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Considering the potential of Collaborative International Online Learning (COIL) for cross-boundaries interacting and collaborating effectively, this study aims to explore the intercultural awareness of pre-service language teachers after participating in a COIL project.

Following a quantitative research approach and an exploratory cross-sectional method, the authors administered a 13-item questionnaire to unveil the perceptions of 64 future language teachers from Spain after their online experience with counterparts from the USA.

Participants consider that COIL may have enhanced their intercultural and global awareness and equipped them with valuable skills and knowledge for the future, being women more positive than men. Moreover, the results also suggest that those participants who have not traveled abroad consider COIL to be a good opportunity to compensate for the lack of knowledge or experience with other cultures resulting from not having had the opportunity to visit other countries.

COIL needs to be seen as a powerful tool to promote global learning, intercultural understanding and the development of skills among students that will be vital for success in today’s interconnected world. Nevertheless, universities and teacher training centers need to rethink the preparation of future teachers for the increasing demands to prepare students for the requirements of the global world, and to do so, they need to consider that COIL may offer them significant benefits.

This work offers an interesting exploration of teachers’ attitudes toward COIL, providing insights into the potential of online collaboration for developing intercultural awareness.

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.

Personal influence is one of the most powerful strategies to influence publics’ behaviours. Yet, there is scant attention on how personal influence is leveraged for different public relations purposes in different cultural contexts. This study empirically investigates the presence and use of personal influence among Italian public relations professionals.

A survey was conducted through a self-administrated, web-based questionnaire and was developed from earlier studies investigating personal influence in public relations literature. Survey participants included public relations professionals across public, non-profit and private sectors.

The findings empirically show the presence and regular use of personal influence by professionals from all sectors to cultivate interpersonal relationships. Personal influence is considered a personal resource and used to leverage own influencing power. The findings also document four major manifestations of personal influence, which were named: relational closeness strategy, engagement strategy, expertise strategy and added value strategy.

This study enhances our understanding of personal influence in a specific cultural context and offers strategic insights for international professionals seeking to leverage influence in the socio-political environment of Italy. It also offers elements to improve public relations education and training.

The study offers some preliminary understandings of how Italian professionals leverage their personal influence in their daily public relations activities contributing with empirical evidence to the body of knowledge in public relations.

This study aims to explore how university language students evaluate different sustainability themes and examine the overall relevance of ecological, social, cultural and economic sustainability dimensions in language education.

A questionnaire was designed to study Finnish university language students’ (n = 55) order of priority for sustainability dimensions and their sub-themes and the justifications for the priority orders using a mixed methods design. Qualitative content analysis was conducted using NVivo software, and weighted rankings were used to analyse the quantitative data.

The findings of the study showed that language students evaluated the social and cultural dimensions as the most relevant in language teaching. In all dimensions, students approached sustainability mainly by prioritising larger issues and advancing towards smaller ones. Most non-directional responses appeared in the economic dimension. In addition, individual prioritising and justification approaches varied between different sustainability dimensions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous studies have examined language students’ evaluations of and justifications for all four sustainability dimensions. The results highlight the need to use multiple, holistic approaches and systems thinking to incorporate education for sustainable development.

Listening is often considered the cornerstone of the communication process, with feedback being a crucial skill for effective management. The primary objective of this article was to investigate the relationship between managers’ listening skills and feedback skills from their subordinates’ perspectives. Moreover, it explores the mediating effect of message-sending skills and the ability to deal with interference in this relationship.

This article deployed a quantitative, descriptive research design. The authors developed and distributed a self-administered questionnaire via non-probability convenience sampling, resulting in 304 useable responses.

The results of the main direct effect test (model 1) indicate that listening is positively associated with feedback. Model 2 established that message-sending skills did not directly mediate that relationship. On the other hand, the ability to deal with interference was found to mediate the relationship. Finally, model 4 showed the multi-mediating effect of message-sending skills and the ability to deal with interference in the relationship between listening and feedback.

As far as the researchers are aware, this paper is the first of its kind to show the ability to deal with interference as a mediating factor in a statistical model. Moreover, this study is the first to present a continuous intermediary role played by message-sending skills and the ability to deal with interference in the relationship between listening and feedback.

This paper discusses the effectiveness of a consortium-based student mobility programme by investigating the impact of the Asian International Mobility for Students (AIMS) Programme. AIMS is a regional multilateral large-scale student mobility programme based on a consortium of 10 member countries and 87 member universities with the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization Regional Centre for Higher Education and Development (SEAMEO RIHED) as a facilitator. Over 6,000 students have participated in a semester-long intra-regional student exchange under AIMS since 2010.

The study employed questionnaire surveys and semi-structured interviews to investigate the impact of AIMS and its advantages as a consortium-based student mobility programme.

