lewis, Ann; Robertson, Christopher; Parsons, Sarah (2005)
This report outlines research funded by the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) and undertaken between August 2004 and March 2005, by a team based at the University of Birmingham. The remit was to explore the educational experiences of disabled pupils/students and their families. This encompassed identifying (broadly) their concerns and priorities but also, importantly, identifying and trialling appropriate research methodologies.
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African-American students' early trust beliefs in work-based mentors - Linnehan, Frank; Weer, Christy H.; Uhl, Josh (Journal of Vocational Behavior, 2005)
Using an experimental design with a sample of African-American high school students (n=94), this study examines the determinants of students' initial trust beliefs about adult mentors. Consistent with the model of initial trust formation, results indicate that both structural assurance beliefs and youth dispositions toward trust were positive, significant predictors of the belief in an adult mentor's benevolence, honesty, competence, and predictability. Mentor selection procedures were not related to any of the trust beliefs. Ethnic identity of the student was found to moderate the relation between two of these beliefs (competence and predictability) with racial similarity of the mentor and student. Contrary to expectations, African-American students with low ethnic identity believed that a White adult mentor would be more competent and predictable than students with high ethnic identity. Implications for work-based, adult–youth mentoring programs and future research are discussed.
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Nutrition education for illiterate children in southern Madagascar – addressing their needs, perceptions and capabilities - Mahr, Johanna; Wuestefeld, Marzella; Haaf, Joep ten; Krawinkel, Michael B. (Public health nutrition (Wallingford), 2005)
A Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices (KAP) study was conducted in three villages of Bekily District in southern Madagascar prior to the implementation of a health education programme with children. The participatory learning concept of the Child-to-Child approach was followed to involve the children in the planning and implementation of the programme, which was covered by the German Agency for Technical Cooperation.To this effect, qualitative research methods such as Participatory Learning and Action techniques (focus group discussions, mapping and matrix ranking, etc.) were applied.The survey was conducted between August and December 1999. It involved a total of 55 school-aged children (6-14 years) along with 21 mothers and 34 fathers, representing different ethnic groups and educational backgrounds.The results show that children's KAP related to health and nutrition strongly reflect those of adults. They are not aware of a possible link between bad hygiene and the occurrence of diseases. According to them, diarrhoea or malaria is caused by consuming too large amounts of certain foods. Even if they know about certain elementary hygiene behaviours, they do not practise this in their everyday life.A major objective of the health education programme for children should be to tackle the discrepancy between hygiene-related knowledge and behaviour. Through the participatory study approach the children revealed their ability to contribute to the programme development. In using appropriate communication channels, the Child-to-Child health education programme is expected to influence the health behaviours of both adults and children. The health education programme should be combined with a literacy programme to address the children's desire to learn reading and writing.
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Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom. By Heather Andrea Williams. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Pp xii, 304. $29.95. - Margo, Robert A. (The Journal of Economic History, 2005)
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Access to justice and the role of law schools in developing countries : some lessons from South Africa : part 2 : 1990 until the present - McQuoid‐Mason, David (2005)
Toegang tot die regstelsel en die rol van regsskole en regsfakulteite in ontwikkelende lande : sekere lesse uit Suid-Afrika : deel 2 : 1990 tot die hede Toegang tot die regstelsel in Suid-Afrika het dramaties verbeter sedert die 1990's. Die verbetering het gevolg na die instelling van 'n konstitusionele demokrasie in Suid- Afrika. Die Grondwet waarborg toegang tot regsverteenwoordiging in strafsake. Regsverteenwoordiging in siviele sake het nuwe uitdagings gestel vir regsskole en regshulpklinieke. Die reg tot regsverteenwoordiging in siviele sake is nog nie getoets in die Konstitusionele hof nie. Die las om hierdie dienste, veral met betrekking tot sosio-ekonomiese regte, te verskaf word al hoe meer die verantwoordelikheid van regsskole en regshulpklinieke. Dit het aanleiding gegee tot nuwe moontlikhede en geleenthede. 