Search results for: passion in an entrepreneurial context

Authors: Irena Smetackova

Abstract:

The important part of school mathematics are word problems which represent the connection between school knowledge and life reality. To find the reasons why students consider word problems to be difficult, it is necessary to take into consideration the motivational settings, besides mathematical knowledge and reading skills. Our goal is to identify whether the familiar or unfamiliar context of math word problem influences solving success rate and if so, whether the reasons are motivational or cognitive. For this purpose, we conducted three steps study in group of fifty pupils 9-10 years old. In the first step, we asked pupils to create ‘the best’ word problems for entered numerical formula. The set of 19 word problems with different contexts were selected. In the second step, pupils were asked to evaluate (without solving) how they like each item and how easy it is for them. The 6 word problems with low preference and low estimated success rate were selected and combined with other 6 problems with high preference and success rate. In the third step, the same pupils were asked to solve the word problems. The analysis showed that pupils attitudes and solving toward word problems varied by the context. The strong gender patterns both in preferred contexts and in estimated success rates were identified however the real success rate did not differ so strongly. The success gap between word problems with and without preferred contexts were stronger than the gap between problems with and without real experience with the context. The hypothesis that motivational factors are more important than cognitive factors was confirmed.

Keywords: mathematics, context of reality, motivation, cognition, word problems

Procedia PDF Downloads 169

Authors: Mohadese Motahari

Abstract:

In general, we consider the phenomenon of "fandism" or extreme fandom to be an aspect of fandom for a person, a group, or a collection, which leads to extreme support for them. So, for example, we consider a fan or a "fanatic" (which literally means a "fanatical person") to be a person who is extremely interested in a certain topic or topics and has a special passion and fascination for that issue. It may also be beyond the scope of logic and normal behavior of the society. With the expansion of the media and the advancement of technology, the phenomenon of fandom also underwent many changes and not only became more intense, but a large economy was also formed alongside it, and it is becoming more and more important every day. This economy, which emerged from the past with the formation of the first media, has now taken a different form with the development of media and social networks, as well as the change in the interaction between celebrities and audiences. Earning huge amounts of money with special methods in every social network and every media is achieved through fans and fandoms. In this article, we have studied the relationship between fans and famous people with reference to the economic debates surrounding it.

Keywords: fandism, famous people, social media, new media

Procedia PDF Downloads 59

Authors: Argyro Maria Skourmalla

Abstract:

The present paper draws on the example of the University of Luxembourg as a multilingual and international setting. The University of Luxembourg, which is located between France, Germany, and Belgium, has adopted a new multilingualism policy in 2020, establishing English, French, German, and Luxembourgish as the official languages of the Institution. With around 7.000 students, more than half of which are international students, the University is a meeting point for languages and cultures. This paper includes data from an online survey that with undergraduate students from different disciplines at the University of Luxembourg. Students shared their personal experience and opinions regarding language use in this higher education context, as well as practices they use in learning in this multilingual context. Findings show the role of technology in assisting students in different aspects of learning this multilingual context. At the same time, more needs to be done to avoid an exclusively monolingual paradigm in higher education. Findings also show that some languages remain ‘unseen’ in this context. Overall, even though linguistic diversity in this University is seen as an asset, a lot needs to be done towards the recognition of staff and students’ linguistic repertoires for inclusion and education equity.

Keywords: higher education, learning, linguistic diversity, multilingual practices

Procedia PDF Downloads 41

Authors: Poonsook Thatchaopas, Nik Kamariah Nikmat, Nattakarn Eakuru

Abstract:

Since 2003, the Thai Government has implemented several initiatives to encourage and incubate entrepreneurial skills and motivation among her citizens. One of the initiatives is the “One College One Product” business model or well known as ‘OCOP’, launched by the Vocational Education Commission to encourage partnership between college students to choose at least one product for business venture. In line with this mission, several business enterprises were established such as food products, restaurants, spa, Thai massage, minimart, computer maintenance, karaoke centre, internet café, mini theater etc. Currently, these business incubator projects can be observed at 404 vocational colleges and 21 incubation centres to encourage entrepreneurial small and medium enterprise (SME) development. However, the number of successful OCOP projects is still minimal. Out of the 404 individual OCOP projects at Vocational Colleges around Thailand, very few became successful. The objective of this paper is to identify the critical success factors needed to be a successful OCOP business entrepreneur. This study uses qualitative method by interviewing business partners of an OCOP business called Crispy Roti Krua Acheeva Brand (CRKAB). It is a snack food company that is developed at Pattani Vocational College in South Thailand. This project was initiated by three female entrepreneurs who were alumni student cum owners of the CRKAB. The finding shows that the main critical success factors are self-confidence, creativity or innovativeness, knowledge, skills and perseverance. Additionally, they reiterated that the keys to business success are product quality, perceived price, promotion, branding, new packaging to increase sales and continuous developments. The results implies for a student business SME to be successful, the company should have credible partners and effective marketing plan.

