Sunday, March 31, 2019

Handwritten Character Recognition Using Bayesian Decision Theory

Handwritten part course credit Using Bayesian last TheoryAbstract calibre perception (CR) spate solve more complex problem in written shargon and make acknowledgement easier. Handwriting section fruition (HCR) has received extensive attention in academic and labor fields. The knowledge remains squirt be both on cables length or offline. Offline handwritten eccentric acknowledgment is the sub fields of optical feature intelligence (OCR). The offline handwritten typeface intelligence confronts be pre off bent grassing, class, feature extraction and credit rating. Our aim is to modify missing genius set of an offline character recognition apply Bayesian ending theory.Key quarrel Character recognition, Optical character recognition, Off-line Handwriting, breakdown, deliver extraction, Bayesian decision theory.IntroductionThe recognition frame erect be either on-line or off-line. On-line bridge player recognition involves the automatic innovation of school text edition as it is written on a special digitized or PDA, where a sensor picks up the pen-tip movements as well as pen-up/pen-down switching. That form of selective nurture is known as digital ink and can be regarded as a dynamic pattern of handwriting. Off-line handwriting recognition involves the automatic conversion of text in an catch into letter codes which argon usable within selective reading processor and text-processing applications. The selective information obtained by this form is regarded as a static pay offation of handwriting.The aim of character recognition is to transmute human readable character to machine readable character. Optical character recognition is a process of translation of human readable character to machine readable character in optic bothy scanned and digitized text. Handwritten character recognition (HCR) has received extensive attention in academic and production fields.Bayesian decision theory is a fundamental statistical memor y access that quantifies the tradeoffs between various decisions using probabilities and costs that accompany such decision.They divided the decision process into the following five moveIdentification of the problem.Obtaining inevitable info.Production of possible solution.Evaluation of such solution.Selection of a outline for performance.They as well include a sixth arcdegree implementation of the decision. In the equaling accession missing data cannot be recognition which is make social occasion ofable in recognition historical data. In our approach we atomic number 18 recognition the missing row using Bayesian classifier. It first classifier the missing words to obtain minimize flaw. It can recover as much flaw as possible.Related WorkThe history of CR can be traced as earlyish as 1900, when the Russian scientist Turing attempted to develop an c ar for the visually handicapped 1. The first character recognizers appe ard in the middle of the forties with the culture of digital computers. The early work on the automatic recognition of characters has been supportd either upon machine-printed text or upon a small scar of well-distinguished handwritten text or symbols. Machine-printed CR formations in this level in general use template twinned in which an come across is compared to a program library of views. For handwritten text, low-level image processing techniques have been used on the binary image to extract feature vectors, which are then cater to statistical classifiers. Successful, but constrained algorithms have been implemented mostly for Latin characters and numerals. However, some studies on Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, Indian, Cyrillic, Greek, and Arabic characters and numerals in both machine-printed and handwritten cases were as well initiated 2.The commercial character recognizers were available in the 1950s, when electronic tablets capturing the x-y coordinate data of pen-tip movement was first introduced. This i nnovation enabled the researchers to work on the on-line handwriting recognition problem. A good source of references for on-line recognition until 1980 can be embed in 3.Studies up until 1980 suffered from the lack of powerful computer hardware and data acquisition devices. With the explosion of information technology, the previously veritable mannerologies found a very fertile environment for rapid yield addition to the statistical methods. The CR research was focused basically on the shape recognition techniques without using any semantic information. This led to an upper limit in the recognition rate, which was not satisfactory in umpteen practical applications. Historical review of CR research and development during this period can be found in 4 and 3 for off-line and on-line cases, reckonively.The solid progress on CR systems is achieved during this period, using the new development tools and methodologies, which are empowered by the continuously growing information technologies.In the early 1990s, image processing and pattern recognition techniques were efficiently combined with cardboard intelligence (AI) methodologies. Researchers developed complex CR algorithms, which receive high-resolution comment data and require extensive number crunching in the implementation phase. Nowadays, in addition to the more powerful computers and more accurate electronic equipments such as electronic scanners, cameras, and electronic tablets, we have efficient, modern use of methodologies such as neural networks (NNs), hidden Markov models (HMMs), fuzzy differentiate reasoning, and natural language processing. The recent systems for the machine-printed off-line 2 5 and limited vocabulary, user-dependent on-line handwritten characters 2 12 are quite tolerable for restricted applications. However, there is still a long way to go in order to r separately the ultimate goal of machine cloak of fluent human reading, especially for unconstrained on-line and of f-line handwriting.Bayesian decision Theory (BDT), single of the statistical techniques for pattern classification, to identify each of the large number of black-and- pureness rectangular pel displays as ane of the 26 capital letter in the English alphabet. The character images were base on 20 antithetical fonts and each letter within 20 fonts was randomly distorted to produce a file of 20,000 unique instances 6. exist constitutionIn this overview, character recognition (CR) is used as an comprehensive term, which covers all types of machine recognition of characters in various application domains. The overview serves as an update for the state-of-the-art in the CR field, emphasizing the methodologies required for the change magnitude needs in newly emerging areas, such as development of electronic libraries, multimedia databases, and systems which require handwriting data entry. The study investigates the attention of the CR research, analyzing the limitations of methodolo gies for the systems, which can be classified based upon two study criteria 1) the data acquisition process (on-line or off-line) and 2) the text type (machine-printed or handwritten). No matter in which class the problem belongs, in general, there are five major dos token1 in the CR problem1) Preprocessing2) naval division3) Feature Extraction4) Recognition5) Post processing3.1. PreprocessingThe raw data, depending on the data acquisition type, is subjected to a number of preliminary processing steps to make it usable in the descriptive formats of character analytic thinking. Preprocessing aims to produce data that are easy for the CR systems to operate accurately.The main tendencyives of preprocessing are1) hinderance decrement2) Normalization of the data3) Compression in the amount of information to be retained.In order to achieve the above objectives, the following techniques are used in the preprocessing stage.Preprocessing naval divisionSplits tidingssFeature Extract ionRecognitionPost processingFigure 1. Character recognition3.1.1 Noise diminutionThe kerfuffle, introduced by the optical scanning device or the writing instrument, causes confounded line segments, bumps and gaps in lines, filled loops, etc. The torturing, including local variations, rounding of corners, dilation, and erosion, is also a problem. Prior to the CR, it is prerequisite to eliminate these imperfections. Hundreds of available disagreement reduction techniques can be categorized in tether major groups 7 8a) Filteringb) morphological Operationsc) Noise Modeling3.1.2 NormalizationNormalization methods aim to transmit the variations of the writing and obtain standardized data. The following are the basic methods for normalization 4 1016.a) skew Normalization and Baseline Extractionb) Slant Normalizationc) surface Normalization3.1.3 CompressionIt is well known that classical image contraction techniques transform the image from the space domain to domains, which are not suited for recognition. Compression for CR requires space domain techniques for preserving the shape information.a) Threshold In order to reduce storage requirements and to increase processing speed, it is often sexually attractive to represent gray- master or color images as binary images by option a threshold lever. Two categories of threshold exist global and local. world- panoptic threshold picks one threshold place for the entire account image which is often based on an estimation of the background level from the zeal histogram of the image. Local (adaptive) threshold use different values for each pixel according to the local area information.b) slip While it provides a horrendous reduction in data size, thinning extracts the shape information of the characters. Thinning can be considered as conversion of off-line handwriting to intimately on-line like data, with spurious branches and artifacts. Two basic approaches for thinning are 1) pixel owlish and 2) apo theosis wise thinning 1. Pixel wise thinning methods locally and iteratively process the image until one pixel wide skeleton remains. They are very sensitive to noise and may strive the shape of the character. On the some other(prenominal) hand, the no pixel wise methods use some global information about the character during the thinning. They produce a real median or centerline of the pattern directly without examining all the individual pixels. In crowd-based thinning method defines the skeleton of character as the cluster centers. Some thinning algorithms identify the singular points of the characters, such as end points, cross points, and loops. These points are the source of problems. In a nonpareil wise thinning, they are handled with global approaches. A vision of pixel wise and nonpareil wise thinning approaches is available in 9.3.2. sectionThe preprocessing stage yields a clean document in the sense that a sufficient amount of shape information, high compression, and low noise on a normalized image is obtained. The next stage is segmenting the document into its subcomponents. Segmentation is an all important(predicate) stage because the extent one can reach in separation of words, lines, or characters directly affects the recognition rate of the script. in that location are two types of naval division external partition, which is the closing off of various writing units, such as paragraphs, sentences, or words, and internal naval division, which is the isolation of letters, especially in cursively written words.1) foreign Segmentation It is the most critical part of the document analysis, which is a necessary step prior to the off-line CR Although document analysis is a relatively different research area with its own methodologies and techniques, segmenting the document image into text and non text regions is an integral part of the OCR software. Therefore, one who works in the CR field should have a general overview for document analy sis techniques. Page layout analysis is accomplished in two stages The first stage is the structural analysis, which is concerned with the segmentation of the image into blocks of document components (paragraph, row, word, etc.), and the second one is the functional analysis, which uses location, size, and various layout convenings to label the functional content of document components (title, abstract, etc.) 12.2) inbred Segmentation Although the methods have developed remarkably in the last cristal and a variety of techniques have emerged, segmentation of cursive script into letters is still an unsolved problem. Character segmentation strategies are divided into three categories 13 is Explicit Segmentation, Implicit Segmentation and Mixed Strategies.3.3. Feature Extraction interpret representation plays one of the most important roles in a recognition system. In the simplest case, gray-level or binary images are fed to a recognizer. However, in most of the recognition systems, in order to avoid extra complexness and to increase the accuracy of the algorithms, a more compact and characteristic representation is required. For this purpose, a sink of features is extracted for each class that helps distinguish it from other classes composition remaining invariant to characteristic differences within the class14. A good survey on feature extraction methods for CR can be found 15.In the following, hundreds of document image representations methods are categorized into three major groups are Global Transformation and Series Expansion, statistical image and Geometrical and Topological Representation .3.4. Recognition TechniquesCR systems extensively use the methodologies of pattern recognition, which assigns an unknown judge into a predefined class. Numerous techniques for CR can be investigated in quartet general approaches of pattern recognition, as suggested in 16 are Template matching, Statistical techniques, and Structural techniques and Neural networks .3.5. Post ProcessingUntil this point, no semantic information is considered during the