'n Voorbeeld hiervan is die formele vennootskappe wat gesluit word tussen regshulpklinieke, nie-regerings organisasies en staatsgesubsideerde regshulpskemas. Dit is die oogmerk van hierdie vennootskappe om regsdienste te lewer en regsadvies te verskaf.Terselfdertyd help die Allemansreg programme die regering om 'n kultuur van menseregte, demokrasie en legitimiteit te bevorder. Die Suid-Afrikaanse ondervinding is getuienis daarvan dat regsskole in ontwikkelende lande 'n aansienlike bydrae kan maak om toegang tot die regstelsel te bevorder, in beide lande waar daar 'n kultuur van onderdrukking is en in lande met 'n demokrasie. Regsskole kan ook baie doen om die gewone burgers te onderrig oor hul regte.Regsskole in ontwikkelende lande verskil van regsskole in ontwikkelde lande omdat eersgenoemde 'n spesiale plig het om die gemeenskap te dien. Die rede hiervoor is omdat hulle funksioneer as die bevoordeelde eiland in 'n see van skaars hulpbronne, veral wanneer dit kom by die verskaffing van toegang tot die regstelsel aan die armes. Access to justice in South Africa improved dramatically during the 1990s, especially after the introduction of a constitutional democracy in 1994. Although the Constitution guarantees access to legal representation in criminal cases this has posed new challenges for law schools and law clinics regarding civil cases. The right to legal representation in civil matters has not been tested in the Constitutional Court, and the burden of providing this service is increasingly falling on NGOs and law clinics, particularly in respect of social and economic rights. This has led to exciting new opportunities such as law clinics and NGOs entering into formal partnerships with the state-funded legal aid scheme to assist in the delivery of legal services and advice. As a result law clinic operations have become more focused and more sophisticated. At the same time Street law programmes are assisting the government in achieving its mission of promoting a culture of legality, human rights and democracy. The South African experience is that law schools in developing countries can make a significant contribution to access to justice in both repressive and democratic political environments. They can do likewise in educating ordinary citizens about their legal rights. What sets developing countries apart from developed countries is that law schools in the former have a special duty to serve their communities. This is because they often operate as a privileged island in a sea of scarce resources, particularly when it comes to providing access to justice for the poor.
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Some South African connections among students at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin 1869-1914 - Mescht, Heinrich Van der (South African Journal of Cultural History, 2005)
Suid-Afrikaanse verbintenisse onder studente by die Hochschule fur Musik in Berlyn, 1869-1914 Eduard Stolz van Enon in Sudafrika het tydens die akademiese jaar 1872/1873 by die Koninklike Kerkmusiekinstituut, wat vanaf 1875 deel van die Hochschule fur Musik gevorm het, studeer. Vanaf die begin van die Hochschule in 1869 tot in 1914 was daar vyf studente wat in Suid- Afrika gebore is. Florence Gau (Grahamstad, April 1893 tot April 1896) was 'n klavierstudent van Oscar Raif. Die vioolstudent Irene Bell (Queenstown, Oktober 1897 tot Oktober 1900) het by Karl Markees en Joseph Joachim studeer, en die tjello-student Edith Bell (Queenstown, April 1900 tot Oktober 1901), waarskynlik Irene se suster, het Robert Hausmann as onderwyser gehad. Emily (Emilie) Hoesch (Oudtshoorn, April 1903 tot April 1908) was 'n baie suksesvolle sangstudent van Adolph Schulze, en Alma Meyer (Kimberley, Oktober 1912 tot Maart 1914) het by Felix Schmidt sang studeer. Onder die studente wat nie in Suid-Afrika gebore is nie, maar later 'n bydrae tot die land se kulturele lewe gemaak het, tel die Australiese pianis Elsie Hall (April 1894 tot April 1897) wat by Robert Kahn en Ernst Rudorff studeer het en haar later in Suid-Afrika gevestig het, en Albertha Tideman-Wijers (van Nederland, April 1906 tot Oktober 1909). Sy was 'n student van die beroemde pianis en komponis Dohnanyi, en het later drie Afrikaanse gedigte van Elisabeth Eybers getoonset. During the academic year 1872/1873, Eduard Stolz from Enon in Sudafrika studied at the Royal Institute for Church Music, which from 1875 formed part of the Hochschule fur Musik. From its inception in 1869 until 1914 there were five South African-born students who studied at the Hochschule. Florence Gau (Grahamstown, April 1893 to April 1896) was a piano student of Oscar Raif. The violin student Irene Bell (Queenstown, October 1897 to October 1900) studied with Karl Markees and Joseph Joachim, and the violoncello student Edith Bell (Queenstown, April 1900 to October 1901), probably Irene's sister, had Robert Hausmann as her teacher. Emily (Emilie) Hoesch (Oudtshoorn, April 1903 to April 1908) was a very successful singing student under Adolph Schulze. Another singer was Alma Meyer (Kimberley, October 1912 to March 1914) who studied with Felix Schmidt. Among students who were not born in South Africa but later made contributions to its cultural life are the Australian pianist Elsie Hall (April 1894 to April 1897) who studied under Robert Kahn and Ernst Rudorff and later settled in South Africa, and Albertha Tideman- Wijers (from the Netherlands, April 1906 to October 1909) who was a student of the famous pianist and composer Dohnanyi. She later set three Afrikaans poems by Elisabeth Eybers to music.
