Teacher peer excellence groups (TPEGs)

2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (5) ◽  
pp. 526-551 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiu Cravens ◽  
Timothy A. Drake ◽  
Ellen Goldring ◽  
Patrick Schuermann
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Teacher Collaboration ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Professional Community ◽  
Content Type ◽  
School Conditions ◽  
Principal Instructional Leadership ◽  
Guidance Teachers ◽  
Instructional Collaboration

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the viability of implementing a protocol-guided model designed to provide structure and focus for teacher collaboration from Shanghai in today’s US public schools. The authors examine whether the new model, Teacher Peer Excellence Group (TPEG), fosters the desired key features of productive communities of practice where teachers can jointly construct, transform, preserve, and continuously deepen the meaning of effective teaching. The authors also explore the extent to which existing school conditions – principal instructional leadership, trust, teacher efficacy, and teachers’ sense of school-wide professional community – enable or moderate the desired outcomes. Design/methodology/approach Data for this paper are drawn from a series of surveys administered to teachers from 24 pilot schools in six school districts over two school years. Descriptive and multilevel modeling analyses are conducted. Findings The findings provide encouraging evidence that, given sufficient support and guidance, teachers report higher levels of engagement in deprivatized practice and instructional collaboration. These findings also hold after controlling for key enabling conditions and school characteristics. Social implications The TPEG approach challenges school leaders to take on the responsibilities of helping teachers make their practice public, sharable, and better – three critical objectives in the shift to develop the profession of teaching. Originality/value The indication of TPEG model’s positive impact on strengthening the features of communities of practice in selected public schools provides the impetus for further efforts in understanding the transformational changes needed and challenges ahead at the classroom, school, and district levels.

scholarly journals Assessing the impacts of school entrepreneurial initiatives

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Pepin ◽  
Etienne St-Jean
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Personal Control ◽  
School Level ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Entrepreneurial Attitudes ◽  
Enterprise Education ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Experimental Group

Purpose Many countries around the world have now introduced entrepreneurship into their curricula and educational practices, starting at the elementary school level. However, recent studies show the relative (un)effectiveness of K-12 enterprise education on diverse learning outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to report on a research aimed at assessing the impacts of enterprise education on students’ entrepreneurial attitudes. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted a quasi-experiment between May and June 2017 to assess the entrepreneurial potential of students at Elementary Cycle 3 (10–12 years) in Quebec, Canada. Relying on attitude theory, the authors used Athayde’s Attitudes toward Enterprise for Young People test, which assesses students’ entrepreneurial potential through four entrepreneurial attitudes (leadership, creativity, achievement and personal control). The experimental group consisted of 11 classes which had conducted an entrepreneurial project during the 2016–2017 school year (n = 208 students), while the 7 classes of the control group had not (n=151 students). Findings At first glance, data showed no difference between the two groups. Further investigation showed that private and Freinet (public) schools’ students, both from the control group, show significantly higher leadership scores than those of the experimental group. In-depth analyses also show that increasing the number of entrepreneurial projects significantly impacted three of the four attitudes assessed, although negligibly. Research limitations/implications Taken together, those results question the relevance of single entrepreneurial activities in developing students’ entrepreneurial attitudes. They also suggest the positive impact of a progressive, constructivist pedagogy in developing such entrepreneurial attitudes. Moreover, the paper raises several factors likely to impact students’ entrepreneurial attitudes for further research. Originality/value K-12 enterprise education remains an understudied context, largely crossed by unproven statements. This research contributes to understand and give direction to educational initiatives targeting the development of young students’ entrepreneurial attitudes.

scholarly journals Women composers’ use of online communities of practice to build and support their careers

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 215-230
Author(s):  
Sophie Hennekam ◽  
Sally Macarthur ◽  
Dawn Bennett ◽  
Cat Hope ◽  
Talisha Goh
Keyword(s):  
Career Development ◽  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Online Communities ◽  
Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Women Composers ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Hierarchical Structures ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Online Communities Of Practice

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine women composers’ use of online communities of practice (CoP) to negotiate the traditionally masculine space of music composition while operating outside its hierarchical structures. Design/methodology/approach The authors employed a mixed methods approach consisting of an online survey (n=225) followed by 27 semi-structured in-depth interviews with female composers to explore the concept and use of CoP. Content analysis was used to analyze the survey responses and interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to interpret respondents’ lived experiences as relayed in the interviews. Findings The findings reveal that the online environment can be a supportive and safe space for female composers to connect with others and find support, feedback and mentorship, increase their visibility and develop career agency through learning and knowledge acquisition. CoP emerged as an alternative approach to career development for practicing female music workers and as a tool which could circumvent some of the enduring gendered challenges. Originality/value The findings suggest that online CoP can have a positive impact on the career development and sustainability of women in male-dominated sectors such as composition.

