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This article presents the life story of "Profile." The story is based on an ethnographic case study that aimed to understand the viewpoints of Profile's new writers and reviewers regarding the role of scientific journals in fostering communities in the knowledge society. To gather information, I relied on personal reflections from my experience as the creator and editor of the journal, along with documentary evidence (published issues, regularly collected statistics, editorial workflows, and communications with editorial teams and various bodies of Universidad Nacional de Colombia, which funds the publication). The story illustrates the inception, development, and primary challenges that need to be addressed to ensure its continuity.

The slowdown in economic development caused by traffic accidents in Spain, together with the disparity in the risk of death or injury due to traffic accidents in its provinces, makes it necessary to evaluate their road safety performance. Therefore, the objectives of the present research are, on the one hand, to find out the level of road safety efficiency of Spanish provinces in the period 2014-2018. On the other hand, it is also aimed to determine to what extent the annual efficiency change is originated by pure changes in efficiency or by technological changes. To achieve both objectives, the nonparametric technique of Data Envelopment Analysis and the Malmquist Index have been used based on the consideration of the Safety Performance Indicators (SPI) as the inputs of the process. The research findings show changes in the level of road safety efficiency in each of the years of the study period. Thus, it is possible to identify a geographical delimitation of the causes that generate changes in efficiency in recent years. A contraction in efficiency and technological progress is identified in part of the Spanish provinces in the north, northeast, and south of Spain.

Descriptive fit indices that do not require a formal statistical basis and do not specifically depend on a given estimation criterion are useful as auxiliary devices for judging the appropriateness of unrestricted or exploratory factor analytical (UFA) solutions, when the problem is to decide the most appropriate number of common factors. While overall indices of this type are well known in UFA applications, especially those intended for item analysis, difference indices are much more scarce. Recently, Raykov and collaborators proposed a family of effect-size-type descriptive difference indices that are promising for UFA applications. As a starting point, we considered the simplest measure of this family, which (a) can be viewed as absolute and (b) from which only tentative cutoffs and reference values have been provided so far. In this situation, this article has three aims. The first is to propose a relative version of Raykov's effect-size measure, intended to be used as a complement of the original measure, in which the increase in explained common variance is related to the overall prior estimated amount of common factor variance. The second is to establish reference values for both indices in item-analysis scenarios using simulation. And the third aim (instrumental) is to implement the proposal in both R language and a well-known non-commercial factor analysis program. The functioning and usefulness of the proposal is illustrated using an existing empirical dataset.

Although lexical diversity is often used as a measure of productive proficiency (e.g., as an aspect of lexical complexity) in SLA studies involving oral tasks, relatively little research has been conducted to support the reliability and/or validity of these indices in spoken contexts. Furthermore, SLA researchers commonly use indices of lexical diversity such as Root TTR (Guiraud's index) and D (vocd-D and HD-D) that have been preliminarily shown to lack reliability in spoken L2 contexts and/or have been consistently shown to lack reliability in written L2 contexts. In this study, we empirically evaluate lexical diversity indices with respect to two aspects of reliability (text-length independence and across-task stability) and one aspect of validity (relationship with proficiency scores). The results indicated that neither Root TTR nor D is reliable across different text lengths. However, support for the reliability and validity of optimized versions of MATTR and MTLD was found.

This article employs critical discourse analysis of the Spear's Schools Index of 'the best private schools in the world', the first such global ranking of schools, to understand representations of elite education in globalised societies. It argues that the Index is a powerful text that exemplifies a global gaze -- an imagined perspective from which education is judged independent of context. Six assumptions about education inherent in this global gaze are identified, through which schools and parents are subjectified while students are objectified, namely that: good education can be judged independent of context; education is a competition; the best schools are supranational; private and Western schools are best; good parents choose globally; and children are an investment. The article demonstrates the fertility of analysing online sources to examine elite schools [Howard, Adam, and Jane Kenway. 2015. "Canvassing Conversations: Obstinate Issues in Studies of Elites and Elite Education." "International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education" 28 (9): 1005--1032.].

In applied universities, innovation and entrepreneurship education (IEE) has entered a new era of comprehensive integration of professional education. However, as a novel educational activity, the evaluation of professional innovation integration still lacks reasonable appraisal standards. This article is based on the basic theory of the Kirkpatrick evaluation model, combined with the innovation and entrepreneurship practice of China's applied universities. This study initially constructs an index system for professional innovation integration in applied universities, estimates and ascertains the weights of different indicators using the Delphi and analytic hierarchy process approach, and thereafter, builds an index system for professional innovation integration in applied universities, which comprises of 4 primary indicators, namely: reaction layer, learning layer, behavior layer, and achievement layer, supported by 9 secondary indicators and 23 tertiary indicators.

