Test (assessment)
A test or examination is an assessment intended to measure a test-taker's knowledge, aptitude, physical fitness, or classification in many other topics. A test may be administered verbally, on paper, on a computer, or in a predetermined area that requires a test taker to demonstrate or perform a set of skills. Tests vary in style and requirements. For example, in a closed book test, a test taker is required to rely upon memory to respond to specific items whereas in an open book test, a test taker may use one or more supplementary tools such as a reference book or calculator when responding. A test may be administered informally. An example of an informal test would be a reading test administered by a parent to a child. A formal test might be a final examination administered by a teacher in a classroom or an I. Q. test administered by a psychologist in a clinic. Formal testing results in a grade or a test score. A test score may be interpreted with regards to a norm or criterion, or both; the norm may be established independently, or by statistical analysis of a large number of participants.
An exam is meant to test a persons willingness to give time to manipulate that subject. A standardized test is any test, administered and scored in a consistent manner to ensure legal defensibility. Standardized tests are used in education, professional certification, the military, many other fields. A non-standardized test is flexible in scope and format, variable in difficulty and significance. Since these tests are developed by individual instructors, the format and difficulty of these tests may not be adopted or used by other instructors or institutions. A non-standardized test may be used to determine the proficiency level of students, to motivate students to study, to provide feedback to students. In some instances, a teacher may develop non-standardized tests that resemble standardized tests in scope and difficulty for the purpose of preparing their students for an upcoming standardized test; the frequency and setting by which a non-standardized tests are administered are variable and are constrained by the duration of the class period.
A class instructor may for example, administer a test on a weekly basis or just twice a semester. Depending on the policy of the instructor or institution, the duration of each test itself may last for only five minutes to an entire class period. In contrasts to non-standardized tests, standardized tests are used, fixed in terms of scope and format, are significant in consequences. Standardized tests are held on fixed dates as determined by the test developer, educational institution, or governing body, which may or may not be administered by the instructor, held within the classroom, or constrained by the classroom period. Although there is little variability between different copies of the same type of standardized test, there is variability between different types of standardized tests. Any test with important consequences for the individual test taker is referred to as a high-stakes test. A test may be developed and administered by an instructor, a clinician, a governing body, or a test provider.
In some instances, the developer of the test may not be directly responsible for its administration. For example, Educational Testing Service, a nonprofit educational testing and assessment organization, develops standardized tests such as the SAT but may not directly be involved in the administration or proctoring of these tests; as with the development and administration of educational tests, the format and level of difficulty of the tests themselves are variable and there is no general consensus or invariable standard for test formats and difficulty. The format and difficulty of the test is dependent upon the educational philosophy of the instructor, subject matter, class size, policy of the educational institution, requirements of accreditation or governing bodies. In general, tests developed and administered by individual instructors are non-standardized whereas tests developed by testing organizations are standardized. Ancient China was the first country in the world that implemented a nationwide standardized test, called the imperial examination.
The main purpose of this examination was to select able candidates for specific governmental positions. The imperial examination was established by the Sui dynasty in 605 AD and was abolished by the Qing dynasty 1300 years in 1905. England had adopted this examination system in 1806 to select specific candidates for positions in Her Majesty's Civil Service, modeled on the Chinese imperial examination; this examination system was applied to education and it started to influence other parts of the world as it became a prominent standard, of delivering standardised tests. As the profession transitioned to the modern mass-education system, the style of examination became fixed, with the stress on standardized papers to be sat by large numbers of students. Leading the way in this regard was the burgeoning Civil Service that began to move toward a meritocratic basis for selection in the mid 19th century in England. British civil service was influenced by the imperial examinations system and meritocratic system of China.
Thomas Taylor Meadows, Britain's consul in Guangzhou, China argued in his Desultory Notes on the Government and People of China, published in 1847, that "the long duration of the Chinese empire is and altogether owing to the good government which consists in the advancement of men of talent and me
Handicraft
A handicraft, sometimes more expressed as artisanal handicraft or handmade, is any of a wide variety of types of work where useful and decorative objects are made by hand or by using only simple tools. It is a traditional main sector of craft, applies to a wide range of creative and design activities that are related to making things with one's hands and skill, including work with textiles and rigid materials, plant fibers, etc. One of the world's oldest handicraft is Dhokra; the term is applied to traditional techniques of creating items that are both practical and aesthetic. Handicraft industries are those that produces things with hands to meet the needs of the people in their locality. Machines are not used. Collective terms for handicrafts include artisanry, handicrafting and handicraftsmanship; the term arts and crafts is applied in the United States and to hobbyists' and children's output rather than items crafted for daily use, but this distinction is not formal, the term is confused with the Arts and Crafts design movement, in fact as practical as it is aesthetic.
