A Diverse Clinical-Based Practice in Teacher Education

The purpose of the study was to determine if offering a virtual clinical-based practice would affect teacher candidates’ level of confidence in teaching diverse students. During 2012-2014, data were collected using a pre- and post-Likert scale questionnaire. A paired two sample t-test was utilized to determine if there was a significant difference in mean scores from the pre- to the postquestionnaire. Increases were found in all questionnaire items with five of the items showing a significant increase at the α=.01 level. The results suggest that a virtual clinical-based practice may provide an authentic experience for teacher candidates, may lead teacher candidates to be become more aware and take a positive approach to students’ differences, and that the teacher candidates’ comfort level with unfamiliar situations posed by students from diverse backgrounds may increase. A future implication is that colleges of education may want to consider adding a virtual clinical-based practice to existing diversity education classes. However, more research needs to be conducted to determine if virtual clinical-based practices are equal to or better than on-site clinical-based practices in an attempt to increase teacher candidates’ levels of confidence in teaching diverse students

Negative Refraction of Infrared Waves and Rays in Sapphire α-Al2O3

The properties of refraction of extraordinary rays at principal surfaces of a uniaxial crystal having a strongly anisotropic dielectric dispersion are studied. Subject to optical nonabsorptivity of the crystal, the criteria for characterizing the refraction behavior are derived from Maxwell\u27s equations. The criteria reveal that in sapphire a variety of specific oblique-incidence reflection spectra arise from negative refraction and counterposition in the infrared region of multimode polar optical phonons. The effects of light dissipation due to damping of the phonons are explored further to interpret the oblique-incidence reflection spectrum measured for the c-surface of a synthetic crystal of sapphire. We pay attention to the directions of wave-normal and Poynting vectors of the infrared light transmitted into the crystal. It turns out that the damping of phonons gives rise to a true negative refraction that the two vectors are simultaneously refracted or deflected negatively in a certain frequency range

The politics of knowledge, epistemological occlusion and Islamic management and organization knowledge

This article argues that Islamic management and organization knowledge (MOK) is relatively under- and mis-represented in the literature. This conclusion is reached following a detailed literature survey and analysis which also examines some of the core representational practices used to account for Islam in the literature: the persistence of essentialism and orientalism; the disposition to refract instances of Islamic MOK through Northern lenses; and the tendency for some Southern scholars and institutions to become intellectually captive to the North’s knowledge system. We discuss this in the context of a politics of knowledge that bears on knowledge production and dissemination processes in MOK. This reveals continued intellectual and cultural imperialism, sustained Western hegemony, and the exclusionary practices of the North’s associated discourses and institutional frameworks that valorise and elevate Northern epistemology, theory and method, but devalues and marginalize alternatives. We argue that any neglect of Islam is unwarranted given (a) its global significance on a range of dimensions, (b) the particularities of its relations to the North—characterized by orientalism and Islamophobia and (c) the presence of a distinctive Islamic worldview, epistemology and ethics that informs practical action, including management and organization. This entails that an Islamic MOK offers prospects of an alternative or complement to the North’s orthodox perspective and is deserving of a proper voice in the literature. We conclude by offering practical suggestions for change