As a corpus-assisted method for language pedagogy, DDL (data-driven learning) may have the potential to enhance language exposure and promote active learner engagement. Concordancing, or KWIC (Key Words in Context), has been the traditional method used in DDL to retrieve numerous language examples, while the method has limitations with overreliance on individual words to search. This paper aims to propose and promote concordancing alternatively based on grammar patterns, a multi-word concept in corpus linguistics. The conceptualised method is named as PIC (Patterns in Context), an extended form of KWIC. An empirical study was conducted to investigate whether the PIC method has any advantages over the traditional KWIC method, using two custom-built Android apps. The research involved 18 pre-university intermediate learners (and six pilot study participants), who used the apps in a self-directed way for two weeks. Then the assessment of the two apps and methods was conducted based on data from automatic logs and responses from questionnaires and interviews. The results suggest that, compared to KWIC, PIC could be slightly advantageous in efficiently helping learners find the target language use, while this approach seems not strong in user engagement and perceived effectiveness. The implications for DDL are discussed, and further investigation is also planned.

Purpose: Recent scholarship has explored higher education institutions' (HEIs) role in transitioning to a sustainable society, but empirically, questions remain regarding their impact on the sustainability of surrounding areas. This study aims to examine the correlation between HEIs' sustainability actions and local sustainability performance. Design/methodology/approach: This study uses a linear regression model and principal component analysis to examine the sustainability performance of 105 US metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) using the US cities sustainable development goal (SDG) index, which hosts 427 HEIs known for sustainability efforts. The weighted HEI sustainability performance score is calculated based on the QS sustainability universities ranking. Findings: The correlation between MSA and HEI sustainability performance exhibits a mix of positive and negative associations, with individual and interlinked SDGs serving as proxies. These correlations encompass a wide range of goals, from economic aspects of SDG 1, 2, 3, 7, 9, social aspects of SDG10 and 16, to socio-environmental aspects of SDG12. Research limitations/implications: Further exploration is needed to identify the causal mechanisms behind associations between SDG measures and HEI sustainability performance, whether influenced by the institution, the individual or both. Practical implications: This study suggests that HEIs are already associated with some aspects of community sustainability, but greater contributions to a broader array of sustainability measures are possible. Social implications: The correlation found between HEI sustainability actions and SDG10, 12 and 16 index performance in an MSA highlights a connection between HEIs and the attainment of societal goals. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to examine the correlation between HEI and MSA sustainability performance in the US through individual and interlinked SDG proxies. It provides novel empirical evidence that demonstrates an association between HEI and some aspects of community sustainability performance.

Various studies have been conducted on applying intelligent recognition technology, especially speech recognition technology to improve English learning ability, mostly listening and speaking. However, few studies have touched on how image-to-text recognition technology can be used for writing. The present research was conducted to fill this gap by exploring the optimization of a deep-learning-based image captioning algorithm to facilitate English writing, so as to enable learners to break the time and space limitations and learn English writing (including sentence patterns, spelling, vocabulary, and grammar) anytime and anywhere by taking pictures. Therefore, this paper focused on image captioning based on CNN(Convolutional Neural Networks) and LSTM (Long Short-Term Memory), using DenseNet201 or Vision Transformer trained on the ImageNet-1K image classification dataset as the image encoder and LSTM as the decoder. First, pre-training was performed on the Flickr8k dataset. After selecting the best-trained model as the pre-trained weight model for the COCO dataset, fine-tuning optimization was performed on the COCO dataset, and the attention mechanism was used to design the ablation experiment. The BLEU-4, CIDEr, METEOR, and ROUGE evaluation indexes of the optimized model on the test set were 0.3437,1.121,0.2750, and 0.5117, respectively. The study results showed that the convergence of the model was accelerated and had better performance. The model was used to automatically caption 12 images that had never been used during the training process. The descriptions generated by the optimized image captioning algorithm have lexical and syntactic accuracy, and matched what the images expressed, showing that this improved algorithm could be used as a learning tool to help English learners improve lexical and syntactic acquisition to promote writing through the generated descriptions of the pictures taken anytime and anywhere in real-life situations.

How to develop a teaching management system to improve the teaching efficiency of art courses has become an important challenge at present. This article takes university art teaching courses as the research object, uses dynamic L-M algorithm to optimize a large number of parameters, proposes an improved neural networks evaluation model, comprehensively analyzes the main influencing factors of art course teaching effectiveness, and establishes a teaching efficiency index evaluation system. The research results indicate that equating the number of hidden layer nodes to the number of samples can improve the performance of neural networks. The improved L-M algorithm was used to train the neural networks, and the maximum error of all test samples was only 0.04, verifying the feasibility and rationality of the improved neural networks model for evaluating course teaching effectiveness. The research results provide theoretical data support for neural networks to improve the efficiency of university art education.

