Search results for: classroom social goal structure

Authors: Shahlan Surat, Saemah Rahman, Saadiah Kummin

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When teachers reflect and evaluate whether their teaching methods actually have an impact on students’ learning, they will adjust their practices accordingly. This inevitably improves their students’ learning and performance. The approach in meta-teaching can invigorate and create a passion for teaching. It thus helps to increase the commitment and love for the teaching profession. This study was conducted to determine the level of metacognitive thinking of teachers in the process of teaching and learning in the classroom. Metacognitive thinking teachers include the use of metacognitive knowledge which consists of different types of knowledge: declarative, procedural and conditional. The ability of the teachers to plan, monitor and evaluate the teaching process can also be determined. This study was conducted on 377 graduate teachers in Klang Valley, Malaysia. The stratified sampling method was selected for the purpose of this study. The metacognitive teaching inventory consisting of 24 items is called InKePMG (Teacher Indicators of Effectiveness Meta-Teaching). The results showed the level of mean is high for two components of metacognitive knowledge; declarative knowledge (mean = 4.16) and conditional (mean = 4.11) whereas, the mean of procedural knowledge is 4.00 (moderately high). Similarly, the level of knowledge in monitoring (mean = 4.11), evaluating (mean = 4.00) which indicate high score and planning (mean = 4.00) are moderately high score among teachers. In conclusion, this study shows that the planning and procedural knowledge is an important element in improving the quality of teachers teaching in the classroom. Thus, the researcher recommended that further studies should focus on training programs for teachers on metacognitive skills and also on developing creative thinking among teachers.

Keywords: metacognitive thinking skills, procedural knowledge, conditional knowledge, meta-teaching and regulation of cognitive

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Authors: Radek Richtr, Petr Pauš

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Social media nowadays connects people more tightly and intensively than ever, but simultaneously, some sort of social distance, incomprehension, lost of social integrity appears. People can be strongly connected to the person on the other side of the world but unaware of neighbours in the same district or street. The Stoa is a type of application from the ”serious games” genre- it is research augmented reality experiment masked as a gaming environment. In the Stoa environment, the player can plant and grow virtual (organic) structure, a Pillar, that represent the whole suburb. Everybody has their own idea of what is an acceptable, admirable or harmful visual intervention in the area they live in; the purpose of this research experiment is to find and/or define residents shared subconscious spirit, genius loci of the Pillars vicinity, where residents live in. The appearance and evolution of Stoa’s Pillars reflect the real world as perceived by not only the creator but also by other residents/players, who, with their actions, refine the environment. Squares, parks, patios and streets get their living avatar depictions; investors and urban planners obtain information on the occurrence and level of motivation for reshaping the public space. As the project is in product conceptual design phase, the function is one of its most important factors. Function-based modelling makes design problem modular and structured and thus decompose it into sub-functions or function-cells. Paper discuss the current conceptual model for Stoa project, the using of different organic structure textures and models, user interface design, UX study and project’s developing to the final state.

Keywords: augmented reality, urban computing, interaction design, mixed reality, social engineering

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Authors: Alexandre Barbosa de Almeida, Telma Woerle de Lima Soares

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Protein structure prediction is a challenging task in the bioinformatics field. The biological function of all proteins majorly relies on the shape of their three-dimensional conformational structure, but less than 1% of all known proteins in the world have their structure solved. This work proposes a deep learning model to address this problem, attempting to predict some aspects of the protein conformations. Throughout a process of multiobjective dominance, a recurrent neural network was trained to abstract the particular bias of each individual multiobjective algorithm, generating a heuristic that could be useful to predict some of the relevant aspects of the three-dimensional conformation process formation, known as protein folding.

Keywords: Ab initio heuristic modeling, multiobjective optimization, protein structure prediction, recurrent neural network

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Authors: Stephanie J. Sedberry, William J. Gerace, Ian D. Beatty, Michael J. Kane

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Increasing the number of US university students who attain degrees in STEM and enter the STEM workforce is a national priority. Demographic groups vary in their rates of participation in STEM, and the US produces just 10% of the world’s science and engineering degrees (2014 figures). To address these gaps, we have developed and tested a practical, 30-minute, single-session classroom-based intervention to improve students’ self-efficacy and academic performance in University STEM courses. Self-efficacy is a psychosocial construct that strongly correlates with academic success. Self-efficacy is a construct that is internal and relates to the social, emotional, and psychological aspects of student motivation and performance. A compelling body of research demonstrates that university students’ self-efficacy beliefs are strongly related to their selection of STEM as a major, aspirations for STEM-related careers, and persistence in science. The development of an intervention to increase students’ self-efficacy is motivated by research showing that short, social-psychological interventions in education can lead to large gains in student achievement. Our intervention addresses STEM self-efficacy via two strong, but previously separate, lines of research into attitudinal/affect variables that influence student success. The first is ‘attributional retraining,’ in which students learn to attribute their successes and failures to internal rather than external factors. The second is ‘mindset’ about fixed vs. growable intelligence, in which students learn that the brain remains plastic throughout life and that they can, with conscious effort and attention to thinking skills and strategies, become smarter. Extant interventions for both of these constructs have significantly increased academic performance in the classroom. We developed a 34-item questionnaire (Likert scale) to measure STEM Self-efficacy, Perceived Academic Control, and Growth Mindset in a University STEM context, and validated it with exploratory factor analysis, Rasch analysis, and multi-trait multi-method comparison to coded interviews. Four iterations of our 42-week research protocol were conducted across two academic years (2017-2018) at three different Universities in North Carolina, USA (UNC-G, NC A&T SU, and NCSU) with varied student demographics. We utilized a quasi-experimental prospective multiple-group time series research design with both experimental and control groups, and we are employing linear modeling to estimate the impact of the intervention on Self-Efficacy,wth-Mindset, Perceived Academic Control, and final course grades (performance measure). Preliminary results indicate statistically significant effects of treatment vs. control on Self-Efficacy, Growth-Mindset, Perceived Academic Control. Analyses are ongoing and final results pending. This intervention may have the potential to increase student success in the STEM classroom—and ownership of that success—to continue in a STEM career. Additionally, we have learned a great deal about the complex components and dynamics of self-efficacy, their link to performance, and the ways they can be impacted to improve students’ academic performance.