School conditions of different forms of teacher collaboration and their effects on instructional development in schools facing challenging circumstances

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanja Webs ◽  
Heinz Günter Holtappels
Keyword(s):  
School Improvement ◽  
Instructional Development ◽  
Teacher Collaboration ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
School Quality ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Content Type ◽  
School Conditions ◽  
Teachers Professional Development

Purpose Teacher collaboration is regarded as a central feature of school quality that promotes students’ learning processes, teachers’ professional development, and school improvement. Although the phenomenon is complex, studies often use global constructs and measures. To meet the research demands, the purpose of this paper is to take a differentiated perspective on teacher collaboration, its particular school conditions and effects on instructional development. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected through a survey of 1,105 teachers at 36 secondary schools in North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany). Using multivariate analysis of variance and structural equation modeling, the occurrence of three different forms of teacher collaboration and their relations to activities of instructional development, structural and cultural working conditions, represented by appropriate scales and indexes, are analyzed. Findings The results show that teachers use less resource-intensive forms of collaboration more often and practice more demanding forms of collaboration less frequently. More demanding forms of collaboration not only depend on the working climate but also on individual self-efficacy, institutionalized teams, collaborative and instructional principal leadership and in turn promote the development of interdisciplinary curricula and concepts for individual support. Originality/value This study provides evidence for the importance of distinguishing different forms of teacher collaboration. Furthermore, by relating different collaborative activities of teachers to certain school conditions and instructional development, this study makes a contribution to research by emphasizing the relativity of teacher collaboration regarding its desired outcomes as well as its necessary requirements.

Personalized cloud service review analysis based on modularized ontology

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (5) ◽  
pp. 953-975
Author(s):  
Emna Ben-Abdallah ◽  
Khouloud Boukadi ◽  
Mohamed Hammami ◽  
Mohamed Hedi Karray
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Base ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Cloud Service ◽  
Service Evaluation ◽  
End Users ◽  
Cloud Services ◽  
Limited Information ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Ontology Language ◽  
Modular Ontology

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyze cloud reviews according to the end-user context and requirements.Design/methodology/approachpropose a comprehensive knowledge base composed of interconnected Web Ontology Language, namely, modular ontology for cloud service opinion analysis (SOPA). The SOPA knowledge base will be the basis of context-aware cloud service analysis using consumers' reviews. Moreover, the authors provide a framework to evaluate cloud services based on consumers' reviews opinions.FindingsThe findings show that there is a positive impact of personalizing the cloud service analysis by considering the reviewers' contexts in the performance of the framework. The authors also proved that the SOPA-based framework outperforms the available cloud review sites in term of precision, recall and F-measure.Research limitations/implicationsLimited information has been provided in the semantic web literature about the relationships between the different domains and the details on how that can be used to evaluate cloud service through consumer reviews and latent opinions. Furthermore, existing approaches are lacking lightweight and modular mechanisms which can be utilized to effectively exploit information existing in social media.Practical implicationsThe SOPA-based framework facilitates the opinion based service evaluation through a large number of consumer's reviews and assists the end-users in analyzing services as per their requirements and their own context.Originality/valueThe SOPA ontology is capable of representing the content of a product/service as well as its related opinions, which are extracted from the customer's reviews written in a specific context. Furthermore, the SOPA-based framework facilitates the opinion based service evaluation through a large number of consumer's reviews and assists the end-users in analyzing services as per their requirements and their own context.

