Search results

Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) can create participatory cultures by removing barriers to access materials, encouraging student modes of expression, differentiating student interactions through digital environments and increasing learner autonomy. Participatory cultures require competencies or new media literacy (NML) skills to be successful in a digital world. However, professional development (PD) often lacks training on CALL and its implementation to develop such skills. The purpose of this study is to describe teachers use of digital tools for multilingual learners through a relevant theoretical perspective.

This design-based research study examines 30 in-service teachers in South Carolina, a destination state for Latinx immigrants, focusing data over three semesters of PD: interviews and instructional logs. The researchers address the question: How are teachers using digital tools to advance NML for multilingual learners (MLs)?

The authors analyzed current elementary teachers’ use of digital tools for language learning and NML purposes. Three themes are discussed: NMLs and digital literacy boundaries, digital tools for MLs and literacy teaching for MLs and NML skills.

Teacher PD often needs more specificity regarding the intersection of MLs and digital literacy. The authors contribute to the literature on needed elementary teaching practices for MLs, the integration of NML and how these practices may be addressed through PD.

Research on online user privacy shows that empirical evidence on how privacy literacy relates to users' information privacy empowerment is missing. To fill this gap, this paper investigated the respective influence of two primary dimensions of online privacy literacy – namely declarative and procedural knowledge – on online users' information privacy empowerment.

An empirical analysis is conducted using a dataset collected in Europe. This survey was conducted in 2019 among 27,524 representative respondents of the European population.

The main results show that users' procedural knowledge is positively linked to users' privacy empowerment. The relationship between users' declarative knowledge and users' privacy empowerment is partially supported. While greater awareness about firms and organizations practices in terms of data collections and further uses conditions was found to be significantly associated with increased users' privacy empowerment, unpredictably, results revealed that the awareness about the GDPR and user’s privacy empowerment are negatively associated. The empirical findings reveal also that greater online privacy literacy is associated with heightened users' information privacy empowerment.

While few advanced studies made systematic efforts to measure changes occurred on websites since the GDPR enforcement, it remains unclear, however, how individuals perceive, understand and apply the GDPR rights/guarantees and their likelihood to strengthen users' information privacy control. Therefore, this paper contributes empirically to understanding how online users' privacy literacy shaped by both users' declarative and procedural knowledge is likely to affect users' information privacy empowerment. The study empirically investigates the effectiveness of the GDPR in raising users' information privacy empowerment from user-based perspective. Results stress the importance of greater transparency of data tracking and processing decisions made by online businesses and services to strengthen users' control over information privacy. Study findings also put emphasis on the crucial need for more educational efforts to raise users' awareness about the GDPR rights/guarantees related to data protection. Empirical findings also show that users who are more likely to adopt self-protective approaches to reinforce personal data privacy are more likely to perceive greater control over personal data. A broad implication of this finding for practitioners and E-businesses stresses the need for empowering users with adequate privacy protection tools to ensure more confidential transactions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore teacher candidates’ response to young adult literature (prose and comics) featuring fat identified protagonists. The paper considers the textual and embodied resources readers use and reject when imagining and interpreting a character’s body. This paper explores how readers’ meaning making was influenced when reading prose versus comics. This paper adds to a corpus of scholarship about the relationships between young adult literature, comics, bodies and reader response theory.

At the time of the study, participants were enrolled in a teacher education program at a Midwestern University, meeting monthly for a voluntary book club dedicated to reading and discussing young adult literature. To examine readers’ responses to comics and prose featuring fat-identified protagonists, the author used descriptive qualitative methodologies to conduct a thematic analysis of meeting transcripts, written participant reflections and researcher memos. Analysis was grounded in theories of reader response, critical fat studies and multimodality.

Analyses indicated many readers reject textual clues indicating a character’s body size and weight were different from their own. Readers read their bodies into the stories, regarding them as self-help narratives instead of radical counternarratives. Some readers were not able to read against their assumptions of thinness (and whiteness) until prompted by the researcher and other participants.

