Public Exams Research Articles

Mujeres pioneras: la catedrática de instituto Rosario Fuentes

If higher education was already restricted and off-limits to women until the 20th century, their access to teaching and obtaining academic positions at these levels was even more difficult and complex. The aim of this paper is to describe a paradigmatic case of this problem: the life of Rosario Fuentes, who achieved the highest score in a public exam to become French professor and who became the first secondary school professor at the Zorrilla high school in Valladolid. Fuentes alsohad a relevant career as a translator, with contributions to texts on education, philosophy and psychology. This study highlights her role as a researcher associated with the Junta para la Ampliación de Estudios (Board for Advanced Studies) and as a writer of French textbooks. She also took part in the organization of language teachers as well as teaching in different Teacher Training Schools. Her career suffered as a result of the purging process which Franco’s dictatorship carried out on teachers, a process that was especially arbitrary against women due to the fact that their own actions and thoughts were often considered less relevant than those of their partners or relatives.. This paper, which examines many of these aspects of her life, relies on documentation and unpublished images from different archives such as those of the administration and the family, as well as previous works that analyse the issue of women teachers in Secondary Education.

Assessing Listening Comprehension at the Secondary Level in Bangladesh: Challenges and Possible Measures

The current National Curriculum 2012 of Bangladesh recommends all four skills of English language education to be assessed in school and public exams. In the curriculum, there is a suggestion to evaluate the listening abilities of students through a formative assessment throughout the year at schools. The marks of the listening assessment need to be counted with the other three skills while grading students’ English language papers for the secondary level in the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) examination. However, the existing exam evaluates only reading and writing tasks. Although various attempts are underway to reform the current language assessment procedure by including listening and speaking skills, nothing has come out in concreate so far. With this article, I provide expert insights into the challenges of listening assessment with the goal of helping policymakers and the secondary school teachers. In-depth interviews with policymakers and secondary school teachers and (n=16) are qualitatively analysed to gain reflection into the existing challenges to assess listening and how to make the assessment procedures. The findings and discussion of the article propose a conceptual framework that can be helpful for the teachers and policymakers to deal with the challenges.

Musical Heritage of the Pereyaslav Collegium

This article is an interdisciplinary study that aims to form a comprehensive view of music and church singing both in the educational process of collegium students and outside it. Thanks to the historical sources involved, we were able to clarify the mechanism of functioning of church singing both in the collegium and at the stage of primary (preparatory) education of future students, as well as its role in the life of collegium graduates who made careers in the major vocal chapel of the Russian Empire. The preparatory stage for the future students was studying in parish schools, where an obligatory discipline was irmoloinyi singing. It is probable that in the 18th century, the teaching of singing in the collegium was carried out in the primary classes, where Church Slavonic literacy was studied at the same time, and in the first years of the 19th century musical singing was officially reflected in the name of a separate class. All students of the collegium underwent compulsory liturgical singing practice. The most gifted of the students were members of the Episcopal Cathedral Vocal Chapel. The students of the collegium were not limited to singing only in the cathedral; they also sang during the festive processions, during the begging, as well as in the parish churches during the holidays, where they also taught church singing. Among the music books, we know for sure about several Irmologions that were used in the collegium. From the memoirs of an eyewitness of the first third of the 19th century, we learn about the singing of hymns during public exams, as well as the singing of vocal concerts during the traditional holiday greetings to the Bishop, Rector, and Prefect of the seminary. It was noted that this tradition existed in the last quarter of the 18th century. Such a practice did exist at the same time in Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, so this evidence seems plausible. The only evidence of the use of musical instruments among the students of the Pereyaslav Collegium comes from the descriptions of the May recreational festivities, when both vocal and instrumental ensembles from among the pupils were heard.

