Search results

This study holistically and systematically consolidates the available research on digital reading to reveal the research trends of the past 20 years. Moreover, it explores the thematic evolution, hotspots and developmental characteristics of digital reading. This study, therefore, has the potential to serve as a research guide to researchers and educators in relevant fields.

The authors applied a bibliometric approach using Derwent Data Analyzer and VOSviewer to retrieve 2,456 publications for 2003–2022 from the Web of Science (WoS) database.

The results revealed that most studies' participants were university students and the experimental methods and questionnaires were preferred in digital reading researches. Among the influential countries or regions, institutions, journals and authors, the United States of America, University of London, Electronic Library and Chen, respectively, accounted for the greatest number of publications. Moreover, the authors identified the developmental characteristics and research trends in the field of digital reading by analyzing the evolution of keywords from 2003–2017 to 2018–2022 and the most frequently cited papers by year. “E-books,” “reading comprehension” and “literacy” were the primary research topics. In addition, “attention,” “motivation,” “cognitive load,” “dyslexia,” “engagement,” “eye-tracking,” “eye movement,” “systematic analysis,” “meta-analysis,” “smartphone” and “mobile reading/learning” were potential new research hotspots.

This study provides valuable insights into the current status, research direction, thematic evolution and developmental characteristics in the field of digital reading. Therefore, it has implications for publishers, researchers, librarians, educators and teachers in the digital reading field.

This paper discusses the implementation of integrated science, technology, engineering and mathematics (EC-iSTEM) education with children in birth-to-age 5 classrooms. It offers a conceptualization for EC-iSTEM, as well as a developmental trajectory in the form of the iSTEM Rope Model. It further highlights the intersection of EC-iSTEM education and the Reggio Emelia-Inspired Approach (RE-IA) as a lens for both viewing EC-iSTEM implementation with young children and as an area of needed research.

This paper uses a qualitative interpretive methodology, drawing from a wide array of theoretical and research literature on early childhood education and integrated STEM education.

Despite growing research and policy reports that advocate for the inclusion of integrated STEM education in early childhood classrooms, today there is currently imprecision in understanding what exactly “integrated STEM” means when applied to the instruction of very young children. This suggests a need for the creation of a unifying conceptual framework, as well as finding alignment with currently known pedagogical approaches to ground the work of birth-to-age 5 teachers and researchers.

This paper proposes a new conceptualization of integrated STEM education for use in birth to age 5 classrooms, as well as a systhsis of the current literature to assess the pedagogical linkages between EC-iSTEM and RE-IA. As the proposed conceptualization offered in this paper is new and research in this area is nascent, further empirical investigation is warrented.

This paper proposes a new conceptualization of integrated STEM education for use in the early childhood education field. It further synthesizes the current literature to assess the pedagogical linkages between EC-iSTEM and RE-IA, suggesting practice implications for supporting the knowledge and skill development of young children from birth to age 5.

This paper aims to critically review the intersection of searching and learning among children in the context of voice-based conversational agents (VCAs). This study presents the opportunities and challenges around reconfiguring current VCAs for children to facilitate human learning, generate diverse data to empower VCAs, and assess children’s learning from voice search interactions.

The scope of this paper includes children’s use of VCAs for learning purposes with an emphasis on conceptualizing their VCA use from search as learning perspectives. This study selects representative works from three areas of literature: children’s perceptions of digital devices, children’s learning and searching, and children’s search as learning. This study also includes conceptual papers and empirical studies focusing on children from 3 to 11 because this age spectrum covers a vital transitional phase in children’s ability to understand and use VCAs.

This study proposes the concept of child-centered voice search systems and provides design recommendations for imbuing contextual information, providing communication breakdown repair strategies, scaffolding information interactions, integrating emotional intelligence, and providing explicit feedback. This study presents future research directions for longitudinal and observational studies with more culturally diverse child participants.

This paper makes important contributions to the field of information and learning sciences and children’s searching as learning by proposing a new perspective where current VCAs are reconfigured as conversational voice search systems to enhance children’s learning.

Professional development (PD) is an essential component of continuing learning for in-service teachers. This paper discusses a school-based example of using the best practice of coaching in early childhood education supported by a professional development school partnership. We explain how a teacher identified need led to a collaborative, multistep approach to meeting that need in connection to State mandates.

In this research, we used a case study methodological approach with a team of preschool teachers at one school. The model combines use of PD sessions, classroom coaching, classroom observation and reflection.

Teachers’ feedback indicates that using the strategy positively impacted most of the participants’ ability to support communication, community-building and inclusive practices in their classrooms. The data that emerged in the following year evidenced increased use of visual supports in classrooms, use in connection with literacy goals and interest in creating new uses in the school.

