Search results

The authors aim to present partial least squares (PLS) as an evolving approach to structural equation modeling (SEM), highlight its advantages and limitations and provide an overview of recent research on the method across various fields.

In this review article, the authors merge literatures from the marketing, management, and management information systems fields to present the state-of-the art of PLS-SEM research. Furthermore, the authors meta-analyze recent review studies to shed light on popular reasons for PLS-SEM usage.

PLS-SEM has experienced increasing dissemination in a variety of fields in recent years with nonnormal data, small sample sizes and the use of formative indicators being the most prominent reasons for its application. Recent methodological research has extended PLS-SEM's methodological toolbox to accommodate more complex model structures or handle data inadequacies such as heterogeneity.

While research on the PLS-SEM method has gained momentum during the last decade, there are ample research opportunities on subjects such as mediation or multigroup analysis, which warrant further attention.

This article provides an introduction to PLS-SEM for researchers that have not yet been exposed to the method. The article is the first to meta-analyze reasons for PLS-SEM usage across the marketing, management, and management information systems fields. The cross-disciplinary review of recent research on the PLS-SEM method also makes this article useful for researchers interested in advanced concepts.

Researchers have argued that video games have great utility for learning. Games promote experiential learning and can be used to facilitate active learning. This paper examines the potential of video games in education. In particular, it examines the benefits of game modding compared to playing and/or creating games. However, video game classes have been primarily attended by male students. This paper looks further into the gender issue regarding the use of video game modding in education. This is demonstrated through a course developed by the authors on game design. The main goal of the course was to introduce middle school and high school female students to IT and assist them in acquiring five basic IT skills. During the course, survey data was collected from participating students. Results from the surveys as well as analysis of student projects and anecdotal evidence suggest that using video game modding is successful in increasing self‐efficacy and motivation as well as teaching female students basic IT skills.

Although schools across the United States are becoming increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse, many teachers remain underprepared to work with students classified as English learners (ELs), especially at the secondary level. Acknowledging the importance of developing systems of support for teachers of ELs, this paper examines the district- and school-level factors shaping secondary teachers' access to EL-focused professional learning in one large urban school district.

To examine teachers' access to EL-focused professional learning, the authors draw on 49 in-depth interviews with district leaders and staff from nine secondary schools. Data analysis was guided by a structure, culture and agency theoretical framework.

Findings revealed that decreased structural support, in terms of both fiscal and human resources, constrained teachers' access to EL-related professional learning. Further, the district culture was characterized by limited understanding of ELs' backgrounds and assets. While some school leaders exercised agency to bolster EL-focused professional learning for teachers, such supports were rare.

Findings help to contextualize secondary teachers' feelings of unpreparedness to serve ELs, illuminating several factors that district and school leaders should attend to in order to bolster the development of professional capital for teachers of ELs at the secondary level.

While prior research outlines the importance of designing systems of support for EL-focused professional learning, this study highlights specific structural and cultural factors shaping such systems.

This chapter discusses the findings of doctoral research into further education lecturers' and middle managers' perceptions of how Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in the sector is planned and implemented. Thematic analysis revealed that mandatory CPD is perceived to: involve conflicting purposes between those planning it and its recipients (deriving from divergent understandings of professionalism and the role of CPD among stakeholders); and be characterised as mostly generic, didactic, and ineffective, leading lecturers to compensate by engaging in additional, separate forms of CPD. This chapter demonstrates the value of practice-based doctoral study in enabling the voices of educators to be positioned at the centre of an exploration of their own professional learning.

