Search results

This research article presents an exploratory case study of the sociotechnical landscape of BookTok, and how young people use it to connect with others around the books they love, or those they love to hate. By observing the interplay between young people, books, and the technology (TikTok) that connects them, this study aims to explore how blending analog and digital media tools makes reading social and fun.

The authors selected three bestsellers available in English and Danish, and BookTokers who made related videos. This study used a qualitative, ethnographic (Pink, 2021) approach to explore interactions on the app. Inductive coding (Saldaña, 2021) helped the authors identify themes, and connect to areas of inquiry.

During the pandemic, TikTok and BookTok offered young people opportunities for reading engagement in social, bookish communities by using technology to promote reading in print. In doing so, their actions made reading and being a reader highly entertaining.

As an exploratory case study, this research is not generalizable. But the findings will apply to future work on reading, publishing, and connected learning in a sociotechnical landscape.

BookTok connects print and digital formats, offering innovative possibilities for young people’s connected learning and reading promotion in schools and libraries.

Because TikTok is a relatively new tool, and its sub-community BookTok became popular during the COVID-19 pandemic, research on this topic is still in its earliest stages.

This paper aims to report the initial findings of a project aiming to re-establish basic education in conflict-ravaged states in Northeastern Nigeria and to improve education providers' ability to plan and deliver basic educational services. The authors present a preliminary analysis of Nigerian teachers' access to information communication technology (ICT), their technology skills, as well associated national ICT policies.

This case study uses results from two co-designed tools, administered using KoboToolbox to Education Managers in the first instance, and teachers in the second. The data from the tools form the basis for analysis.

In the first instance, educational managers reported a lack of access to technology, the internet and to training and professional development. In the second instance, teachers reported issues present in the classroom environment, including poor infrastructure, a lack of resources and over-crowded classrooms. Very few teachers had access to computers or to the internet.

The 33 educational managers represent a small sample size and may not be fully representative of the region covered. The ICT Capacity Audit tool listed Excel in two different areas – basic Excel skills and using Excel for data analysis – which could have caused confusion for participants. The data collection should be repeated, expanded and compared for consistency. For the team, changes to the proposed (SENSE) box content meant that we were not able to deliver low-tech tools, such as Boogie Boards, or high-tech tools, such as tablets, to schools.

Despite seemingly insurmountable challenges, the research team identified low-tech tools as a feasible resource in the classroom. Existing tools, such as teachers' smartphones and use of the WhatsApp application, can be used for sharing educational resources and providing teacher training. This paper argues that Nigeria needs up-to-date national ICT policies to guide in-country efforts to develop implementation of information technology initiatives for education.

In the past few years fashion blogs have become a popular form of user‐generated content, and consequently, the fashion industry has shown great interest in fashion blog marketing. The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze consumer‐to‐consumer (C2C) electronic word‐of‐mouth (eWOM) in fashion blogs, and especially to compare naturally‐occurring, i.e. organic eWOM with marketer‐influenced, i.e. amplified eWOM.

The study takes a netnographic approach to the phenomenon of fashion blogs. The empirical material consists of observational data including blog texts and audience comments of six popular fashion blogs in Finland.

Findings indicate that although not as varied as organic, amplified eWOM content in consumer fashion blogs resembles organic content. The main topics discussed in organic eWOM include personal style, brands, designers and retailers, tips and advice as well as purchases. Amplified topics concerned products received by the blogger, brands, designers and retailers, tips given to the audience, and competitions.

The findings indicate that for blog marketing to be effective and credible, the marketed fashion items, designers, or retailers need to fit the blogger's personal style.

Social media, especially blogs, play an important role in contemporary fashion marketing. This study addresses the emerging, yet scarce area of research into how marketer influence on fashion bloggers can be seen in user‐generated content.

The first part of this chapter addresses the history and development of the International Study Association of Teachers and Teaching (ISATT) and its engagement with the global educational community. We provide an account of the context and background against which ISATT developed as well as information about the founders’ orientations and the actions that led to ISATT’s birth. The second part of the chapter uses patterns of topic focus as graphic indicators of the evolution of ISATT’s research interests expressed through publication titles.

There are two central questions determining the pedagogy of teacher education: (a) What are the essential qualities of a good teacher; and (b) How can we help people to become good teachers? Our objective is not to present a definitive answer to these questions, but to discuss an umbrella model of levels of change that could serve as a framework for reflection and development. The model highlights relatively new areas of research, viz., teachers’ professional identity and mission. Appropriate teacher education interventions at the different levels of change are discussed, as well as implications for new directions in teacher education.

Against the background of a changing relation between the state and “its” education system, the present contribution focuses on two concepts that can be used as tools in order to explain the current transformations. “Governance” is more concerned with technical issues: with instruments and modes, procedures and actors, and with their constellations and forms of cooperation. It focuses research on questions such as: who provides educational services or what is the connection between public and private education. It has been employed to investigate the relation between the various levels of analysis and has proven particularly useful in creating an adequate theoretical understanding of the role of international organizations in shaping educational policies. Sociology and political science are the two disciplines most prominently associated with elaborating the concept under various perspectives. Governmentality, although sharing many characteristics with governance, is a Foucauldian term concerned with the generation of different subjectivities and collectivities through techniques and modes of ruling and guiding in an encompassing sense. A governmentality perspective thus focuses investigations on the typical Foucauldian knowledge/power nexus. While “governance” may be said to be more descriptive, more concerned with the “how” of current transformations, “governmentality” may be drawn on to argue that the changes are related to a reworking of the very modern Weberian notion of rationality, thus stressing the morphodynamics but not the reinvention of education. At stake is the increase of effectivity in order to augment and increase the “usefulness” and thus the value of the population.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the development of the five dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) over time by taking a founder’s perspective.

The paper draws on an in-depth single-case study. It combines semi-structured interviews in the company with archival data, such as annual reports, press clips and interviews in business magazines.

The results indicate that the EO dimensions change from being personalized and directly solution-oriented to being intangible value-creation-oriented.

By suggesting ownership-based EO configurations, this study contributes insights into how different ownership forms propel EO. These configurations – that is, personal, administrative based and intangible focused – show the impact of the EO dimensions and provide a systematic and theoretical understanding of EO change over time.

The expectation gap between auditors and users has recently been the topic of many controversies. This paper aims to evaluate the relationship between auditor’s characteristics and audit expectation gap among information users in listed companies on the Tehran stock exchange market. In other words, the study attempts to find whether there is a significant relationship between audit components and the audit expectation gap or not.

The multiple regression model is used to test the hypotheses. Research hypotheses are tested using a sample of 78 listed companies on the Tehran stock exchange during 2012-2016, by using integrated data technique of the multiple regression model.

The findings show that standard audit fees are not significantly associated with the audit expectation gap. Furthermore, audit fees are negatively associated with the audit expectation gap, which provides that allocated audit price in financial statements gives useful information for external and internal individuals. Predictably, it is recommended that audit opinion significantly determines the level of the audit expectation gap. The authors also find that the independence of the director boards and audit committee members fulfill the expectation gap of individual users. Moreover, finding the negative impact of audit firms ranking on the expectation gap, supports the idea of higher ranked audit firms provide high quality services, and consequently, more reliable information. Finally, the results show that the audit record is positively associated with the audit expectation gap.

As all recent studies on the expectation gap were qualitative, the present study is the first paper, which measures the expectation gap quantitatively through the statistical method.