Engaging Exam-Oriented Students in Communicative Language Teaching by ‘Packaging’ Learning English Through Songs as Exam Practice

Literature has long been used as a tool for language teaching and learning. In the New Academic Structure in Hong Kong, it has become an important element in the senior secondary English language curriculum to promote communicative language teaching (CLT) with a process-oriented approach. However, as in many other English as a second or foreign language (ESL/EFL) contexts where high-stakes testing prevails, Hong Kong students are highly exam-oriented and expect teachers to teach to the test. Because there is no direct assessment on literature in the English language curriculum, many teachers find it challenging to balance CLT through literature and exam preparation. To address this issue, this article describes an innovation of teaching ESL through songs by ‘packaging’ it as exam practice to engage exam-oriented students in CLT. A series of activities derived from the song Seasons in the Sun was implemented in the ESL classrooms in a secondary school in Hong Kong. Based on the author’s observations and reflections informed by teachers’ and students’ comments, the students were first motivated, at least instrumentally, by the relevance of the activities to the listening paper in the public exam when they saw the similarities between the classroom tasks and past exam questions. Once the students felt motivated, they were more easily engaged in a variety of CLT activities, which encouraged the use of English for authentic and meaningful communication. This article offers pedagogical implications for ESL/EFL teachers to implement CLT through literature in exam-oriented contexts.

Renovación pedagógica e identidad: un estudio comparativo de los expedientes de oposición y de depuración de las direcciones escolares de la Segunda República

This paper evaluates the possibilities offered by a comparative study between two sources unrelated until now: the personal files from professional selection processes produced during the Second Spanish Republic and the files produced in the Francoist purge process which started at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. We take a privileged segment of the teaching staff as a sample: the teachers who achieved headteacher positions for the new graded schools in the public exams held in 1932 during the Second Spanish Republic. In order to contextualize the relevance of this contingent of teachers, we first offer a quantitative analysis, showing the impact of the purging process on them. Next, we present the approach from which we perform the qualitative analysis, which is based on the interpretation of the files as “institutional life-archives” and we try to characterise this life-archive practice in both processes, keeping in mind that, although different in modality and purpose, both are valuable sources for studying the professional identities of those who elaborated the files. Finally, we propose three models —confirmation, re-adaptation and dissolution— for performinga qualitative analysis, which make it possible to assess the production and fluctuation of teacher’s identities among these files. These models demonstrate the utility of a comparative analysis of these sources, which can serve to study the configuration of teachers’ professional and pedagogical identities as well as their relationship with the new pedagogical theories and pedagogical tradition in a key time of Spanish history of education. It is our hope that this study will lead to new lines of research in order to analyse the continuities and ruptures of pedagogical discourses and practices between different periods.

AS GERAÇÕES DA WEB NO ENSINO ONLINE

This paper aimed to draw a parallel of the evolution of communication with the tools of distance learning, reflecting the tools currently offered and the desires of students in an era of cyberculture. Distance learning is a controversial subject, in the past it was criticized for its real effectiveness, and today it is increasingly seen as a solution. In the information age, online learning is becoming a necessity for many people who face long working days, associated with the loss of time spent commuting to urban centers, and several other factors that make a traditional classroom education unfeasible. We currently see a direction and improvement of digital information and communication technologies, promoting asynchronous study, especially online, whose quality of teaching also accompanies the offer of increasingly interactive and personalized services. We conducted a literature review on the subject and a field research in a distance learning segment that offers online video classes for public exam candidates, a niche that today attracts millions of students in Brazil and abroad, offering the dream of stability in a period of high unemployment rates and political/economic uncertainties, and seeking new technologies as market trends. We conclude that the tools offered in the courses for public competitions are effective in the distance learning segment.

Using Public Exam Questions in Fishbowl Debate to Engage Exam-Oriented Students in Communicative Language Teaching

This article introduces the use of public exam questions in fishbowl debate to engage highly exam-oriented secondary students with communicative language teaching (CLT). The practice aims to address the issue that many teachers of English as a second language (ESL)/English as a foreign language (EFL) in Asian contexts either teach to the test or implement CLT without catering for the students’ pragmatic needs to pass external assessment. A series of activities was implemented in a secondary school in Hong Kong to promote positive washback from the public exam. The author’s experience and reflections informed by ongoing dialogue with the stakeholders in the school and data collected from student focus group interviews suggest that the fishbowl debate encouraged students to use English for authentic and meaningful purposes, while appreciating its relevance to the writing exam. An important pedagogical implication is for teachers to balance CLT and exam preparation and help students to reach both their mastery and performance goals.

