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Listening to children’s voices is still not considered an essential part of education in some schools, including many in Asian countries. The authority of schools and teachers is still highly valued under the continued influence of Confucian Heritage Culture in many Asian schools, including a significant number in Macao. Teachers in international schools in Asian countries often experience some difficulties when communicating with young children because of their low English proficiency and the traditional views supported by many parents who grew up with the Confucian Heritage Culture, which encourages children to be quiet in the classroom to be good listeners. This Action research took fifteen months between two school years, 2018- 2019 and 2019-2020, with two groups of four and five-year-old students in a kindergarten classroom. Documentation posters were created for young children to use the next morning to reflect on their learning. The pedagogy of listening and pedagogical documentation from the Reggio Emilia approach were implemented to discover and record young children’s ideas and interests, work with daily documentation posters, and help them reflect on documentation posters to improve their learning and develop their higher-order thinking skills. Photos and videos, observation notes with the children’s comments, documentation posters, and reflective discussions were used as interventions to collect the children’s ideas and record their learning activities. The children learned to use documentation posters to remember, think, share, and improve their learning. The children’s comments from Learning Centres, recess, and reflective discussions were used to examine their understanding of learning and higher-order thinking skills. During one Pilot Cycle and three structured data collection cycles, the children demonstrated improvement in learning for each learning project and development of their thinking skills both with and without the teacher’s support. The children demonstrated higher-order thinking skills more often from Learning Centres and recess when they had to solve problems. They also demonstrated higher-order thinking skills more often during the whole group reflective discussions than in small group reflections, when a bigger number of children joined or when they had enough time to think. The thinking skills when children were reflecting were observed to concentrate on remembering and understanding as they focused on remembering and sharing the previous day’s work. The children’s other higher-order thinking skills did not show an increase in frequency during reflective discussions. However, the children demonstrated active engagement and a range of higher-order thinking skills when the teacher asked openended questions and provided support and comments to help them to connect their learning to their past experiences. Findings indicated that the children’s learning from each Learning Centre showed change and improvement during their play over time according to their interests, indicated by their material use and comments. The research was limited by its small number of participants within their age group due to convenience sampling and the children’s relatively limited ability to demonstrate higher-order thinking skills. This study has shown how teachers could help children use daily documentation posters to develop their learning and thinking skills by visualizing their ideas and the teacher’s important role in supporting children’s learning with active listening and support in the classroom
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With water being an essential for life on Earth, it is vital to preserve it and regenerate it, in order to be available for a myriad of uses. Though many types of wastewater management and treatment are available, most rely on high energy input and are therefore not ideal for many circumstances. Constructed wetlands (CW) are an alternative nature-based solution to be applied to wastewater treatment. This study undertakes a Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) of a CW as a means of wastewater treatment and aims to understand how these systems can be an environmentally conscious alternative. The CW under study is located in a rural mountain area in the north of Portugal. Receives wastewater from a tourism unit and operates with horizontal subsurface. The LCA analyses the CW through the construction, operation (treatment), and composting phases. This approach allows the entire scope of the life cycle to be included, of which, the composting phase has been absent in similar LCA previously undertaken. Analysis focuses on the impact categories: Ozone Layer Depletion Potential, Global Warming Potential, Acidification Potential, Eutrophication Potential and Human Toxicity Potential. Of the five categories, none increase during the treatment phase, and indeed, Acidification Potential, Eutrophication Potential, and Human Toxicity potential all decrease. Ozone Layer Depletion Potential and Global Warming Potential increase significantly during the construction and composting phases respectively. Both can be rationalized, with the former being a result of heavy diesel machinery use in construction and the latter a natural byproduct of composting. The results are net positive and display the ability for CW as a low energy wastewater treatment which can limit environmental impact by choice of construction and composting methodology
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