Education in the crucible of a postcolonial revolution: community reaction to the challenges of Zimbabwe’s crisis

It is paradoxical that when Zimbabwe was experiencing the worst economic situation in its recorded history and the highest inflation rate ever experienced worldwide by any nation at peace, its educational achievements were unprecedented. The economy had untold negative effects on the education system causing mass exodus of teachers, dilapidation of infrastructure, shortage of library books and even lack of food. However, against this backdrop, the country scored major successes in education. In 2010, Zimbabwe became the highest ranked in terms of literacy on the continent. University enrolment was ninefold by 2006, and technical and vocational education has achieved similar developments. How and by what means? Research on education has so far mainly focused on the institutions of higher learning with little or no concern at all about community activities and efforts to sustain education at various levels. In fact until recently university education in Zimbabwe has had little community participation. This had to change during the last decade when the state could not afford to fund its own army, let alone education. Donor, bilateral and multilateral funding were withdrawn as the sanctions screw tightened. This research explores the community (students and parents) efforts in sustaining education from secondary to tertiary institutions. How did parents and students react to the deteriorating conditions of education and with what effect? The study findings indicate parents responded by supporting teachers with money and food, engaging in economic activities such as cross-border trading, and were involved in teaching the students. The students also responded by engaging in peer education and sharing resources such as books. This study could widen our understanding of community participation in education particularly at university level.     

Church Attendance,Social Capital,and Black Voting Participation*

Objectives. We test the traditional studies of political participation that suggest enhanced education and income will help reduce the racial gap in voting. Methods. We adopt a Bayesian model to test the impact of education and income on both black and white racial groups. We also link the explanation of black voting participation to social capital. Results. We find that bonding and bridging social capital as well as human capital are all important in explaining white voting participation, but only bonding social capital, measured by church attendance, explained African‐American voting participation. Conclusions. We conclude that the utility of social capital theory and continuing significance of human capital theory must be considered in a racial context. In addition, our findings offer important implications about the continuing role of black churches for increasing social capital and political participation.     

Bioequivalence and the pharmaceutical industry

Since the early 1990s, average bioequivalence (ABE) studies have served as the international regulatory standard for demonstrating that two formulations of drug product will provide the same therapeutic benefit and safety profile when used in the marketplace. Population (PBE) and individual (IBE) bioequivalence have been the subject of intense international debate since methods for their assessment were proposed in the late 1980s and since their use was proposed in United States Food and Drug Administration guidance in 1997. Guidance has since been proposed and finalized by the Food and Drug Administration for the implementation of such techniques in the pioneer and generic pharmaceutical industries. The current guidance calls for the use of replicate design and of cross‐over studies (cross‐overs with sequences TRTR, RTRT, where T is the test and R is the reference formulation) for selected drug products, and proposes restricted maximum likelihood and method‐of‐moments techniques for parameter estimation. In general, marketplace access will be granted if the products demonstrate ABE based on a restricted maximum likelihood model. Study sponsors have the option of using PBE or IBE if the use of these criteria can be justified to the regulatory authority. Novel and previously proposed SAS^®‐based approaches to the modelling of pharmacokinetic data from replicate design studies will be summarized. Restricted maximum likelihood and method‐of‐moments modelling results are compared and contrasted based on the analysis of data available from previously performed replicate design studies, and practical issues involved in the application of replicate designs to demonstrate ABE are characterized. It is concluded that replicate designs may be used effectively to demonstrate ABE for highly variable drug products. Statisticians should exercise caution in the choice of modelling procedure. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Technology-Enhanced Active Learning Classrooms: New Directions for Social Work Education

Social work educators are increasingly exploring how to effectively use technology in their classrooms. The purpose of this study was to explore how a technology-enhanced active learning classroom influenced social work students’ engagement and overall learning experiences. An online survey was conducted with 125 social work students from micro and macro courses. When compared to macro courses, students from micro social work courses more positively reported active participation, effective teaching, and technical skills as benefits of the classroom. Furthermore, the dynamic learning environment and instructors’ effective teaching significantly affected students’ positive learning experience. Social work programs should develop various teaching methods for active learning classrooms to develop students’ practice skills that can be transferred to the real world.     

A Simple Demonstration of the Relationship between Classification and Canonical Variates Analysis

The purpose of this article is to provide a perspective on present technology for acquisition of information relative to the status of renewable natural resources, with particular emphasis on forest and marine resources. Commonalities and dichotomies are emphasized in the hope of achieving a synthesis that will promote shared understanding and dialogue between statisticians and natural resource discipline specialists, with the ultimate goal being improved survey methodology.     

Viewpoint: observations on scaled average bioequivalence

The two one-sided test procedure (TOST) has been used for average bioequivalence testing since 1992 and is required when marketing new formulations of an approved drug. TOST is known to require comparatively large numbers of subjects to demonstrate bioequivalence for highly variable drugs, defined as those drugs having intra-subject coefficients of variation greater than 30%. However, TOST has been shown to protect public health when multiple generic formulations enter the marketplace following patent expiration. Recently, scaled average bioequivalence (SABE) has been proposed as an alternative statistical analysis procedure for such products by multiple regulatory agencies. SABE testing requires that a three-period partial replicate cross-over or full replicate cross-over design be used. Following a brief summary of SABE analysis methods applied to existing data, we will consider three statistical ramifications of the proposed additional decision rules and the potential impact of implementation of scaled average bioequivalence in the marketplace using simulation. It is found that a constraint being applied is biased, that bias may also result from the common problem of missing data and that the SABE methods allow for much greater changes in exposure when generic-generic switching occurs in the marketplace.