Sustainable development modules: algorithm development and implementation in university educational programs

Досліджено нормативно-правовий та інституційно-адміністративний механізм державного управління сталим розвитком аграрного сектору та сільських територій. Проаналізовано міжнародний досвід запровадження принципів сталого розвитку. На основі проведеного аналізу запропоновано алгоритм запровадження основ концепції сталого розвитку України, а саме: прийняття національної стратегії сталого розвитку “Україна – 2030”, відповідно до Глобальних цілей сталого розвитку (далі – ЦСР), прийнятих Генеральною Асамблеєю Організації Об’єднаних Націй (далі – ООН) 25 вересня 2015 р. “Перетворення нашого світу: Порядок денний сталого розвитку 2030”, який вміщує 17 Глобальних ЦСР до 2030 р.; Указу Президента України “Цілі сталого розвитку України на період до 2030 року” від 30.09.2019 р. Зазначено, що в рамках національної стратегії повинна бути розроблена програма сталого розвитку аграрного сектору та сільських територій. Адже для досягнення 2-ї Цілі “Подолання голоду, досягнення продовольчої безпеки, поліпшення харчування та сприяння сталому сільському господарству” саме аграрний сектор та сільські громади мають вирішальну роль. Запропоновано удосконалення адміністративно-інституціонального механізму управління сталим розвитком, а саме створення державного комітету із сталого розвитку, підпорядкованого Кабінету Міністрів України, для здійснення координаційної діяльності всіх міністерств та відомств у напрямку запровадження стратегії сталого розвитку. Розглянуто методи побудови механізмів державного управління сталим розвитком, які враховують інтереси усіх зацікавлених сторін, базуються на моделі “державно-приватного” партнерства, а також методах горизонтальної та вертикальної інтеграції, враховуючи альтернативи розвитку держави, специфіку аграрного сектору економіки, потреб сільських територіальних громад у напрямку досягнення ЦСР.

The article raises the problem of readiness of pedagogical staff of the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan for realization of task 4.7 of Sustainable Development Goals in general education. The results of research on teachers' awareness and their attitude to education on sustainable development and for sustainable development are analyzed in two countries. Teachers' opinions on education for sustainable development and ways of its implementation are described and systematized. Similar problems are identified, their causes are discussed and directions for improvement are proposed. It is concluded that the process of greening of both the content of general and professional pedagogical education is a common direction to ESD for both countries. The areas of mutual interests and cooperation between scientists and teachers of both countries in this direction were identified. The Russian Federation does not have a state program on training of teachers in the sphere of education for sustainable development and education of global citizenship, but the Concept of general environmental education for sustainable development has been developed. The project "Green University" on preparation of teachers for implementation of task 4.7 of Sustainable Development Goals was launched in Kazakhstan. Cooperation between scientists of the two countries in developing a common model of Green School/Higher Education, based on mutual reinforcement of key ideas of pilot projects on greening the content of general education in Russian schools and greening the content of teacher training in Kazakh universities on the basis of a general institutional approach, seems promising.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Continuous Professional Development (CPD) Programs aim to support the career progression of faculty members by leveraging their professional experiences, theoretical knowledge, research, and professionalism with colleagues. These programs enhance skills, knowledge, and competencies throughout a faculty career. However, institutional barriers such as heavy workloads and limited resources can hinder the effectiveness of CPD programs. Faculty training enables them to address concerns, be aware of their teaching assumptions, and foster a positive educational environment. It requires reflection, openness to new ideas, and intellectual work for professional growth. This study’s objective was to determine the frequencies of Institutional Barriers faced by faculty to Continuous Professional Development (CPD) Programs. METHODOLOGY: In this research, we used an observational study design. Purposive sampling was employed to collect the responses. A total of 229 participants responded. Data were entered and analyzed using IBM SPSS version 26 software. A pilot study was conducted to measure reliability. Frequencies were measured, and associations between categorical variables were determined using the Pearson Chi-Square Test. RESULTS: Significant associations of almost all the identified institutional barriers were observed with academic positions whereas the majority of the barriers demonstrated no association with gender and specialty. CONCLUSION: Academic position is the most important factor identified in our study, showing strong associations with almost all the institutional barriers studied. By creating a supportive environment and promoting continuous learning, institutions can empower faculty members to engage in CPD activities and enhance their professional development.