Keywords: academic performance, affect variables, growth mindset, intervention, perceived academic control, psycho-social variables, self-efficacy, STEM, university classrooms

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Authors: Thomas E. Portegys

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An animal behavior problem is presented in the form of a nest-building task that involves two cooperating virtual birds, a male and female. The female builds a nest into which she lays an egg. The male's job is to forage in a forest for food for both himself and the female. In addition, the male must fetch stones from a nearby desert for the female to use as nesting material. The task is completed when the nest is built, and an egg is laid in it. A goal-seeking neural network and a recurrent neural network were trained and tested with little success. The goal-seeking network was then enhanced with “place cells”, allowing the birds to spatially navigate the world, building the nest while keeping themselves fed. Place cells are neurons in the hippocampus that map space.

Keywords: artificial animal intelligence, artificial life, goal-seeking neural network, nest-building, place cells, spatial navigation

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Authors: O. Yeret

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Visual resources are all around us, especially in today's media-driven world, which gravitates, more and more, towards the visual. As a result, authentic resources, such as television advertisements, become testaments – authentic cultural materials – that reflect the landscape of certain groups and communities during a specific point in time. Engaging language students with popular advertisements can provide a great opportunity for developing cultural awareness, a component that is sometimes overlooked in the foreign language classroom. This paper will showcase practical examples of using Israeli Television Ads in various Modern Hebrew language courses. Several approaches for combining the study of language and culture, through the use of advertisements, will be included; for example, targeted assignments based on students' proficiency levels, such as: asking to recognize vocabulary words and answer basic information questions, as opposed to commenting on the significance of an ad and analyzing its particular cultural elements. The use of visual resources in the language classroom does not only enable students to learn more about the culture of the target language, but also to combine their language skills. Most often, interacting with an ad requires close listening and some reading (through captions or other data). As students analyze the ad, they employ their writing and speaking skills by answering questions in text or audio form. Hence, these interactions are able to elicit complex language use across the four domains: listening, speaking, writing, and reading. This paper will include examples of practical assignments that were developed for several Modern Hebrew language courses, together with the specific advertisements and questions related to them. Conclusions from the process and recent feedback notes received from students regarding the use of visual resources will be mentioned as well.

Keywords: authentic materials, cultural awareness, second language acquisition, visual resources

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Authors: Yotaro Natani

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In his recent works, Frankfurt School theorist Axel Honneth elucidates an intersubjective notion of social freedom and outlines a vision of socialism as the realization of social freedom in the family, market economy, and public sphere. These arguments are part of his broader project of defending the tradition of immanent critique and normative reconstruction. In contrast, American Marxist sociologist Erik Olin Wright spells out a vision of socialism in terms of building real utopias -democratic, egalitarian, alternative institutions- through the exercise of civil society’s social power over the economy and state. Wright identifies ‘eroding capitalism’ as the framework for thinking about the strategic logics of gradually diminishing the dominance of capitalism. Both thinkers envision the transition toward socialism in terms of democratic experimentation; Honneth is more attentive to the immanent norms of social life, whereas Wright is better aware of the power of antagonistic structures. This paper attempts to synthesize the ideas of Honneth and Wright. It will show that Honneth’s critique of capitalism suffers from certain ambiguities because he attributes normative legitimacy to existing institutions, resulting in arguments that do not problematize aspects of capitalist structures. This paper will argue that incorporating the notion of power and thematizing the erosion of capitalism as a long-term goal for socialist change will allow Honneth to think more precisely about the conditions for realizing social freedom, in a manner that is still consistent with the immanent critique tradition. Such reformulation will result in a concept of social freedom that is less static and rooted in functional teleology and more oriented toward creative agency and experimental democracy.

