Adaptation to customer needs is a key component of competitiveness in any service industry. In online HE (higher education), which is increasingly worldwide, this adaptation must include consideration of learning styles. Most research shows that learning style has little impact on learning outcomes in online education. Nevertheless, students with…

In the field of English language learning, research proves that culturally relevant reading materials improve students' language acquisition, learning motivation, self-esteem, and identity formation. Since English is the language of instruction in many distant countries, such as Swaziland, even when English is not the native language of those…

Colleges and universities retain Native American and Latino college students at lower rates than other ethnic groups even when culturally based services, financial assistance, and support are provided. College teaching and conceptions of learning have yet to evolve on a widespread basis toward culturally diverse epistemologies and practice. This…

It is well documented that there is a disproportionate number of males pursuing engineering and technology careers when compared to their female counterparts (Milgram, 2011). Some recent articles have proposed methods to recruit more females into technology education (Milgram, 2011; Zywno, Gilbride, Hiscodes, Waalen, and Kennedy, 1999). However,…

This article focuses on multilingual primary-aged children and their families in a post-industrial city in England. Such pupils, sometimes identified in education policy as "underachieving," often have rich experiences of learning that are hidden from their mainstream teachers and unrecognised in national assessment regimes. The article…

The dominance of the human capital approach in vocational skills development has been increasingly questioned for being de-humanised and de-contextualised. Contrary to this trend, the discourse in health professional skills development has shown increasing enthusiasm for consolidating this existing paradigm. To debate whether professional skills…

The purpose of this article is to present a specific approach to the practice of action research "in complex organisations". Clearly, there are many approaches to the challenge of doing action research in organisations; approaches that are, and also must be, quite context dependent and specific. But my purpose is neither to give an…

This paper provides a critical response to the implementation of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, and Assessment (CEFR, Council of Europe, 2001) in Colombia by exposing a threefold approach discussing the following areas: Intercultural communication, Task-Based Learning, and some pertinent SLA research.…

The increasing academic value of studying abroad has encouraged significant increasing number of students participating in various kinds of student mobility programs. Since 1975, the number of mobile students has grown globally by almost 350%. (Chien, 2010) During July 2008 - July 2009, Thailand admitted over 19,052 students from 124 countries.…

Diasporic communities around the world regularly encounter challenges of preserving their identities and communication practices while adapting to their host social-cultural environment. Grounded in communication accommodation theory (CAT) and informed by recent research on deviance, this study investigated the relationships between Tibetan…

Purpose: The aim of the present study is to investigate why teachers participate in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) programmes, what their sociological approaches are, and where they focus their attention in order to achieve the objectives of their training in these new technologies. Design/methodology/approach: The sample group of…

Spoken Word, presented here, is an embodiment of critical theory, where discourse centered on the intersections of race, class, identity, lived experiences, and critical consciousness are named, analyzed, and interpreted in critical performance narratives. Merging the social sciences and the humanities--blending narrative, radical performance…

Using a Hong Kong-sourced sample of 261 participants, this study set out to validate the Volunteer Satisfaction Index (VSI) in the Chinese cultural context and to evaluate its psychometric properties. The VSI was originally developed by Galindo-Kuhn and Guzley (2001) to measure the outcomes of volunteer experiences. In this study, exploratory…

One of the abiding problems in the study of American Indians is that it is plagued by stereotyping and romanticism. In the history of ideas in Europe and the United States, negative as well as positive stereotyping has been called "primitivism." Much of the author's work has been an attempt to get beyond primitivism in order to get to…

In this article, I conceptualize ethnographic, qualitative, and social language research with marginalized and oppressed communities as "humanizing research". Humanizing research is a methodological stance, which requires that our inquiries involve dialogic consciousness-raising and the building of relationships of dignity and care for both…