This article contributes an action-oriented school-based example of bridging research to practice to support teachers’ needs through PD and coaching in a PDS. The design and practical implications may interest preschool educators, instructional coaches, administrators, professional development schools and others involved with monitoring teacher development initiatives.

This research addresses a need in early childhood education for evidence-based teaching strategies that build emotional self-regulation skills in young children. The intervention assessed in this study focused on increasing the emotion vocabulary of preschool-aged students.

This mixed-methods, quasi-experimental study evaluated the impact a dialogic reading approach combined with direct instruction of emotion words during a shared book-reading activity had on students' emotion vocabulary knowledge. The study was conducted in a licensed daycare center in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois, with ten four- and five-year-old students. Pre- and post-session surveys assessed the intervention's impact on the students' receptive and expressive vocabulary knowledge, and observation notes captured the students' responses to the intervention activities.

The results showed significant increases with small to medium effect sizes between the students’ pre- and post-session survey scores for both receptive and expressive emotion vocabulary knowledge, a strong positive correlation between the level of student engagement during the intervention and their emotion vocabulary assessment scores, and the impact other variables had on the intervention’s effectiveness.

This research provides information on a culturally adaptable and quickly learned teaching strategy that could be used to build emotional self-regulation skills in the early childhood classroom.

This research uniquely applies this intervention as a universal strategy with preschool-aged children.

The study examined the influence of humanitarian organizations’ culture and financial service providers’ technology readiness on the usage of digital cash-based assistance by humanitarian organizations, the influence of Humanitarian Organization Culture on Financial providers’ technology readiness and the mediating role of financial service providers’ technology readiness on the relationship between the culture in humanitarian organizations and their usage of digital cash-based assistance.

A quantitative cross-sectional survey design was used. The target population consisted of humanitarian organizations that were members of the Uganda Cash Consortium (UCC). The research hypotheses were tested using SMART PLS version 4.

The culture in humanitarian organizations and financial service providers’ technology readiness positively influences the usage of digital cash-based assistance by humanitarian organizations during humanitarian crises, and humanitarian organizations’ culture positively influences financial service providers’ technology readiness. Financial service providers’ technology readiness fully mediates the relationship between the culture of humanitarian organizations and the usage of digital cash-based assistance by humanitarian organizations during humanitarian crises.

The study mainly focuses on culture in humanitarian organizations and financial service providers’ technology readiness when examining the usage of digital cash-based assistance during humanitarian crises. Further, financial service providers’ technology readiness is examined using a humanitarian organization, financial service provider and beneficiary/persons of concern’s point of view rather than the government’s point of view.

Research examining determinants for digital cash-based assistance usage in humanitarian crises is scarce. Further, empirical research examining the influence of the humanitarian organizations’ culture and financial service providers’ technology readiness in promoting the usage of digital cash-based assistance in humanitarian crises, the impact of humanitarian organizations’ culture on financial service providers’ technology readiness and the mediating role of financial service providers’ technology readiness on the relationship between the culture of humanitarian organizations and usage of digital cash-based assistance in humanitarian crises are non-existent. The majority of research and grey literature focuses on how digital cash-based transfers can be used to enhance financial inclusion in refugee contexts.

Although there has been an increase in the application of a variety of robust technologies and systems, the oil and gas sector relies on project managers’ soft skills for success because of their vital role. Therefore, this study aims to explore the profound influence of project managers’ soft communication skills on successful risk management within Libya’s oil and gas projects.

A review of relevant literature and a quantitative approach through the administration of a questionnaire were used to determine factors impacting risk management implementation related to managerial communication skills. A total of 246 valid responses were received from the oil and gas companies in Tripoli, Libya. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to examine the direct and moderating relationship drawn by the hypotheses.

The findings suggest that managerial soft skills may be used to improve continuous risk management processes and intra-project communication. It was found that the experience is strengthening the positive relationship between written communication soft skills and project risk management implementation among Libyan oil and gas construction projects.

This study defines project managers’ soft communication skills and analyzes project managers’ soft communication skills with the role of experience as a moderator. This paper presents a valuable contribution by offering original insights tailored explicitly to the Libyan context. The information presented in this paper is relevant to project managers operating within the oil and gas industry. It also offers a novel approach to risk management in the Libyan oil and gas industry that can improve project efficiency and effectiveness.

While higher education has been encouraging interdisciplinary research, few studies have been conducted to understand how interdisciplinarity shapes the identity construction of scholars, especially doctoral students who may already strive to socialize into academia.

