Reconfiguring the ‘Male Montessorian’: the mattering of gender through pink towering practices

This paper attempts to open out investigations in ECEC by working beyond anthropocentric accounts of gender. Drawing upon feminist new materialist philosophies we ask whether it might be possible to reconfigure ideas about gender that recognise it as produced through everyday processes and material-affective entanglements. In order to do this, we work with Montessori materials, spaces and practices to grapple with the ways that gender is produced through human-material-semiotic encounters. By focusing on familiar Montessori objects, we follow diffractive lines of enquiry to extend investigations and generate new knowledge about gender in ECEC. This shift in focus allows other accounts about gender to find expression. We argue gender can be encountered as more than an exclusively human matter; and we go on to debate what that might potentiate (i.e. that if gender is fleeting, shifting, and produced within micro-moments there is freedom to break free from narrow framings that fix people, such as ‘the Male Montessorian’, in unhelpful ways). An approach that foregrounds affect and materiality makes a hopeful, generative and expansive contribution to the field

Grappling with the miseducation of Montessori: a feminist posthuman re-reading of ‘child’ in early childhood contexts

This paper demonstrates how feminist posthumanism can reconfigure conceptualisations of, and practices with, ‘child’ in Montessori early childhood contexts. It complicates Montessori’s contemporary reputation as a ‘middle-class phenomenon’ by returning to the earliest Montessori schools as a justice-oriented project for working-class children and families. Grappling with the contradictions and inconsistencies of Montessori thought, this paper both acknowledges the legacy of Montessori's feminism, whilst also situating her project within the wider colonial capitalist context in which it emerged. A critical engagement with Montessori education unsettles modernist conceptualisations of ‘child’ and its civilising agenda on minds and bodies. Specifically, Montessori child observation (as a civilising mission) is disrupted and re-read from a feminist posthumanist orientation to generate more relational, queer and expansive accounts of how child is produced through observation. Working with three ‘encounters’ from fieldwork at a Montessori nursery we attend to the material discursive affective manifestation of social class, gender, sexuality and ‘race’ and what that means for child figurations in Montessori contexts. We conclude by embracing Snaza’s ‘bewildering education’, to reach towards different imaginaries of ‘child’ that are not reliant on dialectics of ‘human’ and ‘nonhuman’, and that allows ‘child’ to be taken seriously, without risking erasure of fleshy, leaky, porous, codified bodies in Montessori spaces

Comparative study of different orographic representations with respect to the Indian summer monsoon simulation

In spectral General Circulation Models that are now widely used in operational weather forecasting and research, the time dependent atmospheric parameters and orography are represented in the form of double series. In such spectral transform methods, Gibbs oscillations appear due to sharp gradients in terrain height, moisture, and cloud fields. The present paper shows the usefulness of different digital filters in reducing the negative values of orography. The application of filters also reduces the heights of the mountain peaks. This affects the Indian region the most, because of the presence of the Himalayas and the Western Ghats. In this paper, an attempt has been made to represent the orography by a new method, called the Filtered Modified Orography (FMO), in which a two dimensional Lanczos filter has been applied in the spectral domain globally with a subsequent local enhancement of the Himalayas and the Western Ghats. The dual advantages of reduction in negative orography values and enhancement of mountain peaks were achieved. A comparison with the envelope orography, where the mean orography is enhanced globally, shows that the new method is able to reduce some of the errors and disparities associated with the envelope technique while retaining some of the advantages of the barrier effect regionally. Results show reasonably good representation of global winds, geopotential and rainfall in FMO representation in T80 model of the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting

Sensitivity of land surface parameterization on Regional Spectral Model forecasts

Experiments were carried out to study the impact of different land surface schemes on a Regional Spectral Model (RSM) forecasts. RSM is based on the perturbation method of NCEP, where the dependent variables are the differences between the regional and global model fields called 'perturbations'. The perturbation method ensures the use of global model values as the base fields all over the domain and predicts the mesoscale features embedded in the base field forecasts. The first version of RSM has a land surface scheme with a single layer of soil moisture, which is the same as the operational global model with which it is nested. The second version of RSM has a land surface scheme with two layers of soil moisture and a more complex treatment of evaporation. The model was integrated for five days nested with the operational global spectral model during August 2001. The RSM with 2-layer soil moisture scheme was found to have slightly less easterly bias over north India. However, the two-layer scheme showed higher evaporation and precipitation over Andhra Pradesh region. Additionally, major differences were also observed in all the components of the surface energy balance over the same region

Mixed-Integer Linear Programming for Vehicle Routing Problem with Simultaneous Delivery and Pick-Up with Maximum Route-Length

