Policy versus ground reality: secondary English language assessment system in Bangladesh     

Sharmistha Das  Prithvi Shrestha  Arifa Rahman  Rubina Khan 《Curriculum Journal》2014,25(3):326-343

Any policy reform in education is highly effective when it is planned and implemented ‘holistically’ and yet, it is the most challenging way forward. Many countries in Asia have reformed their English language policies and syllabi in the last two decades due to the increasing value of the language worldwide. Motivated by a ‘communicative approach’ to English language teaching, Bangladesh was one of the countries that launched such a reform in the 1990s. However, this reform has been criticised for imposing the changes on teachers without preparing them sufficiently. More importantly, there is limited evidence as to how much the secondary English language assessment system is aligned with the changes introduced in the curriculum. In order to explore this gap, a medium-scale study was conducted in 38 secondary schools in Bangladesh, following a mixed methods approach. The findings highlighted a ‘mismatch’ between the intended English language learning outcomes and current assessment practices, including the resulting challenges faced by the teachers. This paper argues that language education reform is likely to fail if the assessment system is not aligned with the curriculum.  相似文献   

Morphological and biochemical responses of Oryza sativa L. (cultivar MR219) to ion beam irradiation   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Anna Pick Kiong Ling  Ying Chian Ung  Sobri Hussein  Abdul Rahim Harun  Atsushi Tanaka  Hase Yoshihiro 《Journal of Zhejiang University. Science. B》2013,14(12):1132-1143

Objective

Heavy ion beam, which has emerged as a new mutagen in the mutation breeding of crops and ornamental plants, is expected to result in the induction of novel mutations. This study investigates the morphological and biochemical responses of Oryza sativa toward different doses of carbon ion beam irradiation.

Methods

In this study, the dry seeds of O. sativa were irradiated at 0, 20, 40, 60, 80, 100, and 120 Gy, followed by in-vitro germination under controlled conditions. Morphological and biochemical studies were conducted to investigate the morphological and physiological responses of O. sativa towards ion beam irradiation.

Results

The study demonstrated that low doses (10 Gy) of ion beam have a stimulating effect on the height, root length, and fresh weight of the plantlets but not on the number of leaves. Meanwhile, doses higher than 10 Gy caused reductions in all the morphological parameters studied as compared to the control samples. The highest total soluble protein content [(2.11±0.47) mg/g FW] was observed in plantlets irradiated at 20 Gy. All irradiated plantlets were found to have 0.85% to 58.32% higher specific activity of peroxidase as compared to the control samples. The present study also revealed that low doses of ion beam (10 and 20 Gy) had negligible effect on the total chlorophyll content of O. sativa plantlets while 40 Gy had a stimulating effect on the chlorophyll content. Plantlets irradiated between 40 to 120 Gy were shown to be 0.38% to 9.98% higher in total soluble nitrogen content which, however, was not significantly different from the control samples.

Conclusions

Carbon ion beam irradiation administered at low to moderate doses of 10 to 40 Gy may induce O. sativa mutants with superior characteristics.  相似文献   

Dargah libraries in India: a comparative study     

Mohamed Taher  Amin Ahmed Khan  Muhammed Burhanuddin 《International Information and Library Review》2013,45(4):337-345

This paper relates to the difficulty in retrieving precise information from big repositories of magazine articles in full text, and proposes an Extended Markup Language (XML) vocabulary for improving retrieval rates. The hypothesis tested was as follows: Magazine articles marked up with an XML vocabulary, indexed only by selected parts, give more precise search results than the same search using full text index.

The study was exploratory with the following characteristics: 29 magazine articles were tested for results, 8 scholars were interviewed for defining 23 search strategies and evaluating results. The data showed that precision improved from 40.72% with full text search to 62.84% using XML markup and searching only in specific labels.

Revision of the vocabulary and more testing has to be done by the library and information science community in order to obtain a valid vocabulary and provide more research results. Cultural characteristics and politics of librarians and information managers’ community are as important as technical issues in order to consider any technical proposal to be implemented successfully to achieve interoperability.  相似文献   

Use of digital resources by the scientists of Central Drug Research Institute (CDRI), India: A survey     

Abdul Mannan Khan  Atika Khursheed 《International Information and Library Review》2013,45(1-2):77-82

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Measuring Effectiveness and Efficiency of an Academic Library's Collection and Services of the Central Library,Allahabad University: Users’ Point of View     

Abdul Mannan Khan 《International Information and Library Review》2013,45(1-2):31-40

