Academic Camp Research Articles

Stakeholders’ Support on School-Based Academic Camps for Improved Students Academic Performance in Public Secondary Schools

The study assessed the stakeholders support on school based academic camps to improve students’ academic performance in public secondary schools in Ulunga district, Tanzania. The study comprised five specific objectives. This study adopted the stakeholder theory as it was propounded by Edward Freeman (1980). The study used a convergent research design supported by a mixed methods research approach. The study used simple random and purposive sampling techniques to select the sample size. The participants in this study were: 1 DEO, 10 WEOs, 10 HoSs, 20 parents, 90 students, 10 teachers, 2 chairpersons, and 1 Member of Parliament (MP). Data collection instruments were questionnaires, semi-structured interview guides, and documentary reviews. Quantitative data were analyzed us Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25, while qualitative data were analyzed using structural-functional and content analysis approach. The study also found that major stakeholders who support academic camps were parents (M = 4.4 and SD = 1.2), school chairpersons (M = 4.1 and SD = 1.4), and students (M = 4.2 and SD = 1.2). The major approach used to solicit stakeholders is school meetings (M = 3.9 and SD = 1.3). Types of support from stakeholders are teaching and learning material (M = 3.70 and SD = 1.1) and light (electricity) mean score (M = 3.5 and SD = 1.2). . Teachers and students perceive uncertainty about stakeholders support; counseling and guidance (M = 3.4 and SD = 1.2), security (M = 3.2 and SD = 1.0), clean and safe water (M = 3.2 and SD = 1.3), and food (M = 2.9 and SD = 1.2). Respondents agree that stakeholders support enhances students’ performance by completing topics (M = 3.5 and SD = 1.1) and interacting in group works (M = 3.5 and SD = 1.3). Based on the findings, appropriate recommendations are proposed.

Assessing the Impact of Academic Camps on the Academic Performance of Ordinary Level Secondary School Students: A Comparative Study

This study investigates the impact of academic camps on the academic performance of ordinary-level secondary school students by comparing the outcomes of those who attended such camps with those who did not. The objective was to assess whether participation in academic camps contributes to measurable improvements in academic achievement. A mixed-methods approach was employed, combining quantitative analysis of academic performance data with qualitative insights gathered from students, teachers, and administrators. The study involved collecting pre- and post-camp academic records, as well as conducting focus group discussions and interviews to understand the perceived benefits and challenges of academic camps. The results revealed a statistically significant improvement in the academic performance of students who participated in academic camps, particularly in core subjects such as mathematics and science. The findings also highlighted key factors contributing to this improvement, including the camp's curriculum design, interactive teaching methodologies, and the integration of extracurricular activities that reinforced academic concepts. In contrast, students who did not attend the camps showed comparatively lower progress in their academic performance. The study concludes that academic camps serve as an effective supplementary educational tool that enhances student learning and engagement. It recommends the broader implementation of such camps within the education system, with a focus on optimizing curriculum content and extending the duration of camps to maximize their impact on student outcomes. This research provides valuable insights for educators, policymakers, and stakeholders interested in enhancing student achievement through targeted interventions like academic camps.

Exploring Students and Teachers’ Teaching and Learning Experiences from Academic Camps in Public Secondary Schools in Simiyu Region, Tanzania

Exploring Students and Teachers’ Teaching and Learning Experiences from Academic Camps in Public Secondary Schools in Simiyu Region, Tanzania

Disclosure of presentations and discussions from the perspective of "Academic Camp 2021 in Oshu"

Disclosure of presentations and discussions from the perspective of "Academic Camp 2021 in Oshu"

Modern Money Theory and International Law

This essay examines an emerging epistemological conjuncture between what might loosely be identified as two (primarily) academic camps: economists subscribing to “modern money theory” (MMT) and international lawyers associated with “critical” traditions within the discipline. For many legal scholars, my sense is that their current experience with MMT varies from “I think I have heard of that before” to “that state theory to money that pushes for a universal job guarantee.” And many progressive economists familiar with MMT have not spent a significant time with the insights and sensibility of critical international law scholarship. My aim here is to explore where there might be fruitful collaboration between these communities.

