Accountability and (In)Congruence in a No-Excuses School College-Going Culture

This study explores how the college-going culture at a no-excuses charter school with high college enrollment rates shaped students’ worldviews and trajectories. Drawing on 7 months of ethnographic fieldwork, I found that the school boosted college enrollment through student compliance to the college accountability policies rather than through the transmission of dominant cultural resources. Alignment between a student’s worldview and the school’s approach mediated their ability to draw on their full range of resources to participate in the college choice process and forge postsecondary trajectories they believed in. These findings foreshadow the potential impacts of “College for All” accountability structures and underscore the importance of cultural congruence in college-going cultures.

Enhancing Textile Industry’s Employee Satisfaction through Market Sensing Capability and Internal Marketing Practice

Recognize the importance of employee satisfaction in any organization, this study is piloted to forestall the effect of Internal Marketing Practice and Market Sensing capability on employees’ satisfaction in the context of the Indonesian textile industry as one of the fast-growing industry criteria in Asian markets. The drive behind this study is to examine the relationship between Internal marketing practice, Market Sensing Capability, and Employee Satisfaction. Furthermore, this study plans to see that how Cultural congruence moderates the relationship between Employee Satisfaction through Internal Marketing Practice along with Market Sensing Capability by advancing a research model. According to this study’s requirement, the quantitative methodology is chosen, with purposive method of 323 employees was selected and analyzed. By using a web-based survey approach was selected for data, entailing of structured questionnaire. A structural equation model was operated for results on AMOS that supported the hypothetical relationship between all hypotheses. This study will guide the managers of textile firms to recognize that how important is employee satisfaction and how they can improve their practices to strengthen employee satisfaction. This study also contributes in cultural Congruence and market sensing capability literature. It is not free from limitations specifically in terms of sample size and variables that can be addressed in the future.

Relationship of Internet-Dependent Behavior, Intellectual Development and Cultural Congruence in Primary School Children

The main purpose of our study was to examine the connection between the Internet addiction in junior school children and their intellectual development and cultural congruence. The study involved 92 schoolchildren from Moscow aged from 9 to 10 years. Our hypothesis was that intellectual abilities of schoolchildren would be related to their cultural congruence, as well as to their Internet dependent behavior. The following methods were used to test the hypothesis: Raven Progressive Matrices, the children's version of Personality Factor Questionnaire by R. Cattell, Chen Internet Addiction Scale, Methodology of determining the cultural congruence of a junior school child by Bayanova and co-authors. The results demonstrated that schoolchildren with good intellectual abilities are highly likely to demonstrate high rates of cultural congruence. At the same time, the study found no statistically significant differences in intellectual development between children with propensity to Internet addiction and children with any Internet addiction. At the same time, it identified significant features in behavior of children prone to online addiction. The behavior of such children is often manifested in demonstrating violations of the regulatory situation at school, as well as in displaying non-congruent behavior; in particular, such children are more likely to tell lies, do not listen to teachers, are late for classes, skip classes, and fight. Besides, such students are characterized by more pronounced impulsiveness and motor retardation, aggressive assertion of their position, self-confidence, and leadership qualities. The school environment is characterized by normative rules and procedures, so children are not always able to realize their motives and desires openly. Thus, we can conclude that more impulsive and motorized children, who are also characterized by displaying aggressive behaviors, will be more likely to be characterized by a tendency to Internet dependent behaviors, because it allows them to express their desires and intentions, which often cannot be realized in a strictly regulated school environment. In this way, our research has demonstrated that high intellectual abilities of junior school children are significantly related to their cultural congruence. In addition, their propensity for Internet addiction can be a factor contributing to non-congruent behavior among children aged 9–10 years.