The article examines the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the transformation of the educational and scientific spheres. It is determined that today, AI is evolving from a simple technology into a powerful tool for transforming education and science. The use of AI offers several advantages, including personalization of the learning process through adaptive systems, automation of routine tasks, and the utilisation of data analytics tools to integrate research and data analysis into scientific and educational cycles, such as those facilitated by intelligent laboratories and digital twins. At the same time, AI can pose risks in areas such as academic integrity, research ethics, publications, and peer review; traditional assessment and teaching methods become irrelevant and ineffective. The use of AI in educational and scientific activities not only improves the teaching process, but also brings universities closer to achieving sustainable development goals, ensuring a higher level of educational services through the use of digital tools, adaptive technologies, learning stimulators, increasing the inclusiveness of the educational environment, increasing the energy efficiency of higher education institutions, training specialists in the development and use of AI for Industry x.0. At the same time, this process negatively affects SDG 7 and 13 due to the increase in electricity consumption by data centres and the carbon footprint of supercomputers. Analysis of international practices reveals that leading universities prioritise innovation in the academic environment by leveraging AI tools. A university's innovative AI-oriented ecosystem is being formed, which combines educational and research initiatives through ethical principles, transparency, a focus on interdisciplinary approaches, and the development of cooperation. Focusing on the market, universities must also adapt their educational products, taking into account requirements such as skill transformation, automation of routine roles, and the demand for AI specialists. It is shown that the educational services market itself is transforming in response to the demands of the time, including the formation of data analytics, machine learning, and programming competencies, the development of skills in using AI tools in the workplace, and a deepening of knowledge about advanced developments in the field of AI. The following areas of educational services are highlighted: university educational programs, courses (for beginners or specialised, such as those on studying Power BI), comprehensive boot camps, intensive training, and self-study. The price range, depending on the profile and volume of such educational services in Ukraine, was analysed, which ranges from 11,000 UAH for short-term courses to 332,800 UAH per year for bachelor's programs in the speciality «Systems Analysis and Data Science». It is demonstrated that enhancing the level of AI competencies is a promising approach to increasing a specialist's competitiveness in the labour market. For the education and science system, it is crucial to select training forms and methods that most effectively meet the current requirements.

In the process of globalization taking place in a modern dynamically developing society, the subjects meeting the needs of the labor market are active, prone to changing working conditions, prone to self-education and improvement, especially business people with full professional competencies. Their peculiarity is the ability to actively think, critical thinking, independent assimilation of new knowledge. The competence-based approach is one of the most important methodological means of bringing the education system of Kazakhstan closer to foreign educational systems within the framework of the Bologna process. In this regard, the goal of foreign language teachers in Kazakh universities is to form genuine "competence" among students, the universality of competencies, even so that they can become "competitive". The article considers the competence approach primarily as an approach based on learning outcomes.

The paper focuses on the major trends of higher education system development in the Republic of Kazakhstan. It gives an overview of the evaluation of Kazakh universities by national and global university rankings. Most of the experts are of the opinion that reforming the national higher education system requires paying special attention to the experience of the leading Western and some Asian universities which are at the top positions in world rankings. However, the trends of higher education development in the countries that, like Russia, inherited the Soviet education system and try to build their national models are of interest as well. One of these countries is the Republic of Kazakhstan, one of the few former Soviet republics to have managed a successful adaptation to market economy. Nowadays Kazakhstan is a signatory of major international documents in the area of education (the Lisbon Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education in the European Region, the Bologna Declaration etc.) On the whole, Kazakhstan's higher education system undergoes transformations. In line with the challenges of our time, the major vector of Kazakh universities' development is internationalization. At present, world rankings are used as the main instrument of measuring the effectiveness of universities. Even though this instrument is questionable as to how adequately the existing rankings evaluate the universities, it is widely used in the modern world. Thus, we have to follow it as well. The purpose of entering the world rankings by Kazakh universities was set by President N.A. Nazarbayev in his message to the people of Kazakhstan in 2010. The most popular nowadays are two global rankings: QS and THE. Global and national rankings are widely used in Kazakhstan for the universities' positioning and promotion, with the government paying much attention to it. Trying to enter the top of world rankings, Kazakh universities are actively studying international experience, working out and implementing their development strategies. However, as the trends of the recent years show, this task is feasible only for two metropolitan universities, the Al-Farabi Kazakh National University and the L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University. The Kazakh model of higher education is increasingly commercialized. It is evident both in the dynamics of the number of state-funded student positions and in the tuition fees. Internationalization is marked with a bias in favor of Western partners, a tendency underlined by the fact that some universities teach in English and employ mostly foreigners. At the same time it is evident that the Republic of Kazakhstan has its own way of moving to a modernized higher education system.

