Adelaide Graduate Centre Postgraduate Research Scholarships

The University of Adelaide offers Adelaide Scholarships International (ASI) to attract high quality overseas postgraduate students to areas of research strength in the University of Adelaide to support its research effort.
The University of Adelaide is widely regarded as one of Australia’s leading Universities and it is the third-oldest university in Australia. The University is associated with five Nobel laureates and 104 Rhodes scholars.

Location:

Australia

Benefits

• Course tuition fees for two years for a Masters degree by Research and three years for a Doctoral research degree (an extension is possible for doctoral programs only),
• An annual living allowance ($26,288 in 2016) for two years for a Masters degree by Research and three years for a Doctoral research degree (an extension is possible for doctoral programs only), and
• For Student Visa (Subclass 500) visa holders the award provides compulsory standard Overseas Student Health Cover (OSHC) Worldcare policy for the student and their spouse and dependents (if any) for the standard duration of the student visa.  It does not cover the additional 6 month extended student visa period post thesis submission. If the award holder does not hold a subclass 500 visa then he/she is responsible for the cost of health insurance.

Eligibilities

• In order to be eligible applicants are required to have successfully completed at least the equivalent of an Australian First Class Honours degree (this is a four year degree with a major research project in the final year). All qualifying programs of study must be successfully completed.
• Scholarships will be awarded on academic merit and research potential. Extra-curricular achievements are not considered.
• International applicants must not hold a research qualification regarded by the University of Adelaide to be equivalent to an Australian Research Doctorate degree or, if undertaking a Research Masters degree, not hold a research qualification regarded by the University of Adelaide to be equivalent to or higher than an Australian Research Masters degree.
• International applicants who have not provided evidence of their meeting the minimum English language proficiency requirements for direct entry by the scholarship closing date, or who have completed a Pre-Enrolment English Program to meet the entry requirements for the intended program of study, are not eligible.
• Citizens and Permanent Residents of Australia, and citizens of New Zealand are ineligible.
• Those undertaking research via remote candidature are ineligible.
• Candidates are required to enrol in the University of Adelaide as ‘international students’ and must maintain ‘international student’ status for the duration of their enrolment in the University.
• Candidates who have applied for Australian permanent resident status can apply for ASI scholarships.
• International applicants are not eligible if they have already commenced the degree for which they are seeking an award, unless they can establish that they were unable to apply in the previous round.
• Scholarships holders must commence study at the University of Adelaide in the semester the scholarship is offered.
• Applicants who applied and were eligible for consideration in an international scholarship round, and were unsuccessful, will automatically be reconsidered in the following international scholarship round, assuming they hold a valid offer of candidature for that intake. An applicant who has been considered in 2 rounds cannot be reconsidered in any future scholarship rounds.
• The offer of a scholarship is contingent upon a student not being offered another award by the Commonwealth of Australia, the University of Adelaide, or an overseas sponsor. The University reserves the right to withdraw an offer of a scholarship at any time prior to enrolment if it is advised that an awardee has been offered a scholarship equal to or in excess of the financial value of the award offered by the University.

MORE DETAILS: http://www.adelaide.edu.au/graduatecentre/scholarships/research-international/opportunities/adelaide-scholarship-international/

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British Chevening Scholarship for International Student 2017, UK

Applications are now open for 2018/2019 Chevening Scholarships and some Chevening Fellowships. Chevening offers a unique opportunity for future leaders, influencers, and decision-makers from all over the world to develop professionally and academically, network extensively, experience UK culture, and build lasting positive relationships with the UK.
Chevening Scholarships are the UK Government’s global scholarship programme, funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and partner organisations. The programme offers awards to outstanding scholars with leadership potential from around the world to study for a master’s degree in any subject at any UK university.
The significance of the Chevening scholarship scheme rests on its large scope – approximately 700 scholarships are awarded each year to students from more than 110 countries, allowing students from developing countries to access British tertiary education institutions, some of which are of a very high standard as determined by international rankings.
The most popular destinations for the Chevening Scholars to study in 2011 were the London School of Economics & Political Science, University College London, and the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, University of Nottingham, University of Bath and King’s College London.

