Social Science OA Books Collection
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Item 21st Century Pedagogies and Citizenship Education(*, 2023) Yiola CleovoulouHow elementary teachers address citizenship is important in 21st century teaching and learning. Situating citizenship education within the varied global contexts of schooling and connecting content to pedagogical approach is a complex task. Even so, citizenship education can be the philosophical underpinning, or vision, for a teaching pedagogy that engages students in active, creative, and critical ways. This chapter illustrates key features and priorities for citizenship education by exploring the concepts of perspective taking, inquiry pedagogy and critical pedagogy and how they work together using the example of elementary school Social Studies in a Canadian context. Using examples from previous studies and narratives from elementary school teachers, this chapter includes portraits of classroom teachers' work using a critical inquiry-based approach. The chapter illustrates how resources can be used in teachers' planning to design learning that is nestled in citizenship education. Government curriculum documents as well as scholarly literature and teaching resources can support critical-inquiry for citizenship education. This teaching can lead to active, engaged citizens. There are many approaches to citizenship education; drawing awareness to perspectives and pedagogical possibilities is essential in teacher development. Teacher education is the ideal place for introducing and connecting foundations of education to best practice.Item 3D Digital Simulation for Material Damage Mechanism Identification in a Railway Carriage Pressure Vessel(IntechOpen, 2023) Alessandra CaggianoDigital simulation approaches applied to railway engineering allow to investigate different railway scenarios via 3D digital twins of real objects, motion simulation, and collision detection to identify the root causes of critical damage and estimate the most likely sources of railway accidents. In this work, a digital simulation approach is applied to a real catastrophic train accident in which a railway carriage carrying a pressure vessel collided with an obstacle that generated a cut in the pressure vessel casing. This cut initiated a liquefied petroleum gas leakage that expanded in the environment and caused the explosion and blaze responsible for human casualties. Traditional railway accident reconstruction procedures identified two potential objects accountable for the cutting of the pressure vessel casing: a wing rail and a track reference stake. Based on digital terrain models and reconstructed models of the railway carriage, 3D digital simulation scenarios were created to detect every possible collision of the pressure vessel with the infrastructure environment and investigate whether the shape of the cut in the pressure vessel wall fits the damage visible on the obstacles and whether the interference between obstacle and pressure vessel wall could generate the chip through an interaction similar to metal cutting.Item A Biosemiotic Modeling of the Body - "Self" Synechism(*, 2023) Maria Asuncion L. MagsinoAs a counterargument to the Cartesian split that has impacted both speculative and practical fields of knowledge and culture, we propose Peirce's doctrine of synechism to show the continuity in the semiotic activity that moves from the body as an Interpretant to the emergence of another Interpretant called the "self." Biosemiotics, a nascent field of interdisciplinary research that tackles inquiries about signs, communication, and information involving living organisms is used as the framework in the discussion. The main question of whether a non-material "self" can emerge from a material body is tackled in many stages. First, the biosemiotic continuum is established in the natural biological processes that takes place in the body. These processes can be taken as an autonomous semiotic system generating the "language" of the body or the Primary Modeling System (PMS). Second, synechism is also observed in the relationship between the mind and the body and this is evident in any physician's clinical practice. The patient creates a Secondary Modeling System (SMS) of how she perceives what the body communicates to her regarding its state or condition. Finally, the question about whether the emergence of "self" is synechistic as well is tackled. There is one organ from which emerges an Interpretant that is capable of generating a dialog between a Subject, that is the "self," with its Object, and that is the brain. It is the primordial seat of specifically human activities like thought and language. The recent theory on quantum consciousness supports the doctrine synechism between the body as Interpretant to the "self" as Interpretant. This synechism is crucial for the creation of Secondary Models of "reality" that will, in turn, determine the creation of Tertiary Models more familiarly called culture.Item A CA - Based Model for City Traffic Including Bicycles(IntechOpen, 2023) Jelena VasicA CA-Based Model for City