Language and Gender: Implications on the Development of Female Self Concept in Zimbabwe

A ZJER article on sexuality and development in women using the paradigms of language and gender.This article analyzes the relationship between use of language and gender in the development of the female self concept.The argument is that language can reinforce asymmetrical gender relations in society through the use of gender specific vocabulary. Two concepts, that is gender and patriarchy, are discussed and their relationship to the use of language is shown. Socialist Feminism as the guiding theoretical perspective is discussed as well as Cooley's concept of the looking glass self. A detailed analysis of the t relationship between language and gender is undertaken and in it the following issues are critically discussed: language used about women, language used by women and linguistic differences to social interactions.This article concludes by showing how education can be used as a tool in the deconstruction of gender stereotypes about women in the use of language.The need to avoid the use of derogatory and demeaning vocabulary in interaction both inside and outside the classroom is emphasized

Perception and attitude towards the study of African languages in Zimbabwean high schools : implications for human resources development and management

The study sought to explore perception and attitude towards the study of African languages in high schools and the resultant implications on human resources development and management. The research basically explored the diverse perception and attitude that prevail towards African languages in African countries in general and Zimbabwe in particular. The descriptive survey research design was used mainly for its effectiveness in exploratory research. Participants were drawn from selected high schools and universities in Zimbabwe. Questionnaires, interviews, focus group discussions and documentary analyses were used to collect data. Data gathered were then subjected to both qualitative and quantitative analyses for triangulation purposes. Major findings indicated that the perception and attitude towards the study of African languages in Zimbabwean high schools is generally negative. English language is preferred to and valued more than African languages. Such perception and attitude determine choices of programmes of study at tertiary level and the selective channeling of people into specific professional fields. Consequently, that impact on the development and management of potential human resources in professions related to African languages. The current language policy in Zimbabwe has no clear instrument that defines the place of African languages in the curriculum and work place as is the case with English. The choice of language to study at high school is thus determined by fossilised perception and attitude towards languages in general, coupled with lack of career guidance on the link between African languages and related career opportunities, in the belief that English is the gateway to success. The study clearly reveals that it is the Zimbabwean education system that should realize the potential of schools as agents of change in improving the status of African languages. Hence the study advocates restructuring of the curriculum. Proposals and recommendations to re-engineer the Zimbabwean curriculum so that indigenous African languages are made compulsory up to ‘A’ level were made. Such a bold move would uplift the status of African languages and at the same time improve perception and attitude towards their study as well as indirectly, but positively, impacting on human resources development and management in related disciplines.African LanguagesD. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages

Primary School Teachers’ Colleges’ Preparation of Student Teachers for the Teaching of Children’s Literature - The Case of Marymount, Masvingo, Mogernster and Bondolfi Teachers’ Colleges

A ZBTE investigation into the primary school teachers' colleges' preparation of student teachers for the teaching of children's literature.The study was an investigation into the primary school teachers' colleges' preparation of student teachers for the teaching of children's literature. It was established that there is no systematic and deliberate preparation of student teachers for the teaching of children's literature despite the general consensus on its importance. The paper recommends the formulation of curriculum for the preparation of student teachers for the teaching of children's literature This could cascade down to the primary schools curriculum so that children's literature can take its . rightful place in the Zimbabwean education system

Violencia intrafamiliar y la autoestima en estudiantes de segundo año de secundaria de un colegio en el distrito de Horacio Zevallos – Ate, Lima – 2021