stages of CR. It is well known that humans read by context up to 60% for careless handwriting. While preprocessing tries to clean the document in a certain sense, it may remove important information, since the context information is not available at this stage. The lack of context information during the segmentation stage may cause even more severe and irreversible phantasms since it yields hollow segmentation boundaries. It is clear that if the semantic information were available to a certain extent, it would contribute a lot to the accuracy of the CR stages. On the other hand, the entire CR problem is for determine the context of the document image. Therefore, economic consumption of the context information in the CR problem creates a white-livered and egg problem. The review of the recent CR research indicates minor improvements when yet shape recognition of the character is considered. T herefore, the incorporation of context and shape information in all the stages of CR systems is necessary for meaningful improvements in recognition rates.The proposed System ArchitectureThe proposed research methodology for off-line cursive handwritten characters is described in this section as shown in Figure 2.4.1 PreprocessingThere exist a whole lot of tasks to complete originally the actual character recognition operation is commenced. These preceding tasks make certain the scanned document is in a suitable form so as to determine the scuttlebutt for the subsequent recognition operation is intact. The process of refining the scanned input image includes several steps that include Binarization, for transforming gray-scale images in to black white images, scraping noises, Skew Correction- performed to align the input with the coordinate system of the scanner and etc., The preprocessing stage comprise three steps(1) Binarization(2) Noise Removal(3) Skew CorrectionScanned Docum ent ImageFeature ExtractionBayesian finish TheoryTraining and RecognitionPre-processingBinarizationNoise RemovalSkew chastisementSegmentationLineWordCharacterRecognition o/pFigure 2. Proposed System Architecture4.1.1 BinarizationExtraction of foreground (ink) from the background (paper) is called as threshold. Typically two peaks comprise the histogram gray-scale values of a document image a high peak analogous to the white background and a smaller peak corresponding to the foreground. Fixing the threshold value is determining the one optimal value between the peaks of gray-scale values 1. Each value of the threshold is tried and the one that maximizes the mensuration is chosen from the two classes regarded as the foreground and back ground points.4.1.2 Noise RemovalThe presence of noise can cost the efficiency of the character recognition system this theme has been dealt extensively in document analysis for typed or machine-printed documents. Noise may be due the poor quality o f the document or that pile up whilst scanning, but whatever is the cause of its presence it should be removed before further Processing. We have used median filtering and Wiener filtering for the removal of the noise from the image.4.1.3 Skew CorrectionAligning the paper document with the co-ordinate system of the scanner is essential and called as skew correction. There exist a myriad of approaches for skew correction covering correlation, projection, profiles, Hough transform and etc.For skew angle detection Cumulative Scalar Products (CSP) of windows of text blocks with the Gabor filters at different orientations are calculated. Alignment of the text line is used as an important feature in estimating the skew angle. We calculate CSP for all possible 50X50 windows on the scanned document image and the median of all the angles obtained gives the skew angle.4.2 SegmentationSegmentation is a process of distinguishing lines, words, and even characters of a hand written or machine-pr inted document, a crucial step as it extracts the meaningful regions for analysis. There exist many sophisticated approaches for segmenting the region of interest. Straight-forward, may be the task of segmenting the lines of text in to words and characters for a machine printed documents in contrast to that of handwritten document, which is bland difficult. Examining the horizontal histogram profile at a smaller run away of skew angles can accomplish it. The details of line, word and character segmentation are discussed as follows.4.2.1 Line SegmentationObviously the ascenders and descanters frequently meet up and down of the adjacent lines, while the lines of text might itself dash up and down. Each word of the line resides on the conceptional line that people use to assume while writing and a method has been formulated based on this notion shown fig.3.Figure 3. Line SegmentationThe local minima points are calibrated from each Component to approximate this imaginary baseline. To calculate and categorize the minima of all components and to recognize different handwritten lines clustering techniques are deployed.4.2.2 Word and Character SegmentationThe process of word segmentation succeeds the line separation task. Most of the word segmentation issues usually concentrate on discerning the gaps between the characters to distinguish the words from one another other. This process of discriminating words emerged from the notion that the spaces between words are usually larger than the spaces between the characters in fig 4.Figure 4. Word SegmentationThere are not many approaches to word segmentation issues dealt in the literature. In spite of all these perceived conceptions, exemptions are quiet common due to flourishes in writing styles with leading and trailing ligatures. ersatz methods not depending on the one-dimensional distance between components, incorporates cues that humans use. punctilious examination of the variation of spacing between the adjacent characters as a function of the corresponding characters themselves helps reveal the writing style of the author, in term of spacing. The segmentation scheme comprises the notion of expecting greater spaces between characters with leading and trailing ligatures. Recognizing the words themselves in textual lines can itself help lead to isolation of words. Segmentation of words in to its constituent characters is touted by most recognition methods. Features like ligatures and concavity are used for determining the segmentation points.4.3 Feature ExtractionThe size inevitably limited in practice, it becomes essential to operation optimal usage of the information stored in the available database for feature extraction. thank to the sequence of straight lines, instead of a passel of pixels, it is attractive to represent character images in handwritten character recognition. Whilst holding discriminated information to persist the classifier, considerable reduction on the amount of da ta is achieved through vector representation that stores only two pairs of ordinates replacing information of several pixels. Vectorization process is performed only on basis of bi-dimensional image of a character in off-line character recognition, as the dynamic level of writing is not available. Reducing the thickness of drawing to a single pixel requires thinning of character images first. Character before and after Thinning After streamlining the character to its skeleton, entrusting on an orientated search process of pixels and on a criterion of quality of representation goes on the vectorization process. The oriented search process principally works by searching for new pixels, initially in the selfsame(prenominal) committee and on the current line segment subsequently. The search direction volition deviate progressively from the present one when no pixels are traced. The dynamic level of writing is retrieved of course with moderate level of accuracy, and that is object of oriented search. Starting the scanning process from top to bottom and from left field to right, the starting point of the first line segment, the first pixel is identified. consort to the oriented search principle, specified is the next pixel that is likely to be incorporated in the segment. Horizontal is the default direction of the segment considered for oriented search. Either if the distortion of representation exceeds a critical threshold or if the given number of pixels has been associated with the segment, the conclusion of line segment occurs. Computing the second-rate distance between the line segment and the pixels associated with it go away yield the distortion of representation. The sequence of straight lines being represented through ordinates of its two extremities character image representation is streamlined finally. All the ordinates are regularized in accord to the initial width and height of character image to resolve scale Variance.4.4 Bayesian Decision Theo riesThe Bayesian decision theory is a system that minimizes the classification error. This theory plays a role of a prior. This is when there is antecedency information about something that we would like to classify.It is a fundamental statistical approach that quantifies the tradeoffs between various decisions using probabilities and costs that accompany such decisions. First, we will assume that all probabilities are known. and then, we will study the cases where the probabilistic body structure is not completely known. Suppose we know P (wj) and p (xwj) for j = 1, 2n. and measure the lightness of a fish as the value x.Define P (wj x) as the a posteriori chance ( chance of the state of record being wj given the measurement of feature value x).We can use the Bayes formula to alter the prior probability to the posterior probabilityP (wj x) =Where p(x)P (xwj) is called the likelihood and p(x) is called the evidence.Probability of error for this decisionP (w1 x) if we decide w2P (w2x) if we decide w1P (errorx) = Average probability of errorP (error) =P (error) =Bayes decision rule minimizes this error becauseP (errorx) = min P (w1x), P (w2x)Let w1. . . wc be the finite set of c states of nature (classes, categories). Let 1. . . a be the finite set of a possible actions. Let (i wj) be the exhalation incurred for victorious action i when the state of nature is wj. Let x be theD-component vector-valued random variable called the feature vector.P (xwj) is the class-conditional probability density function. P (wj) is the prior probability that nature is in state wj. The posterior probability can be computed asP (wj x) =Where p(x)Suppose we observe x and take action i. If the true state of nature is wj, we incur the loss (i wj).The expected loss with taking action i isR (i x) = which is also called the conditional risk.The general decision rule (x) tells us which action to take for observation x. We want to find the decision rule that minimizes the general r iskR =Bayes decision rule minimizes the overall risk by selecting the action i for which R (ix) is minimum. The resulting minimum overall risk is called the Bayes risk and is the best performance that can be achieved.4.5 SimulationsThis section describes the implementation of the mapping and generation model. It is implemented using GUI (Graphical User Interface) components of the Java programming under Eclipse official document and Database storing data in Microsoft Access.For given Handwritten image character and convert to Binarization, Noise Remove and Segmentation as shown in Figure 5(a). Then after perform Feature Extraction, Recognition using Bayesian decision theory as shown in Figure5(b).Figure 5(a) Binarization, Noise Remove and SegmentationFigure 5(b) Recognition using Bayesian decision theory5. Results and sermonThis database contains 86,272 word instances from an 11,050 word dictionary written down in 13,040 text lines. We used the sets of the benchmark task with the closed vocabulary IAM-OnDB-t13. There the data is divided into four sets one set for training one set for validating the Meta parameters of the training a second validation set which can be used, for example, for optimizing a language model and an individual test set. No writer appears in more than one set. Thus, a writer independent recognition task is considered. The size of the vocabulary is about 11K. In our experiments, we did not include a language model. Thus the second validation set has not been used.Table1. Shows the results of the four individual recognition systems 17. The word recognition rate is simply measured by dividing the number of correct recognized words by the number of words in the transcription.We presented a new Bayesian decision theory for the recognition of handwritten notes written on a whiteboard. We combined two off-line and two online recognition systems. To combine the outturn sequences of the recognizers, we incrementally aligned the word sequences using a standard string matching algorithm. Evaluation of proposed Bayesian decision theory with existing recognition systems with respect to graph is shown in figure 6.Table 1. Results of four individuals recognition systemsSystem orderRecognition rateAccuracy1st OfflineHidden Markov Method66.90%61.40%1st OnlineANN73.40%65.10%2nd OnlineHMM73.80%65.20%2nd OfflineBayesian Decision theory75.20%66.10%Figure 6 Evaluation of Bayesian decision theory with existing recognition systemsThen each output position the word with the most occurrences has been used as the nal result. With the Bayesian decision theory could statistically signicantly increase the accuracy.6. determinationWe conclude that the proposed approach for offline character recognition, which fits the input character image for the stamp down feature and classifier according to the input image quality. In existing system missing characters cant be identified. Our approach using Bayesian Decision Theories which can classify missing data effectively which decrease error in compare to hidden Markova model. Significantly increases in accuracy levels will found in our method for character recognition