Keywords: student entrepreneurship, business incubator, food industry, qualitative, Thailand

Procedia PDF Downloads 371

Authors: Ali Zefeiti

Abstract:

There has always been a debate on critical versus pragmatic approach to learning English. Different elements of teaching take different shapes in the two approaches. This study concerns itself with the students who are the main pillar of the teaching/learning operation. Students have always been placed into classrooms to learn what the curricula of different courses offer. There is little room for students to state their own learning needs as they often have to conform with the group requirement. This study focuses on an extra-curricular activity students did alongside their mainstream learning. The students come from different colleges and different EAP courses. They are united by their passion for the task and learning many things along the way. The data are collected through interviews and students' journals. The study was concerned with the effect of this extra-curricular activity on students' main learning trajectory. The students were engaged in the task of film production over the period of their English Language course. The findings show that students are able to set their own agenda for learning and have actually had a lot of skills and vocabulary to take to class.

Keywords: critical EAP, pragmatic EAP, self-directed learning, teaching methods

Procedia PDF Downloads 429

Authors: Noorjehan Joosub-Vawda

Abstract:

Objectives: The aim of this poster presentation is to examine cultural contextual understandings of ABI that could aid conceptualisation and the development of a model for neuropsychological rehabilitation in this context. Characteristics of the South African context that make the implementation of international NR practices difficult include socioeconomic disparities, sociocultural influences, lack of accessibility to healthcare services, and poverty and unemployment levels. NR services in the developed world have characteristics such as low staff-to-patient ratios and interdisciplinary teams that make them unsuitable for the resource-constrained South African context. Methods: An exploratory, descriptive research design based on programme theory is being followed in the development of a South African model of neuropsychological rehabilitation. Results: The incorporation of African traditional understandings and practices, such as beliefs about ancestral spirits in the etiology of Acquired Brain Injury are relevant to the planning of rehabilitation interventions. Community-Based Rehabilitation workers, psychoeducation, and cooperation among the different systemic levels especially in rural settings is also needed to improve services offered to patients living with ABI. Conclusions. The preliminary model demonstrated in this poster will attempt to build on the strengths of South African communities, incorporating valuable evidence from international models to serve those affected with brain injury in this context.

Keywords: neuropsychological rehabilitation, South Africa, acquired brain injury, developing context

Procedia PDF Downloads 297

Authors: Wendy Maddison

Abstract:

This paper describes an Action Research project which was undertaken to inform professional practice in order to develop a newly created Centre for Student Success in the specific context of transnational medical and nursing education in the Middle East. The objectives were to enhance the academic performance, persistence, integration and personal and professional development of a multinational study body, in particular in relation to preclinical medical students, and to establish a comfortable, friendly and student-driven environment within an Irish medical university recently established in Bahrain. Expatriating a new part of itself into a corner of the world and within a context which could be perceived as the antithesis of itself, in particular in terms of traditional cultural and organisational values, the university has had to innovate in the range of services, programmes and other offerings which engages and supports the academic success of medical and nursing students as they “encounter the world in the classroom” in the context of an Arab Islamic culture but within a European institution of transnational education, engaging with a global learning environment locally. The outcomes of the project resulted in the development of a specific student success ‘signature’ for this particular transnational higher education context.

Keywords: transnational higher education, medical education, action research, student success, Middle Eastern context, student persistence in the global-local, student support mechanisms

Procedia PDF Downloads 667

Authors: Naoum Mylonas, Eugenia Petridou

Abstract:

Objectives: The objectives of this research are firstly, to develop an integrated model of predicting factors to new ventures performance, taking into account certain issues and specificities related to creative industry and female entrepreneurship based on the prior research; secondly, to determine the appropriate measures of venture performance in a creative industry context, drawing upon previous surveys; thirdly, to illustrate the importance of entrepreneurial orientation, networking ties, environment dynamism and access to financial capital on new ventures performance. Prior Work: An extant review of the creative industry literature highlights the special nature of entrepreneurship in this field. Entrepreneurs in creative industry share certain specific characteristics and intensions, such as to produce something aesthetic, to enrich their talents and their creativity, and to combine their entrepreneurial with their artistic orientation. Thus, assessing venture performance and success in creative industry entails an examination of how creative people or artists conceptualize success. Moreover, female entrepreneurs manifest more positive attitudes towards sectors primarily based on creativity, rather than innovation in which males outbalance. As creative industry entrepreneurship based mainly on the creative personality of the creator / artist, a high interest is accrued to examine female entrepreneurship in the creative industry. Hypotheses development: H1a: Female entrepreneurs who are more entrepreneurially-oriented show a higher financial performance. H1b: Female entrepreneurs who are more artistically-oriented show a higher creative performance. H2: Female entrepreneurs who have personality that is more creative perform better. H3: Female entrepreneurs who participate in or belong to networks perform better. H4: Female entrepreneurs who have been consulted by a mentor perform better. Η5a: Female entrepreneurs who are motivated more by pull-factors perform better. H5b: Female entrepreneurs who are motivated more by push-factors perform worse. Approach: A mixed method triangulation design has been adopted for the collection and analysis of data. The data are collected through a structured questionnaire for the quantitative part and through semi-structured interviews for the qualitative part as well. The sample is 293 Greek female entrepreneurs in the creative industry. Main findings: All research hypotheses are accepted. The majority of creative industry entrepreneurs evaluate themselves in creative performance terms rather than financial ones. The individuals who are closely related to traditional arts sectors have no EO but also evaluate themselves highly in terms of venture performance. Creative personality of creators is appeared as the most important predictor of venture performance. Pull factors in accordance with our hypothesis lead to higher levels of performance compared to push factors. Networking and mentoring are viewed as very important, particularly now during the turbulent economic environment in Greece. Implications-Value: Our research provides an integrated model with several moderating variables to predict ventures performance in the creative industry, taking also into account the complicated nature of arts and the way artists and creators define success. At the end, the findings may be used for the appropriate design of educational programs in creative industry entrepreneurship. This research has been co-financed by the European Union (European Social Fund – ESF) and Greek national funds through the Operational Program "Education and Lifelong Learning" of the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) - Research Funding Program: Heracleitus II. Investing in knowledge society through the European Social Fund.

