Substituting for families? Schools and social reproduction in AIDS-affected Lesotho

This is the post-print version of the final published article that is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2008 Editorial Board of Antipode.Families, the state and employers all have a broad if differentiated interest in securing the daily and generational reproduction of society. Whereas in Western countries, the past two decades have witnessed a progressive displacement of responsibility for social reproduction from the state to families, in southern Africa, day-to-day social reproduction has always remained overwhelmingly the preserve of families. Today, however, the AIDS pandemic is radically transforming family life for many children, and prompting concerns (arguably a moral panic) about the potential breakdown of social reproduction. Even in Africa, schools have long supplemented families in delivering generational reproduction, albeit geared around the transfer of “factual” knowledge and with a narrow focus on preparing new generations of workers. In light of the AIDS pandemic, a number of commentators have suggested ways in which schools could further substitute for the diminishing capacities of families. Based on interviews with decision-makers and analysis of policy documents, I explore a number of interventions being enacted in Lesotho's schools. I argue that such initiatives remain small in scale and often justified in relation to retaining children in school. In practice both government and employers remain more interested in the generational reproduction of workers than in daily reproduction. If the welfare needs of AIDS-affected children are to be met through schooling, there is a need for the education sector's role to be understood in relation to an ethics of care, rather than the functionalist production of a future workforce.RGS-IBG Small Research Gran

Online Teaching Strategies of Language skills during Pandemic:A Case of Self-Efficacy of Teaching Faculty in Qatar Universities

COVID-19 caused teaching to shifted online which emanated challenges for both teachers and students. To overcome such challenges, self-efficacy plays a vital role. The major objective of this study was to investigate the self-efficacy of teaching staff during the time of COVID-19. The population was a total of over 1100 the university instructors, out of which a sample of 212 (Female=62, Male= 150) participants was administered. The research data was collected through Likert scale after given a training of using various online teaching strategies with language skills for three days. The factors including in this scale were students’ engagement, classroom management, and instructional strategies with 22 statements. Descriptive and Infrential statistics were assessed by using AMOS software. The findings of this research revealed that the respondents showed a high level of self-efficacy towards teaching during pandemic; and that online teaching was challenging for both pre-service teachers and experienced teachers. Further, there was a significant difference found among the demographic variables of the study regarding students’ engagement, classroom management and instructional strategies with language skills. Further, the qualitative results revealed no significant difference about the demographic characteristics of the respondents regarding self-efficacy through online teaching. There was a significant difference found in mean score where female score was greater than male score. This research is expected to make a great contribution for the development of the self-efficacy of the teaching faculty for the successful completion of teaching-learning process through online teaching

Comparing Reading Achievement Scores of Fifth Grade Female Students in Lutheran Schools to Those in a National Norming Group

The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a statistically significant difference between Reading Achievement scores of fifth grade Lutheran school female students compared to national norms. Fifth grade female students (n = 20) from eight New York Lutheran elementary schools who took the Spring 1996 Stanford Achievement Reading Test were the subjects of this study. The scores were collected from eight Lutheran elementary schools and separated by gender. These scores were compared to the national Stanford Achievement Reading scores for fifth grade level. A t test was used to analyze the data. It was determined that there was no statistically significant difference between fifth grade Lutheran female students\u27 scores and the national norming group\u27s scores

