Search results

The primary purpose of this study is to determine if the main character is a shapeshifter and, if so, how does the tale contribute to shapeshifting lore.

The focus of the study is confined to a version of the tale that appears in Jane Yolen's Folktales From Around the World (1986) and on summaries of other versions of shapeshifting tales when needed. Support for the findings is provided by an examination of the observations and rhetorical techniques employed by what appears to be an unreliable narrator and selected knowledge and practices from a variety of academic disciplines.

The research findings neither confirm nor deny that the main character is or is not a shapeshifter.

Instead, the critical reading confirms the traditional characterization of folktales as coming from diverse folk roots and disappearing or changing as they circulate through geographical space and narrative time.

It also implies that the tale has outgrown its practical and social folk roots and now extends far beyond that of traditional shapeshifting or literary folktales.

By bringing to light the racial and gender fears, ignorance and emotional and physical violence that lurk just below the surface of the society from which serpent-woman emerges, the study creates a haunting vision of the embedded biases that lurk just below the surface of many societies.

To this author's knowledge, this is the first study of this tale to appear in publication. The findings need further investigation.

Care leavers are identified as a vulnerable group within UK society and, unsurprisingly, are more susceptible to mental health problems. Research highlights inadequacies among UK Government provisions combined with poorer outcomes for care leavers. This paper aims to measure the effectiveness of provisions on mental health when transitioning from the care system to adulthood.

A systematic review was conducted to identify and highlight the inadequacies of provisions in place to aid a care leaver’s transition and the effects on their mental health. Of the 211 studies identified from the search, six studies met the eligibility criteria and were deemed eligible by the researcher for further exploration of themes.

The findings identified feeling isolated, training given to care professionals and caregivers, collaboration, lack of preparation and support and access and gaps in provisions as the five key themes. The overarching theme of interconnectedness and interplay between subthemes, mental health and a care leaver’s transition, is strongly presented throughout. Many participants within the individual studies reported negative findings illustrating the weaknesses of provisions and the negative effect on their mental health. Furthermore, the findings emphasise the unique nature of everyone’s experience transitioning out of the care system.

A limitation of the review is the selection of key words, which may have restricted the results produced during the main search, subsequently affecting the amount of relevant data extracted and synthesised. Finally, less emphasis on grey literature and more on empirical studies reduces the probability of discovering null or negative findings, therefore increasing the chances of publication bias (Paez, 2017). A small number of eligible studies increase the risk of not making important comparisons, prompting a wider search to be conducted in the future. An unequal ratio between national and international research in the systematic review restricts fresh perspectives and strategies concerning the mental health of care leavers.

Care leavers are identified as a vulnerable group within society and, unsurprisingly, are more susceptible to mental health problems. The UK Government enforces national and local policies to support young adults leaving the care system and transitioning to independence. However, previous research highlights inadequacies among provisions, combined with poorer mental health outcomes for care leavers.

Following on from gaps in the current findings, an investigation into regional disparities across provisions aimed at assisting care leavers transitioning to independence would produce useful information for the field and policymakers. Although current research addresses the essence of interplay between mental health and transitioning, further research is required to help build a supporting argument for adaptations and improvements in policies and practice.

This study supports the argument for an increase in attention from the UK Government and policymakers to improve the quality and quantity of support for a population often underserved and marginalised, especially in terms of reducing poorer mental health outcomes.

Play and playful literacies shape essential spaces for belonging, connection, transformation and joy: from embodied immersions into fantasy worlds, to the creation of interest-led groups overflowing with varied knowledges and identities, and the disruption of societal hierarchies through roleplayed restorying. Yet, theorizations delineating playful possibilities – while plentiful and varied – are often rigidly constructed in relation to neoliberally/biopolitically motivated notions of value, use and productivity. Imbued with forms of modern power, play’s full flourishing has been regulated and quelled, particularly within the realm of education. This study, a literature review, seeks to defy this fatuous notion of a frivolous play.

Drawing from research within the fields of literacy and educational studies, the author centers playful methods commonly trivialized in contemporary discourse, including in global out-of-school spaces (e.g. gaming clubs, improvisational theater groups), with popular culture texts (e.g. picture books, digital fanfiction) and for older youth and adults.

