Search results for: transformative inquiry

Authors: Heny Hartono, Cecilia Titiek Murniati

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The pandemic has given teachers and students no other choice but having full online learning. In such an emergency situation as the time of the covid-19 pandemic, the application of LMS (Learner Management System) in higher education is the most reasonable solution for students and teachers. In fact, the online learning requires all elements of a higher education systems, including the human resources, infrastructure, and supporting systems such as the application, server, and stable internet connection. The readiness of the higher education institution in preparing the online system may secure those who are involved in the online learning process. It may also result in students’ self-efficacy in online learning. This research aimed to investigate how students perceive their self-efficacy in online English learning, especially in speaking classes which is considered as a productive language skill. This research collects qualitative data with narrative inquiry involving 25 students of speaking classes as the respondents. The results of this study show that students perceive their self-efficacy in speaking online classes as not very high.

Keywords: self-efficacy, online learning, speaking class, college students, e-learning

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Authors: Jeanetta Darno

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This paper explores the realm of organizational development through the lens of Edgar Schein's seminal work on culture and change. Specifically, the paper will focus on the strategic implementation of Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) as powerful interventions for catalyzing culture change within modern workplaces. Edgar Schein's foundational theories on organizational culture and his renowned model of culture work will serve as the theoretical framework to guide the exploration of how ERGs can be harnessed as transformative tools in organizational development initiatives. Through a review of literature combined with content analysis, this paper will explore how ERGs align with Schein's principles, contribute to development, and drive positive cultural shifts toward inclusion and equity. The paper aims to provide practical insights for organizational leaders, HR practitioners, and change agents looking to integrate ERGs effectively into their culture change efforts, thereby advancing the field of organizational development informed by Schein's influential framework. The objective of the paper is to investigate and understand the intersection between Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) and Edgar Schein's Culture Work within the context of organizational development.

Keywords: inclusive leadership, culture, equity, employee resource groups, organization development

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Authors: Cyrus Addy, Venkata Sriram Siddhardh Nadendla, Kwame Awuah-Offei

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Surface robots in modern underground mine rescue operations suffer from several limitations in enabling a prompt self-rescue. Therefore, the possibility of designing and deploying in-mine robots to expedite miner self-rescue can have a transformative impact on miner safety. These in-mine robots for miner self-rescue can be envisioned to carry out diverse tasks such as object detection, autonomous navigation, and payload delivery. Specifically, this paper investigates the challenges in the design of object detection algorithms for in-mine robots using thermal images, especially to detect people in real-time. A total of 125 thermal images were collected in the Missouri S&T Experimental Mine with the help of student volunteers using the FLIR TG 297 infrared camera, which were pre-processed into training and validation datasets with 100 and 25 images, respectively. Three state-of-the-art, pre-trained real-time object detection models, namely YOLOv5, YOLO-FIRI, and YOLOv8, were considered and re-trained using transfer learning techniques on the training dataset. On the validation dataset, the re-trained YOLOv8 outperforms the re-trained versions of both YOLOv5, and YOLO-FIRI.

Keywords: miner self-rescue, object detection, underground mine, YOLO

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Authors: Susanna Vanhamäki, Gabor Schneider, Kati Manskinen

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‘Bioeconomy’ is a complex concept that cuts across many sectors and covers several policy areas. To achieve an overall understanding and support a successful bioeconomy, a cross-sectorial approach is necessary. In practice, due to the concept’s wide scope and varying international approaches, fully understanding bioeconomy is challenging on policy level. This paper provides a background of the topic through an analysis of bioeconomy strategies in the Baltic Sea region. Expert interviews and a small survey were conducted to discover the current and intended focuses of these countries’ bioeconomy sectors. The research shows that supporting sustainability is one of the keys in developing the future bioeconomy. The results highlighted that the bioeconomy has to be sustainable and based on circular economy principles. Currently, traditional bioeconomy sectors like food, wood, fish & waters as well as fuel & energy, which are in the core of national bioeconomy strategies, are best known and are considered more relevant than other bioeconomy industries. However, there is increasing potential for novel sectors, such as textiles and pharmaceuticals. The present research indicates that the opportunities presented by these bioeconomy sectors should be recognised and promoted. Education, research and innovation can play key roles in developing transformative and sustainable improvements in primary production and renewable resources. Furthermore, cooperation between businesses and educators is important.

Keywords: bioeconomy, circular economy, policy, strategy

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Authors: Amir Tosson, Mohammad Reza, Christian Gutt

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Metadata stands at the forefront of advancing data management practices within research communities, with particular significance in the realms of neutron and photon scattering. This paper introduces a groundbreaking approach—dynamic metadata schema—within the context of X-ray Photon Correlation Spectroscopy (XPCS). XPCS, a potent technique unravelling nanoscale dynamic processes, serves as an illustrative use case to demonstrate how dynamic metadata can revolutionize data acquisition, sharing, and analysis workflows. This paper explores the challenges encountered by the neutron and photon communities in navigating intricate data landscapes and highlights the prowess of dynamic metadata in addressing these hurdles. Our proposed approach empowers researchers to tailor metadata definitions to the evolving demands of experiments, thereby facilitating streamlined data integration, traceability, and collaborative exploration. Through tangible examples from the XPCS domain, we showcase how embracing dynamic metadata standards bestows advantages, enhancing data reproducibility, interoperability, and the diffusion of knowledge. Ultimately, this paper underscores the transformative potential of dynamic metadata, heralding a paradigm shift in data management within the neutron and photon research communities.

