Browsing by Author "Bekele, Abebe"

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    An Analysis of the Work-oriented Character of the Ethiopian Primary School Curriculum
    (Addis Ababa University, 1994-06) Chere, Andualem; Bekele, Abebe
    The purpo se of thi s study is t o analyse wh e ther the Ethiopian Curri culum of primary schoo l i s work-oriented or no t. To ach i eve thi s a im, t e xtbook co nt en t analysis and qu e st i onnai res have b een used as data co llect ion instruments. Four s t eps have been f o ll owed i n ana ly s ing t he conten t of th e t ex tbooks . Th e first step i s concerned wi th text book selection. Th e second step involves defining the research prob l ems in t e rm s o f categoriE's in relation t o the thE'sis bas i c qUE'st i ons. Th e th ird s t ep deals with ide n tif y ing the t ec hnique of mea surement or uni t o f content. The last step identifies th e system o f enum e rati o n. Th en . da t a obta ined from text bo ok ana lysi s and questi onnaire are int e rpreted and summari zed. The results of the analysis show th a t thirty- seven p e rcpnt of thp co nt ents are work - rpf ere nced. Of th ese wo rkfc, fer"nced paragra ph s , thirty - ti1r f'E' percent are hIlle - c o llar refe r enced and four per cent are ,.- h i te - co l l ar - l'io r k-referenced, TIle quest t o find n llt thp students ocrupational aspirations has r evealed that con t rary t o th e cnntpn t s of the t ex t books, their occupational aspira tion is i ncl ined to wh ite-c o llar categ o ri es o f occupat i o n s . On th e basis of the results. it is co n c luded that, in mos t aspects, th e present content of th e Ethiopian e lementary sc ho o l t ex tbooks do n o t co nt ai n a ba lan ced pr opo rtion o f co ntents which r e fl ec t wo rk orientation . Thoug h the f e ..work- or i en t ed paragraphs re f l ected a blue-collar ca t ego r y of " ork b ia s , th ey fail t o develop on s tu de nt s pos i tive att itude t oward s ma nual work,
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    Automatic Detection of Malaria Parasite based on Microscopic Image Analysis
    (Addis Ababa University, 2017-02) Bekele, Abebe; Demelash, Masreshaw(PhD)
    Automatic Detection of Malaria Parasite based on Microscopic Image Analysis Abebe Bekele Addis Ababa University, 2017 Malaria is a serious global health problem and its diagnosis is usually done manually by compound light microscopy which is time consuming, tiresome and subjective. To support this manual method, in this master thesis, we designed and developed a system which is able to automatically detect plasmodium parasites from images of blood smears acquired by ourselves using a digital light microscope. In this method, blood smears taken from patients who were infected with plasmodium parasites were prepared. Digital images were then acquired by the light microscope and saved in the computer. Red blood cells (RBCs) are first segmented by marker control watershed algorithm, where the foreground markers are obtained from circular Hough transform and background markers from distance transform. The plasmodium infected RBCs are then detected in the Hue-Saturation-Intensity (HSI) color space. Thresholding on hue component of HSI color space is used to detect the chromatin dots of the parasite. Plasmodium falciparum and plasmodium vivax, the two dominant plasmodium species which cause the vast deaths in Ethiopia, are differentiated based on the size of infected RBCs. The performance of the proposed system for RBC segmentation, parasite detection and species differentiations was analyzed by comparing with the gold standard manual method for the total of 91 images of thin blood smears. The result shows that 97% of the RBC counts are similar to the gold standard with 97.5% sensitivity and 84.4% positive predictive value for plasmodium parasite detection at the cellular level. The species differentiations were done for each image with the accuracy level of 91.46%.The result showed the potential of the method for supporting the mass screening of malaria parasite. Keywords: Digital Microscope, Plasmodium, Thin Blood Smears, Watershed Algorithm, Circular Hough Transform, Distance Transform, Hue-Saturation-Intensity (HSI), Thresholding
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    An Evaluation of the Implementation of the Lower Primary School Social Studies Syllabus: The Case of North Shewa Administrative Zone
    (Addis Ababa University, 1994-06) Getachew_ Endalamaw; Bekele, Abebe
    The test of a curriculum plan is ascertained through a thorough inquiry into its practicality and ultimate worth. In view of this, the purpose of this study is to evaluate tbe implementation of the lower primary school social studies syllabus and to identify the outcome as well as problems encountered in translating it into practice. To this effect, fifteen primary schools were se lected as sources of information from tbe five Provinces of North Shewa Administrative Zone. Within tbese schools all social studies teachers of the lower primary grades which are forty-two in number, the school directors, the SPC Coordinators, and a tOlal of 1445 students were taken as actual sources of info rmation. In addition, the school inspectors and the APC Coordinators of the fi,'e Provinces were also included as informants of the