The main purpose of this study is to know the users opinion regarding the adequacy of the library's collection and to analyze the level of users’ satisfaction about the library collection, organization, facilities, and services. A well-structured survey was administered to the faculty members, research scholars, and students of the Allahabad University Library to collect data. Data show that the majority of the respondents believess that not only does the library possess an average collection, but the overall library's function, i.e., library collection, organization of collection, attitude of library staff, services, and IT-based services, is also rated average.  相似文献   

The e-government research domain: A triple helix network analysis of collaboration at the regional,country, and institutional levels     

Gohar Feroz Khan  Han Woo Park 《Government Information Quarterly》2013

This study introduces a hybrid approach (i.e., a social network analysis technique and triple helix indicators) to study certain aspects of the e-government (EG) domain that would otherwise remain hidden when using conventional analytic tools. Particularly, we provide network analysis of the EG research domain by focusing on the network collaboration between regions, nations and institutions. We collected and analyzed 1091 scholarly papers which were classified as being about “e-government” by the Web of Science database. The results indicate that hybrid method can be used to understand certain network-level structures and patterns in the EG domain which are beyond the scope of the predominantly-used systematic literature review (SLR) method. Particularly, the hybrid method is useful in understanding collaboration patterns between countries, institutions and regions in the EG domain, identifying key players by studying their network properties (i.e., degree centralities); and in understanding the pattern of relations among universities, industries, and government. The implications of these results in terms of research and practice, and study limitations are discussed.  相似文献   

The use of public computing facilities by library patrons: demography,motivations, and barriers   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Kurt DeMaagd  Han Ei Chew  Guanxiong Huang  M. Laeeq Khan  Akshaya Sreenivasan  Robert LaRose 《Government Information Quarterly》2013

Public libraries play an important part in the development of a community. Today, they are seen as more than store houses of books; they are also responsible for the dissemination of online, and offline information. Public access computers are becoming increasingly popular as more and more people understand the need for internet access. Using a series of surveys conducted in 12 libraries across the state of Michigan, the current study is a step towards understanding why the computing facilities are widely used, and what are the motivations behind their use. In addition, barriers and other factors that hinder usage are also discussed. The findings from this study will help policy makers and library administrators evaluate the current allocation of scarce resources, help them promote greater use of the library's resources, and guide their future course of action. The study is conducted as part of a federally funded public computing center grant.  相似文献   

Schooling Japan's Imperial subjects in the early ShÔwa period     

Yoshimitsu Khan 《History of education》2013,42(3):213-223

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Teacher-student development in mathematics classrooms: Interrelated zones of free movement and promoted actions     

Mohammed Abdul Hussain  John Monaghan  John Threlfall 《Educational Studies in Mathematics》2013,82(2):285-302

This paper applies and extends Valsiner’s ‘zone theory’ (zones of free movement and promoted actions) through an examination of an intervention to establish inquiry communities in primary mathematics classrooms. Valsiner’s zone theory, in a classroom setting, views students’ freedom of choice of action and thought as mediated by the teacher. The extension of this theory adds that teachers’ freedom of choice of action and thought is mediated by ‘significant others’ and also by the actions of students with new freedoms. The paper presents necessary theoretical constructs and provides extracts from lessons and from teacher-teacher collaboration to illustrate the theoretical extension.  相似文献   

发展中国家实现终身学习的障碍与策略   总被引：3，自引：2，他引：3  

阿布杜尔·卡恩  熊锟 《中国远程教育(综合版)》2003,(7):21-27

众所周知,教育在社会的可持续发展方面起着关键的作用,它有助于减少贫困,增加收入,发展民主,预防疾病,促进健康和保护环境。教育、消除贫困以及人类发展三者的主要关系可以概括为(CIDA,2001):教育能够发展人力资本和生产力,保持家庭健康和营养,促进个人的发展和社会的发展,所有这些特点都有助于减少贫困;发展人力资本和生产力与社会的发展又有利于整个社会宏观经济的增长和发展。当今,教育、学习、知识获得以及技能的作用变得比以往任何时代都更为重要。无论从宏观还是微观的层次来看,我们应付日益变革的能力将成为成功的关键因素(Khan,1997)。那么,使得学习成为决定我们未来的决定性因素是哪些呢?本文拟就发展中国家的教育来探讨这一主题,作者的基本理论前提是:第一、学习是个人与社会生存的关键;第二、传统的教育体系已无法满足日益强烈的学习需求;第三、必须为大多数人的终身学习提供灵活多样的工具和技术;第四、充分应用现代信息技术帮助人们克服学习  相似文献