La presente investigación fue realizada en un colegio del distrito de Horacio Zevallos, Ate – Lima, Perú, tuvo como objetivo principal determinar si existe relación alguna entre la violencia intrafamiliar y la autoestima con un universo muestral de 36 estudiantes del segundo año de secundaria del periodo 2021. El estudio fue de tipo aplicada – correlacional con enfoque cuantitativo, de diseño no experimental, transversal descriptivo. Se utilizó técnicas como el análisis documental y encuestas e instrumentos como la ficha de análisis documental, cuestionario de violencia familiar y la escala de autoestima de Rosenberg para determinar los niveles de cada variable en los estudiantes. Los resultados evidenciaron que dentro del grupo muestral existen bajos niveles de violencia familiar tanto en mujeres como varones, pero a su vez se evidencia que existen bajos niveles de autoestima en las féminas con diferencia a los varones que mostraron mayores niveles de autoestima. Mostrando a su vez el estudio de correlación que existe una relación inversa moderada entre ambas variables. Presenta una propuesta de talleres socioeducativos que involucran no solo a la familia y el estudiante, sino también a la plana docente y personal auxiliar de la institución educativa, 20 talleres socioeducativos con una duración de 4 meses y medio, que albergan información teórica y práctica a través de dinámicas y exposiciones que tiene como objetivo principal generar cambios positivos dentro de la familia y su desarrollo como también en la autoestima del adolescente.TesisCiencias jurídica

Learning and Its Neural Correlates in a Virtual Environment for Honeybees

The search for neural correlates of operant and observational learning requires a combination of two (experimental) conditions that are very difficult to combine: stable recording from high order neurons and free movement of the animal in a rather natural environment. We developed a virtual environment (VE) that simulates a simplified 3D world for honeybees walking stationary on an air-supported spherical treadmill. We show that honeybees perceive the stimuli in the VE as meaningful by transferring learned information from free flight to the virtual world. In search for neural correlates of learning in the VE, mushroom body extrinsic neurons were recorded over days during learning. We found changes in the neural activity specific to the rewarded and unrewarded visual stimuli. Our results suggest an involvement of the mushroom body extrinsic neurons in operant learning in the honeybee (Apis mellifera)

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

What is happening to the 'noble' profession? Concerns about and threats to the teaching profession in high school in Zimbabwe - The Way forward

Abstract The teaching profession in this country used to be regarded as a "noble" profession. I

Impact of perception and attitude towards the study of African languages on Human Resource needs: A case for Zimbabwe

This article argues that the Zimbabwean high school curriculum has remained largely irrelevant to human resource needs for professions that draw expertise from African languages, such as teaching, translating, broadcasting and interpreting. Despite some curriculum reforms after the attainment of political independence, effects of colonial language policy and language planning with regard to the Zimbabwean education system seem to have remained intact. As a result, observations have been made that the system continues to churn out Africans who are still deeply rooted in the belief that the study of foreign languages, English in particular, prepares them for a better and brighter future than African languages would. The belief is largely that a pass in English guarantees them better, higher-paying, more prestigious and more readily available jobs than would African languages. The education system in Zimbabwe today, this paper argues, has negative perceptions and attitudes towards the study of African languages. African languages-related professions are therefore filled by people with little or no sound background knowledge in the area. In addition, those who end up being absorbed in professions that draw from the African languages area, in most cases, are not satisfied. The same can be said of most other African countries that were subjected to colonialism in the past and neo-colonialism today, under the vague and obscure concepts of globalisation and modernisation. Against this backdrop, the article advocates for the re-engineering of the Zimbabwean school core-curriculum by incorporating mandatory study of an indigenous language, at least up to ‘O’ level, in a bid to preserve and promote African languages and at the same time meet human resource needs of professions that draw from the discipline over time

The use of Shona language as a medium of instruction in the first three grades of primary school in a Tonga speaking community: parents and teachers' perceptions

A ZJER investigation into the implications of having a local Zimbabwean language that is foreign to the Tonga community being used as the medium of instruction to impressionable youngsters in their first 3 years of formal learning.This paper investigates teachers’and parents’perceptions of the use ofShona as a medium of instruction in the first three grades of primary school in a Tongaspeaking community. Research was carried out at four schools and their surrounding communities in Nyaminyami District of Mashonaland West Province of Zimbabwe. Data were collected mainly using interviews and some of the data were collected using observation and document analysis. The major findings were that while a few parents and teachers felt that Shona should not be used as a medium of instruction in the first three grades of primary school in a community where the majority of the pupils'mother tongue is Tonga, a large number of them felt that Shona should continue to be used as a medium of instruction at this level, mainly for the purpose of integrating Tonga children in the wider Zimbabwean society