scholarly journals Trends in qualitative research in language teaching since 2000

2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Richards
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
Working Definition ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Future Work ◽  
Year 2000 ◽  
Published Research

This paper reviews developments in qualitative research in language teaching since the year 2000, focusing on its contributions to the field and identifying issues that emerge. Its aims are to identify those areas in language teaching where qualitative research has the greatest potential and indicate what needs to be done to further improve the quality of its contribution. The paper begins by highlighting current trends and debates in the general area of qualitative research and offering a working definition of the term. At its core is an overview of developments in the new millennium based on the analysis of papers published in 15 journals related to the field of language teaching and a more detailed description, drawn from a range of sources, of exemplary contributions during that period. Issues of quality are also considered, using illustrative cases to point to aspects of published research that deserve closer attention in future work, and key publications on qualitative research practice are reviewed.

scholarly journals Trends in Qualitative Research in Three Major Language Teaching and Learning Journals, 2006–2015

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiroko Tojo ◽  
Akiko Takagi
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Four Dimensions ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
Major Language ◽  
Data Collection And Analysis ◽  
Learning Journals ◽  
Language Teaching And Learning

This study examines the current trends and complexities in qualitative research in three major language teaching andlearning journals published from 2006–2015. After categorizing 781 articles into quantitative, qualitative, mixedmethods, and other approaches, 226 qualitative research articles were closely examined and further analyzed in termsof four dimensions: approaches, methods, number of participants, and length of research period. The findingsshowed that case study was the most frequently employed approach, followed by ethnography. The study alsoidentified that while interviews, observations, discourse analysis, and conversation analysis were relatively wellutilized, more than 150 different data collection and analysis methods were used. Although the results of the studyshow a tendency to use certain approaches and methods in qualitative research more than others, they alsodemonstrate the complexity and diversity of qualitative research and the difficulty in clarifying and categorizingtypes of qualitative research in language teaching and learning.

Academic leadership – special or simple

2017 ◽  
Vol 66 (5) ◽  
pp. 630-637 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Graham Anthony ◽  
Jiju Antony
Keyword(s):  
Academic Career ◽  
Lean Six Sigma ◽  
Academic Leadership ◽  
Venn Diagram ◽  
Academic Leaders ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Working Definition ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
Traditional Leadership ◽  
Definition Of

Purpose Is academic leadership unique? Is it special? Do academic leaders require certain knowledge, skills and behaviours that only a career in academic can develop – or is it fundamentally the same as traditional leadership? This paper explores whether or not academic leadership is special or simple. It starts by defining the context and environment academic leaders find themselves in, moving onto explore characteristics and the overlap with traditional leadership thinking and finally concludes with current trends and a working definition of what academic leadership really is. The purpose of this paper is to explore the uniqueness of academic institutions and whether or not they require certain leadership characteristics which can only be found in academic career progression or could an exceptional individual from outside academia lead academics, researchers, administrators and support staff? Design/methodology/approach Based around a literature review of current thinking on academic leadership and then the production of a Venn diagram to compares these current trends with more traditional definitions of leadership. Findings The key findings of this paper include a definition of academic leadership, and how it is similar in many ways to traditional leadership thinking. However, there is a uniqueness centred on the culture and politics of an academic institution which many traditional leaders would not need to work within. Research limitations/implications This paper is part of a wider research project relating to academic leadership and Lean Six Sigma and thus the author has searched out papers which support both areas of the author’s interest. Practical implications Anyone in a position of academic leadership may be interested in how it relates to traditional leadership concepts and where their field differs from others. Originality/value No research current exists which overlaps academic leadership with traditional definitions and characteristics and thus this paper is a new view of academic leadership.

scholarly journals Lukijat sanaston monimuotoisuutta määrittämässä

Virittäjä ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 123 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mari Honko ◽  
Scott Jarvis ◽  
Seppo Vainio
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Rating Task ◽  
Narrative Texts ◽  
Rater Reliability ◽  
Lexical Diversity ◽  
Construct Definition ◽  
Quantitative And Qualitative Research ◽  
Definition Of

