Social class, language and power ‘Letter to a teacher’ : Lorenzo Milani and the school of Barbiana

The link between language and power and the indispensible and urgent need for the oppressed to master the dominant language for emancipatory purposes are among the recurrent themes of Lettera a una professoressa. Developing communicative abilities and learning the ‘art’ of writing are seen by the authors of the Lettera as instruments of empowerment and means to resist the dominant location of hegemonic groups who reproduce their power through an education process that self-serves the interests of the most powerful. One of the main notions expressed constantly throughout the Lettera is that each and every child can learn how to reflect on his/her use of different languages, including the mother tongue, and that all learning experiences in life are valuable, regardless of one’s socioeconomic status. However, when children with different backgrounds start attending school they go through different experiences, even because of the form of language used by teachers: in some cases this may be a natural transition from what they are exposed to at home, even in their pre-school years; in other cases the language of schooling is totally different, the language register may be more formal and the variety used may approach standard forms which contrast with local or regional varieties used at home. The language of schooling may therefore represent one of the first obstacles towards the socialisation and integration of some pupils.peer-reviewe

The Use of Proof Planning for Cooperative Theorem Proving

AbstractWe describebarnacle: a co-operative interface to theclaminductive theorem proving system. For the foreseeable future, there will be theorems which cannot be proved completely automatically, so the ability to allow human intervention is desirable; for this intervention to be productive the problem of orienting the user in the proof attempt must be overcome. There are many semi-automatic theorem provers: we call our style of theorem provingco-operative, in that the skills of both human and automaton are used each to their best advantage, and used together may find a proof where other methods fail. The co-operative nature of thebarnacleinterface is made possible by the proof planning technique underpinningclam. Our claim is that proof planning makes new kinds of user interaction possible.Proof planning is a technique for guiding the search for a proof in automatic theorem proving. Common patterns of reasoning in proofs are identified and represented computationally as proof plans, which can then be used to guide the search for proofs of new conjectures. We have harnessed the explanatory power of proof planning to enable the user to understand where the automatic prover got to and why it is stuck. A user can analyse the failed proof in terms ofclam's specification language, and hence override the prover to force or prevent the application of a tactic, or discover a proof patch. This patch might be to apply further rules or tactics to bridge the gap between the effects of previous tactics and the preconditions needed by a currently inapplicable tactic

Developing oral proficiency through poem recitation in elementary English as a second language

This project addresses the need for a performance-based language-development curriculum to serve the growing number of non-English-speaker immigrants in California\u27s public schools

Citizenship in the Inclusive Environment

The purpose of this study was to investigate the strategies used by educators to initiate equal opportunity for students with disabilities in the social environment known as the inclusive setting. This study also showed how children develop an understanding of what it means to have citizenship in the classroom, and how this stance is reached through the aid of peers and teachers. To be a citizen in the classroom is defined by Mara Sapon-Shevin as a naturalized individual who is entitled to the rights and privileges as any other student (2003). Having these rights and privileges encourages any student to comfortably learn in supportive environment. The citizenship learned in the classroom will encourage students to be leaders in their community with a voice

A Descriptive Multiple Case Study of Three Elementary Schools in Project Homecoming, the Inclusion Program Within the Dallas Independent School District

Topic. The focus of this study was the actions, policies, and procedures used in the successful implementation of an inclusion program in three elementary schools participating in Project Homecoming within the Dallas Independent School District. I was interested in how these actions, policies, and procedures affected the different groups within the schools--students, parents, certified staff, and non-certified staff as well. The data gathered in this study should be useful to other school districts in the process of developing an inclusion program in the elementary school. Purpose. The purpose of this study was to identify the actions, policies, and procedures needed to implement a successful inclusion program. General Methodology. This study is a descriptive multiple case study of three of the elementary schools that are a part of the Project Homecoming in the Dallas Independent School District, Dallas, Texas. I reviewed documents associated with the Homecoming Project and conducted interviews and observations. The school administrators and program administrators were interviewed. Homecoming teachers and support personnel within the participating schools were interviewed, as well as students and their parents. An interview guide was formulated. The case study was piloted at a private school involved in the implementation of an inclusion program. Results. After the first year of implementing the program there were very few actions, policies, and procedures at the District level. The schools participating in the program did not implement any specific actions, policies, and procedures relative to Project Homecoming other than establishing school planning teams and including special-needs children in theregular classroom. The attitude of the staff and the commitment of the local schoolbuilding administrator were contributors to the success of this program after the initial implementation. The District was unable to carry through with extensive training and support services from the central office. Conclusions. Before implementing an inclusion program, school districts should be sure that all populations of the school community are committed to inclusion. The district should also be sure that funding is provided for staff development and support staff

