This qualitative, relational-centred inquiry explores the learning experiences of a group of twenty Child and Youth Care (CYC) students who completed a twelve-day international study tour through parts of Ireland and Scotland. The international study tour offers experience-based learning opportunities for CYC students to see first-hand Irish and Scottish history, culture, and social care systems. Through this inquiry the student participants communicated and interpreted the meaning of their study tour experience. The data analysis revealed five thematic categories organized around five guiding research questions, the results of which are described below.

Different intonation pattern is one of the factors affecting the learning of L2 pronunciation. The contrastive analysis of English-Persian intonation patterns has shown that both languages are similar in sentence-final intonation while they are different in incomplete sentences. To this end, this paper describes English-Persian intonation patterns to look at the differences and similarities of the two languages to improve the effectiveness of L2 learning.

Nationally, thousands of new teachers in grades K-12 permanently leave the profession of teaching within five years of employment. Up to one third of new teachers leave the profession within three years. State legislatures mandated new teacher induction programs in the 1980s to improve new teacher retention. However, research regarding the effectiveness of induction programs shows mixed results. Factors from two theoretical, teacher induction models were used to guide the inquiry: Comprehensive Induction and Mutual Benefits Models. This study examined the relationship of teacher induction models to the likelihood of first-year middle school teacher retention. First-year middle school teachers in Texas from state Education Regions One, Two, Three, and Four participated. Background included gender, age, ethnicity, district type, SES, first or second career, certification type, and content area. Middle school teachers in the Regions were contacted. Only first year teachers were asked to respond. Ninety-nine surveys from respondents were used for quantitative analyses. Analyses included descriptive, frequency, factor analysis, regression, t-test, and ANOVA statistical procedures. Results showed faculty planned on remaining as teachers, but not necessarily due to induction programs. Induction programs were not particularly effective for teachers returning to the profession for a second year. Factor analyses showed the two theoretical models were important to new teachers for professional development as it applies to their career for assessment, planning, and mentoring, but they were not influential for retention. For their personal lives, results showed new teachers want to know how to: balance their personal life with their professional one; provide success opportunities for students; and be at ease in the profession. Implications suggest that a new teacher’s background does not matter for retention: a new teacher is a new teacher. Additionally, new teacher induction programs are not particularly effective for new teacher retention. New teachers have a number of other needs beyond those of the profession that should be addressed in induction programs. Finally, induction programs should consider experimenting with the new induction model proposed in the study as a result of data analyses. It integrates professional and personal interests.

This study was embarked upon as an assessment of school principals’ assertiveness on the school attendance of Nigerian female students living and working as maids. Eight research questions and eight null hypotheses guided the study. The survey research design was utilized for the study. The target population was the 257 school principals in the six education zones in Anambra State, Nigeria. Simple random sampling was utilized in selecting four education zones for the study, out of which 96 principals were selected as the sample of the study. A questionnaire was used to elicit information from these school principals and 82 of them duly filled and returned theirs. The research questions were answered using the statistical mean, while the null hypotheses were tested using the t-test statistic at 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that that male principals did not have any knowledge of female students who work as housemaids or engage in commercial activities when they should be in school, and that both rural and urban school principals had limited knowledge of female students who work as maids in homes or in commercial ventures, among others. The hypotheses testing revealed that male and female school principals’ knowledge of students who work housemaids or engage in commercial activities significantly differed, and also there was no significant difference in rural and urban location response ratings of school principals on their enforcement of school attendance for housemaids and female students used as labour in commercial activities. It was recommended that principals should show more interest in the personal lives of their students, as this could be contributory to their absenteeism from school, and that government should come out with a whitepaper on school attendance, the flouting of which would lead to sanctions against offending masters and mistresses of female students who work as maids in homes and in commercial ventures.

The importance of education quality can never be over emphasized. The objective of this research is to introduce how to set up scientific and reasonable curriculum system in the training of chemical engineering ideas and abilities of students who majored in chemistry and other related specialties. According to the many years practice, the system is built and optimized, and it includes the following courses in the order of “Elementary Chemical Industry”, “Chemical Engineering Experiment”, “Chemical Industry Charting”, “Industry Chemistry” or “Chemical Technology”, “Chemical Process Simulation Experiment”, “Chemical Process and Plant Design”, “Chemical Practice”. Teaching practices have testified that students cultivated by this curriculum system presented well comprehensive quality of innovative talents, and the employment capability is obviously enhanced.