study. Questionnaire, interview, classroom observation, and achievement tests were the data collection instrume nts used to obtain information from the sources. The results of the study in (licate that there are a considerable proportion of teachers who are assigned to teach social studies in the lower primary grades without their interest. The specifications of the syllabus are not also implemented in full. Most of the lessons are conducted wi thou t making any reference to the particular geohistorical conditions of the District, Province, or Administrative Zone in which the children are brought up. Though the dominantly used teaching strategy in the classrooms is the inquiry-oriented approach, there is a failure on the part of teachers to give appropriate guidance to the students as to how to proceed through this approach. Even though the School Pedagogical Centres have attempted to prepare and collect teaching aids relevant for the subject under study and the teachers are not overloaded with teaching duties, it is hard to say that there is a complete conducive teaching-learning atmosphere in the schools for the implementation of the syllabus. Ill-equipped classrooms with some of the necessary furniture, inavailability of Teacher's Guide in some of the schools, the existence of some less concerned school directors about the instructional problems of teachers are the prominent problems identified in the schools. Consequently, the implementation process of the Syllabus is not as effective as it should be in enabling learne rs to have mastery of the subject matter. Particularly, in grades two :1nd three the majority of the students have not attained the instructional objectives indicating the ineffectiveness of the implementation process. Moreover, disparity in the attainment of some of the instructional objectives is noted among the provinces pointing out the existence of differences in the relative emphasis given to the implementation of the specifications of the syllabus.
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    An Investigation into the Major Problems that Contributed to the Failure of the Recently Innovated Community-based Preschool Program in Rural Ethiopia
    (Addis Ababa University, 1996-06) Legesse, Demissie; Bekele, Abebe
    Community-based preschool program (CBPP) was intended to provide care and educational services to rural preschool age children who were entirely devoid of the opportunity. The program was expected to address the stressful familial and extra-familial environment in which the children live through collective community action (community-based approach). This recent educational innovation to rural areas , however , failed to achieve its objective after consuming considerable size of the meagre resource available. This study was therefore conducted to investigate into problems (factors) that account for the failuri te of t he program by giving due emphasis to those related to the innovation process followed. They are (1) whether or not preliminary needs assessment has been made for innovating the program; (2) community's awareness of the significance, of the program; (3) problems related to administrative coordination and resource input in implementing the programs and (4) whether or not follow up (evaluation) has been made for the program. Questionnaires , interviews and observation checklist were employed for the purpose of data collection. Relevant documents have also been consulted to substantiate the information gathered through these instruments. The excoordinators of the program at various levels (National, Zonal and District) ,teachers, the ex-committees for preschool affairs and the randomly selected community members from rural villages were used as the subjects of the study. Such statistical means as percentage system, mean values , weighted ranking, and the t-test have been employed for analysing the data gathered. After a therough invest igat i ons have been made on the assumptions raised the findings obtained made clear (1) lack of appropriate needs assessment for innovating the program to rural areas; (2) community's lack of awareness about the significance of the program; (3) prevalence of administrative problems (e . g . absence of important administrative mechanisms for operating the program; lack of bottom-top-bottom coordination of activities; inability of different parties who were expected to promote the implementation of the program to carry out their tasks; inappropriate and inadequate human, material a nd financial resource inputs ; and (4) lack of systematic follow up during the implementation of the program. Finally, as a measure towards the revival of this failure program' and also its diffusion to other rural areas of the country , some recommendations have been forwarded among which (a) priority attention be given to educate the rural community through possible means (e. g. adult education ; mass media, etc.) before or parallel to the provision of preschool program, (b) encouragement of communi ty participation in the evolution and growth of the program ; (c) encouragement of private investors and organizations to take part in meeting the social and educational needs of preschool age rural children; (d) to practice such an educational innovation (as CBPP) on limited s cale i n some rural villages; a r e the main.
