Search results

While most language departments of the university offer service-learning (SL) subjects based on language teaching, such as “Teaching Chinese as a Second Language in Local Schools” and “Serving the Community through Teaching English,” this paper aims to argue that teaching students to teach language(s) is yet to be the best strategy to serve the service recipients.

SL is widely understood as an experiential learning pedagogy that integrates academic focus, reflection and community service and is shown to be impactful. In Hong Kong, the first university that has made SL a graduation requirement is the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (the University). Considering this, new SL courses have proliferated over the past decade. Adopting a narrative inquiry approach, this paper examines personal narratives from a new SL subject aiming to raise awareness of refugees in Hong Kong. The data includes students’ reflective journals, co-created personal narratives and podcasts and semi-structured interviews.

This paper finds that crafting and recording narratives of shared experiences deepens cultural understanding, cultivates empathy and facilitates language learning in a genuine setting.

Ultimately, this paper advocates a well-designed SL that combines language, content and technology as a powerful, transformational experience for both college students and service recipients.

This paper focuses on a brand new SL course, “Storytelling for Understanding: Refugee Children in Hong Kong,” offered in Semester 1, 2022–2023. The subject was developed by the two authors from a language division affiliated to the University. The deliverables were podcast recordings, co-authored and co-edited by the students and the children.

Potato-based snacks (PBS) are widely popular among people of all age groups despite known negative health aspects. University students, due to their busy routines and less familiarity with diets are more prone to selecting unhealthy meals and snacks. The study aims to explore the outlook of university students regarding their consumption of processed and packaged PBS in their daily lives and compares gender’s PBS choices with dietary habits and food environment.

A total of 122 students from various universities across Pakistan were included in this study. The data were collected using a structured questionnaire and distributed using the snowball method.

The university students showed a significant difference in their living habits (p = 0.016), where 25.4% of enrolled male students were hostellers as compared to females (14.8%). Significant differences were noticed in choosing PBS that further depends on the familiarity of the product, (p = 0.030), where 9.0% of female students rated familiarity with the product as being important while 20.5% of males responded familiarity as a critical factor. Studying the usual location/point of purchase for a PBS, a significant difference was observed (p = 0.008%) where more male students (27.9%) choose to buy their PBS from a local convenience store as compared to female students (18.9%). Female students (13.1%) would rather choose to buy their PBS on their weekly grocery runs.

This study concluded that female and male students’ attitudes regarding the consumption of PBS were almost the same regardless of environment and brand repute.

Highlights

1. Dietary behavioral studies of consumption of PBS

2. The environment and brand reputation have no impact on the consumption of PBS

3. Gender differences have no impact on the selection of PBS

4. Awareness and healthy selection of PBS are critical factors that need to be focused

Dietary behavioral studies of consumption of PBS

The environment and brand reputation have no impact on the consumption of PBS

Gender differences have no impact on the selection of PBS

Awareness and healthy selection of PBS are critical factors that need to be focused

Scholars and practitioners alike wish to understand what makes workplace conflict beneficial or injurious to, for example, performance and satisfaction. The authors focus on parties’ personal experience of the conflict, which is complementary to studying conflict issues (i.e. task- or relationship-related conflict). Although many authors discuss the personal experience of conflict, which the authors will refer to as conflict personalization, different definitions are used, leading to conceptual vagueness. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop an integrative definition of the concept of conflict personalization.

The authors conducted a systematic literature review to collect definitions and conceptualizations from 41 publications. The subsequent thematic analysis revealed four building blocks that were used to develop an integrative definition of conflict personalization.

The authors developed the following definition: Conflict personalization is the negative affective as well as cognitive reaction to the self being threatened and/or in danger as a result of a social interaction about perceived incompatibilities.

The integrative definition of this study enables the development of a measurement instrument to assess personalization during workplace conflict, paving the way for developing effective research-based interventions.

Conceptual vagueness hampers theoretical development, empirical research and the development of effective interventions. Although the importance of conflict personalization is mentioned within the field of workplace conflict, it has not been empirically studied yet. This paper can serve as the basis for future research in which conflict issue and personal experience are separated.