Thank you, merci, shukran! private education and language in Egypt

My thesis examines the processes by which the reproduction of power and social hierarchies transpire in the field of international, private schools in Egypt. More specifically, I will analyze how the linguistic system in these schools reproduce and reinforce forms of power and inequality. I will consider the process by which nonnative languages, principally English, became the dominant and legitimate linguistic system of these schools, and how the complexities of their habitus have influenced students\u27 language beliefs and practices. Language is a place for ideological contestation and identity assertion reinforcing power relations between groups and individuals. Differences in accent, grammar, language, and vocabulary indicate hierarchical social positions and quantities of linguistic capital. Furthermore, this process has stigmatized Arabic, although the national language, as deficient and subordinate. Using a theoretical framework guided by the work of Pierre Bourdieu and through ethnographic fieldwork, I will attempt to understand the effects such developments have on structuring agents\u27 (studentsâ primarily Egyptian, teachers, alumni) behavior and beliefs, and how private schools assist in the reproduction of this social order. Aside from my ethnographic fieldwork, I explore the effects of two transformative socio-historical processes on Egypt\u27s education system and social order. First, I explore the emergence of the effendiya and the reproduction of their habitus and practices into a privileged, cosmopolitan class. Second, I explore the reproduction of social positions and inequalities through the continued bifurcation of Egypt\u27s education system into two distinct tracks. Previous scholarship focused on public Egyptian schools analyzing curriculum, the pyramidal and antidemocratic nature of public schooling, the impact of Islam on school culture, and the State and Arabic language polices. I, however, will focus on the complexities of social processes in Egypt\u27s â privilegedâ class regarding the development of language using education as the site of contestation. Through a rather unexplored approach, this thesis will show how inequalities and social hierarchies are transferred into the macrosociety through the English language and education. Furthermore, it also addresses ways in which power relations and social positions of the elite in Egypt are maintained and reproduced

The Influence of Smart Technology on an Older Adult’s Communication with Family

The purpose of this study was to investigate an older adult’s perspective on the influences of smart technology on her communication with a family member. The participant in this single case study was included in a larger, phenomenological qualitative research study that investigated the impact of smart technology on senior care. She lived alone in a senior living facility apartment. The participant received smart home sensor technology, which tracked activity patterns and alerted a designated family member if deviations from typical activity patterns were detected. The participant also received Amazon Alexa® (2018) as part of the technology package. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with the participant both prior to installation and post-installation (at 2 and 8 months). The participant’s designated family member was interviewed at 2-months post-installation as well. The interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, and coded using NVivo® software. A framework analysis was used to analyze the data, which included using charting matrix analysis and mapping to identify themes. Overall, the findings of the study showed that communication between the participant and her family member did not change with the use of smart technology. The themes that emerged from the data about why the smart technology did not influence communication included, “I’m just going on as usual”, “I keep in good contact”, and “I don’t know what the technology is really going to do for me”. The participant expressed her communication did not change due to a prior establishment of regular communication, her activities and health remaining the same, as well as feeling supported by senior living staff and that she didn’t need the smart technology. These findings were confirmed in the family member interview. The experience of not being changed by the technology might be explained with application of the Person-Environment-Occupation- Performance (PEOP) and Elderadopt models, in that the participant’s health, communication, and social supports were stable at the time smart technology was added to the participant’s environment. This case study fills a gap in the literature about the knowledge gained from examining an older adult’s experience over the span of a year, before and during use of smart technology. An older adult’s adoption and use of smart technology depends on the complex interaction between the person, their environment, and occupation factors. Occupational therapists have the training and expertise to consider such factors when making smart technology recommendations to older adults for aging in place

A Global-Local Paradox: The Influence of International Schools on Egyptian Students

This study seeks to understand the influence of global-local connections in the context of international schools in Egypt. Specifically, how does the international and local orientation of elite, international schools in Egypt influence Egyptian students’ orientations towards the self, others, and the broader society? Quantitative subquestions explored include: What is the orientation of elite, international schools in Egypt? What global and local inputs have the greatest significant influence on this process? Qualitative questions include: What role do international schools play in legitimizing and cultivating cosmpolitanism in these privileged students? How do privileged students interpret and use the skills and dispositions acquired and refined in their international schools? The goal of this study is to examine social and cultural processes in elite, international schools in Egypt that reinforce and reproduce distinction and privilege. Unraveling this process is done using a mixed methods, vertical case study framed by the work of Pierre Bourdieu through the perspectives of school alumni. International schools are unique and exclusive sites where global inputs–teachers, curriculum, language–flow largely unfiltered into these local schools. Yet, little research exists that analyzes the influence of these global inputs in local school contexts, if any adaptation or inclusion of the local context transpires, or the subsequent long term influence this field has on students (re)positioning into society. Quantitative results indicate that global-local connections in international schools persistantly focus on internationalization at the expense of localization. The lack of localization subsequently increases differentiation within Egypt’s society. Qualitative results support these quantitative findings that perceptions of differentiation are largely related to the cultivation of global rather than local connections. As a result, these schools act as exclusive vectors of cosmpolitanism, subsequently, deepening social class divides while simaltaneously reinforcing students’ privilege and distinction. However, this distinction, cultivated and legitimized by elite, international schools, provides both advantages and disadvantages depending on the orientation of the field in which they are participating and individuals’ abilities to operationalize legitimatized local and transnational capital

Climate change and 'climategate' in online reader comments: a mixed methods study

Climate change has rarely been out of the public spotlight in the first decade of this century. The high‐profile international meetings and controversies such as 'climategate' have highlighted the fact that it is as much a political issue as it is a scientific one, while also drawing our attention to the role of social media in reflecting, promoting or resisting such politicisation. In this article, we propose a framework for analysing one type of social media venue that so far has received little attention from social scientists – online reader comments. Like media reporting on climate change, reader comments on this reporting contribute to the diverse, complex and contested discourses on climate change, and can reveal the meanings and discursive resources brought to the ongoing debate by laypeople rather than political elites. The proposed framework draws on research in computer‐mediated communication, corpus linguistics and discourse analysis and takes into account both the content of such 'lay talk' and its linguistic characteristics within the specific parameters of the web‐based context. Using word frequencies, qualitative study of co‐text and user ratings, we analyse a large volume of comments published on the UK tabloid newspaper website at two different points in time – before and after the East Anglia controversy. The results reveal how stereotypes of science and politics are appropriated in this type of discourse, how readers' constructions of climate science have changed after 'climategate', and how climate‐sceptic arguments are adopted and contested in computer‐mediated peer‐to‐peer interaction

A contracting model for flexible distributed scheduling

We are interested in building systems of autonomous agents that can automate routine information processing activities in human organizations. Computational infrastructures for cooperative work should contain embedded agents for handling many routine tasks [9], but as the number of agents increases and the agents become geographically and/or conceptually dispersed, supervision of the agents will become increasingly problematic. We argue that agents should be provided with deep domain knowledge that allows them to make quantitatively justifiable decisions, rather than shallow models of users to mimic. In this paper, we use the application domain of distributed meeting scheduling to investigate how agents embodying deeper domain knowledge can choose among alternative strategies for searching their calendars in order to create flexible schedules within reasonable cost.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44288/1/10479_2005_Article_BF02187332.pd