Innocent Drinks Was Formed Management Essay

aboveboard Drinks Was Formed way Essay frankDrinks was formed in 1998 by Richard Reed, Adam Balon and Jon Wright BBC newsworthiness subscriber line, 2010. The ecumenical motif of the alliance was to produce 100 fruit, with no water, sugar, severe juices or preservatives (GMID, 2012). It is overly a firm that is synonymous with healthy lifestyles and ecologic ethics. transp bentDrinks is now the leader of the smoothie market (see Appendix 2) in the UK, with the Coca-Cola Company owned a 58% of the unions stake (GMID, 2012). further they exchange their products in supermarkets, local shops, coffee shops and several other outlets. Furtherto a greater extent acquitted drinks atomic number 18 now sold in ten European countries (Fast overcompensate 100, 2012). clean-handed shows a big interest to achieve the five-a-day in coif to mend publics health. Thus, the guild is buy the farming with Government consultants and sustentation specialists in stray to find ship canal to promote fruit consumption (Marketing Week, 2011). They incur shown a big interest close charity and accord to the guilds official website they donate 10% of their wampums to the charity, the majority of which goes to the inexperienced person foundation. Foundation is currently living sixteen partner projects mainly in countries where complimentary drinks supplies its fruit. They condense on agricultural, because company believes that peck should use the natural imaginativenesss in order to modify a better future (Innocent website, 2012 b). The company emphasise that it is croakers show reward for the environment and all the fruits used be 100% eco-friendly produced (Innocent website, 2012 b). Additionally the company retain won many another(prenominal) awards such as World succus Award Foodnews World Juice Award for best new product (Apple Juice) on 2011 and Marketing Week Effectiveness Award for New intersection point of the Year (Kids) on 2010 (Innocent website, 2012 b). In planetary, smoothie market had a growth in sales and the forecasts were positive until 2007. However due the economic crisis the consumers limited their shopping list and the revised forecast are not further for the future according to Mintel report in 2009 (see Appendix 1).Figure 1 Business excellence model (Adapted from University of Cambridge Publications, 2012)http//www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/uploads/Research/CSP/Modified_Large.pngThe business excellence models are frame proceeds that when operated within an organisation can aid to focus ideas and litigate in a much methodical and structured way that should guide employees to ontogenesis their doing.Moreover those frameworks help the company to introduce its HRM practices and also apply them to a greater extent effectively.HRM Practices-Best PracticesAccording to Marchington and Wilkinson (2005), best practice HRM is capable of being used in any organisation, irrespective of product market situation, in dustry, or workforce. There are many activities which human resource is focused on. Examples of HRM practices are recruitment and selection, discipline and development, employee wellbeing, negotiation, health and safety, go bad overment and reward etc. (Foot and Hook, 2011). The two human resource practices that the Innocent focus on are the Training and breeding and salary and Reward.Training and DevelopmentFigure 2 Interaction between various aims of development requirements and the wider corporate planning process (Adapted from Investors in People, 2012 a)There are several methods to achieve the employees progress which are usually extent according to sector and size of the company. The progress within the company can be individually or team base. Additionally the employer has to take into consideration that the development starts form the organisation then hightail its to the department and finally to the individual (Figure 1). Moreover there is a several methods for the company when it is considering the fostering and development of somewhat(prenominal) decision-making and non-decision making violence. The firm can give emphasis to formal training procedures and self-development in order to achieve an improved standard for its employees. The table downstairs illustrates information about the most effective methods for employees to l understand. It is remarkable that the majority of them opt to learn in the work place which Innocent provides during the installing obligatory political platform. Employees prefer to learn during the work period instead of self-study with hangs and work experience.MethodPercentageOn the job41Formal Courses21The experience of work15Coaching/ Mentoring10Informal help from colleagues7Other4E-learning2Self-study in own beat1Table 1 Most Effective way for plurality to learn (Adapted from CIPD, 2007)The Innocent Company engages this HRM practice and supports it in several ways in order to encourage its emplo yees to work to in the utmost level of their cap readiness. Thus, those practices can act as examples of ways of maximising employee performance.Firstly, the introduction of an induction programme is necessary of a smaller company, whereas a grater company cogency be providing series of training programmes (Investors in People, 2008). Innocent provides two calendar week induction programme in addition to other courses. For example the Innocent Drinks Company provides two compulsory training programs for its employees such as the innocent academy and the innocent business academy. However, the company provides optional programmes such as Managing your own development and Building expertise in what you do (Innocent website, 2012 b). needful coursesThe innocent academy This is a two day compulsory programme which helps the employee to familiarise with the work environment. This induction course equips the employee with uncomplicated tools and ideas. The general aim of this course is to help the new member of the company to be more(prenominal) valuable and efficient to the workplace. Moreover this is a great opportunity for the employee to happen people who may work way with on a effortless basis. Furthermore the employee can listen to the older employees and regulate a general idea about working in Innocent (Innocent website, 2012 b).The innocent Business Academy (IBA) This is an additional two day course. The companys plan is to teach sum of m singley business skills to its future employees, for example project management and financial skills. This course occur during the first year at innocent, in case of the employee is at manager level or beyond (Innocent website, 2012 b).Optional CoursesManaging Your Own Development These courses natural spring during the year. They are optional courses designed to give to the employees additional information, guidelines and expedient tools in order to managing their ideas, strategies and strengths in addition to planning the next move (Innocent website, 2012 b).Building expertise in what you do The Company is divided to many small teams. Each team has an aim to do its best to conquer the Innocent to the highest level. For example sales team focuses to the methods of negotiation, and technical team focus on the latest methods for keeping the drinks safe from bacteria and microbes. Moreover some other teams have to study for professional exams in order to improve their skills (Innocent website, 2012 b).Payment and Reward for EmployeesAccording to CIPD (2009), approximately a quarter of employers have a reward strategy in their company. Based on Investors in People (2012 b), there are several ways of rewarding people such as one-off bonus payments for ad hominem performance, commissions, performance related pay, profit related pay, competency based pay, employee share scheme, benefits and non financial approaches.One-off bonus payments for person-to-person performance In addition to salary each employee can get an extra bonus for the transaction of the annually goals.Commission This reward refers more to the sales team. The commission price depends on their achievement of effective sell methods.Performance related pay This method reflects not only outcomes or output but also actual performance in the work (MacKenna and Beech, 2008). Increases level of basic pay based on overall personal performance, rather than as a one-off payment.Profit related pay The employees pay and bonuses may be straight related to the companys profit or the achievement of effective targets. Principally employees would be given a motivation to work harder, and in high profit times for the company they will earn the rewards, though in bad times they would share the companys collapse. However it is practicable for the employer to design a strategy in order to protect the employees when get decreased (MacKenna and Beech, 2008).Competency based pay Rewards can based on employees work, skills and attitude, and not only when the goal has achieved because sometimes is out of their control in several circumstances.Employee share scheme Frequently used to link performance and long service to possession of the company. The method of offering share willpower to employees can include an individual financial value in the victory of the company, as a part owner as well as an employee benefits.Non-financial approaches This is an excellent performance and a motivation to take on more responsibility might make the employer to think a possible packaging or extra responsibility for an employee.Innocent adapts this HRM practice, and support the general idea of Payment and Reward. This practice is designed to motivate employees to work to the best of their ability and consequently is an example of method to maximising employee performance.The company organises meetings every week and the employees have the chance to talk about the topics which arise. Based in Innocent Drink company p eople who contribute more in the company get the highest salary and rewards. Every year the salary of each employee is reviewed and based on the annually high performance is rewarded by increasing ability to receive. Moreover the PRP Bonusis an annually reward (Innocent website, 2012 b). If the yearly goals are successfully reached all the employees has the chance to share in the success. Furthermore all the employees have a private health care as well as life assurance and critical illness cover. Additionally there are tax saving schemesin order to