ANALISIS KESIAPAN PEMBELAJARAN E-LEARNING SAAT PANDEMI COVID-19 DI SMK NEGERI 1 TAMBELANGAN

Abstrak: Tujuan dalam penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui bagaimana Kesiapan Pembelajaran e-learning saat pandemic COVID-19 di SMK Negeri 1 Tambelangan dalam enam aspek kesiapan (kesiapan peserta didik, kesiapan guru, kesiapan infrastruktur, dukungan managemen, budaya sekolah, dan kecenderungan terhadap tatap muka). Model E-Learning Readiness yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah Model Teddy & Swatman (2006) menggunakan enam faktor kesiapan. Enam faktor tersebut adalah kesiapan peserta didik, kesiapan guru, infrastruktur, dukungan managemen, budaya sekolah dan kecenderungan pembelajaran tatap muka. Faktor kesiapan peserta didik diperoleh nilai sebesar 3,8 dalam skala 5. Menurut tabel rentang nilai dan kategori (Aydin & Tasci 2005 : 2015) bahwa dengan nilai tersebut dinyatakan siap tetapi membutuhkan sedikit peningkatan. Faktor kesiapan guru, Faktor dukungan management serta faktor budaya sekolah diperoleh nilai sebesar 4,2. Menurut tabel rentang nilai dan kategori (Aydin & Tasci 2005 : 2015) bahwa dengan nilai tersebut siap penerapan e-learning dapat dilanjutkan. Hanya 1 faktor yang tidak siap dan perlu peningkatan adalah Faktor Kecenderungan pembelajaran e-learning dengan nilai ELR sebesar 3,3Abstract:  The purpose of this study was to find out how e-learning Learning Readiness during the COVID-19 pandemic at SMK Negeri 1 Tambelang in six aspects of readiness (student readiness, teacher readiness, infrastructure readiness, management support, school culture, and trends in face-to-face).The E-Learning Readiness model used in this study is the Teddy & Swatman Model (2006) using six readiness factors. The six factors are the readiness of students, teacher readiness, infrastructure, management support, school culture and the tendency of face-to-face learning. Student readiness factor obtained value of 3,8 on scale of 5. According to the table of ranges of values and categories (Aydin & Tasci 2005: 2015) that with these values is declared ready but requires a slight increase. Teacher readiness factors, management support factors and School Culture Factors score of 4.2. According to the table of ranges of values and categories (Aydin & Tasci 2005: 2015) that with these values ready for the application of e-learning can be continued. Only 1 factor that is not ready and needs improvement is the e-learning tendency factor with an ELR value of 3.

Career exploration of Chinese university students in Hong Kong: testing relations among antecedent, process and outcome variables

A quantitative research study was conducted with Chinese students from a university in Hong Kong over a period of up to six months to examine relations among antecedent, process and outcome variables of career exploration. With reference to Flum. and Blustein's (2000) research framework of vocational exploration and the situation in Hong Kong, 22 hypotheses were developed for testing. A cross-sectional sample of 271 and a longitudinal sample of 101 respondents were obtained from students who participated in either a student internship or a series of career seminars. The results demonstrated that relational support, prior career exploration and time effects were related consistently to career exploration as hypothesized, but the claim that achievement motivation is an antecedent of exploration received only limited support. Career exploration was also found to be related consistently to career decision making self efficacy and associated with identity status as hypothesized, but the propositions that self clarity, career decisiveness and career decidedness are outcomes of career exploration were not sufficiently proved. Moreover, participants in work internships did not show a significantly greater increase in career exploration over time than participants in career seminars. Taken in total, the study was fruitful in applying the framework of Flum and Blustein (2000) for the first time in Hong Kong and adding culture-specific variables to it. Especially, the constructs of Chinese motivation (Yu & Yang, 1987) and of prior career exploration (Millar & Shevlin, 2003) were found relevant in understanding career exploration behaviour. The theoretical and applied implications of this study are discussed and suggestions are made to further extend the line of career exploration research in Hong Kong and other Chinese societies

The Language Attitude of Border Peoples Insular Riau, West Kalimantan, East Kalimantan, North Sulawesi, and the Eastern Sunda Islands

This research aims at describing (1) the language use of border area societies (Insular Riau, West Kalimantan, East Kalimantan, North Sulawesi, and the Eastern Sunda Islands) in terms of local language (BD), Indonesian (BI), and foreign language (BA) in the domains of family, society, and occupation, (2) language activity of border area societies relating to news observation, language attention, and language constraints in mass media, (3) language attitude of border area societies towards BD, BI, and BA. The findings are as follows. First, within the family and society at large, BD is more frequently used than BI and BA. This shows that BD functions in non-formal situations. In the professional field, however, BI is more frequently used than BD. Second, people in border provinces widely observe mass media, whether printed or electronic. They also often pay attention to the language the mass media uses. Third, border societies have a positive attitude towards BD as is shown (agree/totally agree) by the answers to eight questions relating to BD. The language attitude of border societies towards BI is positive based on the answers (agree/totally agree) to seven questions concerning BI. This also means that BI is prestigious for border people, especially in formal communication. The language attitude of border societies towards BA is mixed. In as far as it is negative it implies a positive evaluation of BD and BI because people appreciate them as part of their local and national identities

Bilingual preschool education: a comparative study between Hong Kong and Shanghai