Farm wages and public works

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kanika Mahajan
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
Wage Rate ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Wage Growth ◽  
State Level ◽  
Random Allocation ◽  
Farm Sector ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Impact

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) on farm sector wage rate. This identification strategy rests on the assumption that all districts across India would have had similar wage trends in the absence of the program. The author argues that this assumption may not be true due to non-random allocation of districts to the program’s three phases across states and different economic growth paths of the states post the implementation of NREGS. Design/methodology/approach – To control for overall macroeconomic trends, the author allows for state-level time fixed effects to capture the differences in growth trajectories across districts due to changing economic landscape in the parent-state over time. The author also estimates the expected farm sector wage growth due to the increased public work employment provision using a theoretical model. Findings – The results, contrary to the existing studies, do not find support for a significantly positive impact of NREGS treatment on private cultivation wage rate. The theoretical model also shows that an increase in public employment work days explains very little of the total growth in cultivation wage post 2004. Originality/value – This paper looks specifically at farm sector wage growth and the possible impact of NREGS on it, accounting for state specific factors in shaping farm wages. Theoretical estimates are presented to overcome econometric limitations.

scholarly journals Addressing migrants’ well-being during COVID-19: An analysis of Chinese communities’ heritage language schools in Germany

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zi Wang
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Information Access ◽  
Well Being ◽  
School Closure ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Educational Programmes

Abstract The coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing lockdown affected social life in every regard. In critical times, the well-being of vulnerable groups is often at stake. Migrants represent a case in point because language barriers and the lack of social networks impede their seeking help from public institutions and information access. In migration policy and research, current attention overwhelmingly focusses on COVID-19’s impact on travel restrictions and healthcare. This article contributes a new perspective by demonstrating how migrants’ well-being needs (understood as emotions and sense of achievement) in education during the COVID-19-induced school closure were addressed by community educational organisations. Focussing on the Chinese community in Germany, data were collected in Chinese heritage language (CHL) schools from three urban areas. This article argues that CHL schools’ reaction to public schools’ closure had a positive impact on their members’ well-being. Such organisations achieved this by expanding their educational programmes during and after the lockdown. These measures ensured continuity in migrant children’s education beyond the realm of heritage language instruction, while enabling migrant parents to seek employment as the economy reopened. Overall, the results of this study underscore the potential of community organisations’ educational programmes in maintaining migrants’ well-being, especially in trying times.

Does corporate governance affect the performance of Islamic banks? New insight into Islamic countries

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 1073-1090 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ejaz Aslam ◽  
Razali Haron
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Governance ◽  
Audit Committee ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Islamic Banks ◽  
Governance Mechanism ◽  
Method Of Moment ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Return On Equity ◽  
Islamic Countries ◽  
And Performance

Purpose Corporate governance plays a significant role to overcome agency issues and develop the culture of transparency and openness. In this context, this paper aims to examine how corporate governance mechanisms affect the performance of Islamic banks (IBs). Design/methodology/approach Stepwise, two-step system generalize method of moment estimation technique is used in the analysis in which control variables are added into the model sequentially. This study used data on 129 IBs from 29 Islamic countries (Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia) during the period of 2008 to 2017. Findings The findings suggest that the audit committee (AUDC) and Shariah board (SB) have positive impact on the performance of IBs (return on assets and return on equity). However, board size and risk management committee have negative and significant effect on the performance of IBs. CEO duality and non-executive directors have mixed relationship with the performance of IBs. These results support the argument that IBs need to improve their financial performance through appropriate governance mechanism. Research limitations/implications The findings of the study added a new dimension to the governance research that could be a valuable source of knowledge for policymakers and regulators to improve the existing governance mechanism for better performance of IBs. Originality/value The study fills the gap in the literature by addressing the issue of corporate governance on performance of IBs across countries. Agency theory is discussed to explain the relationship between corporate governance mechanism and performance.

Promoting strategic performance through strategic orientation and strategic renewal

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 376-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hassan Ahmed Shah ◽  
Muhammad Yasir ◽  
Abdul Majid ◽  
Muhammad Yasir ◽  
Asad Javed
Keyword(s):  
Positive Impact ◽  
Moderated Mediation ◽  
Strategic Orientation ◽  
Mediation Model ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Strategic Performance ◽  
Strategic Renewal ◽  
Mediating Role ◽  
Moderated Mediation Model

