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1 – 10 of over 2000Nancy Bouranta and Evangelos Psomas
Due to the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, primary and secondary schools worldwide are deploying online teaching/learning practices, fostering and thus innovation practices…
Abstract
Purpose
Due to the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, primary and secondary schools worldwide are deploying online teaching/learning practices, fostering and thus innovation practices. The purpose of this study is to determine the degree to which practices reflecting educational innovation are implemented in the Greek public primary and secondary schools operating under conditions characterized by the COVID-19 pandemic. Determining the relationship among these educational innovation practices is also an aim of the present study.
Design/methodology/approach
A research study was conducted in the Greek public primary and secondary schools. 522 teachers fully completed a structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were applied to analyze the data.
Findings
The findings reveal that administration-related innovation practices, teaching-related innovation practices and online teaching/learning practices are implemented to some extent in primary and secondary schools in Greece, but there is still scope for continued development. The online teaching/learning practices set the foundations for further developing a culture of fully adopting other educational innovation practices in these schools to improve education.
Originality/value
Limited research concerning educational innovation practices has focused on primary and secondary schools. The need for more studies on teaching and learning innovations that have resulted from the COVID-19 crisis is highlighted by the literature. The results of this study support the fact that online teaching/learning implemented in primary and secondary schools is positively associated with administration-related and teaching-related innovation practices, concluding that this forced change in the educational process can act as a catalyst for more changes and innovative actions.
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Alberto Guillén Perales, Francisco Liébana-Cabanillas, Juan Sánchez-Fernández and Luis Javier Herrera
The aim of this research is to assess the influence of the underlying service quality variable, usually related to university students' perception of the educational experience…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this research is to assess the influence of the underlying service quality variable, usually related to university students' perception of the educational experience. Another aspect analysed in this work is the development of a procedure to determine which variables are more significant to assess students' satisfaction.
Design/methodology/approach
In order to achieve both goals, a twofold methodology was approached. In the first phase of research, an assessment of the service quality was performed with data gathered from 580 students in a process involving the adaptation of the SERVQUAL scale through a multi-objective optimization methodology. In the second phase of research, results obtained from students were compared with those obtained from the teaching staff at the university.
Findings
Results from the analysis revealed the most significant service quality dimensions from the students' viewpoint according to the scores that they provided. Comparison of the results with the teaching staff showed noticeable differences when assessing academic quality.
Originality/value
Significant conclusions can be drawn from the theoretical review of the empirical evidences obtained through this study helping with the practical design and implementation of quality strategies in higher education especially in regard to university education.
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Esther Adot, Anna Akhmedova, Helena Alvelos, Sofia Barbosa-Pereira, Jasmina Berbegal-Mirabent, Sónia Cardoso, Pedro Domingues, Fiorenzo Franceschini, Dolors Gil-Doménech, Ricardo Machado, Domenico Augusto Maisano, Frederic Marimon, Marta Mas-Machuca, Luca Mastrogiacomo, Ana I. Melo, Vera Miguéis, Maria J. Rosa, Paulo Sampaio, Dani Torrents and Ana Raquel Xambre
The paper aims to define a dashboard of indicators to assess the quality performance of higher education institutions (HEI). The instrument is termed SMART-QUAL.
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to define a dashboard of indicators to assess the quality performance of higher education institutions (HEI). The instrument is termed SMART-QUAL.
Design/methodology/approach
Two sources were used in order to explore potential indicators. In the first step, information disclosed in official websites or institutional documentation of 36 selected HEIs was analyzed. This first step also included in depth structured high managers’ interviews. A total of 223 indicators emerged. In a second step, recent specialized literature was revised searching for indicators, capturing additional 302 indicators.
Findings
Each one of the 525 total indicators was classified according to some attributes and distributed into 94 intermediate groups. These groups feed a debugging, prioritization and selection process, which ended up in the SMART-QUAL instrument: a set of 56 key performance indicators, which are grouped in 15 standards, and, in turn, classified into the 3 HEI missions. A basic model and an extended model are also proposed.
