Changing practice in Malaysian primary schools: learning from student teachers’ reports of using action, reflection and modelling (ARM)

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Education for Teaching on 15 March 2018, available online at doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2018.1433468. Under embargo until 1 August 2019.Curricular and pedagogical reforms are complex inter-linked processes such that curricular reform can only be enacted through teachers teaching differently. This article reports the perspective of emergent Malaysian primary teachers who were expected to implement a Government reform that promoted active learning. The 120 student teachers were members of a single cohort completing a new B.Ed. degree programme in Primary Mathematics designed by teacher educators from Malaysia and the UK. They were taught to use a tripartite pedagogical framework involving action or active learning, supported in practice through reflection and modelling. Drawing on findings from surveys carried out with the student teachers at the end of their first and final placements this article examines evidence for the premise that the student teachers were teaching differently; illustrates how they reported using active learning strategies; and identifies factors that enabled and constrained pedagogic change in the primary classroom. The students’ accounts of using action, reflection and modelling are critiqued in order to learn about changing learning and teaching practice and to contribute to understanding teacher education and early teacher development. The students’ reports suggest diversity of understanding that emphasises the need to challenge assumptions when working internationally and within national and local cultures.Peer reviewe

Variational autoencoders for supervision, calibration and multimodal learning

Learning representations of data has long been a desirable goal in machine learning. Constructing such representations enables downstream tasks such as classification or object detection to be preformed efficiently. Furthermore, it is desirable to have these representations be constructed in such a way so they are interpretable, which allows for fine grained intervention and reasoning on characteristics of the input. Other tasks may include, cross-generation between modalities, or calibrating predictions such that their confidence matches their accuracy. An effective way to learn representations is through a Variational Autoencoder (VAE), which performs variational inference on the latent variables of the observable input. In this thesiswe show how the VAE, can be utilised to: incorporate label information into the learning process; learn shared-representations of multimodal data; and calibrate predictions of existing neural classifiers. Data sources are often accompanied by additional label information, which may indicate the presence of a characteristic in the input. A question naturally arises as to whether the additional label information can be used to structure the representation such that it provides a notion of interoperability about the characteristic; such as “to what extent is the person smiling?”. The first contribution of this thesis is to address the aforementioned problem and propose a method which successfully uses label information to structure the latent space. Furthermore, this allows us to perform additional tasks such as fine grained interventions; classification; and conditional generations. Moreover, we are also successfully able to handle the case when label information is missing, drastically reducing the data burden when training these models. Rather than being presented with labels, we sometimes instead observe another unstructured observation of the same object, e.g. a caption of an image. In this scenario, the objective changes slightly to one where the model is able to learn shared-representations of data, allowing it to perform cross-generations between modalities. The second contribution of this theses addresses this problem. Here, learning is performed by employing mutual supervision between the modalities and introducing a bi-directional objective, which faithfully ensures symmetry in the model. Furthermore, by virtue of this approach, we are able to learn these representations in situations where some of the modalities may be missing during training. Uncertainty quantification is an important task in machine learning, with it now being well known that current deep learning models severely overestimate their confidence. The final contribution of this thesis is to address how the representations of VAEs can be used to extract reliable confidence estimates for neural-classifiers. This investigation leads to a novel approach to calibrate neural-classifiers, which is applied post-hoc to off the shelf classifiers and is very fast to train and test

ASSESSING THE EFFECT OF SENSE OF COMMUNITY ON MILITARY VETERAN COMMUNITY REINTEGRATION DIFFICULTIES

Sense of Community (SOC) has been the theoretical underpinnings of practice models with veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (Amdur et al. 2011; Bowen, Martin, Mancini & Nelson, 2000; Hollingsworth, 2011; U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs). The current study addresses the need for empirical evidence to support this practice intervention by testing the mediation role of SOC on the relationship between Veteran Community Reintegration (VCR) risk factors and VCR difficulties. Secondary data from a cross-sectional survey consisting of N=131 military veterans in the southern region of the United States was used to test this model. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) resulted a model which did not fit the data well: χ² [Chi square] (df = 761, N=131) = 1480.072, p = .000 RMSEA = .085, PCLOSE = .000 TLI=.721 & CFI = .754. Consequently a conservative path analysis was chosen. The path model also failed to fit the data well: χ² = 46.016 (4 df, N = 131), p = .000, CFI = .744, RMSEA = .284, PCLOSE = .000, TLI = -.345). Model fit indices suggest limitations to results from this study. The path from depression symptoms to SOC (B = -.407 (β [Beta] = -.278), SE= .154, p = .008), the path from suicidal ideation to SOC (B = 1.027(β = .207), SE= .443, p = .020), and the path from SOC to VCR difficulties (B=.974 (β = .488), SE = 6.039, p \u3c.001) were all statistically significant. These results suggest a possibility that SOC has a negative mediating effect on the relationship between depression symptoms and VCR difficulties and a positive mediating effect on the relationship between suicidal ideation and VCR difficulties. Implications of study findings for social work practice and future research directions are discussed