This chapter investigates the impact of a teacher preparation program that includes specific attention to the needs of bilingual learners on participants’ subsequent teaching practices. Specifically, this mixed methods retrospective study examines graduates’ reports of their current teaching practices as well as their perceptions of the Teaching English Language Learners (TELL) program’s impact on these practices. Multiple-choice survey data were analyzed quantitatively to identify trends among reported practices and perceptions. Open-ended survey and interview data were analyzed qualitatively to identify interrelated themes within teachers’ detailed, first-hand accounts of their pre-service and in-service experiences. The results showed that there was variety with respect to whether particular linguistically responsive practices were routine, used occasionally, or rarely. There was also a difference with respect to whether such practices were perceived to be the result of having participated in the program. Notably, the most frequently used practices attributed to the TELL program involved teaching language (TL) to facilitate content learning. Other aspects of the teacher preparation program supported effective practices for academic content learning, but only TELL coursework and experiences facilitated practices that emphasized academic language development. These results suggest that programs created to improve the preparation of teachers to work with bilingual learners in mainstream classroom contexts must make a special effort to develop teachers’ skills in regard to language teaching, especially practices that focus on language beyond the word-level. There are limitations to the study because of the small number of participants and the fact that they were self-selected as program participants.

To summarize the shocks and stresses that peasants in Mexico have been subjected to since the 1940s and to examine the responses of sons of peasants working as semi-informal beach vendors in Cabo San Lucas as to what they define as the worst problems of the peasantry in their hometowns.

This chapter offers an analysis of the responses of 32 sons of peasants interviewed on Medano Beach in Cabo San Lucas in October of 2012 partially as concerns whether they would like to be peasants themselves and as to what they define as the worst problems of the peasantry in their hometowns.

Twenty-five of the thirty-two vendors interviewed would be happy to be peasants. According to all of the vendors, the overwhelming problems facing the peasantry were primarily droughts or floods (related to climate change) and lack of government aid (related to neoliberalization).

The peasantry in Mexico is being and has been marginalized both by a number of stresses and shocks, currently identified by some of those at risk as factors related to climate change and neoliberalization.

Demographic changes across the United States have led to dramatic shifts in the composition of public school enrollments. While these shifts are manifest across multiple dimensions of diversity, the influx of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students is particularly pronounced. As the numbers of CLD students rapidly grow across all geographic regions, from rural to suburban to urban, school leaders face the daunting responsibility of responding to ensure that these students receive equitable opportunities to learn. Some guiding principles for accomplishing this generalize across settings, yet ultimately this leadership needs to be context-specific. In this chapter we discuss these guiding principles and apply them narrowly to the context of medium and small urban districts. We argue that school leadership – particularly district and school administration – plays a crucial role in supporting the design and delivery of supports for CLD students and their families, who constitute a “new mainstream” in many of these settings.

The massive investment in, and development of, automated and connected transport (ACT) technology development has triggered much debate about this breakthrough technology’s potential positive and negative impacts. Multiple studies have explored the potential direct implications for users in terms of road safety, ‘productive’ travel time, mobility of the elderly and physically less mobile persons, as well as indirect impacts such as reduced emissions and freed road space. Through a critical review of the literature on ACT deployment types and discussions with an expert working group on the wider impacts of ACT implementation, this chapter examines four distinct deployment types of ACT technology and their opportunities and threats in transitioning toward inclusive transport systems. Of the four types, we posit that ACT-based public transport has the greatest potential to contribute to a more inclusive mobility future. Examining the case of Singapore using policy documents, academic literature and interviews with representatives of public and private sectors and academia, the chapter draws policy recommendations for governance toward more inclusive ACT innovation and deployment.

Until the 2008 Crash, the prevailing economic orthodoxy, accepted across the broad political spectrum, was that inequality was a necessary condition for economic health. The evidence of the last four decades is that this trade-off theory – that you can have more equal or more efficient economies but not both – is incorrect. Not only do excessive concentrations of income and wealth bring social dislocation and breed public discontent with democratic institutions, but a number of studies have shown that inequality on today’s scale brings slower growth and greater economic turbulence. Although there is now a broad acceptance amongst global leaders that inequality poses significant risks for social cohesion and economic stability, there has been little or no action to match the high level verbal war against inequality. As a result, inequality has carried on rising within nations since 2008. In the United Kingdom, the gap between the top and bottom has continued to widen, in part because post-2010 governments have weakened the pro-equality role of the state. Tackling inequality is now one of the most pressing issues of the day – an economic as well as a social imperative – while reversing this four decade long trend will require a major restructuring of the pro-market economic models in place across most of the rich world.