Levels Of Ontology Research Articles

Communicative‐based curriculum innovations between theory and practice: implications for EFL curriculum development and student cognitive and affective change

This qualitative study examines the influence of teacher conceptualisations of communicative language teaching on their actual classroom practice and student cognitive and affective change. The qualitative paradigm underpinned this research at the levels of ontology (multiple teacher realities), epistemology (interaction with, rather than detachment from, the respondents), and methodology through using an idiographic strategy (qualitative case study), instruments (qualitative interviews, participant observation and questionnaires), and data analysis technique (explanation‐building). The results indicated that teachers who understood CLT and managed to materialise its principles into action significantly improved student language learning (cognitive change) and motivation (affective change). Moreover, traditional, structural and didactic teaching as well as communicative knowledge that was not translated into practice had almost a typical negative impact on student learning and motivation. Recommendations for curriculum development, teacher development, teacher training and future research are made.

Complexity Theory, School Leadership and Management: Questions for Theory and Practice

Complexity theory (CT) has had a meteoric rise in management literature and the social sciences. Its fledgling importation into school leadership and management raises several questions and concerns. This article takes one view of CT and argues that, though its key elements have much to offer school leadership and management, caution has to be exercised in accepting CT too readily, as it: (1) is unclear on its own novelty, nature and status; (2) can be regarded as disguised ideology in conflating description and prescription; (3) confuses explanation with prediction; (4) is relativist, undermining its own status; (5) contains problems in its advocacy of self-organization; (6) neglects the ethical and emotional dimensions of leadership and management; and (7) risks exonerating school leaders and managers from reasonable expectations of accountability and responsibility. The article concludes that there are questions to CT at the levels of theory, ontology, deontology and ethics, but that it offers useful challenges for school leadership and management.

Classroom-level curriculum development: EFL teachers as curriculum-developers, curriculum-makers and curriculum-transmitters

This qualitative study aimed to explore teacher curriculum approaches and the strategies attached to each approach because they influence the taught curriculum, teacher development and student learning. The study was therefore grounded in teacher curriculum development, curriculum implementation, teacher development, student cognitive and affective change and constructivism. To address this study's qualitative and exploratory purposes, it made use of the qualitative paradigm at the levels of ontology (multiple curriculum realities), epistemology (interaction with rather than detachment from respondents) and methodology (using idiographic methodology and instruments). In line with the qualitative paradigm, it used qualitative case-study (method), general interviews, pre/post-lesson interviews, group interviews and participant observation (data collection methods) in addition to grounded theory (data analysis approach) to meet the research purposes. Working with English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers and mixed-nationality college students, the study reached a teacher curriculum approach classification comprising curriculum-transmission, curriculum-development and curriculum-making. It recommended alternatives for teacher, student and curriculum development, curriculum implementation and teacher training.

Usage of Ontologies in Systems of Data Exchange

Usage of Ontologies in Systems of Data Exchange This paper describes the methods and techniques used to effectively extract knowledge from large volumes of heterogeneous data. Also, methods to structure the raw data by the automatic classification using ontology are discussed. In the first part of the article the basic technologies to realize the Semantic WEB are described. Much attention is paid to the ontology, as the major concepts that structure information on a very high level. The second part examines AVT-DTL algorithm proposed by Jun Zhang which allows one to automatically create classifiers according to the available raw, potentially incomplete data. The considered algorithm uses a new concept of floating levels of ontology; the results of the tests show that it outperforms the best existing algorithms for creating classifiers.

Refusing Able(ness): A Preliminary Conversation about Ableism

Feminist Rosemary Tong long ago alluded to the profound possibilities of using critical disability studies theory to recomprehend and respatialize the landscape of thinking about race and gender as sites of signification. This piece presents a preliminary conversation in the emergent field of studies in ableism and desires to not only problematize but refuse the notion of able(ness). Our attention is on Ableism's production and performance. Such an exploratory work is indebted to conversations already commenced by Campbell, Hughes and Overboe. My approach is three pronged. Firstly I explore the problem of speaking/thinking/feeling - about the Other (in this case persons referred to as 'disabled people') and the 'extraordinary' Other, the 'Abled'. This conversation is captured under the banner of "The Ableist Project". Here I argue it is necessary to shift the gaze of contemporary scholarship away from the spotlight on disability to a more nuanced exploration of epistemologies and ontologies of ableism. As part of this project of exposure my second task then will be to tease out the strands of what can be called "Ableist Relations", including the effects of the compulsion to emulate ableist regulatory norms. Finally, as part of a commitment to make the necessary connections between theory and practice, I look at the tasks ahead in the refusal of Ability and the commitment to a disability/not-abled imaginary.

Integrating Concept Ontology and Multitask Learning to Achieve More Effective Classifier Training for Multilevel Image Annotation

In this paper, we have developed a new scheme for achieving multilevel annotations of large-scale images automatically. To achieve more sufficient representation of various visual properties of the images, both the global visual features and the local visual features are extracted for image content representation. To tackle the problem of huge intraconcept visual diversity, multiple types of kernels are integrated to characterize the diverse visual similarity relationships between the images more precisely, and a multiple kernel learning algorithm is developed for SVM image classifier training. To address the problem of huge interconcept visual similarity, a novel multitask learning algorithm is developed to learn the correlated classifiers for the sibling image concepts under the same parent concept and enhance their discrimination and adaptation power significantly. To tackle the problem of huge intraconcept visual diversity for the image concepts at the higher levels of the concept ontology, a novel hierarchical boosting algorithm is developed to learn their ensemble classifiers hierarchically. In order to assist users on selecting more effective hypotheses for image classifier training, we have developed a novel hyperbolic framework for large-scale image visualization and interactive hypotheses assessment. Our experiments on large-scale image collections have also obtained very positive results.

Knowledge acquisition and interpretation problem-solving methods for visual expertise: S study of petroleum-reservoir evaluation

The paper presents a practical study of expertise in sedimentary petrography and its incorporation into a knowledge-based computing system, PetroGrapher. The study identifies features of expert geologists' essentially visual knowledge that limit the usefulness of traditional logic-oriented symbolic methods for developing relevant knowledge-based systems. In particular, the experts' expressions of knowledge differ significantly from what is taught through the literature about their subject. Also, the means (ontology) of describing the explicit objects of geological data are not well-suited to describe how experts combine such objects and make inferences about them. The paper indicates how to deal with those two different levels of ontology, proposes “knowledge graphs” as an effective medium for linking them and explains their place in a general descriptive model of how experts solve problems in interpretation based on visual evidence. The model is being validated through the use of PetroGrapher, for management of data and knowledge about reservoir rocks, in a petroleum company.