Month: March 2021
Masked Intimacy as New Dating Culture: The Cultural Identity and Gaze in Masked Dating During Post-COVID-19 in Hong Kong and Taiwan
While the world is getting into the post-COVID19 era, the social structure has been reconstructed in many forms, particularly shifting everything into virtual. Precisely, it would be essential to digest the changes of human culture under various regional public health policies implemented. Started with masks shortage at the beginning of 2020, “Mask” has turned into …
Serious Game Design and Integration in English Phonology and Pronunciation Teaching
Interest in using games to impart knowledge has grown tremendously over the past few years. Following a pedagogical shift toward a learner-centered approach, serious games offer new perspectives in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) (Reinhardt et al, 2020; Bogost, 2007). This study investigates the design process and use of a digital game for L2 phonology at …
Investigating the Impact of Factors Associated With Student Academic Achievement and Expectations Through the Ecosystemic Perspective in the Greek Context
In this proposal, Bronfenbrenner’s theory (Brofenbrenner,1970; 1979; Brofenbrenner & Crouter, 1983; Brofenbrenner & Morris, 1998; Brofenbrenner & Evans, 2000) will be used to investigate the individual, microsystemic and exosystemic factors that may affect adolescents’ academic achievement as well as their expectations in Greece. First, the topic of academic achievement in an adolescent developmental context will …
Developing Socially Inclusive Practices in Chilean Higher Education Classrooms Through Participatory Action Research
Using a Participatory Action Research approach, my research will attempt to create inclusive classroom practices within a higher education classroom in Chile, with pre-service teachers as co-participants. Chilean classrooms present us with a number of dimensions that make this research, and this particular approach, necessary: in addition to having a socially excluded indigenous population struggling …
Making Students Engaged in Improving Their English Writing Skills – A Case-Study from a Norwegian Upper Secondary School
Research has shown that Norwegian upper secondary school students struggle with various aspects of writing English texts as required in the curriculum. To support a group of vocational students to improve their English writing skills, a fivestep method has been applied, that facilitates for self-regulation and emotional support in the learning process. The method is …
How to Create a Supportive Learning Environment in Mathematics Classes – An Example from a Norwegian Lower Secondary School Class
Mathematics is an important subject in school, however, many students find this subject very challenging. Some even dread mathematics as they do not master it and they may fear that their social status will be negatively influenced by this. It is therefore important that the teacher facilitates for creating a learning environment where students feel …
Perceived Tasks of Quality Assurance and Its Impact on the Teaching-Learning Process among Deans and Faculty
Quality assurance systems of schools are put in place to ensure that optimum education are provided by institutions responsible for such endeavors. The study looked into the perceptions of deans and faculty on the task of the quality assurance system and its impact on the teaching-learning process of a University in Northern Philippines. The researchers …
News Sharing via Social Media in UAE: An Explanatory Study
Digital media lower the threshold for sharing news since anyone can post links, comment on stories and even create their own content. Shared news has become a widespread means of news access. A 2016 Pew Research Center survey found that 62% of US adults obtained news via social media, compared to 49% in 2012. Mobile …
Secondary ESL Teachers’ Beliefs, Strategies, and Experiences in Teaching Vocabulary
The importance of vocabulary in language learning cannot be ignored, due to the significance that it brings into the core foundation of second or foreign language learning. Due to the declining and poor performance of learners in language subjects in recent international and national standardized examinations, this study explored the beliefs, strategies, and experiences of …
ASEAN Regionalism and Cross-Border Research of Philippine Higher Education: The Case of the University of the Philippines Diliman Campus
Applying the New Regionalism Approach evinces the exogenous and endogenous factors affecting the processes underlying the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) higher education regionalism. By delving into a rather unexplored area of regionalism (higher education) in a less investigated region (Southeast Asia) and state (Philippines), this paper treads through a relatively recent terrain of …
The Observation of Gender Stereotyping in Music Instruments in 2021, and the Process of Musical Instrument Selections of Children
In 2021, a research team in the music and music education department at Teachers College at Columbia University conducted an explanatory sequential research consists of both the quantitative and the qualitative method to contemplate the current status of the gender association in music in the instruments selections and the correlation in regard to the influence …
