Departmental Division Research Articles

APPRAISING BENINESE EFL TEACHERS’ BELIEFS ON FORMATIVE AND SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT IN THE COMPETENCY-BASED APPROACH CONTEXT

This study explores Benin EFL beliefs on the two forms of assessment: formative and summative. Both forms of assessment are important in teaching adjustments, in determining priorities and addressing learners’ needs. The study was conducted in two EFL classes of Oueme regions in Benin republic. Six EFL teachers and 106 EFL students of upper sixth forms (Terminales) were involved in this study. The data include interviews with Educational Facilitators (Head Teachers), School Board Educational Administrators, Educational Advisors and Schools Board Administrators at the departmental division of secondary education. Questionnaires were addressed to EFL students and class observation was also used as research instruments. The study indicates that EFL teachers need empowerment in making decision in their own classes owing to a certain number of constraints. It also shows that there is a need to revise test administration strategies in Benin secondary schools. Article visualizations:

Pelaksanaan Proses Peminatan Berdasarkan Implementasi Kurikulum 2013 Terhadap Tingkat Kepuasan Peserta Didik

Curriculum 2013 is a curriculum that prioritizes understanding, skills, and character education, students are required to understand the material, active in discussions and presentations and have a high discipline manners. In the 2013 curriculum, the division of departments through junior high school grades is done when students are still in class X. This study aims to determine the level of student satisfaction with the implementation of the division of majors conducted by the teachers at the time the students are still on Class X and based on SMP report cards. The department is one way to achieve the ideals and future of the students because the majors aim to develop the talents and abilities of the students. Instrument that researchers use is with the division of questionnaires, data collection techniques that the authors use are interviews, study libraries and documentation. Based on the research, it is found that the level of student satisfaction toward the implementation of departmental division based on the 2013 curriculum is very high or it can be said that the students who do not receive the results of the department division through the 2013 curriculum are very low. Therefore, the 2013 curriculum is very well used in the students next year or academic year 2017/2018.

Microempresas del sector abarrotero

Este ensayo muestra actividades encaminadas a las microempresas, las cuales se definen como “aquellas entidades de negociación comercial, industrial o de servicios que emplean de una a diez personas”, dentro de éstas se encuentran las pertenecientes al sector abarrotero. La estructura organizacional de la microempresa no se integra como generalmente lo hace una empresa de mayor tamaño, puesto que no se tiene la división departamental comúnmente conocida, por lo tanto solo se tienen dos niveles; en el primero se encuentra el dueño de la microempresa, quien desempeña la función de gerente y solo emplea a una o dos personas, que se encuentran en el segundo nivel del organigrama y están subordinados a él. La línea de mando es directa y las actividades están siempre vinculadas a los objetivos del negocio. El gerente es la máxima autoridad y es quien ordena y determina las reglas y actividades a desempeñar. Por otro lado, los trabajadores o empleados de mostrador, son quienes están sujetos a las disposiciones que les indique el gerente.

Examination of Publications from Academic Anesthesiology Faculty in the United States

Leaders in academic anesthesiology in the United States have called for an examination of the state of scholarship within anesthesiology departments. National Institutes of Health funding and publication quality of subsets of U.S anesthesiologists have been examined; however, the publication output of and the demographic characteristics that are associated with academic anesthesiologists, defined as faculty associated with a medical college, are unknown. A database from the American Association of Medical Colleges containing demographic information of all academic anesthesiologists in the United States was used to examine the publication output and demographic characteristics of anesthesiology faculty during a 2-year period from 2006 to 2008. All the publications found in the PubMed database for each faculty member were retrieved and included in a database containing their demographics including institution, gender, academic degree, academic rank, nature of appointment (part versus full-time), status of appointment (joint versus primary), departmental division, subspecialty certification status, and additional graduate medical education training. Six thousand one hundred forty-three faculty who held positions at the 108 U.S. academic anesthesiology programs published 8521 manuscripts between 2006 and 2008. Thirty-seven percent of faculty published a manuscript, and the overall median publication rate was 0. The proportion of faculty with at least 1 publication was larger among faculty with higher rank (Odds Ratio [OR] for professors versus instructors = 6.4; confidence interval [CI], 4.57-8.49; P < 0.0001), male gender (OR 1.3; CI, 0.14-1.47; P < 0.0001), possessing a courtesy appointment status (OR 2.1; CI, 1.25-3.52; P = 0.0048) and lacking postgraduate training and subspecialty certification (OR for MD versus MD w/training + certification 1.3; CI, 1.11-1.60; P = 0.0020). Those faculty with an MD had lower probablility of publishing when compared with MD/PhD or PhD faculty (OR 0.45; CI, 0.32-0.65; P < 0.0001; OR 0.27; CI, 0.20-0.37; P < 0.0001, respectively). Within the group of faculty who published at least 1 paper, full professor faculty had 3.8 times more publications than instructors (CI, 2.99-4.88; P < 0.0001), and those who lacked postgraduate training had 1.4 times more publications than those who were trained and certified (CI, 1.16-1.78; P = 0.0009). PhD degree (P = 0.006), male gender (P = 0.013), and courtesy anesthesia appointment (P = 0.037) also were associated with higher publication rates. The overall publication rate of anesthesiologists associated with medical schools was low in this time period. These data establish the pre-"call to action" baseline of scholarly activity by U.S. academic anesthesiologists for future comparisons. Increased use of structured resident and fellow research education programs as well as recruiting more MD/PhD and PhD scientists to the field may help to improve the publication productivity of academic anesthesiology departments.

Renewal of the clinical-phase dental curriculum to promote better learning at the University of Oulu.

