Second Chance for School Dropouts in Kenya through Adult Education

Most Kenyan high school dropouts do not have a school reentry option, and without a high school diploma, they lack access to tertiary or higher education institutions for training and career development. This case study was an investigation of how an adult learning center in Kenya educated high school dropouts and helped them to gain access to vocational training or higher education. The research questions addressed the pedagogy, learning experiences, and curriculum of the Baraka Adult Learning Center (BALC) and also focused on how the BALC met students\u27 aspirations, needs, and goals based on the perceptions of teachers and adult learners. The conceptual framework was based on liberatory education theory, transformative learning theory, and andragogy. Data collected from classroom observation s, curriculum review, and interviews with 9 current students, 3 former students, 5 teachers, and the principal were analyzed inductively by sorting and coding to generate emergent themes. The results of the study indicated that instructors followed the regular high school curriculum with little adaptation and lacked training about teaching adult learners and self-directed learning approaches. The adult learners perceived returning to school as getting a second chance. A professional development project for BALC instructors was developed to address some of the needs identified in the study. This training could have an impact on the adult learners by better assisting them to gain access to vocational training and higher education

THE FUTURE OF KENYAN HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUTS: ADULT LEARNERS’ PERSPECTIVES ON GOING BACK TO SCHOOL

High school dropouts in Kenya have limited chances of returning to school and to continue with education, despite few adult education schools having been established in the recent years to exceptionally bridge this gap. This paper is based on a case study that sought to investigate the perceptions of the learners on going back to school after dropping out of high school. The study is therefore aimed at examining the future of this category of learners. The author as a result, explores how an adult learning center (Baraka Adult Learning Center (BALC)) in Kenya educates high school dropouts and helps them to gain access to vocational training or higher education. The study addresses the pedagogy, learning experiences, and curriculum of BALC focusing on how BALC met students’ aspirations, needs and goals based on the perceptions of adult learners and how this impact on the future of the learners. Data was collected from classroom observations, curriculum review, and interviews with 9 current students, 3 former students, 5 teachers, and the principal and thereafter analyzed inductively by sorting and coding to generate emergent themes. The results of the study indicated that the adult learners perceived returning to school as getting a second chance and were therefore willing to take up the chance.  Article visualizations

THE PERCEPTION OF ADULT LEARNER INSTRUCTORS ON THE INTEGRATION OF REGULAR SECONDARY SCHOOL CURRICULUM IN ADULT EDUCATION IN KENYA

Curriculum integration usually should provide learners with an opportunity for a holistic acquisition of skills, knowledge and attitudes with no restrictions on subject boundaries and co-curriculum activities. This however may not be the same for Adult and Continuing Education (ACE) which focuses on meeting individual adult needs and integrating adult education in the regular secondary curriculum and may not be forthcoming. ACE is geared towards attaining Vision 2030 of developing the relevant human resource base in Kenya. However, adult learning has faced a myriad of challenges including inadequate instructional materials, inability to balance family and career and the varying perceptions of the instructors on curriculum integration. This paper informed by transformative learning theory sought to assess the perception of adult learner instructors on the integration of regular secondary school curriculum in adult education in Kenya. In order to achieve this objective, data was collected through classroom observations, curriculum review, and interviews with 9 current students, 3 former students, 5 teachers, and the Principal. The results of the study indicated that instructors followed the regular high school curriculum with little adaptation and lacked training about teaching adult learners and self-directed learning approaches. A professional development project for Baraka Adult Learning Center (BALC) instructors was developed to address some of the needs identified in the study. This training could have an impact on the adult learners by better assisting them to gain access to vocational training and higher education.  Article visualizations

Grotesque, masks and fantômes in Palaeolithic rock art. Conceptual analysis and critical review

En el presente artículo investigamos la validez de tres conceptos que han influido en el estudio delos antropomorfos del arte paleolítico. Mediante el análisis histórico conceptual descubrimos lospros y los contras del uso de los términos grotesco, máscara y fantôme. En consecuencia, advertimos:a) que el vocabulario prehistórico omite el componente humorístico de lo grotesco y b) que máscarasy fantômes describen más bien cabezas humanas sin contorno gráfico y cabezas humanas esquemáticascon contorno gráfico.This paper analyzes the validity of three concepts that have influenced the study of Palaeolithicanthropomorphic figures. Through an historical overview on the use of these concepts we discoverthe “pros” and “cons” of using the terms grotesque, mask and fantôme. Accordingly, we point out that:a) prehistoric vocabulary omits the humoristic component of the grotesque and b) masks and fantômesdescribe human heads without graphic outline and schematic human heads with a graphic outline