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the ways in which strategic orientation (SO) and strategic renewal (SR) could create the possibility for improving strategic performance (SP). The indirect effect of SO was also tested in this study. Furthermore, by using the moderated mediation model, the authors also investigated the moderating role of organizational ambidexterity (OA). Design/methodology/approach The results of this cross-sectional study are based on a survey conducted on 1,430 owner/managers of SMEs. To analyze the relationship among variables, this study used descriptive, correlation and hierarchical multiple regression approach. Findings Results revealed that SO positively affects SR and SP in SMEs. Furthermore, the mediating role of SR between the relationships of SO and SP was also confirmed. Moreover, OA strengthens the connection between SO, SR and SP. Practical implications The current study provides new insights for strategic planning and management by focusing on SO along with its different dimensions. Therefore, it provides new guidelines and a roadmap that would be helpful in achieving the objectives of SP. Originality/value The study makes significant contributions to the extant literature by adding new knowledge about the positive impact of SO on SP. Moreover, with the analysis of mediating role of SR in this relationship, the study has made significant addition to the existing literature on SP. Furthermore, moderated mediation model adds value to the existing body of knowledge.

Values and career behaviours of entrepreneurs and employees

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (7) ◽  
pp. 1607-1625
Author(s):  
Anita Gaile ◽  
Ilona Baumane-Vitolina ◽  
Erika Sumilo ◽  
Daina Skiltere ◽  
Ricardo Martin Flores
Keyword(s):  
Career Success ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Career Adaptability ◽  
Individual Values ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Entrepreneurial Behaviour ◽  
Culture Development ◽  
Individual Value

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to determine the differences in the values and behaviours of employees and entrepreneurs and to develop guidelines for employers to foster entrepreneurial thinking in their organisations. Design/methodology/approach To determine individual behaviours, the authors used the career adaptability scale developed by Savickas and Porfelli (2012), complemented with the statements regarding relationships in the workplace and reward, designed by Gattiker and Larwood (1986). The individual values were evaluated by Schwartz’s individual value framework. The career success of individuals was defined by income level and job satisfaction. Data from a sample of 473 respondents were analysed using structural equation modelling. Findings This paper reveals that there are differences in the behaviours and the values of employees and entrepreneurs. Employees are more concerned with relationships at the workplace, rewards and confidence, whereas entrepreneurs focus solely on relationships. Self-direction value has a direct positive impact. Universalism, conformism, achievement, stimulation and safety have indirect positive effects on career success for employees. There is no specific individual value driving career success for entrepreneurs. Originality/value This paper follows the recent trends in organisational culture development whereby organisations seek to incorporate the entrepreneurial mindset at all levels of the organisation. Until now, there has been scarce empirical evidence on the differences between entrepreneurial and employee values. This research provides evidence that the value gap between these two distinct groups is considerable enough to question the ability of the average employee to adopt the entrepreneurial behaviour required by modern organisations.

Customer satisfaction with sommelier services of upscale Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 532-554 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tommy Lau ◽  
Man Lai Cheung ◽  
Guilherme D. Pires ◽  
Carol Chan
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Customer Satisfaction ◽  
Service Quality ◽  
Customer Loyalty ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Partial Least Square ◽  
Least Square ◽  
Survey Method ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Impact

Purpose The abolishment of the wine tax in Hong Kong has led to increased wine consumption and increased demand for wine-related professionals, such as sommeliers. Yet the importance of sommeliers’ value-adding performance in the context of upscale Chinese restaurants has not been examined. To address this gap, the SERVQUAL framework is adopted to examine the influence of sommeliers’ service quality (SQ) on customer satisfaction (CS) and loyalty in the context of upscale Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong. Design/methodology/approach The survey method is used to collect data from 302 units of the population of interest, partial least square-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) is used to test the links between constructs. Findings Four of the seven dimensions of sommeliers’ service quality, namely, empathy, tangibles, credibility and assurance, have a significant positive impact on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, whereas the impact of perceived value and responsiveness on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty is positive but only marginally significant. Reliability has a weak and non-significant impact on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Research limitations/implications Examining a small number of upscale Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong limits generalisation of the findings to other contexts. Replication of the research in different contexts will enhance generalizability. In terms of implications, the discussion highlights the importance of sommeliers’ service performance on customers’ SQ perceptions SQ, CS and loyalty, all of which are important variables for restaurateurs. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study of the influence of the quality of sommelier’s SQ on CS and loyalty in upscale Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong. Given the lack of attention to this service role in the literature, the study contributes theory from which further understanding can develop.

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