Excelling in Exam Through Narrative Writing: A Connection of Creative and Descriptive Expressions

This paper discusses the impacts of an action research on how students can excel in writing skills regardless of their level of competency especially for those taking the English Language paper (SPM 1119) in the Malaysian Secondary School Public Exam in 2018. This action research aims to exert the need for realigning our focus to incorporate an approach of teaching and learning at upper secondary level. The research was carried out from January to October in a secondary school in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. Two classes of 37 Limited English Proficiency students and 24 High English Proficiency Students who were sitting for SPM 1119 in 2018 were the subjects. The students were exposed to creative expressions under various topics which were then emphasized to be utilized in continuous writing. As a result, the performance of students had improved significantly in their continuous writing where they eventually scored 100 percent pass in SPM1119 in 2018. All 24 Highly Competent students were able to score ranging from “A-” to “A+” with grade A being the median grade. On the other hand, all the students from the Limited English Proficiency students passed with grades ranging from “A”+ to “E” (minimum passing grade) with grade “B” as the median.

Implementing Innovative Lean Educational Method to Enhance English Language Achievement

Purpose: To our knowledge, the present study is the first experimental example of the application of innovative Lean Educational Method (LEM) in middle school English classes in Turkey. How to learn and teach foreign languages has become the preoccupation of teachers, researchers, educational authorities, parents, and students. All of the stakeholders in the education processes want to satisfy the learning needs of the students ideally. As a result of the relevant efforts, many teaching methods emerged in the field of English Language Teaching (ELT). In this regard, this study primarily aims to introduce LEM and present its efficiency through an experiment. Methods: To question the effects of LEM in English lessons, this experimental study was conducted. A control group (40 students), and an experimental group (40 students) were chosen through random cluster sampling in a public middle school. The experimentation process continued for 19 weeks. Statistical analyses of the collected data were conducted using descriptive statistics and the variance analyses carried out using one-way ANOVA. Findings : The findings showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the experimental and control groups (control group’s pre-test mean=8.9, sd=3.801 / post-test mean=8.775, sd=4.293; experimental group’s pre-test mean=8.45, sd=4.437 / post-test mean=13.375, sd=3.998). Variance analyses of the pre-test and the post-test showed a statistically significant difference in the dependent variable (F=27.197, p<.05). Implications for Research and Practice: The results showed that the implementation of LEM in middle school contexts is quite possible. LEM has the potential to bring many innovations to ELT and it also increases the foreign language achievement in nation-wide public exams. LEM can be applied in other educational contexts such as; primary schools, high schools and universities.

Winnowing Out High-psm Candidates: The Adverse Selection Effect of Competitive Public Service Exams

ABSTRACT:Existing literature based in Western society generally supports that people who have high public service motivation (PSM) prefer a public service career, and public organizations are likely to recruit high-PSM individuals. This proposition may not hold in cultures where the public service exam is notoriously competitive. The present study, based in Taiwan, provides evidence showing that a competitive, standardized public service exam, along with its unique social symbolism, can deter high-PSM people from entering the public sector. We then discuss the theoretical and practical implications in the conclusion.