Handicrafting has its roots in the rural crafts—the material-goods necessities—of ancient civilizations, many specific crafts have been practiced for centuries, while others are modern inventions, or popularizations of crafts which were practiced in a limited geographic area. Many handicrafters use natural entirely indigenous, materials while others may prefer modern, non-traditional materials, upcycle industrial materials; the individual artisanship of a handicrafted item is the paramount criterion. Seen as developing the skills and creative interests of students and sometimes towards a particular craft or trade, handicrafts are integrated into educational systems, both informally and formally. Most crafts require the development of skill and the application of patience, but can be learned by anyone. Like folk art, handicraft output has cultural and/or religious significance, may have a political message as well, as in craftivism. Many crafts become popular for brief periods of time, spreading among the crafting population as everyone emulates the first examples their popularity wanes until a resurgence.
The Arts and Crafts movement originated as a late 19th-century design reform and social movement principally in Europe, North America and Australia, continues today. Its proponents are motivated by the ideals of movement founders such as William Morris and John Ruskin, who proposed that in pre-industrial societies, such as the European Middle Ages, people had achieved fulfillment through the creative process of handicrafts; this was held up in contrast to. These activities were called crafts because many of them were professions under the guild system. Adolescents were apprenticed to a master craftsman, refined their skills over a period of years in exchange for low wages. By the time their training was complete, they were well equipped to set up in trade for themselves, earning their living with the skill that could be traded directly within the community for goods and services; the Industrial Revolution and the increasing mechanisation of production processes reduced or eliminated many of the roles professional craftspeople played, today many handicrafts are seen when no longer the mainstay of a formal vocational trade, as a form of hobby, folk art and sometimes fine art.
The term handicrafts can refer to the products themselves of such artisanal efforts, that require specialized knowledge, may be technical in their execution, require specialized equipment and/or facilities to produce, involve manual labor or a blue-collar work ethic, are accessible to the general public, are constructed from materials with histories that exceed the boundaries of Western "fine art" tradition, such as ceramics, textiles and wood. These products are produced within a specific community of practice, while they differ from the products produced within the communities of art and design, the boundaries overlap, resulting in hybrid objects. Additionally, as the interpretation and validation of art is a matter of context, an audience may perceive handicrafted objects as art objects when these objects are viewed within an art context, such as in a museum or in a position of prominence in one's home. Simple "arts and crafts" projects are a common elementary and middle school activity in both mainstream and alternative education systems around the world.
In some of the Scandinavian countries, more advanced handicrafts form part of the formal, compulsory school curriculum, are collectively referred to as slöjd in Swedish, käsityö or veisto in Finnish. Students learn how to work with metal and wood, not for professional training purposes as in American vocational–technical schools, but with the aim to develop children's and teens' practical skills, such as everyday problem-solving ability, tool use, understanding of the materials that surround us for economical and environmental purposes. Secondary schools and college and university art departments provide elective options for more handicraft-based arts, in addition to formal "fine arts", a distinction that continues to fade throughout the years with the rise of studio craft, i.e. the use of traditi
Textbook
A textbook is a comprehensive compilation of content in a branch of study. Textbooks are produced to meet the needs of educators at educational institutions. Schoolbooks are other books used in schools. Today, many textbooks are published in digital formats; the history of textbooks dates back to ancient civilizations. For example, Ancient Greeks wrote educational texts; the modern textbook has its roots in the mass production made possible by the printing press. Johannes Gutenberg himself may have printed editions of Ars Minor, a schoolbook on Latin grammar by Aelius Donatus. Early textbooks were used as well as by individuals who taught themselves; the Greek philosopher Plato lamented the loss of knowledge because the media of transmission were changing. Before the invention of the Greek alphabet 2,500 years ago and stories were recited aloud, much like Homer's epic poems; the new technology of writing meant stories no longer needed to be memorized, a development Socrates feared would weaken the Greeks' mental capacities for memorizing and retelling.
