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Parental involvement in ECE developments in Samoa
No full textThe establishment of Early Childhood Education (ECE) in Samoa has been a significant educational development in the first stage of children's school life. The research investigated parents' involvement in ECE developments in Samoa. Parental commitment to their children's education is strongly supported. This is evident in parents willingness to ensure children make a smooth transition between home and school. ECE in Samoa is operated by a non-government agency with assistance from the Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture (MESC). Support includes resources and training workshop, however, teachers' salary and facilities are the responsibility of ECE centres. The operational budget for ECE centres is minimal. In this research a mixed methodology using quantitative and qualitative approaches was employed whereby quantitative data was collected, and qualitative data provided further explanation. Findings from quantitative data showed parents contribution to preschool education whereas qualitative data indicated parents and ECE principals views on parental involvement. The majority of teachers believed parents’ support should be outside the classroom. There are some tensions that have become evident and this paper concludes that there needs to be discussions between parents, ECE principals, and teachers to establish mutual understanding acceptable to all in supporting children's early years of education
Gross National Happiness and challenges for education in Bhutan: Perspectives of policy experts
Get PDFNations, institutions and researchers around the world are increasingly demanding their governments set out a systemic change to humanize the present order of the world. In Bhutan, the introduction of a Gross National Happiness (GNH) philosophy in the 1970s and the application of GNH indicators in the early 2000 are a deliberate attempt to embed Bhutanese values into national governance structures. For Bhutan, GNH provides a focus and sharpness to policy to ensure development is on a path that is humane. The nation-wide happiness index, constructed every five years, measures the happiness level of people through nine domains consisting of 33 indicators by GNH survey of all Bhutanese citizens. The latest survey indicates that education is perceived as the domain that makes the lowest contribution to GNH index. This study is an attempt to understand this perception by drawing on interviews with key policy actors to examine the significantly understudied context as to the nature of GNH in education, and outlines findings of three key challenges for policy architects as they seek to implement happiness-focused governance policies with implications for education. Observations on educational implications for Bhutan and countries seeking to replicate a national focus on happiness and good governance through education conclude the paper
Book review: Kaori H. Okano, Education and Social Justice in Japan.
Get PDFThis review examines Okano's recent book, pointing out its achievements in a balanced and nuanced treatment of the subject. It begins with an examination of what this book offers undergraduate readers, with an overview of the chapters and how they might lay a foundation for undergraduates. It then proceeds to its contribution to researchers and specialists, focusing on the methodological contributions of Okano's work, and how she combines methods in order to rethink the discourse of social justice from multiple directions
Present Pasts
Get PDFViewing and contemplating archival objects and images provokes me—a female Australian settler artist—to imaginatively engage with and re-present stories of the past; pasts that resonate in the contemporary present. My focus over the last ten years has been to imagine and think within the historical records of the French Enlightenment voyages of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as led by the colonial governor, Antoine Bruni d’Entrecasteaux and cartographer and naturalist, Nicolas Baudin. These voyages to Australia and the Pacific are situated within a dismembering discourse of Empire, exploration, ‘discovery’ and exoticism (Chevallier). A major impetus for their undertaking was given by the emerging discipline of the natural sciences, and accompanying shifts in European conceptions of humankind’s relation to the natural world; a prime objective was the gathering/taking/making of knowledge by observation, measurement and material collection. In 2020, following the 2019–20 summer of ferocious bushfires, and during a COVID-19 lockdown in Canberra amidst a global pandemic, my focus in practice turned to the endemic birds around me: local, heard, seen, treasured. What emerged was a renewed close-to-home response to the Baudin collecting raid of ‘exotic’ Australian species
Deriving electromagnetism from special relativity: A novel teaching-learning module
Get PDFINTRODUCTION
In this presentation, a novel teaching-learning module on electromagnetism is proposed, which finds its inspiring source in two sets of unpublished notes by R. P. Feynman (Feynman 1963, 1967-68). It relies on an ab initio derivation of Lorentz's force and Maxwell's equations from special relativity (De Luca et al., 2019), which is the opposite of the usual standard historical route. This approach works with the potentials rather than the fields from the very beginning, which implies simpler mathematics. From a methodological point of view, in order to derive electromagnetism from special relativity in a consistent way, one has to develop the latter independently from electromagnetic quantities (e.g., the speed of light), which is indeed possible as shown by some authors (see, for instance, Ugarov 1979). The key observation is that the invariance of the speed of light is not postulated from the beginning, so that the theory builds upon the idea that any interaction should have a limiting speed, which is required to be an invariant according to the principle of relativity. Then, Lorentz transformations can be derived in the usual way and depend on a parameter, the invariant speed, whose value can be fixed by experiments and identified with the speed of light only at the end. These guidelines are the basis for the development of our proposal, which is aimed at introducing electromagnetism at the advanced undergraduate level. Finally, the advantages of this approach with respect to more traditional ones are briefly discussed.
A BRIEF OUTLINE OF THE MODULE
The module is designed for an advanced undergraduate level, so that a basic knowledge of variational principles is required. The starting point is an alternative introduction to special relativity according to the above guidelines. For instance, it is possible to derive Lorentz transformations relying only on the requirements of relativity of inertial reference frames, homogeneity of space and time, isotropy of space and group structure. The next step consists in deriving the form of the Lorentz force from first principles, i.e., building only on the Lorentz invariance of the electric charge and on relativity. That allows one to obtain, as a further bonus, the correct transformation laws for the electric and magnetic fields under Lorentz boosts. A further key point is the introduction of the 4-potential, which allows one to generalize the least action principle of classical mechanics to the relativistic case. Upon varying the action, it is possible to get the homogeneous Maxwell equations. The derivation of non-homogeneous Maxwell equations then follows from the previous results together with one more assumption, i.e., the validity of Coulomb's law. Finally, qualitative properties and shapes of fields in various situations, as well as a bunch of more applicative topics are introduced in the usual way.
REFERENCES
De Luca, R., Di Mauro, M., Esposito, S. & Naddeo, A. (2019). Feynman's different approach to electromagnetism. European Journal of Physics, 40, 065205.
Feynman, R. P. (1963, December 13). Alternate way to handle electrodynamics. Retrieved January 20, 2019, from http://feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/info/other/Alternate_Way_to_Handle_Electrodynamics.html
Feynman, R. P. (1967-68). Feynman Hughes Lectures. Volume 2: Relativity, Electrostatics, Electrodynamics, Matter-Wave Interactions. Notes taken and transcribed by John T. Neer. Retrieved February 8, 2019, from http://www.thehugheslectures.info/wp-content/uploads/lectures/FeynmanHughesLectures_Vol2.pdf
Ugarov, V. A. (1979). Special Theory of Relativity. Paris: MIR