Artikkelissa tarkastellaan leksikaalisen diversiteetin eli tekstin sanastollisen monimuotoisuuden rakentumista. Tavoitteena on esitellä leksikaalisen diversiteetin tutkimuksen metodiikkaa ja osoittaa sen potentiaali kielitaidon arvioinnin välineenä. Tutkimuksessa selvitetään, kuinka yksilöllisiä arvioijien käsitykset tietyn tekstin sanastollisesta monimuotoisuudesta ovat, missä määrin arvioijien käsityksiä voidaan selittää tekstien sanastollisilla piirteillä ja mitkä näistä piirteistä ovat käsitysten selittäjinä tärkeimpiä. Artikkelissa leksikaalista diversiteettiä tutkitaan tekstejä ja niiden tulkintaa vertailemalla. Aineisto koostuu koululaisten kirjoittamista kertomusteksteistä ja aikuisten lukijoiden teksteille antamista sanastollisen monimuotoisuuden arvioista. Kunkin tekstin (yht. 60) arvioi 23 arvioijaa, joiden vastausten yhdenmukaisuutta tarkasteltiin tilastollisesti. Tämän jälkeen selvitettiin tätä tutkimusta varten rakennetun tilastollisen mallin avulla, millaisiin sanastollisiin piirteisiin inhimilliset arvioijat kiinnittävät huomiota tekstien sanastollista monimuotoisuutta arvioidessaan. Tulokset osoittavat, että arvioijien käsitykset yksittäisten tekstien sanastollisesta monimuotoisuudesta ovat hyvin yhdenmukaisia (Cronbachin alfa = 0,959). Arviointien luotettavuutta lisää se, että arvioitavien tekstien suuresta määrästä huolimatta kaikki arvioijat suorittivat tehtävän loppuun saakka eikä arviointilinja olennaisesti muuttunut tehtävän aikana. Leksikaalisen diversiteetin määrittelyn kannalta on olennaista, että tekstien yksittäisistä sanastollisista muuttujista neljä riittää selittämään lähes kolme neljäsosaa (n. 73 %) arvioiden vaihtelusta. Tutkitun aineiston perusteella lukijoiden tulkinta tekstin sanastollisesta monimuotoisuudesta tukeutuu vahvasti 1) tekstin eri sanojen määrään (runsaus), 2) tietyn sanan esiintymien välisiin etäisyyksiin tekstissä (sironta), 3) sanojen laatuun (erityisyys) sekä 4) tekstin sanastolliseen tiheyteen (vaihtelevuus), joka perustuu uusien sanojen tasaiseen ilmaantumiseen tekstissä.   Readers’ perceptions of lexical diversity: Examining lexical diversity at the interface between quantitative and qualitative research This article examines the construct of lexical diversity while focusing on research methodology and the potential for lexical diversity to be used as an index of language proficiency. The study gives attention to questions of inter-rater reliability, the effects of texts’ lexical characteristics on raters’ lexical diversity ratings, and which set of features best accounts for raters’ perceptions of lexical diversity. The present study focuses on lexical diversity in Finnish, and it does this by comparing the lexical characteristics of texts with how they are perceived. The data consists of narrative texts written by school children, as well as lexical diversity ratings assigned to the same texts by adult raters. Each text (n = 60) was rated by 23 raters, whose ratings were tested statistically for inter-rater reliability. A regression model was then used to investigate which lexical features the raters relied on while assessing the texts’ levels of lexical diversity. The results show that the raters’ lexical diversity ratings were highly consistent with one another (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.959). Despite the large number of texts they were asked to rate, all raters rated each of the 60 texts, and their intra-rater consistency remained high from the beginning to the end of the rating task. The results have important implications for the construct definition of lexical diversity: of all the lexical features examined in the present study, four alone suffice to account for nearly three quarters (roughly 73%) of the variance in the ratings. The results suggest that raters’ perceptions of lexical diversity are strongly associated with 1) the number of different words in a text (abundance), 2) the intervals between occurrences of the same word (dispersion), 3) the semantic quality of individual words in the text (specialness) and 4) the overall degree of repetitiveness in the text (variety).  

scholarly journals A critical appraisal of guidelines for electronic communication between patients and clinicians: the need to modernize current recommendations

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 413-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joy L Lee ◽  
Marianne S Matthias ◽  
Nir Menachemi ◽  
Richard M Frankel ◽  
Michael Weiner
Keyword(s):  
Electronic Communication ◽  
Clinical Care ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Ovid Medline ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
Future Work ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Published Research ◽  
Current Guidelines

