Teacher Professionalism in Uganda: An Outcome of a Myriad of Factors

This study examined primary school teachers’ reasons for choosing teaching as a profession, their current attitudes toward teaching, and the support they receive and obstacles and opportunities they encounter during teaching during their work. A descriptive survey design guided the study. 240 Participants from Eastern Central, and Western regions of Uganda were selected using a non-probability convenience sampling technique. The findings indicate that, the assurance of a job (irrespective of its unattractive salary) was the main reason for joining teacher education colleges. Some teachers have positive attitudes resulting from intrinsic motivation such as regarding teaching as a calling or enjoying working with children while others were extrinsically motivated by the salary and chances for further studies. Poor salary, heavy work-load and low-status accounted for teachers’ negative attitudes. Teachers appreciated the support they get from head teachers but expressed dissatisfaction with the Government’s support services. The main obstacles to teachers’ professional development are insufficient salary and negative attitudes towards teaching. The head teacher’s support (85%) was identified as the biggest opportunity. A detailed strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis needs to be done as one of the strategies of promoting teacher professional development.Group C: Teacher Professional Developmen

Management of Infants and Children who are Contacts of Contagious Tuberculous Patients

Contact investigation and management form the key for tuberculosis (TB) control in countries with a low tuberculosis incidence. Oman, with a low TB incidence, has implemented contact investigation and management as one important strategy to control TB. However there is a lack of clear guidelines for the investigation and treatment of contacts, especially with regard to children who are contacts of TB cases. The failure to manage children in contact with infectious TB cases indicates a missed opportunity to prevent TB disease in a population which is prone to progress rapidly to severe and complicated illness. This article attempts to provide a concise and practical approach for managing infants and children who are in contact with TB patients. Essential steps in a variety of possible scenarios are briefly discussed

Ebola preparedness in Oman: An experience from the Middle East

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Effectiveness of University Teacher Education Curriculum on the Secondary School Teacher Performance in Uganda : The Case of Kyambogo University <Special Issue : Study results of the Africa-Asia university dialogue for educational development network second phase>

The main objective of this study was to examine the effectiveness of the Kyambogo University teacher-education curriculum on secondary school teacher performance in Uganda. The study was conducted between 2008-2011. Questionnaires, focus group discussions, lesson observations and interviews were administered to Kyambogo University lecturers, university students, secondary school teachers and students. Results indicate that most lecturers and secondary school teachers use teacher-centred methods. Theoretical teaching was widely practiced in schools and university. Teachers attributed their use of teacher-centered methods to their training and pressure of national examinations. Suggestions to improve the effectiveness of the university secondary teacher education program are made and include: university curriculum review, reform of examination system, conducting pedagogical courses for university lecturers, teachers, and involving experienced teachers in supervising students on school practice

The magnitude of educational disadvantage amongst indigenous minority groups in Australia.

Indigenous groups are amongst the most disadvantaged minority groups in the developed world. This paper examines the educational disadvantage of indigenous Australians by assessing academic performance at a relatively early age. We find that, by the age of 10, indigenous Australians are substantially behind non-indigenous Australians in academic achievement. Their relative performance deteriorates further over the next 2 years. School and locality do not appear to be important determinants of the indigenous to non-indigenous achievement gap. However, geographic remoteness, indigenous ethnicity and language use at home have a marked influence on educational achievement. A current focus of Australian indigenous policy is to increase school resources. Our results suggest that this will not eliminate indigenous educational disadvantage on its own

PainDroid: An android-based virtual reality application for pain assessment

Earlier studies in the field of pain research suggest that little efficient intervention currently exists in response to the exponential increase in the prevalence of pain. In this paper, we present an Android application (PainDroid) with multimodal functionality that could be enhanced with Virtual Reality (VR) technology, which has been designed for the purpose of improving the assessment of this notoriously difficult medical concern. Pain- Droid has been evaluated for its usability and acceptability with a pilot group of potential users and clinicians, with initial results suggesting that it can be an effective and usable tool for improving the assessment of pain. Participant experiences indicated that the application was easy to use and the potential of the application was similarly appreciated by the clinicians involved in the evaluation. Our findings may be of considerable interest to healthcare providers, policy makers, and other parties that might be actively involved in the area of pain and VR research

Multi-user video streaming using unequal error protection network coding in wireless networks

In this paper, we investigate a multi-user video streaming system applying unequal error protection (UEP) network coding (NC) for simultaneous real-time exchange of scalable video streams among multiple users. We focus on a simple wireless scenario where users exchange encoded data packets over a common central network node (e.g., a base station or an access point) that aims to capture the fundamental system behaviour. Our goal is to present analytical tools that provide both the decoding probability analysis and the expected delay guarantees for different importance layers of scalable video streams. Using the proposed tools, we offer a simple framework for design and analysis of UEP NC based multi-user video streaming systems and provide examples of system design for video conferencing scenario in broadband wireless cellular networks