Principles of teaching foreign language intercultural interaction of students based on the case method

The case method is one of the methods of problem learning, which consists in solving a problem situation or case by students. The study and discussion of the case, as well as the preparation and presentation of the solution to the problem, takes place in a foreign language. Of particular relevance is the solution by students of cases containing cultural conflicts. From this perspective, the use of cases in foreign language classes will contribute to the development of students’ skills in foreign language intercultural interaction. The effectiveness of the appropriate methods for teaching foreign language intercultural interaction of students based on the case method is directly dependent on the chosen general didactic and methodic approaches to teaching, which, in turn, are implemented through the principles. The methodological basis of teaching in this study is the competence-based, systemic, personality-activity, socio-cultural, intercultural, multicultural and communicative-ethnographic approaches. These approaches are implemented in practice through the principles on the basis of which the selection of subject-thematic content of education and the development of a system of problematic cultural tasks are carried out. The following teaching principles are described in detail: the principle of consciousness and activity, the principle of accessibility and feasibility, the principle of consistency, the principle of individualization of training, the principle of functionality, the principle of speech orientation of teaching, the principle of dialogue of cultures, the principle of didactic cultural congruence, the principle of cultural variability, the principle of cultural reflection, the principle of dominance of problematic cultural as-signments.

Strategies Used By Community Health Workers to Influence Adoption of Maternal Nutrition Behaviors in Rural Bangladesh: A Focused Ethnographic Study

Objectives Efforts to integrate nutrition into antenatal health promotion in low income countries have led to increased involvement of community health workers (CHWs) in counseling on maternal nutrition. Little is known about how CHWs “package” messages in resource-poor communities to increase adoption of recommended maternal nutrition behaviors. We developed focused ethnographic techniques to explore this. Methods We interviewed 35 randomly selected CHWs providing monthly counseling to pregnant women and their families in 7 ‘Alive & Thrive’ intervention sites in Bangladesh. Two sorting exercises explored CHW strategies for promoting and perceptions of adoption of messages on micronutrient supplements, maternal dietary adequacy, and rest during pregnancy. In-depth probing on messages identified as “difficult” to deliver or adopt revealed how CHWs addressed barriers. Analysis of quantitative sorting data complemented thematic coding of qualitative textual data using grounded theory. Results CHW communication strategies involved 3 themes: feasibility (attitudes, norms, agency, poverty), audience (influence, motivators, support), and linguistic choice (emotional appeals, metaphors, logic, sellable but inaccurate arguments). CHWs viewed micronutrient messages as least difficult to adopt, requiring minimal “packaging”. Dietary messages were moderately difficult to adopt, prompting CHWs to leverage cultural congruence to target family members with different strategies. For example, messaging on diet diversity targeted husbands—the primary food-buyers—with logical arguments highlighting costs of inaction. When mothers-in-law held beliefs restricting gestational food intake, CHWs used metaphors (‘healthy tree, healthy fruit’) or faith-based appeals. Some CHWs used inaccurate messages (‘mother rests, baby rests’) to promote rest during pregnancy because it was seen as the least feasible behavior to adopt. Conclusions Where behavior change is viewed as feasible, CHWs use culturally resonant strategies to enhance adoption of maternal nutrition behaviors. Cultural congruence, or shared beliefs, language and cultural identity, is key to CHW effectiveness, but unhelpful for contextually infeasible behaviors. BCC programs co-designed with CHWs could improve messaging and effectiveness. Funding Sources Cornell AWARE Travel Grant.

Internal marketing, employee satisfaction and cultural congruence of Gulf airlines

Purpose Little empirical research has examined the role of culture on the internal marketing-employee satisfaction (ES) relationship, and even fewer studies focus on this subject in the airline sector. This paper aims to assess whether culture moderates the contribution of internal marketing to the satisfaction of employees from Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) airlines. Design/methodology/approach The investigation is conducted via a structured questionnaire with 310 cabin crew members who work at three GCC airlines. Multi-group analysis was used within SmartPLS 3.0 to measure whether the impact of internal marketing on ES is moderated by cultural congruence. Findings The results reveal the practice of internal marketing contributes to ES in GCC airlines, while cultural congruence moderates the direct relationship between internal marketing and the satisfaction of airlines’ employees. The results indicate that airlines need to satisfy the cultural needs of employees to increase their satisfaction for successful internal marketing practice. Originality/value This study contributes towards assessing the moderation effects of cultural congruence on internal marketing practice in the airline sector. It contributes to the current literature on aviation research, as well as specific managerial implications for the airlines and managers to achieve higher competitiveness.