THE ROLE OF GIS IN ADDRESSING ENVIRONMENTAL, SOCIAL AND TOURISTIC CHALLENGES IN MOHAMMEDIA CITY, MOROCCO

During the last years, Morocco’s Environmental, Social and Touristic perspectives has improved significantly, but it remains one of the biggest challenges for Mohammedia city. The purpose of this study is to locate an optimal site for the construction of a new Waste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP) in order to help the environment, to select an appropriate site for the construction of a new School that will benefit the social needs of the city and to create a suitable tour plan of touristic sites for tourism. It was carried out by using Geographic Information System (GIS), Remote Sensing (RS), Global Positioning System (GPS) devices, Digital cameras and Multi- criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA).Throughout the process, the used data for both WWTP and School selection include the remote sensing data of multi spectral satellite imageries and the digital elevation model combined with vector data of land use (LU) layers, and for Tour creation the used data include collected photographs and GPS data from the site. According to MCDA, the results presents an optimal site with an area of 48283,02 m2 for a new WWTP, a suitable area with an area of 3200 m² for a new School and a city tour for tourists with a distance of 27 km.

The Rise in Norovirus-Related Acute Gastroenteritis During the Fight Against the COVID-19 Pandemic in Southern China

Background: There has been a significant decline in the morbidity of almost all infectious diseases during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, while the incidence of norovirus-related acute gastroenteritis declined in Guangzhou, China during the initial period of the pandemic, incidence increased significantly once the new school year began in September 2020.Methods: Norovirus-related acute gastroenteritis clusters and outbreaks were assessed in Guangzhou from 2015 to 2020. Medians and interquartile ranges were compared between groups using the Mann–Whitney U-test, and attack rates were calculated.Results: While 78,579 cases of infectious diarrhea were reported from 2015 to 2019, with an average of 15,716 cases per year, only 12,065 cases of infectious diarrhea were reported in 2020. The numbers of sporadic cases and outbreaks reported from January to August 2020 were lower than the average numbers reported during the same time period each year from 2015 to 2019 but began to increase in September 2020. The number of cases in each reported cluster ranged from 10 to 70 in 2020, with a total of 1,280 cases and an average attack rate of 5.85%. The median number of reported cases, the cumulative number of cases, and the attack rate were higher than the average number reported each year from 2015 to 2019. The intervention time in 2020 was also higher than the average intervention time reported during 2015–2019. The main norovirus genotypes circulating in Guangzhou during 2015–2020 included genogroup 2 type 2 (GII.2) (n = 79, 26.69%), GII.17 (n = 36, 12.16%), GII.3 (n = 27, 9.12%), GII.6 (n = 8, 2.7%), GII.4 Sydney_2012 (n = 7, 2.36%), and GII.4 (n = 6, 2.03%).Conclusions: Our findings illustrate the importance of maintaining epidemiological surveillance for viral gastroenteritis during the COVID-19 pandemic. Local disease prevention and control institutions need to devote sufficient human resources to control norovirus clusters.

Analysis of USAID/Georgia Supported Basic Education Program First Cycle Implementation

The article highlights Akaki Tsereteli State University's involvement and participation in wide school reforms to establish student-centered education in Georgia. School educational reform cannot proceed and succeed without the direct involvement of the universities which carry out teacher preparation programs. Unequivocally, there should be close cooperation and collaboration between these two institutions to reach the desirable and targeted outcomes. The purpose of the article was to present the results of the survey, which was intended to assess the effectiveness of training conducted by the university trainers during the first phase of the new school reform in Georgia which focused on achieving student-centered learning. The selected trainers from the eight partnering universities were supposed to cover 2075 schools throughout Georgia (373 schools in Imereti Region) to train leader teachers and help the institution to develop new instructional methods, more specifically, to develop a school curriculum based on constructivist educational principles and apply it into practice. The survey findings assisted Pedagogical faculty in identifying existing curriculum gaps and discrepancies and taking measures to bridge them by modifying and supplementing them with the necessary content.