This study applied a content analysis method to compare how the algebraic topic of using symbols for unknown quantities is presented in elementary school mathematics textbooks from Taiwan (Nani), Singapore (My Pals Are Here!), and Finland (Laskutaito). Specifically, differences in question types (purely mathematical, verbal, visual, or combined representation), contextual versus noncontextual presentation, and pedagogical content design were compared. The findings showed that (1) fewer visual representations are found in Nani compared with the other textbooks; (2) Taiwan uses more contextual problems than the other countries; and (3) the content design in Taiwan focuses on applying the equivalent axiom to solve for unknown quantities, whereas Singapore and Finland use line segments or divide concepts in geometry graphs. In addition, the Singaporean textbooks teach algebraic simplification, providing this topic earlier than the other countries and enabling students to form connections with junior high school learning. Other implications of this study are discussed, and suggestions for future research are provided.

Rapid development of information technology provides a favorable and high-quality platform for teachers’ online professional development. However, due to some factors, some teachers are unable to attend their OPD courses successful and effectively. Therefore, the research objective of this study was to assess the challenges of Chinese EFL lecturers attending online professional development (OPD). The participants consist of 100 EFL lecturers from 3 universities in Ningxia. The instrument for data collection used for the study was 20-item questionnaire. The researchers adopted the Cronbach Alpha method to determine the reliability of the instrument. A reliability index of 0.81 was obtained. Two research questions were structured and data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation. Findings revealed that, over workload and shortage of time are among the barriers of OPD for EFL lecturers. It was also recommended that less workload and adequate technical support would improve lecturers’ professional development in universities.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relations of Islamic activities to the students’ academic achievement in Islamic Education Subject in senior high school in Indonesia. Therefore, the quantitative approach was conducted. The techniques used in collecting the quantitative data were questionnaire. Furthermore, the techniques to analyze the data were descriptive quantitative in which the results of the study are presented in description, table/matrix, and arithmetic formula. The result of the study was assumed that the teachers in senior high school in Indonesia eventually conducted the activities, which are taught by Islam and its correlation to the students’ learning achievement was very positive. In conclusion, Islamic activities give positive correlation to the students’ academic achievements in Islamic Education Subject.

Festival is considered as one of the key ingredients in culture development. This means that in an effort for a community to meet its cultural growth agenda, attention should be a place of the festival activity. This study is on the design of festivals and the knowledge about artforms in Agbeliza of Avenorpedo. The main objective is the identification of artistic componentsand understanding the symbolisms as used in the celebration of Agbeliza. Qualitative approach was used to describe the activities of the celebration. A participant observation, interview and questionnaire techniques were used to identify the major artforms. The main artforms showcased in the celebration of the festival were visual and performing arts. The results indicated the following credibility of knowledge of the Agbeliza celebration; 70% identified various art forms but did not understand them, 11.5% identified some and gave their own meanings and, 18.5% could not identify but saw them as something needed to enhance the celebration. It was found that the lack of understanding of the visuals that enhance the celebration of Agbeliza bridges the embarrassment of their cultural heritage. It was recommended that educating citizens and Ghanaians to learn to understand and manage their cultural heritage may provide them with adequate insight to avoid escalating negative feelings. Suggested approaches like, making and using approaches with field and school experiences were the expectations of the study.

The process of globalization has brought a number of modern issues and perspectives to the landscape of foreign language education including influences on EFL learners’ identity. Being exposed to local cultures together with foreign cultures raises critical questions vis-à-vis identity construction (Galajda, 2011; Guilherme, 2002; Houghton, 2013). Besides, as Nizegorodcew (2011) argues, questioning learners’ identity as simultaneously speakers of different national languages and English as a lingua franca (ELF) is at the heart of EFL concerns. Hence, much effort is highly recommended to investigate EFL learners’ identity in order to keep abreast of the growing issues including intercultural citizenship (Byram, 2009). In light of these controversial issues, the present paper provides a qualitative analysis about Moroccan EFL learners’ identity that reflects the desired profile of the ‘intercultural speaker’. The analysis is based on Byram’s framework of ICC (1997) that stresses mainly the ability of drawing on different cultural realities to highlight common issues and phenomena. Also, the paper aims at describing the development of the aforementioned identity among Moroccan EFL undergraduate learners. This paper, therefore, contributes to the extant literature on identity and intercultural communication.

