Towards improving content and instruction of the ‘TESOL/TEFL for Special Needs’ course: an action research study     

Mahmoud M. S. Abdallah 《Educational Action Research》2017,25(3):420-437

Action research (AR) – as a participatory, problem-oriented methodology – has been employed recently in Egypt to resolve complicated classroom and learning problems, and provide context-based solutions. Simultaneously, new ‘special education’ courses have been included recently in the university bylaws of Egyptian colleges of education. This imposes challenges, especially on course design and content selection. The present study therefore aimed at negotiating and improving the structure and delivery of a new special education language-learning course entitled ‘TESOL/TEFL for Special Needs’ taught to English majors (English as a foreign language [EFL] student-teachers) at Assiut University College of Education, and reaching a final framework. Therefore, an AR methodology of two cycles was employed with two different groups of English majors throughout two successive semesters during the academic year 2012/13: the first group included 106 junior general-section EFL student-teachers (first semester, 2012); and the second group consisted of 51 senior primary-stage EFL student-teachers (second semester, 2013). Data collection tools were used for both formative and summative evaluation purposes, and thus varied both at the initial stage and during iterations. They included questionnaires, online diaries, semi-structured interviews, final feedback reports and follow-up logs. The two AR cycles resulted in a final framework of course structure/content along with some suggestions and guidelines on how to deliver it. Moreover, some implications for teaching EFL to students with special educational needs as well as some conclusions related to using AR in Egypt to resolve many teaching/learning problems were presented.  相似文献   

Tracking policies for a class of dynamic production-inventory systems     

Magdi S. Mahmoud  Umar M. Al-Turki 《Journal of The Franklin Institute》2010,347(9):1689-1703

In this paper, new results are established for generating tracking policies in aggregated production-inventory systems. A dynamic model is developed to characterize the evolution of targeted production, inventory and demand over time and incorporates the inventory, production and demand tracking errors as additional variables. The control variables are managerial decision variables on rate of production and advertisement. The developed model takes the form of linear system with time-varying delay. Tracking policies are then formulated and determined to ensure that the production-inventory tracking model achieves a desirable performance in terms of H_∞-measure. Numerical simulation is performed to illustrate the theoretical developments.  相似文献   

New methods for compression of MP double array by compact management of suffixes     

Tshering C. Dorji  El-sayed Atlam  Susumu Yata  Mahmoud Rokaya  Masao Fuketa  Kazuhiro Morita  Jun-ichi Aoe 《Information processing & management》2010

Minimal Prefix (MP) double array is an efficient data structure for a trie. However, its space efficiency is degraded by the non-compact management of suffixes. This paper presents three methods to compress the MP double array. The first two methods compress the MP double array by accommodating short suffixes inside the leaf nodes, and pruning leaf nodes corresponding to the end marker symbol. These methods achieve size reduction of up to 20%, making insertion and deletion faster at the same time while maintaining the retrieval time of O(1). The third method eliminates empty spaces in the array that holds suffixes, and improves the maximum size reduction further by about 5% at the cost of increased insertion time. Compared to a Ternary Search Tree, the key retrieval of the compressed MP double array is 50% faster and its size is 3–5 times smaller.  相似文献   

Robust H∞ filtering for switched stochastic systems under asynchronous switching     

Zhengrong Xiang  Changhui Qiao  Magdi S. Mahmoud 《Journal of The Franklin Institute》2012,349(3):1213-1230

This paper investigates the problem of robust H_∞ filtering for switched stochastic systems under asynchronous switching. The so-called asynchronous switching means that the switching between the filters and system modes is asynchronous. The aim is to design a filter ensuring robust exponential mean square stability and a prescribed H_∞ performance level for the filtering error systems. Based on the average dwell time approach and piecewise Lyapunov functional technique, sufficient conditions for the existence of the robust H_∞ filter are derived, and the proposed filter can be obtained by solving a set of LMIs(linear matrix inequalities). Finally, a numerical example is given to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.  相似文献   

Scaled consensus design for multiagent systems under DoS attacks and communication-delays     