The Role of Soft Power Along the Current Silk Road
The Silk Routes have long been a passage for exchange of goods and commodities as well as the exchange of religion and culture. One aspect in the exchange of culture, was the soft power that was generated along with it, which in turn facilitated closer ties between states and/or formed unique bonds between people of …
Exploring the Effect of Pull Factors on Recreational Needs in Heritage Tourism
Attracting travelers and preserving heritage are important issues in heritage tourism because several heritage sites have failed to attract travelers. Past studies found that heritage architecture, art activity, wide nature, regional attractions, recreational benefits, and long-term values were critical considerations in heritage tourism. Specifically, heritage architecture, art activity, wide nature, and regional attractions were pull …
Gender differences in language about Feminism: Results from Sentiment Analysis and Use of Emojis on Twitter
Social networks, such as Twitter with its around 192 million active users per day, are increasingly changing the way how people access information, communicate with each other, express opinions and discuss a wide range of topics. An example of a rather controversial topic is feminism. This study tries to shed light on the used language …
“There Is Always the Other Side, Always”: Women’s Voice and Identity in Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea and Kanafani’s Umm Saad
Published in the 1960s, Ghassan Kanafani’s Umm Saad and Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea portray a gendered image of women under the shadow of patriarchy and post-colonialism. With this in mind, this paper calls into question the differences in the representations of women’s voice and identity from the perspective of a female author and a …
Assessing College Students’ Readiness for Online Learning
Advancements in technology and pedagogy with respect to distance education have highlighted the need for higher education institutions to adapt to these changes and embrace online learning as an alternative approach to instructional delivery. To assess students’ readiness to this non-conventional modality, the current study utilized the Online Learning Readiness Scale (OLRS) by administering an …
The Changing Stakeholder Roles, Responsibilities and Expectations in Sustainable Modern Education
Most of the stakeholders of education, teachers, students, parents, governments, regulators, policymakers, parliamentarians are puzzled about the way out, of the issues of modern education. Some of the issues of modern education are unemployment, adopting new technologies, manpower training, and learner discontent. The purpose of this study is to examine and analyze the education sector …
Imitation and Self-imitation Practice on L2 Pronunciation Progress
The major aim of the current study is to investigate the outcomes of computer-assisted L2 pronunciation training to verify if there is a positive correlation between self-imitation practice and L2 pronunciation improvement in the process of second language acquisition. 35 Polish students of Applied Linguistics (at English level B2+) divided into two groups did imitation …
A Blended and Interactive Online Learning Courseware for Bridging Art, Bioethics, and Medicine
We will discuss an interactive, multifunctional e-learning Courseware that we developed, which strongly bridges the gap between art, bioethics and medicine. First, a series of animated videos introducing selected topics of bioethics and related issues will be introduced. Then, a set of problem-based practical videos (“interactive doctor-patient role play”) along with discussion questions and online …
Teaching Aptitude of the Teachers
This paper discusses about the teaching aptitude of teachers teaching at different levels from primary school to graduate level. This paper compares the teaching aptitude of male and female teachers, teachers from different specializations, teachers with a teaching degree and teachers who don’t hold a professional teaching degree and also that of the freshers and …
Effective Revising Instruction for Struggling Writers
Revising is a critical part of the writing process (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1986). Expert writers tend to make global text revisions and target more meaning-changing revisions, which lead to substantial improvement in overall writing quality (Butterfield, Hacker, & Albertson, 1996). However, poor writers have been found to experience difficulties with revising (Midgette, Haria, & MacArthur, …
Retranslating Shakespeare in Romeo X Juliet
The reproduction of renowned western literary works in the artistic forms typical of Eastern cultures has always provided a basis for mutual enrichment of both cultures. This paper will focus on the peculiar relationship between William Shakespeare and Japanese animation, aiming to show that the retranslation of the canon in the quintessentially Japanese form of …
BRANEN and BRANES Corpora