Keywords: venture performance, female entrepreneurship, creative industry, networks

Procedia PDF Downloads 240

Authors: Xunan Huang, Caicai Zhang

Abstract:

This paper investigated the code-mixing features in Mandarin-English bilingual children in Singapore. First, it examined whether the code-mixing rate was different in Mandarin Chinese and English contexts. Second, it explored the syntactic categories of code-mixing in Singapore bilingual children. Moreover, this study investigated whether morphological information was preserved when inserting syntactic components into the matrix language. Data are derived from the Singapore Bilingual Corpus, in which the recordings and transcriptions of sixty English-Mandarin 5-to-6-year-old children were preserved for analysis. Results indicated that the rate of code-mixing was asymmetrical in the two language contexts, with the rate being significantly higher in the Mandarin context than that in the English context. The asymmetry is related to language dominance in that children are more likely to code-mix when using their nondominant language. Concerning the syntactic categories of code-mixing words in the Singaporean bilingual children, we found that noun-mixing, verb-mixing, and adjective-mixing are the three most frequently used categories in code-mixing in the Mandarin context. This pattern mirrors the syntactic categories of code-mixing in the Cantonese context in Cantonese-English bilingual children, and the general trend observed in lexical borrowing. Third, our results also indicated that English vocabularies that carry morphological information are embedded in bare forms in the Mandarin context. These findings shed light upon how bilingual children take advantage of the two languages in mixed utterances in a bilingual environment.

Keywords: bilingual children, code-mixing, English, Mandarin Chinese

Procedia PDF Downloads 190

Authors: Sekkal Nawel

Abstract:

The Web of Things (WoT), integration of smart technologies from the Internet or network to Web architecture or application, is becoming more complex, larger, and dynamic. The WoT is associated with various elements such as sensors, devices, networks, protocols, data, functionalities, and architectures to perform services for stakeholders. These services operate in the context of the interaction of stakeholders and the WoT elements. Such context is becoming a key information source from which data are of various nature and uncertain, thus leading to complex situations. In this paper, we take interest in the development of intelligent Web services. The key ingredients of this “intelligent” notion are the context diversity, the necessity of a semantic representation to manage complex situations and the capacity to reason with uncertain data. In this perspective, we introduce a multi-layered architecture based on a generic intelligent Web service model dealing with various contexts, which proactively predict future situations and reactively respond to real-time situations in order to support decision-making. For semantic context data representation, we use PR-OWL, which is a probabilistic ontology based on Multi-Entity Bayesian Networks (MEBN). PR-OWL is flexible enough to represent complex, dynamic, and uncertain contexts, the key requirements of the development for the intelligent Web services. A case study was carried out using the proposed architecture for intelligent plant watering to show the role of proactive and reactive contextual reasoning in terms of WoT.

Keywords: smart web service, the web of things, context reasoning, proactive, reactive, multi-entity bayesian networks, PR-OWL

Procedia PDF Downloads 38

Authors: Zhou Yang, Heli Sun, Jianbin Huang, Jizhong Zhao, Shaojie Qiao

Abstract:

Traffic prediction is essential in a multitude of ways in modern urban life. The researchers of earlier work in this domain carry out the investigation chiefly with two major focuses: (1) the accurate forecast of future values in multiple time series and (2) knowledge extraction from spatial-temporal correlations. However, two key considerations for traffic prediction are often missed: the completeness of raw data and the full context of the prediction timestamp. Concentrating on the two drawbacks of earlier work, we devise an approach that can address these issues in a two-phase framework. First, we utilize the raw trajectories to a greater extent through building a VLA table and data compression. We obtain the intra-trajectory features with graph-based encoding and the intertrajectory ones with a grid-based model and the technique of back projection that restore their surrounding high-resolution spatial-temporal environment. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to study direct feature extraction from raw trajectories for traffic prediction and attempt the use of raw data with the least degree of reduction. In the prediction phase, we provide a broader context for the prediction timestamp by taking into account the information that are around it in the training dataset. Extensive experiments on several well-known datasets have verified the effectiveness of our solution that combines the strength of raw trajectory data and prediction context. In terms of performance, our approach surpasses several state-of-the-art methods for traffic prediction.