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHARACTER EDUCATION MODEL TROUGH AN INTEGRATED CURRICULUM AT ELEMENTARY EDUCATION LEVEL IN MEDAN CITY

Character education is an effort to help the development of the soul of children/learners both inward and inward to a better human. Therefore character education is a continuous and never-ending process, in order to produce a future human figure rooted in the cultural values of the Indonesian nation. Thus character education has a higher meaning than moral education because character education is not only about right-wrong problems, but how to instill habits of good things in life, so that children/learners will have awareness, and high understanding, as well as concern and commitment to apply the virtues in everyday life. Character education in today's context is very relevant to children/learners to overcome the moral crisis that is happening in our country. Whether or not this real moral crisis exists that involves our generation is our children as future leaders. The crisis is among others promiscuity, a crime against friends, teenage theft, cheating habits, drug abuse and drugs, pornography, and so forth. This should be addressed early on by characterizing character education through an integrated curriculum to children/learners. This is done by researchers as a continuation of research activities in 2015 with the object of basic education research in Muhammadiyah Elementary School  29 of Sunggal. The year 2016 was continued again in Muhammadiyah Junior High School 47 of Sunggal as part of basic education. Because the so-called elementary education is elementary (primary school) and junior (junior high school) equal. This research was conducted to see the development of character education model conducted in SMP Muhammadiyah 47 Sunggal through an integrated curriculum. Because so far there is a stigma that the character education is only the responsibility of teachers REM and PCE in school, so that dichotomous character education (only inculcated by both teachers while other teachers do not do). It turns out through an integrated curriculum that character education is willing or not to be inculcated by all teachers and school residents. So the model of character education today is through 2 approaches, character education is positioned as the subject itself and character education is positioned as the mission of every subject (integrated into each subject). This research is conducted as an effort to assist the government in anticipating and overcoming the moral crisis that occurs in order to prepare a generation that character in the futureKeywords: Character Education Model, Integrated Curriculum, Elementary Education Level

Clafer: Lightweight Modeling of Structure, Behaviour, and Variability

Embedded software is growing fast in size and complexity, leading to intimate mixture of complex architectures and complex control. Consequently, software specification requires modeling both structures and behaviour of systems. Unfortunately, existing languages do not integrate these aspects well, usually prioritizing one of them. It is common to develop a separate language for each of these facets. In this paper, we contribute Clafer: a small language that attempts to tackle this challenge. It combines rich structural modeling with state of the art behavioural formalisms. We are not aware of any other modeling language that seamlessly combines these facets common to system and software modeling. We show how Clafer, in a single unified syntax and semantics, allows capturing feature models (variability), component models, discrete control models (automata) and variability encompassing all these aspects. The language is built on top of first order logic with quantifiers over basic entities (for modeling structures) combined with linear temporal logic (for modeling behaviour). On top of this semantic foundation we build a simple but expressive syntax, enriched with carefully selected syntactic expansions that cover hierarchical modeling, associations, automata, scenarios, and Dwyer's property patterns. We evaluate Clafer using a power window case study, and comparing it against other notations that substantially overlap with its scope (SysML, AADL, Temporal OCL and Live Sequence Charts), discussing benefits and perils of using a single notation for the purpose

Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Domain-Specific Language Design and Implementation (DSLDI 2015)

The goal of the DSLDI workshop is to bring together researchers and practitioners interested in sharing ideas on how DSLs should be designed, implemented, supported by tools, and applied in realistic application contexts. We are both interested in discovering how already known domains such as graph processing or machine learning can be best supported by DSLs, but also in exploring new domains that could be targeted by DSLs. More generally, we are interested in building a community that can drive forward the development of modern DSLs. These informal post-proceedings contain the submitted talk abstracts to the 3rd DSLDI workshop (DSLDI'15), and a summary of the panel discussion on Language Composition