This paper presents two learner corpora built to investigate anaphora: the Brazilian Learners of Anaphora in English (BRANEN) and the Aprendices Brasileños de Anáfora en Español (BRANES). Texts were written by language undergraduate students during an online course on anaphora, offered at a Brazilian University in 2020. The corpora provides insights for the analysis of …
Facts, Fiction, Propaganda? An Analysis of Chinese Belt and Road Discourses
At the Second Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Forum in Beijing, Xi Jinping described the “new silk road” as a model for international win-win progress through cooperation. Official China claims that the concept is neither “a geopolitical strategy” nor “a China-dominated geo-economic scheme”. A closer look, however, reveals that China’s BRI discourses differ immensely depending …
Forest Shamans: The Sacred Tree and Narratives of the Folk History
This paper examines the oral narratives of female shamans and people involved in their religious practices in modern Japan. Narratives are told and retold, ultimately becoming traditional oral histories that are closely related to local people’s lives. This paper discusses the ways in which such narratives make and can be read as folk history. As …
Reading Kenji Miyazawa after 3.11: Region, Utopia, and Resilience
Interpretations of Miyazawa Kenji’s work have gone through several iterations since his death: from virtual obscurity he was recovered as an author of children’s literature and poetry, and, in the postwar, his writing was appreciated for its incorporation of Buddhist themes and Miyazawa himself became synonymous with provincial Japan. After the 3.11 earthquake, tsunami, and …
Reading Habits, Feminism and Views About Feminism in India
Culture changes from time to time, both men and women are affected by the cultural change in many ways, women empowerment is an integral part of the same. There are different issues faced by men and women in different countries across the world. And in developing countries like India there are many different perspectives about …
Reflective Practice and Teaching Postgraduate Counselling Students
In the fields of counselling and psychology, reflective practice is a process where we critically analyse our actions with the aim of improving professional practice. Within a counsellor education setting, the current paper reports on counselling skills lecturers’ engagement in reflective practice during the course of one academic semester. Using a reflective practice approach the …
An Investigation into Student Writers’ Improvements on English Article Usages Across Different Learning Modes
Most digital educational games have been developed to facilitate second/foreign language learners’ vocabulary acquisition (Hung, Yang, Hwang, Chu, & Wang, 2018; Tsai & Tsai, 2018). Few has been found to improve students’ grammatical competence. A digital game which served as a virtual business context in which learners acted as an entrepreneur to conduct interviews with …
At the Intersection of Technology and Teaching: The Critical Role of Educators in Implementing Technology Solutions
Educators are critical for the successful implementation of any technology. Acrobatiq by VitalSource can use data to demonstrate the dramatic impact instructors—and their course policies—can have on courseware engagement. Acrobatiq courseware incorporates learning content, formative practice, homework assignments, adaptive practice, and summative assessments into a single learning environment for students, with additional data dashboards for …
A Maid in the U.S. House: Architecture, Occupied Japan, and Tokyo Joe
This paper aims to shed light on the hitherto understudied relations between Japanese women and architecture in the postwar Hollywood film Tokyo Joe (1949), starring Humphrey Bogart. Set in Japan during the postwar U.S. occupation, the film features a well-equipped dependent housing designated as a “U.S. House” and a nursemaid who works there. In historical …
Parental Perspectives on Distance Learning during Class Suspension: A Study from the Hong Kong Early Childhood Education Sector
Since the first class suspension, announced in Feb 2020 due to the prevalence of Covid-19, many schools, including all kindergartens, primary, secondary, and tertiary institutions, have redirected their face-to-face learning to online learning to strive for ‘suspending classes without suspending learning’. The physical closure has switched face-to-face learning to learning at home, which has given …
Design Thinking in AI Systems Design for Engineering Courses
Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes one of the essential courses that all students should learn regardless their disciplines. In this work, a teaching and learning pedagogy is proposed and implemented to conduct AI’s lesson in engineering course through design thinking. There is no additional course is required in the pedagogy, but the lesson is part of …
The Silk Roads, 300 BCE to 1700 CE: Connecting the World for Two Millennia