Global and local factors have recently pushed English-Chinese bilingualism to the forefront of early childhood education in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Signaling new sociolinguístic alignments, each city is pursuing language policies according to its own political and economic imperatives. Using Bronfenbrenner’s (1977) ecological system's theory as a framework for analysis, this research study examines the contextual layers that shape the linguistic environments of the two cities, focusing on the macrosystem’s forces of globalization, the exosystem’s social networks, the mesosystem's institutions and human players, the microsystem's schools and homes, and the chronosystem’s biology, acknowledging all factors that affect child development. In the hope of providing better strategies and interventions for developing second language learning, it looks at the stakeholders' attitudes towards, beliefs about, and expectations of English, as well as at parental involvement in children’s English education, perceptions about NETs (native English-speaking teachers), and curriculum implementation. Quantitative and qualitative data collected (from four schools in each city and a total of 438 respondents) through questionnaires, interviews and archival documents are then triangulated to identify differences and similarities between the two cities. The results show that English is universally promoted for its economic benefits, both to individuals and society. The form of preschool bilingualism advocated by the governments of Hong Kong and Shanghai, however, is unduly influenced by political and nationalist considerations. This has lead in Shanghai to conceptualizations of bilingualism that allow only for the acquisition of English without its attendant cultural and philosophical dimensions. In Hong Kong, the government's attempt to arbitrarily reduce the size of English-medium education, has lead, due to blowback, to extremely high English literacy expectations for preschoolers, delivered through overly ambitious programmes. In both cities, attempts to safeguard the use of the mother tongue as the primary medium of Instruction stand in the way of early bilingual development through immersion or partial immersion. In addition, the stakeholders' disparate expectations about when, how and why English at preschool is important have given rise to conflicts and dilemmas that distort the two cities' cultures of learning and the extent and form of their education reforms. The recommendations made seek to create for bilingual preschool education, sufficient space, given the current political, social, and economic conditions in both cities, to allow educators to pursue it with the most effective pedagogies

The Relationship Between Teachers’ Understanding and Implementation of Differentiated Reading Instruction and Third-Graders’ Reading Achievement Scores

The purpose of this correlational study was to determine whether the predictor variables, teachers’ perceived understanding and implementation of differentiated instruction, as measured by the Understanding and Implementation of Differentiated Instruction survey, had a relationship to the criterion variable, third-grade students’ reading achievement, as measured by the mClass: Reading 3D Text Reading and Comprehension Test. Using convenience sampling, third grade teachers from six rural North Carolina counties were invited to participate in the study. Data from 54 third grade teachers who consented to participate were analyzed using a Pearson product moment correlation. The results of this study indicated that a statistically significant relationship did not exist between teachers’ understanding and implementation of differentiated instruction and third-grade students’ reading achievement scores

Teacher-student relationship in an age of student consumerism

This thesis is about teacher-student relationship in higher education. Set against the background of marketization, when the higher education sector is seen as a market, education institutions act like business enterprises, and students are seen as customers, teacher-student relationship is commonly perceived as having transformed itself to resemble a customer-seller relationship. On a conceptual level, this transformation is doing a disservice to the sector, as revealed in the many obvious differences between a customer-seller relationship and that between teachers and students. Academics, in particular, vehemently resist such conceptualizations, blaming such transformations as the main culprit of the prevalence of students’ disengagement and incivility in higher education nowadays. While much of what has been said about the negative influence of student consumerism on teacher-student relationship has been anecdotal in nature, this thesis attempts to offer some empirical evidence to fill the gap in the literature. Because of its quantitative nature, this study focused on only one of the many possible dimensions of examining teacher-student relationship, the power relations, measured by the level of teachers’ influence on students. Using the Interpersonal Power Interaction Model (IPIM) as the conceptual framework, this thesis assesses the relationship between student consumerism and teacher power by (1) examining the association between the students’ consumerist attitude and teachers’ hard and soft power bases and (2) establishing the moderation effect of students’ consumerist attitude on the relationship between students’ personality variables and teachers’ soft and hard power bases. The study was conducted in the HKUSPACE Community College, the leading community college of the sector which has been operating on a fully self-financing status since its establishment in 2000. Data was collected by way of a questionnaire survey covering the key variables including students’ consumerist attitude, compliance with teachers’ power, as well as four personality variables: motivation orientation, desire for control, concern for appropriateness and self-esteem. Statistical analysis of the findings from the research confirmed only some of the hypotheses. In terms of correlation, while students’ consumerist attitude was found to be positively associated with soft power base as hypothesized, its correlation with hard power base was also found to be positive, which was contradictory to the hypothesis. In terms of moderation, consumerist attitude was found to moderate only three out of ten relationships between personality factors and teacher power bases. Specifically, students’ consumerist attitude was found to moderate the relationship between intrinsic motivation and compliance with both hard and soft power bases, as well as that between concern for appropriateness and soft power base. Results have been analyzed in light of the literature on instructional communication and teaching effectiveness with implications offered to warn educators against the potential abuse of soft power as well as on the proper use of both power bases to exercise positive influence on students. Implications were also drawn on further research in the area of teacher-student relationship in the context of a marketized education sector