This exploration of play’s potential across lifespans, formal/informal learning ecologies and worldwide contexts foregrounds its intrinsic nature and essential entwining with socio-culturally/materially mediated forms of knowledge and communication.

With a unique focus on the playful literacies emerging across ages, spaces and places, this review advocates a turn toward the imaginative, messy, uncontrollable worlds of play in future research and practice.

The authors explore the under-researched area of post-decision evaluation in PPPs (public–private partnerships), focusing upon how and whether Post-decision Project Evaluation (PdPE) is considered and provided for in United Kingdom (UK) public infrastructure projects.

The authors’ research design sought insights from overviewing UK PPP planning and more focused exploration of PPP operational practice. The authors combine the extensive analysis of planning documents for operational UK PPP projects with interviews of different stakeholders in PPP projects in one city. Mobilising an open critical perspective, documents were analysed using ethnographic content analysis (ECA) and interviews were analysed using thematic analysis consistent therewith. The authors theorise the absence and ambiguities of PdPE drawing on the sociology of ignorance.

The authors find a long-standing absence and lack of PdPE in PPP projects throughout planning and operational practice, reflecting a dynamic, multi-faceted ignorance. Concerning planning practice, the authors’ documentary analysis evidences a trend in PdPE from its absence in the early years (which may indicate some natural or genuine ignorance) to different levels or forms of weak inclusion later. Regarding this inclusion, the authors find strategic ignorance played a substantive role, involving “deliberate engineering” by both public sector and private partners. Interview findings indicate lack of clarity over PdPE and its under-development in PPP practice, deficiencies again suggestive of natural and strategic ignorance.

The authors draw from the sociology of ignorance vis-à-vis accounting's absence and ambiguity in the context of PPP, contributing to an under-researched area.

Since the development of the COVID-19 vaccinations, questions surrounding race have been prominent in the literature on vaccine uptake. Early in the vaccine rollout, public health officials were concerned with the relatively lower rates of uptake among certain racial/ethnic minority groups. We suggest that this may also be patterned by racial/ethnic residential segregation, which previous work has demonstrated to be an important factor for both health and access to health care.

In this study, we examine county-level vaccination rates, racial/ethnic composition, and residential segregation across the U.S. We compile data from several sources, including the American Community Survey (ACS) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) measured at the county level.

We find that just looking at the associations between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, both percent Black and percent White are significant and negative, meaning that higher percentages of these groups in a county are associated with lower vaccination rates, whereas the opposite is the case for percent Latino. When we factor in segregation, as measured by the index of dissimilarity, the patterns change somewhat. Dissimilarity itself was not significant in the models across all groups, but when interacted with race/ethnic composition, it moderates the association. For both percent Black and percent White, the interaction with the Black-White dissimilarity index is significant and negative, meaning that it deepens the negative association between composition and the vaccination rate.

The analysis is only limited to county-level measures of racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, so we are unable to see at the individual-level who is getting vaccinated.

We find that segregation moderates the association between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, suggesting that local race relations in a county helps contextualize the compositional effects of race/ethnicity.

The purpose of this study is to investigate what sustainability initiatives are being implemented by Canadian independent restaurants and to determine if the initiatives represent all 10 categories of a sustainable restaurant as established by a sustainability initiative framework.

The study uses a qualitative approach of semi-structured interviews with 15 small to medium enterprise (SME), independent restaurant owners and operators across Canada. The data was digitally transcribed and thematic analysis was performed.

Results indicated that most initiatives aligned with the categories of “sustainable food/menu” and “waste reduction and disposables” which shows that the operators were inclined to pursue initiatives in customer view. Restaurants put limited focus on water supply, chemicals and pollution reduction, furniture and construction materials. Some of the barriers to implementing, measuring and learning about initiatives were: cost, lack of access to programs, supply chain complications, not having buy-in from owners and lack of time to implement.

The study recommends that governments provide incentives to implement sustainability initiatives that are out of sight to the customer. For example, implementing composting, energy efficient equipment and water saving processes. It is also recommended that third-party restaurant organizations provide more accurate, evidence-based guidance and education on implementing a wide-range of sustainability initiatives.