Report on “2020 Academic Camp in Oshu City” Online tour : Research meeting in the age of COVID-19 pandemic

コロナ禍においては，研究者が集まる学会やシンポジウムなどの学術イベントは現地開催が困難な状況にあり，オンライン上での試みが多く行われている．オンラインの学術イベントについては，感染リスクが低い状況で参加できること，さらにこれまで空間的・時間的制約により参加が困難であった参加者との議論が可能になったことが利点として挙げられる．一方で，直接交流し，体験することで行っていた課題・現状の共有や議論をどう行うかが課題となっている．

Report on "2019 Academic Camp in Noto" ： the theme of preserving and inheriting of academic materials

日本国内には，多種多様な歴史資料が現存し，それらは学術研究資料だけでなく，社会的な振興・発展への文化資源としても注目される．今後，地域の学術資料と関連する専門家の役割は重要である．一方，学術資料の保存・継承に関しては，自然災害による’突発的な資料喪失’と，人口減少などによる’緩やかな資料喪失’への対応が喫緊の課題である．これらから合同会社AMANEでは，国立歴史民俗博物館などと地域の学術資料の保存・継承・利活用をテーマとした「学術野営2019 in 能登半島」を開催した．本発表では，学術野営2019の論点および成果を紹介し，多様な分野・立場の専門家が社会的な課題を共有して実践的な議論を行う研究集会に関する基礎的な考察を行う．

Bodies, Spaces, and Cultural Models: On Bridging the Gap between Culture and Cognition

AbstractOver the past two decades cognitive literary studies (CLS) has emerged as a new subfield of literary studies. Despite the success of cognitive theories in some areas of research such as in narratology, however, the impact of CLS on the academic discipline of literary and cultural studies as a whole has not been as profound as predicted. Major schools of research, e.g. postcolonial studies or gender studies, remain virtually untouched, and the vast majority of literary scholars are still sceptical or indifferent towards this area of research. Reasons for this scepticism include, for example, epistemological and methodological uncertainties concerning the interdisciplinary intersection of science and literature. But scholars have also begun to address another lacuna in contemporary research that may prove to be of equal or even more profound consequence: the lack of a solid and widely accepted conceptual and analytical bridge between cognitive approaches and the wide field of cultural studies. It is a well-known fact that the study of culture in its many theoretical guises has taken a lead role in philology departments around the globe. Though not every scholar welcomes this development, it would certainly be unwise to ignore the general impact of cultural studies on philology. For this reason, my paper argues that CLS not only needs to engage in a productive interdisciplinary dialogue between literary scholars and cognitive scientists but it also needs to incorporate cultural studies into this dialogue. In other words, an important challenge lies in making cognitive approaches relevant for cultural analysis.This paper engages with current attempts to face this challenge. It provides a survey of approaches that aim to build a conceptual bridge between culture and cognition and thus take a step towards extending cognitive approaches into the field of cultural studies. For this purpose, I adopt the distinction between so-called ›first‹ and ›second generation‹ approaches in order to group this research heuristically into two academic camps: (1) approaches that emphatically foreground so-called second generation cognitive science as their prime source of inspiration, i.e. approaches that engage with enactive, embedded, extended, and embodied aspects of cognition; and (2) studies which do not explicitly situate themselves within this paradigm and rather seek innovation by turning to more ›classical‹, foundational ›first generation‹ concepts of mental representation, information- and text processing. By discussing examples from both lines of research, including work by Kukkonen/Caracciolo (2014), Strasen (2013), Sommer (2013), and Hartner/Schneider (2015), my survey attempts to provide an impression of the wealth of creative thinking currently at work in CLS. In this context, the paper discusses some of the major challenges cognitive approaches are facing today; it traces a selection of current developments in the field, including work on the concept of ›cultural models‹, the notion of the ›intercultural mind‹, and the attempt to programmatically ground conceptualizations of cognition in our bodily interactions with culture and the environment.All in all, I argue that despite the efforts towards a systematic cognitive investigation of culture sketched in this survey, the project of cognitive cultural studies in general is still in its infancy. Its work is conducted by a comparatively small group of enthusiasts and constitutes a highly-specialized academic niche within a multitude of postclassical approaches to literature. Whether it will be possible to interest the much larger body of ›traditional‹ literary and cultural scholars in cognitive approaches, in my opinion, will to no small degree hinge on the field’s ability to move beyond abstract theoretical reflection. While there is obviously nothing intrinsically wrong with specialized fields of research beyond the mainstream, I believe that cognitive approaches have the potential to reach a wider audience. However, this may depend on the ability of CLS to develop concepts and methods capable of analysing concrete cultural phenomena in their social and historical context.