Social desirability bias (SDB) has been a major concern in educational and psychological assessments when measuring latent variables because it has the potential to introduce measurement error and bias in assessments. Person-fit indices can detect bias in the form of misfitted response vectors. The objective of this study was to compare the performance of 14 person-fit indices to identify SDB in simulated responses. The area under the curve (AUC) of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was computed to evaluate the predictive power of these statistics. The findings showed that the agreement statistic (A) outperformed all other person-fit indices, while the disagreement statistic (D), dependability statistic (E), and the number of Guttman errors (G) also demonstrated high AUCs to detect SDB. Recommendations for practitioners to use these fit indices are provided.

Umbrella reviews (reviews of systematic reviews) are increasingly used to synthesize findings from systematic reviews. One important challenge when pooling data from several systematic reviews is publication overlap, that is, the same primary publications being included in multiple reviews. Pieper et al. have proposed using the corrected covered area (CCA) index to quantify the degree of overlap between systematic reviews to be pooled in an umbrella review. Recently, this methodology has been integrated in Excel- or R-based tools for easier use. In this short letter, we highlight an important consideration for using the CCA methodology for pairwise overlap assessment, especially when reviews include varying numbers of primary publications, and we urge researchers to fine-tune this method and exercise caution when review exclusion decisions are based on its output.

In this study, the phonographic view of the acceleration of scientific publishing in Türkiye has been revealed with TÜBITAK/DergiPark data and the values of the measurements of the impact factors of scientific journals have been sampled with the SOBIAD Index data. SOBIAD Index dataset was used in the study. Using the "full count" research method, the data were analyzed by providing access to the entire mass, which is the research population, based on purpose-oriented descriptive analysis. In the calculation of the impact factors of the articles in the SOBIAD index, multiple parameters such as the total number of citations of the articles in the journal, citation comparison (percentage) and area-weighted citation impact, new metric joint values and the similarity criteria in the content evaluation were determined. In the study, the measurement and evaluation standards of international impact factor measuring institutions (WOS-SSCI, Google Scholar, Eigenfactor Metrix and Elsevier/Scopus Index) were also used. According to the results of the research, while the average value of the impact factors of scientific journals in Türkiye is 0.19, this is seen as 6,19 in WOS-SSCI. With the research, the examination of the impact factors of scientific journals and articles in Türkiye was presented as an original review through the SOBIAD index sample. In order to increase the quality and impact factor of journal/article in academic publishing in Türkiye, qualified growth is required rather than quantitative growth.

The Montessori Bibliography Online (MBO) makes information about Montessori education and the Montessori movement more accessible through an online interface that includes links to digitized source materials. Historically, Montessori bibliographies and indexes have been published in physical form and include references to other sources, but a direct link is absent. This database builds on previously compiled indexes to consolidate citations into a comprehensive repository with an intuitive user interface and a robust search capability. Additionally, the MBO provides hyperlinks to digitized source material. Although this type of tool is not unprecedented in the larger research and educational landscape, it is novel within the domain of Montessori education. This methodological essay discusses the steps I took to compile and develop the MBO. Beginning with a review of the literature and legal matters, the discussion describes the methods and processes employed. It concludes by outlining future directions for the MBO. The MBO is accessible at https://montessoribib.ku.edu.

In this study, international research papers by Turkish scholars on social studies education were investigated. The sample was selected among published journals of education indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) database, such as Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), and Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-Expanded). The obtained data were analyzed via the bibliometric analysis method using version 1.6.17 of VOSviewer software. The results revealed that the first publication in the relevant indexes was released in 2005, and after 2007 the number of publications showed an increasing trend. In addition, it was found that "Educational Sciences-Theory & Practice" and "Education and Science" were among the international journals that most frequently published papers on social studies education, while Kaya Yilmaz, Arife Figen Ersoy, and Handan Deveci were the most cited authors. Results also revealed that Anadolu University, Marmara University, and Gazi University were identified as the institutions that published most papers while they were also cited most. Finally, the most frequently used common keywords were determined as "social studies", "social studies education", "pre-service social studies teachers"; "academic achievement", "citizenship education" and "values education".

Vocabulary teaching and learning constitute a major problem for EFL instructors and students. EFL freshman students have difficulty in pronouncing, recognizing the meaning of, using and spelling new English words. Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, all college courses have shifted to online distance learning since March 2020. Surveys with samples of college students and instructors in Saudi Arabia showed lack of interest among the students in online instruction, participation, giving oral presentations, doing homework-assignments, attending online classes, low engagement, interaction, communication and self efficacy. No adaptations have been made in the college curricula. Since the new distance learning environment requires new modes of teaching and learning, the present study proposes a variety of online vocabulary tasks and technologies that vocabulary instructors can choose from, such as mobile-based applications viz Vocup, Quizlet, Quizizz, game-based mobile apps, Saving Alice, Duolingo, Kahoot, vocabulary flashcards, mobile audiobooks, collaborative mobile ebook reading; podcasts; online dictionaries; concordance-based glosses; picture viewing and picture drawing on tablets; videos; e-portfolios; teaching idioms via graphic novels; multimedia annotations; social networks; project-based learning and mind-maps. To engage, motivate and encourage student-student and student-instructor interaction in the distance learning environment, the study proposes the following: using WhatsApp, ConnectYard, creating a community of inquiry, creating learning partnership, collaborative writing exchange projects, student collaboration, social interaction, integrating text-chat and webcam, and utilizing technology mediated task-based language teaching. Online vocabulary tasks can be performed individually, in pairs or in small groups; interactively or collaboratively; synchronously or asynchronously. Instructional phases and teacher and students' roles are also described.