Originality/value
The paper provides a useful measure of quality performance of HEIs, showing a holistic view to monitor HEI quality from three fundamental missions. This instrument might assist HEI managers for both assessing and benchmarking purposes. The paper ends with recommendations for university managers and public administration authorities.
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This study aims to explore the effect of eco-labels on green product purchase intention among consumers of electrical/electronic products in an emerging market context.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the effect of eco-labels on green product purchase intention among consumers of electrical/electronic products in an emerging market context.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopted an extended theory of planned behaviour to assess the effects of eco-labels. To measure the key constructs, scales pertaining to the relevant literature were used to design a structured questionnaire for empirical examination. A final data set of 680 consumers was analysed using structured equation modelling.
Findings
The results indicate that eco-labels significantly impact perceived behavioural control, attitude, subjective norms and consumers’ willingness to pay higher prices for environmentally friendly green products.
Practical implications
The findings not only complement research on green consumerism but also serve as an important direction for socially responsible marketers who aim to play an important role in propagating pro-social consumption among emerging cohorts of consumers. The importance of eco-labelling as an effective marketing tool is highlighted, with valuable insights for future research and practices pertaining to emerging consumer markets.
Originality/value
This study fills a void in contemporary research by examining consumers of electrical/electronic products that typically involve long-term usage, with potentially greater environmental footprints.
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Hart Hodges and Brady Flynn Anderson
The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the way competitiveness is measured matters, as well as to analyze the relationship between tax burden and economic…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the way competitiveness is measured matters, as well as to analyze the relationship between tax burden and economic competitiveness using a variety of model specifications.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses statistical models aimed at finding the relationship between taxes and different measures of economic competitiveness, such as gross domestic product per capita, employment and a third-party competitiveness index. Other variables are also considered, and statistical procedures such as lag specifications and “white period” errors are used to address problems of endogeneity and serial correlation.
Findings
The models find no robust relationship between taxes and competitiveness. Certain models find correlations between the tax burden of specific income groups with economic competitiveness, but these vary in direction and are difficult to interpret. This follows past research, which shows different results depending on the period analyzed, measure of competitiveness and other variables used.
Originality/value
This paper looks at many of the different measures of competitiveness, control variables and periods that are used in the previous literature and shows how any changes to these model specifications cause inconsistent results. This paper highlights that, because results can vary greatly depending on the model, researchers and policymakers must be careful when drawing any conclusions from relationships between taxes and economic competitiveness.
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Nishant Agarwal and Amna Chalwati
The authors examine the role of analysts’ prior experience of forecasting for firms exposed to epidemics on analysts’ forecast accuracy during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Abstract
Purpose
The authors examine the role of analysts’ prior experience of forecasting for firms exposed to epidemics on analysts’ forecast accuracy during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors examine the impact of analysts’ prior epidemic experience on forecast accuracy by comparing the changes from the pre-COVID-19 period (calendar year 2019) to the post-COVID period extending up to March 2023 across HRE versus non-HRE analysts. The authors consider a full sample (194,980) and a sub-sample (136,836) approach to distinguish “Recent” forecasts from “All” forecasts (including revisions).
Findings
The study's findings reveal that forecast accuracy for HRE analysts is significantly higher than that for non-HRE analysts during COVID-19. Specifically, forecast errors significantly decrease by 0.6% and 0.15% for the “Recent” and “All” forecast samples, respectively. This finding suggests that analysts’ prior epidemic experience leads to an enhanced ability to assess the uncertainty around the epidemic, thereby translating to higher forecast accuracy.
Research limitations/implications
The finding that the expertise developed through an experience of following high-risk firms in the past enhances analysts’ performance during the pandemic sheds light on a key differentiator that partially explains the systematic difference in performance across analysts. The authors also show that industry experience alone is not useful in improving forecast accuracy during a pandemic – prior experience of tracking firms during epidemics adds incremental accuracy to analysts’ forecasts during pandemics such as COVID-19.