Los expedientes-oposición a direcciones de escuelas graduadas de 1932 como fuente histórico-educativa. Un estudio de caso: el expediente-oposición de María Sánchez Arbós

El objetivo de este artículo es presentar y contextualizar una fuente original hasta ahora desatendida y carente de un estudio sistemático. Se trata de los expedientes-oposición de las oposiciones a Direcciones de escuelas graduadas de seis o más secciones de 1932, las únicas convocadas por la Segunda República Española para este cuerpo. La particular estructura de estas oposiciones nos sugiere una propuesta metodológica para trabajar estos expedientes: se trata de considerar cada expediente-oposición como una práctica de archivo de vida, donde cada opositor selecciona, con cierta libertad, una serie de fragmentos y documentos mediante los cuales construye y representa su identidad profesional ante el tribunal, pero también ante sí mismo. Por último, llevaremos a cabo un estudio de caso con el expediente de una de las opositoras más conocidas: María Sánchez Arbós. Este caso nos permite, además, medir las posibilidades metodológicas de nuestra propuesta para estudiar la construcción y reconstrucción de las identidades profesionales de los docentes republicanos, al tener la oportunidad de comparar la composición del expediente-oposición, elaborada en 1932, con otra fuente muy conocida: su Diario, publicado en los años sesenta.

Writing Essays Made Easy with Instawrite

Writing is a mammoth task especially to English as a Second Language Learners (ESL). In the Malaysian education setting, Year 6 Pupils are required to sit for a public exam where their writing skills are evaluated. However, it was discovered that feedbacks from teachers to pupils take more time. This action research was carried out to determine how far the use of InstaWrite can improve writing essays among Year 5 Pupils. These pupils were from rural primary schools in Alor Gajah, Melaka and Jempol, Negeri Sembilan. The research participants were a total of seven males and seven females with low to intermediate proficiency levels. Participants would use InstaWrite to help them to write narrative essays. These essays are based on a specific context and in an environment that is relatively fun for the participants. The data collected for this research were analysed using document analysis and semi-structured interviews. Participants wrote a single paragraph daily and feedbacks were given by both teachers and other participants. These feedbacks were used to refine the work. After the implementation of InstaWrite, results of the study showed an increase in the number of correct sentences written. The sentences constructed post-InstaWrite adhered to the Subject-Verb Agreement (SVA) structure. The study showed that the use of Instawrite could be a suitable teaching tool to strengthen pupils writing of paragraphs to form an essay. This beneficial use of technology would encourage more pupils to practice writing in English.

Focus Group Interview as a Means to Determine School Effectiveness Indicators

The growth of interest in school effectiveness has been striking and is gaining momentum. Similarly in Malaysia, school effectiveness has become a dominant theme in contemporary educational reform and development. Thus, the growing concern about educational reform has resulted in a wide variety of school effectiveness interventions, initiatives and strategies. Although school effectiveness has become the central focus in most schools, there is still a strong need to determine the constructs or dimensions that are suitable to measure school effectiveness in Malaysian secondary schools. In this study, a focus group interview consisting of eight selected excellent and senior school principals were conducted. Thefindings from the focus group interview indicated 5 indicators for school effectiveness which comprised academic performance, school programme, organizational effectiveness, learning environment and school achievement. The findings also indicated 15sub-indicators for school effectiveness consisting of curriculum, public exam, student assessment, academic programme, co-curriculum programme, student development, resource management, technology advancement, data and information management, teaching and learning, community relation, staff professional development,, award and recognition, innovation and niche area.

Características dos concursos para contratação de cirurgiões-dentistas na Estratégia Saúde da Família