The trade networks of the Silk Roads offered an astonishing array of intellectual and cultural influences, which, through the exchange of knowledge and ideas, both verbal and written, still reverberate throughout our societal framework today. Science, arts and literature, textiles and technologies were shared and disseminated into societies along the lengths of these routes, and, …
The Topsy-Turvy World of the University Classroom
This paper will review how the Global Pandemic starting in 2020 has affected classes at a typical Japanese university. Initially, the university students at an all women’s college were considered to be passive and not willing to take risks. However, as the instructor was forced to switch from face-to-face to online classes using the university’s …
Strategies of Integration: Challenges and Possibilities in the Online Teaching of Music During the Pandemic
The pandemic crisis has ushered a new era in the teaching of music. The suddenness of the crisis and the transfer of teaching to an online setting brusquely undermined the conviction that online pedagogies were to be transient and purely instrumental to the learning environment of the classroom. “Classrooms,” indicated a music teacher, “is where …
Gendered Robots: The Impact of Visual Design on Robots’ Gender Perception
With the rise of gendered innovations, the field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) has begun to pay more attention to gender issues of robots, especially the effects of gendered robots on Human-Robot Interaction. This study aims to investigate the influence of robots’ visual design on people’s gender perception in robots by using Kansai engineering methods. A …
Existential Mobility, Nostalgia and Narration: Unwrapping a family journal’s account on escape from Japanese air raids in Burma in the years 1941-1942
“The 20th century even more than any age before is the age of the refugee” and simultaneously works on migration seem incomplete without looking into the migrant experiences. In fact, to study migration more holistically would mean to study objective analysis of migration along with lived experience of the migrants, which is made possible through …
Children’s Motivation for Digital Media Use
This paper aims to explore motivations for digital media use among Croatian children aged 4 to 14 years, from the perspective of children and their parents. Since the use of digital media has become a significant part of children’s and parents’ everyday life, and digital devices are a common part of every household, one of …
‘Climate Fiction Narratives’: A Study of Maja Lunde’s Novels – The History of Bees and The End of the Ocean
Climate fiction (Cli-fi) is a genre that is gaining momentum over the last decade due to the proclivity in the environmental imagination towards issues concerning climate change. As such, this interdisciplinary area calls upon new voices in the literary scape to address pressing environmental concerns that plague us today. In a growing dystopian world where …
Application of Comparative Law Methods in Teaching Legal English to Law Students in Russia
A major challenge inherent in a course of legal English taught to students outside the common law tradition lies in the very fact of the difference between the legal system native to the student and that of common law. This difference, manifested in every aspect – formal and cognitive – of legal language, should be …
Resilience of La Rose En Vie: Recovering from Upheaval through a Transphenomenology of Spirit on the Basis of the Arts and Humanities’
During the pandemic the arts and humanities have often been underestimated, usually considered marginal to other more pressing matters, or too weak to look after themselves let alone others. This paper will revert this view by stating that the success of any civilisation, even in times of crisis, derives from the strength of the foundations …
Do You Believe In Magic? Exploring the Cultural Boundaries of Magical Thinking
Magical thinking has been a topic of interest in the social sciences (Muchow, 1928; Piaget, 1969; Berenbaum, Boden, and Baker, 2009). Meehl (1964) asserted that magical thinking relates to a “belief, quasi-belief, or semi serious entertainment of the possibility that events which, according to the casual concepts of this culture, cannot have casual relation with …
Cultural Formation of the Expo in Japan: The Case of Producer Shinya Izumi
The Japan World Exposition Osaka 1970 was the first Expo to be held in Japan and in Asia. The planners of the Osaka Expo not only struggled to express the uniqueness of the first expo in Asia, but also revised and reinterpreted its significance and format so that it would be accepted by Japanese society. …
International Circulation of Newspaper Novels: British Empire, Japan, and the Yubin Hochi Shimbun
Japanese newspaper novels emerged as a genre in the latter half of the 19th century. In 1886, the Yubin Hochi Shimbun (YHS), a hitherto primarily political newspaper, declared that it would print novels in order to internationalize its readers. The editor Morita Shiken had visited Europe and America to learn how to run and edit …
Impact of Advergames on Brand Outcomes among Saudi Players