This research contributes to the literature on sustainability in restaurants and applies a sustainability initiative framework in a practical context. The study provides a unique assessment of the current state of restaurant sustainability and states where restaurants need to improve their efforts.

Metadiscourse is an important dialogue technique used in productive knowledge building to help a group evaluate and advance their knowledge progress. Previous studies have identified and defined various types of metadiscourse. However, there is scant knowledge about how different metadiscourse types emerge among different groups or what implicit correlations lie between progressive discourse and metadiscourse. Moreover, research on how different types of metadiscourse influence groups' knowledge advancement and artifacts is still inadequate. Therefore, this study aims to further examine the roles that different types of metadiscourse play in the collaborative knowledge building community on both a fine-grained (i.e. progressive discourse) and coarse-grained (i.e. group knowledge advancement and group artifacts) level.

Data for this study are drawn from the behaviour of undergraduate students participating in a 12-week course at a key university in China. On the fine-grained level, epistemic network analysis (ENA) is applied to illustrate how metadiscourse promotes the development of progressive discourse. On the coarse-grained level, two different chi-square tests are conducted to examine the roles of different types of metadiscourse in groups' knowledge advancement and artifacts.

The analysis allowed several conclusions to be drawn. First, the types of metadiscourse that students most often adopted were reflecting on ideas development (RD) and commenting on ideas (CI); they less frequently adopted setting group goals (SG) and making group plans (MP). Second, most types of metadiscourse correlated with developments in progressive discourse, particularly RD and CI. Third, the metadiscourse types RD, CI and coordinating group efforts (CE) played essential roles in knowledge advancement. Fourth, higher-quality artifacts could be created by using the metadiscourse type reviewing the state of knowledge building progress (RP).

A more profound comprehension of the role that metadiscourse plays in the collaborative knowledge building community not only contributes to the literature in the knowledge building field but also carries a significant meaning in regulating community, promoting learner agency and sustained knowledge, and consequently improving collaborative learning performance.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a research model in which coworker service sabotage influences hospitality employees’ service creativity via work engagement. It also aims to test the moderating effect of sensitivity to the interpersonal mistreatment of others (SIMO).

A time-lagged questionnaire study was performed in hotels in China. The hypotheses were tested via hierarchical multiple regression.

Coworker service sabotage is indirectly associated with hospitality employees’ service creativity via work engagement. The trait of SIMO buffers the harmful effect of coworker service sabotage.

Although our research design helps mitigate common method bias, it could still exist. Other coworker behaviors that might influence employees were not included in this research. The findings may also be biased due to the restricted sample from China.

Hospitality organizations should take measures to curb service sabotage. Organizations could also provide supportive resources to suppress the negative impacts of coworker service sabotage. Moreover, organizations should motivate those low in SIMO to care more about customers.

The research takes the lead in investigating the outcomes of service sabotage from a third-party perspective. Work engagement is identified as the mechanism for transmitting the impact of coworker service sabotage to employees. Moreover, a new moderator that attenuates the negative effects of coworker service sabotage is found.

There is a scarcity of research studies on why people remain inactive when encountering and recognising misinformation online. The main aim of this paper is to provide a groundwork for future research into why users do not challenge misinformation on digital platforms by generating hypotheses through a synthesis of pertinent literature, including organisational behaviour, communication, human-computer interaction (HCI), psychology and education.

Given the lack of directly related literature, this paper synthesised findings from relevant fields where the findings might be relevant, as the tendency to withhold opinions or feedback is a well-documented practice in offline interaction.

Following the analysis of relevant literature, the potential reasons for online silence towards misinformation can be divided into six categories: self-oriented, relationship-oriented, others-oriented, content-oriented, individual characteristics and technical factors.

Although corrections coming from peers can effectively combat misinformation, several studies showed that people in cyberspace do not take such action. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there has been scarce and virtually non-existent research investigating why people refrain from challenging others who post misinformation online. Thus, this paper attempts to address this gap and identify reasons in adjacent domains. The reasons provide a starting point for researching interventions to reduce reluctance and abstinence regarding the challenge of misinformation. The findings can be beneficial beyond the area of challenging misinformation and are extensible to other types of content and communication that people are hesitant to discuss and challenge, such as online injustice, prejudice and hate speech.