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The development of continuing education for trauma care in an African nation - Mock, Charles; Quansah, Robert; Addae-Mensah, Lawrence; Donkor, Peter (Injury-International Journal of the Care of the Injured, 2005)
A trauma continuing education course was developed to meet the needs of rural hospitals in Ghana.The course's effectiveness was evaluated by pre-course and post-course test scores; and by interviews with course participants 1 year afterwards.Mean test scores improved from 69% (% correct) to 80%. There were improvements in all major categories: initial management, torso, plastic surgery, orthopaedics, and X-ray interpretation. Follow-up interviews revealed high level of utilisation of basic airway manoeuvres (93% of participants utilising at least once) and chest tube insertion (67%), but limited utilisation of advanced airway manoeuvres (20%). Participants reported that their provision of most categories of care had improved. Categories with less improvement were: management of open fractures (33% not improved), closed fractures (20%), and diagnosis of abdominal injury (20%).This locally developed course improved the participants' knowledge and their self-reported process of trauma care. Aspects of trauma care with low test scores indicate areas needing reinforcement. Aspects with low subsequent utilisation, such as advanced airway management, indicate areas that might need attention to other components of care, such as equipment availability and training of ancillary staff. These findings provide lessons for efforts to improve trauma care in other low-income countries.
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Book Review: Culture, Education, and Development in South Africa: Historical and Contemporary Perspective - Mungazi, Dickenson A. (Journal of Asian and African Studies, 2005)
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Crucial Role of Nutrition in Education: The Kenya Experience - Mwiria, Kilemi (Food and Nutrition Bulletin, 2005)
Improved health and nutrition among children contributes to high school enrollment better school attendance lower rates of dropout and improved performance in academic work as well as to social equity and economic growth. It also enhances childrens classroom and school participation which is important not just for academic but for social development of children. Moreover child malnutrition can lead to disability or even death. It is the leading cause of death among children under 5 years of age. The exemplary performance of Makueni children in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) has partly been credited to a sustainable school-feeding program and other health programs such as vitamin A supplementation and de-worming supported by parents and the World Food Programme. If we agree that one must be physically fit to engage in any productive work then it is easy to appreciate why children need to be well-fed not only to grow but also to concentrate on learning while at school. In any case health even more than education is a basic human need. (excerpt)
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Decentralisation and the management of change in South African teacher training institutions - Nieuwenhuis, F. J.; Mokoena, Sello (Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 2005)
Democratisation as set out in the constitution of South Africa is based on the ideal of devolving power and authority to community level. Running parallel with the ideal of democratisation and devolution of powers are the imperatives of redress, educational transformation and restructuring, to be managed by central government and provincial authorities. Implementing the process of transformation also affects teacher training colleges. This article discusses the changes that affected teacher training colleges and the challenge faced by college management in managing the change required. A major assumption underpinning the existing body of knowledge is that management has the power and authority to initiate and manage the change required. This assumption could not withstand the scrutiny of research conducted into the transformation of teacher training colleges in South Africa. It was found that if the real power and authority to effect change is located in an agency outside the management structure (i.e., a state department) a whole new set of dynamics were unleashed that alter the whole change management process.
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Higher education policies in the new South Africa [Book Review] - Nishin, Ryota (The Australasian review of African studies, 2005)
Review(s) of: National policy and a regional response in South African higher education, by Saleem Badat, Nico Cloete, Teboho Moja and Pundy Pillay, Oxford, James Currey Ltd, September 2004. ISBN 0- 8255-435-4 (p/b).