Keywords: metadata, FAIR, data analysis, XPCS, IoT

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Authors: Ahmed Boujdad

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Morocco, situated in North Africa and celebrated for its diverse landscapes and vibrant cultural heritage, confronts evolving challenges in the realms of cardiovascular well-being and psychological health. In this context, this article aims to highlight distinctive findings stemming from Moroccan research concerning the effects of aerobic exercise on cardiovascular physiology and psychological states. The discourse will encompass a wide array of subjects, including adaptations in cardiac function due to exercise, management of blood pressure, and vascular well-being tailored to the Moroccan populace. A prominent focal point of the article will be the exploration of the interplay between aerobic exercise and Moroccan behavioral tendencies and socio-cultural influences. The research will delve into the correlations between consistent physical activity and its potential to mitigate stress, anxiety, and depression within the Moroccan framework. This inquiry will also extend to examining how exercise contributes to strengthening the societal tapestry of Morocco, fostering community involvement, and cultivating a sense of holistic wellness.

Keywords: kinesiology, cardiovascular, event-related potential‎, physical activity

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Authors: Carla Aramouny

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Digital fabrication, between advancements in software and machinery, is pushing practice today towards more complexity in design, allowing for unparalleled explorations. It is giving designers the immediate capacity to apply their imagined objects into physical results. Yet at no time have questions of material knowledge become more relevant and crucial, as technological advancements approach a radical re-invention of the design process. As more and more designers look towards tactile crafts for material know-how, an interest in natural behaviors has also emerged trying to embed intelligence from nature into the designed objects. Concerned with enhancing their immediate environment, designers today are pushing the boundaries of design by bringing in natural systems, materiality, and advanced fabrication as essential processes to produce active designs. New Territories, a yearly architecture and design course on digital design and materiality, allows students to explore processes of digital fabrication in intersection with natural systems and hands-on experiments. This paper will highlight the importance of learning from nature and from physical materiality in a digital design process, and how the simultaneous move between the digital and physical realms has become an essential design method. It will detail the work done over the course of three years, on themes of natural systems, crafts, concrete plasticity, and active composite materials. The aim throughout the course is to explore the design of products and active systems, be it modular facades, intelligent cladding, or adaptable seating, by embedding current digital technologies with an understanding of natural systems and a physical know-how of material behavior. From this aim, three main themes of inquiry have emerged through the varied explorations across the three years, each one approaching materiality and digital technologies through a different lens. The first theme involves crossing the study of naturals systems as precedents for intelligent formal assemblies with traditional crafts methods. The students worked on designing performative facade systems, starting from the study of relevant natural systems and a specific craft, and then using parametric modeling to develop their modular facades. The second theme looks at the cross of craft and digital technologies through form-finding techniques and elastic material properties, bringing in flexible formwork into the digital fabrication process. Students explored concrete plasticity and behaviors with natural references, as they worked on the design of an exterior seating installation using lightweight concrete composites and complex casting methods. The third theme brings in bio-composite material properties with additive fabrication and environmental concerns to create performative cladding systems. Students experimented in concrete composites materials, biomaterials and clay 3D printing to produce different cladding and tiling prototypes that actively enhance their immediate environment. This paper thus will detail the work process done by the students under these three themes of inquiry, describing their material experimentation, digital and analog design methodologies, and their final results. It aims to shed light on the persisting importance of material knowledge as it intersects with advanced digital fabrication and the significance of learning from natural systems and biological properties to embed an active performance in today’s design process.

Keywords: digital fabrication, design and craft, materiality, natural systems

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Authors: Vesile Evrim, Aliyu Awwal

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By the evolvement in technology, the way of expressing opinions switched the direction to the digital world. The domain of politics as one of the hottest topics of opinion mining research merged together with the behavior analysis for affiliation determination in text which constitutes the subject of this paper. This study aims to classify the text in news/blogs either as Republican or Democrat with the minimum number of features. As an initial set, 68 features which 64 are constituted by Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) features are tested against 14 benchmark classification algorithms. In the later experiments, the dimensions of the feature vector reduced based on the 7 feature selection algorithms. The results show that Decision Tree, Rule Induction and M5 Rule classifiers when used with SVM and IGR feature selection algorithms performed the best up to 82.5% accuracy on a given dataset. Further tests on a single feature and the linguistic based feature sets showed the similar results. The feature “function” as an aggregate feature of the linguistic category, is obtained as the most differentiating feature among the 68 features with 81% accuracy by itself in classifying articles either as Republican or Democrat.

