Сборник материалов международной научной конференции студентов, магистрантов, аспирантов

М.И. Шульгач

Республика Беларусь, Брест, БрГУ имени А.С. Пушкина

Научный руководитель – Т.С. Троцюк

TEACHING GOALS SOURCES

The goals selected by various teachers differ in their value to the student. Some teachers have as their goal keeping the kids busy; other teachers have as their goal getting through a textbook or covering a chapter in the following week. The value of each of these goals is questionable at best and is hard to defend from a professional standpoint. David A. Jacobsen, Paul Eggen and Don Kauchak describe some possible sources for the establishment of educationally defensible goals and discuss the significance of these sources for today’s schools. There are three sources of goals: the child, society and the academic disciplines.

The first source of the goals is the child. Two basic questions every teacher should ask in considering the goals of instruction are “What are schools for?” and “How does my class fit into the larger picture?” One pair of answers to these questions is that schools are for people, and the function of the school and its classrooms is to help young people develop to the fullest extent of their potential. In other words, one source of goals for instruction can be found in the students themselves. In tapping this source of curriculum goals, the teacher is basically asking the question, how the knowledge and skills that she/he possesses as a teacher can help the students she/he is teaching to develop into healthy and functioning adults.

The area of the curriculum where the learner has the greatest effect on goals is in the area of early childhood. Here, a large part of the school day is devoted to helping the child grow emotionally, intellectually, and physically. Special attention is paid to the developmental levels of the students, and learning tasks are designed to match these levels and help children progress to the next. In addition, special attention is paid to the emotional growth of individuals, and attempts are made to help students develop healthy attitudes about themselves and others.

The second source of teaching goals is society. Another way to approach the task of establishing teaching goals is to examine the society that students live in and will ultimately function in, and decide how schools can help students to effectively meet the challenges of that society. Proponents of this view of the curriculum claim that the role of the school is to prepare students for life, and the content of the schools should be matched to the demands of everyday living. The value of goals established by this approach is measured in terms of their usefulness to the individual in functioning in today’s world. Knowledge for its own sake is rejected; instead, knowledge becomes valuable to the extent that it is practical. A present-day interpretation of this approach of selecting goals is called life management and focuses on those goals that will help an individual manage his/her life in a complex technological world. A major focus of this curriculum is helping students to understand how basically abstract processes like math and reading have potential utility for functioning in the worlds of work and play.

One of the areas of the curriculum which has had a major impact on the curriculum is in the area of home economics. Students, here, are trained to attack the problem of functioning in today’s modern society in a systematic and scientific way.

Another more traditional area of the curriculum where societal demands have an influence is the field of mathematics. With this orientation, mathematics’ place in the curriculum is determined by the extent to which it can help students function. Emphasis is placed on the application of maths skills rather than their theoretical implications. In these examples mathematics is seen not as an end, but rather as a means toward some other goal.

The third source of goals is the academic disciplines. This way generates goals for instruction, examines the various academic disciplines and determines which knowledge in these disciplines is most important or central to understanding these different content areas. Proponents of this approach to goal setting contend that the function of the schools is not so much to help students adjust to society or to give them short-range skills that will quickly become outmoded in today’s rapidly changing world but rather to transmit to students the knowledge that has stood the test of time. Attention is paid to the immense number of changes that have occurred in the last 20 or 30 years and pointed out that anything other than an academically oriented curriculum, which transcends these changes, would soon be outmoded.

If a teacher were to use an academic approach to select teaching goals, she/he would turn to the texts and notes she/he used as a college student and try to determine which ideas were central to discipline. These would then become the goals of the curriculum and the major focus of teaching.

1. 
   Jacobsen, D. Methods for Teachnig: A Skills Approach / D. Jacobsen, P. Eggen, D. Kauchak. – NY : Macmillian Publishing Company, 1989. – 360 p.
   

В статье раскрываются основные источники, которые помогают учителю в целеполагании: ребёнок, общество и академические дисциплины.

С.А. Якубович, А.В. Самолюк

Республика Беларусь, Брест, БрГУ имени А.С. Пушкина

Научный руководитель – А.С. Поплавская

THE OUTBREAK OF A DEADLY DISEASE  EBOLA

As of September 14, 2014, a total of 4,507 confirmed and probable cases of Ebola virus disease (EVD), as well as 2,296 deaths from the virus, had been reported from five countries in West Africa – Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sierra Leone. In terms of reported morbidity and mortality, the current epidemic of EVD is far larger than all previous epidemics combined. The true numbers of cases and deaths are certainly higher. There are numerous reports of symptomatic persons evading diagnosis and treatment, of laboratory diagnoses that have not been included in national databases, and of persons with suspected EVD who were buried without a diagnosis having been made.