Keywords: traffic prediction, raw data utilization, context building, data reduction

Procedia PDF Downloads 99

Authors: Dina Mohamed Ayman, Rafieu Akin

Abstract:

In an attempt to increase the female total entrepreneurial activities (TEA) within Egypt and Nigeria, this paper aims to investigate the challenges facing female entrepreneurs operating in Egypt, in relative to Nigeria. In this regard, both researchers undertook a qualitative approach due to the scarcity of the literature reviewed on the topic; in those particular countries, and as an in-depth comparative mode. Therefore, ten Egyptian entrepreneurs in relative to ten Nigerian entrepreneurs were in-depth investigated. The research findings prove that female entrepreneurs face complex problems for being both gender and country-specific. Regarding the gender-specific obstacles, the work/life imbalance due to the scarcity of child-care nurseries and the prevalence of the gender-role division while performing the house chores rather than the concept of co-operation, acted as a main source of cultural challenge because women are considered mostly as 'housewives'. However, interestingly, this specific gender-discrimination challenge is proven to have no grounded effect in terms of the business-establishment and daily dealings neither in Egypt nor Nigeria, as one of the sample exclaimed 'as long as you pay, then no gender difference is set on the table'. Other country-specific challenges facing female entrepreneurs, lied in, the aggregate weak entrepreneurial framework governing both countries, also, women faced the difficulty of access to financial institutions with collateral requirements that are usually "hardly to be met", besides, the absence of the "micro-credit-Grameen-banks" concept. As well, the scarcity of incubators and business training centers providing network, consultancy and well-trained workforce to female entrepreneurs constitute a major hurdle for women entrepreneurs operating in both countries. Finally, this paper will conclude the research by offering a set of public-policy recommendations to pave the way for females to choose self-employment as a career path.

Keywords: entrepreneurship, female entrepreneurship, obstacles, framework conditions, culture, micro-credit

Procedia PDF Downloads 345

Authors: J. Daniel Sanchez Ruiz

Abstract:

The paper explains why and how a research criterion was included within an accreditation system for undergraduate engineering programs, in spite of not being a common practice of accreditation agencies at a global level. This paper is divided into three parts. The first presents the context and the motivations that led the Institute for Quality and Accreditation of Computing, Engineering and Technology Programs (ICACIT) to add a research criterion. The second describes the criterion adopted and the feedback received during 2017 accreditation cycle. The third, the author proposes changes to the accreditation criteria that respond in a pertinent way to the results-based accreditation model and the national context. The author seeks to reconcile an outcome based accreditation model, aligned with the established by the International Engineering Alliance, with the particular context of higher education in Peru.

Keywords: accreditation, engineering education, quality assurance, research

Procedia PDF Downloads 259

Authors: Nalinee Sophatsathit

Abstract:

The objectives of memorabilia of Suan Sunandha are to develop a general knowledge presentation about the historical royal garden through interactive graphic simulation technique and to employ high-functionality context in enhancing interactive user navigation. The approach infers non-intrusive display of relevant history in response to situational context. User’s navigation runs through the virtual reality campus, consisting of new and restored buildings. A flash back presentation of information pertaining to the history in the form of photos, paintings, and textual descriptions are displayed along each passing-by building. To keep the presentation lively, graphical simulation is created in a serendipity game play so that the user can both learn and enjoy the educational tour. The benefits of this human-computer interaction development are two folds. First, lively presentation technique and situational context modeling are developed that entail a usable paradigm of knowledge and information presentation combinations. Second, cost effective training and promotion for both internal personnel and public visitors to learn and keep informed of this historical royal garden can be furnished without the need for a dedicated public relations service. Future improvement on graphic simulation and ability based display can extend this work to be more realistic, user-friendly, and informative for all.

Keywords: interactive user navigation, high-functionality context, situational context, human-computer interaction

Procedia PDF Downloads 330

Authors: Yuichi Morita, Yoshiteru Nakamori

Abstract:

In car dealer business of Japan, a sale professional is a key factor of company’s success. We hypothesize that, if a corporation knows what is the sales professionals’ trait of its corporation’s business field, it will be easier for a corporation to secure and nurture sales persons effectively. The lean human resources management will ensure business success and good performance of corporations, especially small and medium ones. The goal of the paper is to determine the traits of sales professionals for small-and medium-size car dealers, using chi-square test and the variable rough set model. As a result, the results illustrate that experience of job change, learning ability and product knowledge are important, and an academic background, building a career with internal transfer, experience of the leader and self-development are not important to be a sale professional. Also, we illustrate sales professionals’ traits are persistence, humility, improvisation and passion at business.

