“Choice and voice”: elementary teachers’ perceptions of the influence of Edcamps on their professional practice

Created by a group of educators in 2009, Edcamps are “free, voluntary, participant-driven” unconferences for educators to informally learn from one another (Carpenter & Linton, 2016, p. 97). Since the first Edcamp in 2010, over 700 Edcamps have been held across the United States and in 25 total countries (Edcamp Foundation, 2016). In spite of the viral, organic growth of Edcamps and the extensive research literature on the need for high-quality teacher professional development (PD), almost no empirical research exists on this model of teacher PD. As a result, education stakeholders have little understanding of the possible value and influence of Edcamps on teachers’ professional practice. The purpose of this qualitative, multiple case study was to explore U.S. public elementary teachers’ perceptions of their Edcamp experiences and how, if at all, their Edcamp experiences influenced their professional practice, specifically in the areas of student instruction, peer collaboration, and teacher leadership. Two semi-structured interviews were conducted with each of the twelve study participants. During the second of these interviews, participants shared and discussed artifacts demonstrating the influence of Edcamps on their professional practice. A total of 68 unique artifacts were collected and examined from among all participants. A thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) of the interview data revealed that all twelve teachers perceived that their Edcamp experiences were legitimate, high-quality PD. All teachers also perceived that their Edcamp experiences had influenced their professional practice in at least one of the following areas: student instruction, peer collaboration, and teacher leadership. Teachers spoke of applying the discrete knowledge and skills that they had learned during Edcamp sessions as well as applying the format and beliefs of the Edcamp model of PD itself to their professional practice. Based on teachers’ interview responses, three major factors contributed to whether Edcamps influenced teachers’ professional practice: teachers’ motivations, colleague support, and administrator support. Additionally, all participants stated that teachers should have greater choice and voice in their PD. The findings of this study may inform future studies about Edcamps and, more generally, teacher-driven PD. Recommendations for practice and future research are discussed

SOCIO-CULTURAL ATHROPOLOGY OF VIETNAMESE LABOUR EXPORTED TO SOUTHEAST ASIAN COUNTRIES

Vietnam is evaluated as the nation of young population with the high rate of abor age, making up about 63% of its total population (by the end of 2006 there were 43.3 million labors, in which 22.5 % were trained workers and 5% were managing staff). However, the rate of unemployment is quite high, therefore, employment is an urgent and long-term problem. To solve this problem, it is important to develop local business and production, but also the labor export to neighbor countries and the world should be taken into account.Among Southeast Asian nations, Malaysia considered as a potential market for labor export, because it is available for unskilled workers. It needs about 1 million of foreign workers per year to fill the lacking of its local labor for the strategy of turning Malaysia into a developed industrial nation towards the year of 2020. To carry out the targets of labor export policy, besides the responsibility of concerned agencies and authorities, it is necessary to require the contribution by scientists, including Anthropology. Hopefully, the applied research of anthropology could contribute to the improvement of Vietnamese labor export to Malaysia market, and limit the risks of cultural problems particularly between Vietnamese laborers and local ones in Malaysia which is an Islamic multi-ethnic country

Integrating SiO2 nanoparticles to achieve color uniformity and luminous efficiency enhancement for white light emitting diodes

A phosphor structure with SiO2 nanoparticles is proposed to achieve the enhancement in the correlated color temperature (CCT) homogeneity and the luminescence performance for white light-emitting diodes (WLEDs). As SiO2 is integrated into the phosphorus compound, the scattering effect of this material contributes to better blue-light utilization. Thus, this innovative packaging design results in a significant increased lumen efficiency, more than 12%, in comparison with that of conventional dispensing ones. Meanwhile, the angular CCT deviation also decreases considerably, from 522 K to 7 K, between the angles of -70 and 700. Moreover, this reduction leads to the diminishment of yellow ring phenomenon effect. In addition, the measurement of haze demonstrates that there is a strong scattering in the visible spectrum when SiO2 is added into the silicone film. Besides that, when increasing the driving current, SiO2 stabilizes the chromaticity coordinate shift, which is a vital requirement for indoor lighting applications. Furthermore, SiO2 nanoparticles own excellent optical features, cost efficiency, and simple production will probably turn this material into a potential material in advancing the optical performance of WLEDs

Study of LaSiO3Cl:Ce3+,Tb3+ and Ca5B2SiO10:Eu3+ Phosphors for Improving Hue Standard and Illuminating Beam of WLEDs

Remote phosphor arrangements usually have low color quality and superior lumen output to that of conformal phosphor arrangements and in-cup phosphor arrangements. For this reason, many researches are done so that we could enhance the chromatic quality for the remote phosphor arrangements. For this research, we are suggesting the double-layer remote phosphor arrangement to boost the CRI (short for color rendering index) as well as the CQS (short for color quality scale) in WLED devices. Three identical WLED arrangements which have dissimilar chromatic temperature which covers 5600 K, 8500 K will be used in this paper. The initial idea involves placing one sheet of blue phosphor LaSiO3Cl:Ce3+,Tb3+ or one sheet of red phosphor Ca5B2SiO10:Eu3+ over a sheet of yellow phosphor YAG:Ce3+. After that, seek an appropriate concentration of Ca5B2SiO10:Eu3+ so that we could obtain the most desirable chromatic performance. Judging the result, the element Ca5B2SiO10:Eu3+ seem to help improve the CRI and CQS levels. Particularly, the greater the concentration of La2O3:Eu3+ is, the greater level the CRI and the CQS will get, because of the boost in red illumination within the WLED devices. In addition, the blue phosphor layer LaSiO3Cl:Ce3+,Tb3+ helps increase the lumen output. But the decline of the lumen as well as the chromatic performance manifests if the concentration of LaSiO3Cl:Ce3+,Tb3+ and Ca5B2SiO10:Eu3+ is beyond required level. This is demonstrated by utilizing the theory of Mie-scattering as well as the law of Beer–Lambert. This research’s result is important for the augmentation of white light performance in the WLED devices