Keywords: Axel Honneth, immanent critique, real utopias, social freedom, socialism

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Authors: Qin Yao

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Content and language integrated instruction provides second language learners instruction in subject matter and language, and is greatly valued, particularly in the language immersion classroom where a language other than students’ first language is the vehicle for teaching school curriculum. Corrective feedback is an essential instructional technique for teachers to integrate a focus on language into their content instruction. This study aims to fill a gap in the literature on immersion—the lack of studies examining corrective feedback in Chinese immersion classrooms, by studying learning opportunities brought by oral corrective feedback in a Chinese immersion classroom. Specifically, it examines what is the distribution of different types of teacher corrective feedback and how students respond to each feedback type, as well as how the focus of the teacher-student interactional exchanges affect the effect of feedback. Two Chinese immersion teachers and their immersion classes were involved, and data were collected through classroom observations interviews. Observations document teachers’ provision of oral corrective feedback and students’ responses following the feedback in class, and interviews with teachers collected teachers’ reflective thoughts about their teaching. A primary quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data revealed that, among different types of corrective feedback, recast occurred most frequently. Metalinguistic clue and repetition were the least occurring feedback types. Clarification request lead to highest percentage of learner uptake manifested by learners’ oral production immediately following the feedback, while explicit correction came the second and recast the third. In addition, the results also showed the interactional context played a role in the effectiveness of the feedback: teachers were most likely to give feedback in conversational exchanges that focused on explicit language and content, while students were most likely to use feedback in exchanges that focused on explicit language. In conclusion, the results of this study indicate recasts are preferred by Chinese immersion teachers, confirming results of previous studies on corrective feedback in non-Chinese immersion classrooms; and clarification request and explicit language instruction elicit more target language production from students and are facilitative in their target language development, thus should not be overlooked in immersion and other content and language integrated classrooms.

Keywords: Chinese immersion, content and language integrated instruction, corrective feedback, interaction

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Authors: Hema Vanita Kesevan

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The global spread of Covid-19 virus in early 2020 has led to major changes in many walks of life, including the education system. Traditional face to face lessons that were carried out for years has been replaced by online learning. Although online learning has been used before the pandemic, it has not been the only source of teaching and learning. This drastic change has brought significant impact to the process of teaching and learning in many classrooms around the world. Likewise, in country like Malaysia that that has been promoting online learning but has not utilize it fully due to many restrictions in terms of technology, accessibility, and online literacy, the sudden change to full online platform learning in all educational sector has definitely caused Issues in terms of its adaptation and usage. Although many studies have been conducted to explore the efficiency and impact of online learning during the pandemic, studies focusing on the same are limited in Malaysian classroom context, especially in English language classrooms. Thus, this study seeks to explore on the efficacy and effectiveness of online learning tools in ESL classroom contexts during the pandemic. The aim of this study is to understand the educator's and student's perceptions on the implementation of online learning tools in the teaching and learning process and the types of online learning tools that were used to assist the teaching and learning process during the pandemic. Particularly, this study focused to explore the types of online learning tools used in Malaysian schools and university during the online teaching and learning process and further explores how the various types of tools used impacted the students' participation in the lessons conducted. The participants of this study are secondary school students, teachers, and university students. Data will be collected in terms of survey questionnaire and interviews. The survey data intends to obtain information on the types of online learning used in ESL teaching and learning practices during the pandemic, how the various types of online tools influence students' participation during lessons. The interview data from the teachers serves to provide information about the selection of online learning tools, challenges of using it to conduct online lessons, and other arising issues. A mixed method design will be used to analysed the data obtained. The questionnaire will be analysed quantitatively using descriptive analysis meanwhile, the interview data will be analysed qualitatively.

Keywords: Covid 19, online learning tools, ESL classroom, effectiveness, efficacy

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Authors: Asyraf Abdul Halim, Mohd Edil Abd Sukor, Obiyathulla Ismath Bacha

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This paper attempts to investigate the capital structure behavior of Shariah compliant firms of various levels as well those firms who are consistently Shariah non-compliant in Malaysia. The paper utilizes a unique dataset of firms of the heterogeneous level of Shariah-compliancy status over a 20 year period from the year 1997 to 2016. The paper focuses on the effects of dynamic forces behind capital structure variation such as the optimal capital structure behavior based on the trade-off, pecking order, market timing and firmly fixed effect models of capital structure. This study documents significant evidence in support of the trade-off theory with a high speed of adjustment (SOA) as well as for the time-invariant firm fixed effects across all Shariah compliance group.

Keywords: capital structure, market timing, trade-off theory, equity risk premium, Shariah-compliant firms

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Authors: Janell Jayamohan

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A pilot project based on the Theory of Planned Behavior was completed at a single sex female international high school in order to improve the quality of comprehensive sex education in a 12th grade classroom. The student sample is representative of a growing phenomenon of “Third Culture Kids” or global nomads; often in today’s world, culture transcends any one dominant influence and blends values from multiple sources. The Objective was to improve intentions of condom use during the students’ first or next intercourse. A peer-education session which focused on condom attitudes, social norms, and self-efficacy - central tenets of the Theory of Planned Behavior - was added to an existing curriculum in order to achieve this objective. Peer educators were given liberty of creating and executing the lesson to their homeroom, a sample of 23 senior students, with minimal intervention from faculty, the desired outcome being that the students themselves would be the best judge of what is culturally relevant and important to their peers. The school nurse and school counselor acted as faculty facilitators but did not assist in the creation or delivery of the lesson, only checked for medical accuracy. The participating sample of students completed a pre and post-test with validated questions assessing changes in attitudes and overall satisfaction with the peer education lesson. As this intervention was completed during the Covid-19 pandemic, the peer education session was completed in a virtual classroom environment, limiting the modes of information delivery available to the peer educators, but is planned to be replicated in an in-person environment in subsequent cycles.