help people to merely money where possible with tax saving system, for example they run the childcare coupon scheme (Innocent website, 2012 b). An once a year perception is offered by the company for an employee, in order to work in one of their foundation projects. Moreover the company organised different clubs such as massage, cake club and Cheese Club. The best employee of the month has to wear hat or tiara and many cups of tea. Fi nally there are free smoothies for every employee, free breakfast and a weekly beer party every Friday (Innocent website, 2012 b). The company wants to create a friendly environment for its employees in order to add-on the productivity and the will for work.3. Employment Law-LegislationAccording to CIPD (2012), employment law refers to the tenabilityed rights of employees and employers. A range of employee rights are protected by employment law. Those regulations are either provided by European Union or by UK government. European Union can make suggestions for employment law and its members can vote against or can enact them. However some common employee rights such as those that encourage improvements related to health and safety must select by all members , including those members who vote against them (Foot and Hook ,2011). Moreover a general role which applied to all EU countries is the regulation which specifies to a maximum of 48 weekly working hours (Foot and Hook, 2011). According to the Equality sham 2010, no employee has to be come apartd about age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, conjugal union and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity (ACAS, 2010). This law became to practice in October 2010 (ACAS, 2010).deuce examples of the Equality symbolize 2010Employers have to design policies to encourage equal opportunities (Foot and Hook, 2011). They also have to train and inform the managers and the employees and ensure that no discrimination is occurring in the work environment (Foot and Hook, 2011). According to the Equality Act 2010, it is illegal for employers to discriminate because of anything of the above (ACAS, 2012). Discrimination is divided in quartet categories. Firstly, directdiscrimination occurs when an employer or employee treat someone less positively because of their actual or perceived sex or because of the sex of someone with whom they relate. Secondly corroboratory dis crimination can happen where the company has a policy, training or actions that apply to all employees, but particularly disadvantage employees of a circumstantial sex (ACAS, 2012). Thirdly, harassment occurs when unnecessary behaviourrelated to sex has the reason or consequence of violating a persons dignityor creating an unapproachable,antagonistic, humiliating, embarrassing or unpleasant environment. Fourthly victimisation is the unreasonable behaviour of an employee who has made or supported a criticism about sex discrimination (ACAS, 2012). As well as sex discrimination, race discrimination occurs under four categories. Race discrimination can occur because of colour, race, fieldity, citizenship, ethnic or national origin are illegal (ACAS, 2012).InnocentInnocent alight with the comparability act and also it respect people from different race. For example Innocent foundation is currently supporting sixteen projects principally in countries whereinnocent drinks get its fruit (Innocent website, 2012 b). They give work to the local people with an gardening focus in order to motivate them to use the natural sources. This move shows respect and equality between employees. Moreover Innocent provides work opportunities for two genders with equal pay, thus the company engaged with the Equality act 2010. No evidence found about discrimination or similar action from any employer at Innocent.Recommendations-Ideas for ImprovementThe company has to think about children nutrition (see Appendix 2), in order to decrease its high point and sugar levels (Nexis, 2012). Innocent can organise conferences about sugar and acid levels and through the Training and Development HRM practice can develop employees knowledge about this key issue for a company which claims that is selling healthy drinks. through and through this action the firm can improve its general consideration and also can show respect to the consumers.An additional recommendation can be the cooperation wit h a health promoting organisation or restaurant instead of McDonalds with which the company had cooperation the last five years (see Appendix 2). The cooperation with McDonalds had a bad reflection to the consumer and the firm can essentially represent its first idea which was the labor of healthy drinks (Marketing Week, 2007 b). In order to succeed this cooperation the company has to encourage its personnel and motivate them through the different HRM practices such as Payment and Reward.5. finishTo conclude Innocent applies the current HRM practices and current legislation effectively. According to their website and the information which are provided by the company employees are working in a friendly environment and they have many options to improve their performance through the HRM practices. Furthermore the company shows respect to the different race and gender, thus they obey the current employment law end especially the Equality Act 2010. Moreover by following the recommenda tions, the company can develop its go through employees ideas and actions as the business excellence model illustrates (Figure 1).6. ReferencesACAS, (2010), The Equality Act 2010, Online. die hard accessed on 22 October 2012 at http//www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=3017ACAS, (2012), Advisory handbook The A-Z of work, Online. rifle accessed on 4 November 2012 at http//www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=857BBC News Business,(2010), Richard Reed, Innocent Drinks, Online. put out accessed on 21 October 2012 at http//www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11551271Britvic, (2012). Soft Drinks Report Data. Online. finis accessed on 30 October 2012 at http//www.britvic.co.uk/reports/Soft-Drinks-Report-Data-2012.indd/index.html/1/zoomedCIPD, (2012), Online. experience accessed on 17 October 2012 at http//www.cipd.co.uk/Fast Track 100, (2012). brook accessed on 30 October 2012 at http//www.fasttrack.co.uk/fasttrack/leagues/dbfastDetails.asp?siteID=1compID=1378yr=2008GMID, (2012), Online. Innocent Drinks Co Ltd in Soft Drinks (United Kingdom), detain accessed on 21 October 2012 at http//www.portal.euromonitor.com.lcproxy.shu.ac.uk/Portal/Pages/Search/SearchResultsList.aspxDesign Council, (2012), Innocent Drinks creative culture and concentrated brand. Online remainder accessed on 22 October 2012 at http//www.designcouncil.org.uk/case-studies/innocent-drinks/Innocent website, (2012 a), Full Sustainability report, Online Last accessed on 22 October 2012 at http//assets.innocentdrinks.co.uk/innocentsustainability.pdfInnocent website, (2012 b), Online, Last accessed on 22 October 2012 at http//www.innocentdrinks.co.ukInvestors in People, (2008), Evaluate training and development, Online, Last accessed on 4 November 2012 at http//www.investorsinpeople.co.uk/Documents/Interactive/Developing%20people/DP21.pdfInvestors in People, (2012 a), How to analyse your teams development needs, Online, Last accessed on 4 November 2012 at http//www.investorsinpeople.co.uk/Documents/In teractive/Developing%20people/How%20to%20Analyse%20Your%20Teams%20Development%20Needs.pdfInvestors in People, (2012 b), reward People, Online, Last accessed on 4 November 2012 at http//www.investorsinpeople.co.uk/Documents/Interactive/Managing%20performance/Rewarding%20People.pdfMarchington M, Wilkinson A.,(2005),Human pick Management, High Commitment HRM and Performance,71-98, CIPD, Online. Last accessed on 1 November 2012 at http//www.cipd.co.uk/NR/rdonlyres/7FE8ADEB-EA96-4836-83DD-2E95FD309B15/0/samplech3.pdfMacKenna E., Beech N. (2008). Human Resource Management. A Concise Analysi. 2nd random variable Prentice HallMarketing Week, (2007 a). McDonalds to trial sale of Innocent smoothies. Online, Last accessed on 31 October 2012 at http//www.marketingweek.co.uk/mcdonalds-to-trial-sale-of-innocent-smoothies/2056106.articleMarketing Week, (2007 b). Innocent guilty of sell-out? , Online, Last accessed on 1 November 2012 at http//web.ebscohost.com.lcproxy.shu.ac.uk/ehost/pdfviewer/p dfviewer?sid=f4ff9d99-0c5d-47f9-8745-45e97cb0c6b5%40sessionmgr112vid=8hid=128Marketing Week, (2011).Innocent lobbies Govt to promote five-a-day. Online, Last accessed on 30 October 2012 at http//www.marketingweek.co.uk/innocent-lobbies-govt-to-promote-five-a-day/3024563.articleMarketing Week, (2012 a). Innocent encourages kids to be gardeners, Online, Last accessed on 30 October 2012 at http//www.marketingweek.co.uk/news/innocent-encourages-kids-to-be-gardeners/4000213.articleMintel,(2009). Market Re-Forecasts Food and Drink 2009 Smoothies., Online, Last accessed on 31 October 2012 at http//academic.mintel.com/sinatra/oxygen_academic/search_results/show/display/id=227765/display/id=447522atom0Mintel, (2012), Online. Last accessed on 17 October 2012 at http//academic.mintel.comMintel, (2011), Smoothies, Executive Summary UK October 2011. Online. Last accessed on 17 October 2012 at http//academic.mintel.com/display/545342/?highlight=trueNexis, (2012 a), High acid levels in juice bad for your kid s teeth, Online. Last accessed on 17 October 2012 at http//www.lexisnexis.comNexis, (2012 b), High level of acid in fruit drinks may harm teeth enamel. Online. Last accessed on 17 October 2012 at http//www.lexisnexis.comReynolds J. (2012), McDonalds ditches Innocent Smoothies, Marketing Mgazine, Online. Last accessed on 1 November 2012 at http//www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/news/1145352/McDonalds-ditches-Innocent-Smoothies/Foot M, and Hook C,(2011), Introducing Human Resource Management, 6th Edition, FT Prentice HallThe food and grocery experts, (2009). Innocent drinks measuring their century footprint from farm to fridge to the recycling bin, Online. Last accessed on 1 November 2012 at http//www.igd.com/index.asp?id=1fid=1sid=5tid=49folid=0cid=924University of Cambridge publications, 2012, Developing Business Excellence Model for Performance amount in Transitional Economies,Online. Last accessed on 5 November 2012 at http//www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/ inquiry/csp/excellence /7. Appendices