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Relevance of public secondary school students' career aspirations to the manpower needs of Ghana - Ocansey, Frederick (2005)
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The macrobenthic fauna at two point sources of pollution in estuarine Lagos lagoon of southwestern Nigeria. - Ogunwenmo, Christiana A; Okuonghae, Omoruyi; Olofin, Imole; Chilaka, Gerald (Journal of Environmental Biology, 2005)
Benthic, water and sediment samples were collected at Okobaba, a sawmill site, and Iddo, a sewage dumpage site, in an open estuarine lagoon, in southwestern Nigeria during two periods (December 1999-May 2000 and April 2002-September 2002). Air, surface and bottom water temperatures were high (23.9-32.0 degrees C). Dissolved oxygen (DO) was between 3.4-5.3 mg/l, while biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) varied between 18.0 and 30.0 mg/l at Iddo and, 7.5 and 8.6 mg/l at Okobaba. The pH was alkaline throughout the sampling period at the two sites (7.3-8.6) while, rainfall was between 0.00 and 372.1 mm. Sediment ranged from mud, sandy mud, muddy sand to sandy type. Density and diversity of macrobenthic fauna were low and representative of Polychaeta, Mollusca and Arthropoda. Factors affecting the dynamics and reduction of species in the two communities were discussed.
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Instructional functions in large, under-resourced science classes : perspectives of South African teachers : research article : : general - Onwu, Gilbert O.M.; Stoffels, Newton Trevor (Perspectives in Education, 2005)
Following the implementation of the new outcomes-based Curriculum 2005, teacher competence in teaching reform-based science in large classes is one of the challenges in the continuing reform of South Africa's education system. Most school teachers have little experience, meagre training and are operating in large and poorly resourced science classrooms. As part of the understanding of the teaching and learning that takes place in such contexts, this study focuses on science teachers' perspectives on their current classroom practices. Data collected through surveys and questionnaires to participating science teachers revealed their perspectives of the reality of teaching large under-resourced science classes and the typical patterns of classroom teaching. The essential components of their instructional functions are identified together with the implications these have for teacher education.
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Village Elders’ and Secondary School Students’ Explanations of Natural Phenomena in Papua New Guinea - Pauka, Soikava; Treagust, David F.; Waldrip, Bruce (International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 2005)
This research investigated the sources of explanations and understanding of natural phenomena in terms of the students’ cultural and school science experiences. The first phase involved interviews with eight village elders that probed their explanations and understanding of natural phenomena. The second phase involved the design, development and administration of two questionnaires on natural phenomena to 179 students in a rural boarding high school in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Most village elders gave explanations of many of the phenomena in terms of spirits, spells, magic, religion, and personal experiences. Most school-aged students choose scientific explanations of natural phenomena in terms of what they had learned in school or from personal experiences. However, many choose explanations of the same phenomena about spirits, spells and magic that came from the village, family or home. The study revealed that students’ ideas about natural phenomena are strongly governed and controlled by their school science knowledge in the school setting. It is likely that their own traditional knowledge cannot be identified in a school setting but that questionnaires in the students’ local language be given to students in their villages (as opposed to school). In addition, so as not to diminish the value of this traditional knowledge, science education programs are needed that are able to consider and harmonise traditional knowledge with school science.
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Geochemistry of Mauritius and the origin of rejuvenescent volcanism on oceanic island volcanoes - Paul, Debajyoti; White, William M.; Blichert‐Toft, Janne (Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems, 2005)
We report new trace element concentrations and Sr, Nd, Hf, and Pb isotopic ratios for basalts from the three lava series of Mauritius. Older Series lavas, which represent the shield‐building phase of Mauritius, are isotopically similar to other lavas produced by the Réunion mantle plume. The Intermediate and Younger Series lavas, erupted after a hiatus of millions of years, have more depleted isotopic signatures than the Older Series. Incompatible element abundances and major element compositions suggest that the extent of melting was greatest for the Older Series, smallest for the Intermediate Series, and intermediate for the Younger Series. Volcanic evolution on Mauritius is thus broadly similar to the Hawaiian pattern, with lavas of the rejuvenescent phase being produced by small degrees of melting of a more depleted source than the shield phase. We propose that both shield and rejuvenescent phase magmas are derived from a lithologically heterogeneous or “plum pudding” mantle plume that consists of pods or veins of low‐solidus‐temperature material such as eclogite or pyroxenite embedded in peridotite matrix. The plums have a less depleted isotopic signature than the matrix. In the vertical stem of the plume, melting is zoned: at greatest depth, only the plums melt; at intermediate depth, both plums and matrix melt, and at shallowest depth, only the matrix melts. Shield stage magmas are hybrids of melts produced in all three zones. As the plume flattens out against the lithosphere and is dragged downstream of the stem, some melting continues due to buoyant lateral spreading of the plume. In this region, although both plums and matrix are melting, melts produced carry the isotopic signature of the matrix because incompatible elements in the plums were previously stripped during melting in the vertical stem of the plume. The relatively small degree melts produced in the melting tail, which give rise to rejuvenescent stage volcanism, thus carry the isotopic signature of the matrix. From a consideration of thermal and isotopic equilibrium, we judge the scale of heterogeneity to be about 10 2 m.