Keywords: adolescents, condoms, peer education, sex education, theory of planned behavior, third culture kids

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Authors: Maria Lina Garrido

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This paper aims to reflect upon instruction in English classes with the specific purpose of reading comprehension development, having as its paradigm the considerations presented by William Grabe, in his book Reading in a Second Language: Moving from theory to practice. His concerns regarding the connection between research findings and instructional practices have stimulated the present author to re-evaluate both her long practice as an English reading teacher and as the author of two reading textbooks for graduate students. Elements of the reading process such as linguistic issues, prior knowledge, reading strategies, critical evaluation, and motivation are the main foci of this analysis as far as the activities developed in the classroom are concerned. The experience with university candidates on postgraduate courses with different levels of English knowledge in Bahia, Brazil, has definitely demanded certain adjustments to this author`s classroom setting. Word recognition based on cognates, for example, has been emphasized given the fact that academic texts use many Latin words which have the same roots as the Brazilian Portuguese lexicon. Concerning syntactic parsing, the tenses/verbal aspects, modality and linking words are included in the curriculum, but not with the same depth as the general English curricula. Reading strategies, another essential predictor for developing reading skills, have been largely stimulated in L2 classes in order to compensate for a lack of the appropriate knowledge of the foreign language. This paper presents results that demonstrate that this author`s teaching practice is compatible with the implications and instruction concerning the reading process outlined by Grabe, however, it admits that each class demands specific instructions to meet the needs of that particular group.

Keywords: classroom practice, instructional activities, reading comprehension, reading skills

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Authors: Sahar Jami, Iman Valizadeh

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The purpose of the study: The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of culture on the choice of capital structure management companies are listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange. Methods: This study was a cross-document using data after the event (Retrospective) in 1394 was performed. To select a sample of elimination sampling (screening) is used to determine the sample size was 123 companies. Results: The results showed that the variables of culture, return on equity, a significant positive impact on the capital structure (ROA, QTobins) and financial leverage and firm size variables and a significant negative impact on the capital structure (ROA, QTobins).

Keywords: culture management, capital structure, ROA, QTobins, variables of culture

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Authors: Montserrrat Dopico Gonzalez, Ramon Lopez Facal

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The development of a critical, open and plural citizenship constitutes one of the main challenges of the school institution in the present multicultural societies. Didactics in Social Sciences has conducted important contributions to the development of active methodologies to promote the development of the intercultural competencies of the student body. Research in intercultural education has demonstrated the efficiency of the cooperative learning techniques to improve the intercultural relations in the classroom. Our study proposes to check the effect that, concerning the development of intercultural competencies of the student body, the emotional education can have in the context of the use of active methodologies such as the learning by projects and the cooperative learning. To that purpose, a programme of intervention based on activities focussed on controversial issues related to cultural diversity has been implemented in several secondary schools. Through a methodology which combines intercultural competence scales with interviews and also with the analysis of the school body’s productions, the persistence of stereotypes against immigration and the efficacy of the introduction of emotional education elements in the development of intercultural competencies have both been observed.

Keywords: active methodologies, didactics in social sciences, intercultural competences, intercultural education

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Authors: Pau Rodriguez, Jordi Gonzalez, Josep M. Gonfaus, Xavier Roca

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Image sharing in social networks has increased exponentially in the past years. Officially, there are 600 million Instagrammers uploading around 100 million photos and videos per day. Consequently, there is a need for developing new tools to understand the content expressed in shared images, which will greatly benefit social media communication and will enable broad and promising applications in education, advertisement, entertainment, and also psychology. Following these trends, our work aims to take advantage of the existing relationship between text and personality, already demonstrated by multiple researchers, so that we can prove that there exists a relationship between images and personality as well. To achieve this goal, we consider that images posted on social networks are typically conditioned on specific words, or hashtags, therefore any relationship between text and personality can also be observed with those posted images. Our proposal makes use of the most recent image understanding models based on neural networks to process the vast amount of data generated by social users to determine those images most correlated with personality traits. The final aim is to train a weakly-supervised image-based model for personality assessment that can be used even when textual data is not available, which is an increasing trend. The procedure is described next: we explore the images directly publicly shared by users based on those accompanying texts or hashtags most strongly related to personality traits as described by the OCEAN model. These images will be used for personality prediction since they have the potential to convey more complex ideas, concepts, and emotions. As a result, the use of images in personality questionnaires will provide a deeper understanding of respondents than through words alone. In other words, from the images posted with specific tags, we train a deep learning model based on neural networks, that learns to extract a personality representation from a picture and use it to automatically find the personality that best explains such a picture. Subsequently, a deep neural network model is learned from thousands of images associated with hashtags correlated to OCEAN traits. We then analyze the network activations to identify those pictures that maximally activate the neurons: the most characteristic visual features per personality trait will thus emerge since the filters of the convolutional layers of the neural model are learned to be optimally activated depending on each personality trait. For example, among the pictures that maximally activate the high Openness trait, we can see pictures of books, the moon, and the sky. For high Conscientiousness, most of the images are photographs of food, especially healthy food. The high Extraversion output is mostly activated by pictures of a lot of people. In high Agreeableness images, we mostly see flower pictures. Lastly, in the Neuroticism trait, we observe that the high score is maximally activated by animal pets like cats or dogs. In summary, despite the huge intra-class and inter-class variabilities of the images associated to each OCEAN traits, we found that there are consistencies between visual patterns of those images whose hashtags are most correlated to each trait.