Practical implications
The study findings should prompt macroeconomic policymakers at the national level, such as the central banks of countries, to include past epidemic experiences as a key determinant when forecasting the economic outlook and making policy-related decisions. Moreover, practitioners and advisory firms can improve the earning prediction models by placing more weight on pandemic-adjusted forecasts made by analysts with past epidemic experience.
Originality/value
The uncertainty induced by the COVID-19 pandemic increases uncertainty in global financial markets. Under such circumstances, the importance of analysts’ role as information intermediaries gains even more importance. This raises the question of what determines analysts’ forecast accuracy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Building upon prior literature on the role of analyst experience in shaping analysts’ forecasts, the authors examine whether experience in tracking firms exposed to prior epidemics allows analysts to forecast more accurately during COVID-19. The authors find that analysts who have experience in forecasting for firms with high exposure to epidemics (H1N1, Zika, Ebola, and SARS) exhibit higher accuracy than analysts who lack such experience. Further, this effect of experience on forecast accuracy is more pronounced while forecasting for firms with higher exposure to the risk of COVID-19 and for firms with a poor ex-ante informational environment.
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Sarah Barnett and Heather Drew Francis
This paper describes how a pre-service teacher’s knowledge and pedagogy changed as she documented her reflective practice while teaching arts-integrated lessons in a fifth-grade…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper describes how a pre-service teacher’s knowledge and pedagogy changed as she documented her reflective practice while teaching arts-integrated lessons in a fifth-grade classroom during her pre-service teacher preparation program. The pre-service teacher spent three-months conducting an action research project in collaboration with a university mentor.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper explores what she and her mentor learned as she prepared arts-integrated lesson plans based on the four studio structures for learning and analyzed them along with identifying and documenting evidence of deep learning through field notes and video recordings.
Findings
Analysis of field notes, video recordings and lesson plans led the authors to take a deeper look at where the four studio structures for learning overlapped in the teaching event. In the data the intersections of the four studio structures shared a pattern of increased evidence of deep learning for the students. This paper describes the phenomenon in the classroom at various points of intersection.
Research limitations/implications
This action research study is preliminary, and the findings are suggestive of further research that would require indexing what deep learning looks like and gathering and analyzing student data.
Practical implications
It is recommended that teachers use the four studio structures to integrate the arts in their classrooms and to enhance and encourage creativity, communication, critical thinking, collaboration, character and culture and as teachers work toward deep learning for students.
Originality/value
This case shows how a university partnership provides fertile ground for educators of all skills and experience to participate in the expansion of the field of education as well as personal and professional development.
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Baburhan Uzum, Bedrettin Yazan, Sedat Akayoglu and Ufuk Keles
This study aims to examine how teacher candidates (TCs) in Türkiye and the USA navigate their intercultural communication skills in a telecollaboration project.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine how teacher candidates (TCs) in Türkiye and the USA navigate their intercultural communication skills in a telecollaboration project.
Design/methodology/approach
Forty-eight TCs participated (26 in Türkiye and 22 in the USA) in the study. TCs discussed critical issues in multicultural education on an online learning platform for six weeks. Their discussions were analyzed using content and discourse analysis.
Findings
The findings indicated that TCs approached the telecollaborative space as a translingual contact zone and positioned themselves and their interlocutors in the discourse by using the personal pronouns; I, we, you and they. When they positioned themselves using we (people in Türkiye/USA), they spoke on behalf of everyone included in the scope of we. Their interlocutors responded to these positionings either by accepting this positioning and responding with a parallel positioning or by engaging in translingual negotiation strategies to revise the scope of we and sharing some differences/nuances in beliefs and practices in their community.
Research limitations/implications
When TCs talk about their culture and community in a singular manner using we, they frame them as the same across every member in that community. When they ask questions to each other using you, the framing of the questions prime the respondents to sometimes relay their own specific experiences as the norm or consider experiences from different points of view through translingual negotiation strategies. A singular approach to culture(s) may affect the marginalized communities the most because they are lost in this representation, and their experiences and voices are not integrated in the narratives or integrated with stereotypical representation.
