Great Britain Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Great Britain - Essay Example rnment has been one of the most complex and multifaceted political processes.1 This is so because throughout history there has been a struggle to shift power and accountability from the supreme king to the people who claimed to be the representatives of people. Britain is one of the very few countries that have been lucky enough to have not been invaded over the past thousand years. Due to this reason, Britain has no history of any revolution or constitution. As a consequence, there has never arisen any need for a written constitution or set of laws. The ultimate result is that the political system of Britain is not really logical or clean. However, the change in laws that has occurred throughout history has been gradual and often built on consensus. One of the major problems that the political system in Britain faces is the fact that the United Kingdom throughout political history has been divided into three parts. According to Hesperides, the three parts of United Kingdom, namely Scotland, Wales and the Northern Ireland have special statuses and have separate local administrations with a huge number of responsibilities.2 It is, however, ironic because England, the part of Great Britain that has the highest (or more precisely 84%) population, does not have a strong sense of regionalism. As a result, the United Kingdom is not very similar to the American system of government that rules over a total of fifty states. Although matters like defence and foreign affairs are some things that are under the direct control of the central British government, devolution of the Scottish, the Welsh and the Irish assembly have led to a greater desire among the people to strengthen the local government in the United Kingdom. This has led to an increased divide between the people who just wish to be representatives of a certain group of people. UK, as mentioned earlier, is a country that has not been invaded and conquered in any way for the last thousand years. The fact that

Hands-on Learning Motivates Students in the Science Classroom Thesis

Hands-on Learning Motivates Students in the Science Classroom - Thesis Example References 27 6.0. Appendices 28 6.1. Appendix 1: Student Survey Questionnaire 28 6.2. Appendix 2: Teacher-To-Be Survey Questionnaire 29 6.3. Appendix 3: Results of Test-Retest Reliability Analysis 30 List of Tables Table 1. Gender and Age Profile of Grade 10 Student Respondents 7 Table 2. Gender and Age Profile of Teacher and Student-Teacher Respondents 8 Table 3. Detailed Data Analysis Plan 12 Table 4. Student Level of Interest on Lecture 19 Table 5. Level of Student Interest on Hands-On Activities 20 Table 6. Students’ Preferred Method in Science Teaching 21 List of Figures Figure 1: Why Students Take the Science Course 13 Figure 2: What the Students Like to Do in the Science Classroom 14 Figure 3: Frequency of Conducting Group Activities 16 Figure 4: Perceived Usefulness of Labs or Hands-On Activities 16 Figure 5: Student Understanding of Concepts through Hands-On Activities 17 Figure 6: Teaching Method That Helped Students Better 18 1.0 Introduction The term hands-on lear ning means â€Å"learning through doing† (Gardiner, 2005, para.2). Hands-on learning is used commonly in the science classroom to describe a form of learning where students investigate and develop understanding of a scientific concept by active involvement in an activity or an experiment (Gardiner, 2005). Askell-Williams and Lawson (as cited in Brophy, 2010) reported that middle school students frequently mention hands-on activities when asked about interesting elements of lessons, together with features which satisfy their need to for independence, competence and relatedness, experiments, outdoor learning, design projects, and innovative and creative assignments. Meanwhile, high school students enjoy classes for different reasons, and tend to rate highly those related to learning, creation,... Grounded on the findings of the study, all groups of respondents demonstrated their concurrence with the thesis statement that â€Å"hands-on learning motivates students in the science classroom†. The following conclusions were drawn for the specific objectives of the study. This report makes a conclusion that the uniqueness of each individual is one of the perplexities of humankind. Even twins have different set of fingerprints and different ways of learning styles and preferred teaching method. Even student teachers who are well-versed on the efficacy of various teaching methods prefer different teaching styles. The experienced science teachers recognized such individual differences and attributed different favorite teaching styles to such differences. The teachers declared that there is no one single style which can help develop the cognitive competence of students in science. In some concepts, however, one or a combination of two methods have proven to be more efficient that other styles. Teachers have to be aware of student preference and needs to adapt lessons and activities to these varying needs. The Science teachers enumerated several advantages and disadvantages of hands-on activities. Among the advantages identified were: hands-on activities e nable students to experience scientific phenomena through experiments with physical materials; these activities teach a student in planning investigations, utilization of scientific instruments, and in the collection, recording, and analysis of data.