Keywords: emotions and effects of mood, social impact theory in social psychology, social influence, social structure and social networks

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Authors: Wang Zhanquan, Yang Zeping, Gu Chunhua, Zhu Fazhi, Guo Weibin

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Recently, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are becoming the new trend of education. There are many problems under the environment of Database Principle curriculum teaching process in MOOCs, such as teaching ideas and theories which are out of touch with the reality, how to carry out the technical teaching and interactive practice in the MOOCs environment, thus the methods of database course under the environment of MOOCs are proposed. There are three processes to deal with problem solving in the research, which are problems proposed, problems solved, and inductive analysis. The present research includes the design of teaching contents, teaching methods in classroom, flipped classroom teaching mode under the environment of MOOCs, learning flow method and large practice homework. The database designing ability is systematically improved based on the researching methods.

Keywords: problem solving-driven, MOOCs, teaching art, learning flow;

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Authors: Liza Mariah Hj. Azahari

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This paper will look at a case study on English Camp which was an activity coordinated at the Sultan Sharif Ali Islamic University in 2011. English Camp is a fun and motivation filled activity which brings students and teachers together outside of the classroom setting into a more diverse environment. It also enables teacher and students to gain proximate time together for a mutual purpose which is to explore the language in a more dynamic and relaxed way. First of all, the study will look into the background of English Camp, and how it was introduced and implemented from different contexts. Thereafter, it will explain the objectives of the English Camp coordinated at our university, UNISSA, and what types of activities were conducted. It will then evaluate the effectiveness of the camp as to what extent it managed to meet its motto, which was to foster dynamic interactive learning of English Language. To conclude, the paper presents a potential for further research on the topic as well as a guideline for educators who wish to coordinate the activity. Proposal for collaboration in this activity is further highlighted and encouraged within the paper for future implementation and endeavor.

Keywords: English camp, UNISSA, interactive learning, outside

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Authors: Buntheng Chhorn, WooYoung Jung

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Large-scale swing has been used in entertainment and performance, especially in circus, for a very long time. To increase the safety of this type of structure, a thorough analysis for displacement and bearing stress was performed for an extreme condition where a full cycle swing occurs. Different masses, ranging from 40 kg to 220 kg, and velocities were applied on the swing. Then, based on the solution of differential dynamics equation, swing velocity response to harmonic force was obtained. Moreover, the resistance capacity was estimated based on ACI steel structure design guide. Subsequently, numerical analysis was performed in ABAQUS to obtain the stress on each frame of the swing. Finally, the analysis shows that the expansion of swing structure frame section was required for mass bigger than 150kg.

Keywords: swing structure, displacement, bearing stress, dynamic loads response, finite element analysis

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Authors: Nazia Shehzad

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Language and art can supplement and correlate each other. Through the ages art has been a means of visual expression used to convey a wide series of incarnated ideas. Art can take the perceiver into different times and into different worlds. It can also be used to introduce different levels of vocabulary to the learners of a second language. Learning a second language for most students is a very difficult and strenuous experience. They are not only trying to accommodate to a new language but are also trying to adjust to themselves and a new environment. They are anxious about almost everything, but they are especially self-conscious about their performance in the classroom. By relocating the focus from the student to an object, everyone participates, thus waiving a certain degree of self-consciousness. The experience, a student has with art in the classroom has to be gratifying for both the student and the teacher. If the atmosphere in the classroom is too grave it will not serve any useful purpose. Art is an excellent way to teach English and encourage collaboration and interaction between students of all ages. As making art involves many different processes, it is wonderful for classification and following/giving instructions. It is also an effective way to achieve and implement language of characterization and comparison and vocabulary acquirement for the elements of design (shape, size, color, texture, tone etc.) is so much more entertaining if done in a practical and hands-on way. Expressing ideas and feelings through art is also of immeasurable value where students are at the beginning stages of English language acquisition and for many of my Saudi students it was a form of therapy. It is also a way to respect, search, examine and share the cultural traditions of different cultures, and of the students themselves. Art not only provides a field for ideas to keep aimless, meandering minds of students' busy but is also a productive tool to analyze English language in a new order. As an ESL teacher, using art is a highly compelling way to bridge the gap between student and teacher. It’s difficult to keep students concentrated, especially when they speak a different language. To get students to actually learn and explore something in your foreign language lesson, artwork is your best friend. Many teachers feel that through amalgamation of the arts into their academic lessons students are able to learn more profoundly because they use diverse ways of thinking and problem solving. Teachers observe that drawing often retains students who might otherwise be dispassionate and can help students move ahead simple recall when they are asked to make connections and come up with an exclusive interpretation through an artwork or drawing. Students use observation skills when they are drawing, and this can help to persuade students who might otherwise remain silent or need more time to process information.