The next revolution in the field of books came with the 15th-century invention of printing with changeable type. The invention is attributed to German metalsmith Johannes Gutenberg, who cast type in molds using a melted metal alloy and constructed a wooden-screw printing press to transfer the image onto paper. Gutenberg's first and only large-scale printing effort was the now iconic Gutenberg Bible in the 1450s — a Latin translation from the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament. Gutenberg's invention made mass production of texts possible for the first time. Although the Gutenberg Bible itself was expensive, printed books began to spread over European trade routes during the next 50 years, by the 16th century, printed books had become more accessible and less costly. While many textbooks were in use, compulsory education and the resulting growth of schooling in Europe led to the printing of many more textbooks for children. Textbooks have been the primary teaching instrument for most children since the 19th century.
Two textbooks of historical significance in United States schooling were the 18th century New England Primer and the 19th century McGuffey Readers. Recent technological advances have changed the way people interact with textbooks. Online and digital materials are making it easy for students to access materials other than the traditional print textbook. Students now have access to online tutoring systems and video lectures. An example of an e-book is Principles of Biology from Nature Publishing. Most notably, an increasing number of authors are avoiding commercial publishers and instead offering their textbooks under a creative commons or other open license; as in many industries, the number of providers has declined in recent years. Elasticity of demand is low; the term "broken market" appeared in the economist James Koch's analysis of the market commissioned by the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance. Some students save money by buying used copies of textbooks, which tend to be less expensive, are available from many college bookstores in the USA, who buy them back from students at the end of a term.
Books that are not being re-used at the school are purchased by an off-campus wholesaler for 0-30% of the new cost, for distribution to other bookstores. Some textbook companies have countered this by encouraging teachers to assign homework that must be done on the publisher's website. Students with a new textbook can use the pass code in the book to register on the site. Students who look beyond the campus bookstore can find lower prices. With the ISBN or title and edition, most textbooks can be located through online used book sellers or retailers. Most leading textbook companies publish a new edition every 3 or 4 years, more in math and science. Harvard economics chair James K. Stock has stated that new editions are not about significant improvements to the content. "New editions are to a considerable extent another tool used by publishers and textbook authors to maintain their revenue stream, that is, to keep up prices." A study conducted by The Student PIRGs found that a new edition costs 12% more than a new copy of the previous edition, 58% more than a used copy of the previous edition.
Textbook publishers maintain. That study found that 76% of teachers said new editions were justified “half of the time or less” and 40% said they were justified “rarely” or “never”; the PIRG study has been criticized by publishers, who argue that the report contains factual inaccuracies regarding the annual average cost of textbooks per student. The Student PIRGs point out that recent emphasis on e-textbooks does not always save students money. Though the book costs less up-front, the student will not recover any of the cost through resale. Another publishing industry practice, criticized is "bundling", or shrink-wrapping supplemental items into a textbook. Supplemental items range from workbooks to online passcodes and bonus material. Students cannot buy these things separately, the one-time-use supplements destroy the resale value of the textbook. According to the Student PIRGs, the typical bundled textbook is 10%-50% more than an unbundled
Physical education
Physical education known as Phys Ed. PE, gym, or gym class, known in many Commonwealth countries as physical training or PT, is an educational course related of maintaining the human body through physical exercises, it is taken during primary and secondary education and encourages psychomotor learning in a play or movement exploration setting to promote health. Whether the class produces positive effects on students' health and academic performance depends upon the kind of program, taught. Physical education trends have developed to incorporate a greater variety of activities besides the skills necessary to play typical team sports such as football or basketball. Introducing students to activities like bowling, walking/hiking, or frisbee at an early age can help them develop good activity habits that will continue into adulthood; some teachers have begun to incorporate stress-reduction techniques such as yoga, deep breathing and tai chi. Tai chi, an ancient martial arts form focused on slow meditative movements, is a relaxation activity with many benefits.
Studies have shown that it enhances muscular strength and endurance, as well as cardiovascular endurance. It provides psychological benefits such as improving general mental health, concentration and positive mood, it can be taught to any age student with little or no equipment, making it ideal for mixed ability and age classes. Tai chi can be incorporated into a holistic learning body and mind unit. Teaching non-traditional sports may provide motivation for students to increase their activity, can help them learn about different cultures. For example, while learning about lacrosse in the Southwestern United States, students might learn about the Native American cultures of the Northeastern United States and Eastern Canada, where the sport originated. Teaching non-traditional sports provides an opportunity to integrate academic concepts from other subjects as well, which may now be required of many PE teachers. PE is important to students' health and overall well-being; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated that over the past three years obesity in children and adolescents has doubled because of diet and lack of activity.