Location:

United Kingdom

Benefits

A Chevening Scholarship normally covers

• University tuition fees
• A monthly stipend
• Travel costs to and from the UK
• An arrival allowance
• A homeward departure allowance
• The cost of one visa application
• A travel grant to attend Chevening events in the UK

Eligibilities

• Be a citizen of a Chevening-eligible country
• Return to your country of citizenship for a minimum of two years after your award has ended
• Have an undergraduate degree that will enable you to gain entry onto a postgraduate programme at a UK university. This is typically equivalent to an upper second-class 2:1 honours degree in the UK.
• Have at least two years’ work experience (this may be up to five years for fellowship programmes, so please refer to your country page for further details)
• Apply to three different eligible UK university courses and have received an unconditional offer from one of these choices by 12 July 2018
• Meet the Chevening English language requirement by 12 July 2018
• In order to receive a Chevening Award, all applicants must demonstrate that they have fulfilled the Chevening English language requirement by 12 July 2018.

All applicants to ensure they have fulfilled the English language requirement as early as possible by either:

• Taking an English language test
• Claiming an exemption based on the UKVI exempt categories

Chevening accepts English language tests from five providers:

• Academic IELTS
• Pearson PTE Academic
• TOEFL iBT
• Cambridge English: Advanced (CEA)
• Trinity ISE II (B2)

Applicants must ensure they meet the minimum work experience requirement for the award that they are applying to before submitting their Chevening application:

• Chevening Scholarships – two years’ work experience
• Chevening Fellowships – either five or seven years’ work experience depending on the fellowship. Please check your country page for eligibility details relating to the specific fellowship you are applying to.
  If you do not already have the required level of work experience, you will be unable to submit your application (To get the more specific information please visit the official website)
• Click on the following link.

 http://www.chevening.org/

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Educators in Nepal

- Akhil Karn
 
Parenthood is a job that requires one to give up almost all of one’s time and energy for the well-being of another. Teachers too are, by nature, givers. The desire to help others, to give something for other’s inspiration, to be a part of students' betterment, to inspire the children in the classroom are some of the reasons many young people choose this path in life.

We find the teachers constantly giving for others especially a young and idealistic teacher. S/he truly believes s/he is helping a young person. He/she would mark the test papers whole night, spending hours perfecting lessons or making resources. Oftentimes there wouldn't be any distinction between his/her personal and professional lives.

These days the class monitoring and paperwork that teachers have to endure has increased in volume and perceived importance. The teachers struggle to keep up with the inefficient record keeping at schools and the endless meetings. The frequency of testing has also increased and the content the teachers are asked to teach has become more prescriptive.

Even with all these pressure at work, teaching as a profession has steadily seen a decline in a decent wage. Privately run schools, with a few exceptions, regularly underpay and overwork their staffs. As a teacher ages, he can see his youth slipping by, wages stagnate, pensions reduced and have reduced job security. Still teachers keep working in the face of losing the prime years of their lives, dwindling resources, limited rights, and rarely even their sanity being taken away.

Sometimes people who influence the growth of a society the least are the ones who are paid the most. Why is this so? You'd love a teacher if they shield your kids from a crazed gunman shooting up a school, protecting them. You adore educators when they use their bodies to protect a kid from a falling wall. But the moment the teachers decide to unite to voice their grievances about limited job security or reasonable pay or manageable workload and all of sudden they are labeled as crazy union thugs.

With lack of respect and with minimum wages, teachers today spend the last ounce of their energy trying to make a difference in their students' lives. Teaching as a profession is losing its pride. Teachers along with politicians have taken the respect out of their professions for so long that the public has lost faith in them. Look at the recent doctors’ strike which people were largely supportive of. In contrast, during the teachers’ strike, there were comments from parents and general public about how selfish the teachers were. The teachers today are treated as the slaves of the 21st century.

Young people should be able to see teaching as a profession that’s both noble and sustainable. It’s about time the teaching profession is elevated to the level where it truly belongs. The teachers should be rewarded for their dedication to teaching the children.

One change that needs to come is in the attitudes of the parents. They generally believe that since they are paying for the teachers' salaries, it gives them an upper hand in dealing with the school and the teachers. This same attitude is passed onto their wards as they spend more time with their guardians than they do with their teachers.

