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The objective of this paper is to evaluate the learning gap between private and public school children in primary school, and ascertain the part of the private–public school learning gap that is due to differences in observables and the part that can be attributed to private school effect.

The paper utilized a household survey data from Ghana that assessed children on numeracy and literacy in both English and local languages. The primary methodology for this study is non-linear Oaxaca decomposition. The study also utilized Welch's t-statistics to test if there are any differences in the private–public school learning gaps across several sub-groups.

Findings from this study show a substantial gain for private school attendance on both numeracy and literacy. The results show that a little over 60% of the total learning gap in numeracy and literacy in English is explained by observable characteristics. However, observable characteristics almost explain all the learning gaps in the reading and writing of local languages. Evidence from the study suggests that the private school effect is homogeneous across several sub-groups. The results reveal years of education, expenditure on extra classes, religion and urbanicity as the most important variables explaining the gap that is caused by differences in observables.

Despite the belief that private school children in Ghana have better learning outcomes, there has not been any study to quantify this learning gap in the country and this study fills this gap. While there is literature on the differences in the learning outcomes between public and private schools, those studies have focused on the differences that are attributable to the private school effect. This article does not only present the differences in the learning outcomes but also shows the proportion that is due to observable characteristics and the part that can be attributed to the private school effect.

Finance is a male-dominated field of work. This study aims to understand if learning in finance follows the same pattern. Furthermore, the authors want to understand if foreign female students are subject to the same cultural norms and sorting mechanisms as their counterparts from the USA or Finland.

In the context of a capstone course, students of two well-known international business programs (one in the USA, the other in Finland) participate in a business simulation. The authors surveyed the students on their learning experience across different business functions. The authors collected 440 responses over five years.

A gender gap exists in learning finance. Females surveyed reported learning less (9%–15%) than males. However, foreign females reported learning more (11%–17%). Additionally, the authors find no gender gap in learning of other business functions (i.e. marketing and strategy). Foreign females seem to bypass traditional roles and sorting mechanisms.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to document the moderating effect of foreignness on the gender gap in learning.

This paper aims to identify the digital gaps in seamless learning concept within the higher educational institutions (HEIs) context.

The most cited mobile-assisted seamless learning framework, recent Educause higher education research report and relevant articles have been reviewed.

The digital gaps among educators and students hinder the implementation of the seamless learning framework in HEIs.

The finding will inform HEIs in addressing digital gaps to ensure learning and teaching enhancement with educational technology across institutions. It will also be useful for the design and improvement of the seamless learning framework. The finding may also be useful in creating awareness among educators and students as to the benefit of educational technologies.

No previous viewpoints have been published on digital gaps in the seamless learning concept. The digital gaps among educators and students constitute one of the most critical issues in implementing technology-assisted teaching and learning design in HEIs. This paper addresses the root of the problem by examining the digital gaps among educators and students within the seamless learning framework.

This study aims to explore expectation gaps concerning the roles between educators and students in the context of venture creation courses at higher education institutions by investigating their mutual perspectives. The authors seek to answer the following research questions: (1) how is the role expectation toward the entrepreneurship education of teachers different from that of students and (2) what are the consequences of these expectation gaps in entrepreneurship education?

This study applies an explorative qualitative approach. As the research setting, the authors selected an entrepreneurship education course for advanced management students at a German public university. The authors conducted in-depth interviews with both educators and students to examine how role ambiguity emerges in venture creation courses.

This study identified discrepancies between educators and students in their fundamental assumptions regarding the role of educators and students. Such discrepancies are the autonomy-level assumption gap, capacity assumption gap and learning outcomes expectation gap. Based on the findings, this study develops a framework of expectation gaps between educators and students as sources for role ambiguity in entrepreneurship education by extending the role episode model developed in role theory.

The findings contribute to the extant literature on entrepreneurship education in several ways. First, this study reveals that students in venture creation programs can encounter role ambiguity due to differing expectations about their role between educators and students, which can negatively affect the students' perception of their learning outcome. Second, this study discovered that the possible discrepancies regarding the fundamental assumptions about the role of educators and students pose a challenge to educators. Third, the findings illuminate the importance of understanding the complex identity of students in the context of student-centered entrepreneurship education.

This study offers several practical implications for entrepreneurship educators in higher education institutions. First, this study reveals the confusion among students concerning their role in entrepreneurship education. As such, it is recommended that educators explain to students the purpose of the student-centered pedagogical approach and the expected role of students in acting as independent entrepreneurial agents. Second, while student-centered entrepreneurship education is based on the fundamental assumption that students are motivated to develop their own startup projects, educators must consider the nature of students' motivation and their overall student-life situation. Finally, this study demonstrates the importance of creating an active feedback loop so that entrepreneurship teachers can be aware of such perceptional gaps between educators and students and understand the sources of these gaps.

While the extant literature indicates the existence of perceptual gaps between educators and students in the context of entrepreneurship education, how these gaps emerge and influence the outcome of entrepreneurship education remained unclear. One critical reason for the under-investigation of this issue was that existing studies predominantly emphasize the educators' perspectives, although such expectation gaps can only emerge through the discrepant views of two different parties. This study tackled this research gap by considering the mutual perspective of educators and students by applying role theory.

