Search results

During the COVID-19 crisis in Victoria, Australia the complexity of school leadership increased greatly for school principals. This study focused on the lived experiences of early career principals in the independent school sector from March to November 2020 in Victoria, Australia. It investigates transformative work that was undertaken by these leaders in leading their schools over a protracted crisis.

The study builds on constructs of crisis leadership, adaptive leadership, agile leadership and emotional intelligence, exploring the leadership approaches undertaken by twenty-two early career principals in Victoria, Australia. Using a narrative inquiry approach, across three temporal points in 2020, storied productions drawn from the findings present four emergent types of emotionally intelligent leadership approaches undertaken by these principals. These leadership approaches are presented as the commander-leader, the conductor-leader, the gardener-leader and the engineer-leader with each approach demonstrating both organisational leadership approaches as well as individual leadership styles used by these principals as they led their schools.

The findings have direct implications for professional development programs focusing on aspiring principals and early career principals with emphasis on the importance of developing emotionally intelligent skillsets in principals for use during periods of rapid change or high crisis in schools. The findings present insight into the support useful for early career principals in the first five years of principalship.

This study uses a unique emotional intelligence approach to understand school leadership during and after a crisis.

The authors enrich and extend the existing institutional anomie theory (IAT) in the hope of sharpening the understanding of the joint effects of selected cultural values and social institutional changes on women's pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts. The authors theorize that women are culturally discouraged to pursue pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts or wealth accumulation in a specific culture. This discouragement creates an anomic strain that motivates women to deviate from cultural prescriptions by engaging in pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts at a faster speed. Building on this premise, the authors hypothesize that changes in social institutions facilitate the means of achievement for women due to the potential opportunities inherent in such institutional changes.

Using a randomly selected sample of 1,431 registered active individual users with a minimum of 10,000 followers on a leading entertainment live-streaming platform in the People's Republic of China, the authors examined a unique mix of cultural and institutional changes and their effects on the speed of women's engagement in live-streaming platform activity.

The authors find support for the impact of the interaction between changes in social institution conditions and cultural values. Unexpectedly, the authors also find a negative impact of cultural values on women's speed of engaging in pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts.

The authors add institutional change to the IAT framework and provide a novel account for the variation in the pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts by women on the platform.

This study aims to explore how learners prefer to interact with microlearning videos. Microlearning is an emerging topic in work-based learning, and the benefits of using video in supporting learning have been widely discussed. However, only very few of previous works were conducted on discussing how learners prefer to interact with microlearning video. This paper aims to fill this knowledge gap.

A questionnaire was used in this study for data collection purposes. In total, the invitation had been sent to 236 enrolled learners from the three targeted modules through emails. A total of 77 participants completed the survey with the response rate of 32.6%. The chi-square test is used in this study in order to conclude whether the findings from the sample related to hypotheses are statistically significant.

By analysing primary data collected from a United Kingdom (UK) university, the findings suggest that 1) the perceived usefulness of the control functions and the expression functions of multimedia microlearning videos are generally high and 2) more participants, on the one hand, prefer to have more control in their multiple-choice questions’ arrangement and open-ended questions’ arrangement; on the other hand, there was no significant difference on the preference of when to attempt assessment.

This is the first time that a study like this had been conducted to review and discuss the interactive preferences between learners and multimedia microlearning. This study could shed some lights on future research in the field of microlearning and work-based learning.

Students of mixed-ability learning together in one class is a challenge for all educators, especially in English as foreign language (EFL) contexts. Timed reading activity (TRA) is an activity that can help educators address the learning needs of students in such a context. The present study investigated the effectiveness of the TRA in enhancing EFL students' reading rate and reading comprehension as well as in making them aware of potentially wrong reading strategies that they may be using.

A classroom intervention was designed for a group of preparatory year (PY) students at a Saudi university. The study sample consisted of one intact class of 29 students. Data were collected from pre- and post-tests of students' reading rate and reading comprehension as well as progress charts. In addition, a questionnaire was used to identify the reading strategies used by the students.

The results showed that the TRA generally enhanced the reading comprehension and the reading rate of EFL mixed-ability students as well as raised their awareness of their use of wrong fast reading strategies.

The results of the study support the use of TRA as a remedial reading activity in EFL mixed-ability classes.