Abstract Background Patient-provider electronic communication has proliferated in recent years, yet there is a dearth of published research either leading to, or including, recommendations that improve clinical care and prevent unintended negative consequences. We critically appraise published guidelines and suggest an agenda for future work in this area. Objective To understand how existing guidelines align with current practice, evidence, and technology. Methods We performed a narrative review of provider-targeted guidelines for electronic communication between patients and providers, searching Ovid MEDLINE, Embase, and PubMed databases using relevant terms. We limited the search to articles published in English, and manually searched the citations of relevant articles. For each article, we identified and evaluated the suggested practices. Results Across 11 identified guidelines, the primary focus was on technical and administrative concerns, rather than on relational communication. Some of the security practices recommended by the guidelines are no longer needed because of shifts in technology. It is unclear the extent to which the recommendations that are still relevant are being followed. Moreover, there is no guideline-cited evidence of the effectiveness of the practices that have been proposed. Conclusion Our analysis revealed major weaknesses in current guidelines for electronic communication between patients and providers: the guidelines appear to be based on minimal evidence and offer little guidance on how best to use electronic tools to communicate effectively. Further work is needed to systematically evaluate and identify effective practices, create a framework to evaluate quality of communication, and assess the relationship between electronic communication and quality of care.

Democracy

2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 233-234
Author(s):  
Kristen Parris
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Working Definition ◽  
Charles Tilly ◽  
Accurate Definition ◽  
The Social ◽  
Essentially Contested Concepts ◽  
Definition Of

Democracy, Charles Tilly, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. xi, 227.The ideal of democracy is rarely challenged openly in the contemporary world, yet it remains one of the social science's essentially contested concepts. Despite a large and growing literature on the topic, there is little consensus on how we are to decide when a particular regime qualifies as a democracy or not. In his ambitious and forceful new book, Charles Tilly argues that this lack of a clear and accurate definition of democracy is of considerable consequence. Lucid explanations of democratization, political standing of regimes, related foreign policy decisions and the quality of people's lives are all at stake. Tilly devotes his first chapter to building a working definition of democracy before putting forward a cogent explanatory framework for understanding how and why democracies emerge and why they sometimes disappear and to demonstrate what difference it makes.

Requirements Elicitation for Complex Systems

2011 ◽  
pp. 27-52
Author(s):  
Chad Coulin ◽  
Didar Zowghi
Keyword(s):  
Complex Systems ◽  
System Development ◽  
Requirements Elicitation ◽  
Development Projects ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
Academic Environments ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Direction

This chapter examines requirements elicitation for complex systems from a theoretical and practical perspective. System stakeholders, requirements sources, and the quality of requirements are presented with respect to the process, including an investigation into the roles of requirements engineers during elicitation. The main focus of the chapter is a review of existing requirements elicitation techniques and a survey of current trends and challenges. It is concluded with some views on the future direction of requirements elicitation in terms of research, practice and education. It is the intention of the authors that readers of this chapter will be sufficiently informed on the concepts, techniques, trends, and challenges of requirements elicitation to then apply this knowledge to system development projects in both industrial and academic environments.

scholarly journals Lyrical prose and the ritualistic: Lyricality as an interpretative lens for analysing C. C. Krijgelmans’s short story “Homunculi”

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (s1) ◽  
pp. s105-s125
Author(s):  
Nele Janssens
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Narrative Texts ◽  
Short Story Collection ◽  
Working Definition ◽  
Lyrical Poetry ◽  
Story Collection ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Narrative Conventions

