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The purpose of this study is to analyze the first major federal education policy, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, and the most recent federal policy, the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, through a Black critical theory (BlackCrit) lens to understand better how these educational policies have served as antiblack projects. Furthermore, this study locates examples of educational Freedom Dreams in the past and present to imagine new possibilities in Black education.

By analyzing education policy documents and history through BlackCrit methods, the authors expose how education policy is inherently an antiblack project. Freedom Dreams catalyze possibilities for future education.

The data confirms that while these policies purport equity and accountability in education, they, in practice, exacerbate antiblackness through inequitably mandated standardized testing, distributed funding and policed schooling.

This paper applies BlackCrit analysis of education policy to reimagine Black educational possibilities.

The research discussed in this paper aims to study the impact of video footages on the academic performance of students. Video footages are usually inserted into video lectures — in addition to the verbal narration of any examples by the teachers — to explain and simplify concepts. Similarly, in conventional classrooms, teachers verbally narrate examples to clarify concepts — but, in this case, students have to rely on their imagination and previous exposure to similar situations to develop an understanding of the concepts.

A two-phase experiment was designed to compare these two teaching methods. A sample of 70 participants was drawn from non-psychology students in the Virtual University of Pakistan; and two groups, Group A and Group B, each with 35 participants, were formed through random assignment of the students. In the first phase of the experiment, members of Group A were taught through a 24-minute video lecture on psychology, which had four chunks of video footage in it. After the lecture, the students' academic learning was measured through a multiple-choice test with 27 items, which was developed by incorporating an equal number of questions on three levels of Bloom's taxonomy (viz. understanding, comprehension and application). The item levels were decided after agreement by three examiners who had at least three years of experience of developing such questions. In the second phase, a lecture with similar content was taught to Group B. The only difference was in the mode of delivery: in this case, the content was conveyed verbally and no video footages were used. The same test of students' learning was employed to get the scores of Group B. In addition, a qualitative study, involving data gathered through participants' feedback on the performance of the learning facilitators and weaknesses in both teaching modes was collected in order to explore the participants' perceptions and experiences of the phenomenon being studied. The results indicated that the two groups were significantly different in terms of academic achievement. The mean values suggested that those who were taught through video footages showed a higher level of academic learning than those who received a traditional verbal narration lecture. In addition, the students reported that the video footages and examples facilitated their learning, and helped them to remain focused and motivated in class. The findings have broad implications for teachers, content developers, academic policy-makers and producers involved in the production of academic content.

This study used a visual research approach to investigate how small business (SB) entrepreneurs in Nigeria, a low-income country, perceive digital transformation (DT). The study aims to improve and broaden the understanding of DT by uncovering its metaphors. Making metaphorical sense of DT will increase its knowledge among populations who are unfamiliar with digital technology concepts, as well as communicating and collaborating with them to develop future research and strategies on the subject of DT. This study is significant because scholars have paid little attention to social imaginations of DT depicted through metaphors, more so when considered from a worldview of SBs in low-income countries.

The uniqueness of the research objective motivated the use of social theory to frame the research approach, and picture-elicitation techniques to drive data collection through in-depth interviews with 17 SB entrepreneurs and business owners in Nigeria. Data were analyzed using a content analysis procedure known as metaphor analysis.

The study revealed three metaphors of DT: a drama, a war and a pregnant elephant. A triangulation of the metaphors with English lexicon, extant literature and interview excerpts supported the war and drama perceptions of DT but opposed “DT as a pregnant elephant.”

It argued that the social perception of DT can improve the sustainable, purposeful and successful execution of DT strategies for SB DT. As a result, this study pushes the boundaries of DT, particularly for SB entrepreneurs in low-income countries.

Metaphors pervade our daily lives, not only in our language and communications, but also in how we think and act; as such, they can play an important role in understanding and implementing DT, a concept that has received little attention in the SB settings.

This is one of the first empirical studies to figuratively explain DT and its implications for literature and practice in SB entrepreneurship and information systems domains.