Traffic Including BicyclesItem A Classifier Fusion System with Verification Module for Improving Recognition Reliability(IntechOpen, 2023) Ping ZhangA Classifier Fusion System with Verification Module for Improving Recognition ReliabilityItem A Community of Practice Around Online Labs in Iraq(IntechOpen, 2023) Razwan Mohmed SalahThe growing interest of society in science and engineering disciplines has lead to a quality improvement in curricula; a more careful definition of the educational outcomes; and; an increased concern with the continuous improvement of student learning and the quality of teacher training programmes. Hands-on experiments with innovative instructional technologies (e.g. online labs) built confidence and skills of academics and students by helping them to better understand, especially in those disciplines. A community of practice is a group of people informally bound together by shared expertise or an area of interest in a topic. It focuses on sharing best practices and creating new knowledge to advance a domain of professional practice. In addition, it shares the appropriate activities and instructional technologies that support the higher educational systems. This study aims to examine how teachers and students are interested in using online labs to support hands-on labs for completing their educational tasks and illustrates the potential benefit of a community of practice around online labs. Consequently, in order to facilitate the formation of a new community of practice around instructional technologies in the Middle East and North Africa, several presentations about online labs have been made in different universities in IraqItem A Conceptual Model of Carbon Dynamics for Improved Fallows in the Tropics(IntechOpen, 2023) M. L. KaongaA Conceptual Model of Carbon Dynamics for Improved Fallows in the TropicsItem A Different Kind of Teacher for a Different Kind of School(*, 2023) John FischettiThe current 'old school' paradigm of teaching and learning is based on students sitting passively in rows, completing a required syllabus in the order they are told to do so, and with very little choice. Assessment systems sort children and reinforce the status quo, promoting learning for 'some'. In the 'new school' paradigm, schools will no longer be places young people go to watch their teachers work. They are learning centres, with student engagement at the forefront and personalized approaches focussing the instruction on the needs of the learner. In this dynamic learning environment, a new approach to classroom and school leadership is vital. The implications of learning for 'all' are profound for teacher education. Schools of Education mostly place our students in schools as they are, not in schools as they need to be. That means we are replicating and perpetuating obsolescence. In this chapter, I offer a conceptual rationale for the change ahead and propose an internationally developed framework for teacher education to cut across the silos of individual states and provinces governed by individual regulators but where practices may not necessarily be driven by the knowledge base. The work is centred on implementing a Deweyan philosophy of education. We need a different kind of teacher for a different kind of school.Item A Gender Analysis of the Determinants of Youth Unemployment in Cote d'Ivoire(*, 2023) Ibrahima SyThe purpose of this article is to improve knowledge and understanding of the determinants of unemployment duration by gender in Cote d'Ivoire. One of the central questions on this issue is to what extent the personal characteristics of jobseekers affect their exit from unemployment. In this sense, we apply a proportional risk model with heterogeneity correction of Weibull (2004), applied to data from the Household Employment Survey in Cote d'Ivoire (EEMCI) that was conducted in 2012 by AGEPE. The results of the study reveal that young men are much more likely to exit unemployment than young women. Even if the results show a negative relationship between high level of education and unemployment, the high representation of women on the unemployment rate remains attributable to their very low level of education and the weight of tradition relegating the role of the woman, as a matter of priority, to housework.Item A Guide for Deconstructing Social Reproduction(*, 2023) Jesus Jaime-DiazAs the mosaic of student demographics continue to change into the 21st century, teacher credential training programs must necessarily prepare educators to be culturally affirming and responsive to the equitable schooling of students. Through pedagogical conocimientos, educators-in-training may rely on self-reflexive methodologies, which facilitates the engagement of self and others in interaction, as they collectively retrieve family legacies, focusing on gathering histories on their family's origins, language, religion, work, education, and migration. This prepares future teachers to unearth and examine internalized prejudices, traumas, and stereotypes, to thus counter and contest deficit thinking and distorted views of student populations, beginning