Keywords: feature selection, LIWC, machine learning, politics

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Authors: Milind Patil

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Present paper is a discussion on Hindi-Marathi Morphological Analysis and generating rules for Machine Translation on the basis of Machine Readable Dictionary (MRD). This used Transformative Generative Grammar (TGG) rules to design the MRD. As per TGG rules, the suffix of a particular root word is based on its Tense, Aspect, Modality and Voice. That's why the suffix is very important for the word meanings (or root meanings). The Hindi and Marathi Language both have relation with Indo-Aryan language family. Both have been derived from Sanskrit language and their script is 'Devnagari'. But there are lots of differences in terms of semantics and grammatical level too. In Marathi, there are three genders, but in Hindi only two (Masculine and Feminine), the Natural gender is absent in Hindi. Likewise other grammatical categories also differ in their level of use. For MRD the suffixes (or Morpheme) are of particular root word for GNP (Gender, Number and Person) are based on its natural phenomena. A particular Suffix and Morphine change as per the need of person, number and gender. The design of MRD also based on this format. In first, Person, Number, Gender and Tense are key points than root words and suffix of particular Person, Number Gender (PNG). After that the inferences are drawn on the basis of rules that is (V.stem) (Pre.T/Past.T) (x) + (Aux-Pre.T) (x) → (V.Stem.) + (SP.TM) (X).

Keywords: MRD, TGG, stem, morph, morpheme, suffix, PNG, TAM&V, root

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Authors: Ali Aldakhil

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This paper explores the many faces of the barriers and exclusionary attitudes and practices that disabled teachers and students experience in a school where they teach or attend. Critical disability studies and inclusive education theory were used to conceptualise this inquiry and ground it in the literature. These theories were used because they magnify and expose the problems of disability/disablism as within-society instead of within-individual. Similarly, disability-first language was used in this study because it seeks to expose the social oppression and discrimination of disabled. Data were generated through conducting in-depth semi-structured interviews with six disabled teachers who teach disabled children in a Saudi mainstream school. Thematic analysis of data concludes that the school is fettered by disabling barriers, attitudes, and practices, which reflect the dominant culture of disablism that disabled people encounter in the Saudi society on a daily basis. This leads to the conclusion that overall deconstruction and reformation of Saudi mainstream schools are needed, including non-disabled people’s attitudes, policy, spaces, and overall arrangements of teaching and learning.

Keywords: disablism, disability studies, mainstream schools, Saudi Arabia

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Authors: Farzingohar Mehrnaz, Yasemi Mehran, Esmaili Zinat, Baharlouian Maedeh

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Aboozar (Ardeshir) and Bahregansar are the two important Iranian oilfields in Persian Gulf waters. The operation activities cause to create spills which impacted on the marine environment. Assumed spills are molded by ADIOS II (Automated Data Inquiry for Oil Spills) which is NOAA’s weathering oil software. Various atmospheric and marine data with different oil types are used for the modeling. Numerous scenarios for 100 bbls with mean daily air temperature and wind speed are input for 5 days. To find the model sensitivity in each setting, one parameter is changed, but the others stayed constant. In both fields, the evaporated and dispersed output values increased hence the remaining rate is reduced. The results clarified that wind speed first, second air temperature and finally oil type respectively were the most effective factors on the oil weathering process. The obtained results can help the emergency systems to predict the floating (dispersed and remained) volume spill in order to find the suitable cleanup tools and methods.

Keywords: ADIOS, modeling, oil spill, sensitivity analysis

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Authors: Nilamadhab Mohanty

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It is essential to use message formats that make communication understandable and correct. It is because; the information format can influence consumer decision on the purchase of a product. This study combines information from qualitative inquiry, media trend analysis, eye tracking experiment, and questionnaire data to examine the impact of specific message format and consumer perceived risk on attention to the information and risk retention. We investigated the influence of message framing (goal framing, attribute framing, and mix framing) on consumer memory, study time, and decisional uncertainty while deciding on the purchase of drugs. Furthermore, we explored the impact of consumer perceived risk (associated with the use of the drug, i.e., RISK-AB and perceived risk associated with the non-use of the drug, i.e., RISK-EB) on message format preference. The study used eye-tracking methods to understand the differences in message processing. Findings of the study suggest that the message format influences information processing, and participants' risk perception impacts message format preference. Eye tracking can be used to understand the format differences and design effective advertisements.

Keywords: message framing, consumer perceived risk, advertising, eye tracking

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Authors: Kwame Amoah

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Artificial intelligence (AI) has the prospect of transforming project management, significantly improving efficiency and accuracy. By automating specific tasks with defined guidelines, AI can assist project managers in making better decisions and allocating resources efficiently, with possible risk mitigation. This study explores how AI is already impacting project management and likely future AI's impact on the field. The AI's reaction has been a divided opinion; while others picture it as a destroyer of jobs, some welcome it as an innovation advocate. Both sides agree that AI will be disruptive and revolutionize PM's functions. If current research is to go by, AI or some form will replace one-third of all learning graduate PM jobs by as early as 2030. A recent survey indicates AI spending will reach $97.9 billion by the end of 2023. Considering such a profound impact, the project management profession will also see a paradigm shift driven by AI. The study examines what the project management profession will look like in the next 5-10 years after this technological disruption. The research methods incorporate existing literature, develop trend analysis, and conduct structured interviews with project management stakeholders from North America to gauge the trend. PM professionals can harness the power of AI, ensuring a smooth transition and positive outcomes. AI adoption will maximize benefits, minimize adverse consequences, and uphold ethical standards, leading to improved project performance.