This study aimed to investigate the effects of the integration of indirect feedback and concordances on improving grammatical accuracy in Thai EFL undergraduate students' writing and to explore the students' perceptions toward the intervention. Thirty third-year undergraduate students who studied at a government university in Bangkok were the participants of this study. During the experiment, participants were required to perform three writing tasks. In each writing task, they wrote the first draft and then received both direct and indirect feedback. For indirect feedback, participants were asked to look at concordances to help revise their first draft. The pre-test and the post-test were used to assess grammatical accuracy in the students' writing before and after the experiment. Additionally, the questionnaire and the semi-structured interview were used to find out the students' perceptions toward the intervention. The findings revealed that the number of grammatical errors showed a significant decrease in the post-test compared with the pre-test. As a result, the integration of indirect feedback and concordances was seen to be able to improve grammatical accuracy in the participants' writing. Besides, the results from the questionnaire and the semi-structured interview showed that the participants had positive perceptions toward the intervention on improving grammatical accuracy in their writing because they had a chance to learn from their mistakes after receiving indirect feedback and concordances helped them to induce grammatical patterns.

This work aims to elaborate a governance composite index for research laboratories in public university. This index is composed by an indicator of responsible liberalism associating effectiveness and ethics, to which are added an organizational management indicator and a strategic management indicator. To achieve the above aim, several methods are used, such as adjusted data envelopment analysis and geometric mean to aggregate indicators to calculate the composite index, Vigier index to compute responsible liberalism indicator, and tools to measure the validity and the reliability of indicators. The findings show that the developed index can be applied in any context.

The technological capacity that now exists to gather and store large amounts of data has improved access to information related to the academic performance, demographic profile and welfare needs of young people in a school. Improvements in data management techniques, statistical data analysis and software packages have made retrieving and analyzing systems data a more accessible and manageable process. This situation has provided greater opportunities for researchers, school leaders and educators to understand factors affecting the academic achievement and welfare needs of students in the school. In many countries, examining school data has become an education policy priority and is seen as a way to improve academic outcomes in student learning. However, despite the excessive amount of data available, many school principals and teachers can struggle to use data to identify students requiring additional academic assistance. This article describes the development and application of a School-based Index Analysis (SIA) implemented twice over a seven-year period in a large regional school, and the associated collaborations between researchers and school personnel. Data included in the index consists of enrolment data, as well as internal school administrative and academic data. Student data is a source representing the characteristics of the school community that can provide evidence to inform school-based decisions regarding student support programs, welfare needs, teaching and learning requirements and the targeting of resources.

The present study investigates the Thai quantifier 'laay' ([Thai characters omitted]) and its two major English lexical equivalents: 'several' and 'many', using data from an English-Thai parallel corpus, the Thai and British National Corpora. An examination of the parallel corpus reveals that the quantifier 'laay' has a broad semantic property as it can express meanings related to small, medium and large quantities or just the plurality of entities. This provides support to an observation that the word can pose problems for Thai EFL learners, translators and interpreters when expressing the concept of 'laay' in English. Based on the parallel corpus, two English quantity words that denote different scales of quantity, 'many' and 'several', were found to be among the most common lexical equivalents of 'laay'. Further comparative investigation was conducted on the Thai and British National Corpora. It is found that 'laay' and its two common equivalents have overlapping and different co-occurrence patterns, illustrating their lexical equivalent status and distinct usage profiles at the same time. Differences between the two English equivalents were then focused on so that empirical evidence of usage patterns of the two most common English lexical equivalents of 'laay' can be obtained. Findings from the study provide an insight into phraseological patterns and pragmatic-discourse functions associated with the English equivalents, which Thai speakers of English can make use of as a possible framework for their decision making when translating 'laay' into English.

Student academic burden exists to varying degrees throughout the world. To reach a comprehensive and unbiased understanding of the roles of academic burden, this paper explores academic burden from different viewpoints and summarizes existing assessment indexes for it. Factors correlated with student academic burden are examined and detailed evaluations on both its advantages and disadvantages are conducted. Some suggestions are proposed to better address this issue for the benefit of student healthy growth and development.

