This work describes the implementation of a low-cost spectrometer produced with common objects and proposed as a pedagogical students’ project. This task aims to introduce the theme of image detection and to stimulate the students to develop skills in the fi eld of optics and photonics. The performance of the developed spectrometer was tested in the characterisation of several sources such as…
This paper presents a study to evaluate students’ perception of the development and use of remote Control and Automation training kits developed and tested in two Portuguese universities. Three projects were implemented based on real-world environments. The students, supervised by teachers,designed and implemented the kits using the theoretical and practical knowledge taught in traditional cl…
A microcontroller-based system is used to illustrate experimental concepts in a Control Systems course in an Electrical Engineering Technology program. Students are able to experiment with different control strategies ranging from an open-loop to PID control. Students are asked to reason and discuss the benefi ts and drawbacks associated with each strategy. The microcontroller system has been c…
This paper deals with a simple robust nonlinear control of a liquid-level system. The controller is based on one-step-ahead continuous time minimization of the predicted tracking error. We show different steps for complete engineering design from modeling and identifi cation to real-time implementation of the control algorithm. Simulations are performed to check the tracking performance of the …
Fibre optic sensors are becoming so important in engineering that it is important to introduce this new subject in Electrical Engineering courses. This work describes the construction of a simple, low-cost fi bre Bragg grating (FBG) electronic interrogation system that uses LabVIEW as a tool for simulation, measurement interface and parameter extraction of the FBGs. Although the system is relat…
Numerical analysis is a very important and useful course for students of the undergraduate program in electrical and electronic engineering. This course has real-life applications in the fi elds of electrical and electronic engineering. Therefore, this course has to be taught effectively so that students can apply the knowledge learned from this course in solving their practical problems. Skill…
In this paper, two laboratory sessions, specially designed to instruct students on the operational methodology of different induction motors fault diagnosis techniques, are presented and explained. The sessions are taught within the context of a subject dealing with predictive maintenance of electrical installations and machines. During the laboratory sessions, the students apply the different …
One instrumental step in promoting overall children’s academic success across the trajectory of early childhood, elementary, middle, and secondary grades is purposefully establishing positive linkages for families and schools through a shared partnership. By facilitating an ongoing collaborative approach to sustain family engagement practices both in and out of the classroom, schools can help…
This article examines the use of interdisciplinary project co-design, as a mechanism for increasing the capacity of a school and promoting the growth of teachers’ professional practice in an urban high school setting. Changing teaching practices and the professional culture within a school can be extremely difficult. Simply providing resources about novel strategies can be ineffective. In …
As curricular development in Scotland espoused the importance of pupil participation, the extent to which this has been embedded across teachers’ pedagogy into assessment and reporting practices warranted investigation. This article reports a mixed-methods study with parents, pupils and teachers from three Scottish primary schools that examined pupils’ participation in parents’ evening…
In today’s educational systems, students of all levels of education experience math anxiety. Furthermore,math anxiety is frequently linked to poor achievement in mathematics. The purpose of this study is to examine the causes of math anxiety and to explore strategies which pre-service teachers have identified to overcome math anxiety. The methodology included conducting surveys with 70 pre-se…
The central and distinguishing thesis of social and cultural perspectives on outcome equity is that public school classrooms are culturally biased environments. Such environments disaffect children who arrive at school from the economic or cultural margin. The ‘formative learning environment’ (FoLE) establishes and sustains legitimate partnerships for the purpose of supporting learning and …
Primary schools are identified as being in a primary position to offer nutrition education. Moreover, primary schools can offer an environment which is conducive to the promotion of healthy eating while influencing eating behaviours of children to benefit their health, well-being and academic development and performance. School canteens are one area where a healthy ethos can be encouraged and w…
Family characteristics in terms of parental education and income are an important influence on individual’s participation in higher education. In India it could be found that categorically those who are out of the higher education system belong to marginalized groups due to their economic class, caste, gender, religion etc. despite massive expansion of higher education. With this background, …
Objective: This study investigated how young urban students conceptualize health and fitness and tried to identify their sources of information about health-related issues. The findings are intended to help make suggestions for policy makers to design and develop effective health-education strategies. Methods: Focus group discussions (FGDs) of 20 groups, each comprised of eight 10th-grade stud…
Objective: The aim of this study was to identify promoting and inhibiting correlates associated with the physical activity (PA) of children and adolescents (aged 3–18). The intention was to demonstrate the complexity of correlates of PA and to determine possible influencing factors. Design: A systematic review of reviews. Methods: Systematic database research was carried out in Medline, Coc…
Objective: This study aimed to determine women’s reported health behaviours (physical activity, diet,weight management) before and during pregnancy, and to identify sources of health information. Design: Retrospective study incorporating quantitative (a self-completed survey) and qualitative (one-onone interviews) methods. Methodology: Participants were women aged 18 or over; had no pre-exi…
