The MENA region is facing important vulnerabilities, which the current crises—first the pandemic, then the war in Ukraine—have exacerbated. Prices of food and energy are higher, hurting the most vulnerable, and rising interest rates from the global tightening of monetary policy are making debt service more burdensome. Part I explores some of the resulting vulnerabilities for MENA. MENA countries are facing diverging paths for future growth. Oil Exporters have seen windfall increases in state revenues from the rise in hydrocarbon prices, while oil importers face heightened stress and risk—from higher import bills, especially for food and energy, and the depreciation of local currencies in some countries. Part II of this report argues that poor governance, and, in particular, the lack of government transparency and accountability, is at the root of the region’s development failings—including low growth, exclusion of the most disadvantaged and women, and overuse of such precious natural resources as land and water.

The contributions in Toward Learning Robots address the question of how a robot can be designed to acquire autonomously whatever it needs to realize adequate behavior in a complex environment. In-depth discussions of issues, techniques, and experiments in machine learning focus on improving ease of programming and enhancing robustness in unpredictable and changing environments, given limitations of time and resources available to researchers. The authors show practical progress toward a useful set of abstractions and techniques to describe and automate various aspects of learning in autonomous systems. The close interaction of such a system with the world reveals opportunities for new architectures and learning scenarios and for grounding symbolic representations, though such thorny problems as noise, choice of language, abstraction level of representation, and operationality have to be faced head-on. Contents Introduction: Toward Learning Robots * Learning Reliable Manipulation Strategies without Initial Physical Models * Learning by an Autonomous Agent in the Pushing Domain * A Cost-Sensitive Machine Learning Method for the Approach and Recognize Task * A Robot Exploration and Mapping Strategy Based on a Semantic Hierarchy of Spatial Representations * Understanding Object Motion: Recognition, Learning and Spatiotemporal Reasoning * Learning How to Plan * Robo-Soar: An Integration of External Interaction, Planning, and Learning Using Soar * Foundations of Learning in Autonomous Agents * Prior Knowledge and Autonomous Learning

Many researchers have confirmed that students with disabilities engage in significantly less physical activity than their nondisabled peers in physical education class. One of the elements that influences student participation in physical education class is attitude and there is a gap in the literature with respect to investigating the attitudes of students with learning disabilities, emotional/behavioral disabilities, or attention difficulties. There is limited research on how teachers perceive and assist students to participate in physical education. This dissertation is looking specifically at enjoyment and useful attitudes of physical activity in physical education class for students with learning disabilities.

What does it mean to teach for social justice? Drawing on his own classroom experiences, leading author and educator Kevin K. Kumashiro examines various aspects of anti-oppressive teaching and learning and their implications for six different subject areas and various grade levels. Celebrating 20 years as a go-to resource for K-12 teachers and teacher educators, this 4th edition of the bestselling Against Common Sense: Teaching and Learning Toward Social Justice features: • An expanded introduction that examines teaching in today’s context of censorship and attacks on diversity, democracy, and teaching truth; • New sections on teacher preparation, social studies, reading and writing, and the arts; • Updated lists of resources in every chapter; • Graphics, teacher responses, and discussion questions to enhance comprehension and help translate theory into practice across the disciplines. Compelling and accessible, the 4th edition of Against Common Sense continues to offer readers the tools they need to begin teaching against their commonsensical assumptions and toward democracy and justice.

Toward Community-Based Learning contends that the ideal school offers the opportunity to understand reality in a way that connects teaching and education with conditions in the surrounding community and the student’s life and concerns. This view holds that problem solving requires an understanding and awareness of the whole, which can be achieved through direct activities. In this manner, learning is linked to its natural context, with ideal instruction being actively problem-oriented, holistic, and life-centered. This thought-provoking volume offers an essential and comprehensive picture of community-based learning in the field of education. The book deals with the history of community-based learning as well as its present applications, including its global successes and difficulties. The authors provide numerous pedagogical approaches that are designed to meet the challenges of contemporary education. They show how learning is connected with authentic community environments in which students can gain new understandings through solving emerging problems. They also demonstrate how teachers can make learning more functional and holistic so that students have the ability to work in new situations within the complex world around them. School-specific descriptions reveal how teachers and their students have implemented community-based projects in the U.S.A., India, and China at different times. Contributors are: Thomas L. Alsbury, Mary Ewans, Linda Hargreaves, Susan K. Johnsen, Eija Kimonen, Susan Kobashigawa, Karon N. LeCompte, Suzanne M. Nesmith, Raimo Nevalainen, and Lakia M. Scott.

"This book evaluated the incorporation of technology into educational processes reviewing topics from primary and secondary school to higher education, from Second Life to wiki technology, from physical education to cultural learning"--Provided by publisher.