In the AI field of language learning, chatterbots are an interesting area for language learning and practice. This research investigates Arabic EFL vocabulary learning using an interactive storytelling chatterbot. A chatterbot was created and equipped with four vocabulary tools: a dictionary, images, an L1 translation tool, and a concordancer. The target words were enhanced by these tools to provide the learners with interactive comprehensible input. This project seeks to identify which tools are mostly used when EFL learners are practicing English with a chatterbot. It also seeks to determine which tool could help most in vocabulary learning as well as retention. The results of the study indicate that the dictionary is the most favoured and effective tool for vocabulary learning. For retention, the findings uncover that L1 translation is slightly (but insignificantly) higher than the dictionary.

The motif of the folktale is essentially the smallest and striking elements of narrative content with the ability to endure in tradition. It is divided into three categories: actor, item and single incident. These categories become the foundation that supports the built of the original motif-index of folk literature by Stith Thompson. Nevertheless, the index, as an analysis tool, was developed based on an analysis conducted on mostly European folk literature (folktale inclusive). It is a question dawned on the researcher regarding the applicability of the universal motifs and sub-motifs listed in the index on Malaysian folktales considering such local folktales were not involved in the making of the index many moons ago. Therefore, the study seeks to understand the applicability of the original motif-index in the local folktales' context. The qualitative text analysis method was mainly employed in Atlas.ti, a computer-aided qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) to propel the study in understanding the scenario stated. Being the heart of the article, it is found that the original motif-index is indeed applicable in the local folktales' context to a certain extent. Inopportunely, not all the universal motifs from the index exist in the local folktales. The applicability and dispersion of the motif classes' weight which leans toward the D. Magic class, is heavily influenced by the differences between the local and the European cultures because truly what is folktale if not a fruit of a unique culture.

This paper presents a documentary review in Spain on the uses and experiences of school change with Index for Inclusion materials (Booth and Ainscow, 2000, 2011) during the last 15 years. A brief description of the Spanish educational system is made in order to contextualise this analysis. The initiatives are grouped into three categories. Firstly, it has served as a source of partial inspiration, primarily in research contexts, to generate tools for analysis. Secondly, it has been taken up in teacher education activities. In this context, the index has been especially useful to help to construct and share a common language about inclusive education. The third category encompasses projects that have used the index in the evaluation and improvement processes to guide inclusive development in schools. Some 'lessons learned' are shared and common challenges are discussed, among them the need to give greater emphasis to the conditions which support schools on their journey to become more inclusive.

Citation metrics have become a popular method of characterizing the citation performance of academic journals. Because the "International Journal of Self-Directed Learning" is not indexed in a data system that provides such metrics, the purpose of this research was to determine two popular citation metrics--h-index and i10-index--via scholar.google.com for the journal's 20 years of publications.

Following academic globalization, successful integration into the international research community is a fundamental interest for all participating countries. The success of these internationalization processes, however, are often under scrutiny, and the results are rarely unequivocal. This holds true for Central and Eastern Europe, which usually is described as a semiperipheral region of global knowledge production. Analyzing the publication and citation indices of 365 Hungarian social scientists in one national (Hungarian Scientific Bibliography) and two global (Scopus, Google Scholar) databases, we explicate the current international impact of Hungarian academic research while exploring pivotal factors behind the major differences between databases. Our results indicate that Hungarian scholars lag behind their peers in neighboring countries, necessitating effective policy measures. To this end, the analysis recommends the use of standardized global publication databases instead of national datasets, while still acknowledging the shortcomings of the latter in research assessment protocols.

Under the background of insufficient scientific research funding, evaluating the level of scientific research from the perspective of sustainable development is necessary. The study aims to develop an evaluation index system based on the theories for sustainable competitive advantage (SCA), which could be used to evaluate the sustainable development trend of scientific research in universities. In this study, 42 world-class universities in China are used as examples to calculate their SCA performance in scientific research using the entropy and equal weights methods. The scores of scientific research in different universities in the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) in 2021 are used to verify the effectiveness of the evaluation index system. The results show that the evaluation index system can effectively predict the scientific research performance of universities in the future. It could be deduced from the results that universities with better scientific research performance meet the needs of the external market better and have more valuable, rare, imitable, and ambiguous resources but a lower level of scientific research dynamic ability. The evaluation index system makes up for the lack of emphasis on the potential scientific research capacity of the university in the current evaluation methods. It can help university administrators formulate relevant scientific research management regulations.

The purpose of this study was to analyze six English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners' trajectories of discriminating near-synonyms in a data-driven learning task. Since the learners find it considerably difficult to learn subtle meaning differences of near-synonyms, corpus-based data-driven learning may provide an opportunity for them to tackle their difficulties. The study materials guided the learners to identify the differences between the four pairs of near-synonyms, categorize the concordance lines based on their findings, and generalize the findings. The six participants had notably different trajectories of discriminating near-synonyms. The qualitative analysis of the trajectories showed a tendency that the intermediate learners focused on the meanings and found the correct answer without knowing the core meaning, and the advanced learners moved further to attend to structural differences and sometimes tested their previous knowledge on the concordance data. This study implies the need for careful guidance, collaborative group works, and strategy teaching in data-driven learning tasks.