Keywords: traits of sales professionals, variable precision rough sets theory, sales professional, sales professionals

Procedia PDF Downloads 358

Authors: Megan E. Davies

Abstract:

With the intention of identifying cognitive processes uniquely involved in the dark triad personality traits of psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism, this study aimed to determine further potential differences and parameters of individual traits by explaining a statistically significant amount of variance between the constructs of manipulativeness, impulsiveness, grit, and need for cognition within the dark triad. Applying a cross-sectional design, N = 96 participants self-reported using the MACH-IV, SRP-III, NFC-S, and Grit Scale for Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that only manipulativeness predicted Machiavellianism, whereas manipulativeness and impulsiveness were found to have predictive qualities for psychopathy. Overall, these results found areas of discrepancy and overlap between manipulation and impulsivity regarding psychopathy and Machiavellianism. Additionally, this study serves to preliminarily eliminate the Need for Cognition and grit as predictive variables for Machiavellianism and psychopathy.

Keywords: Machiavellianism, psychopathy, manipulation, impulsiveness, need for cognition, grit, dark triad

Procedia PDF Downloads 75

Authors: Mythri Kukkaje

Abstract:

Information about the social and psychological contexts that operate as a breeding ground for perpetrators of violence against women in India is scarce. To understand the social and psychological contexts that form the bases of violent behaviour in male-perpetrators against women, interviews were conducted with 13 men above the age of 18 years, who were convicted for their crimes against women. Using thematic analysis, the nurturance and the social background of the perpetrators, determined by their social relationships, the socio-economic status, the extent of substance abuse, the history of experiencing and witnessing violence and their cultural context, were found to define the social context. The nature and the psychological background of the perpetrators determined by the thoughts and beliefs regarding gender and violence, the motivation behind their violent behaviour and a few specific personality traits were found to define the psychological context. These factors on their own, as well as an interaction between them, could be responsible for varying degrees of violence against women.

Keywords: perpetrator, psychological, social, violence against women

Procedia PDF Downloads 198

Authors: Miraç Savaş Turhan, Ali Danişman

Abstract:

Recently scholars of new institutional theory have used institutional logics perspective to explain the contradictory practices in modern western societies. Accordingly, distinct institutional logics are embedded in central institutions such as the market, state, democracy, family, and religion. They guide individual and organizational actors and constraint their behaviors in a particular organizational field. Through this perspective, actors are assumed to have a situated, embedded, boundedly intentional, and adaptive role against the structure in social, cultural and political context. On the other hand, over a decade, there is an emerging attempt focusing on the role of actors on creating, maintaining, and changing the institutions. Such attempts brought out the concept of institutional entrepreneurs to explain the role of individual actors in relation to institutions. Institutional entrepreneurs are individuals, groups of individuals, organizations or groups of organizations that are able to initiate some actions to build, maintain or change institutions. While recent studies on institutional logics perspective have attempted to explain roles of entrepreneurial actors who have resources and skills, little is known about the effects of multiple institutional logics on the ability of institutional entrepreneurs. In this study, we aim to find out that how multiple institutional logics affect the ability of institutional entrepreneurs during the process of institutional change. We examine this issue in the Turkish Education Field. While institutional logics were identified based on the previous studies in the education field, the actions taken by Turkish National Education Ministry from 2003 to 2013 was examined through content analysis The early results indicate that there are remarkable shift and contradictions in the ability of institutional entrepreneur in taking actions to change the field in relationship to balance of power shift among the carriers of institutional logics.

Keywords: institutional theory, institutional logics, institutional entrepreneurs, Turkish national education

Procedia PDF Downloads 328

Authors: Dianah Kitiabi

Abstract:

This study examines the experiences of graduate international students in Study Abroad (SA) in order to understand the evolution of their second language (L2) skills during the period of their sojourn abroad. The study documents students’ perspectives through analysis of interview data situated within the context of their overall SA experience. Based on a phenomenological approach, the study focuses on a sample of nine graduate students with at least one year of SA experience. Gass & Mackey’s (2007) interaction approach and Vygotsky’s (1962) sociocultural theory help frame the study within the discourse of second language acquisition (SLA) in SA, such as to highlight the effects of SA on L2 skills of advanced-level learners. The findings of the study are first presented as individual case vignettes where students’ interpretations of their personal experiences are described in entirety, followed by an analysis across the cases that highlight emergent themes. The results of this study show that the linguistic outcomes of international students studying abroad are highly individualized. Although students reported to have improved some of their L2 skills, they also reported a lack of improvement in other L2 skills, most of which differed by case. What emerges is that besides contextual factors, students’ pre-program exposure to L2, interactions with NSs, frequency of L2 use in context, and personal beliefs contribute to their linguistic gains in SA.

Keywords: context, interaction, second language acquisition, study abroad

Procedia PDF Downloads 48

Authors: Jekaterina Novikova, Leon Watts

Abstract:

In the emerging world of human-robot interaction, people and robots will interact socially in real-world situations. This paper presents the results of an experimental study probing the interaction between situational context and emotional body language in robots. 34 people rated video clips of robots performing expressive behaviours in different situational contexts both for emotional expressivity on Valence-Arousal-Dominance dimensions and by selecting a specific emotional term from a list of suggestions. Results showed that a contextual information enhanced a recognition of emotional body language of a robot, although it did not override emotional signals provided by robot expressions. Results are discussed in terms of design guidelines on how an emotional body language of a robot can be used by roboticists developing social robots.

