Assessment Literacy and Assessment Practices of Teachers of English in a South-Asian Context: Issues and Possible Washback

Author(s):  
Radhika De Silva
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexei Kochetov ◽  
Paul Arsenault

AbstractKalasha (Northwestern Indo-Aryan, spoken in Pakistan) exhibits a complex set of ten affricate phonemes, which is exceedingly rare among the world’s languages and not representative of the broader South Asian context. This paper presents results of an acoustic analysis of place contrasts (dental, retroflex, and alveolopalatal) in affricates of four laryngeal specifications (voiceless unaspirated, voiceless aspirated, non-breathy voiced, and breathy voiced). These consonants were produced by four male speakers of Kalasha in a variety of phonetic contexts, resulting in a sample of close to 700 affricate tokens. A series of acoustic analyses of the data revealed that place contrasts in Kalasha affricates are distinguished robustly by both burst/frication spectra and formant transitions, but not by duration, which correlates more with laryngeal features. Place distinctions are somewhat diminished for voiced affricates but are largely unaffected by aspiration and syllable position. Most of these results are consistent with what is known about comparable (yet laryngeally simpler) place contrasts in other languages outside of South Asia. However, some of them are unique and may reflect the typological uniqueness and complexity of Kalasha’s affricate system.


2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 231-241
Author(s):  
Helan Ramya Gamage ◽  
Ananda Wickramasinghe

Risk taking is fundamental to entrepreneurial activities and a central theme of the entrepreneurship literature. However, research on the risk taking propensity of entrepreneurs has met with virtually no empirical evidence on how socio-cultural factors influence on taking entrepreneurial risk in the context of South Asia where entrepreneurs consistently face challenges of high uncertainty due to socio-cultural and politico-economic complexity and instability. Purpose of this paper is to address this paradox by examining entrepreneurial risk through the lenses of socio-cultural, politico-economic and decision making. Given the self-evident that nature of complexity, irrationality and uncertainty in this context, a sophisticated exploration of entrepreneurial social reality of risk taking and management requires the fundamental philosophy of subjectivism and therefore this study adopts qualitative inductive case study methods in a sample of Sri Lankan entrepreneurs. The study found that entrepreneurs do indeed use their social and cultural understanding to a great extent in their decision making.


Edukacja ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2020 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-20
Author(s):  
Bibek Dahal ◽  

Research ethics is concerned with ethical issues that can arise while conducting research. Social science research entails a combination of three equal entities: process, context and human agency. In each study, these entities demand rich interaction with each other. Generally, research ethics questions the interrelation between the research context and the human involvement established within that context. The research context and interaction between researcher and research participants lead to variations in the construction of knowledge, while research ethics plays a major role throughout all undertakings. In this narrative review paper, I have critically reflected my arguments on behalf of research ethics as a context-specific issue. I argued that the one-size-fits-all approach of research ethics is not viable by presenting ethical practices from the South Asian perspective. The paper is organized in three specific sections – ethical theories, research ethics and its contextual practices. Research ethics is very much a private affair and directly linked to the personal outlook of the researcher towards others. The ethical issue in research is not generic, but specific to the research context, i.e. the context of the research determines what form of behaviour is ethical and what is not. I explore the idea that the South Asian context may have its own system to conduct research ethically, as in euro-western and indigenous systems.


Author(s):  
Jamal J. Elias

This chapter focuses on the visual representation of children in the religious poster arts of Pakistan. As in the previous chapter, it locates the representation of childhood within the history of religion and education in the society. The chapter provides a brief history of poster arts in Pakistan, contextualizing the importance of chromolithography in a broader South Asian context. It continues the analysis of cuteness undertaken in the previous chapter, locating it within a broad framework of beauty, which it then demonstrates is related to virtue and goodness in Islamic thought. Focusing on the differences between the ways in which girls and boys are represented, the chapter argues for important differences in the way the gender of children is conceptualized in Islamic societies, introducing a category called girl-women as an indeterminate female age category that lies between the undisputed girlhood of the child and adult womanhood, which is actualized through marriage and motherhood.


