“... I am no longer sitting down and waiting for others to come and develop my instructional skills ...”: The Nature of Self-directed Professional Development by EFL Teachers in Saudi Universities

This thesis explores the nature of Self-Directed Professional Development (SDPD) pursued by university English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers in Saudi Arabia with a special emphasis on investigating the impact of one model of SDPD ‘Virtual Community of Practice’ (VCoP) through WhatsApp on teaching practice. Due to the exploratory nature of this study, an interpretive epistemological stance was adopted informing two designs in two stages. In the first stage, a sequential mixed-methods design with two phases was implemented, starting with a quantitative phase employing online questionnaires, followed by a qualitative phase using semi-structured interviews to gain a comprehensive understanding of the nature of SDPD at the macro-level of the EFL context in public universities, in terms of its models, type of activities and reasons behind pursuing this form, as well as the challenges that inhibit teachers form practising it. A total of 260 participants from 13 Saudi universities completed the questionnaire and 14 of them participated in interviews. Quantitative data were analysed through SPSS to get descriptive data, and qualitative data were analysed thematically. In the second stage, a holistic case-study design was adopted to gain deep insights into the micro-level of SDPD through investigating the nature and impact of one model of SDPD, ‘a self-directed VCoP’, via WhatsApp on EFL university teachers’ teaching practice in one Saudi university. Participant online observation was carried out for six months followed by semi- structured interviews with nine participants. Qualitative data from both methods were analysed thematically. The findings of the mixed-methods stage revealed that although EFL university teachers employed both individual and collaborative SDPD, they tended to favour individual rather than collaborative activities. The findings also showed that SDPD enhances teachers’ autonomy, self-empowerment, motivation, confidence and professional identity. Moreover, key reasons (e.g. personal, academic, administrative) for pursuing SDPD were identified, as well as the challenges and limitations of both types of offline and online SDPD. The findings of the case study showed that self-directed VCoP via WhatsApp positively impacted on teachers’ practice, themselves and their students. Most importantly, using an informal medium of communication e.g. the first language of teachers, ‘Arabic’, demonstrated a significant impact on EFL teachers’ learning and communication. Revealing the effectiveness of SDPD as an alternative approach to teacher’s PD, the thesis concludes by indicating a need to devote equal attention to SDPD (as both a term and a concept) as an aspect of the formally acknowledged form of in-service PD. It also makes a number of significant recommendations, and highlights implications, to improve the policy and practice of SDPD for policymakers, teachers and researchers

The Processes of Teaching Languages to Sixth Grade Students in an International Immersion School in a Midwestern City, U.S.A

This paper examines the teaching strategies used in an international immersion school in a Midwestern city in the U.S.A.  A good number of teaching strategies are highlighted in literature review to provide context for this particular study. The immersion program is considered a teaching strategy and an additional name for bilingual schools in which students learn through a second language’s environment with the purpose of developing proficiency in two languages. The significance of this study is that students in immersion schools should have the same quality of education as their peers have in public schools.  The participants in this study used the cognate, cooperative, structural strategies and other strategies in teaching the second language itself or when teaching subjects in the students’ second language. This study is a basic qualitative research and the data was collected though observations and interviews. The data was analyzed by using the ground theory approach. This study shows that immersion schools help students to achieve their second language acquisition and help them in the future to have the ability to access different languages of curriculum. Because the school is under development, this is one limitation that is presented in this study. Keywords: Teaching Strategies, Motivations, Immersion schools, Language acquisitions. DOI: 10.7176/JEP/11-5-07 Publication date: February 29th 202