AbstractHomunculi (1967) is the first short story collection by the Flemish-Belgian experimental writer Claude C. Krijgelmans. The stories challenge narrative conventions. The title story of the collection mainly experiments with formal conventions: it foregrounds rhythmic repetition and musicality, and deviates from grammatical rules. These features are conventionally associated with lyrical poetry, rather than with narrative texts. Moreover, the text thematises rituals, which hints at the presence of a ritualistic quality that is often linked with lyrical texts. This article focuses on the lyrical elements in “Homunculi” and associates them with the ritualistic. I define lyricality as a literary mode that consists of lyrical tendencies, which can be realised in different ways. The ritualistic quality associated with this mode can be defined as a recurrent combination of lyrical tendencies. The ritualistic involves both semantic and formal aspects. Semantically, it is characterised as an impersonal quality of language. Formally, the ritualistic is memorable, non-representational language. The focus on lyricality enables a working definition of the ritualistic. Approaching “Homunculi” with lyricality as an interpretative lens has theoretical as well as analytical advantages. First, it situates the prose text in a wider tradition of lyrical, ritualistic texts. Next, the focus on lyricality reveals new interpretative possibilities for “Homunculi”. Against that background, this paper demonstrates the need for a narratology that considers the interaction between narrativity and other modes, like lyricality.

scholarly journals Understanding Patient Trust in the Athletic Setting through Interviews

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon David ◽  
John Hitchcock
Keyword(s):  
Athletic Training ◽  
Athletic Trainers ◽  
Division I ◽  
Student Athlete ◽  
Training Setting ◽  
Working Definition ◽  
Vital Component ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Member Checks

Trust is a vital component of the patient-clinician relationship yet little is known about trust in the athletic training (AT) profession. Purpose: The purpose of this qualitative study was to define and understand trust in an athletic training setting. Methods: Interviews with Division I student-athlete patients (n=9) and athletic trainers (n=3) were conducted to collect data about participant views and definitions of trust. Data were analyzed using classical and constant comparison techniques; the trustworthiness of findings were assessed via peer debriefing, member checks, and reflexive journaling. Results: The analyses yielded 21 codes and four themes described to promote trust: (1) athletic trainers’ attributes, (2) interactions between athletic trainers and athletes, (3) the quality of this relationship and (4) the overall experience. Conclusion: A working definition of trust in the athletic training setting was developed via this work; furthermore, athletic trainers and patients agreed that trust is a complex construct but is vital to developing a productive therapeutic relationship.

scholarly journals Towards A Typology Of Gossip In The Workplace

2005 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
C. M. De Gouda ◽  
L. J. Van Vuuren ◽  
A. Crafford
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Corporate Governance ◽  
Research Study ◽  
Workplace Relationships ◽  
Card Sorting ◽  
Theory Analysis ◽  
Qualitative Research Study ◽  
Individual Interviews ◽  
Working Definition ◽  
Definition Of

In today’s communication-driven world, informal communication can at some point be construed as malicious gossip. Literature shows that certain areas of gossip are insufficiently studied, such as how gossip is defined in the workplace, when communication is construed as gossip, and what characteristics highlight the parameters between healthy communication and gossip. This research is of value because workplace gossip could have direct implications on trust in workplace relationships, might undermine principles espoused by corporate governance and could therefore lead to higher staff absenteeism and turnover. A qualitative research study was undertaken to explore individual constructions surrounding this phenomenon. Data was collected from structured individual interviews and the technique of card sorting, and a grounded theory analysis resulted in the formulation of a working definition of the concept, the identification of its parameters as well as the development of a typology of gossip in the workplace. The implications of the findings are discussed.

Physecology: A Conceptual Framework to Describe Data Physicalizations in their Real-World Context

2022 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Kim Sauvé ◽  
Miriam Sturdee ◽  
Steven Houben
Keyword(s):  
Material Properties ◽  
Complex Interaction ◽  
Output Coupling ◽  
Type Ii ◽  
Information Communication ◽  
Interaction Mechanisms ◽  
Working Definition ◽  
Conceptual Clarity ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Future Work

The standard definition for “physicalizations” is “a physical artifact whose geometry or material properties encode data”  [ 47 ]. While this working definition provides the fundamental groundwork for conceptualizing physicalization, in practice many physicalization systems go beyond the scope of this definition as they consist of distributed physical and digital elements that involve complex interaction mechanisms. In this article, we examine how “physicalization” is part of a broader ecology—the “physecology”—with properties that go beyond the scope of the working definition. Through analyzing 60 representative physicalization papers, we derived six design dimensions of a physecology: (i) represented data type, (ii) way of information communication, (iii) interaction mechanisms, (iv) spatial input–output coupling, (v) physical setup, and (vi) audiences involved. Our contribution is the extension of the definition of physicalization to the broader concept of “physecology,” to provide conceptual clarity on the design of physicalizations for future work.

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