Teaching and teachers have shaped generations and informed the masses for centuries. It still plays a vital role in lifting a populace out of illiteracy. However the abundance of educators shouldn't mean the value of each educator is diminished. In contrast, it just means that we can now educate more people.

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Author's Bio: Mr. Karn has been teaching in secondary school of Nepal for 7 years. Currently a secondary Mathematics teacher at Suvatara School, he is also an active member of Teachers' Network Nepal.

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Vacancy at British Council Nepal: Project Manager (English and Digital for Girls’ Education in VSO’s Sisters for Sisters Project) and Training Consultant

British Council Nepal has published an advert for calling applications for the 4 years position as Project Manager (component: English and Digital for Girls Education) in the 'Sisters for Sisters Project'.

This position is a part of the wider English team, reporting to Head of Programmes Nepal. In year 1 and 2 there will be significant collaboration with the English (and wider Education) programme manager and officer, working on both English for Education Systems (EES) and Face to Face training projects.  However, years 3 and 4 will be primarily focused on managing the EDGE team and liaising with the following other roles: Project director, Finance manager, Project officer, HR officer, IT officer, Academic Consultant and Quality assessor. The EDGE component is allocated as follows over the 4 years: Yr 1: 25%; Yr 2 :50%; Yr 3&4 : 100%)   (Source: British Council)

For more details please click here.

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Call for Nominations for 6th P.P. Prasai 'Best Teacher Award 2017'

Like every years, this year also the PP Prasai Foundation has published call for application for 'Best Teacher Award 2017'. 

This year, the interested teacher has to submit recommendations from school management committee (SMC), Parents-Teachers Association (PTA), and a teacher/student. With the application the interested teacher has to provide personal details and professional details including details on educational training.

The best teacher at the national level will be evaluated with the information provided by the particular teacher for 9 questions about the best approaches, alignments and qualities deemed to that particular teacher. The 7 provincial best teachers will also be decided upon applications from 7 provinces, and the respective schools will be benefited with allowances and 2 'disadvantaged-scholarships' for each.

The Nepali version of the notice published by the PP Prasai Foundation follows.

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Internship Opportunity with OLE Nepal

OLE Nepal has been a popular organisation; esp. those who have been keeping updates about technology interventions for quality education. Terminology - ICT in education makes its genuine presence in rural Nepalese schools with this organisation and its ever innovative team.

If you are deeply passionate with such profession where you will contribute to educational development with a tech-savvy team, you are reading the right opportunity for you.

In their own words - "OLE Nepal offers internships to young students and graduates who wish to be part of our movement to bring quality education to all children in Nepal. The internship program also gives an excellent opportunity to participate in various open source projects. OLE Nepal is looking for 2 interns for the duration of 6 months. The positions will give college students or recent graduates a chance to work alongside our E-Paath content design and development team in our most important project. The two internships currently available are with the Content Design and Graphic Design teams." (Source: http://www.olenepal.org/internship/)

More Details: http://www.olenepal.org/internship/

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6 Starting Points for Place-based Learning

- Dr. Bernard Bull

“As you stroll down the halls of your neighborhood school at nine o’clock on a Wednesday morning, you notice that something is different. Many of the classrooms are empty; the students are not in their places with bright, shiny faces. Where are they? In the town woodlot, a forester teaches tenth graders to determine which trees should be marked for an upcoming thinning project. Downtown, a group of middle school students are collecting water samples in an urban stream to determine if there’s enough dissolved oxygen to support reintroduced trout. Out through the windows, you can see children sitting on benches writing poems. Down the way, a group of students works with a landscape architect and the math teacher to create a map that will be used to plan the schoolyard garden. Here’s a classroom with students. In it, eighth graders are working with second graders to teach them about the history of the local Cambodian community. In the cafeteria, the city solid-waste manager is consulting with a group of fifth graders and the school lunch staff to help them design the recycling and composting program. Students’ bright shiny faces are in diverse places in their schoolyards and communities.” – David Sobel in Place-Based Education: Connecting Classroom and Community

This opening paragraph comes from David Sobel’s 7-page overview of place-based learning, an educational philosophy that he helped popularize. Place-based education is an approach to teaching and learning that quite literally turns the community into the classroom. Some focus on learning that engages students in solving real problems in the community, but others just focus on the idea of place.

