Search

This project study aimed to identify the opportunities and challenges encountered by the Kagay-anon1 teachers’ utilizing direct and indirect teaching methods cultivated in Japan; facilitate the multi-grade teachers’ practices for continuing professional development; and determine the observed patterns of behavior of learners in the teaching and learning process. The participants of this project were purposely selected based on the prioritization matrix. Document analysis, In-depth interview (IDI), and Focus group discussions (FGDs) served as sources of information. Coding and thematic analyses were employed. Findings revealed that teachers have learned new concepts in multi-grade teaching, improved teaching competence, boosted self-esteem, enhanced the structure and organization in lesson planning, understood the dynamics of lesson study, initiated proactive actions for the learners, shared responsibility through student learning facilitator, given technical assistance from superior, and empowered to be resourceful and innovative. However, teachers affirmed that they have encountered challenges in their classroom such as physical set-up, class size, boards, and IMs preparation. Despite the challenges, multi-grade teachers have observed positive changes in the behavior of learners. It is recommended that the identified challenges could be addressed with the help and support of the internal and external stakeholders as well as other existing professional learning communities.

Based on the Cognitive Evaluation Theory and on the Self-Determination Theory, this study aims at testing the effectiveness of planning tools combined with autonomy and group dynamics. The purpose of these tools is to increase intrinsic motivation because of their informational effect. More specifically, thanks to the use of a monthly planner, we tested the improvement of school performance in students attending upper secondary schools.

Kazakhstan envisions a transition towards a green economy in the next decades which poses an immense challenge as the country heavily depends on (hydro-)carbon resources, for both its economy and its energy system. In this context, there is a lack of comprehensive and transparent planning tools to assess possible sustainable development pathways in regard to their technical, economic, and environmental implications. We present such a tool with a comprehensive techno-economic model of the Kazakh electricity system which determines the hourly least-cost generation dispatch based on publicly available data on the technical and economic characteristics of power plants and the transmission infrastructure. This modeling framework accounts for the particularities of the Kazakh electricity system: i) it has a detailed representation of combined heat and power, and ii) line losses are endogenously determined using a linear approximation. Model results are examined for a typical winter week (with annual peak load) and a typical summer week (with the hour of lowest annual load) presenting regionally and temporally disaggregated results for power generation, line utilization, and nodal prices. In an application to market design, the paper compares nodal and zonal pricing as two possible pricing schemes in Kazakhstan for the envisioned strengthening of the day-ahead market. In general, the model can be readily used to analyze the least-cost dispatch of the current Kazakh electricity system and can be easily expanded to assess the sector's development. Among others, possible applications include investment in transmission lines and in the aging power plant fleet, scenarios and policy assessment for emission reduction, and questions of market liberalization and market design.

Hurricane Sandy (ultimately downgraded to "Superstorm" Sandy by the time it hit the coasts of New York and New Jersey in late October 2012) was the most lethal and destructive hurricane in 2012, resulting in 285 deaths, $68 billion in damages, and 8.5 million utility customers in the eastern United States losing power. Superstorm Sandy provided a wake-up call for electric utilities on the need to adopt a different set of long-term planning tools to improve the resilience of the electric system against anticipated extreme weather events. The experience of Superstorm Sandy provides a case study of the system resiliency benefits of distributed generation (DG) resources and microgrids, and valuable lessons that can be learned as utilities plan for increasingly frequent extreme weather events of the future. This Article examines legal and regulatory tools available to encourage electric utilities to move in the direction of a DG-based model, and it focuses in particular on the Consolidated Edison Company of New York (Con Edison) rate proceeding in New York. In that recently concluded proceeding, utility regulators had an opportunity to consider a "traditional" approach proposed by the utility-featuring transmission and distribution infrastructure investments-alongside a competing view of a "utility of the future" offered by environmental parties, geared toward a more resilient system that integrates DG resources and microgrids. In a precedent-setting order issued by the New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) on February 21, 2014, the PSC required Con Edison to make significant investments "to enhance system reliability, to achieve a higher level of storm hardening and resiliency in the face of anticipated climate change and sea level rise." Con Edison was directed to take specific steps to use DG resources as an alternative to traditional infrastructure, to facilitate DG installations in its service territory, and to develop an implementation plan for microgrids in its service territory. More broadly, utilities in New York were directed to integrate predicted impacts from climate change into their long-term system planning processes. The article also examines other legal theories that can be used in utility regulatory proceedings to move utilities toward a new utility paradigm that features DG resources, including the prudent investment standard, the doctrine of "used and useful," and the requirement to set "cost-based" rates.