Objective: To determine the prevalence of home safety practices and use of safety equipment by disadvantaged families participating in a national home safety equipment scheme in England. Design: Cross-sectional postal survey sent to a random sample of 1,000 families. Setting: England, United Kingdom. Results: Half the families (51%) returned a completed questionnaire. The majority of familie…
Objectives: Discourses of complexity have entered health professional education. This paper explores the meaning of complexity by asking how health professionals are educated and some of the consequences of that education. Design: A qualitative study was carried out drawing on reflexivity, discourse analysis and grounded methodology. Setting: Two rural healthcare settings in Western Australi…
Objective: Although welfare in childhood and adolescence is of great public concern, individual or other resources have not been extensively studied in relation to wellbeing in schools. In this longitudinal study,factors that may promote girls’ or boys’ school wellbeing as well as factors that may have an adverse effect were assessed. Methods: Altogether, 149 boys and 119 girls in public p…
Objectives: This study aimed to investigate tobacco use behaviours and their correlates among secondary school students in Nepal and Sri Lanka together with cross-country comparisons. Design: Cross-sectional survey. Methods and Settings: The data were obtained from the Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS), 2007.Current tobacco use was considered as a response variable. Predictors were selected …
Objective: To examine and discuss the evidence base behind the effectiveness of the ‘teach-back’technique as an educational intervention for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patient selfmanagement using respiratory inhalers. Design: A systematic literature review Method: A search was conducted through Medline, CINAHL Embase, Cochrane Library Databases and reference lists to ob…
Objective: The purpose of the study is to determine if an updated online evidence-based educational programme delivered through Facebook is effective in improving the knowledge, skills, and self-efficacy of patients with arthritis in relation to evidence-based self-management rehabilitation interventions for osteoarthritis (OA) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Methods: Adult patients (>18 years …
Objective: To establish family-centred health education for patients in a neurosurgery unit and to evaluate its impact on patients’ and families’ satisfaction. Design: Cooperative participatory research through which a group of clinical nurses and an academic researcher engaged in cycles of action and reflection. Setting: The study was conducted in a 26-bed neurosurgery unit in a univer…
Objective: This study examined the temporal stability (i.e. test–retest reliability) of the Salutogenic Wellness Promotion Scale (SWPS) using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC). Current intraclass results were also compared to previously published interclass correlations to support the use of the intraclass method for test–retest analyses. Method: One thousand, one hundred and thir…
In recent times, empowerment has become the focus of much work with young people amidst increasing concerns about their health. Empowerment is often offered as a ‘solution’ to such concerns, with the uncritical assumption being made that empowerment unproblematically results in positive health outcomes. While much of the health promotion literature advocates ‘empowerment’, it often doe…
Empirical studies of community participation in health services commonly tie effectiveness to the perceived legitimacy of community representatives among health staff. This article examines the underlying assumption that legitimacy is the major pathway to influence for community representatives. It takes a different vantage point from previous research in its examination of data (primarily thro…
The past decades have seen a drastic increase in the medicalization of childbirth,evidenced by increasing Caesarean section rates in many Western countries. In a rare moment of congruence, alternative health-care providers, feminist advocates for women’s health and, most recently, mainstream medical service providers have all expressed serious concerns about the rise in Caesarean section rate…
Children and youth with progressive conditions are living longer, and there is increased interest in designing programs that will assist them with “transitioning” to adulthood. Almost none of the transitions research to date, however, has attended to the experiences of disabled boys in “becoming men,” nor has there been critical conceptual work problematizing notions of “normal” adu…
The clinical use of blood has a long history, but its apparent stability belies the complexity of contemporary practices in this field. In this article, we explore how the production,supply and deployment of blood products are socially mediated, drawing on theoretical perspectives from recent work on ‘tissue economies’. We highlight the ways in which safety threats in the form of infections…
While men’s gendered experiences of depression have been described, the perspectives of women partners who are affected by men’s depression have received little attention. Women partners were recruited to explore how men’s depression impacts them and its influence on gender regimes. Individual interviews with 29 women spouses were coded and analysed. Although idealized femininity positio…
This article explores power, resistance and agency in relation to pedagogic politics aiming to disrupt schooling inequalities. It theorises the concept of agency in enacting politics in the classroom and attempts to demonstrate the precariousness of the position of the teaching subject engaging in radical politics. Focusing on a detailed data excerpt depicting resistance towards classroom testi…
Research on migration frequently emphasises the cultural backgrounds of migrants, the numbers migrating, and the impact migrants are likely to have on social cohesion, on wealth and assets, and on vocational skills. Rarely, though, do these studies mention children. This article considers the children of Chinese families who have migrated to Sydney, Australia and the development of their transn…