O objetivo do presente estudo foi avaliar as características dos concursos públicos para contratação de cirurgiões-dentistas para a Estratégia Saúde da Família em municípios Brasileiros. Foi realizada análise documental de editais de concursos públicos ocorridos entre 2006 e 2014 no Brasil, com base nos seguintes critérios: macrorregião, conteúdo programático, salário, número de vagas e regime de contratação. De um total 765 editais de concursos, 42% eram para a região Sudeste, 24% Nordeste, 22% Sul, 7% Centro-Oeste e 5% Norte. A média de vagas ofertadas foi de 4,2 e de salário foi de R$ 2.458,01. Os conteúdos foram distribuídos em conhecimento específico (81%), língua portuguesa (71%), conhecimentos gerais (30%), saúde coletiva (14%) e outros (33%). Com relação às formas de contratação, 21% estavam relacionadas a regime de trabalho estatutário, 16% celetista, 4% processo seletivo de caráter temporário, 1% contrato temporário na ausência de processo seletivo público e 57% não especificaram. Os concursos públicos no período avaliado mostraram editais imprecisos, com ausência de informações importantes para a decisão segura em participar do processo seletivo. A maioria dos concursos foi realizada na região Sudeste, estado de Minas Gerais, com a exigência de conhecimentos específicos da área de atuação e língua portuguesa. Conteúdos de Saúde Coletiva e titulação foram exigidos apenas pela minoria. Faz-se necessário o direcionamento, principalmente em relação aos conhecimentos exigidos nas provas, para que seja contemplado o profissional com perfil e conhecimentos adequados para o trabalho na Estratégia de Saúde da Família.

Health work: portrait of community workers in the Northeast region of Brazil.

The aim of this study was to characterize the profile of community health workers in northeastern Brazil and aspects related to the management of their work. This is a cross-sectional study, which included 535 community agents who were distributed in 107 primary health units in northeastern Brazil. The data were extracted from eight blocks of questions related to the community agents' perceptions about social-demographic, economic and political factors; their contracts and remuneration; their evaluation as workers; their working conditions and their training. The results indicate that the majority of community agents in the northeast region were hired by direct administration. The main form of hiring community agents was by public exam, followed by public selection. Direct administration is the main form of hiring; however, new modalities, such as the public and private law foundations, social organizations, and inter-municipal consortiums are alternatives that have been adopted by managers which can produce a number of weaknesses due to flexible labor relations.

Research on Establishing System of Integrity for National and State Examination

It aims to analyze the credit crisis of the national examinations. Nowadays, the main reason for anomie of national examinations is the alienation of the main purpose of the examination, lack of severe punishment and execution as well as the lack of fair examination system. To avoid anomie in examinations, so that it further serves to the best of sustainable development, there appears a need for setting up reasonable exam purpose, cultivating integrity self-discipline, accelerating the development and implementation of basic law of examination; overall planning, the establishment of system of integrity for examinations and so on. Examination is not the only way for the country to select and train talents, improve the quality of the citizens, yet it is closely related to citizens' rights to obtain education, grow, succeed etc. Examination is one of the methods widely used to measure educational attainment and its efficient operation built on sustainable honesty. In recent years, much attention has been paid to the state examinations including the entrance examination for college and postgraduate study, as well as social public exams like national civil servant and title level exams in China. It is often said that exam takers break the exam rules and cheat in the examinations. It is now indisputable that the state examination is in crisis in terms of honesty and faith put by people on it. In such circumstances, building fair examination system and strengthening controls over the examination to maintain integrity is worth of great attention.

Hong Kong's Postcolonial Education Reform

The Hong Kong education system is at a crucial point in its trajectory, and changes to public education also reflect broader social, economic and political changes within Hong Kong and globally. Since the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from British control to China, Hong Kong has struggled to develop its own identity under the One Country, Two Systems premise. One of the compulsory courses in the Hong Kong curriculum known as liberal studies, introduced in 2009, provided a useful departure point for exploring many social tensions occurring in Hong Kong. Exploring education reform through liberal studies explains how these social tensions manifest within education, and how these educational tensions manifest within the broader society. Contemporary trends in Hong Kong's education were examined, including the public exams, the proliferation of shadow education and the expansion of self-financed tertiary education options for Hong Kong students. Tensions in Hong Kong are further explained through the notions of post-colonialism. The liberal studies debate mirror aspects of the broader economic, political, and social tensions as they relate to Hong Kong youth, and Hong Kong society at-large, and this article endeavors to explore these tensions through the lens of liberal studies as it relates to education discourse in Hong Kong. Through a combination of literature review from academic and mainstream sources, the article establishes the groundwork for further empirical work in order to gain a more in-depth understanding of the issues and tensions in Hong Kong.