Keywords: social robotics, non-verbal communication, situational context, artificial emotions, body language

Procedia PDF Downloads 263

Authors: Yousra Drissi

Abstract:

This research explores language teacher identity in a multilingual context where both teachers and students come from different linguistic backgrounds. It seeks to understand how teachers perceive themselves as language teachers in this context in relation to different influencing factors, both internal and external. This study is being conducted due to the importance of language teacher identity (LTI) in the university context, which is being neglected in the present literature (in an attempt to address the gap in the present literature). The broader aim of this study is to bring attention to language teacher identity along with the different influencing elements which can either promote or hinder its development. In this research, we are using the sociocultural theory and post-structural theory. This research uses the mixed methods approach to collect and analyse relevant data. A structured survey was distributed to language teachers from different universities around Algeria, followed by in-depth interviews. Results are supposed to show the different points in self-perception that these teachers share or differ in. they will also help us identify the different internal and external factors that can be of influence. However, the results of this research can be used by institutions as well as decision-makers to better understand university teachers and help them improve their teaching practices by empowering their language teacher identity, starting from teacher education programs to continuous teacher development programs.

Keywords: identity, language teacher identity, multilingualism, university teacher

Procedia PDF Downloads 52

Authors: Tingke Wu, Yaping Huang

Abstract:

Many cities in China have been experiencing serious urban sprawl since the 1980s, which pose great challenges to a country with scare cultivated land and huge population. Because of different social and economic context and development stage, driving forces of urban sprawl in China are quite different from developed countries. Therefore, it is of great importance to probe into urban sprawl driving mechanism in Chinese context. By a comparison study of the background and features of urban sprawl between China and developed countries, this research establishes an analytical framework for sprawl dynamic mechanism in China. By literature review and analyzing data from national statistical yearbook, it then probes into the driving mechanism and the primary cause of urban sprawl. The results suggest that population increase, economic growth, traffic and information technology development lead to rapid expansion of urban space; defects of land institution and lack of effective guidance give rise to low efficiency of urban land use. Moreover, urban sprawl is ultimately attributed to imperfections of policy and institution. On this basis, this research puts forward several sprawl control strategies in Chinese context.

Keywords: China, driving forces, driving mechanism, land institution, urban expansion, urban sprawl

Procedia PDF Downloads 159

Authors: Thapelo Jacob Moloi

Abstract:

This paper purports to present the findings in relation to the competencies of commercial grain farmers using a classic grounded theory method. A total of about eighteen semi-structured interviews with farmers, former farmers, farm workers, and agriculture experts were conducted. Findings explored competencies in the form of skills, knowledge and personal attributes that commercial grain farmers possess. Skills range from production skills, financial management skill, time management skill, human resource management skill, planning skill to mechanical skill. Knowledge ranges from soil preparation, locality, and technology to weather knowledge. The personal attributes that contribute to shaping a commercial grain farmer are so many, but for this study, seven stood out as a passion, work dedication, self-efficacy, humbleness, intelligence, emotional stability, and patience.

Keywords: grain farming, farming competencies, classic grounded theory, competency model

Procedia PDF Downloads 51

Authors: Esra Yaldız, Dicle Aydın

Abstract:

Sustainability is a term that provides deciding about the future considering environment and investigates the harmony and balance between protection and usage of the resource. The main objective of sustainability is creating residential areas is nature compatible or providing continuance thereby adapting existing residential area to nature. In this context, historical and traditional areas must have utilized according to sustainability. Traditional housing texture are identified as a traditional architectural product has been designed based on this term. General characteristics of traditional housing within the context of sustainable architecture are their specific dynamics and components and their harmonisation of environment and nature. Owing to the fact that traditional housing texture harmonizes natural conditions of the region, topography, climate and their context, construction materials are provided from environment and traditional techniques and their forms are used and due to construction materials has natural insulation traditional housing create healthy and comfortable living environment, traditional housing is rather significant in terms of sustainable architecture. The basis of this study comprise the routers in traditional housing design in accordance with the principles of sustainability. These are, accommodating topography, climate, and geography, accessibility, structuring at the scale of human, utilization of green zones, unique to the region used construction materials, the form of construction, building envelope and space organization of dwelling. In this context, the purpose of this study is that vernacular architecture approaches of traditional housing textures which are in Central Anatolia Region Located in Anatolia are utilized with regard to sustainability.

Keywords: Anatolia, sustainability, traditional housing texture, vernacular architecture

Procedia PDF Downloads 429

Authors: Bochra Khiari, Lamia Labed

Abstract:

In the new digital marketplace, organizations are striving for a proactive position by leveraging the great potential of disruptive technologies to seize the full opportunity of the digital revolution in order to reshape their customer value propositions. New technologies such as big data analytics, which provide prediction of future events based on real-time information, are being integrated into BPM which urges the need for additional core values like capabilities for dynamic adaptation, autonomic behavior, runtime reconfiguration and post-deployment activities to manage unforeseen scenarios at runtime in a situated and changeable context. Dynamic Software Product Lines (DSPL) is an emerging paradigm that supports these runtime variability mechanisms. However, few works exploiting DSPLs principles and techniques in the BPM domain have been proposed so far. In this paper, we propose a conceptual approach DynPL4CBPM, which integrates DSPLs concepts along with the entire related dynamic properties, to the whole BPM lifecycle in order to dynamically adapt business processes according to different context conditions in an individual environment.