Keywords: project management, disruptive teacnologies, project management function, AL applications, artificial intelligence

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Authors: Wenfan Yan, Yumei Han

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Objectives: Educational inequality persists between China's ethnic minority regions and the mainland. The key to rectifying this disparity lies in enhancing the quality of educators. This paper delves into the Chinese government's innovative policy, "Group Educators Supporting Tibet" (GEST), designed to bridge the shortage of high-quality teachers in Tibet, a representative underprivileged ethnic minority area. GEST aims to foster collective action by networking provincial expert educators with Tibetan counterparts and collaborating between supporting provincial educational entities and Tibetan education entities. Theoretical Framework: The unequal distribution of social capital contributes significantly to the educational gap between ethnic minority areas and other regions in China. Within the framework of social network theory, motivated GEST educators take action to foster resources and relationships. This study captures grassroots perspectives to outline how social networking contributes to the policy objective of enhancing Tibetan teachers' quality and eradicating educational injustice. Methodology: A sequential mixed-methods approach was adopted to scrutinize policy impacts from the vantage point of social networking. Quantitative research involved surveys for GEST and Tibetan teachers, exploring demographics, perceptions of policy significance, motivations, actions, and networking habits. Qualitative research included focus group interviews with GEST educators, local teachers, and students from program schools. The findings were meticulously analyzed to provide comprehensive insights into stakeholders' experiences and the impacts of the GEST policy. Key Findings: The policy empowers individuals to impact Tibetan education significantly. Motivated GEST educators with prior educational support experiences contribute to its success. Supported by a collective -school, city, province, and government- the new social structure fosters higher efficiency. GEST's approach surpasses conventional methods. The individual, backed by educators, realizes the potential of transformative class design. Collective activities -pedagogy research, teaching, mentoring, training, and partnerships- equip Tibetan teachers, enhancing educational quality and equity. This collaborative effort establishes a robust foundation for the policy's success, emphasizing the collective impact on Tibetan education. Contributions: This study contributes to international policy studies focused on educational equity through collective teacher action. Using a mixed-methods approach and guided by social networking theory, it accentuates stakeholders' perspectives, elucidating the genuine impacts of the GEST policy. The study underscores the advancement of social networking, the reinforcement of local teacher quality, and the transformative potential of cultivating a more equitable and adept teaching workforce in Tibet. Limitations of the Study and Suggestions for Future Research Directions: While the study emphasizes the positive impacts of motivated GEST educators, there might be aspects or challenges not fully explored. A more comprehensive understanding of potential drawbacks or obstacles would provide a more balanced view. For future studies, investigating the long-term impact of the GEST policy on educational quality could provide insights into the sustainability of the improvements observed. Also, understanding the perspectives of Tibetan teachers who may not have directly benefited from GEST could reveal potential disparities in policy implementation.

Keywords: teacher development, social networking, teacher quality, mixed research method

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Authors: Tsai-Hsiu Lin

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Three dimensions of teacher culture hinder educational improvement: individualism, conservatism and presentism. To promote the professional development of teachers, these three aspects in teacher culture should be eliminated. Classroom observation may be a useful method of eliminating individualism. The Ministry of Education in Taiwan has attempted to reduce the isolation of teachers to promote their professional growth. Because classroom observation discourse varies, teachers are generally unwilling to allow their teaching to be observed. However, classroom observations take place in the country in the form of school evaluations. The main purpose of this study was to explore the differences in teachers’ conservatism, individualism and presentism after classroom observations had been conducted at an elementary school in Taiwan. The research method was a qualitative case study involving interviews with the school principal, the director of academic affairs, and two classroom teachers. The following conclusions were drawn: (1) Educators in different positions viewed classroom observations differently; (2) The classroom teachers did not highly value classroom observation; (3) There was little change in the teachers’ conservatism, individualism and presentism after classroom observation.

Keywords: classroom observation, Lortie’s Trinity, teacher culture, teacher professional development

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Authors: O. M. van den Broek

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This article examines how large German companies have responded to the 2014 refugee crisis. It challenges the assumption that the historical legacy of implicit CSR in Germany would lead to low levels of business response through CSR channels. Instead, and building on institutional CSR and the converging forces of globalization, this article argues that the urgency of a humanitarian crisis creates incentives, in the absence of formal institutional arrangement, for explicit CSR responses. This explorative research encompasses the 53 German companies presented on 2015 Forbes2000. A qualitative content analysis of corporate websites was supplemented with inquiry e-mails. Results indicate considerable evidence for the main hypothesis, showing a vast majority of companies responding to the refugee crisis. Levels of engagement varied, depending on the phase of the crisis, from core-business activities to non-integrated action. The high level of partnerships with the state and other non-state actors indicates a quest for enhanced legitimacy in the face of an absent democratic mandate.

