The overall aim of this study is to investigate the attitudes of teachers of English and Modern languages towards assessment and the grading process. The inspiration comes from the notion that grades are not set on an equivalent basis in upper secondary schools. The syllabi for the subjects are formulated in a way that enables interpretation, and they have been constructed this way in order for the goals to be re-written on a local basis to better suit the needs of the specific students. This step in the process, formulating a local work plan from the national syllabus, is however often omitted and many teachers have no local work plan to base their teaching on and instead use the generalized syllabi as a base, which in turn are interpreted subjectively. This leads to the situation where there is a lack of equivalence in both education and assessment. In anticipation of the new Education Act including new syllabi and grading criteria teachers have also been asked their opinions and expectations on these, and if they think things will change. The results and analysis conclude that the only way equivalence in grading can be reached is through extensive cooperation between teachers, which would lead to greater objectivity.

This study was focused on understanding the students and parents of high school who how to face school accountability, including attitude, approaches and context index. The research process included literature review and questionnaire survey. The population of this study was the high school students and parents across Southern Taiwan, Kaohsiung area, 751 students and 443 parents¡¦ questionnaires were returned. The data was analyzed through item analysis, explore factor analysis, reliability analysis, descriptive statistic, one-way ANOVA, two-way ANOVA, multipack regression. The findings of the study were as follows: A. There are six types of school accountability approaches in students and parents, they are: respond to government, school chose, professional and democratic teaching, professional school administration, school route for retreat and respond to politician. B. There are six types of school accountability contexts in students and parents, they are: school equipments, administrational strategies, students¡¦ learning achievements, teaching and learning efficiency, origin and vent of students, percentage of satisfaction with students and parents. C. High school students and parents show high and positive attitude toward school accountability, especially in parents are higher then students. D. Different backgrounds of students and parents affect to school accountability attitude, approach and context index. E. The professional school administration affect students to school accountability attitude deeply; the respond to government approach, teaching and learning efficiency approach, and origin and vent of students affect parents to school accountability attitude deeply. The suggestions of the study for Taiwan policymakers were as follows: A. Promoting school accountability system can help parents and students to choose school. B. Promoting school accountability should be satisfied to any sort of school stakeholders¡¦ needs. C. School accountability should run in circle that was including in input, process, output and feedback. D. Different schools should be evaluated by different criterion.

Extrusion is a metal forming process used extensively in industry to produce different structural, mechanical, electrical, architectural, automotive and aerospace application parts. Currently after extrusion, the rod is subjected to environmental wear due to long storage time and hence requires an additional cleaning process before further use. This cleaning process can be eliminated by extruding a polymer coated metal rod workpiece such that the polymer coating is sustained on the final product after the extrusion process. In the present research study a new upper bound analytical model is developed to predict the forces required to conduct extrusion of a polymer coated metal rod successfully. The search for the lower upper bound power functional is modeled as a non linear optimization problem. Optimizing the functional also determines the set of constraints defining the shape of rigid plastic deformation boundaries and the final coating thickness. Also an upper bound analytical model was developed to predict forces for failure of the polymer coating during the extrusion. Both the analytical models for successful and failed extrusion are compared to obtain critical die angle which can provide tooling and process design guidelines. Finite element analysis simulations were modeled using commercially available software package, ABAQUS. Predictions of FEA simulations were in good agreement with published results and with the predictions of analytical model developed in this study.

<p>The essay has been written in order to give a picture of culture teaching within the subject of English in upper secondary schools in Sweden. Although earlier research within this field is still not very extensive, a theoretical framework has been based on the results available and the syllabuses for the subject of English in the upper secondary school. A questionnaire with open question has been used as a tool for collecting data. The main focus is put on analyzing the contents of and ways in which teachers deal with cultural studies, considering the goals in the syllabuses. The results support the results of previous scientific investigations concerning culture studies in Swedish schools and show that culture teaching is often dealt with in the traditional ways where culture is viewed mainly as customs, traditions and history of the target language country, and where teachers mainly choose cultural elements from the UK and the US and seldom from other English speaking countries.</p><p>Various factors that influence teachers choices in their cultural studies are examined and alternative changes considering the teaching methods, for example ethnographic training, are proposed. The uncertainty about how to approach and what to include in cultural studies is reflected in the testing of students on cultural issues. The survey shows that half the respondents do not test their pupils on culture at all. The conclusion, based on the results of this survey and the previous research, is that no great changes have taken place within this field over the last decade and that further continuous study of culture teaching is recommended.</p>

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on Feb 23, 2010). The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Thesis advisor: Dr. Anthony R. Lupo. Includes bibliographical references.