Parent–school engagement has become a goal of education policy reforms around the world and is seen as a critical factor in children’s educational success. While the factors that impact on parent–school engagement are complex and varied, there is widespread acknowledgement that teachers play a significant role in the relationships between home and school. Teachers’ views,attitudes and b…
The Australian story of the Gurindji strike pertains to a seven-year protest by the Gurindji people, led by elder Vincent Lingaiari, demanding a return of Indigenous land that had been placed under the control of pastoralists from the late 1800s. The story of their struggle was captured by the composers Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly in 1993 in a song titled From Little Things Big Things Grow – w…
This article aims to describe the different ways that children in public schools connote values and represent two new educational tools received in the framework of two educational policies,concerning access to foreign languages since first grade, and laptops and digital literacy. How do children and adolescents represent the use of computers and the dominance of a foreign language? How do they…
Multi-Electrode Arrays (MEA) have been widely used in neuroscience experiments. However, the reduction of their wireless transmission power consumption remains a major challenge. To resolve this challenge, an efficient on-chip signal compression method is essential. In this paper, we first introduce a signal-dependent Compressed Sensing (CS) approach that outperforms previous works in terms of…
Protein fold recognition (PFR) is considered as an important step towards the protein structure prediction problem. Despite all the efforts that have been made so far, finding an accurate and fast computational approach to solve the PFR still remains a challenging problem for bioinformatics and computational biology. In this study, we propose the concept of segmented-based feature extraction te…
The material properties, including Young’s modulus, Poisson’s ratio, and density, of the structural components in the stator end winding of a typical 600-MW turbogenerator were experimentally measured; the equivalent bending stiffness of the conductor bars are determined by the three-point bending test, and the lower orders of natural frequencies and mode shapes were measured by modal test…
This paper proposes a new modulation strategy that balances the neutral-point voltage for three-level neutral-clamped inverter systems. The proposed modulation replaces the P-type or N-type small switching states with other switching states that do not affect the neutral-point voltage. The zero and medium switching states are employed to help the neutral-point voltage balancing. This method lit…
The discourse of the non-traditional classroom has found itself fundamentally intertwined with the rationalities of creating learning relevant for the future-orientated twenty-first century. In such an imaginary the idea of the conventional classroom – with its four walls, blackboard, ‘closed’ door,teacher-centred pedagogy and student learning conceptualised through the logics of the indu…
This article is an attempt at a systematic presentation of the knowledge of problems related to the value system of gifted persons. Psychological literature was reviewed to make the reader familiar with the concept of the value system and to present the current state of research. The problem of the value system of gifted persons was discussed from the perspective of its relationship with intel…
A number of characteristics are shared between attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and gifted populations. They include issues with sustaining attention, following directions, and completing tasks. When an individual is both gifted and has ADHD (gifted–ADHD) he has unique educational needs that may put him at risk for underachievement. To date the literature largely addresses how…
The study was conducted during the Easter holidays of 2010 at Rawmarsh City Learning Centre with 16 students from school years 8 to 11 who had participated, during their infant years, in a gifted and talented Key Stage One Enrichment Cluster. The students represented a wide range of backgrounds, and five were identified as being on the autistic spectrum. The Enrichment Cluster was known as ori…
Performance-based assessment clearly represents an indispensable approach for assessing gifted student learning. Challenging performance tasks allow gifted learners to reveal their considerable intellectual capacity and energy. Through performance tasks, teachers gain insights into a gifted student’s true level of capability in a domain of knowledge. As the majority of programs for the gif…
In the context of increasing interest and support for a developmental conception of giftedness,there is perhaps an ever-greater need for off-level testing for students with high potential. Off-level testing is no longer merely a single-use tool that helps administrators identify students for gifted programs, but provides essential information about where students’ various strengths are curre…
Identification of gifted and talented students presents a conceptual and practical challenge for educators. On the one hand, giftedness can be represented by potential, a difficult trait to measure reliably given the multifaceted approach supported by many gifted programs. On the other hand, some behaviors that are indicative of potential, especially in academic areas, may only develop if stude…
Flipping the classroom can be an effective instructional strategy for differentiating instruction for gifted and talented students. The author presents a rationale for using the strategy with gifted students, possible problems educators might encounter, and practical tips for beginning the process of flipping the classroom. Keywords: differentiation, technology
Using assessment data to determine student growth has become an integral part of the accountability movement, and researchers and educators are currently examining how new rules impact the academic assessment of gifted learners. In 2008, the Association for the Gifted’s Annual Symposium at the Council for Exceptional Children Convention focused on policy and legislative issues and their effec…
The United States is considered the land of immigrants and cultural diversity, and our nation’s ever changing demographics attests to this. Yearly, our nation and schools become more racially and linguistically different. In what ways, we must ask, are schools welcoming and providing for students who come from different cultural backgrounds, especially Black and Hispanic students? The author …