Reading against and writing back

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how student learning materials, such as textbooks, are becoming more oriented toward multi-modal approaches using visuality and orality. While such approaches may help students to understand and then to reproduce taught materials, the objective of this paper is to question whether they are serving to promote students’ critical literacy. Design/methodology/approach – The paper assesses the character of current textbooks and other means of student support, such as online learning management systems, and assesses how well they seem able to promote the critical literacy that requires ability in “reading against” and “writing back”. The paper goes on to identify ways in which some parts of the university see orality as preliminary and subordinate to literacy-focused communication, but elsewhere, the pinnacle of students’ work is artistic or creative attainments with lesser need to write complexly literate textual works. Findings – As a means of trying to resolve inherent tensions between differing pedagogical assumptions and methods in the university, the paper proposes ways in which Ong’s (1982, p. 36) nine communication characteristics of “orally based thought and expression” may be able to offer insights into challenges of improving students’ critical literacy. Research limitations/implications – The inherent academic tensions within the university still remain insufficiently theorized. For example, the humanities and social sciences (still) place much store on developing students’ abilities in critical writing, while disciplines such as design or creative arts are much more focused on students’ creative outputs. The paper contributes to a better understanding of such scholars talking past one another. Practical implications – Scholars in different academic camps often note the discrepancies in how their relative pedagogical tasks are to be understood, but typically, it is not clear to them how they might better relate to other parts of the university. The paper aims to elucidate the nature of academic differences that often appear to exist to provide insights into possibly new ways of seeing everyday teaching and learning. Social implications – Ong’s insights into literacy and orality when viewed through a prism of tertiary teaching and learning provide a practical means whereby students and other university stakeholders can develop a better appreciation of the character of the modern university. Originality/value – The novel use of Walter Ong’s model of literacy and orality provides fresh ways of seeing challenges and disputes within the academic community and suggests new ways of seeing students’ work and their teachers’ expectations of them.

Deciphering the human condition: the rise of cognitive forensics

It has been almost a decade since a ‘paradigm shift’ in the forensic identification sciences was predicted. This shift was seen as an inevitable response to the mounting pressure resulting from scientific criticisms from both legal and academic camps. For most of the identification disciplines, the traditional paradigm has proven remarkably resistant to change. There has, however, been a healthy increase in research engagement relating to studies focused on the role that human perceptual and cognitive processes play in deciphering traditional forms of forensic evidence. The greatest cognitive research efforts in recent times have been directed toward the potential for bias to influence the outcomes of forensic examinations. The role of cognitive research is far more wide-reaching however, and is making important contributions to understanding models of interpretation and reporting, to assessing the characteristics of forensic competency and in identifying flawed constructs in subjective examination approaches. The challenge for our profession is to encourage cognitive scientists to assist us in understanding the characteristics of our claimed expertise, to make our resources available to detailed studies in spite of our casework demands, and ultimately to develop a culture prepared to change the way we go about our work.

