Environmental characteristics, nutritional and executive functions in children of 6 to 7 years

This study aimed to analyze the socio-environmental characteristics, executive and nutritional functions in children aged 6 to 7 years, from public schools in Alagoas, Brazil. A quantitative, cross-sectional and descriptive study was performed involving 64 children of the mentioned age group, from public schools located in Alagoas: Maceió, on the coast; Major Isidoro, in the hinterland and Palmeira dos Índios, in the country. Such analyzes were made through the application of neuropsychological tests and anthropometric assessment with children and food and socio-environmental surveys with their parents. As for the type of housing, 100% were made of masonry, with a bathroom present in 98.4%. All children reported with the habit of bathing in the river / lagoon, presented some pathology. There was no significant difference between cities in terms of the sociodemographic characteristics evaluated, with the same result occurring with the factors associated with the occurrence of diseases in children. The subtests of WISC-IV, were below the average in all municipalities, and the TAC and SCC were classified within the average. However, even though the ranking were divided between below average and average, it is possible to identify from the subtests of WISC-IV, that the general IQ showed a cognitive level below the average. There was also no significant difference in the anthropometric assessment (weight, height, BMI and IMCI) between the evaluated students. The average weight was 23.3 kg to 25 kg, the height between 1.23 m to 1.24 m, the BMI between 16.4 to 17; the IMCI from 2.8 to 3.0. Children were classified within the average. Regarding micronutrients (Ca, Fe, K, Mg and Na, and vitamins A, C, D, B1, B9 and B12) and calories, there was also no significant difference between the cities evaluated. The same occurred with macronutrients (proteins, carbohydrates and lipids). This study showed that in general there was no difference between the students of the three municipalities. Probably, even though they are all public schools and from different cities, children have similar social conditions.

Perbandingan Penerbitan dan Harga Buku Mengikut Genre di Malaysia dan Jepun Menggunakan Data Akses Terbuka dan Simulasi Monte Carlo

[The article is written in Bahasa Malaysia] Reading habits are often associated with an increased cognitive level. However, book genre can also affect the cognitive level. This is because different book genres can be attributed to different type of knowledge and tendency towards a specific book genre can be viewed as a preference toward a specific type of knowledge. Research on Malaysian’s interest and the tendency towards book genre and type of knowledge can be investigated using the publication data of each book genre and its prices. The objective of this research is to analyze and compare the book publications and the average price of each book’s genre in Malaysia with Japan. Comparison was done based on book categorization genre strategy to 12 book genre. Based on Monte Carlo simulation method data, Malaysians are attracted to book genre on Language, literature, and science. While the Japanese are more interested in the book genre of social sciences and hobbies/art. The similarity between Malaysian and Japanese are that both societies also favors book genre of literature. However, it is possible that the themes of literary genre in Japan and Malaysia are very different. The result of this study can be used to identify the differences between Malaysian and Japanese reading habits as well as used for formulating strategies to changed Malaysian reading habits toward the style of Japanese reading habits.

Cognitive Functioning Mediates the Association of Cognitive Reserve with Health-Related Quality of Life

We investigated whether the relations of the cognitive reserve markers education and cognitive level of work to the physical and the mental component of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) were mediated via cognitive functioning in a large sample of 701 older adults (mean age = 70.36 years, SD = 6.87). HRQoL was measured with the 12-item Short-Form Health Survey. To measure cognitive functioning, we used the COGTEL, which is a cognitive test battery assessing prospective memory, verbal short-term memory, verbal long-term memory, working memory, verbal fluency, and inductive reasoning, combined into a composite score. Individuals reported information on their education and their main profession during their working life. Mediation analyses showed that better cognitive functioning mediated the association of higher values in the cognitive reserve markers (longer education and a high cognitive level of work) with higher HRQoL. In conclusion, the present study suggests that the sustainability of cognitive functioning in old age with the help of cognitive reserve is fundamental for the sustainability of quality of life, presumably particularly for the mental HRQoL component.

Pelatihan Pengembangan Instrumen Penilaian Numerasi untuk Peningkatan Kompetensi Guru Matematika SMP

Asesmen Kompetensi Minimum (AKM) or Minimum Competency Assessment has different objectives and formats compared to Ujian Nasional (National Exam), therefore teachers need to upgrade their knowledge of assessment instruments that measure students’ numeracy skills. This training aims to develop teachers' professionalism and competence in developing numeracy assessment instruments. The training was carried out online through a Zoom Meeting with participants of 29 junior high school mathematics teachers in Bogor Regency, West Java. The training was delivered in 2 sessions by 2 mathematics education lecturers from Universitas Negeri Jakarta. The first session with topics of AKM discussed the material domain, cognitive level, and the form of the questions on the AKM questions. The second session was with topics of numeracy skills discussed the benefits and the definition of numeracy skills. At the end of the training, participants were assigned to make a numeracy assessment instrument within 1 week. Participants and presenters join WhatsApp groups as a forum for discussion in the process of doing assignments. This training activity produces an output in the form of a numeracy assessment instrument that is developed based on the AKM question format. Participants are motivated and have ideas to develop numeracy assessment instruments.