The degree awarded to a dentist in Finland is Licentiate of Dentistry, and it takes 5 years to achieve it. The old curriculum at the Institute of Dentistry, University of Oulu, Finland, was based on the departmental division, and there was minimal integration between the disciplines. According to student feedback, the old curriculum was overloaded. The amount of contact teaching was up to 40 h per week throughout the academic year. Based on the workload regulation model launched at the University of Oulu, the actual workload of students for three clinical years was found to exceed the confirmed curriculum (40 study weeks per year for 3 years, representing 180 European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) credits) by 68 ECTS credits (representing 45.3 study weeks). Because of the heavy workload, students did not have time actively to deepen their scientific reasoning. To tackle this problem and to maintain the high academic standards, the Institute of Dentistry, University of Oulu, Finland, decided to change the dental curriculum. The properties and qualities of the competent dentist were listed and arranged in the corners of an octagonal to provide the model of the key dental competencies. Based on this, a thorough core analysis of the courses was carried out by the departments. The new curriculum consists of 10 broader integrative entities, so called dental teaching strands (DTSs), wherein the teaching given by the different departments has been combined. The effort was successful. We managed to remove overlap in the substance of the courses to reduce the students' actual workload by about 45 ECTS credits (representing 30 study weeks and 1200 h of studying) and to promote better scientific reasoning and learning results. The authentic learning and comprehensive patient care comprise the core of the clinical practice.

Recommended curriculum for a program in biochemistry and molecular biology

The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) last developed a new curriculum for an undergraduate program in biochemistry and molecular biology in 1992. The intervening years have seen enormous change in both the subject matter and in our understanding of good teaching practices. The Education and Professional Development Committee of ASBMB has been working for the last 3 years to develop a new curriculum that takes account of these changes. This recommendation represents a work in progress; the Committee intends to revisit this issue at regular intervals. It is no longer adequate to describe a curriculum only in terms of the courses it contains. Instead it is important that the description focus on the concepts, content, and topics of the program as well as the student outcomes that should be expected from the program. The recommended curriculum (Table I) is a compromise between the traditional, course-centered approach to curriculum and the more modern content and outcome-centered approach. It is the intent of the Committee that curriculum designers should have flexibility about how the content is organized. The course organization given below is only one of many ways that the material might be organized. The description also contains a list of recommended skills that students should acquire during their undergraduate years in a biochemistry/molecular biology program (Table II). The separation of biochemistry topics from molecular biology topics, as well as the separation of chemistry topics from biology topics, has roots in the traditional departmental division between chemistry departments and biology departments. Biochemistry/molecular biology departments or programs can stand in different relationships to the two core subjects, and the organization of course material may differ substantially from that recommended here. The important things are the overall content and coherence of the program as well as the skills that students are expected to acquire. Research experience is an essential part of the undergraduate experience in biochemistry and molecular biology. However, it is acknowledged that this research experience may in some cases be achieved through well designed laboratory courses rather than through an extended period in an individual research laboratory. The National Institutes of Health and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have commissioned a report on undergraduate biology curricula for those entering the biomedical sciences [1]. This detailed, 144-page report describes the rapidly changing nature of the field and its educational requirements. It is a “must read” for those developing interdisciplinary programs in biochemistry and molecular biology as well as those interested in assessing the strength of their current program.

International Business Education in Estonia - From Socialism to Capitalism

The paper evaluates ongoing efforls in the reform of international business and economics education at Tartu University in the newly independent republic of Estonia. Contested issues include the needed upgrading and allocation of existing staff and research resources in the context of a national, institutional and departmental division of labor. The reform of international business education at TU, as guided by heir new strategic plan, depends, in part, on the effective integration of technically qualified foreign experts, well versed in market economics but often poorly informed on Estonian history, conditions and language, with elhnic Estonian faculty and administrators, entrepreneurs and politicians who were themselves trained in the technically narrow and ideologically constrained world of Marxism-Leninism. Despite the constraints, it is probable that the academic center for international commerce in Estonia will be Tartu University.

Efficient allocation of public resources in manpower training

This paper utilizes the linear programming technique for developing a general model to solve choice-involving questions in the area of manpower training policy. The model can be used to bring about a more efficient allocation of budgetary and non-financial resources among given training activities. It was applied in an empirical evaluation of on-the-job and institutional training activities in the Province of Ontario, Canada. Some of the findings are reported in the last section of the paper. Theoretically, the objective function is set up to maximize the contribution of government-sponsored training to social real income subject to constraints. Empirically, this contribution is measured as the present value of the cumulated stream of additional earnings of placed graduate-trainees; externalities are ignored due to measurement difficulties. Three resource constraints are used: (1) trainee allowances paid during the course of training, (2) cost of instruction, and (3) government administration expense, which reflect actual budgetary conditions of the training activities evaluated. Also there is an upper boundary for each training activity showing the maximum volume of demand for training by employers and trainees. The empirical evaluation refers to the fiscal year 1966/67. A total of six linear programming models were constructed for purposes of evaluation. The main empirical results were as follows : 1. There was considerable sub-optimality in the conduct of on-the-job activities, chiefly for two reasons; (i) much training was carried in relatively low-yielding industries, (ii) excess administration capacity existed in the handling of these training activities. 2. Training of the under-employed was virtually as efficient as that of the unemployed. 3. Institutional training had comparative advantage in academic upgrading courses. The operation of institutional training activities was sub-optimal, but less so than on-the-job activities, because of (i) the provision of a large volume of commercial training for which the pay-off per unit of cost was relatively low, and (ii) low demand for skill development courses in institutions in spite of fairly high pay-off rates. 4. While some economies of integration of institutional and on-the-job activities could be realized, it would be virtually as efficient to maintain the existing departmental division of responsibilities provided that each were run optimally. In that event, the most efficient choice would be to devote institutional training exclusively to academic upgrading courses and on-the-job training to occupational skill development.