This study aimed at finding out the effects of social life adjustment on the academic achievements of adolescents in secondary schools in the North West Region of Cameroon and also to verify if the social life adjustment and academic achievement apply equally for both male and female. Four hundred and eighty (480) students were randomly sampled from three secondary schools in major urban areas of the Region. The descriptive survey design was used for the study. A self-constructed questionnaire with the Likert scale on social life adjustment was used to gather the necessary data. Two null hypotheses were formulated and tested at the 0.05 level of significance. The data were analysed using the chi-square and Fishers’ Z scores for gender. The findings revealed that social life adjustment had significant influence on students’ academic achievements in secondary schools in the North West Region of Cameroon. It was also found that there exist no significant difference in the effects of social life adjustment on academic performance between boys and girls. Based on these findings, it was recommended amongst others that, counsellors should constantly monitor and guide adolescents properly during class periods, recess periods and extracurricular activities in order for them to achieve academically. Keywords: Social life adjustment; Adolescents; Academic achievements; Cameroon.

This study aims at providing further insights into the factors influencing people’s decisions to pursue teaching English as a career. The study attempts to give answers to the following questions: (1) What are the career motivations of 1st and 4th grade prospective English teachers? (2) Is there a difference between 1st and 4th grade prospective English teachers’ career motivations? A total of 84 prospective English teachers (41 first grade and 43 fourth grade) participated in the study. The data were collected by means of a questionnaire designed to investigate career motivations of Turkish prospective English language teachers. For the data analysis, descriptive statistics in terms of mean and standard deviation were computed, and independent samples t-tests were conducted to find out whether the findings were statistically significantly different or not. The findings revealed that intrinsic and altruistic reasons were the most preferred ones by the student teachers. In contrast, extrinsic reasons were found to be the least influential factors behind the participants’ decisions to become a teacher. The findings also showed that there is not a statistically significant difference between the grades in terms of career motivations. According to the results, further implications were suggested in the study.

The study examined the level of parents’ contributions to their children’s education process and its influence on SPI in UCE examinations in Central and Northern Uganda. The objective was to investigate the influence of the levels of the parents’ contributions towards education process of their children on the SPI in UCE in schools in Central and Northern Uganda. Quantitative and qualitative approaches were used. 72 school leaders, 80 teachers, 140 students, 12 parents and 10 Key Informants (KI) participated. Data was collected using interviews, questionnaires and Informal Conversational Interview and analysed to obtain SPA, SPI and RSPC, frequency counts, percentages and using t-test. The result showed that the Parents of students in schools in Central Uganda contributed more than the parents from Northern Uganda. This has resulted in schools in Central Uganda achieving higher School Performance Indices (69% = 118%) than schools in Northern Uganda (71% = 163%) School leaders, especially, of schools in Northern Uganda therefore need to encourage parents to contribute more in their children’s school.

In recent years, preschool education in China is facing great chances, but there are some challenges as well. There is a lack of qualified preschool English teachers, and many graduates majoring in preschool education in secondary vocational school fail to meet the requirements of English Curriculum for Secondary Vocational School (2009). In order to solve the problems, more and more English teachers are exploring new teaching methods, among which situational teaching method is widely accepted. This method has been used in English teaching in Chinese primary and middle schools. However, little attention has been paid to situational teaching method in English class in secondary vocational school. Therefore, the paper aims to explore strategies in situational teaching method in English class for preschool education majors in secondary vocational school.

The number of students enrolling at International schools in Malaysia is increasing each year. A number of parents are paying substantial amount of money in order to seek for a quality education for their children. However, the quality of a teacher is not always easy to measure, particularly the personality, attitudes and beliefs of a teacher. There have been numerical quantitative researches on the quality of a teacher but it is argued that a qualitative approach would add to existing knowledge by providing deeper insights and from a different point of views. The purpose of the present study was to explore excellent teachers’ views of a good teacher through individual in-depth interviews. Six excellent teachers from different schools were selected for this study. Various themes emerged from the interviews, some of which have not yet been uncovered in past research investigating quality teacher. The findings provide evidence that teacher’s personality, student-centred approach, nurturing students, moral and social awareness, level of professionalism and effective management skills are the elements leading to the establishment of a good teacher. This study also provides support for the employment of qualitative methods in the study of a good teacher.

The study was carried out to determine the effect of stop, think and talk activities on the performance of students in reading comprehension in junior secondary schools in Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja. The study was carried out using a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest research design. The target population of the study comprised of 16,925 JSII students. A sample size of 100 JSII students from two secondary schools in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja, were purposely sampled in the study. Sixty five (65) students from Government Junior Secondary School, Apo and thirty five (35) from Government Junior Secondary School, Garki were used for the study. Both groups of students were taught for six (6) weeks. Government Junior Secondary School, Apo was assigned as the experimental group while Government Junior Secondary School, Garki was assigned as the control school. Students were pre-tested to establish their homogeneity before the commencement of the treatment. They were taught for six (6) weeks and were tested using retelling test as an instrument. Data collected from students’ test scores was analysed using mean and standard deviation, while t-test was used to test the formulated null hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. Findings of the study revealed that “stop, think and talk” activities had significant effect on students’ performance in reading comprehension. In fact, the experimental group which was exposed to stop, think and talk activities had better understanding of the reading comprehension passages given to them. The result further revealed that students in experimental group were more active, responsive and paid more attention to details concerning the main ideas in the passages read. Based on the findings, it was recommended that teachers should be encouraged to use “stop, think and talk” activities in reading comprehension lessons. Such activities should be provided before, during and after every reading comprehension passage to enhance and facilitate students’ reading abilities. Curriculum planners should provide activities that would encourage students to “stop, think and talk” to make reading comprehension lesson more purposeful and meaningful.