Placement of department of health management in university admission exam and public personel recruitment: Assessment of 2016

With this study it is aimed to analyze that the quota of health management departmant in university exam, the number of instructor and the quota of central public recruitment of them. In this context 2016 application and preference guide of student selection and placement system and public personnel selection exam is used. There are 55 universities that have undergraduate health management department including 31 public and 24 private universities. Totally 5883 quota is set for students, 4630 of them for public universities and 1253 of them for private universities. It is found that students placed to all of the public universities quota and to most of the private universities quota. When the number of instructor is examined it is obsereved that there are 144 instructor including 22 professors, 30 associate professors and 92 assistant professors in public universities; there are 74 instructor including 21 professors, 13 associate professors and 40 assistant professors in private universities. Besides it is observed that 24.817 personnel were recruited in central recruitment in 2016, but there was not reserved any quota not even one for them who has graduated from health management department. It is suggested that the quota of student admission to university and personnel recruitment to public should be planned considering the necessities of public and private sector according to human resources management principles. When looked at the perspective that professionalisation especially in health sector which is very influential for human life directly is indispensible truth, it is evaluated that employment of health management educated professionals in public more would be benefical for qualified health service.

Preliminary Findings on Online Hate Speech and the Law in India

During the 2013 Muzaffarnagar communal riots, in which over sixty people died and thousands were displaced, social media was reported to have played a significant role in spreading rumors and propaganda. In this context, an incendiary video of two men being beaten to death, described (incorrectly) as a video of Hindus being lynched by a Muslim mob was circulated on the Internet. Similarly, a Muslim man was killed by a mob in Pune following the circulation of morphed images denigrating iconic leader attributed to him. These images were circulated on Facebook and through Internet messaging applications on smartphones.State governments in India have taken to disabling Internet services, especially mobile data services, in response to threats of violence. For example, in June 2016, the Indian government shut down the Internet in the state of Haryana, fearing potential violence arising from ongoing protests. Internet shutdowns are becoming commonplace – there have been thirty-nine incidents since January 2015. The alleged reasons for the shutdowns ranged from apprehensions about provocative social media rumors related to the recovery of cow carcasses to the prevention of cheating during a public government-administered exam. Many of these justifications offered for Internet shutdowns fall within the umbrella of online hate speech or incitement to violence.Hate speech is a serious concern in the Republic of India. However, Indian law does not use the phrase “hate speech.” Different forms of what may arguably be called hate speech are covered in different ways by various Indian statutes.This briefing paper outlines preliminary issues that we noted while conducting a detailed study of hate speech laws in India. It teases out some of the major concerns that arise in the context of both online and offline hate speech, especially speech as potential incitement to violence. Our upcoming detailed report covers a wider range of what might be called hate speech, and extends to speech that may not act as potential incitement to violence. The report offers a more nuanced and detailed picture of the current state of affairs, as well as the conclusions drawn and recommendations made.

Positive Action Measures and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Italian law (Law No. 68/1999 of 12 March 1999) requires that employers with a workforce of more than fifty employees ensure that at least 7 percent of their workforce are people who are registered as disabled. In addition, in order to fulfil this quota, the law requires that public employers reserve up to half of positions to be filled through competitive exams for registered persons with disabilities. The complainant, A.F., was a registered person with a disability who sat a competitive exam at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. Only one position was to be filled. A.F. obtained the third highest mark in the exam and was not appointed. He had previously been unsuccessful in such exams. He argued that Law No. 68/1999 had been breached, the 50 percent quota for public exams had not been respected, and that he should be awarded the relevant position. He was unsuccessful before domestic courts and submitted a communication to the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD Committee) arguing that Italy had breached Article 27 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) on employment. The CRPD Committee found the communication to be admissible because the final court decision, which had examined the claim of discrimination on its merits, was rendered after Italy had ratified the Optional Protocol and A.F. had exhausted all national remedies. It also found that A.F. had not submitted evidence of a breach of his individual rights under the CRPD and that Article 27 had not been violated.