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A Comparison between African-American and White Students Enrolled in an Equal Opportunity Program on Predominantly White College Campuses: Perceptions of the Campus Environment. - Phillips, Calvin D. (College student journal, 2005)
This article compares the campus environmental perceptions of African-American and White students enrolled in an opportunity program on predominantly White campuses. These are students who are trying to overcome socioeconomic and academic challenges in their quest to become college graduates. The survey instrument measured marginality and mattering perceptions of these students. The results indicated that African-American students did feel marginalized. Conversely, White students were not aware of the different challenges that African-American students were experiencing on campus. It is evident that African-American students within these programs have three major barriers to overcome in this environment including: racial, socioeconomic, and academic issues. ********** According to the National Education Association Higher Education Research Center the graduation rate of African-American students within a six-year period at four-year institutions is 45.7 percent in comparison to White students 66.8 percent (Henderickson et al., 2004). This graduation gap further illustrates the fact that the promise of the Brown vs. The Board of Education has a way to go. It has been 50 years since that decision changed the racial landscape of American's education system. While this defining decision worked to dispel the fallacy of the separate but equal premise, it created other challenges for many universities. One of theses challenges is to create an environment on predominantly White campus that is inviting to students of color. It is known that African-American students do not faire as well at historically White institutions (Astin, 1982; Davis, Fleming, 1984). In fact, African-American students have developed social systems and cultural connections to survive on these campuses (Allen, 1992). Students of color experience feelings of loneliness because of the lack of connection within these environments (Loo, & Rolison, 1986). Further, Chavous (2000) suggests African-American students are more apt to reporting a gap when it comes to feeling a connection with their culture and the social and academic areas on a predominantly White campus. In a similar study, Schwitzer, Griffin, Ancis, and Thomas (1999) found that African-American students openly admitted not feeling welcome on their predominantly White campus. Research shows that students need to make a connection to feel that they matter in this new environment. Rosenberg and McCullough (1981) found tour domains in which a feels that he or she matters: attention, importance, ego-extension, and dependence. Attention--one commands the interest or notice of another person (Rosenberg and McCullough, 1981, p. 164). Importance--to believe that other cares about what we want, think, and do, or is concerned with our fate (Rosenberg and McCullough, 1981, p.164). Ego-extension--the feeling that other people will be proud of our accomplishments or saddened by our failures (Rosenberg and McCullough, 1981, p. 164). Dependence--our behavior is influenced by our dependence on other people ... What is ... more mysterious is why our actions are equally governed by their dependence on us(Rosenberg and McCullough, 1981, p. 164). Scholessberg (1989) added a fifth to the domain: appreciation, the feeling that an individual's efforts are valued. In essence, expanding the depth of research as it pertains to African-American students' perspectives of the campus environment, especially with opportunity programs on predominantly White campuses may help to bridge the gap between the hope and reality of Brown v. the Board of Education. Procedures This quantitative compared the perspectives of African-American and White students who participated in an opportunity at two state predominantly White four-year public institutions. The researcher's survey instrument examined six areas in the undergraduate environment such as academic advising relationship, administrative climate, classroom climate, faculty interaction, peer interaction, and student services. …
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How teacher practitioners, theory builders, teacher educators, policymakers and researchers talk to each other about mathematics education Researching Mathematics Education in South Africa : perspectives, practices and possibilities, Renuka Vithal, Jill Adler and Christine Keitel (eds) : book review - Samuel, Michael (Perspectives in Education, 2005)
Extracted from text ... Perspectives in Education, Volume 23(3), September 2005 155 How teacher practitioners, theory builders, teacher educators, policymakers and researchers talk to each other about mathematics education1 Review of the book by Renuka Vithal, Jill Adler and Christine Keitel (eds) 2005: Researching Mathematics Education in South Africa: Perspectives, practices and possibilities. Cape Town: HSRC Press ISBN 0-7969-2047-8 Pages 360 R180, 00 REVIEWED BY MICHAEL SAMUEL The media profile granted to the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) is symptomatic of the kind of agenda that grabs attention, not only of the general public, but also of policymakers, politicians and even ..
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