Keywords: corporate social responsibility (CSR), implicit versus explicit CSR, public-private partnerships, European refugee crisis

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Authors: Mary T. McKinley

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As socio-economic globalization impacts education and turns knowledge into a commodity, institutions of higher education are becoming more intentional about infusing a global and intercultural perspective into education via the recruitment of international students. Coming from dissimilar cultures, many of these students are evaluated and held accountable to Euro-American values of independence, self-reliance, and autonomy. Not surprisingly, these students often experience culture shock with deleterious effects on their mental health and academic functioning. Thus, it is critical to understand the experiences of international students with the hope that such knowledge will keep the field of psychology from promulgating Eurocentric ideals and values and prevent the training of these students as good-enough White therapists. Using a critical narrative inquiry framework, this study elicits stories about the challenges encountered by international students as they navigate their clinical training in the presence of acculturative stress and potentially different worldviews. With its emphasis on story-telling as meaning making, narrative research design is hinged on the assumption that people are interpretive beings who make meaning of themselves and their world through the language of stories. Also, dominant socially-constructed narratives play a central role in creating and maintaining hegemonic structures that privilege certain individuals and ideologies at the expense of others. On this premise, narrative inquiry begins with an exploration of the experiences of participants in their lived stories. Bounded narrative segments were read, interpreted, and analyzed using a critical events approach. Throughout the process, issues of reliability and researcher bias were addressed by keeping a reflective analytic memo, as well as triangulating the data using peer-reviewers and check-ins with participants. The findings situate culture at the epicenter of international students’ acculturation challenges as well as their resiliency in psychology doctoral programs. It was not uncommon for these international students to experience ethical dilemmas inherent in learning content that conflicted with their cultural beliefs and values. Issues of cultural incongruence appear to be further exacerbated by visible markers for differences like speech accent and clothing attire. These stories also link the acculturative stress reported by international students to the experiences of perceived racial discrimination and lack of support from the faculty, administration, peers, and the society at large. Beyond the impact on the international students themselves, there are implications for internationalization in psychology with the goal of equipping doctoral programs to be better prepared to meet the needs of their international students. More than ever before, programs need to liaise with international students’ services and work in tandem to meet the unique needs of this population of students. Also, there exists a need for multiculturally competent supervisors working with international students with varying degrees of acculturation. In addition to making social justice and advocacy salient in students’ multicultural training, it may be helpful for psychology doctoral programs to be more intentional about infusing cross-cultural theories, indigenous psychotherapies, and/or when practical, the possibility for geographically cross-cultural practicum experiences in the home countries of international students while taking into consideration the ethical issues for virtual supervision.

Keywords: decolonizing pedagogies, international students, multiculturalism, psychology doctoral programs

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Authors: Musa Njabulo Shongwe

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The multilateral trading system is facing a great danger of fragmentation. Its modus operandi, multilateralism, is increasingly becoming clogged by trade barriers created by the proliferation of preferential regional trading blocs. The paper explores the fragmentation of the multilateral trade regulation system (WTO law) by analysing whether and to what extent Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) have conflicted with the Multilateral Trading System. The paper examines the effects of RTA dominance in view of the WTO's quest for trade liberalization. This is an important inquiry because the proliferation of RTAs implies the erosion of the WTO law’s core principle of non-discrimination. The paper further explores how the proliferation of RTAs has endangered the coherence of the multilateral trading system. The study is carried out with the initial assumption that RTAs could be complementary and coherent with WTO law, and thus facilitate international trade and enhance development prospects. There is evidence that is tested by this study which suggests that RTAs can be divergent and hence undermine the WTO multilateral rules of regulating international trade. The paper finally recommends legal tools of regulating and managing the WTO-RTA interface, as well as other legal means of ensuring a harmonious existence between the WTO and regional trade arrangements.

Keywords: fragmentation of international trade law, regionalism, regional trade agreements, WTO law

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Authors: K. C. Surekha

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The natural habitat forms the setting for every urban development. The tangible and intangible characteristics of the site contributed to the sustenance of various urban dimensions of early civilizations. However, as the towns were continuously evolving and developing, the attitude towards the natural habitat changed. The after effects of this self-centered attitude resulted in various natural and manmade catastrophes. At the same time the social habitat, cities and new towns were increasingly over-populated; and will become even more numerous and crowded in the future. The coexistence of natural and urban components is necessary for a sustainable future and preserving the region’s unique features. Therefore, there is an urgent need to rethink actively on alternative development paradigms to achieve sustenance of all living forms on the planet in a more sustainable way. The main aim of this paper is to understand bioregionalism as an alternative development paradigm, its theory, concepts as well as the key aspects of bioregional planning. The paper will try to understand the concept of bioregionalism theoretically and take case studies. The critical interpretation of theory and analysis of case studies will be used to form a set of design parameters which can be physically implemented from an urban design and planning standpoint.

