Differences in Male and Female Texas Community College First-time-in-College Part-Time Students Over Time: A Multiyear, Statewide Analysis

In this multiyear, statewide investigation, the extent to which enrollment rates of male and female, part-time, first-time-in-college students enrolled in Texas community colleges differed from the 2003-2004 academic year to the 2018-2019 academic year was determined. From the 2003-2004 academic year to the 2011-2012 academic year, statistically significant differences were identified in the enrollment rates of both male and female, part-time, first-time-in-college students. Cohen’s d effect sizes, calculated for both male and female, part-time students, were small (0.22). Enrollment rates for male and female, part-time, first-time-in-college students from the 2011-2012 academic year to the 2018-2019 academic year and from the 2003-2004 academic year to the 2018-2019 academic year were similar. Enrollment rates for male and female, part-time, first-time-in-college students enrolled in Texas community colleges remained consistently around 45% and 55%, respectively, during the 16 academic year span. Recommendations for future research as well as implications for policy were discussed.

EFL Learners’ Comprehension of Scalar Emotion Verbs

This study investigated EFL learners’ comprehension of scalar properties of three types of emotion verbs, namely, fear type, liking and disliking emotion verbs and compare their performance with instructors and native speakers of English. The participants were 38 non-native pre-service teachers from ELT department at a state university in Turkey, 11 ELT instructors at different universities and 10 native speakers from the USA and the UK. The data were collected through a scale construction task according to participants’ judgements on scalar emotion verbs in terms of their relative order on a linear scale. The results revealed that in terms of constructing consistent scales with with previously determined scales in literatutre, pre-service teachers performed poorly for fear-type and disliking emotion verbs, they were partly successful in constructing consistent scales for liking verbs. It was also found that similarly instructors performed poorly in constructing scales for fear-type and disliking verbs, but they were better than pre-service teachers. They were also successful in constructing scales for liking verbs. Native speakers were successful in fear-type and liking verbs; however, like non-native participants, they performed poorly in constructing consistent scales for disliking verbs. This means that there may be cross-cultural differences among participants’ judgement of emotion verbs on a linear scale in terms of their intensity. This study may provide valuable information for the studies on lexical resources (e.g., VerbNet, WordNet etc.) Previous studies (e.g. Fellbaum & Mathieu,2014; Sheinman, & Tokunaga, 2009) show a way to represent the scalar properties of emotion verbs in WordNet, and other possible extensions to additional verb families can cause a more subtle semantic analysis of emotion verbs in lexical databases with potential benefits for automatic inferencing, language pedagogy and translation. This study may contribute to semantic analysis of emotion verbs in lexical databases. It may also provide some implications for students, language teachers, and policy makers in terms of vocabulary learning and teaching.

Planning and Validating a Curriculum of Global Citizenship Education in Elementary Schools of Iran's Educational System

The purpose of this study was to explore and delineate the curriculum of global citizenship education in elementary schools of Iran's educational system and to develop an exploratory model. In this exploratory research, based on the grounded theory, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 34 active members in the field of global citizenship. The themes and sub-themes of the curriculum of global citizenship education and their associations were explored within three steps of open, axial, and selective coding. To generalize the results of the qualitative phase and to validate the resulting model, a questionnaire was designed and completed by 387 elementary school teachers in Tehran, Iran. The analysis process in the qualitative phase included twelve themes of attention to necessity, goals, content, teacher’s role, teaching-learning methods, evaluation, time, location, materials and resources, organizational factors, implicit learning, and program outcomes. In the quantitative phase, the hypotheses derived from the qualitative analysis were confirmed. Finally, according to the findings and the results, some guidelines are provided for implementing the program.

Refugee Education Coordinators in the Greek Educational System: their role as mediators in refugee camps

In Greece, the program for the integration of school-aged refugee children in public education has been implemented since 2016. An innovation established by the Greek Ministry of Education to facilitate refugee children’s access to public school was the institution of the Refugee Education Coordinator (REC). The research explores the role of RECs regarding involvement of refugee parents. Therefore, semi-structured interviews were conducted with fourteen RECs positioned in refugee camps in order to acquire the qualitative data required to answer the research questions. The research participants considered that RECs had a determining role in raising refugee parents’ awareness on the necessity of their children’s schooling, as well as connecting them with their children’s school.

