1,720,954 research outputs found
The teaching and learning of word problems in beginning algebra : a Nigerian (Lagos State) study
Get PDFAt both the junior and senior secondary school levels in Nigeria, student performance in mathematics examinations has been poor. Within the context of large classes, with inadequate facilities, and teaching and learning in a second language, algebra and algebra word problems are introduced to students during their first year of junior secondary school. The transition from primary school arithmetic to the use of the algebraic letter is challenging to students and it is important that teachers should know the likely difficulties and misconceptions students may have as they begin algebra (Welder, 2012).
In this study, the impact of a teacher professional learning program on teachers’ knowledge, beliefs and practice was examined. The impact on students’ ability to solve word problems in beginning algebra was also investigated. To do this, a multiple case study was designed and data were collected using quantitative and qualitative methods. Thirty teachers of first year junior secondary students completed a questionnaire and this provided general information about the teachers’ beliefs and algebra teaching practice. After this, 12 of the teachers actively participated and collaborated in a professional learning workshop designed as an intervention program. The program focused on enhancing the teachers’ knowledge of student misconceptions about variables, expressions and equations, and language-based teaching strategies. Four teachers and their classes, two each from public and private schools, served as case studies and provided further data about the impact of the intervention program. Before and after the intervention program, lessons were observed, students completed algebra tests and some of them were interviewed using the Newman interview protocol. The data for each case study were analysed and the key findings generated from each of them were used for a cross-case analysis.
The study revealed that these Nigerian teachers had mainly traditional beliefs about mathematics teaching and that teacher-talk dominated the classroom practice. Prior to the intervention, the teachers had limited knowledge of students’ algebra misconceptions and the students’ main difficulty was that they did not understand the questions. The professional learning increased the teachers’ knowledge of algebra, their pedagogical content knowledge and their awareness of algebra misconceptions. The teachers used more student-centred and language-based teaching strategies when working on algebra problems. There was a significant improvement in students’ problem-solving success on the post-test because more students were able to understand the word problems and displayed fewer misconceptions. The incidences of ignoring the algebraic letter, believing that the algebraic letters cannot have the same value and confusing product and sum reduced. However, the use of the letter as an object or a label and a belief that the algebraic letter had alphabetical positioning persisted.
The study demonstrated the effectiveness of the professional learning model used in this study and it should be considered for more widespread implementation with in-service teachers. There is also an implication for pre-service teacher education. Mathematics education programs should ensure that student teachers are aware of common algebra misconceptions and the language-based strategies needed to support school students’ transition from arithmetic to algebra
Migration and Identities in Chika Unigwe’s Novels
Get PDFMonumental dispersals caused by the phenomenon of migration greatly affect the identities of people. Much like the process of globalization, migration is highly sexualized and gendered. To this extent, it is necessary to centralize women and their peculiar experiences in migration discourses and theories. Beyond the usual focus on the economics, politics and sociology of migration, which at any rate do not often adequately address gender-specific migratory experiences; this study takes a literary route that considers the fictional representations of migrant women in two of the novels of Chika Unigwe: The Phoenix (2005) and On Black Sisters’ Street (2008). The focus here is to underscore the validity and significance of gender as an imperative analytical premise in contemporary literary debates particularly by African migrants. In demonstrating how the inflections of gender portend different outcomes for men and women, the study significantly uncovers how the woman’s body is simultaneously the site of physical and symbolic migration. The essay traces the movement in transition and the impact of these and new environment on the bodies of female migrants and how the embodied motifs of migration ultimately alter the identities and realities of migrant African women in particular. In all, the essay hopes to expand some of the current theorizations on the new directions in the development of the fictional representations of Nigerian women as well as to contextualize the role of the émigré author in these developments.
Who Is Afraid Of Ẹfúnṣetán Aníwúrà? Performing Power in Yoruba Masculinist Oligarchy
Get PDFThe iconic Yoruba female personage of Ẹfúnṣetán Aníwúrà has, in several studies, been vilified; and at a first glance, it would seem that Akinwunmi Isola’s eponymous protagonist and heroine of that play reinforces the image of a villainous, wicked and self-centred woman. Contextualized within the Yoruba socio-political and economic national narratives of the late18th and early 19th centuries, this image appears both problematic and complexly contradictory. It is therefore useful to appropriately recuperate and verify the status of Ẹfúnṣetán Aníwúrà within the backdrop of Yoruba cultural context. This is illustrated through a feminist re-reading of Ẹfúnṣetán’s actions and character against the grain of the Yoruba masculinist cultural backcloth and the uneven devolution of powers of her time. In this essay, we make the argument that Isola’s heroine astutely resists and rejects the cultural prescriptivism and master narratives of the powerful masculinist oligarchy of that period. We therefore suggest that in spite of Isola’s seeming pejorative representation of Ẹfúnṣetán, the chieftain adumbrates possibilities for more equitable gender relations in her time
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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