Uncertainty and utilitarian moral decision-making

A long history of research in philosophy, psychology and neuroscience has explored moral utilitarian research questions, decision mechanisms and behaviour. For example, in the question ‘Is it appropriate for you to sacrifice one workman in order to save five workmen?’ moral utilitarian theorists (consequentialism) would answer with ‘Yes’, as utility maximisation and moral justification is achieved by the consequence of this moral decision (‘saving the greatest number’). Accordingly,psychologists have explored the psychological validity and range of behavioural violations of this utilitarian normative prediction. For example, theorists haveproposed a dual-process moral utility theory (e.g., Bartels, 2008; Cushman et al.,2006; Greene, 2007; Greene, et al., 2001; Haidt, 2001; Pizarro & Bloom, 2003;Young & Koenigs, 2007; Evans & Stanovich, 2013), and argued that this moral utilitarian model predicts rational and irrational behaviour for morally sensitive decision alternatives. The dual-process moral utility theory assumes that two psychological systems are involved in moral decision-making: (i) deliberative and effortful (cognitive processing) and (ii) automatic and effortless (emotional activations). Moreover, the theory predicts ‘emotional interference’ for moral scenarios with personal involvement (to push a stranger on to the track in order to save the five strangers) inducing (i) irrational behaviour and (ii) decision delay (longer response time), even when participants make a rational choice in dilemmas with personal involvement. These predictions were empirically confirmed (e.g., Greene et al., 2001) - respondents judged moral dilemmas with personal involvement (‘to push’ in footbridge dilemma) as less appropriate, than equivalent moral dilemmas with impersonal involvement (‘to hit a switch’ in the trolley dilemma). Greene and colleagues concluded that moral 14 dilemmas with personal involvement were more emotionally salient and cognitively demanding, as respondents took significantly more time deciding about moral dilemmas with personal involvement. In nine experiments, I have developed further the empirical moral utilitarian method, and empirically explored and identified a generic utilitarian cognitive factor – ‘uncertainty’ (caused by partial and insufficient descriptions of utilitarian information) – that predicts rationality and irrationality in moral decision-making. As the experimental results confirmed, this factor had an independent influence (beyond the type of dilemma and involvement – previously confounded in experimental research) on moral utilitarian behaviour. An increased accessibility to utilitarian information decreased psychological uncertainty, inducing rational moral utilitarian behaviour across the experiments. Moreover, in contrast to the dual-process utilitarian theory, when making a rational choice respondents took less time with scenarios offering full utilitarian accessibility (full text description of the scenarios and moral choice questions and supported by visualisation of decision consequences), than with scenarios offering partial textual descriptions of moral utilitarian information (as with all moral experimental studies published since Thomson, 1985). This finding is important, as it offers methodological improvements to the study of moral decisionmaking and reveals issues with the dual-process moral utilitarian theory predictions and assumed psychological mechanisms. Neuroscience research should build upon the methodological improvements and empirical evidence provided in this dissertation, and explore further the plausibility that the emotional activations predicted by the dual-process moral utility theory are, in fact, degree of uncertainty (experiments 1 to 9) caused by limited accessibility to utilitarian information. Furthermore, the results form experiments 4 and 5 revealed no difference (as 15 predicted by previous research, e.g., Tassy et al., 2013) in the behavioural utilitarian patterns between moral choice and moral judgements. I found that uncertainty significantly predicted both moral choice and moral judgements – additional evidence of the generalisability of uncertainty as a major factor that should be taken into account by moral utilitarian researchers. Moreover, in experiments 6, 7, 8 and 9 I discovered additional and not previously considered psychological factors influencing moral utilitarian behaviour. In experiments 6 and 7 the respondents, in their effort to maximise utility, were influenced by the utility ratio of the moral trade-offs. For example, and in addition to the eliminated uncertainty (caused by insufficient utilitarian information), the increased number of victims induced respondents’ moral rational behaviour. This result can be attributed to enhanced reward activations for utilitarian moral dilemmas, offering ‘saving of more victims’. In experiments 8 and 9 I also found that content of utility is a psychological factor predicting moral utilitarian behaviour. Processing moral utilitarian contents, which consist of things we can own or previously have owned (e.g., experience with utilitarian trade-offs) – nonhuman and inanimate stimuli – induced respondents’ utilitarian choice rationality. The results from nine experiments are novel and have the potential to contribute to the theoretical development of both normative and psychological moral decisionmaking. The research findings will inform theories of judgement, decision-making, moral reasoning, experimental philosophy and neuroscience about the psychological factors (not previously explored) underlying moral decision-making, and their influence on utilitarian rationality. Moreover, it is envisaged that the research findings and knowledge from this dissertation have practical applications. For example, in the development of training interventions (for special security units and law enforcements agencies), the relevant authorities should take into account the influence of decision 16 uncertainty, content of utility (decision training paradigms), and utility ratios involved in moral trade-offs