This research project is designed to assess the level of anxiety among nursing students regarding clinical experiences at a private nursing institute in Peshawar, Pakistan. A Cross sectional quantitative study designed is used. Self-adopted, structured, and validated questionnaire is distributed among sample of 53 nursing students. Data are analyzed by using SPSS version 22. Chi-Square test is applied to find out significance of the variables. Results are given in the form of descriptive, and inferential statistics. Due to clinical training and practices, 11.3% students have sever anxiety. Results also signify that due to clinical practice, male students have more anxiety than female students. There is an immense need for ongoing follow-up of students’ psychosocial health and development of effective coping abilities in them.

Teachers constitutes the most important asset in teaching profession, thus, their readiness and interest towards work is important to the educational development. This study adopted a quantitative research of the survey type to provide a numeric description of portion of the population. The perception of teachers towards work and teaching profession were examined and the findings reveal that, teachers are willing to show more commitment to their work and the teaching profession. The study recommends that stakeholders should give support to teachers towards fulfilling the school objectives.

This paper reviews studies on school safety and safety precautionary measures in schools to safe guard the lives and properties in the school environment. To this end, the review is done under the following headings: theoretical framework; concept of safe school; relevance of the concept of safe school to health education; empirical evidences of studies on school safety. The primary responsibility of every Local Education Authority (LEA) is to ensure a safe and secure environment for students, staff and visitors. Specific actions that schools can take to increase school safety include ways to identify possible warning signs of students-at-risk and provide support to such students who do not feel that they belong in the school community. Working together, schools and community partners can focus their emergency planning using national guidance, including efforts to build a positive school climate to establish relations of trust and respect among students and staff in order to encourage them to share information about threatening behavior before an incident occurs. Students who do not feel safe at school stay home, and when students are not in school, they do not perform academically; it is therefore recommended that students’ perception of safe school is vital for progress in the entire educational endeavour.

Curriculum design can be understood as that the sum of a teacher’s personal efforts in preparing and finishing each lesson, which normally includes design, implementation and evaluation. To ensure teaching efficiency: (1) the teacher should elaborately design each lesson basing on teaching objectives; (2) actualize it with feasible teaching method; (3) inspect and assess the teaching effectiveness according to appropriate method. In this paper, the curriculum design, implementation and evaluation for a 72hour Chemical Engineering Basic course was investigated and discussed. It included the main knowledge units of course basic methods, fluid flow and machine, heat transfer process, mass transfer process, gas absorption, distillation, reactor flow Model, design and calculation. Teaching practices have testified that the careful planning, thorough implementation and scientific assessment cannot only obviously improve teacher’s teaching level, but also ensure teaching quality.

The students getting entered in colleges and universities for their higher education have some sort of motives and expectations towards their degree programs. They also have some degree of preparedness towards their educational institute and mainly towards their major subjects. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the differences in motivation, expectations and preparedness towards the higher education among first-year students on gender basis having accounting as a major subject. Data have been collected from the educational institutions of Multan. It is found that students either male or female, have same level of motives, expectations and preparedness towards higher education. The results of this study revealed no significance differences on the basis of gender among the first year students of college and university.

This study assessed the contributions of Community Based Management Organizations in promoting Literacy in UBE schools in Kaduna State. The study was carried out with the objectives to assess the contributions of community based management organizations in promoting literacy in UBE schools in Kaduna State, and to find out the relevance of literacy towards community development. The study adopted survey research design with the target population of 4225 headmasters, 411 principals and 5301 teachers in UBE schools in Kaduna State. A sample size of 497 respondents was sampled from the entire population using random sampling technique which consisted of 211 headmasters, 21 principals and 265 teachers. A close ended questionnaire tagged “Contributions of Community Organizations in Promoting Literacy Questionnaire” was used for data collection. The instrument was validated by three experts of the rank of senior lecturer in Measurement and Evaluation, English language and Curriculum. The reliability level of 0.85 was obtained using Cronbach alpha technique. The researcher with the help of three research assistants administered the questionnaire to the respondents. In answering the research questions, frequency counts, mean and standard deviation were used. while Kruskal-Wallis was used to test the formulated hypotheses at 0.5 level of significance. Finding revealed that community based management organizations contributed in promoting literacy in UBE schools in Kaduna State, and that literacy is relevant and play crucial role in community development. The study concluded that community based management organizations contributed in areas such as advocacy on enrolment, provision of textbooks, notebooks, biros, charts, maps, pictures, flashcards and so on, in promoting literacy in UBE schools in Kaduna State. Recommendations were put forward among others that community based management organizations should contribute more to the production and distribution of literacy and other instructional materials for UBE schools in Kaduna State. This will help equip pupils with functional literacy skills.

