Of Wife and the Domestic Servant in the Arab World

The author asserts to avoid common misunderstandings on the relevance of Sharia to modern women in the Arab World that a) Shari’s relevance to the lives of modern women in the Arab World has been largely confined to the area of family law, b) in the modern nation state Sharia has been codified, i.e., certain rules derived from Islamic jurisprudence on the family have been selected and passed as laws, each nation state having its own unique combination of such rules, c) the courts and the judges who adjudicate disputes on family law are either secular courts/judges, or judges trained in state-run judiciary institutions with specific instruction on the state-based modern understanding of what Sharia is and d) the code, rather than Quran, the prophetic traditions, or the school of Islamic jurisprudence, is the primary source of the law. The latter constitute secondary sources

Collaborating in virtual teams

Abstract. This paper describes some early results from observin

Ask a clearer question, get a better answer.

Many undergraduate students struggle to engage with higher order skills such as evaluation and synthesis in written assignments, either because they do not understand that these are the aim of written assessment or because these critical thinking skills require more effort than writing a descriptive essay. Here, we report that students who attended a freely available workshop, in which they were coached to pose a question in the title of their assignment and then use their essay to answer that question, obtained higher marks for their essay than those who did not attend. We demonstrate that this is not a result of latent academic ability amongst students who chose to attend our workshops and suggest this increase in marks was a result of greater engagement with ‘critical thinking’ skills, which are essential for upper 2:1 and 1st class grades. The tutoring method we used holds two particular advantages: First, we allow students to pick their own topics of interest, which increases ownership of learning, which is associated with motivation and engagement in ‘difficult’ tasks. Second, this method integrates the development of ‘inquisitiveness’ and critical thinking into subject specific learning, which is thought to be more productive than trying to develop these skills in isolation

Assessments in Mathematics, undergraduate degree

In the sequel, we question the validity of multiple choice questionnaires for undergraduate level math courses. Our study is based on courses given in major French universities, to numerous audiences

Interlocutors-Related and Hearer-Specific Causes of Misunderstanding: Processing Strategy, Confirmation Bias and Weak Vigilance

Noises, similarities between words, slips of the tongue, ambiguities, wrong or false beliefs, lexical deficits, inappropriate inferences, cognitive overload, non-shared knowledge, topic organisation or focusing problems, among others, may cause misunderstanding. While some of these are structural factors, others pertain to the speaker or to both the speaker and the hearer. In addition to stable factors connected with the interlocutors′ communicative abilities, cultural knowledge or patterns of thinking, other less stable factors, such as their personal relationships, psychological states or actions motivated by physiological functions, may also result in communicative problems. This paper considers a series of further factors that may eventually lead to misunderstanding, and which solely pertain to the hearer: processing strategy, confirmation bias and weak vigilance

The grounded theory alternative in business network research

This paper presents a brief outline of the defining characteristics of grounded theory methodology. Such a focus was motivated by a desire to bring the methodology into clearer focus. Particular attention is paid to the debate grounded theory has engendered. In doing so, a number of misunderstandings, dilemmas and criticisms are highlighted. Thus, while one research strategy should not be emphasised to the exclusion of others, this paper advocates the use of grounded theory methodology as a fresh approach in addressing some of the research challenges associated with network studies

Chapter 6: Culture and Ethics

The OTiS (Online Teaching in Scotland) programme, run by the now defunct Scotcit programme, ran an International e-Workshop on Developing Online Tutoring Skills which was held between 8–12 May 2000. It was organised by Heriot–Watt University, Edinburgh and The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, UK. Out of this workshop came the seminal Online Tutoring E-Book, a generic primer on e-learning pedagogy and methodology, full of practical implementation guidelines. Although the Scotcit programme ended some years ago, the E-Book has been copied to the SONET site as a series of PDF files, which are now available via the ALT Open Access Repository. The editor, Carol Higgison, is currently working in e-learning at the University of Bradford (see her staff profile) and is the Chair of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT)

MAINTAINING VERNACULARS TO PROMOTE PEACE AND TOLERANCEIN MULTILINGUAL COMMUNITY IN INDONESIA

Indonesia is a large nation in terms of ethnics, cultures, and vernaculars. Indonesian constitution guarantees that the cultures, vernaculars will be taken care of by the government. Thiss in line with the UNESCO recommendation, to preserve vernaculars as the world culturalheritage. The most important thing is that preserving vernaculars will promote peace andsolidarity in multilingual community. In reality, speakers of many vernaculars in Indonesia aregetting less and less. Sneddon states that this is caused by lingua franca and language shift (2003:203). Areas of higher linguistic diversity like Indonesia always need means of interethniccommunication, i.e. lingua franca. People shift to lingua franca may cause vernacular speakersdecline rapidly, which may cause language decay. The teaching of vernaculars only at the passiveevel, not emphasizing writing and reading will fasten the language decay.Vernaculars will bepreserved if they are respected, used, and inherited to the following generation. Friberg (2011)ates that languages that can be maintained are the ones written and can be read. We should notonly use our national language, but also our vernaculars in order to maintain our regionalanguages. And as people of multilingual community, it is better if we are multilingual. It should beborne in mind that vernaculars reflect local cultures, local values, local identity. The exposure toregional languages will make people familiar with the languages. And as a result, the people willbe familiar with their own cultural values and other people‘s cultural values. Komorowska (2010)aims that understanding others‘ languages will promote understanding and communicationbetween citizens. And this will lead to peace process, to deeper knowledge of other communitiesand their cultures, and in consequence to promote tolerance