Practical implications
Teachers and teacher educators should first pay attention to their language choices, especially use of pronouns, which may communicate inclusion or exclusion in intercultural conversations. Next, they should prepare their students to adopt and practice language choices that communicate respect for cultural diversity and are inclusive of marginalized populations.
Social implications
Speakers’ pronoun use includes identity construction in discourse by drawing borders around and between communities and cultures with generalization and particularity, and by patrolling those borders to decide who is included and excluded. As a response, interlocutors use pronouns either to acknowledge those borders and respond with corresponding ones from their own context or negotiate alternative representations or further investigate for particularity or complexity. In short, pronouns could lead the direction of intercultural conversations toward criticality and complexity or otherwise, and might be reasons where there are breakdowns in communication or to fix those breakdowns.
Originality/value
This study shows that translingual negotiation strategies have explanatory power to examine how speakers from different language backgrounds negotiate second and third order positionings in the telecollaborative space.
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The application of artificial intelligence chatbots is an emerging trend in educational technology studies for its multi-faceted advantages. However, the existing studies rarely…
Abstract
Purpose
The application of artificial intelligence chatbots is an emerging trend in educational technology studies for its multi-faceted advantages. However, the existing studies rarely take a perspective of educational technology application to evaluate the application of chatbots to educational contexts. This study aims to bridge the research gap by taking an educational perspective to review the existing literature on artificial intelligence chatbots.
Design/methodology/approach
This study combines bibliometric analysis and citation network analysis: a bibliometric analysis through visualization of keyword, authors, organizations and countries and a citation network analysis based on literature clustering.
Findings
Educational applications of chatbots are still rising in post-COVID-19 learning environments. Popular research issues on this topic include technological advancements, students’ perception of chatbots and effectiveness of chatbots in different educational contexts. Originating from similar technological and theoretical foundations, chatbots are primarily applied to language education, educational services (such as information counseling and automated grading), health-care education and medical training. Diversifying application contexts demonstrate specific purposes for using chatbots in education but are confronted with some common challenges. Multi-faceted factors can influence the effectiveness and acceptance of chatbots in education. This study provides an extended framework to facilitate extending artificial intelligence chatbot applications in education.
Research limitations/implications
The authors have to acknowledge that this study is subjected to some limitations. First, the literature search was based on the core collection on Web of Science, which did not include some existing studies. Second, this bibliometric analysis only included studies published in English. Third, due to the limitation in technological expertise, the authors could not comprehensively interpret the implications of some studies reporting technological advancements. However, this study intended to establish its research significance by summarizing and evaluating the effectiveness of artificial intelligence chatbots from an educational perspective.
Originality/value
This study identifies the publication trends of artificial intelligence chatbots in educational contexts. It bridges the research gap caused by previous neglection of treating educational contexts as an interconnected whole which can demonstrate its characteristics. It identifies the major application contexts of artificial intelligence chatbots in education and encouraged further extending of applications. It also proposes an extended framework to consider that covers three critical components of technological integration in education when future researchers and instructors apply artificial intelligence chatbots to new educational contexts.
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Haibo Xu, Ahmad Albattat, Jeong Chun Phuoc and Baogui Wang
The purpose of this study is that the teaching style of college physical education (PE) teachers affects the establishment of college students' exercise habits.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is that the teaching style of college physical education (PE) teachers affects the establishment of college students' exercise habits.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses the teaching style scale for 32 PE teachers and the autonomic motivation and exercise habits scale for 320 college students in the form of self-report.
Findings
Chinese college PE teachers mainly use the teacher-centered reproduction style, and the practice style is the most frequently used; The overall teaching style of college PE teachers was significantly negatively correlated with autonomous motivation and exercise habits. PE teachers' teaching style can negatively affect college students' autonomous motivation, and college students' autonomous motivation can positively affect their exercise habits.
Originality/value
There is a significant negative correlation between the teaching style of college PE teachers and the exercise habits of college students. However, it cannot directly affect the establishment of college students' exercise habits, but is achieved through the mediating role of college students' autonomous motivation.
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