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This exploratory research project investigated how mainland Chinese business students studying overseas conceptualize and describe the learning effectiveness of ten different instructional techniques commonly encountered in their business courses. A large numbers of mainland Chinese students enroll in business courses in private international institutions in Singapore – dislocated from their home cultures – but needing to adapt to Western learning curricula and ultimately to acquire proficiency in Western business practices. Certain instructional techniques are likely to bridge the cultural gap better than others. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Twenty consenting students selected from 400+ geographically diverse Chinese students participating in a larger study provided face-to-face interview information on how different instructional techniques stimulated different aspects of content acquisition, learner group dynamics, decision-making, learning efficiency, comfort, flexibility, familiarity, and applicability.

Interviewees' free-form descriptions of “learning effectiveness” included phrases such as “quality of learning”, “control over my learning”, “scope of knowledge”, “efficiency of learning”, “gaining/acquiring knowledge”, “understanding theories”, “flexibility in time and place”, “applicability of new information”, “attractive learning environment”, “[absence of] ambiguity and uncertainty”, “security and ease of mind”, etc. Their 340 descriptors were classified into 30 qualitative indicator categories, four of them common to many instructional techniques and ten more specific to individual techniques.

Although Chinese mainland students generally prefer rote-learning styles of instructional techniques due to their prolonged exposure to it, rote-style techniques may not always be the preferred choices for learning effectiveness and adaptation to new culture norms and practices. This paper reports qualitative “consultations” with learners in new cultures and argues for holistic and engaged approaches to learning effectiveness for students dislocated from their home cultures while providing a starting-point for further research in mainland Chinese students' Western-based business education in Singapore and elsewhere.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a new trend of training mainland Chinese students in Western‐style business education in Singapore. The paper examines the influence of the inferred learning effectiveness and cultural dislocation variables when measured across ten commonly used instructional techniques.

The use of consensual qualitative research allowed the data to be qualitatively analysed. The random selection of 20 participants represents mainland Chinese students, from the northern, southern, eastern and western regions. The study reports the level of knowledge acquisition, the relationship between comfort and knowledge acquired and the differences between the active and passive instructional techniques on students' learning effectiveness.

Rote‐learning styles of instructional techniques may not be the Chinese students' only preferred choice in terms of acquisition of knowledge and how they learn most effectively.

The present exploratory study provides a starting‐point for further research into understanding how to teach Western‐based business education to mainland Chinese students in Singapore.

The findings will give institutions conducting Western‐based education programs in Singapore an advantage in providing effective learning pedagogies, and will assist in increasing their quality, which will enable them to nurture well‐qualified business professionals.

The quality of the educational standard and its compatibility with the Asian client base are further enhanced both in terms of contents' intensity and educational services provided to students.

The paper offers practical help from the perspective of the curriculum design and development of an effective business educational framework to sustain profitability by offering tailor‐made, superior quality course programs.

The rapid introduction of new technology and the various needs for human resource development are changing the priorities for vocational and technical training. While the fundamental goals for training remain, emphasis is shifting from a focus on content delivery to a recognition of the importance of a systems approach. As a consequence, professionals involved with training are increasingly aware of the need for more rigour in the process by which training is developed, implemented and evaluated. The chief purpose of this monograph is to introduce training and other interested personnel to the Instructional Systems Development (ISD) approach. Collected in this one document is the essential information on the ISD process for the development and conduct of efficient and effective performance‐based training programmes. For those planning a new training programme, this logical and organised approach provides a road map. Furthermore, the procedural steps presented are useful when modifying and revising existing programmes. Instructional Systems Development methodology is presented in five phases: analyse, design, develop, implement and control.

The purpose of this paper is to study the viability of implementing a protocol-guided model designed to provide structure and focus for teacher collaboration from Shanghai in today’s US public schools. The authors examine whether the new model, Teacher Peer Excellence Group (TPEG), fosters the desired key features of productive communities of practice where teachers can jointly construct, transform, preserve, and continuously deepen the meaning of effective teaching. The authors also explore the extent to which existing school conditions – principal instructional leadership, trust, teacher efficacy, and teachers’ sense of school-wide professional community – enable or moderate the desired outcomes.

Data for this paper are drawn from a series of surveys administered to teachers from 24 pilot schools in six school districts over two school years. Descriptive and multilevel modeling analyses are conducted.

The findings provide encouraging evidence that, given sufficient support and guidance, teachers report higher levels of engagement in deprivatized practice and instructional collaboration. These findings also hold after controlling for key enabling conditions and school characteristics.

The TPEG approach challenges school leaders to take on the responsibilities of helping teachers make their practice public, sharable, and better – three critical objectives in the shift to develop the profession of teaching.

The indication of TPEG model’s positive impact on strengthening the features of communities of practice in selected public schools provides the impetus for further efforts in understanding the transformational changes needed and challenges ahead at the classroom, school, and district levels.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering all library types.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2018.