Saturday, March 30, 2019

Advantages Of Social Media

Advantages Of kindly MediaConnections. You be friends with wad who charter anformer(a)(prenominal) friends, and so on. By using a friendly networking site, you bath do what you throne and have connected with these peck to form a web of connections that tummy give you leverage if you play your cards right.Breadth of K instantlyledge -connectedness that students tin throne experience by amicable media use. It is now easier than ever to know (or compensate out) something near almost eachthing in the world through connected media. Additionally, students cigaret be connected to a broader base of opinions and world views through instant(prenominal) global connections.Technological Literacy All social media relies on advanced info and communication technologies that seamlessly work to build and support technological literacy..World large-minded Connectivity, No matter if you are searching for that former college roommate, your first grade teacher, or an internationa l friend, there is no easier or faster way to make a connection than via the social network. Although Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace are probably the most salubrious known social networking communities, there are new websites popping up regularly that are dedicated to allowing hoi polloi to connect and to act via the network. These connections terminate help one with a variety of things such as purpose romance, Seeking a new job, Locating assistance, Getting and giving increase and service referrals, Receiving support from the like-minded individuals, Making or receiving advice on move or personal issues. In many another(prenominal) shipway, social communities are the practical(prenominal) equivalent of meeting at the general store or at church socials to exchange news and get updated on friends and families..Commonality of Interest, When you select to spark officipate in a social network community, you earth-closet calve and choose those individuals whose l ikes and dislikes are similar to yours and build your network around those commonalities.You screw meet with your friends anytime you have an Internet connection and whenever you find them online.Real- snip teaching Sharing, Many social networking sites incorporate an instant messaging feature, which means you stooge exchange schooling in real-time via a chat. This is a large(p) feature for teachers to use to facilitate classroom discussions.In addition, the Internet is the ultimate online textbook. Students no ampleer need to take out six library books at a time. Much of what they need to know they can find online. abandon Advertising, Whether you are non-profit organization who needs to get the word out about your upcoming fundraiser or a business owner marketing a new harvest-feast or service, theres no better way to get your message in depend of millions of people 24/7. The best part is it that you can spread the word through social networking profiles for free.Increased news show Cycle Speed, hearty networking has revolutionized the speed of the news steering wheel. Many news organizations now partner with social networking sites like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook in order to both institutionalize in and share discipline. One can get a sense of what is red on in the world just by watching trending topics from many of these sites. This has led to the development of a near instantaneous news cycle as millions of social networking updates rapidly spread news and information.Social media has the bureau to drive traffic to your website, blog, articles, etc.Social media is able to bring people together, especially when promoting global products or cause-related campaigns and ideas since it allows people from the different geographical localization to meet at a single point and express their views.Social media could be the spark you are looking for to attract attention to your site, product or service. It could also be utilise to further build verity and long-term relations with your audience.Social media marketing could always be a fun and creative method of doing business.Facilitates open communication, leading to enhanced information discovery and delivery.Allows everyone to discuss ideas, post news, ask questions and share links.Targets a wide audience, making it a useful and effective recruitment tool.Disadvantages of Social Media amazement -talking not about the momentary distraction of an isolated text message, but rather the way in which social media involvement provides an acceptable diversionary attack from intellectual pursuits. Essentially, he is arguing that it is socially safer to stay connected to peers through always-on social media, than it is to put oneself out there by having a sure opinion about a serious topic and disconnecting from the social networks long fair to middling to put it out there.Pressure to Conform examples of students confiding in him that one of the main reasons behind their 24 /7 connection is a fear of not keeping up with peers or appearing like a loser in public, as one of his students confided in a class journal.Risk Aversion unclear about whether students aversion to taking riskinesss is a symptom of social media use or is directly caused by it, but the point is no less important any way. Social media engagement supports a culture of avoidance which operates in direct opponent to the idea that students need to take risks and fail in their academic endeavors in order to aim successful innovators.Shallowness . Twitter, text messages, and other social media tools focus on brief, loyal, shallow interactions that do not encourage either deep social engagement or intellectual exploration. There is, aft(prenominal) all, only so much information that can be obtained in 140 characters.when you make a mistake offline, a few leave behind know but when you make a mistake in front of hundreds or thousands of you online audience, most of them will knowFac e to Face Connections are Endangered, A huge advantage of these social communities has a reverse military position effect that is also a big disadvantage of social networking they undertake or eliminate face-to-face socialization. Because of the autonomy afforded by the virtual world, individuals are free to create a fantasy persona and can make up to be someone else.It is hard to say no, be rude, or dissolve someone when you are looking them in the eye. Its incredibly easy and quick to unfriend or unfollow someone or simply block their efforts to make a connection. Just one click of the mouse and your problems are over. Tweens and teens are at higher risk because those years are when they are learning to interact with others or build and maintain relationships. A report from the National prepare Boards Association shows that of the children in these age groups that use a social network, 41 percentage spend their time posting messages. They are not expenditure this time in fa ce-to-face interactions with their peers or others nor are they developing the essential social skills for future success.Cyberbullying and Crimes Against Children, Use of social networks can expose individuals to torment or inappropriate contact from others. Unless parents are diligent to filter the Internet content to which their families are exposed, children could be exposed to pornography or other inappropriate content..Risks of Fraud or Identity Theft, Whether you like it or not, the information you post on the Internet is available to almost anyone who is clever enough to access it. Most thieves need just a few critical pieces of personal information to make your life a nightmare and if they success wide-cuty steal your identity, it could cost you dearly.Time Waster, A Nielsen report explains that social networking can be a big waste of time that sucks 17 percent of our Internet time down the non-productivity drain. it is also true that it is easy to become distracted and e nd up spending worthy time on games, chats or other non-related activities.Corporate Invasion of Privacy, Social networking invites major corporations to infest your privacy and sell your personal information. Facebook projects it will earn $3.8 billion in revenue in 2011. Thats not bad for a free site. If Facebook and other social networking sites dont charge their members, however, how do they make so much funds? They do it by selling the ability to specifically target advertisements. On social networking sites, the website isnt the product, its users are. These sites run algorithms that search for keywords, web browsing habits, and other selective information stored on your computer or social networking profile and provide you with advertisements targeted specifically to you. At the same time, you may be giving the site leave to share your information with exterior sources unless you specifically generate settings that disallow them to do so. Participating in applications li ke Farmville may also be allowing outside vendors access to your private information.In order to get social medias full effect, you need to understand how it works, when and how to use it and which channels to focus on depending on your end goal of using social media.Social media can have a negative influence on students and workers productivity. Employees may waste valuable time using social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter. They can also use social media to attack the companys reputationWhen social media is used excessively or in the wrong way, it could have serious perverting outcomes on both mental and even physical health of individuals.Opens up the possibility for hackers to commit fraud and launch spam and virus attacks.Increases the risk of people falling prey to online scams that seem genuine, resulting in data or identity theft.May result in negative comments from others about everything we put in our social media example our video in youtubePotentially results in lost productivity, especially if students are busy updating profiles, etc. omit of Anonymity,You are putting out information about your name, location, age, gender, and many other types of information that you may not want to let others know. Most people would say be careful. As long as people can know who you exactly are, then some can find ways to do you in.Scams and Harassment, While many sites apply certain measures to keep any of these cases of harassment, cyber-stalking, online scams, and identity theft to an absolute minimum, you still may never know.Time Consuming, that it would just be a waste of time for you. The key to social networking is that it is supposed to be fun, whether you are just doing it for kicks or clicking around for lead purposes. That should be reasonable enough for anyone, but there are those people who dont see the point. For them, it can be a disadvantage.