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    An Investigation of Teachers' Training Institute Instructors Effectiveness in Defining and Implementing the General Objectives of Pedagogic Syllabus (With Particular Reference to TTIS in Region Three)
    (Addis Ababa University, 1996-06) Demissie, Getnet; Bekele, Abebe
    TThe purpose of this study was to examine the TTl instructors effectiveness in implementing the general objectives of the pedagogics syllabus. Among the many characteristics of teacher effectiveness which are necessary for implementing the objectives of a syllabus, due emphasis was given here for instructors' preparation of lesson plans, formulation of objectives, making the trainees aware of each lesson objective, and correspondence of the instructional activities of the instructors and trainees to the intended lesson objectives. To this end, all the pedagogics instructors (11 in number), the directors, the deputy directors, and a total of 550 trainees (50 trainees for each instructor) in the three TTls of Region Three - Debre Birhan, Dessie, and Gondar- were the sources of information. The data collection instruments used in the study were questionnaire, interview, classroom observation, and documentary analysis. And, the data collected were analysed using percentages, averages, One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOV A), Tukey Honestly Significant Difference (HSD) method, and Pearson Product-Moment Correlation. The results of the study revealed that all the instructors did not prepare consecutive lesson plans but use the lesson plans prepared by their colleagues in every instruction. It was ascertained that the majority of the instructors prepared five lesson plans once for a week in every month. Most of the objectives of the prepared lesson plans were specific, and consisted of both behaviour and content. However, an insignificant num ber of objectives of the lessons included behaviour, content, testing condition, and standard of performance simultaneously. In addition, the prepared lesson plans were observed as highly dominated by lower level cognitive objectives- knowledge and comprehension. In the actual classroom instruction, instructors were also observed in making effort for the attairullent of lower level cognitive objectives mor,e often than affective and higher level cognitive objectives- though the latter groups of objectives were given a considerable degree of emphasis by the instructors when they teach than they plan. All the lesson objectives have been found to be encompassed in the unit and general objectives of the syllabus, but a considerable number of unit objectives of the syllabus were not described by the lesson objectives. Instructors did not also make their trainees aware of the intended lesson objectives. Although most of the instructional activities ofthe instructors and the trainees were aimed at the attairunent of the lesson objectives, there were some (instructors' and trainees') instructional activities which do not correspond with the written lesson objectives. Hence, instructors effectiveness in implementing the general objectives of the pedagogics syllabus was not as much as it should be. Based on these findings, appropriate recommendations were also forwarded.
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    Major Factors Affecting the English Achievement Upper Primary School Pupils in Gondar Town
    (Addis Ababa University, 1994-06) Ayele, Abera; Bekele, Abebe
    The quality of ed uca tion as reflected in academic achievement can not be divorced from the complex set of social and edu ca tional factors which interplay to affect l earning processes and outcomes. The question "what makes a differ e nce in academic performance?" has been addressed by differ ent researchers from both the developed and the developing countries. Within the developed countr i es much i s known about the determinant - achievement relationships. In the developing countries, how ever, the findings are inconclusive and in co nsistent. The purpose of the study was to examine the extent t o which variables used in the Educational Production Function and the Process-Product research approaches explain differences in grade five and six pupi Is ' Engl ish achievement. Specifically, the study attemptecl to inves tigate the relative impact on pupils' achievement of seven home, six pupil, six schoolc lassr oom ancl eleven teacher relat ed variables. This task was accompl ished by regressing thirty ind e pendent variables for each grade le vel . The dependent variable used as a cri terion measure was achievement test prepared by the investigator based on the objectives and contents determined by the Ministry of Education for the respective grade levels. The thirty ind e pend ent variables were selected on the basis of review of lit eratu r e. Information on the independent variables was secured using three basi c t oo ls of data coll ec tion: Questionnnaire, school and classroom inventory, and classroom evaluation rating scale. The r e lationship between the thirty independ en t var iabl es and pupils ' achievement at each grade l eve l was analysed by the method of multipl e r eg ression. A var iahl e's statistical impact on the dependent variable was acceptecl as s i gnificant at 0 . 05 a level or better . Results of the analysis revealed that variables describing home, pupil. school-classroom and teacher attributes have differential impacts on students ' English achievement: some va ria b l es (s uch as class r epet ition, father 's education and planning sk il l) showed statisti ca lly significant impacts whil e others (such as pup l sex, class-size, and family-size) exer t ed nonsignifi ca nt influence. Based on these findin gs some basic conclusions are r eac hed and related r ec omm enda tion s forwarded