Keywords: amalgamation of arts, expressing ideas and feelings through arts, effective way to achieve and implement language, language and art can supplement and correlate each other

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Authors: Piyawan Srisuruk, Janya Boonmeeprasert, Romwarin Gamlunglert, Benjamaporn Choikhruea, Ornjira Jaraepram, Jarin Boonsuchat, Sakdadech Singkibud, Kusalaporn Chaiudomsom, Chanatiporn Chonprai, Pornchanaka Tana, Suchat Paholpak

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Objective: To develop an Intensive and comprehensive program (ICP) for the Inclusive Class Teacher (ICPICT) to teach elementary students (ES) with ASD in order to enhance the students’ academic and social skills (ASS) and to study the effect of the teaching program. Methods: The purposive sample included 15 Khon Kaen inclusive class teachers and their 15 elementary students. All the students were diagnosed by a child and adolescent psychiatrist to have DSM-5 level 1 ASD. The study tools included 1) an ICP to teach teachers about ASD, a teaching method to enhance academic and social skills for ES with ASD, and an assessment tool to assess the teacher’s knowledge before and after the ICP. 2) an ICPICT to teach ES with ASD to enhance their ASS. The project taught 10 sessions, 3 hours each. The ICPICT had its teaching structure. Teaching media included: pictures, storytelling, songs, and plays. The authors taught and demonstrated to the participant teachers how to teach with the ICPICT until the participants could display the correct teaching method. Then the teachers taught ICPICT at school by themselves 3) an assessment tool to assess the students’ ASS before and after the completion of the study. The ICP to teach the teachers, the ICPICT, and the relevant assessment tools were developed by the authors and were adjusted until consensus agreed as appropriate for researching by 3 curriculum of teaching children with ASD experts. The data were analyzed by descriptive and analytic statistics via SPSS version 26. Results: After the briefing, the teachers increased the mean score, though not with statistical significance, of knowledge of ASD and how to teach ES with ASD on ASS (p = 0.13). Teaching ES with ASD with the ICPICT could increase the mean scores of the students’ skills in learning and expressing social emotions, relationships with a friend, transitioning, and skills in academic function 3.33, 2.27, 2.94, and 3.00 scores (full scores were 18, 12, 15 and 12, Paired T-Test p = 0.007, 0.013, 0.028 and 0.003 respectively). Conclusion: The program to teach academic and social skills simultaneously in an intensive and comprehensive structure could enhance both the academic and social skills of elementary students with ASD. Keywords: Elementary students, autism spectrum, academic skill, social skills, intensive program, comprehensive program, integration.

Keywords: academica and social skills, students with autism, intensive and comprehensive, teaching program

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Authors: Ricardo Merlo

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The use of simulation as a digital didactic tool allowed students to reproduce the laws of Physics in order to improve their academic performance. The didactic resource of simulation also favored the motivation of most of the young people, depending on the subject of Physics to be developed in the classroom and in that sense, it was significant to know the favorable or unfavorable attitude that the students presented about the use of simulation resources to maximize the anchorage of the contents planned for the different classes developed in the classroom. The different real-time simulation applications that were offered free of charge through the Internet were not presented as a specific resource that could be used in a didactic model, and in that framework, the teachers of Physics at the university level did not apply these resources in a systematic way with the knowledge of the favorable or unfavorable attitude of the students towards these didactic resources. For this reason, this work proposed the design and application of attitude questionnaires to enhance the use of those simulation resources that allowed for improving the quality of the class and the academic performance of the students.

Keywords: physics teaching, attitude, motivation, didactic resources

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Authors: Berfu Guley Goren, Ayse Lale Berkoz

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The aim of the study is to analyze the concept of universal design and accessibility to make the city which allows equality and independence for individuals. In the content of the study, literature researches and observations of samples in Istanbul, Turkey are analyzed. As a result proposals are going to be developed to create the cities which are designed for everyone. In globalization process, in cities, population have been increasing dramatically with social and economic activities. Medical developments have been effective in prolonging human life and the disability that comes with aging has also increased in parallel with the disabled population. Nowadays disability is an important phenomenon. Because approximately 1 billion people live with disabilities. The heterogeneous structure formed by the rapid gathering of individuals with different social, economic and physical characteristics in the cities creates great spatial diversity and richness in the cities with different needs brought together. Unlike the cultural and physical wealth in these places and the potential to integrate and diversify the urban people, unfortunately, the designs in practice cause the urban areas to break apart, the urbanities to tear themselves apart, to interfere with their communication and interactions. The social and physical structure of the city is important to feel belonging to the urban society. In most cities when an observation is made, obstructions for people with disabilities can be seen in urban physical structure and design. With these obstructions, people with disabilities cannot live in urban space, and they are desolated in urban life. The city, which offers equal opportunity, the relation between economic development, social justice and built environment must be planned synchronous. Isolation and stigmatization must be abolished by regulations, activities of awareness and universal urban design. Without regard to social, economical and physical features every individual has the same right, which is using the freedom of movement. Supporting freedom of movement of every individual may be ensured by universal design and its principles. So urban spaces are going to be for every individual. For equal opportunity in urban services, urban design must be the focus on every individual including people with disabilities. In built environment practices, democratic suitable spaces should be created. In this respect, urban planners, architects, political decision-makers and other relevant actors should work together and should think very versatile.