with them. This chapter introduces pedagogical conocimientos, illustrating the praxis as it problematizes social reproduction in the context of schooling.Item A Hebbian Learning Approach for Diffusion Tensor Analysis and Tractography(IntechOpen, 2023) Dilek Goksel DuruA Hebbian Learning Approach for Diffusion Tensor Analysis and TractographyItem A Human Rights-Based Approach to Maternal and Child Health in Ethiopia(*, 2023) Solomon Tekle AbegazA rights-based approach to health helps to address health equity gaps. While several aspects of health as a human right exist, this chapter highlights particular indicators relevant to shaping a human rights approach to maternal and child health in Ethiopia. These indicators include recognition of the right to health; national health plan; accessible and acceptable health-care services; accountability; and a civil society that draws on the agency of vulnerable groups. Probing the extent to which the Ethiopian health system includes these features, this chapter identifies that the Federal Constitution does not adequately recognize maternal and child health as a human right. While identifying the positive developments of increased access to women's and children's health-care services in Ethiopia, the chapter also charts problems that limit further improvement, including health workers' inability from making the right health-care decisions; extreme gaps in ensuring accountability; and a restrictive law that restrains social mobilization for a proper health rights movement. The chapter concludes by providing recommendations to the government of Ethiopia that addressing these problems using a rights-based approach offers an alternative pathway for the progressive realization of the right to health of women and children, and it thereby improves health inequities in the country.Item A Meta-Analysis Framework and Its Application for Exploring the Driving Causes to Social Vulnerability(IntechOpen, 2023) Le-Le ZouA Meta-Analysis Framework and Its Application for Exploring the Driving Causes to Social VulnerabilityItem A Method to Improve Comprehension and Learning in Science Education. A Case Study in Systems Engineering and Automation(*, 2023) Sergio Velazquez-MedinaDifficulties are commonly detected in students with respect to the acquisition of certain specific competencies in a particular topic. One strategy to optimize the assimilation of knowledge and improve the learning results of students in a specific topic is through the use of the active learning process. Active learning can serve to facilitate autonomous and collaborative learning in specific topics as a complement to in-person classes. In this chapter, a method to improve comprehension and learning is developed and applied, using for this purpose both autonomous and collaborative works. The case study presented is undertaken for one of the subjects in the area of systems engineering and automation in one of the public universities of Canary islands (Spain). Different specific topics of the subject were selected. To check the effect of the application of the proposed method, a statistical analysis was performed. For this objective, t-test and the p-value statistical were used. As results, it was found that 100% of the students who presented some difficulty in relation to the general subject obtained higher relative results in the specific topics that they worked on when employing the proposed method, compared with their global result in the subject.Item A Methodology for Evaluation and Distribution of Patent Applications to INPI-BR Patent Examiners(*, 2023) Cesar Vianna Moreira JrThis paper presents the development of a new methodology for evaluation and distribution of patent applications to the examiners at the Brazilian Patent Office considering a specific technological field, represented by classification of the application according to the International Patent Classification (IPC), and the variables corresponding to the volume of data of the application and its complexity for the examination process. After identifying the most relevant variables, such as the Specific Areas of Expertise (ZAE) of the examiners, a mathematical model was developed, including: (a) application of the principal component analysis (PCA) method; (b) calculation of a General Complexity Ratio (IGC); (c) classification into five classes (very light, light, moderate, heavy and very heavy) according to IGC average ranges and standard deviations; (d) implementation of a logic of distribution, compensating very heavy applications with very light ones, and light applications with heavy ones; and (e) calculation of a Distribution Balancing Ratio (IBD), considering the differences between the samples' medians. The model was validated using a sample of patent applications including, in addition to the identified variables, the time for substantive examination by the examiner. Then, a correlation analysis of the variables with time and a comparison of the classifications according to the time and the IGC generated by the model were carried out. The results obtained showed a high correlation