Engaging a Community-based Perspective: The Problems of and Prospects for a Grassroots Endeavor in the Dominican Republic

The purpose of this article is to bring to the forefront the inconsistency of so-called “grassroots” organizations that operate by using traditional structures. The case of Educate Everyone, a nonprofit organization in the Dominican Republic, is utilized to illustrate this incompatibility at the organizational level, and identify the ways in which this issue plays out in a project. Additionally, possibilities for the organization to employ a community-based framework are discussed. The accounts that are presented to explore the central theme stem from two months of fieldwork that were spent carrying out a participatory action research project with volunteers who support Educate Everyone’s annual academic camp.

Polemos: ‘I am at war with myself’ or, Deconstruction™ in the Anthropocene?

The term “anthropocene,” emerging around the time of Derrida's death, implies a shift in reference that his late production does not address or anticipate—and thus, if it is to be taken seriously as a ghost term, it poses today a question of a selective translation effect as regards “deconstruction.” This essay finds in Derrida's “last” interview and the “war with myself” that it avows a cipher and entry point for this broader question. Given official “deconstructions” withdrawn, conservative, and fallow state today, as a minor academic camp dedicated to Derridean theology, the essay asks whether the arrival of the term is not a catalyst for the re-organization of deconstructive memes (if not proper names). It examines not only Derrida's systematic avoidance in his writing of eco-catastrophism, but how that occlusion parallels others—specifically, a certain “materiality” that lies outside binaries and, more surprisingly, cinema. In examining this “war” between the two Derridas the essay speculates on whether the anthropocene moves us beyond the sort of soft Derrideanism that, since his death, has paralyzed the franchise (deconstruction™) and fulfilled his prediction of his work's disappearance.

Community Service Self-Efficacy and Summer Service-Learning: Comparative Analyses Among Academically Talented Youth

This article presents findings from a pre-lpost-comparative study of the levels of community service self-efficacy of academically-talented adolescents enrolled in a summer academic camp. Students required to complete community service activities as part of their social science-based community service-learning class are compared to students in humanities and science courses, which did not include a civic education component. Findings revealed significant overtime changes in community service self-efficacy scores for students who participated in the service-learning program as compared to those who did not complete a service-learning experience.

Racial Quotas and the Culture War in Brazilian Academia

AbstractDozens of Brazilian universities recently adopted racial quotas for negros, read Afro‐Brazilians, in higher education. Anyone familiar with the Brazilian context will recognize this step as a paradigm shift in the state’s approach to ‘race’. State discourse in past decades touted a mixed‐race population not beset by overt discriminatory practices. In response to this new approach, two well‐defined clusters of professors in Brazil’s universities authored several dueling manifestos supporting and opposing race‐based affirmative action. This article suggests a ‘culture war’ framing of the debate and delineates the contrasting historic ideologies of racialism and antiracialism that inform the divergent racial worldviews of each academic camp. It then explores four points of contention from the manifestos that characterize their conflicting perspectives. They differ in terms of (1) their images of the Brazilian nation, (2) their diagnoses of the mechanisms behind non‐white underrepresentation in Brazilian universities, (3) their prognoses for a remedy via racial quotas, and (4) their motivations for entering the debate. At the same time, the article locates some possible common ground.