Interview with Joy Park-Thomas

Joy Park-Thomas is a screenwriter and story producer in reality TV. She is a first generation Korean American born in Ohio and raised in Pennsylvania. She lives in Los Angeles, has an Ivy-League degree, and is a feminist and advocate for women.https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/auntiesewing_interviews/1024/thumbnail.jp

Educator\u27s Technology Integration Barriers and Student Technology Preparedness as 21st Century Professionals

Millions of dollars have been spent to acquire educational computing tools, and many education, government, and business leaders believe that investing in these computing tools will improve teaching and learning. The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine whether charter school educators face technological barriers hindering them from incorporating technology into their classrooms. If they experienced self-efficacy issues integrating technology in their classrooms and if they believed their students were technologically prepared as 21st century professionals. A 5-point Likert scale survey, validated by a pilot study, was completed by 61 charter high school teachers. Their responses were analyzed, scores from the individual mean responses were used to calculate the total mean; and a parametric t test used to determine if the null or alternative hypothesis could be rejected. The theoretical foundation for this study was Cubans\u27 and Brickners\u27 first- and second-order barriers to change. In one charter school stratum, teachers experienced barriers integrating technology into their classes, while teachers in the other charter school strata did not. There was statistical significance in teachers\u27 beliefs about their skills integrating technology into their classes and their students being technologically prepared as 21st century professionals. The results of this research could lead to positive social change by providing valuable information to help charter school administrators identify teachers who are experiencing barriers and how they can improve teacher\u27s professional development integrating technology into their classrooms

Running of Spectral index for a hybrid inflationary model

A hybrid inflationary model with cubic potential where inflation ends in a differentway, due to very rapid rolling of an auxiliary scalar field ψ is discussed. The slowly rollinginflation field φ does not account for the majority of the energy density in hybrid inflation.Another field ψ takes this role, which is maintained in position by its interaction with φ untilφ falls below a critical value φc . When this occurs, ψ has been destabilized and inflationcomes to an end by rolling toward its true vacuum. In this model, the second derivative ofthe inflaton potential, which represents its effective mass undergoes a sudden small change.The spectral indices related to density perturbations n1 and n2 just before and soon after thephase transition respectively are determined. It is found that the ensuing density perturbationhas a power spectrum that is nearly flat with a step in ns

A Pedagogy of Radical Love: Biblical, Theological, and Philosophical Foundations

In this article, we will bring biblical, theological, and philosophical perspectives on radical love into creative dialogue with critical pedagogy.  The biblical narratives of the book of Ruth and the Parable of the "Good" Samaritan contain paradigms for a radical kind of love that seeks the liberation and well-being of others.  These insights on love carry epistemological and methodological implications for critical pedagogy.  Such implications can be identified by placing these insights about love in conversation with Paulo Feire's "pedagogy of love," as discussed by Antonia Darder.  Also, bell hooks' cultural critiques and emphasis on engaged pedagogy can illumine other implications that relate to cultural experiences.  The ultimate goal is to illustrate how love, rooted in biblical and philosophical foundations, motivates cross-cultural and interfaith engagement, and encourages emancipatory action

Insertion of the CXC chemokine ligand 9 (CXCL9) into the mouse hepatitis virus genome results in protection from viral-induced encephalitis and hepatitis.

The role of the CXC chemokine ligand 9 (CXCL9) in host defense following infection with mouse hepatitis virus (MHV) was determined. Inoculation of the central nervous system (CNS) of CXCL9-/- mice with MHV resulted in accelerated and increased mortality compared to wild type mice supporting an important role for CXCL9 in anti-viral defense. In addition, infection of RAG1-/- or CXCL9-/- mice with a recombinant MHV expressing CXCL9 (MHV-CXCL9) resulted in protection from disease that correlated with reduced viral titers within the brain and NK cell-mediated protection in the liver. Survival in MHV-CXCL9-infected CXCL9-/- mice was associated with reduced viral burden within the brain that coincided with increased T cell infiltration. Similarly, viral clearance from the livers of MHV-CXCL9-infected mice was accelerated but independent of increased T cell or NK cell infiltration. These observations indicate that CXCL9 promotes protection from coronavirus-induced neurological and liver disease