The paper provides a brief description of all 422 sources, and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians and anyone interested as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

The principal purpose of this article was to identify supervisory approaches available to instructional leaders in education. Selected supervisory approaches served as the basis for creating the Supervisory Options for Instructional Leaders (SOIL) Model. Instructional leaders in a variety of educational settings could use this model. The SOIL Model is divided into three levels of supervision. The supervisory approaches included in each level are placed along a continuum of reward and risk. Reward is defined as “something given or offered for some service or attainment” (Mish, 1989, p. 628). Risk is defined by Mish (1989) as “the exposure to possible loss or injury” (p. 632).

As the instructional leader and teacher develop in the supervisory process, it is proposed that the approach of supervision used should change. As professional readiness increases and as the circumstances dictate, the instructional leader should progress in an upward direction on the continuum and facilitate more teacher-directed approaches of supervision. With teacher-directed approaches of supervision, instructional leaders and teachers may experience greater reward from the supervisory process.

Purpose – To provide a resource for educators and graduate students that contains information about using formal assessment data to plan literacy instruction and intervention.

Design/methodology/approach – Several aspects of formal assessment are presented, including a definition of formal assessment, types of formal assessment scores, commonly used formal assessments, and recommendations for using formal assessments for individuals and groups. Information about formal assessment is informed both by documented sources and the experiences of the authors.

Findings – The authors provide an overview of common, commercially available assessments designed to measure literacy achievement in either individuals or groups. Reviews of formal assessments include scores, number of forms, literacy domains measured, and published reliability figures. Recommendations for formal assessment use include using assessment data to plan instruction and intervention for both individuals and groups. In addition, a case study is presented demonstrating the efficacy of using formal assessment data to plan instruction and intervention in a K-6 elementary school in the United States.

Research limitations/implications – The review of commercially available individual and group literacy assessments does not constitute an exhaustive list.

Practical implications – Information about formal assessments, assessment score types, and formal assessment uses is consolidated in one location for easy access by graduate students and other educators.

Originality/value – This chapter provides graduate students and others in the field of education an overview of formal assessments and how formal assessment data can be used to make instructional decisions for both individuals and groups.

The purpose of this paper is to document a three-year international project aimed to improve the capacity of participating schools and districts in implementing and scaling Teacher Peer Excellence Groups (TPEGs). The TPEG model involves teams of teachers organized by subject matter or grade levels, deeply engaged in communities of practice for instructional improvement. It facilitates the professionalization of teaching through the de-privatization of teacher practice, collaborative planning, giving and receiving actionable feedback, and holding one another accountable for implementing improvement measures.

The project is a collaborative partnership between US and Chinese universities and school districts in Tennessee and Shanghai. Mixed-method approaches were used to track the development and implementation of the TPEG model in 27 pilot schools in six Tennessee districts from 2013 to 2016. Data were collected through school site visits, lesson-planning documents, classroom observations, focus groups, interviews, and teacher and principal surveys.

This paper compiles the key findings from multiple research studies and program reports about the TPEG project. Findings provide encouraging evidence that, given sufficient support and guidance, teachers can construct productive learning communities. The results show consistent positive and statistically significant result across all three key signposts for effective communities of practice – increases in instructional collaboration, comfort with deprivatized teaching practice, and engagement in deprivatized teaching practice. These findings hold after controlling for key enabling conditions and school characteristics. Qualitative analyses provide a rich and nuanced picture of how TPEGs were doing after the implementation grants. Participating schools reported a full range of engagements in TPEGs, and emphasized the role of school leadership in facilitating and supporting teachers to lead and participate in TPEGs.

The TPEG project provides a valuable case study to address the benefits, concerns, and potential risks associated with cross-cultural learning of effective instructional practices. Findings from the three-year process highlight the key steps of cultivating the necessary culture and expertise to support, implement, and sustain effective TPEGs school-wide and district-wide. It also underscores the necessity of developing and customizing tools and resource kit for supporting this work such as observation protocols, feedback guides, and examples of timetables to conduct TPEG activities.

There have been many research studies on students’ satisfaction of services in universities in developed countries. However, students’ expectation and satisfaction of public and private higher education institutions (HEIs) with regard to service quality in Eastern Europe have been under-researched. Therefore, this study aims to offer an empirical examination of student satisfaction of the service quality of public and private HEIs in Albania by evaluating the gap between students’ expectation and perception and the effect of student satisfaction on retention in HEIs.

The survey instrument used in this study was the student satisfaction inventory in the USA. Primary data were collected from a survey of students in two private and four public HEIs in Albania. A total of 554 valid responses were collected from the survey.

The findings suggested that there were performance gaps between public and private HEIs. Public universities performed well in terms of concern for the individual, campus support services, student-centeredness and instructional effectiveness. Private HEIs scored well in terms of concern for the individual, academic advising effectiveness, instructional effectiveness and safety and security (parking). There is a significant difference in students’ perception of the overall satisfaction of HEIs. Students’ overall satisfaction positively impacts their retention.

Overall, this study provides valuable insights to private and public HEIs’ administrators regarding to student satisfaction and retention. The findings will have far-reaching managerial implications for all groups of stakeholders in terms of the service delivery by universities in Albania and Eastern Europe.