Nonlinear Photonics

Suitable for both graduate and senior undergraduate students, this textbook offers a logical progression through the underlying principles and practical applications of nonlinear photonics. Building up from essential physics, general concepts, and fundamental mathematical formulations, it provides a robust introduction to nonlinear optical processes and phenomena, and their practical applications in real-world devices and systems. Over 45 worked problems illustrate key concepts and provide hands-on models for students, and over 160 end-of-chapter exercises supply students with plenty of scope to master the material. Accompanied by a complete solutions manual for instructors, including detailed explanations of each result, and drawing on the author's 35 years of teaching experience, this is the ideal introduction to nonlinear photonics for students in electrical engineering.

Identifying Higher-Order Thinking Skills on Lesson Plan: How Do Teachers Construct the Lesson Plan?

In line with 21st-Century learning, the 2013 Curriculum highlights the development of critical thinking, problem analysis, problem-solving, decision making, and creating something new. Professional teachers need to facilitate students in developing these abilities. This research describes how the teachers plan the higher-order thinking skills (HOTs). This research is qualitative research with a descriptive design. The respondents were four teachers with 0-40 years of teaching experience. The data were collected qualitatively through documentation and interviews. The results showed that HOTs were not clearly expressed in the teacher's lesson plans at teaching experience levels of 0 to 10 years and 10 years to 20 years. Teachers with 20 to 30 years of teaching experience and 30 to 40 years of experience have expressed HOTs explicitly and completely in all parts of the lesson plan. Teachers have an important role in facilitating higher-order thinking skills that can be seen through the lesson plans. The lesson plan must describe the development of higher-order thinking skills holistically. Teachers need to review each lesson plan to be coherent in every part and relevant to 21st-century learning.

COVID-19: Threat or ally in the teaching-learning process in phytopathology?

<p>Preventive confinement against COVID-19 changed the teaching-learning process of the Phytopathology course at the Faculty of Agronomy of the UCR. Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) were integrated into a program called ‘Phytopathology 2020, at the distance but together’. Each student received at her home a box of materials, including culture media and a paper microscope, that allowed her to set up and carry out different phytopathological techniques. The result obtained exceeded expectations and previous results in 16 years of teaching experience. The integration of the family into the educational project was surprising, fostering values of mutual commitment in education and prevention of COVID-19.</p>

Assessment of Virtual Reality as a Didactic Resource in Higher Education

Given that the university teachers with more experience in the use of virtual reality are those corresponding to the areas of Health Sciences and of Engineering and Architecture, this article analyzes the assessment these teachers make about virtual reality as a teaching resource in their respective disciplines. The study uses a questionnaire that assesses the technical aspects and future projection of virtual reality, its drawbacks and the perception of the different dimensions of the participants’ knowledge about virtual reality and its didactic employability. The questionnaire was answered by a sample of 423 university teachers of different genders, ages, academic level and teaching experience, whose teaching activity is developed in various Latin American universities in the area of Health Sciences or in the area of Engineering/Architecture. Their answers have been analyzed descriptively and Spearman’s r statistics and the Multifactor ANOVA test have been used to verify the existence of significant differences in their evaluations for the different variables considered, cross-referencing them with the field of knowledge. Within the main results, gaps by area, years of teaching experience and academic level in the participants’ evaluations have been identified and discussed.

School-Immigrant Family-Community Collaboration Practices: Similarities and Differences

We compared school-immigrant family-community collaboration practices based on the six dimensions of Epstein’s influence model (2001). These three groups of stakeholders (N = 54) participated in this study by answering a questionnaire on their collaboration practices. Kruskall-Wallis analyses revealed a notable difference between the three groups with regard to decision-making practices and at-home learning. A positive correlation was found between the number of years of teaching experience in the school and communication, volunteering, parenting, and decision making, as well as between the child’s grade level and parenting. Results show that although the collaboration practices followed Epstein’s involvement theory, they remained weak, with no significant difference between the three groups in terms of their use. Our findings are discussed in light of recent literature and their practical implications and avenues for future research are proposed to better understand and improve the conditions favoring school-immigrant family-community collaboration.

Assessing Iranian EFL teachers’ educational performance based on gender and years of teaching experience

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the assessment of Iranian English teachers’ performance. Besides, it was aimed to examine and compare the performance of teachers based on their gender differences and teaching experience. To the first aim, the Delphi technique was used to develop a questionnaire and the reliability of the Delphi questionnaire based on Cronbach’s alpha was .982. In the first round, 25 experts including university lecturers and experienced instructors in the field of English teaching were asked to answer open-ended questions regarding important issues in the evaluation of an English teacher. Then, the related themes emerged. Using emerged themes, a questionnaire including 100 questions was designed and measured on a linear scale (1 = not important to 5 = absolutely essential). After calculating the frequency of each item, the results were resent to the panel to rate the questions. In the last phase, three criteria including 1—the mean 4 and more, 2—standard deviation less than 1, 3—less than 10% of the participants do not answer to the item were considered to decide on the final questions and components of the questionnaire. The questionnaire was distributed using Google forms. One hundred and fifty questionnaires were filled correctly and analyzed using SPSS 22. Then, the validity of questionnaire was checked. Overall, it was seen that there was not any significant difference between teachers’ performance based on gender difference and teaching experience. The findings of the present study might have some implications for researchers, instructors, language teachers, school administrators, and the ministry of education.