Keywords: disability, equality, universal design, urban design

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Authors: Proud Arunrangsiwed, Sarinya Kongtieng

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Teachers and university lecturers face an unsolved problem, which is students’ multitasking behaviors during class time, such as texting or playing a game. It is important to examine the most powerful predictor that can result in students’ educational performances. Meta-analysis was used to analyze the research articles, which were published with the keywords, multitasking, class performance, and texting. We selected 14 research articles published during 2008-2013 from online databases, and four articles met the predetermined inclusion criteria. Effect size of each pair of variables was used as the dependent variable. The findings revealed that the students’ expectancy and value on SNSs usages is the best significant predictor of their educational performances, followed by their motivation and ability in using SNSs, prior educational performances, usage behaviors of SNSs in class, and their personal characteristics, respectively. Future study should conduct a longitudinal design to better understand the effect of multitasking in the classroom.

Keywords: meta-regression analysis, social networking sites, academic Performances, multitasking, motivation

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Authors: Sunanta Klibthong

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Inclusive education services for students with Autism remains in its early developmental stages in Thailand. Despite many more children with autism are attending schools since the Thai government introduced the Education Provision for People with Disabilities Act in 2008, the services students with autism and their families receive are generally lacking. This quantitative study used Attitude and Preparedness to Teach Students with Autism Scale (APTSAS) to investigate 110 primary school teachers’ attitude and preparedness to teach students with autism in the general education classroom. Descriptive statistical analysis of the data found that student behaviour was the most significant factor in building teachers’ negative attitudes students with autism. The majority of teachers also indicated that their pre-service education did not prepare them to meet the learning needs of children with autism in particular, those who are non-verbal. The study is significant and provides direction for enhancing teacher education for inclusivity in Thailand.

Keywords: attitude, autism, teachers, Thailand

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Authors: Eric Tardif, Nicolas Meylan

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Recent studies suggest that the consolidation of episodic memory is better achieved through repeated retrieval than with the use of concept mapping or repeated study. Although such laboratory results highly appeal to educationalists, it remains to be shown whether they can be directly used in a classroom setting. Forty-five college students (42 girls; mean age 16.1 y/o) were asked to remember pairs of biology-related words (e.g. mitochondria-energy) in two configurations. The first configuration consisted of a three-minute study of pairs of words followed by a final one-minute test in which the first word of a pair was shown and the subject asked to write down the second associated word. This procedure was repeated three times. The second configuration consisted of a one-minute study of a list of pairs of words, which was immediately followed by a one-minute test. This procedure was repeated 6 times. Subjects filled out a small questionnaire assessing their general mood, level of fatigue, stress and motivation to do the exercise. One week later, subjects were given a final test using the same words. A total of 8 lists of words were studied and tested during the semester. Results showed that subjects recalled more correct words when using the second configuration, both within the study period and one week later, confirming laboratory findings. However, the general performance (mean items recalled) as well as the motivation to do the exercise gradually decreased during the semester. Motivation was positively correlated with performance (r=0.77, p<0.05). The results suggest that laboratory findings may provide some applications in education but other variables inherent to the classroom setting must also be considered.

Keywords: long-term, episodic memory, consolidation, retrieval, school setting

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Authors: Zahra Mirsanjari, Mohammad Reza Baradaran, Mehdi Rastegari Ghiri

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Research in the field of education has widely documented that teachers’ sense of efficacy has strong impacts on various aspects of teaching and learning. The present study is an attempt to examine Iranian EFL teachers’ degree of self-efficacy for teaching English. The data required for the study was gathered from Iranian EFL teachers teaching English as a foreign language in different schools and language institutes in Iran. Data were collected using Teacher’s Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES). Results identified four dimensions of teachers’ English teaching-specific sense of efficacy: instructional strategies, classroom management, student engagement, and oral English language use. It was also found that teachers rated their self-efficacy in teaching English at a moderate level in the dimensions of instructional strategies, classroom management, and student engagement. Results have implications for language teachers and practitioners.

Keywords: Self-efficacy, teaching, EFL, teachers

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Authors: Samara E., Kilintzis P., Katsoras E., Martinidis G.

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Regions play an important role in the global economy by driving research and innovation policies through a major tool, the Regional Innovation System (RIS). RIS is a social system that encompasses the systematic interaction of the various organizations that comprise it in order to improve local knowledge and innovation. This article describes the methodological framework for developing and validating a RIS model utilizing system dynamics. This model focuses on the functional structure of the RIS, separating it in six diverse, interacting sub-systems.