Teacher Cognition in Grammar Teaching: A Case Study in a Turkish EFL Context

This Language Teacher Cognition (LTC) study primarily explores language teachers’ beliefs and practices about a common Instructed Second Language Acquisition (ISLA) construct: Grammar Teaching (GT). This study also aims to investigate to what extent teacher beliefs and practices compromise with each other and cognitive and contextual factors behind their cognition. The data were collected through interviews, observations, and stimulated recall with the teachers. The findings after a cross-case analysis revealed that coursebook-based beliefs, experience-based beliefs, lack of theoretical knowledge and inclination for communicative activities influence what teachers believe about GT. There are both congruent and incongruent relationships between beliefs and practices varying from one teacher to another due to the effect of experiential knowledge, unconscious decisions, and some contextual factors. The findings can contribute to the integration of LTC into ISLA studies, and to LTC framework by exploring the effects of many variables on teachers’ decision making processes. Key words: Language Teacher Cognition (LTC), Grammar Teaching (GT), teacher beliefs, teacher practices

ATTITUDE TOWARDS RESEARCH AMONG MASTERS STUDENTS IN MAKERERE UNIVERSITY BUSINESS SCHOOL (MUBS), UGANDA

This study set out to examine the Masters students’ attitudes towards research component of their programme. It was conducted in Makerere University Business School (MUBS) in Uganda. A phenomenological qualitative study approach was employed. The respondents were able to narrate their stories on their own experience when undertaking research. The selection of the 17 respondents who participated in this study was done using purposive technique. To be selected as a respondent in this study, one had to be a student of MUBS pursuing an MBA programme and had to have completed the coursework component of their work but had delayed in the programme due to failure to complete their research component in time. The student had to still being engaged in research without having sought a “dead period”, an official period of withdrawal before resumption, or having internally decided to give the course a break. The findings revealed that the students’ attitude towards research was mainly influenced by supervision, the students’ own abilities and the environment they suddenly found themselves in. Given the findings, it is recommended that the Business school be flexible in terms of selection of supervisors and also come up with adequate orientation programme on research.

The Study of Preschool Teachers’ and Principals’ Opinions on Turkish Education System

The present study conducted with preschool teachers and principals working in preschool educational institutions in Alanya, a district of the province Antalya. In the study group, there were 89 female participants that were determined via easy sampling method. Qualitative research method and content analysis technique were used to analyze the data. When the findings are examined in line with the sub-goals, it was seen that the ideas were gathered under four categories: “General education system”, “teacher's rights”, “family” and “other”. The most important problems expressed in this direction were the quality of the education system, continuously changing programs and applications, inequality of opportunities, test-focused system, crowded classes, lack of funds supporting education, teaching in the form of double-schedule education. It is recommended that continuity of this study should be ensured via quantitative and mixed methods, and all stakeholders’ opinions should be taken into consideration.

Strategies to Improve English Vocabulary and Spelling in the Classroom For ELL, ESL, EO and LD Students

Vocabulary and spelling are two of the most important skills to achieve success in an academic setting. This review of 15 articles highlights classroom interventions that successfully enhanced vocabulary and spelling skills among ESL, English Only, English language learners (ELL), and learning disabled (LD) students. The strategies that enhanced vocabulary skills were reading strategies, story book reading strategies, and memorization strategies. The strategies that enhanced spelling skills were Cover, Copy, Compare (CCC) and writing strategies. Results showed that the strategy of storybook reading enhanced the vocabulary skills among both English Only and ESL students. Writing strategies resulted in spelling skill improvement for students with LD. Future research should focus on the CCC strategy application to improve their vocabulary skills for ESL students who also have LD.

Resilience analysis in the teen stage: an approach to the situation of schools in the Basque Country

The incessant social, cultural and economic changes in which society is immersed, does require developing coping skills towards change that allow teenagers to successfully develop as active subjects of society. Within this framework, the school environment is considered an ideal scenario to work resilience in the adolescent stage. Based on these considerations, the objective of this research is the approach to the reality of adolescents and their resilience. For this reason, a descriptive analysis is carried out with 193 teenagers from various schools in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country (CAPV). The results show significant differences in resilient capacities related to the age and sex of the participating adolescents.

Responsive Mobile Learning (M-Learning) Application Design And Architecture In Fog Computing

Today, digital transformation is changing the educational and social life rapidly. In contrast, organizations and educational institutions, developers, and end users do not benefit from cloud-based mobile technologies to the desired level. Mobile systems are used extensively for educational purposes in the Internet of Things (IoT) environment, and the number of online students is increasing. The real problem is how user-friendly, aesthetic mobile learning courses can be effectively delivered on different mobile devices in the desired performance and manner. The responsive design developed with fog computing should be able to provide the ability to design and use mobile learning lessons with sufficient performance, automatically adapted to any browser or device. This should ensure that every person of the target audience can benefit from the lessons without worrying about screen size, resolution, speed and even security. In this study, the fog informatics teaching strategies of mobile learning sensitive teaching design are discussed. The fog computing architecture that can be used with responsive mobile learning, utilizing mobile computing to provide seamless and low latency mobile devices, is described. Finally, a fog-based, responsive designed mobile learning education architecture has been compiled with a better understanding of the lessons and a suitable structure for the use of mobile devices in education.