The unification of South Korea and North Korea is a plausible idea yet it requires a comprehensive preparation in advance. As a method to achieve fiscal efficiency in public services, decentralization theory is consistently applied. However, the current literature and political reality argue that decentralization does not always hold its efficiency. Therefore, this paper focuses on finding an ideal education finance model for post-unification Korea by studying how one country's academic/economic status is related to their education finance model. This paper conducts the OLS linear regression analysis with 40 OECD and its partner countries' information on GDP per capita, Gini Index, PISA mathematics score, and the form of education finance system. The main findings of this research are that the political and fiscal decentralization are different ideas, and fiscal decentralization does not always hold its efficiency as the decentralization theory states. Among the types of decentralization, the optimal education finance model for academic and economic improvement is deconcentration--which is a combination of fiscal centralization and political, or administrative, decentralization to empower regional autonomy.

Today, digital technologies are used extensively in all areas of life, so education has important role to raise individuals who are researching, questioning, and constructing the knowledge. Digital storytelling; Written, visual, audio tools that work together, providing information in a digital environment is a method that allows students to learn with fun. The aim of the study is to compile the studies related with digital story (2005-2019) in Turkey. Descriptive scanning model was used in the study which is one of the qualitative research methods. The studies were examined in terms of their population, sample, years of publication, their universities, the indexes of the journals, their findings and the courses and disciplines that they are preferred most. Also, by including recommendation of the studies, the researchers aims to help teachers to shape their teaching process, experts to to improve program features, Ministery of National Education to develop projects on digital storytelling. As a result of the study, it was found that 2017 is the year that the most thesis were published whereas this situation is valid for 2018 in articles. Qualiative methods were preferred in articles generally, and in theses, researchers used quantitative methods. In sample choice, students were the most included group in the studies. When we look at the findings, the most encountered ones were "digital storytelling increases students' motivation, creative and critical thinking skills and problem-solving skills ". The recommendations of the studies were generally was "digital storytelling can be used in different areas and disciplines", "digital stories can be applied to students in different level and examine different variables". As a result, the study revealed the increasing importance of digital storytelling with the digital age. Also, it display that digital storytelling enables students learn actively by exploring, help to develop creative and critical skills, and give opportunity to learn by doing. [This study was presented as an oral presentation in 17th Primary Teacher Education Symposium.]

Social scientists have developed numerous asset-based wealth indices to assess and target socioeconomic inequalities globally. However, there are no systematic studies of the relative performance of these different measures as proxies for socioeconomic position. In this study, we compare how five asset-based wealth indices--the International Wealth Index (IWI), the Standard of Living portion of the Multi-Dimensional Poverty Index (MPI-SL), the Poverty Probability Index (PPI), the Absolute Wealth Estimate (AWE), and the DHS Wealth Index (DHS)--predict benchmarks of socioeconomic position across 11 communities in rural Bangladesh. All indices were highly correlated. The IWI best explained variation in individual and community ranking of economic well-being, while the PPI best explained variation both between and within communities for total household wealth and a general measure of subjective social status.

Strong claims are made regarding the significant role that multiword sequences play in the comprehension and production of speech and writing. Although the literature is replete with research-informed, evidence-based guidelines on how to maximize the learning of such sequences, such guidelines need to be synthesized, analyzed and evaluated for learning purposes. This paper attempts to fill this gap, addressing the numerous instructional options that ESL/EFL practitioners, curriculum designers and materials authors have at their disposal while dealing with lexically bundled sequences in several learning contexts. Another purpose of this paper, is to explain the problems that may arise as a result of teaching these sequences and the ways to solve them. The bulk of discussion will be centered on the tasks, activities and techniques suggested by researchers for deepening learners' understanding of these patterns across a wide range of contexts.

This study aims to explore cross-language intensification in affirmative sentences by examining the translation of standard amplifiers, words that scale upward towards an assumed norm to emphasize a quality of any entities, from Thai into English. The data comprises 602 parallel concordance lines with 17 intensifying patterns, which were drawn from a corpus of eight works of fiction in Thai and their English translations translated by qualified translators. The analysis of the data found that in the English translation, English amplifiers (e.g. very, really) were found with the highest frequency, followed by intensified lexemes and comparative and superlatives respectively. The findings suggest that the tendency to transfer standard amplifiers was through lexical (TL amplifiers, intensified lexemes, emphasizing adjectives) and syntactic means (comparatives and superlatives, exclamatory constructions, and metaphors), and that the selection was made in accordance with the context. Compared with the Thai standard amplifier maak2 'much-many', the linguistic devices used in the English translations tend to reveal a stronger force of intensity. The findings can provide pedagogical implications in translations. They, for instance, can raise students' awareness of the various linguistic forms used in transferring intensity expressed in the source text and also provide norms in translating amplifiers from Thai to English, which might be useful for students in translation programs. In addition, students may realize that if a literary work loses the expressivity of feelings or emotion, it becomes uninteresting and lacks vivacity, thus losing appeal to the TL reader.