De la Ciencia al mito: El laberinto interdisciplinar de la Prehistoria, el Arte y el Cine

En el presente artículo proponemos algunas ideas para incentivar los estudios marginales de la Prehistoria. Los orígenes de la percepción visual, la imaginación, la ficción, el símbolo, se encuentran expresados en el arte paleolítico. Hemos analizado las relaciones del arte paleolítico con el cine y la imagen que el cine trasmite de la evolución humana. La asimilación de la naturaleza violenta de la especie humana, el fin del Homo sapiens y el nacimiento de la posthumanidad parecen ser tres temas de enorme interés en la actualida

Lo trascendental antropológico en Tomás de Aquino

el estudio pretende determinar los elementos del pensamiento de Tomás de Aquino que hacen posible la ampliación trascendental, propuesta por Leonardo Polo. Para ello, se expone la doctrina clásica de los trascendentales y se resalta el valor antropológico de verum y bonum, especialmente en algunos pasajes referidos al autoconocimiento del alma, la reditio in seipsum y el principio bonum diffusivum sui. De este análisis, se desprende un sentido peculiar del ser —propio del espíritu—, que no es meramente constitutivo del ente, sino otorgante del acto. Este sentido del ser se describe como apertura 'hacia dentro' o 'intimidad', y permite incoar una consideración trascendental de la persona creada

Neurals Networks for Projecting Named Entities from English to Ewondo

Named entity recognition is an important task in natural language processing. It is very well studied for rich language, but still under explored for low-resource languages. The main reason is that the existing techniques required a lot of annotated data to reach good performance. Recently, a new distributional representation of words has been proposed to project named entities from a rich language to a low-resource one. This representation has been coupled to a neural network in order to project named entities from English to Ewondo, a Bantu language spoken in Cameroon. Although the proposed method reached appreciable results, the size of the used neural network was too large compared to the size of the dataset. Furthermore the impact of the model parameters has not been studied. In this paper, we show experimentally that the same results can be obtained using a smaller neural network. We also emphasize the parameters that are highly correlated to the network performance. This work is a step forward to build a reliable and robust network architecture for named entity projection in low resource languages

El hombre entre la biología y la técnica: el proyecto antropológico de Arnold Gehlen

The proposal of Arnold Gehlen has been categorized as “anthropobiology”. The current article describes the continuity established by Gehlen between the biology of the human being and such specifically human dimensions as technology and culture

FUNGSI DEWAN PERWAKILAN RAKYAT DALAM PENYELENGGARAAN PEMERINTAHAN SETELAH AMANDEMEN UUD 1945

Tujuan dilakukannya penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui bagaimanakah kedudukan dan fungsi badan legislatif (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat) dalam sistem pemerintahan negara Republik Indonesia menurut Undang-undang Dasar 1945 Setelah Amandemen dan bagaimana upaya meningkatkan kinerja Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat terutama dalam melakukan fungsi legislasi, yang dengan metode penelitian hukum nomatif disimpulkan bahwa 1.  Adanya amandemen terhadap UUD 1945, terjadilah perubahan yang signifikan terhadap kedudukan, tugas dan wewenang DPR/DPRD. Kalau sebelum amandemen UUD 1945 kekuasaan membentuk undang-undang berada di tangan Presiden, maka sesudah amandemen UUD 1945 kekuasaan membentuk undang-undang berada di tangan DPR. Amandemen Undang-undang Dasar 1945 menempatkan kekuasaan membentuk undang-undang kepada Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat, sedangkan Presiden hanya mengesahkan rancangan undang-undang yang telah dibahas bersama dengan Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat. 2. Dengan diberikannya kekuasaan membentuk undang-undang kepada Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat, maka kedudukan Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat baik dari aspek politik maupun yuridis menjadi semakin kuat untuk menjaga sistem check and balances dalam penyelenggaraan pemerintahan. Kata kunci: dewan perwakilan rakyat, amandeme