The state of science education is similar to that of other disciplines: research shows a clear need for new instructional strategies based on a constructivist model of learning emphasizing conceptual growth, conceptual change and the conditions that support conceptual change. Practice, however, remains anchored in behaviorist theory and rote methods of learning. “Serious constructivist approaches usually set out to reorganize traditional teaching by including changes of aims, setup of content structures, media, and teaching/learning strategies” (Treagust et al, 1996, p7). Maher and Alston (1990) discuss constructivist reform efforts and the implications for classroom teaching focusing on three issues that arise repeatedly: how to learn to listen to students’ thinking; how to organize classroom activities to support “listening and questioning”; and how to implement forms of assessment that document students’ questions.

This paper describes some constructivist teaching methodology and practices, and highlights their effectiveness as an aid to teaching and understanding in the classroom.

Eco-social crises such as the loss of biodiversity call for transformative learning. This study analyzes the prospects of social media in learning about nature.

The study is placed in the intersection of science and technology studies, futures studies, environmental social sciences, and environmental humanities. The study draws on a qualitative case study of a mycologists' Facebook group. The empirical material was collected through digital ethnography.

Social media provides opportunities for learning about nature for many people. However, specialized naturalist social media groups are increasingly geared towards citizen science. The development may fragment the online naturalist cultures and narrow the scope for learning.

Insights from a single case study cannot be broadly generalized. However, the case highlights significant features to consider in promoting collective learning in social media in the future.

Much of the previous research has focused on social media uses in the formal education of youth. This study addresses social media in informal and collective learning, specifically about nature.

This article aims to help ensure high-quality subject access to Swedish lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersexual (LGBTQI) fiction, and aims to identify challenges that librarians consider important to address, on behalf of themselves and end users.

A web-based questionnaire comprising 35 closed and open questions, 22 of which were required, was sent via online channels in January 2022. By the survey closing date, 20 March 2022, 82 responses had been received. The study was intended to complement an earlier study targeting end users.

Both this study of librarians and the previous study of end users have painted a dismal image of online search services when it comes to searching for LGBTQI fiction. The need to consult different channels (e.g. social media, library catalogues and friends), the inability to search more specifically than for the broad LGBTQI category and suboptimal search interfaces were among the commonly reported issues. The results of these studies are used to inform the development of a dedicated Swedish LGBTQI fiction database with an online search interface.

The subject searching of fiction via online services is usually limited to genre with facets for time and place, while users are often seeking characteristics such as pacing, characterization, storyline, frame/setting, tone and language/style. LGBTQI fiction is even more challenging to search because indexing practices are not really being standardized or disseminated worldwide. This study helps address this important gap, in both research and practical applications.

Drawing on theories of development economics and sustainable tourism, this research explores the differences between sovereign and nonsovereign small island tourism economies (SITEs) and identifies the antecedents and effects of overtourism in the Caribbean.

The research design is based on a comparative case study of selected Caribbean SITEs. Case study research involves a detailed empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context. The main purpose of a case study is to provide a contextual analysis of the conditions and processes involved in the phenomenon under study. A comparative case study is an appropriate research methodology to explore new multi-faceted concepts with limited empirical evidence.

The results confirm previous studies that nonsovereign SITEs have a distinctive overdrive toward tourism specialization. Moreover, the findings indicate that overtourism is driven by both global and domestic policy factors and generates significant economic volatility, social inequality and ecological stress. The paper discusses the tourism policy implications of the evolving economic disconnectedness, environmental decay and social tensions in SITEs in the Caribbean.

Policy recommendations are presented for transitioning toward a more inclusive development and strengthening the resilience of small island tourism development in the Caribbean.

Few resources exist to incorporate principles of modular approach to course design. This research aimed to help instructors by presenting principles for practical and empirically informed modular course design in engineering education.

In the first phase, a systematic literature review was completed to identify categories addressing a modular course design. Search and screening procedures resulted in 33 qualifying articles describing the development of a modular course. In the second phase, 6 expert interviews were conducted to elaborate on the identified categories.

Guided by the interview results and the ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate) course design model, the categories were compiled into six design principles. To present the design principles in relation to the guiding principles of modular approach, an overarching conceptual model was developed.

Here, we present our innovation; a foundation for an evidence-based systematic approach to modular course design. Implications have value for supporting flexibility and autonomy in learning.