Since the 1970s the number of children who are obese has tripled. SHAPE America's National Standards & Grade-Level Outcomes for K-12 Physical Education define what a student should know and be able to do as result of an effective physical education program. Another trend is the incorporation of nutrition into the physical education curriculum; the Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004 required that all school districts with a federally-funded school meal program develop wellness policies that address nutrition and physical activity. While teaching students sports and movement skills, PE teachers are now incorporating short health and nutrition lessons into the curriculum; this is more prevalent at the elementary school level, where students do not have a specific Health class. Most elementary schools have specific health classes for students as well as physical education class. Due to the recent outbreaks of diseases such as swine flu, school districts are making it mandatory for students to learn about practicing good hygiene along with other health topics.
Today, many states require Physical Education teachers to be certified to teach Health courses. Many colleges and universities offer both Physical Health as one certification; this push towards health education is beginning at the intermediate level, including lessons on bullying, self-esteem and stress and anger management. Research has shown that there is a positive correlation between exercising. Incorporating local indigenous knowledge into physical education can lead to many meaningful experiences and a way of learning about other cultures. For example, by incorporating traditional knowledge from varying indigenous groups from across Canada, students can be exposed to many concepts such as holistic learning and the medicine wheel. A unit could be focused on connecting to a place or feeling while outdoors, participating in traditional games, or outdoor environmental education; these types of lesson can be integrated into other parts of the curriculum and give Aboriginal students a chance to incorporate their culture in the local school community.
Studies have been done in. In a 2007 article, researchers found a profound gain in English Arts standardized testing test scores among students who had 56 hours of physical education in a year, compared to those who had 28 hours of physical education a year. In Brazil, the physical education curriculum is designed to allow school pupils a full range of modern opportunities, including sports. Martial arts classes, like wrestling in the United States, Pencak Silat in France and Malaysia, teach children self-defense and to feel good about themselves; the physical education curriculum is designed to allow students to experience at least a minimum exposure to the following categories of activities: aquatics, conditioning activities, individual/dual sports, team sports and dance. In these areas, a planned sequence of learning experiences is designed to support a progression of student development; this allows kids through 6th grade to be introduced to sports and teamwork in order to be better prepared for the middle and high school age.
In 1975, the United States House of Representatives voted to require school physical education classes include both genders. Some high school and some middle school PE. New technology in education is playing a big role in classes. One of
Arabic
Arabic is a Central Semitic language that first emerged in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world. It is named after the Arabs, a term used to describe peoples living in the area bounded by Mesopotamia in the east and the Anti-Lebanon mountains in the west, in northwestern Arabia, in the Sinai Peninsula. Arabic is classified as a macrolanguage comprising 30 modern varieties, including its standard form, Modern Standard Arabic, derived from Classical Arabic; as the modern written language, Modern Standard Arabic is taught in schools and universities, is used to varying degrees in workplaces and the media. The two formal varieties are grouped together as Literary Arabic, the official language of 26 states, the liturgical language of the religion of Islam, since the Quran and Hadith were written in Arabic. Modern Standard Arabic follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic, uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties, has adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties.
Much of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the post-classical era in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, construed as a multitude of dialects of this language; these dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are acquired in families, while the latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children; the relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Latin and vernaculars in medieval and early modern Europe. This view though does not take into account the widespread use of Modern Standard Arabic as a medium of audiovisual communication in today's mass media—a function Latin has never performed. During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe in science and philosophy.
As a result, many European languages have borrowed many words from it. Arabic influence in vocabulary, is seen in European languages Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese, Catalan, owing to both the proximity of Christian European and Muslim Arab civilizations and 800 years of Arabic culture and language in the Iberian Peninsula, referred to in Arabic as al-Andalus. Sicilian has about 500 Arabic words as result of Sicily being progressively conquered by Arabs from North Africa, from the mid-9th to mid-10th centuries. Many of these words relate to related activities; the Balkan languages, including Greek and Bulgarian, have acquired a significant number of Arabic words through contact with Ottoman Turkish. Arabic has influenced many languages around the globe throughout its history; some of the most influenced languages are Persian, Spanish, Kashmiri, Bosnian, Bengali, Malay, Indonesian, Punjabi, Assamese, Sindhi and Hausa, some languages in parts of Africa. Conversely, Arabic has borrowed words from other languages, including Greek and Persian in medieval times, contemporary European languages such as English and French in modern times.
