Foreign languages in the comprehensive school curriculum

This thesis is an analysis of foreign language teaching and learning in schools during the course of two decades or so of radical change in the education system of this country. For a subject area which had hitherto been taught mainly to pupils in selective schools, the necessity of catering for pupils of all abilities has been particularly challenging, even unique. Now that comprehensive schools are well established, therefore, it is appropriate to examine the contribution of foreign languages to the curriculum of their pupils, the successes and failures of this subject area and its role in the future. To this end, this work is made up of three sections. Part I analyses foreign language teaching and learning in the Primary and Secondary sectors. It also includes an assessment of contemporary methodology and its contribution to the situation in those sectors. The second part of the thesis outlines many of the outcomes and initiatives in foreign language teaching resulting from those experiences detailed in Part I. It takes into account outcomes at local and national level, but also examines recent research into such areas as curricular theory and development, language awareness, learners' needs and the cultural and social aspects of language learning, with particular reference to their contribution to the future developments of this subject area. Part III assesses the present-day situation with an emphasis upon those pressures emanating from central government in the way of policy documents and changes in the examination system. It concludes by suggesting positive changes and outlooks for future developments in foreign language teaching and learning within a curricular outline appropriate to pupils' needs in contemporary society

Generalised arc consistency for the AllDifferent constraint: An empirical survey

AbstractThe AllDifferent constraint is a crucial component of any constraint toolkit, language or solver, since it is very widely used in a variety of constraint models. The literature contains many different versions of this constraint, which trade strength of inference against computational cost. In this paper, we focus on the highest strength of inference, enforcing a property known as generalised arc consistency (GAC). This work is an analytical survey of optimizations of the main algorithm for GAC for the AllDifferent constraint. We evaluate empirically a number of key techniques from the literature. We also report important implementation details of those techniques, which have often not been described in published papers. We pay particular attention to improving incrementality by exploiting the strongly-connected components discovered during the standard propagation process, since this has not been detailed before. Our empirical work represents by far the most extensive set of experiments on variants of GAC algorithms for AllDifferent. Overall, the best combination of optimizations gives a mean speedup of 168 times over the same implementation without the optimizations

Health behavioural theories and their application to women's participation in mammography screening

The most effective method of detecting breast cancer amongst asymptomatic women is by mammography screening. Although, most countries have this preventive measure in place for women within their society; most of these programmes still struggle with women’s attendance. This article discusses four health behavioural theories and models, in relation to mammography screening, including the health belief model, theory of planned behaviour, trans-theoretical model, and the theory of care seeking behaviour that may explain the factors affecting women's participation in mammography screening. In summary, analysis of these theories indicates that the theory of care seeking behaviour has value for exploring the factors affecting women's participation in mammography screening. This is because of its sensitivity to socioeconomic differences that exists amongst women in the society, and that it has a broader construct (such as habit and external factors) compared to the other health behavioural theories

Noncommunicable Respiratory Disease and Air Pollution Exposure in Malawi (CAPS). A Cross-Sectional Study.

RationaleNoncommunicable respiratory diseases and exposure to air pollution are thought to be important contributors to morbidity and mortality in sub-Saharan African adults.ObjectivesWe set out to explore the prevalence and determinants of noncommunicable respiratory disease among adults living in Chikhwawa District, Malawi.MethodsWe performed a cross-sectional study among adults in communities participating in a randomized controlled trial of a cleaner-burning biomass-fueled cookstove intervention (CAPS [Cooking and Pneumonia Study]) in rural Malawi. We assessed chronic respiratory symptoms, spirometric abnormalities, and personal exposure to air pollution (particulate matter <2.5 μm in aerodynamic diameter [PM2.5] and carbon monoxide [CO]). Weighted prevalence estimates were calculated; multivariable and intention-to-treat analyses were done.Measurements and main resultsOne thousand four hundred eighty-one participants (mean [SD] age, 43.8 [17.8] yr; 57% female) were recruited. The prevalence of chronic respiratory symptoms, spirometric obstruction, and restriction were 13.6% (95% confidence interval [CI], 11.9-15.4), 8.7% (95% CI, 7.0-10.7), and 34.8% (95% CI, 31.7-38.0), respectively. Median 48-hour personal PM2.5 and CO exposures were 71.0 μg/m3 (interquartile range [IQR], 44.6-119.2) and 1.23 ppm (IQR, 0.79-1.93), respectively. Chronic respiratory symptoms were associated with current/ex-smoking (odds ratio [OR], 1.59; 95% CI, 1.05-2.39), previous tuberculosis (OR, 2.50; 95% CI, 1.04-15.58), and CO exposure (OR, 1.46; 95% CI, 1.04-2.05). Exposure to PM2.5 was not associated with any demographic, clinical, or spirometric characteristics. There was no effect of the CAPS intervention on any of the secondary trial outcomes.ConclusionsThe burden of chronic respiratory symptoms, abnormal spirometry, and air pollution exposures in adults in rural Malawi is of considerable potential public health importance. We found little evidence that air pollution exposures were associated with chronic respiratory symptoms or spirometric abnormalities and no evidence that the CAPS intervention had effects on the secondary trial outcomes. More effective prevention and control strategies for noncommunicable respiratory disease in sub-Saharan Africa are needed. Clinical trial registered with www.isrctn.com (ISRCTN 59448623)