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Asian history is increasingly recognized by experts as a necessary part of a high school student's world history experience. Asia is important for them to study because of its great intrinsic value and because of Asia's relationship with the United States in the future. To date, however, in Utah there are no separate Asian history courses being taught and few teachers include Asia as an important part of the world history course.Schools in other parts of the nation have instituted practical Asian history courses and Utah can follow their example. Teachers should consider how much time can be devoted to Asia, whether to teach a survey of all Asia or in-depth studies of one or two Asian countries, and what methods to use. Each teacher must decide what is best for his situation. A variety of books and teaching aids are available to help him gain knowledge and enrich the course. Utah teachers can make a significant contribution to America's future by teaching valid concepts about Asia to their students.

In the opening decades of the 21st Century, a movement towards parental choice in public schools has taken flight. One of the choices becoming more readily available to parents of young children is charter schools. Charter schools are expanding across the United States and Central Florida is representative of this growth. Parents are faced with more choices as they make decisions on their children's educational future than ever before making the availability of quality, accurate information about local schools paramount. While scholarly work on charter schools, the effects of media coverage on public opinion, and how parents make choices for their children exists, in many cases the research offers inconclusive results and rarely was there an attempt to connect all three. This paper, written from a parent's perspective, analyzes research, newspaper articles, interviews, and surveys of Central Florida's media outlets, public school representatives, and parents of young children to determine the types of information on charter schools available to parents of young children in Central Florida. The purpose of this thesis will be to investigate the information available to parents when considering a charter school for their young children by comparing the stated opinions of the local media, district school boards, and the charters themselves. It also identifies who is responsible for disseminating this information, and how the parents choose to gather and use this information.

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Yes / Assessment of children for school readiness is a crucial process that requires extensive effort to select the sequence of tests most appropriate for the particular case to be investigated. Indeed, the success of the assessment depends highly on the diversity, flexibility, and comprehensiveness of the tests available and the ability of the applied system to decide on the specific sequence of tests to be utilized for each child based on his/her skills which should be discovered dynam- ically as the assessment progresses. Given the huge search space for the test cases to be utilized in the assessment process, it is preferred to apply an optimization technique capable of finding an appropriate test case that better fits the skills of a given child. It was decided to use a genetic algorithm (GA)-based approach for the optimization process. Any other optimization technique could have been used and utilizing the GA is a personal decision to complement the framework developed for this paper. GAs have been widely and successfully used in various application domains. Fortunately, the results reported in this paper demonstrate the effective- ness of the utilized GA in handling the assessment process to decide on school readiness. Assessment of a person’s abilities and skills is an important task for organizations. Examples include evaluating a child’s readiness for school or determining an employee’s aptitude for a position. The assessment involves various parameters related to the test subject’s aptitude, such as motor skills, linguistic development, or deductive capabilities, among others. The assessment may be conducted by various bodies, such as public education systems, commercial testing companies, and recruiters. To facilitate the assessment process in a systematic way less influenced by the attitude of a specific domain expert, it is preferred to develop and employ web-based assessment systems which integrate the skills of professional domain experts. A recent innovation is an adaptive web-based stealth assessment that analyzes the subject’s skill and dynamically adapts the assessment tests accordingly. A web-based stealth assessment is used for evaluating school readiness of a child by having the child play a series of games comparing the child’s per- formance with a database of performance results for a population. The web-based stealth assessment includes a processor for processing the child’s performance data, for comparing the performance data with the performance results of the population, and for applying a GA to determine the most appropriate next test for the child.