Although many reader response scholars have demonstrated readers’ tendencies toward personal identification in the face of racial and class differences, there is less research regarding classroom practices around the entanglement of physical bodies, body image and texts. Analyzing reader’s responses to the constructions of fat bodies in prose versus comics may help English Language Arts (ELA) educators and students identify and deconstruct ideologies of thin-thinking and fatphobia. This study, which demonstrates thin readers’ tendencies to overidentify with protagonists, suggests ELA classrooms might encourage readers to engage in critical literacies that support them in reading both with and against their identities.

This research paper aimed to investigate the affordances of using virtual reality (VR) in teaching culture among in-service teachers of teaching Persian to speakers of other languages (TPSOL) in Iran.

This qualitative case study, conducted at two Iranian universities, used purposeful sampling to select 34 eligible in-service Persian teachers from a pool of 73. Data collection used an open-ended questionnaire and interviews.

Before the TPSOL in-service training workshop, teachers expressed their reservations regarding the use of VR to teach culture in TPSOL courses. The emerged themes were “skepticism toward effectiveness,” “practicality concerns,” “limited awareness of VR applications,” “technological apprehension” and “prevalence of traditional teaching paradigms.” During the post-workshop interview, it was discovered that the teachers’ perceptions of VR in teaching culture had undergone a positive shift. The workshop generated emergent themes that reflected positive perceptions and affordances for using VR to teach culture in TPSOL, including “enhanced cultural immersion,” “increased student engagement,” “simulation of authentic cultural experiences,” and “facilitation of interactive learning environments.”

One primary limitation is the lack of prior experience with VR for teaching practices in real-world classrooms among the participants. While the study aimed to explore the potential of VR in enhancing pedagogical approaches, the absence of participants with prior exposure to VR in educational contexts may impact the generalizability of the findings to a broader population. Additionally, the study faced practical constraints, such as the unavailability of sufficient facilities in the workshop. As a result, the instructor had to project the VR cont7ent on a monitor, potentially diverging from the immersive nature of true VR experiences. These limitations offer opportunities for future research to refine methodologies and gain a more comprehensive understanding of the implications of integrating VR into teaching practices.

Extensive research has been conducted on the effectiveness of VR in language education. However, there is a significant gap in research on TPSOL, which is considered a less commonly taught language. This study aims to address this gap by exploring the use of VR in the TPSOL through the lenses of in-service teachers. As part of a larger investigation, this qualitative inquiry focuses on the perceptions of in-service teachers about VR, with a particular emphasis on the cultural understanding of the Persian language.

This study aims to explore motives behind teachers' and students' use of translanguaging and how they use it in Tanzanian public secondary school classrooms.

Data were collected using interviews and non-participant observations.

The findings indicate that translanguaging was used to facilitate content comprehension, promote classroom interaction and increase students' motivation to learn. Translanguaging was implemented using three strategies: paraphrasing an English text into Kiswahili, translating an English text into its Kiswahili equivalent and word-level translanguaging.

By highlighting the motivations for translanguaging and corresponding strategies associated with translanguaging pedagogy in the Tanzanian context, this study has significant practical implications for teachers and students to showcase their linguistic and multimodal knowledge, while fostering a safe learning space that relates to students' daily experiences.

The study offers new insights into previous research on the role of language-supportive pedagogy appropriate for teachers and students working within bi-/multilingual education settings.

Mainland Tanzania has seen two decades of significant social policy reforms and transformations in its social and economic structures, whilst the country continues to grapple with persisting gender inequalities. This article examines Tanzania's social policy developments from a gender perspective. The authors analyse the level, reach and quality of social policy delivery to working-age women across the areas of health policy, social protection and employment policy during 2000–2021.

The article draws on qualitative research deploying the scoping review method. The data consist of diverse secondary materials, including academic publications, government policy documents, relevant statistics and other types of “grey” literature.