Keywords: adaptive processes, context aware business process management, customer centric business process management, dynamic software product lines

Procedia PDF Downloads 140

Authors: Thevaranchany Sivaskaran

Abstract:

Women entrepreneurs are the key players in the society and their contributions is highly highlighted to enhance economic stability in the country. In Sri Lanka, especially in North and East provinces people badly affected by war. Most of them are widows and women headed families. Due to this changing environment, Educational opportunities, and the support of NGO’s Most of the women have started their business and become entrepreneurs. Even though existing family setup and social setup entrepreneurial women are overburdened and difficult to balance their business and family roles. The research has been conducted on the experiences of women entrepreneurs with the family role support and work-life balance within the small and micro- enterprise sector in Jaffna, Srilanka. This study aims to identify that what extent the role of family support will be the tool to balancing work and life effectively and, secondly, the main challenges they face in achieving work-life balance. This is done by drawing on literatures including those on work-life balance, small-and micro enterprises, and entrepreneurship theories. To find out this objective, the data were collected from 50 entrepreneurs among the members of Jaffna women chamber in each GS division basis (cluster random sampling). A qualitative methodological technique and semi-structured interviews were used to collect the data for the case study on these entrepreneurs. The results indicate that the majority of entrepreneurs do not enjoy a sense of work-life balance because most of them are women headed family and they need to work hard to generate financial profit for the benefit of family. The motivation for them to work in this way is to provide basic needs. Results confirmed for others that support of husbands is very important. Mostly, emotional support (belief and empowerment) is exposed; however, getting financial contribution seems to be highly appreciated. More responsibilities which spouses were ready to take over regarding the home responsibilities (that is, childcare) should also not be neglected in the system of support to their entrepreneurial wives. Although, more important for all, women with children appreciated other members and spouses help and assistance to a higher extent. Results showed that majority of women who started their own business feel that in the first year of ope-ration the emotional support of family members was more important.

Keywords: family support, work life balance, women entrepreneurs, Jaffna District, Sri Lanka

Procedia PDF Downloads 435

Authors: Jinghui Wang, Minjie Xing

Abstract:

The increasing number of international students for doctoral education has brought vitality and diversity to the educational environment in China, and at the same time constituted a new challenge to the English teaching in the higher education as the majority of international students come from developing countries where English is not their first language. To make their contribution to knowledge development and technical innovation, these international doctoral students need to present their research work in English, locally and globally. This study reports an exploratory study with an emphasis on the cognition and construction of academic discourse in the multicultural context. The present study aims to explore ways to better prepare them for international academic exchange in English. Voluntarily, all international doctoral students (n = 81) from 35 countries enrolled in the English Course: Speaking and Writing as a New Scientist, participated in the study. Two research questions were raised: 1) What did these doctoral students say about their cognition and construction of English academic discourses? 2) How did they manage to develop their productive skills in a multicultural context? To answer the research questions, data were collected from self-reports, in-depth interviews, and video-recorded class observations. The major findings of the study suggest that the participants to varying degrees benefitted from the cognition and construction of English academic discourse in the multicultural context. Specifically, 1) The cognition and construction of meta-discourse allowed them to construct their own academic discourses in English; 2) In the light of Swales’ CARS Model, they became sensitive to the “moves” involved in the published papers closely related to their study, and learned to use them in their English academic discourses; 3) Multimodality-driven presentation (multimedia modes) enabled these doctoral student to have their voice heard for technical innovation purposes; 4) Speaking as a new scientist, every doctoral student felt happy and able to serve as an intercultural mediator in the multicultural context, bridging the gap between their home culture and the global culture; and most importantly, 5) most of the participants reported developing an English discourse community among international doctoral students, becoming resourceful and productive in the multicultural context. It is concluded that the cognition and construction of academic discourse in the multicultural context proves to be conducive to the productivity and intercultural citizenship education of international doctoral students.

Keywords: academic discourse, international doctoral students, meta-discourse, multicultural context

Procedia PDF Downloads 362

Authors: Polina Trusova

Abstract:

The majority of young enterprises is founded and run by teams and develops new, innovative products or services. While problems within the team are considered to be an important reason for the failure of young enterprises, effective teamwork on innovation may be a key success factor. It may require special teamwork design or members’ creativity not needed during work routine. However, little is known about how young enterprises develop innovative solutions in teams, what makes their teamwork special and what influences its effectivity. Extending this knowledge is essential for understanding the success and failure factors for young enterprises. Previous research focused on working on innovation or professional teams in general. Rare studies combining these issues usually concentrate on homogenous groups like IT expert teams in innovation projects of big, well-established firms. The transferability of those studies’ findings to the entrepreneurial context is doubtful because of several reasons why teamwork should differ significantly between big, well-established firms and young enterprises. First, teamwork is conducted by team members, e.g., employees. The personality of employees in young enterprises, in contrast to that of employees in established firms, has been shown to be more similar to the personality of entrepreneurs. As entrepreneurs were found to be more open to experience and show less risk aversion, it may have a positive impact on their teamwork. Persons open to novelty are more likely to develop or accept a creative solution, which is especially important for teamwork on innovation. Secondly, young enterprises are often characterized by a flat hierarchy, so in general, teamwork should be more participative there. It encourages each member (and not only the founder) to produce and discuss innovative ideas, increasing their variety and enabling the team to select the best idea from the larger idea pool. Thirdly, teams in young enterprises are often multidisciplinary. It has some advantages but also increases the risk of internal conflicts making teamwork less effective. Despite the key role of teamwork on innovation and presented barriers for transferring existing evidence to the context of young enterprises, only a few researchers have addressed this issue. In order to close the existing research gap, to explore and understand how innovations are developed in teams of young enterprises and which factors influencing teamwork may be especially relevant for such teams, a qualitative study has been developed. The study consisting of 20 half-structured interviews with (co-)founders of young innovative enterprises in the UK and USA started in September 2017. The interview guide comprises but is not limited to teamwork dimensions discussed in literature like members’ skill or authority differentiation. Data will be evaluated following the rules of qualitative content analysis. First results indicate some factors which may be relevant especially for teamwork in young innovative enterprises. They will enrich the scientific discussion and provide the evidence needed to test a possible causality between identified factors and teamwork effectivity in future research on young innovative enterprises. Results and their discussion can be presented at the conference.

Keywords: innovation, qualitative study, teamwork, young enterprises

Procedia PDF Downloads 171

Authors: Lia Tsuladze

Abstract:

The paper discusses the Georgians’ online discourses of national identity in the context of Europeanisation focusing on two periods - initialing of the EU-Georgia Association Agreement in November 2013 and signing it in June 2014. Discussing how the Georgians’ aspiration to integrate with the EU is combined with their perception of Europeanisation as a threat to the national identity, the author explores how the national sentiment is expressed in the above discourses while performed for the local vs. international audiences.

Keywords: Europeanisation, frontstage, backstage discourses, Georgia, national identity

Procedia PDF Downloads 479

Authors: Liu Jia’nan

Abstract:

The default accounts hold the view that there exists a kind of scalar implicature which can be processed without context and own a psychological privilege over other scalar implicatures which depend on context. In contrast, the Relevance Theorist regards context as a must because all the scalar implicatures have to meet the need of relevance in discourse. However, in Katsos, the experimental results showed: Although quantitatively the adults rejected under-informative utterance with lexical scales (context-independent) and the ad hoc scales (context-dependent) at almost the same rate, adults still regarded the violation of utterance with lexical scales much more severe than with ad hoc scales. Neither default account nor Relevance Theory can fully explain this result. Thus, there are two questionable points to this result: (1) Is it possible that the strange discrepancy is due to other factors instead of the generation of scalar implicature? (2) Are the ad hoc scales truly formed under the possible influence from mental context? Do the participants generate scalar implicatures with ad hoc scales instead of just comparing semantic difference among target objects in the under- informative utterance? In my Experiment 1, the question (1) will be answered by repetition of Experiment 1 by Katsos. Test materials will be showed by PowerPoint in the form of pictures, and each procedure will be done under the guidance of a tester in a quiet room. Our Experiment 2 is intended to answer question (2). The test material of picture will be transformed into the literal words in DMDX and the target sentence will be showed word-by-word to participants in the soundproof room in our lab. Reading time of target parts, i.e. words containing scalar implicatures, will be recorded. We presume that in the group with lexical scale, standardized pragmatically mental context would help generate scalar implicature once the scalar word occurs, which will make the participants hope the upcoming words to be informative. Thus if the new input after scalar word is under-informative, more time will be cost for the extra semantic processing. However, in the group with ad hoc scale, scalar implicature may hardly be generated without the support from fixed mental context of scale. Thus, whether the new input is informative or not does not matter at all, and the reading time of target parts will be the same in informative and under-informative utterances. People’s mind may be a dynamic system, in which lots of factors would co-occur. If Katsos’ experimental result is reliable, will it shed light on the interplay of default accounts and context factors in scalar implicature processing? We might be able to assume, based on our experiments, that one single dominant processing paradigm may not be plausible. Furthermore, in the processing of scalar implicature, the semantic interpretation and the pragmatic interpretation may be made in a dynamic interplay in the mind. As to the lexical scale, the pragmatic reading may prevail over the semantic reading because of its greater exposure in daily language use, which may also lead the possible default or standardized paradigm override the role of context. However, those objects in ad hoc scale are not usually treated as scalar membership in mental context, and thus lexical-semantic association of the objects may prevent their pragmatic reading from generating scalar implicature. Only when the sufficient contextual factors are highlighted, can the pragmatic reading get privilege and generate scalar implicature.

Keywords: scalar implicature, ad hoc scale, dynamic interplay, default account, Mandarin Chinese processing

Procedia PDF Downloads 293