Advergames present a unique, yet effective way of advertising owing to the high level of players’ engagement with online games. This preliminary study sought to explore the impact of advergames on brand outcomes among Saudi players. This research has capitalized the flow theory to examine this phenomenon in Saudi consumers. A questionnaire was formulated for …
Peace Comes About in Your Honour’: The Arts, Migration and Reconciliation
This presentation illustrates how a multimodal and transdisciplinary project brings together dance, music, poetry and historical and natural settings, with the ultimate aim of raising awareness about issues of migration. The mixing of Maltese poetry translated into English, with corporeal gestures and movements allows the interpreter of the work to experience and embody social, historical, …
Identity of the ǂKhomani San as Authentic Bushman in the 21st Century: An Ethnographic Study
The small indigenous community of the ǂKhomani San Bushmen in the Southern Kalahari Desert of South Africa are grappling to maintain their identity in the 21st century. Being authentic Bushman comes with a huge number of challenges for this indigenous community in retaining their cultural links to the land and their San heritage. Their authenticity …
Reinventing the Cross Culture of Paddy in Indonesia
The cross-culture of rice is interesting to revisit. After nearly twenty centuries, a clear historiography of West Java’s Indonesia rice culture history is needed. This study aims to reinventing the cross-cultural dynamics of rice in Indonesia by taking a case study in West Java province from the inception of records on rice cultivation in Indonesia …
Mnemosphere: An Interdisciplinary Research Between Memory of Places, Emotions and Atmosphere of Space
The transmission of memory seems to be an obsession of our time. This issue has been addressed by different disciplines and approaches. Design, as a discipline that contributes to the enhancement of culture, can help to expand the horizon of memory studies, but so far this issue is still undefined and blurred. Mnemosphere project, through …
Technology Driven Management and Employees’ Task Accomplishment in Government Technical Colleges in Lagos State, Nigeria
The study examined the contributions of Technology-Driven management to employees’ task accomplishments in the “new normal” with particular reference to Government Technical Colleges in Lagos State Nigeria. The study was guided by three research questions and three hypotheses. The descriptive survey research design was used for the study. The population comprised all the 528 teachers …
Brave Virtual Classrooms: Strategies for Engaging Students to Maximize Learning
The pandemic ushers in a new normal in language education, in which virtual classes have become the routine. Moving from physical face-to-face presence to virtual contact has greatly impacted both our teaching and learning. With the unavoidable drawbacks in virtual learning environment such as lack of personal interaction and screen fatigue, we find ourselves constantly …
Transnational University Collaborations Through the Lenses of Content and Social Network Analyses
In the age of COVID-19 and a global pandemic, international collaborations have become as important as ever to solve complex societal challenges of which universities play important roles. In fact, transnational university collaborations beyond institutional walls extend knowledge and resources to drive innovative change for large-scale economic and social progress that would not be possible …
Learner Autonomy and Self-regulated Learning: The Case of University – Level French as a Foreign Language (FFL) Students
French as a foreign language (FFL) is the second most popular international language in Ghana after English, but very few Ghanaians speak French, even though it is a core subject in elementary school and an elective subject in high schools. While the general aim of most language learners remains the development of communication competence, we …
Parental Involvement in Early Childhood Education in Lao PDR: Case of Vientiane Province
In the past decade, significant and measurable progress in Early Childhood Development (ECD) has been accomplished in Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR), but it continues to be behind the average development level of the world. Given this evidence, this case study on parental involvement in ECD attempts to examine the extent of parental involvement …
Maximising Student Engagement in Online and Blended Learning: A Survey of Learner Preferences
Blended learning is the integration of classroom face-to-face (F2F) learning with online learning experiences to engage students in a flexible learning framework. F2F lecturing is generally described as being more engaging. However, the incorporation of online resources gives students choice and flexibility in how they approach their studies, and can offer an additional tool to …
Embodied Interaction in Language Learning Materials: A Multimodal Analysis
The purpose of this research is to explore the potential of English-language learning materials as a source of multimodal communicative representation. In particular, this study examines the animated cartoon videos that supplement the text-based dialogues for how kinesics is made relevant in the moving images to enhance the communicative capacity of the English-language textbooks used …