Oftentimes, educators begin their task of teaching a group of students by accepting the restraints of a given physical room. On occasion, the teacher might plan a field trip or even a series of outings. Yet, the classroom is still seen as the base and primary learning center. Teachers and students often design classrooms in wonderfully diverse and creative ways. Yet, the classroom is still the hub. Place-based learning is an approach that challenges that assumption. It begins with letting go of this dominant and age-old premise that most teaching and learning happens or should happen in a classroom.

Instead, a place-based learning philosophy begins with a couple of simple questions. What places in this community or the nearby community would create rich opportunities for student learning about a given topic or subject? What new possibilities for teaching and learning a given subject or topic emerge if we consider the entire community to be our physical classroom?

The moment that we allow ourselves to ask such questions, wonderful things start to happen. We find ourselves able to imagine new and promising opportunities for teaching and learning. We begin to think about the partnerships that might be needed or possible in other parts of the community. We rarely find ourselves focused upon a more narrow set of approaches to teaching and learning. In addition, we gravitate toward learning through service, projects, experiences, and any number of hands-on learning activities.

It is often amazing to see the power of reconsidering what we mean by space in learning contexts or to observe the change in attitude and mindset of teachers and students when we change locations. You can find a professor who persistently turns to lecture as the dominant form of teaching in a classroom suddenly become more of a tour guide who invites students to explore. We find teachers begin to think about learning through experiments and projects who previously leaned on textbooks and worksheets. As one article referenced by Sobel describes it, place-based learning allows us to imagine learning contexts where the river becomes the textbook. The place is not just a box with walls, windows, doors, and desks. The place is an intentional and thematic part of the learning experience.

Place-based learning is a philosophy that creates greater alignment between place and curriculum. It is one thing to study nature in a textbook. It is a completely different one to let the forest become at least a large part of the learning experience. We can sit in a social studies class and talk about social challenges, or we can actually engage in activities in the community we learners seek to understand the challenges firsthand, brainstorm solutions, create interventions, and test them out. We can complete math problems in a classroom or we can solve math problems in the community or experience math at work through architecture, the natural world, and much more. This is the spirit of place-based learning.

While there are schools that have made place-based learning a central part of pretty much everything that they do, even a single teacher in a traditional school can begin to tap into this power and possibility. It just takes a little creativity, preparation, and persistence.

Here are six helpful starting points.

1. Consider the possibilities – This begins with simply refusing to accept the physical classroom as an unchangeable constant. Start to look around for possibilities in the community that might align with the curriculum.
2. Think Beyond the Field Trip – Don’t just think about one-day trips. Those can be rich and valuable but stretch yourself to actually think of the community and specific places or organizations as your classroom, not just a brief reprieve from the traditional school room.
3. Start to Build a Network in the Community – Begin by reaching out to various groups and people in the community who own or work in places that align with the curriculum. Reach out to these people. Share a bit of what you are trying to do. Invite them to serve as partners. Brainstorm with them.
4. Learn from Others Who Have Done It – The web is full of teachers and schools that promote or embrace place-based learning. Reach out to the people and organizations with your questions. Learn from their challenges and successes. Get their input on your ideas and refine from there. Your community and resources will likely be different from their community and resources, but there are often transferable lessons.
5. Get Internal Support – You obviously can’t just throw the students in a bus and take off. There are usually policies and the like to work through. This might mean building a case with certain leaders. Be ready to address concerns about safety and cost. Both can be addressed, especially if you have some good partners.
6. Give it a Try – Once you have the place, connections, feedback and internal support; give it a try. Invite students and other colleagues into the experiment, and treat it as that…and experiment. Learn from what works and what does not, then refine the next attempt based on what you learn.

Place-based learning is not new, but it is gaining traction. The more we begin to accept the idea that the classroom need not be four walls with desks, the more we begin to imagine a new and incredible breadth of teaching and learning opportunites. Place-based learning can help us do that.

 ..........
Dr. Bernard Bull is a University professor, Assistant VP of Academics, Chief Innovation Officer, founder of Birdhouse Learning Labs, author, blogger at www.etale.org, and host of the MoonshotEduShow Podcast. 
This article has been reposted here upon consent from Dr. Bull; which has been originally posted on  http://etale.org/main/2016/10/11/the-affordances-limitations-of-place-based-learning/.

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