Keywords: innovations, regional development, systems thinking, social system

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Authors: Mara Varelaki

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In response to the challenge of the environmental crisis the discipline of environmental ethics examines the relation of human beings towards the environment and the value of the non-human constituents of the surrounding world. In the face of this crisis, assumptions regarding human and nature relations ought to be traced and reexamined because they can cause difficulties in diagnosing problematic attitudes towards the environment and non-human animals. This paper presents the claims that European and the Judea-Christian cosmogonic myths place the human figure in the core of the creation of the cosmos, thus verifying a hierarchical structure where humans occupy the top, and they establish a perception of nature as a non-human other. By doing so, these narratives provide some justification to the notion of the human-nature dichotomy and the human domination over other life forms and ecosystems. These anthropocentric assumptions evolved into what Hilde Lindemann terms master narratives and their influence extents to ecocentric ethical theories which attempt, and often fail, to shed the anthropocentrism of the western ethical tradition. The goal of this paper is (1) to trace the anthropocentric assumptions embedded in western thought and (2) articulate how they maintain their grip on our contemporary understanding of the human relation to and position within the environment, thus showing the need for a method of detecting and bracketing anthropocentric assumptions in social narratives and ethical frameworks.

Keywords: cosmogonies, anthropocentrism, human/nature dichotomy, master narratives, ecocentrism

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Authors: Rudolf Egger

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This article shows some results of an ongoing project in Kosova. This project deals with the meaning of social transformation processes in the life-courses of Kosova people. One goal is to create an oral history archive in this country. In the last seven years we did some interpretative work (using narrative interviews) concerning the experiences and meanings of social changes from the perspective of life course. We want to reconstruct the individual possibilities in creating one's life in new social structures. After the terrible massacres of ethnical-territorially defined nationalism in former Yugoslavia it is the main focus to find out something about the many small daily steps which must be done, to build up a kind of “normality” in this country. These steps can be very well reconstructed by narrations, by life stories, because personal experiences are naturally linked with social orders. Each individual story is connected with further stories, in which the collective history will be negotiated and reflected. The view on the biographical narration opens the possibility to analyze the concreteness of the “individual case” in the complexity of collective history. Life stories contain thereby a kind of a transition character, that’s why they can be used for the reconstruction of periods of political transformation. For example: In the individual story we can find very clear the national or mythological character of the Albanian people in Kosova. The shown narrations can be read also as narrative lines in relation to the (re-)interpretation of the past, in which lived life is fixed into history in the so-called collective memory in Kosova.

Keywords: biographical learning, adult education, social change, post war societies

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Authors: Revaz Gvelesiani

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The problem of compliance between the state economic policy and entrepreneurial policy of businesses is primarily manifested in the contradictions related to the congruence between entrepreneurship development and self-development strategies. Among various types (financial, monetary, social, etc.) of the state economic policy aiming at the development of entrepreneurship, economic order policy is of special importance. Its goal is to set the framework for both public and private economic activities and achieve coherence between the societal value system and the formation of the economic order framework. Economic order policy, in its turn, involves intrinsic contradiction between the social and the competitive order. Competitive order is oriented on the principle of success, while social order _ on the criteria of need satisfaction, which contradicts, at least partly, to the principles of success. Thus within the economic order policy, on the one hand, the state makes efforts to form social order and expand its frontiers, while, on the other hand, market is determined to establish functioning competitive order and ensure its realization. Locating the adequate spaces for and setting the rational border between the state (social order) and the private (competitive order) activities, represents the phenomenon of the decisive importance from the entrepreneurship development strategy standpoint. In the countries where the above mentioned spaces and borders are “set” correctly, entrepreneurship agents (small, medium-sized and large businesses) achieve great success by means of seizing the respective segments and maintaining the leading positions in the internal, the European and the world markets for a long time. As for the entrepreneurship self-development strategy, above all, it involves: •market identification; •interactions with consumers; •continuous innovations; •competition strategy; •relationships with partners; •new management philosophy, etc. The analysis of compliance between the entrepreneurship strategy and entrepreneurship culture should be the reference point for any kind of internationalization in order to avoid shocks of cultural nature and the economic backwardness. Stabilization can be achieved only when the employee actions reflect the existing culture and the new contents of culture (targeted culture) is turned into the implicit consciousness of the personnel. The future leaders should learn how to manage different cultures. Entrepreneurship can be managed successfully if its strategy and culture are coherent. However, not rarely enterprises (organizations) show various forms of violation of both personal and team actions. If personal and team non-observances appear as the form of influence upon the culture, it will lead to global destruction of the system and structure. This is the entrepreneurship culture pathology that complicates to achieve compliance between the entrepreneurship strategy and entrepreneurship culture. Thus, the intrinsic contradictions of entrepreneurship development and self-development strategies complicate the task of reaching compliance between the state economic policy and the company entrepreneurship policy: on the one hand, there is a contradiction between the social and the competitive order within economic order policy and on the other hand, the contradiction exists between entrepreneurship strategy and entrepreneurship culture within entrepreneurship policy.

Keywords: economic order policy, entrepreneurship, development contradictions, self-development contradictions

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