of the IGC with time, above 80%, as well as correct IGC classes in more than 80% of applications. The model proposed herein suggests that the three main relevant variables are: total number of pages, total number of claims, and total number of claim pages.Item A Novel Credit Assignment to a Rule with Probabilistic State Transition(IntechOpen, 2023) Wataru UemuraA Novel Credit Assignment to a Rule with Probabilistic State TransitionItem A Philosophical Outlook on Africa's Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century(*, 2023) Samuel AmponsahHigher education is perceived as key to the comprehensive development of Africa. In line with this perception, various governments have initiated several policies and models in an attempt to build quality higher education for developing Africa's human capital to positively respond to the global challenges of the twenty-first century. Despite these efforts, an observable gap still exists between higher education and socioeconomic development of Africa. This gap raises the question of how the quality of higher education in Africa could be improved to make the needed contribution to the comprehensive development of Africa. This chapter casts a philosophical outlook on higher education in Africa and doubts its relevance in Africa. The chapter reveals that commercialization of teaching and learning, scarcity of qualified faculty, inadequate resources for research, and ineffective governance of higher education institutions hinder African higher education from playing its role as a development agent. The chapter further claims that research collaborations across disciplines in higher education institutions, improvement in irregular/nontraditional modes of teaching and learning, utilization of student-based learning models, and restructuring the governance of higher institutions will help the African society reimagine the significance of these institutions to the socioeconomic developmental goals of the African society.Item A Professional Development Program for Beginning High School Teachers(*, 2023) Cristina Maciel De OliveiraThis paper presents a professional development program for beginning high school teachers. The program was designed after identifying, characterizing and evaluating the professional training needs of beginning teachers, using quantitative and qualitative methodologies via interviews and surveys. With a framework in personalized education and in constructivist theory- both related to professional development for such teachers- and in adult transformative learning theory, the program promotes personal pedagogy which guides teachers to clarify the meaning of their role in the twenty-first century. The program fosters a model of formative learning that is more related to the knowledge of the beginning teacher regarding the reality of teaching and learning, the pedagogical subject, the school environment and capacity to act on the educational situation, than to specific disciplinary contents. The contents on which the program is structured are oriented to the systematic observation of pedagogical practice, to the knowledge of adolescents and their learning as a reason for it, to teaching in diversity and to the significance of being a teacher of secondary education.Item A Psycholinguistic Perspective on Development of Phonetic Category Formation in Bilingual Children(IntechOpen, 2023) Sue Ann S.This chapter reviews theories and research about phonetic category formation in bilingual children. Investigating phonetic categories provides us with a way to answer one of the longstanding theoretical issues in bilingualism, that is, whether bilingual children possess one versus two linguistic systems in the learning of their respective languages. In this chapter, theoretical backgrounds of phonetic categories in bilingual adults and children are reviewed. Then, empirical evidence showing phonetic categories in bilingual children is summarized. Finally, a development model of phonetic category formation in simultaneous and sequential bilingual children is proposed. Based on the model, detailed phonetic categories do not form across-the-board and bilingual children may invoke multi-dimensional representations of phonetic categories.Item A Responsive Higher Education Curriculum(*, 2023) Maureen Snow AndradeThis case illustrates how a large, regional university redesigned its program review, curriculum proposal, and curriculum approval processes to maintain currency and viability and meet regional educational needs. The chapter analyzes the problem, process, and outcomes of the changes, and discusses implications for broader contexts. It introduces the concept of disruptive innovation, discusses innovation and change within higher education, provides context for the institution highlighted in the case study, and outlines the initiatives. It then reviews the innovations from a change process model perspective and considers the implications of the case analysis. The chapter concludes with thoughts on the extent of change needed in higher education to keep pace with a continually-evolving global environment.