The Impact of Empowering Leadership Behaviors on Organizational Citizenship Behavior

The current study examines the impact of empowering leadership behaviors (namely, enhancing the meaningfulness of work, fostering participation in decision making, expressing confidence and providing autonomy) on organizational citizenship. The data was collected through a questionnaire from a sample consisting of 200 employees in governmental institutions in Albaha region. Pearson correlations indicated that OCB had statistically significant positive relation with all factors of leadership empowerment behavior, ranged between 0.432 and 0.655. The study provided practical implications and suggested some directions for future research

Moral Judgements Under Uncertainty

Research on ‘moral dilemmas’ has shown that respondents judge personal moral actions (“to push” in the footbridge dilemma) as less appropriate than equivalent impersonal moral actions (“to switch” in the trolley dilemma). Furthermore, theorists argued (e.g., Greene et al., 2001) that judgments of appropriateness in personal moral dilemmas are (i) more emotionally salient than impersonal moral dilemmas, and (ii) more cognitively demanding, as respondents spend relatively more time judging the appropriateness of personal moral actions. In contrast, in one experiment, we found that (i) the level of uncertainty regarding moral actions predicted judgments of appropriateness and (ii) participants spent relatively more time judging the appropriateness of actions in moral dilemmas with a high level of uncertainty. These results question existing theoretical accounts based on “cognitive emotional parameters” in processing of morally sensitive information, and offer a simple cognitive explanation, based on learning and elimination of uncertainty

Exploring the Dynamic Voltage Signature of Renewable Rich Weak Power System

Large-scale renewable energy-based power plants are becoming attractive technically and economically for generation mix around the world. Nevertheless, network operation has significantly changed due to the rapid integration of renewable energy in supply side. The integration of more renewable resources, especially inverter-based generation, deteriorates power system resilience to disturbances and substantially affects stable operations. The dynamic voltage stability becomes one of the major concerns for the transmission system operators (TSOs) due to the limited capabilities of inverter-based resources (IBRs). A heavily loaded and stressed renewable rich grid is susceptible to fault-induced delayed voltage recovery. Hence, it is crucial to examine the system response upon disturbances, to understand the voltage signature, to determine the optimal location and sizing of grid-connected IBRs. Moreover, the IBRs fault contribution mechanism investigation is essential in adopting additional grid support devices, control coordination, and the selection of appropriate corrective control schemes. This article utilizes a comprehensive assessment framework to assess power systems' dynamic voltage signature with large-scale PV under different realistic operating conditions. Several indices quantifying load bus voltage recovery have been used to explore the system' s steady-state, transient response, and voltage trajectories. The recovery indices help extricate the signature and influence of IBRs. The proposed framework's applicability is carried out on the New England IEEE-39 bus test system using the DIgSILENT platform. © 2013 IEEE

COMPUTER AIDED DIAGNOSIS OF VENTRICULAR ARRHYTHMIAS FROM ELECTROCARDIOGRAM LEAD II SIGNALS

In this work, we use computer aided diagnosis (CADx) to extract features from ECG signals and detect different types of cardiac ventricular arrhythmias including Ventricular Tachycardia (VT),Ventricular Fibrillation (VF), Ventricular Couplet (VC), and Ventricular Bigeminy (VB).Our methodology is unique in computing features of lower and higher order statistical parameters from six different data domains: time domain, Fourier domain, and four Wavelet domains (Daubechies, Coiflet, Symlet, and Meyer). These features proved to give superior classification performance, in general, regardless of the type of classifier used as compared with previous studies. However, Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) classifiers got better performance than other classifiers tried including KNN and Naïve Bayes classifiers. Our unique features enabled classifiers to perform better in comparison with previous studies: for VT, 100% accuracy while best previous work got 95.8%, for VF, 100% accuracy while best previous work got 97.5%, for VC, 100% sensitivity while best previous work got 71.8%, and for VB, 100% sensitivity while best previous work got 84.6%