The chapter assesses the nature and effects of climate change on sustainable development in Nigeria. It observes that climate change has a multifarious effect not only on the environment but also on the socio-economic life of the people. Therefore, if sustainable development is to be realized in the country, climate change should be properly managed through extant public policies. However, if government track records on policies and program implementations is anything to go by, the future of sustainable development is gloomy. This makes an interrogation of the interface between climate change and sustainable development germane. The chapter observes that while government has shown willingness to manage climate change for the sustainability of the environment and its people, certain limitations stand on its path. These include poor policy or program implementation, inadequate funding of climate change management, poor sensitization program on environment management, among others. However, there are opportunities that can be harvested at the state and individual levels.

The paper considers aspects of the development of algorithms for optimizing complex systems, and also develops an algorithm for solving problems of convex stochastic programming with a non-smooth goal function. The principles of constructing adaptive procedures for adjusting the parameters of variable gradient optimization algorithms are proposed. Note that in almost any iterative algorithm, as a rule, there are parameters that require their adjustment. To control and adjust parameters, - criteria are formed that determine the quality of adjustments. At the same time, the problem of determining the best value of the adjustment parameters belongs to the same class as the original optimization problem. Usually, iterative algorithms that work in the same class of optimization problems are used to adjust the available parameters. Thus, it turns out that two algorithms work simultaneously, in the source space and in the parameter space. Since algorithms are adapted by parameters during operation, this type of algorithm is called adaptive. The current stage of development of computer technology and mathematical support requires the development of algorithms that must function successfully without the User’s participation, both in the process of solving the problem and in the process of finding a solution to the problem. The paper provides recommendations for software implementation of adaptive stochastic algorithms and construction of computational procedures for stochastic computational experiments based on them.

This article explores relations between cultural heritage and cultural values for sustainable development in the Enugu region. It discusses the potential to advance a cultural approach to sustainable development of regions by examining the cultural food heritage and relating it to cultural values. Based on empirical research, the article employed a mixed-methods approach to examine the relationship between the identified major local food heritage and cultural values for sustainable regional planning and development. The study examined primary data from 380 community elders, traders, and relevant institutions—including the Ministry of Arts and Culture and the Ministry of Agriculture—through interviews, participant observation, and questionnaires. Data were analyzed using SPSS and Pearson product–moment correlation. Findings identified eight local food heritages and six cultural values. The findings suggest that promoting and preserving local food heritage can be crucial in fostering sustainable cultural values and contributing to sustainable regional development. The local food had a statistically significant influence on cultural values. The Pearson correlation result (p-value = 0.000) shows a strong correlation between the local food heritage and cultural values for sustainable regional planning and development. However, the study also identified several challenges threatening the sustainability of local food heritage in the region, including high costs, small-scale farming, insecurity, climate change, and poor transportation. The study recommends the development and implementation of comprehensive policies and programs that prioritize the preservation and promotion of local food heritage while addressing the identified challenges.