Classical Arabic is the liturgical language of 1.8 billion Muslims, Modern Standard Arabic is one of six official languages of the United Nations. All varieties of Arabic combined are spoken by as many as 422 million speakers in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet, an abjad script and is written from right to left, although the spoken varieties are sometimes written in ASCII Latin from left to right with no standardized orthography. Arabic is a Central Semitic language related to the Northwest Semitic languages, the Ancient South Arabian languages, various other Semitic languages of Arabia such as Dadanitic; the Semitic languages changed a great deal between Proto-Semitic and the establishment of the Central Semitic languages in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include: The conversion of the suffix-conjugated stative formation into a past tense; the conversion of the prefix-conjugated preterite-tense formation into a present tense.
The elimination of other prefix-conjugated mood/aspect forms in favor of new moods formed by endings attached to the prefix-conjugation forms. The development of an internal passive. There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of the northern Hejaz; these features are evidence of common descent from Proto-Arabic. The following features can be reconstructed with confidence for Proto-Arabic: negative particles m *mā.
Mathematics
Mathematics includes the study of such topics as quantity, structure and change. Mathematicians use patterns to formulate new conjectures; when mathematical structures are good models of real phenomena mathematical reasoning can provide insight or predictions about nature. Through the use of abstraction and logic, mathematics developed from counting, calculation and the systematic study of the shapes and motions of physical objects. Practical mathematics has been a human activity from as far back; the research required to solve mathematical problems can take years or centuries of sustained inquiry. Rigorous arguments first appeared in Greek mathematics, most notably in Euclid's Elements. Since the pioneering work of Giuseppe Peano, David Hilbert, others on axiomatic systems in the late 19th century, it has become customary to view mathematical research as establishing truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions. Mathematics developed at a slow pace until the Renaissance, when mathematical innovations interacting with new scientific discoveries led to a rapid increase in the rate of mathematical discovery that has continued to the present day.
Mathematics is essential in many fields, including natural science, medicine and the social sciences. Applied mathematics has led to new mathematical disciplines, such as statistics and game theory. Mathematicians engage in pure mathematics without having any application in mind, but practical applications for what began as pure mathematics are discovered later; the history of mathematics can be seen as an ever-increasing series of abstractions. The first abstraction, shared by many animals, was that of numbers: the realization that a collection of two apples and a collection of two oranges have something in common, namely quantity of their members; as evidenced by tallies found on bone, in addition to recognizing how to count physical objects, prehistoric peoples may have recognized how to count abstract quantities, like time – days, years. Evidence for more complex mathematics does not appear until around 3000 BC, when the Babylonians and Egyptians began using arithmetic and geometry for taxation and other financial calculations, for building and construction, for astronomy.
The most ancient mathematical texts from Mesopotamia and Egypt are from 2000–1800 BC. Many early texts mention Pythagorean triples and so, by inference, the Pythagorean theorem seems to be the most ancient and widespread mathematical development after basic arithmetic and geometry, it is in Babylonian mathematics that elementary arithmetic first appear in the archaeological record. The Babylonians possessed a place-value system, used a sexagesimal numeral system, still in use today for measuring angles and time. Beginning in the 6th century BC with the Pythagoreans, the Ancient Greeks began a systematic study of mathematics as a subject in its own right with Greek mathematics. Around 300 BC, Euclid introduced the axiomatic method still used in mathematics today, consisting of definition, axiom and proof, his textbook Elements is considered the most successful and influential textbook of all time. The greatest mathematician of antiquity is held to be Archimedes of Syracuse, he developed formulas for calculating the surface area and volume of solids of revolution and used the method of exhaustion to calculate the area under the arc of a parabola with the summation of an infinite series, in a manner not too dissimilar from modern calculus.
Other notable achievements of Greek mathematics are conic sections, trigonometry (Hipparchus of Nicaea, the beginnings of algebra. The Hindu–Arabic numeral system and the rules for the use of its operations, in use throughout the world today, evolved over the course of the first millennium AD in India and were transmitted to the Western world via Islamic mathematics. Other notable developments of Indian mathematics include the modern definition of sine and cosine, an early form of infinite series. During the Golden Age of Islam during the 9th and 10th centuries, mathematics saw many important innovations building on Greek mathematics; the most notable achievement of Islamic mathematics was the development of algebra. Other notable achievements of the Islamic period are advances in spherical trigonometry and the addition of the decimal point to the Arabic numeral system. Many notable mathematicians from this period were Persian, such as Al-Khwarismi, Omar Khayyam and Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī. During the early modern period, mathematics began to develop at an accelerating pace in Western Europe.