Reading And Reading Processes

Reading And Reading Processes1.2 Definition of Reading and Reading ProcessesIt is hardly realizable to carry taboo, or even take away, a explore on recitation without an soul of the script culture and the branches involved in it, and the present take away is no exception. Reading plays such an substantive percentage in educational settings that it has been defined as the near important academic speech communication readiness (Grabe Stoller, 2002). It is a psycholinguistic receptive process of write communication in that it starts with a linguistic sur casing representation encoded by a author and ends with slosheding that the reader seduces ( superbman, 1995). It is a process that involves the reader and the school text edition edition in a dynamic and complex interaction in which a moral representation is constructed based on the meaning signaled by the writer and the readers goals and interests (Rumelhart, 1985 Stanovich, 1980).What is meant by the process is course session proper, i.e. the interaction between a text and a reader (Alderson, 2000, p. 3). In this process, what the readers do is look at print, decode the written sacred scriptures on the page, and determine their meanings and their descents. The readers too think near what they atomic number 18 indication, what it means to them, how it relates to otherwise things they have read before and to things they already k in a flash. contrasting readers give develop different souls of what a text means. This is dowryly be urinate a text does non contain meaning which has to be detected by a proficient reader as the product of rendition.The product of the belief process is recognition (Barry Lazarte, 1995). There whitethorn be as some(prenominal) different require products as at that place be different readers. This is because readers may differ in their sleep withs and intimacy. In order for the interpreting product to be attained, readers employ deuce d ifferent approaches while engaged in the adaptation process (Nuttall, 2005), namely the bottom-up and the top- overthrow approaches.Bottom-up, or information-driven, approaches ar sequent models (Alderson, 2000, p.16), where the reader begins with printed words, recognizes graphic stimuli, decodes them to sound, recognizes words and decodes meanings. According to Grabe and Stoller (2002), the bottom-up model suggests that yarn follows a mechanical pattern in which the reader creates a piece-by-piece psychological translation of the information in the text, with finespun reference from the readers own earth noesis.Top-down, or conceptually driven, bear upon is a full complementary method of processing written text in which readers draw on their intelligence and experience to understand a text (Nuttall, 2005). According to the top-down model of the nurture process, what the reader already enjoys is thought to determine in large part what s/he impart be able to hold on (Alvermann Phelps, 1998). The top-down model assumes that comprehending begins when a reader has access to appropriate oscilloscope experiences and association to make sense of the print. In other words, unlike the bottom-up model, the top-down model proposes that the reader makes educated guesses to predict the meaning of the print.As a matter of fact, what is emphasized in top-down processing, according to Alderson (2000), is the companionship that a reader brings to text. This model is based on lineation theory, which accounts for the acquisition of fellowship and the interpretation of text through the activation of schemata networks of information retentivityd in the originator which act as filters for incoming information (Ausubel, 1968 Bartlett, 1932 kiosk, 1983a Carrell, Devine Eskey, 1988 Hudson, 1982). In this view, readers activate what they tump over to be relevant existing schemata and map incoming information onto them. To the cessation that these schemata are relevant, knowledge is successful.Nevertheless, neither the bottom-up nor the top-down approach, per se, is an adequate motion-picture show of the rendition process (Alderson, 2000). What readers need to employ while attending to texts is a combination of the two approaches, which, in Nuttalls words (2005), are apply to complement each other. This inadequacy led to the introduction of a third approach, the interactional model. The synergistic model of the practice session process incorporates features of both the bottom-up and top-down models. In practice, a reader continually shifts from one focus to a nonher, now adopting a top-down approach to predict the probable meaning, then mournful to the bottom-up approach to check whether that is really what the writer says (Nuttall, 2005, p. 17). In this context, Alvermann and Phelps (1998) trust that the interactive model of reading process is a good soma of how students typically read their content area texts. They connect what they know about delivery, decoding, and lyric poem, or bottom-up skills, to their soil experiences, front knowledge, and familiarity with the publication world read, or top-down skills. Interestingly, these skills are compensatory to Stanovich (1980). He fence ins that when readers lack plenty bottom-up skills, they may use top-down knowledge to compensate. Likewise, when they do not have enough desktop knowledge on the paper they are reading, they resort to their language skills to comprehend the text.Most of the current models of L2 reading acquaintance, according to Nassaji (2007) are interactive in that L2 apprehension is considered to be a process consisting of both bottom-up and top-down processes. However, familiarity with reading models, alone, is not sufficient for the understanding of the factors involved in the reading process. Alongside the significance of the knowledge of the reading process, the importance of reading for ESL recorders necessitates the understanding of the versatiles affecting a learners apprehension of texts. Research on reading variables has divided them into two major sections factors within the reader, and aspects of the text to be read (Alderson, 2000). What is of focus in the present teach is the former section, the reader variables.1.4 reader VariablesResearch has looked at the way readers themselves affect the reading process and product, and has investigated a number of different variables. Among them, two very important reader variables are radical familiarity (i.e. prior(prenominal) knowledge on topic), or background knowledge, (Bransford Johnson, 1972 Carrell, 1983a Carrell Wise, 1998 Kintsch, 1992 Leeser, 2007 Moravcsik Kintsch, 1993 Nassaji, 2007 Young, 1991), and style knowledge (Alderson Urquhart, 1985 Anderson Freebody, 1983 Carrell, 1984 Koda, 1988, 2005 Qian, 1999). A definition of these variables seems indispensible to this seek introduction.1.4.1 Topic Familiarity precedent to pic knowledge, and its influence on readers text experience is one of the variables being investigated in this canvas with regards to teachers intervention in the schoolroom. Therefore, an understanding of the concept seems essential for the reader. There is a substantial body of enquiry in cognitive psychology supporting the idea that topic familiarity has a facilitative part in reading light (e.g. Bransford Johnson, 1972 Kintsch, 1992 Moravacsik Kintsch, 1993). This design has been motivated through schema-based models of comprehension (e.g. Rumelhart. 1977, 1980) which posit that pre-existing schemata control comprehension. In other words, readers background knowledge contributes to their understanding of texts. When the term background knowledge is used, what is usually meant is a readers prior knowledge of the subject matter of the text. In this regard, Alvermann Phelps (1998) claim that What a someone already knows about a topic is probably the single or so potent factor in what he or she will learn ( p. 168).The nature of the knowledge that readers have will influence not whole what they remember of text, but also the product, i.e. their understanding of the text, and the way they process it (Bartlett, 1932 Carrell, 1984 Rumelhart, 1980 Alderson, 2000). The suppuration of schema theory has onslaughted to account for the consistent bring outing that what readers know affects what they understand. Schemata are seen as interlocking mental structures representing readers knowledge (Alderson, 2000, p. 33). When readers process text, they mix in the new information from the text into their pre-existing knowledge or schemata. In addition, their schemata influence how they recognize information as well as how they store it (Carrell, 1983a). Researchers have distinguished different types of schemata, which will be discussed in distributor point in Chapter 2.Problems arise when a reader has no relevant schemata or an insufficient schema, if rele vant schemata are not disowned, or if an existing schema is inconsistent with information in the text. Readers will often ignore ideas in a text that conflict with conventional real world knowledge (Alvermann, Smith, Readence, 1985). Students with reading difficulties appear to have particular trouble using their prior knowledge to modify misconceptions or to learn new information from reading (Holmes, 1983). Often, a reader who is struggling to understand a difficult text will follow isolated details in the text and as a result employ an inappropriate schema to fill in the gaps. A factor that has strong potential to affect readers comprehension, and can cause their misinterpretations is culture (Steffensen, Joag-Dev, and Anderson, 1979). Effects of cultural divagations on reading recall, experiment pull ahead and reading miscues have been consistently found in different studies (e.g., Carrell, 1984b Dimassi, 2006 Rice, 1980). This will be elaborated on in the next chapter.1.4. 2 Vocabulary fellowshipThe guerrilla parameter that is probed in the study, the understanding of which is inevitable to the reader, is dictionary knowledge. thriving comprehension is heavily dependent on knowledge of individual word meanings (Koda, 2005, p. 48). Research confirms a strong connection between readers language knowledge and their ability to understand what they read (Anderson Freebody, 1983 Davis, 1968 Koda, 2005 Qian, 1999). For example, Koda (2005) argues that there is a reciprocal relationship between word knowledge and comprehension. On the one hand vocabulary knowledge plays a crucial role in text understanding among both L1 and L2 readers, and on the other, vocabulary teaching and processing are as dependent on comprehension. She adds that the precise meaning of a particular word is determined in large part by the context in which it appears, and that this meaning is closely connectioned with readers real-life experience. However, in spite of overwhelmin g info available on their strong connection there is little consensus as to the exact mutuality between the two (ibid.).While, traditionally, vocabulary has been viewed as the supreme factor in reading comprehension (Davis, 1968 Whipple, 1925, cited in Hiebert Kamil, 2005), a to a greater extent recent view suggests a two-way link where the two are interdependent during their development process (Anderson Freebody, 1983). Anderson and Freebody evaluated two contrasting hypotheses implemental and knowledge. The instrumental hypothesis postulates a direct mutual tie between vocabulary and comprehension, maintaining that word knowledge facilitates comprehension. On the contrary, the knowledge hypothesis assumes an indirect link between the two, positing that their relationship is linked through a third phenomenon, background knowledge. In this view, vocabulary size reflects conceptual knowledge. Once readers have real-world experience, their text understanding is considerably impr oved. There will be more than shade on this in Chapter 2.As was said earlier in this chapter, vocabulary knowledge and background knowledge, or topic familiarity, are two most important variables affecting students comprehension. Research has also shown that the most important problems teachers face in a reading class is alien vocabulary and extraterrestrial being topic (Cabaroglu Yurdaisik, 2008). In order to have a let on understanding of teachers contribution to the reading class with regard to these two parameters, an awareness of the teachers role in the reading class, which is another variable in the present research, seems inevitable.1.5 Teachers habitIt is believed that the role the teacher plays in reading nurture is satisfying in the degree of the nucleusiveness of a reading program (Blair, Rupley Nichols, 2007). In this regard, Duffy-Hester (1999) is win over that the teacher is more important and has a greater impact than every single, fixed reading program, method, or approach (p. 492). However, it should be noted that it is not enough for a teacher to be a good soul who loves working with students. They must be aware of the reading process and the teaching and learning of reading if they call for their instruction to yield good results (Blair, Rupley Nichols, 2007).Good teachers understand that students need to be prepared to read before they are asked to (Alvermann Phelps, 1998). One way to prepare students for reading new topics is presenting basic background knowledge through brainstorming, question and answer, discussion on the topic, or pictures. some other way is providing students with topic related vocabulary and instructing them prior to reading (ibid.). These preceding(prenominal) activities are usually practiced in the pre-reading soma, which, according to Chastain (1988), is meant to motivate students to want to read the assignment and to prepare them to be able to read it.Pre-reading activities raise a reader wit h required background to organize activity and to comprehend the material (Ringler and Weber, 1984). These experiences involve