This project began with the basic preconception that there is a growing resistance towards reading among students and this has been partially proved correct. The research questions were: In upper secondary education, what is it that encourages or hinders the students’ incentives for reading? What effect does this have on the subsequent teaching of fictional texts? The aim of this investigation was to examine attitudes on reading among students in upper secondary education and how these attitudes affect the teaching of fictional texts. The project’s research material consists of a qualitative interview with a practising teacher, and a student questionnaire which was answered by two of the teacher’s classes; one studying the natural science programme, the other studying a vocational, practically oriented programme.  The overall majority of students recognise the importance of reading in their lives, seeing it as an activity that helps them understand themselves and the world. The importance of ”contact points” within the texts is vital for encouraging reading, yet finding texts which have a universal appeal proves to be an impossible task. Reading is seen by the students and the teacher as an activity that contributes to the students’ all-round education, although the teacher does not believe that most of his students truly understand this. A key factor which hinders reading incentives is time. Students grapple with a heavy workload of schoolwork and reading is not prioritised. Film is seen as an effective ”way in” to reading as many students state a preference for films over books, which is largely recognised by the teacher. Film is used as a supplement to the teaching of fiction and is found by the teacher to be a successful method. School texts are invariably described as boring on account of the difficulties that students have engaging and relating with them, yet many texts are also described in equal measure as exciting or interesting. Reading proves to be more popular among the natural science class, yet despite some very negative attitudes in the vocational class, there are still a number of encouragingly positive ones.

Gender plays an important role in all facets of human life and although great strides have been made against the gender discrimination, still the progress is gradual and slow. More specifically, in the field of educational management and leadership women’s attempt to gain equal groundwork with men is quite evident but the former still face gender related barriers that hamper their progress. The current research focuses on investigating the role and perceptions of women principals in the field of educational management and leadership and on drawing comparisons between their role in upper secondary education in Greece and Sweden. Therefore, the investigation takes place in the municipality of Thessaloniki and Stockholm with female principals from upper secondary schools to take part in the study. Ten from each city respond to the questionnaire, which is specially designed in their native language. The present findings provide an insight about women’s motivation to become upper secondary school principals, the reasons for their under-representation, the variations in managerial qualities and styles as part of their feminine identity, the difficulties they face towards identifying a position and ways to augment their involvement in the field. Drawing on the evidence of the survey conducted in Thessaloniki, despite the great progress that has been achieved in Greece in the field of educational management and leadership in terms of gender, women are greatly under-represented in upper secondary school management positions and significantly face sociocultural constraints and discrimination in their career path. However, the results of the study in Stockholm disclose that women progressively possess the managerial field in education currently outnumbering their male superintendents.

The effects of comprehension-strategy based and decoding/fluency-based reading interventions on the reading comprehension skills of upper-elementary English language learners (ELLs) were evaluated in this review. Nine studies assessing the efficacy of ten interventions were systematically reviewed. Findings showed that comprehension strategy-based interventions were associated with positive gains in reading comprehension, while decoding and fluency-based interventions were not. Support was shown for direct instruction with guided and independent practice, large group discussions, and small-group student-led discussions. Support was also shown for the use of the following comprehension strategies: summarizing the text, identifying the main idea, making personal connections to the text, monitoring vocabulary comprehension, making predictions, asking questions, and visualizing. / text

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This report discusses two examples of the use of Poincare disc models and their different relationships to Euclidean geometry. The topics include light reflection in hyperbolic geometry and the Hyperbolic Pythagorean Theorem; all in relation to the Poincare unit disc and Poincare upper half plane model. / text