2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 306-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ridhi Arora ◽  
Santosh Rangnekar

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of personality factors in influencing mentoring relationships in the South-Asian context. Design/methodology/approach The sample included 363 subjects from public and private sector organizations in North India. Findings Results revealed that in the Indian context, conscientiousness acts as significant predictor of perceived psychosocial mentoring, agreeableness acts as significant predictor of perceived career mentoring support, and emotional stability acts as significant predictor of both categories of mentoring relationships. Further, managers employed in public sector organizations were found to be high on all the Big Five personality factors and mentoring functions in contrast to managers from private sector organizations. Research limitations/implications Overall, the results suggest that mentoring relationships should operate in organizations with a firm understanding of employees’ personality traits. Implications and future research directions were also discussed. Further, suggestions have also been given for incorporating various interventions in order to handle employees with different personality attributes such as counseling for helping emotionally unstable employees manage their emotions and stress. Originality/value To the knowledge, this is the first study that seeks to examine impact of personality factors on mentoring relationships in the South-Asian context.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-223
Author(s):  
Fathima Nizaruddin

The article analyzes the role of the documentary form in building pronuclear narratives around the Indian nuclear project. It situates the nuclear films made by two state institutions, Films Division of India (Films Division) and Vigyan Prasar, as part of a network of expert statements, documentary assertions, and state violence that bring into being a pronuclear reality. Through the insights gained from my practice-based enquiry, which led to the production and circulation of a film titled Nuclear Hallucinations, I argue that the certainty of the pronouncements of such documentaries can be unsettled by approaching them as a tamasha. I rely on the multiple connotations of the word tamasha in the South Asian context and its ability to turn solemn assertions into a matter of entertainment or a joke. This vantage point of tamasha vis-à-vis the Indian nuclear project builds upon the strategies of antinuclear documentaries that resist the epistemological violence of pronuclear assertions. In this article, I explore the role of comic modes and irony in forming sites of tamasha to create trouble within the narratives that position nonviolent antinuclear protestors as “antinational” elements. The article also expands on how the point of view of tamasha can engender new solidarities, which can resist the violence of the Indian nuclear project by forming new configurations of possibilities.


Author(s):  
Andrea Major

Various forms of labor obligation, coercion, and oppression existed in colonial India, but the supposed dichotomy between “free” and “unfree” labor was rarely absolute. European slave-trafficking, internal trades in women and children, domestic slavery, caste-based obligations for agricultural and other labor, and capitalist systems such as indenture represented distinct but overlapping forms of “unfree” labor in the South Asian context. Enslaved Indians were exported to various European colonial possessions in the 17th and 18th century or provided domestic services within the homes of both the European and Indian elites. Meanwhile, various preexisting local labor relationships such as begar, caste-based obligation, and debt bondage involved elements of coercion, control, and ownership that mirrored some of the characteristics of slavery. These underwent significant changes in the colonial period, as the colonial state both tapped into and sought to reshape the Indian labor market to suit the needs of the imperial capitalist economy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 467-487
Author(s):  
SOHEB NIAZI

AbstractWhile Islamic scriptures like the Quran and Hadith are often quoted to negate the existence of social stratification among Muslims, authors of genealogical texts rely on the very same scriptures to foreground and legitimise discussions on descent and lineage. In the South Asian context, several conceptions of hierarchy as practised by Muslims in north India evolved over the course of colonial rule and were deployed interchangeably by Sayyids. These were based on notions of race, ethnicity, respectability and nobility, and occupational distinctions as well as narratives that referred to the history of early Islam. This article contributes to the study of social stratification among South Asian Muslims by exploring the evolution of Urdu tarikh (historical texts) produced by Sayyid men in the qasbah of Amroha in the Rohilkhand region of the United Provinces during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Sayyid authors narrated the past through the medium of nasab (genealogy). While their texts place emphasis on lineage and descent to legitimise a superior social status for Sayyids, they also shed light on the changing social and material context of the local qasbah politics with the discourse on genealogy evolving into a form that engaged with social contestations.


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