Text mining techniques have become popular in many disciplines in the era of big data. Author profiling analysis, a method of text mining, is useful for identifying the intellectual structures of research fields and the latest research topics that did not appear from author co-citation analysis. This study analyzed the changing intellectual structure of the Human Resources Development (HRD) field in Korea by investigating researcher groups, research areas, and relationships between researchers based on research topics through author profiling analysis. Using selected authors' articles published during periods 2010-2014 and 2015-2019, an index was extracted from titles, abstracts, and keywords of a total 1961 articles. 2670 indexes were derived through the index cleaning process structured by expert verification and expert cross-validation. The cosine similarity matrix between authors was calculated by applying weights to the index, followed by a clustering and network analysis using PNNC algorithm through WNET program. The results of this study advance discussion surrounding the existing HRD paradigm, definitions of HRD, areas of HRD, theoretical foundations of HRD, and previous studies that analyzed research trends by providing additional layers of granularity and an expanded framework of thought across each topic. The findings also suggested implications for academic and practical aspects and further research.

The literature of empirical studies on the concordance-based cloze test (ConCloze) is far and few between. This is despite the fact that it has a potential for item writing without the aid of native speakers and for making use of corpus-based technology in task design. This article explores the test-taking processes and strategies of a ConCloze item variant. The aim is to investigate the substantive aspect of the construct validity for the item type and increase the generalizability of the findings in the universe of admissible observations. The sample consists of 14 non-native English users who are in higher education and engage with 3 test tasks each, totaling 42 verbal reports. The sampling method is purposive sampling, in which their first language profiles are maximized in terms of heterogeneity for increased power of generalization. It is found that "Reading concordance lines and recognizing clue words inside" is a major process, and "Assessing item components and testing a meaningful compatibility of a word in context" a secondary one. A model of communicative language ability is used to provide a context for task use in this study, where strategic competence is represented in ConCloze substantive validity.

It is evident that technology plays an important role in the foreign language teaching and learning processes, whereas foreign language anxiety (FLA) is one of the considerable affective variables that influence adversely the aforementioned processes. However, how the use of technology affects FLA levels has not been drawn attention among researchers. It should be also stated that the results of current studies on the issue have been mixed. Thus, this study presents a brief research synthesis on the issue to make practical recommendations for target groups and researchers to guide further research. The study concludes that while research results have not reached a consensus, the use of technology has a reducing effect on FLA in the scope of the results obtained from the studies reviewed. Finally, the study ends with practical recommendations for target groups and researchers.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in using concordance lines as part of corpus-based language pedagogy to enhance vocabulary instruction. However, teachers in various L2 teaching contexts may lack awareness on how to design and use concordance lines while teaching vocabulary, and they may need guidance in order to implement corpus-based language pedagogy effectively in their actual teaching practices. Based on this need, the present study aimed at offering in-service training on the design and implementation of corpus-based materials in vocabulary instruction, and exploring teachers' perceptions of using these materials in their classrooms. For these purposes, three EFL instructors at a Turkish state university participated in the study. Participants received a four-week training on corpus-based language pedagogy, the use of corpus in L2 vocabulary learning and how to design and implement concordance lines to enhance their instruction. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, reflective logs and an open-ended questionnaire. Qualitative analyses revealed that EFL university instructors did not have prior knowledge about how to use corpus-based materials in vocabulary instruction before the study, and training increased their awareness on incorporating corpus-based language pedagogy into vocabulary instruction. Moreover, the participants perceived the implementation of the corpus-based materials beneficial for raising students' awareness on specific vocabulary items as well. Nevertheless, the participants stated their concerns regarding the use of corpus-based language pedagogy due to challenges in using technology and designing corpus-based materials. The findings of this study may shed light on teachers' classroom practices of corpus-based language pedagogy in vocabulary instruction.