The epidemic began in Guinea during December 2013, and the World Health Organization (WHO) was officially notified of the rapidly evolving EVD outbreak on March 23, 2014. On August 8, the WHO declared the epidemic to be a “public health emergency of international concern”. By mid-September, 9 months after the first case occurred, the numbers of reported cases and deaths were still growing from week to week despite multinational and multisectoral efforts to control the spread of infection. The epidemic has now become so large that the three most-affected countries – Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone – face enormous challenges in implementing control measures at the scale required to stop transmission and to provide clinical care for all persons with EVD.

Because Ebola virus is spread mainly through contact with the body fluids of symptomatic patients, transmission can be stopped by a combination of early diagnosis, contact tracing, patient isolation and care, infection control, and safe burial.

Case definitions for EVD have been reported previously by the WHO. In brief, a suspected case is illness in any person, alive or dead, who has (or had) sudden onset of high fever and had contact with a person with a suspected, probable, or confirmed Ebola case or with a dead or sick animal; any person with sudden onset of high fever and at least three of the following symptoms: headache, vomiting, anorexia or loss of appetite, diarrhea, lethargy, stomach pain, aching muscles or joints, difficulty swallowing, breathing difficulties, or hiccupping; or any person who had unexplained bleeding or who died suddenly from an unexplained cause.

A total of 4,507 confirmed and probable EVD cases were reported to the WHO between December 30, 2013, and September 14, 2014 – a 37-week period. A total of 718 confirmed and probable cases and 289 deaths were reported in the week of September 8 through September 14 alone. The median age of persons with EVD was 32 years, and there were no significant differences in the age distribution of persons with EVD among countries. The majority of persons with EVD (60.8%) were between 15 and 44 years of age. There were also no significant differences among countries in the total numbers of male and female persons with EVD reported. EVD has taken a heavy toll among health care workers in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

Assessing the case fatality rate during this epidemic is complicated by incomplete information on the clinical outcomes of many cases, both detected and undetected. Derived by calculating the ratio of all reported deaths to all reported cases to date are low in comparison with historical outbreaks and are highly variable among the affected countries. Significant risk factors for death include an age of 45 years or older as compared with 44 years of age or younger.

Although the current epidemic of EVD in West Africa is unprecedented in scale, the clinical course of infection and the transmissibility of the virus are similar to those in previous EVD outbreaks. The incubation period, duration of illness, case fatality rate, are all within the ranges reported for previous EVD epidemic. The present epidemic is exceptionally large, not principally because of the biologic characteristics of the virus, but rather because of the attributes of the affected populations and because control efforts have been insufficient to halt the spread of infection.

Certain characteristics of the affected populations may have led to the rapid geographic dissemination of infection. The populations of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone are highly interconnected, with much cross-border traffic at the epicentre and relatively easy connections by road between rural towns and villages and between densely populated national capitals. The large intermixing population has facilitated the spread of infection. In Nigeria, the number of cases has so far been limited, despite the introduction of infection into the large cities of Lagos (approximately 20 million people) and Port Harcourt (1 million people). The critical determinant of epidemic size appears to be the speed of implementation of rigorous control measures.

Previous experience with EVD outbreaks, though they have been limited in size and geographic spread, suggests that transmission can be interrupted, and case incidence reduced, within 2 to 3 weeks after the introduction of control measures.

Considering the prospects for a novel Ebola vaccine, an immunization and greater reductions in transmission would, be desirable, but minimum requirements for the containment of EVD are far less severe than for the containment of more contagious diseases, such as measles. 

The data were used by various field teams across Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. Although they provide an excellent opportunity to better understand the current EVD epidemic in Africa, they understate the magnitude of the problem. It is likely that many cases have not been detected, and for those cases that have been reported, case records are often incomplete. Therefore, interpretation of the available case data requires care. That data are being collected under extreme conditions, and the top priorities are patient care, contact tracing, and limiting transmission in the community, rather than epidemiologic investigations. The future projections provided here should be regarded as indicative of likely future trends more than precise predictions. Despite these limitations and the resulting uncertainties, the results presented help to understand the spread of infection and the potential for control.

1. 
   Ebola Virus Disease in West Africa – The First 9 Months of the Epidemic and Forward Projections [Electronic resource] // The New England Journal of Medicine. – Mode of access: http://www.nejm.org/ doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1411100#Results=&t=article Results. – Date of access: 08.03.2015.
   

В статье раскрываются проблемы, связанные с распространением эпидемии Эбола среди населения Западной Африки. Авторы говорят о способах предотвращения и методах лечения этого смертельного заболевания.