Parents’ Conceptual Involvement in Their Children’s Education: An Assessment-Oriented View

Parents’ underlying beliefs concerning pedagogical issues may be an indispensable key to understanding the diverse activities that parents engage in with their children. Assessment, as a multifunctional educational mechanism, has long engaged the minds of not only teachers and students but also their parents. Thus, this study sought to delve into parents’ conceptions of their children’s assessment with respect to external variables including gender, major, and degree. In doing so, Parents’ Conceptions of Assessment (PCoA) was administered to a subset of 180 parents. The construct validity of the inventory was substantiated via Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Analyzing the data, it was found that ‘Improvement’ was the parents’ dominant view toward assessment. Moreover, running MANOVA, parents’ educational degree played a significant role in the assessment-related conceptions of ‘Relevance’ and ‘Affect’. The results are discussed and implications are provided in the context of education.   Les croyances des parents relatives à certains enjeux pédagogiques pourraient s’avérer être des indications indispensables pour comprendre les activités diverses qu’ils entreprennent avec leurs enfants. L’évaluation, ce mécanisme pédagogique multifonctionnel, préoccupe depuis longtemps non seulement les enseignants et les étudiants mais également les parents. Nous nous sommes donc penchés sur les conceptions qu’ont les parents de l’évaluation de leurs enfants par rapport à des variables externes, y compris le sexe, le domaine de spécialisation et le diplôme. Un échantillon de 180 parents ont passé un questionnaire sur leur conceptions de l’évaluation. La validité conceptuelle du répertoire a été appuyée par la modélisation par équation structurelle. L’analyse des données a révélé que le concept de « l’amélioration » résumait le point de vue dominant des parents quant à l’évaluation. De plus, selon une analyse multivariée de variance, la scolarisation des parents a joué un rôle important dans leurs conceptions d’éléments liés à l’évaluation, notamment la « pertinence» et « l’influence ». Nous discutons des résultats et évoquons des incidences pour le domaine de l’éducation.

Contextualization-Emotionalization Interface: A Case of Teacher Effectiveness

Given the prominence of cognitive and affective factors in teacher effectiveness, this study intends to look at the issue from a different perspective and examine the roles of contextualization and emotionalization in teacher success. In so doing, 305 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners rated their English teachers to determine the extent to which they contextualize and emotionalize their instructions. During the first phase of the study, a pair of scales were constructed and substantiated via Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to serve the abovementioned purpose. As for the second phase, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was utilized to shed light on any probable relationships among the independent variables and teacher success. The results indicated that, teachers who contextualize and emotionalize their instructional practices, enjoy an enhanced level of success. Moreover, it was revealed that, in the close competition between contextualization and emotionalization, contextualization was identified as a slightly better predictor of teacher success. Building upon the rather strong links between the sub-construct of contextualization and emotionalization, it was further inferred that, mutual juxtaposition of the two concepts contribute to teacher success. In the end, the results were discussed in the realm of English language education

Contextualization-Emotionalization Interface: A Case of Teacher Effectiveness

Given the prominence of cognitive and affective factors in teacher effectiveness, this study intends to look at the issue from a different perspective and examine the roles of contextualization and emotionalization in teacher success. In so doing, 305 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners rated their English teachers to determine the extent to which they contextualize and emotionalize their instructions. During the first phase of the study, a pair of scales were constructed and substantiated via Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to serve the abovementioned purpose. As for the second phase, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was utilized to shed light on any probable relationships among the independent variables and teacher success. The results indicated that, teachers who contextualize and emotionalize their instructional practices, enjoy an enhanced level of success. Moreover, it was revealed that, in the close competition between contextualization and emotionalization, contextualization was identified as a slightly better predictor of teacher success. Building upon the rather strong links between the sub-construct of contextualization and emotionalization, it was further inferred that, mutual juxtaposition of the two concepts contribute to teacher success. In the end, the results were discussed in the realm of English language education

Compartmentalizing culture teaching strategies under an emotioncy-based model

Given the significant role of culture in communication, language researchers, among many other educationalists, have endeavored to develop strategies and techniques for teaching culture in foreign/second languages. The abundance of these strategies, nevertheless, does not seem to realize its full potential due to being a fragmented rather than coherent whole. In the current study, we reviewed the relevant literature to find common grounds in culture instruction strategies and, accordingly, embarked upon introducing a framework to unify and categorize strategies used in teaching culture with respect to the emotions they provoke in learners. Building upon the prominent role of emotions in various domains of language teaching and learning, it was assumed that the emotions generated in the classroom may play an important role in culture learning as well. To this end, we employed the recently-developed hierarchical model of emotioncy as the underlying basis for our framework aiming at offering a hierarchy of teaching culture. Consequently, a number of classroom activities were suggested as ways to make better use of learners' emotions

Creativity and its relationship with teacher success = Criatividade e sua relação com o sucesso de professores

Este artigo procurou explorar a relação entre a criatividade dos professores e seu sucesso em sala de aula. Para isso, 289 alunos de EFL, estudando em diferentes escolas de Inglês foram convidados a preencher uma Escala de Criatividade do Professor de Língua Inglesa (ELT-CS), juntamente com o Questionário das características de um professore de inglês bem sucedido para classificar seus professores de inglês como língua estrangeira. Os resultados da análise de correlação indicam uma relação significativa entre as duas variáveis em questão. Os resultados do T-teste também foram significativos com relação à criatividade e suas sub-dimensões. Os resultados obtidos a partir de equações de regressão sugerem que um par de dimensões de criatividade pode significativamente predizer o sucesso do professor. Finalmente, resultados empíricos foram discutidos e implicações foram fornecidas no contexto do ensino de Inglê

A Rare Manifestation of a Common Disease

Introduction: Ectopic pregnancy (EP) is considered a common disease worldwide. This study is intended to present a case report of ectopic pregnancy presented with syncope, a rare symptom. Case: A 31 years old woman presented in emergency department of an academic trauma center with the chief complaint of head trauma. She was suffering of severe headache following falling down because of syncope. In prices exam she had unstable vital signs and was complaining of abdominal pain and tenderness. Routine laboratory tests including β-hCG, head CT scan, complete abdominal and abdominopelvic sonography were ordered for the patient. Results showed positive β-hCG and abundant free fluid in the abdominal cavity in sonography. After approval of ruptured ectopic pregnancy diagnosis, patient underwent laparotomy, salpingectomy and cystectomy