By its nature, AW [academic writing] represents adversity compared to other types of writing. It owns the characteristics of more notable patterns and language usage compared to other writing styles such as literary works, news, etc. Without discriminating the language used, this kind of writing generally bears similarities across languages due to the description and representation of scientific concepts. Therefore, there stands a must that objectivity is observed in AW as much as possible. In terms of language usage, diverse structures may be seen to be used in varied frequencies. Within this study, articles written in English and published in scientific journals covered by high ranking field indices such as Social Sciences Citation Index, Science Citation Index/Health Sciences Library, and American-Eurasian Network for Scientific Information were perused depending on their related fields classified as the Social Sciences, Natural and Applied Sciences, and Health Sciences, and then active/passive dispersion of these articles was identified through descriptive content analysis. The results suggest that active structure usage (61%) in overall analysis outnumbered that of passive (39%); the decline in its utilization depending on fields is rather significant, in that while the gap between active (74%) and passive (26%) usage in Social Sciences is rather wide in favor of active construction, we can observe a significant narrowing of the divide in Natural and Applied Sciences (60% active, 40% passive), and Health Sciences (51% active, 49% passive). The findings of this descriptive study may contribute to prospective research carried out in the specified fields in AW.

The fundamental challenge of higher education lies in its ability to intentionally design thriving, innovative, educational spaces that nurture and inspire transcendent and transformational outcomes at the individual, group, and institutional levels. One of the most studied high impact practices, a well-crafted learning community that fosters student-centered learning driven by collaboration, interdisciplinary study, and experiential learning is hypothesized to be one such educational space. This research advances the academic conversation regarding learning communities beyond nominal conceptualization and proposes an operational definition grounded on three dominant dimensions: (1) differentiation/diversity, (2) integration/association, and (3) feed-back/assessment loops. By constructing a "complex learning community" index, we translate the nominal conceptualization of the learning community into a measurable construct. By implementing a pre- and post-test of all incoming first-year students participating throughout our University's first-year learning communities over the course of two years, we offer insight as to learning community design and practices that influence transformational outputs, including flourishing and persistence.

One of the approaches to achieve sustainable development is based on smart specialization. Rural areas are of particular importance in ensuring sustainable development, the smart development of which largely determines the balanced sustainable development of a state as a whole. The present study reflects the quantitative and the qualitative assessment of sustainable development in the region of Latgale (Latvia) on the level of 19 districts; the assessment has been carried out on the basis of the concept of smart specialization. The assessment has been performed within the framework of the project 5.2 of the National Research Programme EKOSOC-LV. The quantitative assessment is based on scientific and practical experience taking into consideration the distinguishing features of the development of Latvian regions and districts, and it has resulted in the establishment of an integrated index (Smart Development Index), which comprises four dimensions n Resources, Population, Economy, and Management. The qualitative assessment is based on the views concerning the cornerstones of smart specialization and the factors influencing it expressed by experts from the state administration, business and scientific environment. Expert opinions have been collected by using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. The results of the research might facilitate the understanding of the support measures of smart specialization and the opportunities for sustainable development in rural areas, taking into account the level of the regional socio-economic development and the rate of development, as well as regional differences on the level of districts. The example of Latgale has shown that a small number of people and a low rate of development in most of the region districts simultaneously create both the acute need for and a great challenge in the sphere of sustainable development. By contrast, as a result of both the quantitative and the qualitative assessment the population has been recognised to be the main driving force of the development of rural areas in Latgale region.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of the alignment entailed in the continuation task on syntactic complexity in L2 written production. A total number of 48 sophomores majoring in English at a university in China were randomly assigned to two groups, one is the continuation group and the other is the topic writing group. The current study employs an advanced computational tool "the L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyser" to assess syntactic complexity in writing samples and focused on 7 indexes including three measures of length of production, two coordinate phrase measures, and two complex nominal measures. The result shows that significant differences exist in six of the syntactic complexity measures with the continuation group outperforming the topic writing group. It is demonstrated that the continuation task, which couples production with comprehension and entails the alignment effect, has a facilitating impact on improving the writing syntactic complexity for L2 learners. The implications of these findings for second language acquisition and L2 writing pedagogy are considered.

This paper sets out to tackle the issue of the criteria which should be met prior to submission of papers to indexed scientific journals. Firstly, the author addresses the field of qualitative research and tries to define the general characteristics of such works, and secondly, some clarification is brought with respect to the imbalance between the number of published articles in favor of quantitative research. Many authors from our region restate observations and cite other authors, and use the term "qualitative study" for such articles. This paper is also concerned with an overwhelming number of misconceptions which can be found in the articles made by the authors from the Balkans. These misconceptions include: (1) confirmation or rejection of hypotheses by correlations, (2) perform an analysis on "item-by-item" basis, (3) application of parametric statistics on non-parametric set of data; and so forth. Each of the mentioned misconceptions is explained in this paper, but it has not been attempted to prove them as this had been done before in numerous up-to-date textbooks. This paper also deals with action research,with respect to their relatively insignificant presence in highly ranked scientific journals, since they combine characteristics of qualitative and quantitative works. Some authors often fall into the trap of putting every action change in the focus of action research. Reproducibility of study is one of the most fundamental scientific prerequisites, and it has to be met by any study--qualitative, quantitative and action research alike.