Challenges in leading and managing people in educational institutions are worthwhile indicators that require constant checks and adjustments. These verifications are necessary because humans are complex beings and whose thinking faculties are not fixed and often guided by situational and environmental factors. Consequently, they must have divergent views which may pose unpredictable problems to administrators. Only very smart and ardent leaders maybe quick to detect, withstand and overcome such inevitables. The need for such challenges to be identified and controlled before they galvanize subordinates into negative behavioral tendencies cannot be under-estimated. This paper therefore examined possible challenges which may manifest as impediments or hindrances to the effective leading and managing of people in educational institutions in Cameroon. A number of challenges were examined and discussed in the paper. Suggestions for ways of checking and controlling the challenges have been made to serve as a reservoir of checks and guides for school administrators and leaders. The paper cautions school managers to be tactful and apply modern charismatic approaches in the control, directing of staff and managing of their institutions.

The personality of teachers is very essential in developing students’ characters. However, the concept of teachers’ personality is a subjective concept. This study aims to recommend the concept of teachers’ personality in nurturing student characters through a literature review analysis. This study indicates that there are six key elements in the teachers’ personality; they are application of affection values, role model of noble akhlak, mastery of knowledge, self-motivation, leadership skills and sincerity. Each element has its own roles in ensuring that teachers are able to improve the students’ personality. The effects of high personality can also give students a deep understanding of what is being taught and it can attract students and teachers to interact easily with each other.

This study aims to detect the impact of the modified learning cycle strategy on the development of habits of mind and skills of critical thinking in the ‘Islamic Education’ subject for 10th grade students in Jordan. To achieve this goal, the researcher used the semi-experimental approach, hence dividing the students into two groups: a control group and an experimental group. Each grouped consisted of (31) students. The modified learning cycle was applied to teach the experimental group, and the regular traditional strategy to the control group. The researcher prepared two studying tools: a measure of the habits of mind which consisted of (25) paragraph, and a critical thinking skills test which included (28) paragraph. Both tools were applied after assuring their validity and reliability. The results indicated a statistically significant difference for using the modified learning cycle strategy in the development of habits of mind and skills of critical thinking for the experimental group students compared to the control group students. The study, thus, stresses the need to apply the modified learning cycle in teaching the ‘Islamic Education’ subject due to its effectiveness in developing habits of mind and skills of critical thinking. The researcher also recommends conducting more research on the effectiveness of the modified learning cycle that concentrates on different variables.

The aim of national macroscopic education is cultivating students’ personal quality and learning ability, but the choice of selecting talents by exam as an alternative standard has aroused the upsurge of "exam-oriented education" from primary school to university. From the perspective of new institutional economics, the traditional teaching concept of "exam-oriented education" is deeply rooted in people’ mind because of the lack of effective property rights incentive system, such as transaction cost, path dependence and signal theory. As a derivative substitute, the exam can reduce the transaction cost, yet on the other hand, from the view of signal theory, it regards "score" as a signal to judge "quality and ability", which leads to asymmetric information and will have a great influence on the training of object of students and receiving objects of society as well as social relations. It’s difficult for talents under exam-oriented education to adapt to the market economy in the disposition ability. This developing method causes the waste of social resources, which is contrary to the training goal. This paper studies and discusses the economic reasons of exam-oriented education from the perspective of new institutional economics, analyzes the necessity of quality-oriented education and puts forward specific methods and strategies.

It is well evidenced that students with visual impairments have basic learning experiences because they do not able to observe other objects and visuals and their educational needs of the visually impaired students may vary from person to person. This study focused on investigating the challenges facing visually impaired students who are in open and distance learning model using prior empirical literature review. Findings using contents analysis have indicated that university social view, inadequate resources and unfriendly university environment are the main challenges affecting their academic progress. The study have recommended that the university should ensure that learning environments for people with physical disabilities to have specific considerations in design and implementation to ensure their appropriateness and accessibility.