Martha Nussbaum, Essentialism, and Human Sexuality

It is an honor to participate in this program recognizing the work of Professor Martha Nussbaum. A few years ago, after being fortunate enough to have been awarded tenure, the university library at the institution where I worked at the time asked me to choose a book I valued for an exhibit of books chosen by recently tenured professors. I chose Nussbaum's Women and Human Development, a book that has had a deep intellectual influence on me. (1) One of the chapters in that book is titled Defense of Universal Values, a topic that is relevant to this Article. Critiques of essentialism are a common theme in the writings of many contemporary academics. Indeed, queer theorists, critical race theorists, post-structuralists, post-colonialists, and many feminists consistently take issue with the notion that there are attributes or traits that are intrinsically constitutive of categories such as men and women, heterosexuals and homosexuals, disabled and non-disabled, and so on. (2) The emphases and nuances of the anti-essentialist critiques differ depending on membership in particular academic camps and disciplines. However, the critiques uniformly reject moral, philosophical, and political understandings that are explicitly or implicitly grounded in the notion that identities--and for some critics, even the very idea of a being--are static and fixed, that is, immune or separate from forces of social construction. Anti-essentialist critiques hold instead that much (or all) of what constitutes us as individuals is socially constructed and therefore fluid and contestable. From an anti-essentialist perspective, Martha Nussbaum's liberal humanism is intrinsically suspect. Nussbaum, after all, grounds her moral and political philosophy in a particular understanding of what it means to be human, one that is driven by certain capabilities that she argues are necessary to lead a fully human life. Although Nussbaum does not usually refer to herself as an essentialist (3)--few do, since the term is largely used only in a pejorative sense--her capabilities approach to justice is explicitly universalist; (4) it is grounded in commonalities and found across time and place, allowing us to recognize each other as human. (5) It is important to note that Nussbaum's universalism is of a very different order than that usually associated with liberal political theory because it refuses to locate the source of human dignity, which serves as the foundation of her moral and political philosophy, solely in man's capacity to reason. Instead, Nussbaum contends that the capability to affiliate with others also plays an architectonic role in our lives because we exercise most of our important capabilities with and through others. As she explains, [t]o plan for one's own life without being able to do so in complex forms of discourse, concern, and reciprocity with other human beings is ... to behave in an incompletely human way. (6) In addition, Nussbaum's conception of what it means to be human is decidedly non-metaphysical. It is derived not from philosophical principles gleaned through the application of abstract reasoning, but from the interpretation of human practices and experiences, including the stories we tell each other about our lives and aspirations. It is also not dependent on of human nature, whether physiological or psychological, that are separate from our ethical evaluations of what is necessary to lead a full human life. For Nussbaum, in other words, the value of central human capabilities is determined through ethical interpretations and evaluations of human experiences, rather than through the discovery of so-called natural principles or facts that are independent of those evaluations. (7) There was a time early on in Nussbaum's elaboration of the capabilities approach when she criticized John Rawls for deploying an unduly restrictive understanding of the good in determining what is necessary to promote human flourishing. …

Critical Realism and Historical Sociology. A Review Article

Perhaps the fiercest conflict within the social sciences today is one that is not even articulated as a recognizable “debate.” Nevertheless, this conflict has generated bitter divisions between academics who only a decade ago might have stood together on the left or the right and has forged equally strange alliances. I am referring, of course, to the split between epistemological and ontological positions which are usually described as radical constructivism and realist positivism. The recent debate provoked by Alan Sokal's article in Social TextSee Alan D. Sokal, “Transgressing the Boundaries—Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” Social Text (Spring-Summer 1996), 217–52; and idem, “A Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies,” Lingua Franca (May-June 1996), 62–64. The key response is Stanley Fish's article, “Professor Sokal's Bad Joke,” in The New York Times (Opinion–Editorial page, May 21, 1996); see also the responses in the July-August 1996 issue of Lingua Franca; Michael Albert, “Science, Post Modernism, and the Left,” in Z Magazine (July-August 1996); Steven Weinberg, “Sokal's Hoax,” New York Review of Books (August 8, 1996), 11–15; and Tom Frank, “Textual Reckoning,” In These Times (May 27, 1996). I am grateful to Michael Rosenfeld for references to the latter two pieces. brought into sharp focus the growing sense of distrust and anger that divides these academic camps. And, yet, the heterogeneity of each supposed grouping suggests that the dichotomous model masks what is actually a much more complex, multi-dimensional field. On the one hand we find a motley assemblage of positions variously characterized as constructivism, culturalism, neo-Kantian idealism, and postmodernism; the other pole throws together a set of even stranger bedfellows, including rational choice theorists, survey researchers, and traditional historians alongside “realist” philosophers of various stripes.