It was found that AIMS significantly impacted member universities by accelerating their internationalisation processes through increasing the number of inbound and outbound students and courses offered in English and so on. AIMS has promoted harmonisation among the members by developing common procedures and guidelines, providing platforms for mutual sharing of experiences and good practices and capacity building of international relations offices. AIMS has also had a significant impact on students by enhancing their regional identity and knowledge about the region of Asia, contributing to their development as future regional and global citizens. As advantages of AIMS, member universities efficiently built a foundation for international collaboration with common procedures and guidelines and shared their experiences through such venues as Annual Review Meetings. Students also feel supported by having clear guidance and find programmes prepared by host universities and SEAMEO RIHED useful.

This study is unique in that it empirically studies the impact of one of Asia’s largest student mobility programmes for the first time by analysing large-scale qualitative and quantitative data.

The purpose of this paper is to systematically review the history and current state of lesson study (LS) in Germany. In particular, this paper describes the development of LS over time and its stakeholders.

Conducting a systematic literature review, we searched three scientific databases and Google Scholar, examined 806 results and included 50 articles in our final sample, which we analyzed systematically.

The spread of LS in Germany can be divided into three phases, characterized by their own LS projects as well as their own ways of understanding LS. Although interest in LS has increased significantly in recent years, it is only present at a small number of schools and universities in Germany if compared internationally. Furthermore, this paper identifies the so-called learning activity curves as a tool frequently used for observation and reflection that appears to be unknown outside German-speaking countries.

This paper may act as an outline for countries without large-scale LS projects and with limited support from policymakers. The experience from Germany demonstrates the outcomes and challenges that can arise in such a situation and shows how unique LS features and proceedings have emerged.

The aim of this study was to measure the level of challenges faced by novice teachers in South Africa. Findings suggest a need for professional development courses to upskill teachers with effective pedagogies that can incorporate the social and emotional components into teaching and learning.

This study applied a descriptive research methodology by administering a questionnaire to 143 novice teachers. The data analysis technique was the Rasch model.

The findings indicated high item and person reliability, with a good item fit and polarity values that are compatible with the Rasch model. The three major challenges identified are uninvolved parents, discipline problems and a lack of guidance and counselling. These challenges can be related to social and emotional learning (SEL) components.

The study used quantitative methods and discovered the challenges that novice teachers face. If the research uses a combination of qualitative methods, it will be possible to better identify the specific causes of the above three challenges of novice teachers.

Due to the complex nature of South African society, many novice teachers are overwhelmed by the challenges they face when entering the profession. These challenges are often embedded in societal risk factors, which complicate the transition from student teacher to novice teacher. The major challenges identified in this study can be related to SEL components, as the challenges are closely linked to the psychological and social backgrounds of the students. Teachers in this study indicated that they found it difficult to deal with these challenges at the beginning of their careers.

By identifying the challenges facing new teachers in South Africa, they will be better prepared for their work in schools. Therefore, they will improve the above situation to continue developing professionally.

The findings indicated high item and person reliability, with a good item fit and polarity values that are compatible with the Rasch model. Teachers in this study indicated that they found it difficult to deal with these challenges in the beginning of their careers. Professional development courses are suggested to help teachers deal with issues such as discipline, uninvolved parents and guidance and counselling effectively. Higher education programmes should also include these topics in their curricula for student teachers. A greater emphasis on training teachers in their pastoral roles is suggested.

This study relied on the job demands and resource model to understand employees’ turnover intentions. Recent studies have consistently lent support for the significant association between role ambiguity and turnover intentions; however, only a handful of studies focused on examining the potential mediators in this association. The authors argued that role ambiguity positively influences turnover intentions through affective mechanisms: job involvement and satisfaction.

To test the model, a large sample of working adults participated (N = 505).

Structural equation modeling results showed that role ambiguity, job involvement and job satisfaction were significantly associated with turnover intentions. Moreover, a serial mediation was found among the variables: employees with low levels of role ambiguity tended to report higher job involvement, which further increased their satisfaction with the job and subsequently decreased their turnover intentions.

The cross-sectional design is a limitation.

Practical suggestions regarding how organizations can reduce employee turnover are discussed.

The findings provide support for theory-driven interventions to address developing the intention to stay at work among working adults.

The study aims to promote the use of qualitative methods in service research by investigating how these methods are reported in service journals, how the level of reporting has evolved and whether methodological reporting influences the downloads or citations received by qualitative articles.

Methodological reporting practices were identified through content analysis of 318 qualitative articles published in three major service research journals and comparison with prior methodological literature. Regression analysis was used to test how the level of methodological reporting influences article downloads and citations.

The study identifies 29 reporting practices related to 9 key methodological reporting areas. The overall level of methodological reporting in published qualitative articles has increased over time. While differences in the level of reporting between service journals persist, they are narrowing. The level of methodological reporting did not influence downloads or citations of qualitative articles.

Service scholars using qualitative methods should pay attention to methodological reporting as it can improve the chances of being published. Factors such as theoretical contributions are likely to have a greater influence on article impact than methodological reporting.

No prior study has explored methodological reporting practices across different qualitative methodologies or how reporting influences article impact. For authors, reviewers and editors, the study provides an inventory of reporting practices relevant for evaluating qualitative articles, which should lower barriers for qualitative methods in service research by providing practical guidelines on what to focus on when reporting and assessing qualitative research.