The development of calculus by Newton and Leibniz in the 17th century revolutionized mathematics. Leonhard Euler was the most notable mathematician of the 18th century, contributing numerous theorems and discoveries; the foremost mathematician of the 19th century was the German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, who made numerous contributions to fields such as algebra, differential geometry, matrix theory, number theory, statistics. In the early 20th century, Kurt Gödel transformed mathematics by publishing his incompleteness theorems, which show that any axiomatic system, consistent will contain unprovable propositions. Mathematics has since been extended, there has been a fruitful interaction between mathematics and science, to
University
A university is an institution of higher education and research which awards academic degrees in various academic disciplines. Universities provide undergraduate education and postgraduate education; the word university is derived from the Latin universitas magistrorum et scholarium, which means "community of teachers and scholars". While antecedents had existed in Asia and Africa, the modern university system has roots in the European medieval university, created in Italy and evolved from cathedral schools for the clergy during the High Middle Ages; the original Latin word universitas refers in general to "a number of persons associated into one body, a society, community, corporation, etc". At the time of the emergence of urban town life and medieval guilds, specialized "associations of students and teachers with collective legal rights guaranteed by charters issued by princes, prelates, or the towns in which they were located" came to be denominated by this general term. Like other guilds, they were self-regulating and determined the qualifications of their members.
In modern usage the word has come to mean "An institution of higher education offering tuition in non-vocational subjects and having the power to confer degrees," with the earlier emphasis on its corporate organization considered as applying to Medieval universities. The original Latin word referred to degree-awarding institutions of learning in Western and Central Europe, where this form of legal organisation was prevalent, from where the institution spread around the world. An important idea in the definition of a university is the notion of academic freedom; the first documentary evidence of this comes from early in the life of the University of Bologna, which adopted an academic charter, the Constitutio Habita, in 1158 or 1155, which guaranteed the right of a traveling scholar to unhindered passage in the interests of education. Today this is claimed as the origin of "academic freedom"; this is now recognised internationally - on 18 September 1988, 430 university rectors signed the Magna Charta Universitatum, marking the 900th anniversary of Bologna's foundation.
The number of universities signing the Magna Charta Universitatum continues to grow, drawing from all parts of the world. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, the earliest universities were founded in Asia and Africa, predating the first European medieval universities; the University of Al Quaraouiyine, founded in Morocco by Fatima al-Fihri in 859, is considered by some to be the oldest degree-granting university. Their endowment by a prince or monarch and their role in training government officials made early Mediterranean universities similar to Islamic madrasas, although madrasas were smaller, individual teachers, rather than the madrasa itself, granted the license or degree. Scholars like Arnold H. Green and Hossein Nasr have argued that starting in the 10th century, some medieval Islamic madrasas became universities. However, scholars like George Makdisi, Toby Huff and Norman Daniel argue that the European university has no parallel in the medieval Islamic world. Several other scholars consider the university as uniquely European in origin and characteristics.
Darleen Pryds questions this view, pointing out that madaris and European universities in the Mediterranean region shared similar foundations by princely patrons and were intended to provide loyal administrators to further the rulers' agenda. Some scholars, including Makdisi, have argued that early medieval universities were influenced by the madrasas in Al-Andalus, the Emirate of Sicily, the Middle East during the Crusades. Norman Daniel, views this argument as overstated. Roy Lowe and Yoshihito Yasuhara have drawn on the well-documented influences of scholarship from the Islamic world on the universities of Western Europe to call for a reconsideration of the development of higher education, turning away from a concern with local institutional structures to a broader consideration within a global context; the university is regarded as a formal institution that has its origin in the Medieval Christian tradition. European higher education took place for hundreds of years in cathedral schools or monastic schools, in which monks and nuns taught classes.
The earliest universities were developed under the aegis of the Latin Church by papal bull as studia generalia and from cathedral schools. It is possible, that the development of cathedral schools into universities was quite rare, with the University of Paris being an exception, they were founded by Kings or municipal administrations. In the early medieval period, most new universities were founded from pre-existing schools when these schools were deemed to have become sites of higher education. Many historians state that universities and cathedral schools were a continuation of the interest in learning promoted by The residence of a religious community. Pope Gregory VII was critical in promoting and regulating the concept of modern university as his 1079 Papal Decree ordered the regulated establishment of cathedral schools that transformed themselves into the first European universities; the first universities in Europe with a form of corporate/guild structure were the University of Bologna, the University of Paris, the University of Oxford.
The University of Bologna began as a law school teach