Happiness should be a fundamental aim of education. This philosophical assertion raises the practical question of how teachers generate happiness in their classroom programs while operating under the current paradigm of educational accountability. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the perspectives of early primary teachers, students, and parents on what makes a happy classroom. Data were collected through interviews of 12 teachers from public, independent, Waldorf, Froebel, and Montessori schools; over 72 hours of observation in eight early primary classrooms; interviews with 23 students (ages 3 to 8), drawing and photography with 64 students (ages 3 to 8); 66 parent surveys, and eight teacher exit interviews. Four cycles of analysis, including descriptive and conceptual approaches, resulted in the identification of five core conditions of happy classrooms: (a) relational pedagogy, (b) embodied learning, (c) pedagogical thoughtfulness (d) an ethos of happiness, and (e) an ethos of possibility. These five conditions were supported by 17 facets, which describe practical and conceptual ways to support pedagogical thinking and decision-making about children’s happiness in the complex worlds of busy classrooms. Five of the facets are spotlighted: (a) kids need to play, (b) stepping in stepping out, (c) sounds shape feelings and experience, (d) rhythms and routines, and (e) romancing children into delight. In addition, student and parent participants identified that play, positive friendships, time outdoors, experiences involving the arts, and experiences of positive feelings make children happy at school and when they are learning. The discussion centers on the role of teachers in establishing the tone of happy classrooms, considers the notion of strong pedagogy, discusses the generation of happiness in early primary classrooms in the form of lessons to be learned from different pedagogical traditions, and argues that, above all, children’s interests, needs, and development should be a teacher’s first point of consideration for all decisions about instruction and learning in the classroom. The discussion concludes with implications for teaching professionals and offers suggestions for future research. / Thesis (Ph.D, Education) -- Queen's University, 2013-08-02 11:13:05.998

Located in Central Africa, Cameroon is considered the driving force of the sub-region due to its strategic location in the center of the African continent. During the last five years, the country has been under the constant threat of a large range of disasters like floods, droughts, landslides, epidemics, etc. In such a context, the government is implementing several strategies for Disaster Risk Reduction in the country. Under the lead of the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralization, the Directorate of Civil Protection, coordinates Disaster Risk Reduction activities through a network of over 379 decentralized institutions and international partners (Ayanji, 2004). Despite a high level of deployment, these activities still prove to have a low level of efficiency on the field. Results from the literature review suggest that this may be due to strategies for public education and public awareness that do not mirror stakeholders’ needs, capacities, and background. There is a need to: (1) identify the failures of the pre-existing public education and public awareness strategy, (2) assess the educational needs and capacities of each category of actors, (3) select adequate instructional methods and tools and (4) ensure the effectiveness and sustainability of the newly proposed strategy. The aim of this work, which is a three-year PhD project funded by the AXA Research Fund, is therefore to propose a public education and public awareness model adapted to the Cameroonian context, using Technology Enhanced Learning to strengthen capacities and competencies of stakeholders involved in the problem of climate change. The study makes use of a mixed method approach. From the literature review, four categories of actors involved into the climate change education process in the country have first been identified namely (1) government, (2) educational institutions, (3) Non-Governmental Organizations and (4) communities. A sample population has been driven from each category using the Respondent Driven Sampling method. Then data were collected during a six-month field trip in Cameroon, using semi-structured interviews (McNamara, 1999), qualitative survey (Fowler, 2009), direct observation (Bernard, 2006) and focus group discussion (Krueger & Casey, 2009). Findings from data analyses, performed using Epi info software for quantitative data and MAXQDA software for qualitative data show that: the educational strategy is not clearly defined; there is a lack of adequate infrastructures; technologies available are not properly used: either