This paper addresses policy issues and operational implications of development projects that cause involuntary resettlement. The operational procedures described in the paper are tailored to each of the different stages of the project cycle in World Bank-financed projects.In the past, involuntary resettlement was often approached as a welfare operation, rather than one pursuing development objectives. In contrast with such approaches, the World Bank emphasizes that because involuntary resettlement dismantles a previous production system and way of life, all involuntary resettlement programs must be development programs as well. The backbone of any resettlement plan must be a development package consisting of a set of project funded provisions aimed at reconstructing the production base of those relocated and at re-establishing them as self-sustaining producers or wage earners. Policy aspects and operational implications are discussed in the following sequence: -Types of projects and the planning tools for projects involving involuntary resettlement-The economic and financial analysis of project components involving involuntary resettlement-The monitoring and evaluation of involuntary resettlement in World Bank financed projectsSince they are standard, broad instruments, they are applied flexibly. Judgment is exercised to determine the level of data and planning detail needed for each specific case.

This paper is a scoping exercise to explore options for research on urban poverty in developing countries. Based on a review of the literature and experience, the first part of the paper reviews the changing nature of the urban poverty agenda over the last 30 years by comparing today’s issues with those addressed in World Development Report 1979. The issues are categorized by new issues, old issues still relevant, and forgotten issues; and are grouped by challenges, instruments, analytical and planning tools, data and benchmarks, regions/countries/cities, and institutions. The conclusion of this part of the paper is that while some of the old issues and prescriptions are still valid today, and some important ones apparently forgotten, there are many new issues and approaches that need now be considered. The second part of the paper takes the large array of issues identified in the first section and selects 10 for more detailed consideration as part of a menu of potential high-priority research initiatives on urban poverty. They include slums, employment, small- and medium-size cities, and women/children/youth (from among the challenges); comprehensive slum upgrading programs, conditional cash transfer programs, and incentive-based approaches (from among instruments); happiness and life satisfaction research approaches, impact evaluation, and strategic planning tools (from among analytical and planning tools). Among regions, countries and cities, Africa is recommended as a regional focus, China and India for country studies, and Bogota (or possibly other large cities) for specific city studies.

This paper aims at presenting an integrated framework for the study of territorial dynamics in coastal areas. The use of Geographic Information Systems made possible the association of land cover data and socio-economic data using different levels of spatial analysis. The Coastal Alentejo (Portugal) was used as case study to identify these territorial dynamics. Being land cover and land use changes one of the main issues integrating the large debate on sustainable development, its analysis demand clearly an integration of spatial/landscape data with the socio-economic data, which has been recently widely recognised. The question is how this integration is possible, and how can it best be achieved to understand the change. Moreover, the land use changes studies must be a contextualised analysis centred in the individual inside the context where he acts. This departing point assumes that the individual induces land use changes but he also reflects these changes, which were made by him or by other agents that intervene, directly or indirectly, in the land use. Thus we must consider and analyse the impact of external driving forces such as the national and international policies and regulations, being necessary, therefore, an effort to make this kind of analysis at Regional, Local and Individual Level. The coastal areas are special focus given the increasing importance that they had assumed in the global frame of the present economic development. The number and diversity of agents that are searching for space in coastal areas increases the needs for an integrated management in a way to minimise the negative impacts of the increasing number of activities conflicting in these areas. The nature and distribution of human activities on coastal areas result from the action of a range of driving forces demographic, institutional, commercial and market, cultural and technological. The impact of these forces explains the land use changes and the way in which the coastal resources are affected. Toward the identification and understanding the environmental problems of coastal areas it is important, therefore, to analyse the efficacy of the administrative structures at the level of the formulation of the legislative frame and its practice giving possible to understand the articulation, at distinct levels of the institutional dimensions. Moreover the institutional frame, given the integration of Portugal in the European Union since the middle eighties, is in part the reflection of the problems and needs, which are perceived also at the international level. In Portugal the responsibility of management of coastal resources is distributed by several administrative structures that intervene at different spatial levels (national, regional and local levels). This intervention present some contradictions caused by the different objectives of the planning tools, which frame those administrative structures. In what relates to the methodological design, this study is based in an integrated perspective that aims at understand the processes of land use change. The association of different scientific approaches and levels of analysis will accomplish this posture of integration. However, this multi-disciplinary integration cannot be faced as a superimposition or assembling of divers empirical approaches. It represents an articulation between the different scientific domains and levels of spatial or time analysis. The time analysis it is a significant element of the methodological design. If this studies aim at understand the processes of land use change, it is required to analyse different periods, besides the study of different rhythms or cycles of the phenomena. The accurate study of these different moments must contemplate the changes of the biophysical and social frames. The land use change is, therefore, the reflection of the practices of the different agents conditioned by the changes in the global frame of each period. In order to articulate these spatial and temporal levels of analysis of the georeferenced data it was implemented a GIS. How to articulate information from different sources and natures, different scales into the system of analysis is one of the main challenges of the work carried on.