Therefore, this study adopts the approach of autoethnography to analyze my lived experience of developing disciplinary literacy and constructing interdisciplinary identity as a Chinese international doctoral student at a North American university. Communication theory of identity (CTI) is the theoretical framework through which I understand the negotiation among my personal, enacted, relational and communal identities while communicating my research through diverse literacy practices.

This autoethnography reveals that interdisciplinary doctoral students can flexibly use discursive resources from different disciplines and literacy practices in both English and their first language to dynamically create interdisciplinary identities communicable to different discourse communities. Their identities in different disciplines can develop simultaneously, rather than suppressing one for the development of the other as they do interdisciplinary research.

This study first extends current scholarly discussion of disciplinary literacy to a less-investigated setting, i.e. doctoral education in higher education. Second, it adds an additive and current layer of interdisciplinarity to the existing understanding of international doctoral students’ identity construction. Third, it helps to understand how the development of disciplinary literacy can facilitate disciplinary identity construction and how disciplinary identity construction can facilitate the development of disciplinary literacy.

This exploratory study aims to investigate and identify the factors influencing discontinuance intention among past users of local digital wallets in Brunei Darussalam.

This study uses a mixed-method approach that integrates quantitative and qualitative research method. An online survey is distributed via widely used social media platforms, using purposive sampling to target previous users of local digital wallets. Structured questionnaires capture demographic data, whereas open-ended inquiries delve into reasons for discontinuation. Descriptive analysis will extract the demographic profiles of the samples. Inductive thematic analysis, guided by Braun and Clarke's framework, will extract and analyze qualitative responses to unveil emergent themes. Data saturation, anticipated beyond 12 responses, will signify sample adequacy.

Demographic profiles based on gender, age and payment preferences of discontinuers supplement the justification for identified themes influencing digital wallet discontinuation in Brunei Darussalam. These themes include “Acceptability Challenge,” highlighting limited vendor acceptance; “Financial Management and Security Issues,” revealing concerns over impulsive buying behavior and security robustness; “Limited Benefits,” referring to short-term interest driven by promotional benefits; “Technological Inertia,” emphasizing reluctance to change from conventional payment methods and “Technical Challenges,” encompassing internet connectivity and operational functionality issues.

This study acknowledges few limitations, including a limited number of respondents, comprising majorly of the younger age groups and females. Self-reported data usage introduces potential response bias, impacting result validity. The qualitative approach limits comprehensive understanding, suggesting validation through quantitative correlational studies. Additionally, the cross-sectional design restricts insight into the dynamic nature of digital wallet discontinuance in Brunei, suggesting the need for longitudinal studies.

The findings of this study offer valuable insights for digital wallet providers, policymakers and businesses operating within the realm of Brunei Darussalam. By tackling pertinent issues such as vendor acceptance, financial security and promotional incentives, stakeholders can effectively improve user experiences and mitigate intentions of discontinuing usage. Recommended strategies encompass the enlargement of vendor networks, the implementation of stringent security measures and the customization of promotional campaigns. Furthermore, comprehending demographic inclinations enables the tailoring of offerings, thereby fostering enduring adoption rates.

This study’s findings hold social significance for financial inclusion, technological literacy and consumer empowerment in Brunei Darussalam. Overcoming barriers to digital wallet adoption, such as limited vendor acceptance, promotes financial inclusion in the long run. Improved understanding of digital wallets enhances technological literacy and empowers users to make informed decisions. By catering to diverse demographic needs, stakeholders can promote social equity and ensure widespread access to digital payment benefits, thus positively impacting Brunei Darussalam’s socioeconomic landscape.

This study contributes to the existing knowledge gap on digital wallet discontinuance in Brunei Darussalam. By uncovering key themes and factors influencing past users’ decisions, it advances understanding in the context of postadoption dynamics. The study provides valuable insights for local and global fintech adoption strategies.

Creating active learning opportunities requires building a learning culture in which the instructor plays the role of a facilitator, leaving the ultimate responsibility of learning to the student. The question, however, is whether this is happening in practice. This study aims to answer this question through instructors' perceptions of active learning in a higher education institution in Oman.

The study participants were 85 instructors working for a private university in Oman. Data were collected by surveying these instructors' perceptions of active learning practice indicators, such as active teaching strategies and student educational practices. This was followed by interviewing a random sample of the same instructors (N = 10) to obtain a deeper understanding of their implementation of the active learning approach.

Data collected through the survey revealed that the shift from passive to active learning in higher education in Oman created a discrepancy between instructors' willingness to practice active learning and learners' unpreparedness to become autonomous learners. The follow-up interview findings confirmed this point, revealing instructors' negative perceptions of student participation and engagement in out-of-class activities.

This study is among the first to investigate the application of active learning in a higher education institution in Oman from the perspective of instructors.