Keywords: bioregion, bioregionalism, holistic, sustainable

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Authors: Sushil Kumar Solanki, Rachna Khare

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Universal Design is a concept of built environment creation, where all people are facilitated to the maximum extent possible without using any type of specialized design. However, accessible design is a design process in which the needs of people with disabilities are specifically considered. Building standards on accessibility contains scoping and technical requirements for accessibility to sites, facilities, building and elements by individual with disability. India is also following its prescriptive types of various building standards for the creation of physical environment for people with disabilities. These building standards are based on western models instead of research based standards to serve Indian needs. These standards lack contextual connect when reflects in its application in the urban and rural environment. This study focuses on critical and comparative study of various international building standards and codes, with existing Indian accessibility standards to understand problems and prospects of concept of Universal Design building standards for India. The result of this study is an analysis of existing state of Indian building standard pertaining to accessibility and future need of performance based Universal Design concept.

Keywords: accessibility, building standard, built-environment, universal design

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Authors: Suzanne L. Stewart, Mikaela D. Gabriel

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Background: Indigenous People face multiple barriers to successful life transitions, including housing, employment, education, and health. Current statistical trends paint devastating life transitions for Indigenous Peoples, but colonization and its intergenerational impacts are typically lacking as the crucial context in which these trends occur. This presentation will illustrate the massive impact of colonization on Indigenous Peoples; its intergenerational transmission, and how it impacts Indigenous clients seeking mental health treatment today. Methods: A qualitative, narrative inquiry methodology was used to honour Indigenous storytelling and knowledge transmission. Indigenous Elders, outreach workers, and homeless clients were interviewed and narratively analyzed for in-depth trends and themes. Impact: This research provides a wealth of in-depth information as to the life transition needs of Indigenous clients, identify the systemic impacts of colonization to the health and wellbeing of Indigenous People, and strategies for mental health treatment.

Keywords: indigenous trauma, indigenous peoples of canada, intergenerational trauma, colonial trauma and treatment

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Authors: Yenni Anggrayni

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The lack of awareness of the significant prevalence of school absenteeism in Indonesia, which ultimately results in high rates of school dropouts, is an unresolved issue. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the root causes of chronic absenteeism qualitatively and quantitatively using the bioecological systems paradigm in secondary schools for any reason. This study used an open-ended questionnaire to collect data from 1,148 students in six West Java Province districts/cities. Univariate and stepwise multiple logistic regression analyses produced a prediction model for the components. Analysis results show that poor teacher-student relationships, bullying by peers or teachers, negative perception of education, and lack of parental involvement in learning activities are the leading causes of chronic absenteeism. Another finding is to promote home-school partnerships to improve school climate and parental involvement in learning to address chronic absenteeism.

Keywords: bullying, chronic absenteeism, dropout of school, home-school partnerships, parental involvement

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Authors: Benaissa Fatima, Alkama Rezak, Annesi-Maesano Isabella

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To assess the health impact of the air pollution on the population of Béjaia, we carried out a descriptive epidemiologic inquiry near the medical establishments of three areas. From the registers of hospital admissions, we collected data on the hospital mortality and admissions relating to the various cardiorespiratory pathologies generated by this type of pollution. In parallel, data on the automobile fleet of Bejaia and other measurements were exploited to show that the concentrations of the pollutants are strongly correlated with the concentration the urban traffic. This study revealed that the whole of the population is touched, but the sensitivity to pollution can show variations according to the age, the sex and the place of residence. So the under population of the town of Bejaia marked the most raised death and morbidity rates, followed that of Kherrata. Weak rates are recorded for under rural population of Feraoun. This approach enables us to conclude that the population of Béjaia could not escape the urban pollution generated by her old automobile fleet. To install a monitoring and measuring site of the air pollution in this city could provide a beneficial tool to protect its inhabitants by them informing on quality from the air that they breathe and measurements to follow to minimize the impacts on their health and by alerting the authorities during the critical situations.

Keywords: air, urban pollution, health, impacts

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Authors: Rashmi Malik, Videep Mishra

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The practice of generative design has become a transformative approach for an efficient way of generating multiple iterations for any design project. The conventional way of modeling the game elements is very time-consuming and requires skilled artists to design. A 3D modeling tool like 3D S Max, Blender, etc., is used traditionally to create the game library, which will take its stipulated time to model. The study is focused on using the generative design tool to increase the efficiency in game development at the stage of prop and environment generation. This will involve procedural level and customized regulated or randomized assets generation. The paper will present the system design approach using generative tools like Grasshopper (visual scripting) and other scripting tools to automate the process of game library modeling. The script will enable the generation of multiple products from the single script, thus creating a system that lets designers /artists customize props and environments. The main goal is to measure the efficacy of the automated system generated to create a wide variety of game elements, further reducing the need for manual content creation and integrating it into the workflow of AAA and Indie Games.