COVID-19 Driven Adaptations in the Provision of School Meals in the Baltic Sea Region

The instability, rapid changes, and restrictions generated by the COVID-19 pandemic tested the provision of school meals in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR). School meal services were affected by factors such as full or partial lockdowns, strict hygiene regimes, lay-offs or staff shortages, stressful working environments, supply shortages, and changes to storing, cooking, and serving models. However, the responses to the COVID-19 crisis were highlighted by innovation, new opportunities, and cooperation. This paper reviews several examples of COVID-19 crisis management at school canteens in five BSR countries [Estonia, Finland, Poland, Russia (Saint Petersburg), and Sweden] between March 2020 and March 2021. The paper reveals the significant operational, logistical, and systemic problems that appeared because of the pandemic; the solutions and adaptations that were developed are also identified. The preparatory processes, logistics, and services that were adapted during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a new school meal provision model—a takeaway model; that includes similar features and unique characteristics across the different countries. Overall, the provision of school meals was carried out successfully in the BSR during the pandemic. Responsible, competent, and innovative professionals used their organizational skills, flexibility, and responsiveness to feed school pupils in a highly restricted and rapidly changing environment. It is expected that several of the COVID-19-driven innovations will remain in use following the pandemic.

A expertise em educação de Carleton Washburne na produção de saberes sobre o ensino de aritmética

O objetivo deste texto é analisar, em perspectiva historiográfica, a constituição de saberes sobre o ensino de matemática a partir da emergência da figura do expert no âmbito escolar. Trata-se, em específico, de analisar as ações pedagógicas de Carleton Washburne, importante pedagogo estadunidense da educação progressista. Para tanto, utilizou-se como ferramenta de análise os conceitos de expertise e expert advindos dos estudos desenvolvidos por Hofstetter et al. (2017). Os resultados da análise indicam que ao ser convocado para transformar as escolas públicas de Winnetka em escolas de excelência, Washburne produziu e sistematizou saberes específicos sobre o ensino de aritmética, resultando na reestruturação dos conteúdos matemáticos, em novas práticas, novos materiais didáticos, nova relação aluno-professor-saber, novos saberes pedagógicos, de modo a garantir que o aluno seguisse seu próprio ritmo de desenvolvimento. A esse tempo, não basta mais ao professorado saber os conteúdos aritméticos e os métodos pelos quais ensiná-los, mas o que, como, por que e quando e isso depende da produção de novos saberes escolares sobre o ensino de aritmética na escola primária.Carleton Washburne's pedagogical expertise in the production of knowledge about the teaching of arithmeticThe objective of this text is to analyze, from a historiographic perspective, the constitution of knowledge about the teaching of mathematics from the emergence of the figure of the expert in the school environment. It is specifically about analyzing the pedagogical actions of Carleton Washburne, an important American pedagogue of progressive education. For this purpose, the concepts of expertise and expert arising from the studies developed by Hofstetter et al 2017 were used as an analysis tool. The results of the analysis indicate that when invited to transform Winnetka's public schools into schools of excellence, Washburne produced and systematized specific knowledge about the teaching of arithmetic, resulting in the restructuring of mathematical contents, in new practices, new teaching materials, new student-teacher-knowledge relationship, new pedagogical knowledge, in order to ensure that the student followed his own pace of development. At this time, it is no longer enough for teachers to know the arithmetic contents and the methods by which to teach them, but what, how, why and when, and this depends on the production of new school knowledge about the teaching of arithmetic in primary school.Keywords: Arithmetic made to mesure; Teaching individualization; Expert in education; Winnetka system; Teacher training.