Assessment of the knowledge, attitude and practice of oral hygiene among primary school teachers in Navi Mumbai

Background: School age is an important stage in an individual’s development. Early education of oral hygiene by teachers can cause lifelong benefits to students since teachers are closely involved in children during their developmental stages. Oral diseases are becoming global issues and should be considered of public health importance. Yet, oral diseases are a neglected issue, rarely seen as a priority in health policy.Methods: This study is a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted in primary school teachers from Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra. Total 400 school teachers, selected by stratified sampling technique, had participated in this study. Participants were given self-structured questionnaires with 16 dichotomous questions.Results: 67.5% of teachers expressed that they have never received any demonstrations/lectures in maintaining oral hygiene while 82.8% never had any professional training regarding oral hygiene. For the question, Have you received training by a professional on oral health care and hygiene? teachers with less than 1 year of teaching experience 68.8% responded negatively, 78.8% with 1-5 years of experience reported with ‘no’ and 85.4% and 89.4% were negative responses from teachers with 6-10 years of teaching experience and 11-35 years of teaching experience respectively, showing significant value of p=0.026.Conclusions: From this study we understood that, some degree of awareness is seen in younger aged primary school teachers, but it is not satisfactory, suggesting that teachers still have to undergo training for the same. It is hoped that this survey will help in implementation of training programs.

Bilingual education teachers’ perceptions of the educational climate and policies in the United States and Spain

Access to high-quality bilingual education is critical and has evolved in many different ways during the last decades. Given recent efforts to enhance bilingual education, it is important to examine the perceptions of the current education workforce who serve students in bilingual education programs. A hundred and sixty-four bilingual education professionals from Spain and the U.S. participated in the research. They completed a questionnaire about the effect of educational climate and policies in their own countries. Findings show that teachers from Spain rate bilingual education higher than teachers from the U.S. There are significant differences in their general perceptions and insights about resources, collaboration, students, parents and community. Being proficient in two languages seems to have a positive effect on two categories: general perceptions and perceptions about parents. Our findings also suggest that the years of teaching experience influence their responses and there is a need for more professional development in both countries.

The Power of Continuing Professional Development on EFL Teachers’ Creativity

Creativity has played a leading role in education that not only attracts many learners but also teachers. According to Ismail, Desa, and Balakrishnan (2018) creativity is one of the main skills that is extremely noticeable in teaching. Moreover, because of the alteration of generation and expansion of knowledge and technology, the instruction requires creative teachers that can use up-to-date and modern techniques. Within this framework, the researcher tried to investigate any significant relationship between Iranian EFL teachers’ Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and their creativity. To comply with the objective, a total of 210 Iranian EFL teachers took part in this study. For gathering the data two questionnaires were administered through Google Form that shared via social media like Telegram and WhatsApp. The results of correlation analyses revealed that there was a positive significant relationship between Iranian EFL teachers’ CPD and their creativity. Accordingly, this study proposed a structural model to examine CPD factors contributing to EFL teachers’ creativity. Due to the outcome of SEM, collaborating is the best predictor of Iranian EFL teachers’ creativity. Moreover, this study provides evidence that there is no significant difference in the level of Iranian EFL teachers’ creativity between male and female teachers and years of teaching experience. Together these results provide important insights into the significant role of CPD on the teachers’ creativity. These findings provide a potential mechanism for teachers, supervisors, and administrators of English language institutes or schools to elevate teachers’ creativity knowledge, and education by applying beneficial practices and activities of CPD.

Usability Evaluation of E-textbooks by EFL Teachers

Electronic textbooks (e-textbooks) provide great convenience to teachers and students in both being activity-oriented and having more than one media in it. Especially during the COVID-19, e-textbooks have become much more important than any other time for the effective teaching of online courses. Therefore, many publishers rearranged e-textbook versions of their printed publications in Turkey. Regarding human-computer interaction, making the usability tests of these e-textbooks will give ideas to e-textbook content developers. Thus, three of these e-textbooks were carefully analysed for this research. They are the products of Kurmay, Speed Up and YDS publishing houses. The study was carried out with seven voluntary English teachers who teach 8th grades, work at the Ministry of Turkish National Education and have at least 3 years of teaching experience. Due to the pandemic, the sessions were held online by using the ‘Zoom Meetings’, which is an online meeting software. The usability was analysed according to effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction principles of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). At the end of the test, it was observed that the usability of Reading Alley and Marathon Plus e-textbooks were high and the usability of Speed Up was very high.