The vehicle routing problem with simultaneous delivery and pick-up (VRPSDP) is the problem of optimally assimilating goods collection and distribution, when no priority constraints are imposed on the order in which the vehicle must perform the operations. This paper considers an additional constraint of maximum route length in VRPSDP. We develop a mixed-integer linear programming model for VRPSDP with an additional constraint of maximum route length. The results are encouraging for a sample benchmark data set

VOCABULARY ACQUISITION AMONG ESL LEARNERS: A LOOK AT STRATEGIES AND BARRIERS

Having good vocabulary can help language learners go a long way towards mastering their target language. Language learners need to know both grammatical aspects as well as the meaning of words in order to communicate effectively. This study investigates the vocabulary learning strategies and also language learning barriers of undergraduates in a higher institution of learning. The instrument used for this study is a survey. The survey has three main sections; (a) personal details, (b) vocabulary strategies, and (c) language learning barriers. Data collected is analysed using SPSS and presented in the form of mean scores. Findings revealed that learners use vocabulary strategies such as metacognitive, guessing, dictionary, note-taking and rehearsal strategies. Findings also revealed that language barriers such as effective, environment and motivation can hinder learners’ learning of vocabulary of the target language. Article visualizations

ANALYSIS OF CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION CHALLENGES IN THE MOVIE ‘OUTSOURCED’ (2006)

Cross-cultural communication has sparked many cultural misunderstandings in today’s world. This happens because of the challenges faced by people from different cultural backgrounds who communicate with each other without having knowledge or familiarity with each other cultures. Besides, different cultural values can be one of the main reasons for cross-cultural communication challenges to happen. This study aims to identify the cross-cultural communication challenges faced by the American and Indian main characters in the movie ‘Outsourced’ (2006). This study investigates the cross-cultural communication challenges faced by the main characters from two different countries: America and India and how the challenges affect them. The researcher employed a qualitative research design by using content analysis to identify the challenges faced by them. The researcher employed two types of data: primary and secondary data, to collect the best materials to support this study to have a better understanding of the study. The researcher employed the purposive sampling method to select the movie that depicted the cross-cultural communication challenges. In this study, the researchers used coding guidelines and coding themes to get the relevant answers to the research questions. The researcher analysed six themes according to the Stumbling Block in Intercultural Communication by Laray M. Barna (1994) to answer the research questions of this study. The results are presented in a table to get a clear view of data on the cross-cultural communication challenges. This study revealed the common challenges of cross-cultural communication faced by people from different cultures based on the movie ‘Outsourced’ (2006) such as the Assumption to Similarity, Language Differences, Nonverbal Misinterpretation, Stereotype or Preconception, Tendency to Evaluate and High Anxiety or Stress. Hence, this study is significant for people who want to learn about cross-cultural communication as well as those who are in a cross-cultural situation at work or institution because it exposes cross-cultural communication challenges and their effects.  Article visualizations

LANGUAGE GAMIFICATION IN ESL CLASSROOM: TEACHING PERSPECTIVE

Language games have always been the reinforcement activities in second language acquisition. Such activities will not only help the learners to retain the knowledge but to ensure the sustainability of it for a long run. It was not until the early 2000s when researchers began to carry out studies on online language games. Soon after, the terminology of Language Gamification came into perspective. This paper discusses on the notion of language gamification from a teaching perspective. It starts by discussing the related theories on language gamification and second language acquisition before moving to discussing on creating gamification in classroom. This paper is also set to disclose the ramifications of language gamifications in teaching and learning. Article visualizations

Boreal summer sub-seasonal variability of the South Asian monsoon in the Met Office GloSea5 initialized coupled model

Boreal summer sub-seasonal variability in the Asian monsoon, otherwise known as the monsoon intra-seasonal oscillation (MISO), is one of the dominant modes of intraseasonal variability in the tropics, with large impacts on total monsoon rainfall and India’s agricultural production. However, our understanding of the mechanisms involved in MISO is incomplete and its simulation in various numerical models is often flawed. In this study, we focus on the objective evaluation of the fidelity of MISO simulation in the Met Office Global Seasonal forecast system version 5 (GloSea5), an initialized coupled model. We analyze a series of nine-member hindcasts from GloSea5 over 1996-2009 during the peak monsoon period (July-August) over the South-Asian monsoon domain focusing on aspects of the time-mean background state and air-sea interaction processes pertinent to MISO. Dominant modes during this period are evident in power spectrum analysis, but propagation and evolution characteristics of the MISO are not realistic. We find that simulated air-sea interactions in the central Indian Ocean are not supportive of MISO initiation in that region, likely a result of the low surface wind variance there. As a consequence, the expected near-quadrature phase relationship between SST and convection is not represented properly over the central equatorial Indian Ocean, and northward propagation from the equator is poorly simulated. This may reinforce the equatorial rainfall mean state bias in GloSea5