Tanzania has made significant advancements in the legal frameworks around welfare provision and has instituted increasingly gender-responsive government policy plans. The health and social protection sectors, in particular, have witnessed the introduction of large-scale measures expanding social policy implementation. However, social policy delivery remains two-tiered, with differences in provisions for women in the formal and informal sectors.

Social policy delivery and implementation have increased and diversified in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) during the new millennium, with a growing integration of gender-specific policy objectives. However, limited social policy scholarship has focused on the gendered effects of broader social policy models in SSA. The article remedies the concomitant knowledge gaps by examining various social policies and their impacts on working-age women in Mainland Tanzania. The authors also engage with the theoretical welfare regime literature and present an analytical framework for gender-sensitive assessment of emerging social policy models in the Global South.

This study aims to explore the factors influencing the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) consumers’ adoption and usage intention towards mobile payment (m-payment) to achieve financial inclusion and sustainable development goals.

A qualitative research design is used to explore the enablers and inhibitors that influence BOP consumers’ m-payment adoption and usage intention. To collect the qualitative responses, semi-structured in-depth interviews with BOP respondents were conducted. The thematic analysis using the text mining technique will be used to analyse qualitative data for exploring the predominant factors affecting m-payment adoption intention and usage.

The results suggested awareness, social influences and self-efficacy as crucial enablers and privacy and security risks and vulnerability concerns as crucial inhibitors towards m-payment adoption and usage.

As a novel contribution to the BOP, financial inclusion, sustainable development goals and m-payment literature, this study unfolds several unknown perceived benefits and perceived sacrifices that influence the BOP consumers’ m-payment adoption intention and usage. The study’s findings help the government and banks formulate and implement strategies to achieve financial inclusion among BOP consumers.

This study aims to examine how teacher candidates (TCs) in Türkiye and the USA navigate their intercultural communication skills in a telecollaboration project.

Forty-eight TCs participated (26 in Türkiye and 22 in the USA) in the study. TCs discussed critical issues in multicultural education on an online learning platform for six weeks. Their discussions were analyzed using content and discourse analysis.

The findings indicated that TCs approached the telecollaborative space as a translingual contact zone and positioned themselves and their interlocutors in the discourse by using the personal pronouns; I, we, you and they. When they positioned themselves using we (people in Türkiye/USA), they spoke on behalf of everyone included in the scope of we. Their interlocutors responded to these positionings either by accepting this positioning and responding with a parallel positioning or by engaging in translingual negotiation strategies to revise the scope of we and sharing some differences/nuances in beliefs and practices in their community.

When TCs talk about their culture and community in a singular manner using we, they frame them as the same across every member in that community. When they ask questions to each other using you, the framing of the questions prime the respondents to sometimes relay their own specific experiences as the norm or consider experiences from different points of view through translingual negotiation strategies. A singular approach to culture(s) may affect the marginalized communities the most because they are lost in this representation, and their experiences and voices are not integrated in the narratives or integrated with stereotypical representation.

Teachers and teacher educators should first pay attention to their language choices, especially use of pronouns, which may communicate inclusion or exclusion in intercultural conversations. Next, they should prepare their students to adopt and practice language choices that communicate respect for cultural diversity and are inclusive of marginalized populations.

Speakers’ pronoun use includes identity construction in discourse by drawing borders around and between communities and cultures with generalization and particularity, and by patrolling those borders to decide who is included and excluded. As a response, interlocutors use pronouns either to acknowledge those borders and respond with corresponding ones from their own context or negotiate alternative representations or further investigate for particularity or complexity. In short, pronouns could lead the direction of intercultural conversations toward criticality and complexity or otherwise, and might be reasons where there are breakdowns in communication or to fix those breakdowns.

This study shows that translingual negotiation strategies have explanatory power to examine how speakers from different language backgrounds negotiate second and third order positionings in the telecollaborative space.