Thyroid Cancer in Saudi Arabia: A Histopathological and Outcome Study

Most data on differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) came from the Western world. We describe its salient characteristics and outcome from a Middle Eastern country. Patients and Methods. We studied all cases of TC seen during a 2-year period (2004-2005) seen at our institution. Results. A total of 600 consecutive cases of DTC with a median age at diagnosis of 39 years (5–85) and the female : male ratio of 459 : 141 (76.5% : 23.5%). The cases included classical papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) in 77%, follicular variant PTC in 13.3%, follicular thyroid cancer in 3.2%, and other rare subtypes 6.5%. Total or near-total thyroidectomy was performed in 93%, central and/or lateral neck dissection in 64.5% of cases, and radioactive iodine ablation in 82% of cases. Additional therapies were administered to 154 patients (25.7%). At a median follow-up period of 7.63 years (0.22–13.1), 318 patients (53.3%) were in excellent response, 147 (24.5%) having an indeterminate response, 55 (9.2%) biochemically incomplete, 33 (5.5%) structurally incomplete, and 27 (4.5%) unclassifiable. Twenty cases died secondary to DTC (disease-specific mortality 3.3%). Conclusions. In Saudi Arabia, DTC is common and occurs at young age and predominantly in females. Although remission is common, persistent disease is also common but disease-specific mortality is low

Multicopy Crystallographic & Biophysical Analyses of the N-terminal Domain of NBCe1-A: Illumination of the Human R298S Mutation

Background: NBCe1-A membrane-embedded macromolecules cotransport sodium and bicarbonate ions across the bilayers that serve to maintain acid-base homeostasis throughout the body. Defects are linked to a number of disorders, including proximal renal tubule acidosis, mental retardation, dental defects, and cataracts. Previously, we demonstrated the N-terminal domain of NBCe1-A (Nt) is in pH-sensitive monomer-dimer equilibrium. At neutral pH, bicarbonate ions bind the Nt, stabilizing dimerization and intermolecular self-associations of dimers. Methods: We determine and analyze the X-ray crystal structure of the Nt as a dimer at 2.4-A resolution using molecular-replacement methods, and a multicopy crystallographic structure of the monomer using 5 atomic models and strict 4-fold NCS constraints in refinement procedures. We measure the pH-sensitivity of a truncated Nt mutant by light-scattering techniques, and bicarbonate, bisulfite, mutant self-association bindings by surface plasmon resonance techniques. Results: The structures reveal that R298 implicated in the disorders is part of a putative conduit that transverses the Nt. The conduit opens to the transmembrane domain (TMD) on one end and an apparent foyer entrance on the opposite end. The naturally occurring mutation R298S disrupts an electrostatic pocket within the conduit that disables substrate binding. We also report similar conducts in family member AE1 (Band 3) when exploring its crystal structure. Further, we identify by biophysical analyses on a truncated Nt that the autoregulatory domain (ARD) at the N-terminus of the Nt is responsible for self-associations. Conclusions: The Nt responds to changes in pH or bicarbonate fluctuations. In proximal tubule cells, we propose a model where the ARD is a gate for the foyer. When self-associated, the foyer entrance is accessible, allowing substrate entry into the conduit. During acid loads, the gates close entry into the foyer, preventing bicarbonate from leaving the cell. The R298S defect similarly prevents bicarbonate ions from being transported to blood, giving rise to metabolic acidosis that results from the renal tubule acidosis