Bilal J. Karaki  Magdi S. Mahmoud 《Journal of The Franklin Institute》2021,358(7):3901-3918

This paper aims to solve scaled consensus problem for general linear multiagent systems under denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. Firstly, we propose a new scaled disagreement vector and investigate its properties under switching and undirected graphs. Secondly, we establish sufficient conditions in terms of linear matrix inequalities in order to guarantee that the multiagent system achieves scaled consensus under DoS attacks. Contrary to most existing studies where DoS attacks on all the channels are same, in this note, we formulate the problem such that the adversary compromises each agent independently. Moreover, the distributed consensus protocol is investigated for networks with time-varying delay. Finally, two simulation examples are given to demonstrate effectiveness of the proposed design methodologies.  相似文献   

Comparative analysis of students and faculty level of awareness and knowledge of digital citizenship practices in a distance learning environment: case study     

Hawamdeh  Mahmoud  Altınay  Zehra  Altınay  Fahriye  Arnavut  Ahmet  Ozansoy  Kezban  Adamu  Idris 《Education and Information Technologies》2022,27(5):6037-6068

Education and Information Technologies - The COVID-19 pandemic increase the use of distance learning while studies have shown that there is insufficient digital knowledge among students in distance...  相似文献   

Green management practices in higher education: the status of sustainable leadership     

Al-Zawahreh  Abdelghafour  Khasawneh  Samer  Al-Jaradat  Mahmoud 《Tertiary Education and Management》2019,25(1):53-63

Tertiary Education and Management - The present study investigated the level of sustainable leadership among a random sample of 170 faculty members employed by one public university in Jordan. The...  相似文献   

Teachers’ perceptions of the concomitance of emotional behavioural difficulties and learning disabilities in children referred for learning disabilities in Oman     

Mahmoud Mohamed Emam  Ali Mahdi Kazem 《Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties》2013,18(3):302-316

Research has documented overlapping and coexisting characteristics of learning disabilities (LD) and emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD). Such concomitance may impact teacher referrals of children at risk for LD which in turn may influence service delivery. Using the Learning Disabilities Diagnostic Inventory (LDDI) and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), we examined teachers’ ratings of EBD and LD symptoms in 439 students referred for LD in elementary schools in Oman. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) showed that there were no gender differences in LD symptoms, whereas there were significant gender differences in teachers’ ratings of hyperactivity and conduct problems in referred children. There was an association between teachers’ ratings on the LDDI and SDQ dimensions, reflecting children’s concurrent display of LD and EBD symptoms. Implications are discussed within an Omani context in which there is a need to increase teachers’ awareness of the behavioural and emotional profile of children at risk for LD.  相似文献   

Where Arab social science and humanities scholars choose to publish: Falling in the predatory journals trap          下载免费PDF全文

Ahmed Maher Khafaga Shehata  Mohammed Fathy Mahmoud Elgllab 《Learned Publishing》2018,31(3):222-229

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a study of publishing behaviour among a group of Arab scholars in social science and humanities disciplines. The paper also investigated the number of Arab scholars who are publishing in predatory journals and the reasons that drive them to select these journals to share their scholarly findings. The study adopted a mixed methods approach. Eighteen journals that were categorized as predatory journals were scanned to find the number of Arab scholars who published in them. Then, a questionnaire was sent to Egyptian and Saudi scholars as they were found to be the top Arab contributors in these journals. The questionnaire was followed by semi‐structured interviews to gain an in‐depth understanding of the publishing behaviour. The data showed that many Arab scholars prefer publishing in predatory journals as these journals are easier and faster. The results also indicate that there is a need to raise the awareness of the harm that predatory journals can cause to the scholars and how they can avoid these journals. This study was conducted with social science and humanities scholars in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The publishing behaviour may differ in other scholarly disciplines and other Arabic countries.  相似文献   

Scientific Reasoning and Its Relationship with Problem Solving: the Case of Upper Primary Science Teachers     

Mahmoud A. Alshamali  Wajeeh M. Daher 《International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education》2016,14(6):1003-1019

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