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    The Relevance of the Primary School Curriculum to the Future Roles of Rural Girls in the Silt! Area: It’s Impact Upon Their Dropout
    (Addis Ababa University, 1997-06) Tuji, Wendmagegnehu; Bekele, Abebe
    One of the major funct ions of the school curriculum is to provide the knowledge, skills ~md experience which are rdcvant 10 the contexts of the actual life of the students. [n view of this, the purpose of this study is to examine the relevance of the primary school curriculum to the futllrc roles of rural girls in the Silti area and to assess its impact upon their dropout. To this dTect 21 rural primary schollls were selected as sources of information from three worcdas that are inhabited by Silti people. Within these schools all the teachers, school directors, and female students of grades J through 6 were taken as actual sources of iltlormation. In addition, from the neighbouring villages of the sample schools, a total of 324 parents and community members were included in the s,m1ple population. Questionnaire, interview and classroom observation were the c1at,·, collection instruments used in the study. The rcsults of the study idcntified marriage as the only practically available status of life to which the largest majority of female graduates and dropouts from rural Silti primary schools are joining. Yet the results reveal the mismatch between what the girls are exposed to in their primary school curriculum ,md most of the major roles which the girls are required to play in thcir marricd lill:. The centralizl,d nature oCthe primary school curriculum and teachers' failure to utilize the major instructi onal considerations that are essential for the enricl1\11ent of the meaningfulness of the lessons taught are thc two prominent reasons for the inelevance of the curricu,lum to the purpose under-discussion. Moreover the results of tlus study have identified curricular irrelevance as one of the three major reasons (next to early marriage and intensive labour at home) for the dropout of rural Silti girls from primary schools.
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    Utilization of Long Acting and Permanent Contraceptive Methods and Associated Factors Among Married Women of Reproductive age in Bishoftu Town, Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia
    (Addis Abeba Universty, 2017-06) Bekele, Abebe; Seme, Assefa
    Background: The benefit of contraceptive methods has become an important factor in the life of reproductive age of women. Specially, the utilization of Long Acting and Permanent contraceptive Methods (LAPMs) is most effective methods of contraceptive available and are very safe and suitable; do not need daily initiation on the part of the users, and no need of frequent visit to service providers and hence, saves time and money for individual and the government. Objectives: To assess utilization of long acting and permanent contraceptive methods and associated factors among married women of reproductive age in Bishoftu town Methods: Community based cross-sectional study was conducted from September, 2016 among married women of reproductive age in Bishoftu town. Study Kebeles selected by lottery method. Systematic sampling used to select study households while all eligible women in the selected households recruited for the study. The minimum sample size required for the study was 419. A pre-test and structured questionnaire used to collect data from each respondent. The data field edited and entered in to EPI-Info 7 version and cleaned then exported to SPSS version 16 for analyses. Descriptive statistics such as frequency tables and percentages used to describe the study participants. In a bivariate analysis Odds Ratio (OR) and 95% Confidence Intervals calculated to see the magnitude and significance of the association between independent and the dependent variables, respectively. Multiple logistic regression analysis was conducted to determine the independent predictors of LAPMs utilization in the study area. Result: Utilization of LAPMs was 35.7%, the most common is Implant 101(25.5%), and followed by Intra Uterine Contraceptive Device (IUCD) 37(9.4%) and the least was female sterilization 3(0.8%). The result of multivariate analysis revealed that, the significant association of education of respondent on utilization of LAPMs [AOR 2.76, 95% CI (1.16, 6.55)], attitude of husband on LAPMs [AOR 2.97, 95%CI (1.58, 5.59)], discussion with service providers on use of LAPMs [AOR 5.68, 95%CI (2.06, 15.68)], and married women those who need any more additional children was found to be associated [AOR 2.01, 95%CI (1.19, 3.40)]. Conclusion: Utilization of LAPMs among contraceptive methods users in a town was 35.7% and higher than the LAPMs use rate reported other studies and Ethiopia Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS) 2014, but still lead by short acting methods that was inject-able followed by Implant and the least female sterilization.