Implementation of a joule heating algorithm in ADINAT

SUMMARYIn this paper, the first in a series, the authors have developed and implemented new computational algorithms for improving the scalability of CFD simulations on emerging architectures such as multicore high performance computing (HPC) platforms. These algorithmic developments and implementations are classified into three categories: (i) improved partition for multicore platforms, (ii) improved and optimized communication for HPC and (iii) enhancing scalability using computer science based methods. In the first category, the multilevel partitioning strategy was modified to reduce the number of out‐of‐core communications. This resulted in noticeable speedup even for small cases. In the second category, the authors came up with a next generation communication procedure optimized for the architecture and the partitioning. This next generation communication resulted in noticeable speedups. In the third category, improvements with respect to better management of memory were implemented. This again resulted in a speedup of nearly 10%. The overall scalability, as a result of the three algorithmic implementations, yielded ideal and at times superlinear scalability until 3000 processors. In general, the scalability results are very promising and indicate that the approach has a great potential for more complicated multidisciplinary problems such as fluid–structure interaction and aeroelastic simulations. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In education for sustainable development, widely regarded as a framework that offers us the opportunity to improve the ways in which we cope with climate change issues, the need for student teachers to express willingness to act in order to deal with numerous issues and challenges of sustainable development, especially climate change, is of particular importance. Therefore, the focus of this study is on the examination of predictors of student teachers’ willingness to act in a climate-change mitigation and adaptation context. For the purpose of this study, measurement instruments of willingness to act in climate change mitigation and adaptation context, attitudes towards climate change, perception of action possibilities in climate change mitigation and adaptation context, interest in climate change and concern for ecological problems were validated. A total of 201 student teachers from the University of Rijeka (Croatia) participated in the study. It was determined that (I) attitudes towards climate change, (II) perception of action possibilities in climate change mitigation and adaptation context and (III) interest in climate change represent significant predictors of willingness to act in climate-change direction and mitigation contexts. Based on the results of this study, recommendations for teacher education in the climate change context have been offered.

Botswana’s education system, like many other African systems, is greatly influenced by western educational ideas and models. This article reviews Botswana’s education system by examining the policies, models and ideas that have influenced its development. Specifically, the review involves tracing the development of the education system of Botswana from the pre-colonial era to the present and highlighting the educational ideas and models in use at each stage. Since most of the educational ideas are based on western models, the article seeks whatever Platonic underpinnings that might belie these ideas. This is because Plato is considered to be one of the greatest thinkers of all time whose ideas on education are pervasive. His ideas have influenced western education systems as well as modern intellectual and educational thinking.

In the local governance structure of Bangladesh, the Union Parishad (UP) represents the most basic and lowest level, which, by its very nature, is run by a body of elected representatives. By way of representation, Union Parishads are meant to truly reflect local needs through the participation of the community people. In essence, it mandates local people’s consent, often manifested by meaningful roles of standing committees in taking actions such as local-level planning, identifying local needs, and monitoring development projects. This organization possesses the ability to engage citizens in various committees and operations. In the context of regional governance in Bangladesh, the extent of citizen involvement can be effectively measured by their participation. This participation is crucial for upholding democratic processes, making effective decisions, and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). For effective planning and sustainable development in rural areas, a strong UP with the active role of a standing committee is mandatory. This study seeks a qualitative design to gain a deep, contextual understanding of citizens’ behaviors, attitudes, and experiences at the grassroots level in Bangladesh. This study is about a fresh look at citizens’ participation in UP standing committees to ensure effective planning and sustainable development. The study's objective is to examine the community participation in the administrative functions of two Union Parishads. This study is expected to uncover findings of democratic processes at the grassroots level and identify potential areas for improvement to enhance citizen engagement. Understanding the citizens’ involvement in local governance and assessing the effectiveness of the current mechanism for citizen participation are the two motivational aspects of undertaking the study. Keywords: Local Governance, Citizen Participation, Decentralization, Democratic process, sustainable development, Institutional Barriers

Drawing primarily from Pierre Bourdieu's work on “field” and “capital,” this article examines in detail how institutional barriers have systematically denied access to quality education to lower-class/caste students, which results in educational inequality impeding the efforts of sustainable development. China's hukou (household registration system) and India's varna vyavastha (caste system) are used as examples to illustrate how oblivious institutional barriers could manifest and exhibit in similar ways in two distinct sociopolitical nations. The article concludes with making a case for deconstructing the discourses on education for sustainable development based on the principles of social justice and equity.