There is a substantial body of empirical literature on university students' self‐perceived approaches to learning, but evidence on instructors' perceptions of the way they facilitate their students' learning approaches is less evident. This study aims to investigate the extent of the gap between students' learning approaches and instructors' teaching orientations towards facilitating these approaches. The subsequent employability of accounting graduates depends in part on the nature and extent of this gap. Student learning approaches are measured on two dimensions ‐ deep and strategic approaches ‐ drawn from Tait's and Entwistle's (1995) Revised Approaches to Studying Inventory (RASI). Instructors' facilitation of students' learning is measured by a re‐orientation of the same RASI instrument towards teaching approaches. The results reveal several significant differences of emphasis between instructors and students in terms of deep and strategic approaches. Students are falling short of what their instructors believe they are facilitating in terms of the development of their employability competencies and characteristics for a professional career. When students are grouped according to gender, further significant differences are found. Implications of these findings for future change in accounting education are discussed.

This paper aims to explore how online experiential learning can help bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and real‐world competencies.

The paper is a joint opinion piece by Anne Llewellyn, Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences, Leeds Metropolitan University and Sarah Frame, EMEA Business Development Director, Toolwire. In the aftermath of several high‐profile failures in child protection in the UK, educators at Leeds Metropolitan University tasked with finding solutions have turned to immersive Digital Media Simulations. The impetus for introducing an experiential learning solution – covering the highly complex and sensitive topic of safeguarding vulnerable children – comes both from a desire to provide the most engaging and effective learning experience to students and a need to deliver competent social work professionals in line with the most recent guidelines.

The paper reveals that an increasing number of organizations are recognizing that online experiential learning sits at the intersection of several strategic learning needs of today's organizations and are prepared to make the investment in moving from traditional e‐learning to using Digital Media Simulations to help staff build these essential skills.

Experiential learning provides alternative and relevant ways of improving complex skills.

The paper aims to improve professional social work practice in child safeguarding and child welfare to improve the lives of vulnerable children.

This joint paper by Leeds Metropolitan demonstrates the value of experiential learning.

The purpose of this paper is to study the self and vicarious learning patterns of organizations through operational success and benchmark failure experiences. The study is specific to the Indian telecom sector.

This study uses published data of four major telecom firms in India reported by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and analyzed the influence of aspiration performance discrepancy on organizational learning by hypotheses testing. Feasible generalized least square model with year fixed effects is used to run panel data regression.

In the case of operating experience for performance above aspiration, firms fail to learn from their own experience as well as from others’ experiences. For benchmark failure experience under positive discrepancy, firms learn from their own experience. For performance below aspiration, no significant result was found. These insights allow managers to reconfigure their learning orientation and to develop an effective mechanism for absorbing crucial knowledge from themselves and peer firms.

Practitioners should take into account that their knowledge repertoire is essential for learning in good times. This study also motivates managers involved in operating activities to make use of publicly disclosed reports, engage in vicarious learning or form a coalition for developing coping mechanism under negative discrepancy scenarios.

This paper presents a unique context by studying operational success, and failure experiences of telecom sector in India wherein benchmark for failure was decided by the governing regulatory body, TRAI, unlike other studies where success and failures reference points are intrinsically selected.

The purpose of this paper is to examine learning strategies for competence development at the enterprise level, and how these can be actualised in practice. The authors focus on three influential aspects, namely: the highest valued employee skills, main triggers for learning and investment in learning, as well as the most successful types of learning.

The empirical research was designed according to abductive reasoning. The data draw on research we undertook between 2013 and 2015, including semi-structured interviews with management, human resources and union representatives, as well as questionnaire responses from a total of 31 EU and 163 EU-competitors, across 53 industries and 22 countries.

Competence development requires flexible, learner-centred strategies for initiatives that respond to immediate business needs. Additionally, despite soft competences being so highly valued and sought after, investment (financial and other) by enterprises in developing them is low, relative to the investments poured into hard competences. Also, there is a clear employee demand gap for learning that develops soft competences.

Findings and recommendations are based on a large-scale empirical study, providing state-of-the-art knowledge, upon which we can renew our current learning strategies in workplaces.

This research investigates the use of real-time online polling to enhance university teaching and learning.

Using a case study and employing action research, this work shows how polling can improve professional practice, learner engagement and teaching performance.

Incorporating the right type of online real-time polling into lessons is a professional challenge and can be hard work for teachers but has overriding benefits.

This research reports one lecturer's experiences within two UK universities, limited to location, variety of students and lecturer technical capability. The research implications are that online polling, especially in different learning environments, is needed. Previous research is outdated or limited to real-time polling for teaching and learning during physical classes. There are research opportunities therefore in the use of polling before, during and after class.

This research finds that the field of online polling needs to be seen as a modern teaching tool that now uses students' personal technology for easier use by students and teachers: it is more than the use of archaic “clickers” which were extra classroom items to be bought and maintained. Also, online polling, before, during and after classes, can be employed usefully and have validity within teachers' toolboxes. This paper shows how such polls can be successfully deployed.

Whilst there are previous reports of polling undertaken within teaching and learning events, this paper builds upon those experiences and boosts collective understanding about the use of polling as a way to improve professional practice and increase learning.

The aim of this article is to challenge the concept of “the learning organization” as unproblematic and inherently good.

The research looked at how teachers – as an example of public sector professionals in a work organization that claims to be a learning organization – view their conditions for learning.

By using this approach, the normative values surrounding the concept of the learning organization were discussed. This approach identifies power‐relations: i.e. who has the priority of interpretation to define what learning is desired and considered relevant as well as when, how and where one learns. In addition, it gives indications to how and why the implementations of management concepts are not always successful.

This article shows how the implementation of a governance concept (learning organization) in fact can be seen as bringing with it unintended consequences for the organization as a whole – and especially for the professionals. Even within a work organization claiming to be a learning organization, learning gaps can be identified.