understanding the purpose(s) for reading and building a knowledge base necessary for dealing with the content, vocabulary, and the structure of the material (ibid.) Ringler and Weber argue that pre-reading activities elicit prior knowledge, build background and focus attention. In fact, it is in the pre-reading stage that teachers attempt to facilitate and enhance students comprehension of reading texts by topic familiarization and vocabulary introduction. Chapter 2 will discuss the pre-reading stage in detail.1.6 Background to the ProblemThere is a considerable bulk of research on the comparison of the strong suit and enhancing roles of topic familiarity and vocabulary knowledge in ESL reading (e.g. Afflerbach, 1986 Brantmeier, 2003 Carrell, 1987 Hammadou, 1991 Hudson, 1982 Johnson, 1982 Park, 2004a, 2004b Swaffer, 1988). Studies on these two reader varia bles reveal that there is little consensus among the research workers as for their snuff its in ESL contexts.Some findings have shown a significant, positive effect for topic familiarity as either a main effect or as part of a complex interaction. For example, Johnson (1982) gave ESL readers a pass on Halloween and demonstrated that topic familiarity had a greater impact on comprehension than the pre-teaching of vocabulary. Also, Swaffer (1988) concludes, in her paper, that background knowledge can be more influential in reading comprehension than word knowledge. She further claims that topic familiarity facilitates language recognition, and recall of concepts.However, some other research in the literature indicates that vocabulary knowledge may be a more significant variable than prior knowledge on topic in ESL readers success. For example, Phillips (1990), reported by Hammadou (1991), finds that prior knowledge is insignificant when readers lack vocabulary knowledge and languag e proficiency. To Phillips, it is only when readers are proficient that high or low background knowledge comes into play and differentiates between readers levels of comprehension. But, perhaps the most comprehensive study on the effects of vocabulary pre-teaching and providing background knowledge on L2 reading comprehension was done by Park (2004b). He divided his clxxx participants into customary chord multitudes the vocabulary group, the background knowledge group, and the control group, with different treatments. The results he attained were a) the scores of the vocabulary and background knowledge groups were significantly higher(prenominal) than those of the control group, b) the vocabulary group scored higher than the background knowledge group, although the difference between the mean scores of the two groups was not significant, and c) the effects of pre-reading activities on L2 reading comprehension differed by achievement level and text type.Nevertheless, to Tuero (1 996), unknown vocabulary and prior knowledge play equally decisive roles in reading comprehension. She concludes, in her study, that background knowledge and vocabulary difficulty function independently and affect reading in different ways. Even though prior knowledge facilitates comprehension, vocabulary development is equally crucial to contradictory language reading.As said earlier, unknown vocabulary and unfamiliar topic have been found to be the most important problems that teachers encounter in a reading class (Cabaroglu Yurdaisik, 2008). Therefore, to ensure students comprehension, teachers should concentrate on these two variables, because without comprehension reading would be meaningless. Different learners seem to approach reading tasks in different ways, and some of these ways appear to lead to better comprehension (Tercanlioglu, 2004). Research has shown that learners can be instructed to use appropriate reading strategies to help them improve comprehension and recall (Carrell, Pharis, Liberto, 1989), and that this instruction should include more pre-reading strategies than post-reading strategies (Cabaroglu Yurdaisik, 2008).However, what is of concern to the researcher is the degree of effectiveness of teachers instruction of these reading strategies. It is real that unknown vocabulary and unfamiliar topic are the most significant problems in a reading class. But, who should, or can, attend to these problems? Is it the teacher, the student, the author, or other variables that have this responsibility? Although there has been quite a lot of research on topic familiarity and vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension, unfortunately, to date, there is no data available reflecting on the degree of effectiveness of the teachers posture at, or absence from an ESL reading class.In fact, the role of the teacher in enhancing students familiarity with texts topics and contents, and his/her role in vocabulary introduction have not been investigated yet. It is not clear to what extent teachers intervention facilitates students executing on reading comprehension and vocabulary tests. What if the teacher is not available for a pre-reading instruction? Does this mean that students have to postpone their reading activities, waiting for the unfamiliar topic and unknown vocabulary to be introduced by the teacher? In other words, should topic familiarization and vocabulary introduction be necessarily carried out by the teacher? The researcher believes this is a gap in the literature, which the present study seeks to fill.1.7 part and Design of the StudyThis study is an attempt to investigate in depth, in an explanatory mixed methods design, the degree of the effectiveness of teachers saying of background knowledge and his/her instruction of vocabulary at pre-reading stage in adult ESL reading comprehension. The influence of the teacher on the reading class, his/her contribution to students comprehension, and the facilitative role that s/he might play are the important aspects that this study aims to shed light on.The reason for conducting a mixed methods study is that the researcher attempts to combine both numerical and qualitative data for more precise results. The explanatory mixed methods design, which is also called the two-phase model (Creswell, 2008), puts emphasis on quantitative data array and analysis. In this method, the major aspect of data collection is quantitative, and a small qualitative component follows in the second phase of the research (ibid.).The quantitative phase of the study aims to test the following hypothesesTeacher-directed topic familiarization enhances students performance on ESL reading comprehension tasks more than written introductions do. dictionary use and teachers instruction of vocabulary yield the same results in students performance on vocabulary tests.To test the research hypotheses, this study seeks to answer tercet questions, and for the qualitative part of the r esearch, RQ4 is supposed to serve the purpose. The research questions are as followsRQ 1 To what extent does teacher-directed topic familiarization enhance studentsperformance on multiple- filling reading comprehension tests?RQ 2 To what extent does teachers intervention help students recall of a reading passage?RQ 3 What are the differences between teachers instruction of vocabulary and dictionary use in students performance on vocabulary tests?RQ 4 What are students perceptions as to the teachers role in an ESL reading classroom?To answer RQs 1, 2, and 3, quantitative data suffices and serves the purpose, and that is why the researcher applies multiple plectrum questions and written recall tests. But, for RQ 4, it is deemed necessary to mix quantitative and qualitative data to obtain more detailed , specific information than could be gained from the results of statistical tests. Therefore, a 5-point Likert scale questionnaire is combined with semi-structured interviews to answer RQ 4. Details will be found in Chapter 3.1.8 Significance of the StudyThrough his experience as an EFL teacher, the researcher has noticed that many EFL students face challenges whenever the reading comprehension process is altered by any unfamiliar reading task or assignment. He has also noticed that pre-reading instruction activities, including prior knowledge construction of unfamiliar topics, and teaching new vocabulary, play an important role in preparing students for the task and can help them become more aware of the characteristics of reading that are important to the task. This study will help teachers and educators find out the effectiveness and significance of teachers presence at, or absence from, the reading class. It is an attempt to explore teachers contribution to students reading comprehension, and tries to answer the question of whether or not, or to what extent, adult ESL students could be independent readers. This research will investigate, for the first time, th e effectiveness of dictionary use as compared with the teachers vocabulary instruction in enhancing students vocabulary knowledge in the reading class. Another significant viewpoint of the study is that, again for the first time, the teachers skill in familiarizing students with unfamiliar topics at pre-reading stage will be compared with the efficacy of written introductory data doing the same job of providing students with background knowledge on unfamiliar topics, thereof the applicability of written pre-reading information in helping students text comprehension. tout ensemble this will have implications for educators, teachers, practitioners, and researchers in the field of L2 reading comprehension, and will also help them design reading skill courses accordingly. It is hoped that the present research will make a positive contribution to the field of teaching second language reading.1.9 MethodologyThe study was conducted with newly registered postgraduate students at the Univ ersity of Malaya, Malaysia. The found of Graduate Studies (IGS) at UM administers regular English Placement Tests for those new students who do not possess any scores on either the TOEFL or the IELTS as the prerequisite for the registration for the university programs. Based on the students scores on the university Placement Test, the participants were assigned to two treatment groups, host A and root word B, comprising 35 students each.To find the answers to RQs 1, 2, and 3, the participants were provided with three reading passages of unfamiliar topics and contents, which they read and were well-tried on, with a weeks interval between the tests. The difficulty levels of these passages were measured through the Flesch legibility Test (Flesch, 1948). A typical session ran as this The participants in convention A received no teachers intervention. They were provided with some brainstorming questions, to which they received no answers, a constitute of the text concepts, and a wr itten introduction, which were meant to help them construct background knowledge on the text they were going to read. The text this group read had a title, which is believed to have a role in helping students to construct prior knowledge (Hammadou, 1991). They were also given a list of the key vocabulary, and were encouraged to use their dictionaries to check words meanings. In short, gathering A received any information which was thought to be necessary in reading the text, but in the form of written input.Group B, however, underwent teachers intervention. That is, it was the teacher who, in some pre-reading activities, familiarized them with the topic and content, and taught them the key vocabulary. Moreover, their text did not include a title, and no dictionary use was permitted in this group. This procedure was repeated for all the three passages.The participants were then assessed on comprehension and vocabulary after finishing each text. Each reading passage was followed by a at large(p) written recall test and a set of 20 multiple choice questions, 10 on comprehension and 10 on vocabulary. In fact, in the three treatment weeks, the students took three written recall tests, 30 comprehension and 30 vocabulary MCQs. Also, to find the answer to RQ4, on the students perceptions of the teachers role in a reading class, a 5- point Likert scale questionnaire was administered, and then through purposeful sampling, 20 of the participants, 10 from each group, were selected for an interview.Applied as one of the data collection tools, the free recall test is a measure in which readers write down as much as they can remember from what they have undecomposed read, without looking at the passage. According to Johnston (1983) and Bernhardt (1983), the recall measurement is a binding means of evaluating foreign language reading comprehension. This technique has been widely used in second language reading research (e.g., Carrell, 1987 Dimassi, 2006 Leeser, 2007 Young , 1999)Multiple choice tests, as another research tool, are common instruments for assessing reading comprehension (Alderson, 2000). To Koda (2005), they are the most popular format used in similar reading comprehension tests. MCQs have been employed extensively in L2 reading assessment (e.g., Bugel Buunk, 1996 Carrell, 1987 Carrell Wise, 1998 Oded Walters, 2001 Park, 2004 Yazdanpanah, 2007), and, therefore, have been coupled with the free recall test to measure the participants reading ability.In addition, Likert scale questionnaires and interviews are two common techniques in measuring perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs in second language teaching and learning (DeVellis, 1991 Turner, 1993), and have been used widely in the literature (See Brown, 2006 2009 Richardson, 1996 Williams Burden, 1997 Yamashita, 2004, for Likert scale questionnaires, and Barkhuizen, 1998 Cabaroglu Yurdaisik, 2008 Conteh Toyoshima, 2005 Li Wilhelm, 2008, for interviews). Thus, the study has appli ed these tools to find the answer to RQ4. Details on the research instruments will be revealed in Chapter 3.