they are not evenly accessible, or when accessible they do not match learners’ capacities and competencies. Finally, quality criteria for the evaluation of the existing educational strategy are not met, thus failing to ensure it sustainability. The conceptual solution proposed in this work makes use of the concept of learning communities, especially Community of Practice as proposed by Lave and Wenger (1991) to develop an information and knowledge sharing community system to establish best practices for improving community resilience to climate change impact. This Community of Practice will operate essentially offline with a selected domain, a well-defined and structured community, and a practice that makes use of identified technologies already available among communities and, most importantly, that mirrors the Cameroonian socio-cultural context. One unexpected factor that had to be taken into consideration while determining adequate technology tools, is the actors’ perception, or rather say actors’ (un)acceptance of “new technologies”, which render the design of the instructional model quite challenging. / Kamerun ist ein Land in Zentralafrika. Aufgrund seiner strategischen Lage in der Mitte des afrikanischen Kontinents, gilt das Land als die treibende Kraft der Sub-Region. Während der letzten fünf Jahre wurde Kamerun Opfer von ständigen Bedrohungen einer Vielzahl von Katastrophen wie Überschwemmungen, Dürren, Erdrutsche, Epidemien, usw. In diesem Kontext hat die Regierung eine Reihe von Strategien zur Verringerung der Katastrophenrisiken imstande gebracht. Dies wurde unter der Leitung vom Ministerium der territorialen Verwaltung und Dezentralisierung und vom Amt für Katastrophenschutz durchgeführt. Weiterhin nahmen mehr als 379 dezentrale Institutionen und internationale Partner an diese bedeutende Aktion teil (Ayanji, 2004). Die bei diesem Großeinsatz getroffenen Maßnahmen haben aber bisher eine sehr geringe Effizienz auf dem Feld gebracht. Eine nähere Betrachtung im Zusammenspiel mit entsprechender Literatur lassen folgendes vermuten: die Strategien zur Sensibilisierung sind auf die Bedürfnisse, Kapazitäten und Hintergründe der Akteure nicht angepasst. Demnach sind folgende Tatsachen in Betracht zu ziehen: (1) Identifikation der Ausfälle der bevorstehenden Awareness-Strategie; (2) Bewertung den pädagogischen Bedürfnissen und Kapazitäten der einzelnen Kategorien von Akteuren; (3) Auswahl geeigneter Unterrichtsmethoden und Tools; (4) Gewährleisten der Wirksamkeit und Nachhaltigkeit der neu vorgeschlagenen Strategie. Diese Arbeit stammt aus einem dreijährigen Promotionsprojekt finanziert von der AXA Research Fund. Das Ziel der Arbeit ist der Vorschlag eines Awareness-Modells, das an dem kamerunischen Kontext angepasst ist, und das die Bildungstechnologie zur Stärkung der Kapazitäten und Kompetenzen der beteiligten Akteure des Klimawandels nutzt. Aus der Literatur sind vier Kategorien von Akteuren identifiziert worden: Die Regierung, Bildungseinrichtungen, nationale und internationale Organisationen, Gemeinschaften. Die Studie folgt einer Mixed-Method Forschung. Eine Stichprobe wurde aus jeder Kategorie von Akteuren mit Schneeballauswahl-Methode gezogen. Dann wurden Daten während einer 6-monatigen Studienreise in Kamerun gesammelt. Diese wurde in Begleitung mit semi-strukturierten Interview (McNamara, 1999), qualitativen Erhebung (Fowler, 2009), direkter Beobachtung (Bernard, 2006) und Gruppendiskussion (Krueger & Casey, 2009). Die Daten wurden analysiert mit Epi-info Software für quantitative Daten und MAXQDA Software für qualitative Daten. Die Ergebnisse zeigen Folgendes: - Die pädagogische Strategie ist nicht klar definiert - Mangel an angemessenen Infrastrukturen - Die verfügbaren Technologien sind nicht vorhanden und teilweise falsch eingesetzt. Sie sind entweder nicht gleichmäßig verwendet oder sie stimmen mit den Fähigkeiten der Lernenden nicht überein. - Qualitätskriterien für die Bewertung der bestehenden Ausbildungsstrategie sind nicht erfüllt Die vorgeschlagene konzeptionelle Lösung, die in dieser Arbeit verwendet wird, benutzt das Konzept der Learning Communities, insbesondere "Community of Practice" wie von Lave und Wenger (1991) beschrieben. Ziel ist es, ein Informations- und Wissensaustausch Community-System zur Förderung bewährter Verfahren im Sinne der Verbesserung der Gemeinschaft gegenüber Auswirkungen des Klimawandels zu schaffen. Diese Community of Practice wird offline mit einer ausgewählten Domäne, eine gut definierte und strukturierte Gemeinschaft, und eine gut gestaltete Praxis funktionieren. Ein unerwarteter Faktor, der bei der Bestimmung der angemessenen Technologie-Tools berücksichtigt werden müsste, ist die Wahrnehmung der Akteure oder besser gesagt die (Un-)Akzeptanz der "Neuen Technologien" durch die Akteure. Dies macht das Design des Instruktionsmodells zu einer richtigen Herausforderung.