Religion and International Relations Theory: The Case of “New” Historiography of Human Rights

International relations theory (IRT) often ignores or has difficulty accounting for religion. Thus, the choice of “new” historians of human rights to focus on religious actors in the lead-up to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a noteworthy development. One important finding of this stream of scholarship is the crucial role played by Christian personalists in the cultivation of “human rights” discourse in the 1930s and 1940s. However, new school historiography carries assumptions consistent with IRT liberalism that weaken its analysis of religion in the origins of human rights. Most problematic is its dichotomous framework that pits liberal secularism against reactionary religion, which tends to minimize interpretive possibilities. By contrast, IRT constructivism is attuned to the emergence and socialization of norms as different cultures, religious traditions, and value systems interact. Various actors and social networks create, inter-subjectively, pragmatic consensus from positions of fundamental ideological difference. As such, this paper, following a constructivist impulse, uses the case of new school historiography of human rights to better understand the weakness and the promise of IRT in explaining the role of religion in international relations.

Interview with Professor Om Gurung

Professor Om Gurung is a senior anthropologist, an influencing intellectual, and a prominent public leader in Nepal. He served Tribhuvan University as a professor of anthropology for 36 years and headed the Central Department of Sociology/Anthropology for 13 years. Professor Gurung did his M. A. in History from Tribhuvan University in 1975, M. A. in anthropology from the University of Poona in 1980, and Ph. D. in Anthropology from Cornell University of Ithaca, New York in 1996. He is one of the founding members of the Central Department of Sociology/Anthropology at Tribhuvan University of Nepal. He has served as a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Liverpool John Moores University in the UK, Lille University in France, and the University of Sichuan in China. He is a visiting research fellow at the University of Bergen, Norway, and a guest lecturer at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, Oxford University, UK, China Institute of New School University, New York, the University of Mons, Belgium, the University of Heidelberg, Germany and Chinese University in Hong Kong. Professor Gurung was heavily engaged in various social, professional, and political organizations. He has made substantial scholarly and social contributions to the understanding of social and political issues of Nepal. As a promising intellectual leader of ethnic rights and politics of social inclusion in Nepal, he raised socio-political awareness among indigenous peoples of Nepal and mobilized them to assert their ethnic identity and cultural rights. He has a deep commitment to the development of anthropology and Nepali people.

School Choice in Chile

In “School Choice in Chile,” Correa et al. describe the design and implementation of the new school admissions system in Chile. The design, based on the celebrated work of Gale, Shapley, and Roth, involves several challenges to comply with the Chilean legislation. For instance, the system includes different priorities and quotas for different groups of students. Moreover, the system operates nationwide and in all grade levels. As a result of the latter, one of the primary goals was to favor the joint assignment of siblings to the same schools. To accomplish this, the authors propose a heuristic approach that dynamically updates preferences, and breaks ties at the family level to increase the probability that siblings are assigned to the same school. The system, introduced in 2016 and still in use today, serves more than half a million students each year.

THE CONCEPT OF LABOUR BY SOPHIA RUSOVA AND THE WAYS OF IST REALIZATION IN THE SYSTEM ‘PRESCHOOL ESTABLISHMENT – THE SCHOOL OF DOING’

In the context of metamorphoses that the state of Ukraine and the Ukrainian school go through, it is expedient to study and retrospectively analyse pedagogical thought of a specific historical period in order to find answers and form mature solutions to complex issues that arise in modern conditions. Due to certain similarity of historical circumstances, theoretical works and practical realization of ideas of Ukrainian pedagogues from the begin of the XXth century have deep potential as an ideological-inspiring source for contemporaneity. Based on the study of original sources using the comparative theoretical analysis and analytical generalization, the article summarizes the leading ideas of Sophia Rusova on the ways of implementing the concept of labour (activity method of teaching) in the system of preschool institutions and active (labor) school in the 20s of the XXth century. Recommendations for the use of this method are specified, taking into account the age of children and the specifics of the school subjects. Based on the analysis of Sophia Rusova’s works (“New School of Social Education”, “Theory and Practice of Preschool Education”, “Unified Active (Labor) School”, “Extracurricular Education”), the advantages of the labour method, its potential for the formation and development of the child’s personality has been investigated. The connection of Sofia Rusova’s ideas with the classical European pedagogical thought and practical application of such educational concepts in the European countries is traced. Emphasis is placed on the agreement of Sofia Rusova’s ideas on the advantages of the activity method of teaching with the task of reforming the national education system in Ukraine at the beginning of the XXIst century.