Keywords: iterative game design, generative design, gaming asset automation, generative game design

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Authors: Unity Nkateng

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New forms of academic writing such as apprenticeship genres are developing in the field of applied linguistics. However, these perspectives have not adequately addressed the issue of social work students in Botswana. The paper addresses the issue of academic writing with special attention to the types of documents written by University of Botswana (UB) social work students on their fieldwork placement. The research method for this study combines two major research tools in the qualitative inquiry which are text analysis and interviews in order to investigate the context in which the texts are produced. 12 students were consulted and gave their consent for the study. 26 case reports were collected from the Department of Social work at the University of Botswana. The findings show that the case reports students write during their fieldwork placements have 6 moves, which focus on the clients’ story and describe what the students have done and achieved. The significance is that the discrepancy between professional writing and students writing raise questions about the extent to which students are being prepared for professional writing. Students have indicated that their academic writing varies according to the preferences of individual lecturers rather than the requirement of the work situation.

Keywords: apprenticeship genres, client's voice, material processes, relational possesive processes

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Authors: Susana Olmos, Catherine Spencer

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Every year our School in DIT (Dublin Institute of Technology) hosts approximately 80 Erasmus students from partner universities across Europe. Our own students are required to spend a compulsory 3rd year abroad on study and/or work placements. This is an extremely rewarding experience for all of the students, however, it can also be a challenging one. With this in mind, we started a project which aimed to make this transition as easy and productive as possible. The project, which is called MEET: Maximise the Erasmus Experience Together, focuses on the students’ own active engagement in learning and preparation – outside of the classroom –and their own self-directed pursuit of opportunities to develop their confidence and preparedness, which would work as an important foundation for the transformative learning that study abroad implies. We focussed on creating more structured opportunities where Erasmus students from our partner universities (currently studying at DIT) and our second-year students could interact and learn from each other, and in so doing improve both their language and intercultural skills. Our experience so far has been quite positive and we have seen how students taking part in this project have developed as autonomous learners as well as enhanced both their linguistic and intercultural knowledge. As the linguistic element of our project was one of our main priorities, we asked the students to keep a reflective diary on the activities that were organised by the group in the TL. Also, we use questionnaires as well as personal interviews to assess their development. However, there are challenges and proposals we would make to bring this project forward for the near future.

Keywords: erasmus, intercultural competence, linguistic competence, extra curriculum activities

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Authors: Yao Chen

Abstract:

Empathy is crucial for teachers working with teenagers in secondary school. Despite that, little attention was paid to English language teachers’ experiences of empathy in class. Empathy contains cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components that are manifested in the teaching practice. The qualitative study focused on how Chinese ELT teachers expressed empathy in interaction with students in public high schools and private institutions and what factors might lead them to show empathy in different ways. Four participants were invited to attend the individual interviews to share their stories about their empathic experiences. Classroom observation was conducted to investigate teachers’ language use in teaching and non-verbal communication with students to witness their behavior of expressing empathy. Through thematic analysis, three main themes relevant to different types of empathy in teachers’ interaction with students were generated: 1) perspective taking, 2) emotional connections, 3) action taking. Based on the participants’ statements of their personal experiences, the discussion concluded the reasons for their differences in expressing empathy. The result underlined the significance of the role of empathy in building a rapport with students and motivating their language learning. Further implications for the role of empathy in ELT teachers’ professional development are also discussed.

Keywords: teacher empathy, experiences, interaction with students, ELT class

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Authors: Pedro G. Rodrigues, Maria J. Bárrios, Sara A. Ambrósio

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The digitalisation of health is a profoundly transformative economic, political, and social process. As is often the case, such processes need to be carefully managed if misunderstandings, policy misalignments, or outright conflicts between the government and a wide gamut of stakeholders with competing interests are to be avoided. Thus, ensuring open lines of communication where all parties know what each other’s concerns are is key to good governance, as well as efficient and effective policymaking. This project aims to make a small but still significant contribution in this regard in that we seek to determine the extent to which health managers’ perceptions of what is a priority for digital health in Portugal are aligned with official policy perspectives. By applying state-of-the-art artificial intelligence technology first to the indexed literature on digital health and then to a set of official policy documents on the same topic, followed by a survey directed at health managers working in public and private hospitals in Portugal, we obtain two priority rankings that, when compared, will allow us to produce a synthesis and toolkit on digital health policy in Portugal, with a view to identifying areas of policy convergence and divergence. This project is also particularly peculiar in the sense that sophisticated digital methods related to text analytics are employed to study good governance aspects of digitalisation applied to health care.