Friday, March 29, 2019

Differences and Importance of IPPS, OPPS, MPFS and DMEPOS

Differences and Importance of IPPS, OPPS, MPFS and DMEPOSThe in affected role prospective hire system (IPPS) is a structure of payment that comprises the instances of diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) as acute c ar infirmary inpatients. It is founded on resources that are employed to take care of recipients of Medicare in those groups. Each nonpareil DRG has a weight of payment eachocated to it, founded on the standard cost of treating patients in that DRG. IPPS participates a signifi tooshiet function in deciding alone be of infirmary as sanitary as the be of all tools for treating the patient all through a specific stay of inpatient (CMS. Gov, 2012). The outpatient prospective payment system (OPPS) on the some other side is controlled for service groups of several(a) outpatient as classifications of ambulatory payment (armoured personnel carriers).Outpatient function in every APC are alike in expressions of clinical aspects and entailed resources. The APC payment stray In addition, for every group is wage adjusted to rationalize differences of geographic and functional in the group to all operate. Hospitals In this get a fixed sum total for all go of outpatient founded on classifications of ambulatory payment. Medicare away from this, employs it to repay physicians and additional wellness care providers for the items and go that are not division of prospective payment systems (Herbert, 2012). A Medicare physician fee archive (MPFS) establishes the pass judgment of payment for therapy and physician operate that are founded on changeover factors, relative value units, and cost indices of geographic practice.Durable aesculapian equipment, prosthetics, orthotics and supplies (DMEPOS) is recounted to reimbursement rates for these specific things to suppliers that make plastered admission of a high-class of these things to the patients. It includes much than a small image of regulations of payment managing the delivery of DMEPOS things for beneficiaries of Medicare. It renders the process of agonistical and authorization bidding, supplier enrollment, that have an force on suppliers payment make by the hospitals. It advances the capability of physicians to brook these things to their patients in an suitable manner. It make incontestable efficient give of the required resources like wellness techniques, equipments, and technologies to the deprived at the right cost. in that location is most important divergence of recipients, provider groups, and their services gaped for medical beneficiaries in these models, (CMS. Gov, 2012).OPPS and IPPS are executed for the similar provider i.e. wellness organizations and hospitals, nevertheless different in their recipients, who are out patients and inpatients correspondingly. DMEPOS and MPFS have ont comprise prospective payment systems and focus on supplier and physicians groups correspondingly. either these methods are structured to restrain on raise in wellness care serv ices cost to the patients. It aids for the beneficiaries of medical to get lineament and effective health care services at low put through cost (Green Rowell, 2012). Hospitals With this are also confined to get a precise amount for their services, which they offer to the patients.Payment ExpectationsBoth inpatient and outpatient prospective payment system methods of reimbursement are employed by Medicare to reimburse hospitals for outpatient and inpatient services, in addition to rehabilitation hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and home health services. It is expect from both providers that they ought to provide outpatient and inpatient services to the patients efficiently. It is as well pass judgment that these hospitals for all time emphasize improving effectiveness and efficiency of care, temporary hookup generating a results-oriented, patient-focused, market-driven environment (Zweifel, Breyer Kifmann, 2009). It is supposed to be noted drink In this context, that in the instance that someone is not open(a) to recompense for hospitahealth services it is anticipated from the hospital that it offer the free of cost health services. It in addition have to serve a least amount number of beneficiaries of Medicare.Non-physician and physicians practitioners Under the MPFS, are remunerated that offer fundamental health services to beneficiaries of Medicare. For this group Payment expectation is to advance the smell of care for patients man eradicating barriers to thriving participation of physician. They ought to follow Medicare laws with this, consecutively to accomplish the medical beneficiaries expectation. It is inwrought for them In addition, to offer facilities of Medicare to the patients at decided prices with no any conflicts. It is as well presumed to non-physician and physicians practitioners that they construct of the majority of their knowledge and skills consecutively to offer patients health treatment (CMS. Gov, 2012). All hospital and physicians practitioners acquire a fixed sum for every patient and are accountable for making accessible all services for that patient above a assigned period.DMEPOS is employed for salaried back suppliers of prosthetics, durable medical equipment, orthotics and supplies to the patients. Value based purchasing of health care services are Payment expectations for this provider that puke offer additional transparency on quality and cost to make certain Medicare beneficiaries optimal care. Providers In addition, have to be additional spotlight to supply to CMS performance data, which is probable to have an effect on potential reimbursements to provider. There are financial penalties for those providers In condition of any infringement of CMS standards,who dont meet up these standards (Mayes Berenson, 2006). It is as well anticipated from suppliers that they offer efficient supplies to the hospitals in considers ensuring the eminence of the patients health.Implication of a Case ad miscellaneature Involving IPPS, OPPS and DMEPOS for A Small HospitalImplication of a case mix In a small hospital, affecting OPPS IPPS,and DMEPOS is to develop the hospital care quality and center on designing effectual improvement facilities of quality. Hospitals are a most important constituent of the delivery system of health care, which are required to implement and develop an important outcome on quality, costs and admission to care. Small hospitals piece of tail attain their payments in a give up way in the course of executing these methods. They might be capable to get diverse equipments and required resources at rational price all the way through suppliers (Chalfin Rizzo, 2011).It can facilitate them to offer healthcare services based on quality to the patients at a lower cost. They can obtain an appropriate amount for offering healthcare services to the outpatients and inpatients. It facilitates them to clear up their services according the health regulations in an eff ectual way. It as well offers them equivalent opportunity to get growth since of security for payment of their services as indicated by fixed standards and sets.Hospitals of Small specialty and centers in concern of this, are obtaining the latest technology and equipment consecutively to draw high-end customers from commercial hospitals. DMEPOS can aid them to obtain these services with easiness at low down cost. These hospitals Apart from this, are proficient to administer their cash flow capably regarding their inventories and services. A fixed and proper amount of payment to the small health care providers employees can stimulate them to offer quality services to the beneficiaries of medical effectively (CMS. Gov, 2012). Small hospitals can acquire bonus payments for offering health professional shortage care. Consequently, a small hospital can fella these payment methods suitably in its operations.There possibly will be likeliness of risk to get lesser amount on the other han d, for their services since of the nature of illness of patients, high treatment cost involvement, or additional situational factors. It is since the fee is charged for the anticipated expenditure of caring for the patient. If the on the whole cost of care is additional than anticipated, the profit the hospital and furbish up receive can be decreased. It can force growth of hospital in unconstructive manner. It relies on the equipped efficiency of the hospital that they can acquire additional profits by offering care at a lower-than-anticipated cost. Furthermore, there possibly will be a likelihood of less increase in standard payments for services of small hospital in novel reforms of these models of payment (Wachter, Goldman Hollander, 2005).

Thursday, March 28, 2019

Enemy of the People :: essays papers

Enemy of the People An Enemy of the People, a dissemble written by Henrik Ibsen, is about a small townsfolk on the southern coast of Norway and how it perceives and accepts truth. The town is governed by Peter Stockmann and doctored by his young brother, Thomas. The main conflict flares up among these two siblings and then spreads passim the town as they both try to do best by the community. Dr. Thomas Stockmann is a public-minded doctor in a small town famous for its public baths. He discovers that the water supply for the baths is contaminated and has credibly been the cause of some illness among the tourists who are the towns economic lifeblood. In his lawsuit to clean up the water supply, Dr. Stockmann runs into political cowards, sold-out journalists, shortsighted armchair economists, and a benightedCitizenry. His own principled idealism exacerbates the conflict. The well-meaning doctor is publically labeled an enemy of the people, and he and his family are a ll but goaded out of the town he was trying to save. This is an early dramatization of something we lie with better a century later the difficulty of translating medical scientific knowledge into political subroutineion. Ibsens well-intenti angiotensin-converting enzymed blustery doctor heroically fails. This is part because the local democratic processes are quite cynical (powerful people impede him from getting his information to the citizens). Dr. Stockmann also suffers from a professional blindness that keeps him from sagaciousness how anyone could possibly disagree that his scientific truth (he uses the world frequently) requires rebuilding the towns waterworks. He is a classic case of virtue-based ethics sacrificing outcome for principle.This play addresses numerous social issues. It ties in family, truth, righteousness, community, and politics. It really demonstrates how one issue can hire galore(postnominal) truths to it and how different people, even within ones own family, can obtain the same thing in total different perspectives and in doing that act out against one another in an attempt to prove that ones own perspective is the right or only one. In human nature, we are not one to compromise. We see so many things as one way or another, right or vituperate rarely do we seek to find the common ground between the two. In this play, common ground is never found, and in the end leaves a family broken up and a society left to wonder.

Paideia and Modern Educational Policy Essay -- Education Philosophy Pa

Paideia and Modern Educational PolicyABSTRACT The expansive ideals of the classical flavor of paideia, and the restatement of those principles in 1982 by Mortimer Adler and the paideia group remain an unfulfilled pledge in terms of the actualities of prevalent education in the United States. The notion of an educational system for all students built upon a rigorous computer programme manifesting a framework of values to be acted out in the public and democratic forum continues to have great attraction for educators. Indeed, the notion of paideia continues to acquit a sense of urgency as it should. However, the actual task of creating systems disposed to these ideals has run headlong into a governmental labyrinth generated by the divergence between conservative (technical/authoritative) policy-making thought and liberal (teaching/learning theory) application. The political seductiveness of the trend towards standardization currently in vogue throughout the United States (bot h topically and nationally) works counter to the classroom-centered/teacher-student encounter needed to educate students capable of interacting meaningfully in their social and political world. The use of the standard to teach and to measure students carries the sanction of the technical and reinforces the stereotype of intellectual elitism. To bring balance to this conflict and micturate an apolitical design requires attention to the meditative role of the teacher and the nature of learning. There was a fundamental tension embedded in the earlier appropriation of the Greek paideia by early Christianity which continues to be acted out upon the political/ educational stage today. That tension is between valuing knowledge (text) considered as intention as opposed to valuing und... ...the object, but rather its formative power which leads to sense is the paideia of the modern classroom just as it was for Gregory of Nyssa.BibliographyAdler, Mortimer. The Paideia Proposal An Educat ional Manifesto. new-fashioned York, MacMillan Publishing Co. 1982.Alter, Jonathan. Chicagos Last Hope. modsweek, June 22, 1998.Ben-Hur, Meir. Mediation of Cognitive Competencies for Students in Need. Phi Delta Kappan. May, 1998.Bowers, C.A. The Promise of Theory. spic-and-span York. Teachers College Press. 1984.Eisner, E. Teaching as Art and Craft. Educational 1983 Leadership, Vol. 40, January.Heidegger, M. On the Way to Language. New YorkHarper and Row, 1974.Gardner, J. The Unschooled Mind. New York, HarperCollins, Publisher, 1991.Jaeger, J. Early Christianity and Greek Paideia. Cambridge, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1961.