MEASURING EFFECTIVENESS OF ARABIC INSTRUCTIONAL MEDIA IN ARABIC SENIOR HIGH SCHOOLS IN BRUNEI DARUSSALAM: A STUDY AT GRADE ELEVEN / اكتشاف فعالية الوسائل التعليمية لتعليم اللغة العربية في المداس الثانوية العربية في بروناي دار السلام: الصف الحادي عشر نموذجا

This study aims to measure the effectiveness of Arabic instructional media used in eleventh grade of Arabic senior high schools in Brunei Darussalam. This study was quantitative and evaluative study. The researchers distributed questionnaires to all Arabic teachers who teach grade eleven students in the schools. The data then were analyzed quantitatively and having evaluative analysis. Based on data analysis, it was found that the instructional media used to teach Arabic language in grade eleven has advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are the availability of modern and various media (87.5%), most of the media are appropriate for the students’ age and cognitive level (87.5%), all media are interesting and helpful for Arabic language skills (100%), and most of the teachers often use the media (87.5%). While, the weaknesses are there is still few media that is not as modern as it is expected (12.5%) such as language laboratory, a few media is not appropriate for the students (12.5%), and there are still some teachers who do not use the media frequently (12.5%).

A Literature Review on Automatic Generation of Examinations

The examination is a key activity in determining what the learner has gained from the study. Institutions of higher learning (IHL) perform this activity through various assessment methods (test/examination, practical, etc.). The world today is focused on automation of exam generation which is ongoing with dire need during this period of the COVID-19 pandemic when education is greatly affected, leading to embracing online learning and examination. A text/exam comprises questions and answers that focus on evaluation to determine the student’s conversant level in the area of study. Each question has a cognitive level as described by (Armstrong, 2016) in the revised Bloom’s taxonomy. Questions chosen have cognitive levels based on the level of study and standardization of the exam. There is, therefore, a need to consider the question’s cognitive level along with other factors when generating an examination by incorporating deep learning algorithms.

Psychological Factors and Countermeasures of Child Abuse caused by Teachers

Child abuse by teachers has had a devastating impact on society, families, and pupils, and has become a major topic of discussion. Physical health issues or impairments induced by severe abuse might leave victims feeling insecure and distrustful. This paper reviews past research, identifies the many types of teacher abuse, and examines the subjective and objective reasons for child abuse on a personality and cognitive level, as well as the resulting reactions to these causes.

A Study on Teacher-Child Interaction from the Perspective of Children

Children’s perspective is based on their own cognitive level in understanding objective things. The study of children’s perspective is a bottom-up research process under the premise of having a full respect for a child’s view. With the change of views about children in recent years, “children’s perspective” has become a new research direction. At the same time, teacher-child interaction, as an important means of evaluating the quality of kindergarten education, requires a bottom-up perspective from children. This study hopes to understand children’s emotional experience in the process of teacher-child interaction as well as their understanding and evaluation of their own experience by exploring their perspectives on the interaction, so as to better improve the quality of teacher-child interaction in kindergarten.

A personalized programming exercise recommendation algorithm based on knowledge structure tree

Personalized exercise recommendation is an important research project in the field of online learning, which can explore students’ strengths and weaknesses and tailor exercises for them. However, programming exercises differs from other disciplines or types of exercises due to the comprehensive of the exercises and the specificity of program debugging. In order to assist students in learning programming, this paper proposes a programming exercise recommendation algorithm based on knowledge structure tree (KSTER). Firstly, the algorithm provides a calculation method for quantifying students’ cognitive level to obtain their knowledge needs through individual learning-related data. Secondly, a knowledge structure tree is constructed based on the association relationship of knowledge points, and a learning objective prediction method is proposed by combining the knowledge needs and the knowledge structure tree to represent and update the learning objective. Finally, KSTER imports a matching operator that calculates cognitive level and exercise difficulty based on learning objectives, and makes top-η recommendation for exercises. Experiments show that the proposed algorithm significantly outperforms the other algorithms in both precision and recall. The comparison experiments with real-world data demonstrate that KSTER effectively improves students’ learning efficiency.

Double-Sided Transformations of Culture-Bound Constituents in William Saroyan’s Cross-Cultural Domain

The article focuses on the transformations, which occur in Russian and Armenian translations of culture-bound constituents in W. Saroyan’s fiction with special reference to the analysis of their pragmatic value and both cross-cultural and cross-language identification. The aim of the analysis is to reveal the so-called Saroyanesque identity and the translation perspectives of his specific manner of reproducing the actual reality, his personal vision of the world he lived in and created in, the world which combined the environment, circumstances, conditions, characters, cultures, ethnicity of two different communities – his native Armenian and no less native America. The so-called double-sided transformations of culture-bound constituents occur in W. Saroyan’s fiction at basically two levels: the cognitive level of ethnic and mental indicators transformations and the linguistic level of culture-bound elements translation (words, phrases, exclamations etc.). To keep Saroyanesque identity the translators should primarily transform the ideas, the concepts, the ethnic mentality of the characters, then the language media should undergo certain pragmatic modification to be correctly interpreted by the target audience.