Keywords: digital health, health informatics, text analytics, governance, natural language understanding

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Authors: Lam Pham, Peter Hubber, Russell Tytler

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Students’ conceptual understandings of chemistry concepts/phenomena involve capability to coordinate across the three levels of Johnston’s triangle model. This triplet model is based on reasoning about chemical phenomena across macro, sub-micro and symbolic levels. In chemistry education, there is a need for further examining inquiry-based approaches that enhance students’ conceptual learning and problem solving skills. This research adopted a directed inquiry pedagogy based on students constructing and coordinating representations, to investigate senior school students’ capabilities to flexibly move across Johnston’ levels when learning dilution and molar concentration concepts. The participants comprise 50 grade 11 and 20 grade 10 students and 4 chemistry teachers who were selected from 4 secondary schools located in metropolitan Melbourne, Victoria. This research into classroom practices used ethnographic methodology, involved teachers working collaboratively with the research team to develop representational activities and lesson sequences in the instruction of a unit on solution chemistry. The representational activities included challenges (Representational Challenges-RCs) that used ‘representational tools’ to assist students to move across Johnson’s three levels for dilution phenomena. In this report, the ‘representational tool’ called ‘cross and portion’ model was developed and used in teaching and learning the molar concentration concept. Students’ conceptual understanding and problem solving skills when learning with this model are analysed through group case studies of year 10 and 11 chemistry students. In learning dilution concepts, students in both group case studies actively conducted a practical experiment, used their own language and visualisation skills to represent dilution phenomena at macroscopic level (RC1). At the sub-microscopic level, students generated and negotiated representations of the chemical interactions between solute and solvent underpinning the dilution process. At the symbolic level, students demonstrated their understandings about dilution concepts by drawing chemical structures and performing mathematical calculations. When learning molar concentration with a ‘cross and portion’ model (RC2), students coordinated across visual and symbolic representational forms and Johnson’s levels to construct representations. The analysis showed that in RC1, Year 10 students needed more ‘scaffolding’ in inducing to representations to explicit the form and function of sub-microscopic representations. In RC2, Year 11 students showed clarity in using visual representations (drawings) to link to mathematics to solve representational challenges about molar concentration. In contrast, year 10 students struggled to get match up the two systems, symbolic system of mole per litre (‘cross and portion’) and visual representation (drawing). These conceptual problems do not lie in the students’ mathematical calculation capability but rather in students’ capability to align visual representations with the symbolic mathematical formulations. This research also found that students in both group case studies were able to coordinate representations when probed about the use of ‘cross and portion’ model (in RC2) to demonstrate molar concentration of diluted solutions (in RC1). Students mostly succeeded in constructing ‘cross and portion’ models to represent the reduction of molar concentration of the concentration gradients. In conclusion, this research demonstrated how the strategic introduction and coordination of chemical representations across modes and across the macro, sub-micro and symbolic levels, supported student reasoning and problem solving in chemistry.

Keywords: cross and portion, dilution, Johnston's triangle, molar concentration, representations

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Authors: Yusuf Berkay Metinal, Gulden Gumusburun Ayalp

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Architectural education is characterized by its distinctive amalgamation of studio-based pedagogy and theoretical instruction. It offers students a comprehensive learning experience that blends practical skill development with critical inquiry and conceptual exploration. Design studios are central to this educational paradigm, which serve as dynamic hubs of creativity and innovation, providing students with immersive environments for experimentation and collaborative engagement. The physical presence and interactive dynamics inherent in studio-based learning underscore the indispensability of face-to-face instruction and interpersonal interaction in nurturing the next generation of architects. However, architectural education underwent a seismic transformation in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, precipitating an abrupt transition from traditional, in-person instruction to online education modalities. While this shift introduced newfound flexibility in terms of temporal and spatial constraints, it also brought many challenges to the fore. Chief among these challenges was maintaining effective communication and fostering meaningful collaboration among students in virtual learning environments. Besides these challenges, lack of peer learning emerged as a vital issue of the educational experience, particularly crucial for novice students navigating the intricacies of architectural practice. Nevertheless, the pivot to online education also laid bare a discernible decline in educational efficacy, prompting inquiries regarding the enduring viability of online education in architectural pedagogy. Moreover, as educational institutions grappled with the exigencies of remote instruction, discernible disparities between different institutional contexts emerged. While state universities often contended with fiscal constraints that shaped their operational capacities, private institutions encountered challenges from a lack of institutional fortification and entrenched educational traditions. Acknowledging the multifaceted nature of these challenges, this study endeavored to undertake a comprehensive inquiry into the dynamics of online education within architectural pedagogy by interrogating variables such as class level and type of university; the research aimed to elucidate demographic critical success factors that underpin the effectiveness of online education initiatives. To this end, a meticulously constructed questionnaire was administered to architecture students from diverse academic institutions across Turkey, informed by an exhaustive review of extant literature and scholarly discourse. The resulting dataset, comprising responses from 232 participants, underwent rigorous statistical analysis, including independent samples t-test and one-way ANOVA, to discern patterns and correlations indicative of overarching trends and salient insights. In sum, the findings of this study serve as a scholarly compass for educators, policymakers, and stakeholders navigating the evolving landscapes of architectural education. By elucidating the intricate interplay of demographical factors that shape the efficacy of online education in architectural pedagogy, this research offers a scholarly foundation upon which to anchor informed decisions and strategic interventions to elevate the educational experience for future cohorts of aspiring architects.

Keywords: architectural education, COVID-19, distance education, online education

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