Re-imagining Blended Learning 3.0 in Education – Defining a New Technology-Enabled Experience Led Approach to Accelerate Student Future Skills Development
This paper argues that digital living and working has changed irrevocably as a result of the Covid-19 Pandemic and therefore, digital developments in education brought about mainly by the use of blended learning during the Pandemic needs to be converged to support lifelong digital learning. Adopting the European Unions definition of blended learning, the paper …
The Impact of Snapchat Beautifying Filters on Beauty Standards and Self-image: A Self-Discrepancy Approach
This study explores the problematic nature of Snapchat’s beautifying filters by presenting Saudi women’s perceptions of self-beauty and reactions to these face-perfecting filters, from satisfaction to self-discrepancy. It expands the existing literature on Snapchat filters to users from Eastern regions. It uses the self-discrepancy theory to show the impact of perceived discrepancies between the actual …
Altered Andragogy: Lessons From Lockdown for Systems Engineering Education
Systems Engineering (SE) is a largely interactive and applied discipline which has been mainly taught via face-to-face tuition. The move to online-only teaching due to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic thus posed significant challenges for SE education. The andragogical strategy involved had to be rethought and redesigned such that key precepts of student learning could be …
Quantification of Knowledge Exchange Within Classrooms: An AI-based Approach
The industry is increasingly becoming a highly dynamic environment with competence and turnover indicators as prevailing characteristics, where only those who can both acquire and pass knowledge effectively can thrive. Little attention is paid to the value of incorporating Knowledge Exchange (KE) in classroom teaching, leaving students out of the current KE pipeline. Current strategies …
Efficacy of STEM and Engineering School Model Programs in the Los Angeles, California Area
California is famous for being the home of leading tech innovators such as Space-X, Tesla, Apple Computer, Facebook, Ebay and many others. But what are California schools doing to create a workforce capable of working in those “Tech” jobs? This presentation covers the curriculum models most likely to create students who seek engineering and science …
Effects of a Mindfulness-based Intervention Program on Changes of Well-being and Hope Belief
Mindfulness plays a critical role in the mental health of humans. To date, it’s still unclear whether mindfulness-based intervention could be an effective and acceptable program to enhance wellbeing and hope belief. This study aimed to examine a mindfulness-based intervention effect on changes of well-being and hope belief. Participants were 32 adults recruited from online …
Establishing an Action Research Group: Resilience, Adaptability, Drive
In September 2020, Dulwich Prep London began piloting a small, internal Action Research Group. With recent experience in action research, we were keen to share experiences and encourage others to identify their own classroom based ‘challenges’. We would address these by exploring pertinent literature, devising appropriate interventions, collecting data and considering our findings before sharing …
Differentiated Means of Action and Expression in Higher Education Courses
The Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) designed a framework, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), to promote the accessibility of learning practices by providing multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and expression (CAST, 2018). The framework is designed to guide teaching practices to improve learning experiences for all people based on how humans learn. …
Teacher Candidate Support and Resiliency During a Global Pandemic
The global pandemic has disrupted the classroom experience of teacher candidates and for students with disabilities in their P-12 school environment. This presentation will describe how one education preparation program (EPP) had to shift their cohort model from face-to-face to virtual instruction in two weeks and simultaneously support their teacher candidates’ mental health needs and …
Collaborative Writing Challenges and Strategies for Successful Elimination
In spite of having good ideas for research topics, some educators may not be able to bring their concepts to fruition because of poor collaborative writing synergy between the various contributors. Whether we choose to advertise it or not, many educators have stories of collaborative writing dysfunction, which in turn may lead to failed projects. …
The Academic-Industrial Program of Southeast Asian Students in Taiwan
Since 2016’s “New Southbound Policy” has developed in Taiwan, there are more and more Southeast Asian Students coming to Taiwan for study. From 2016 to 2020, their number had risen to over 30,000 students, posting an increase of 85 per cent in five years. Those students’ language learning, life adjustment and practical training on campus …