The effects of prior reputation and type and duration of charitable donation on celebrities’ personal public relations: an investigation based on attribution theory

Charitable donations made by celebrities are being increasingly reported by news media in South Korea. This experimental study has examined the effects of celebrities’ prior reputations, and the duration and type of charitable donation they perform, on young participants’ evaluations of these celebrities (i.e. motive attribution, attitudes toward the celebrities, and related purchase intentions). The results ascertained the main effects of prior reputation and duration and type of donation on the dependent variables. Most notably, the results also found the interaction effect of duration and type of donation on the participants’ evaluation of motive attribution. That is, participants who were exposed to news stories concerning celebrities’ volunteer efforts, or monetary contributions that involve volunteer efforts, performed over long periods of time reported the highest level of motive attribution. Based on these results, this study discussed theoretical and practical implications.     

Narrative Inquiry for Science Education: Teachers’ repertoire‐making in the case of environmental curriculum

This paper considers how the school science curriculum can be conceptualised in order to address the contingent and complex nature of environmental and sustainability‐related knowledge and understanding. A special concern lies in the development of research perspectives and tools for investigating ways, in which teachers are faced with complex and various situations in the sense‐making of science‐related issues, and subsequent pedagogic issues. Based on an empirical examination of Korean teachers’ sense‐making of their curricular practice, the paper develops a narrative approach to teachers’ perspectives and knowledge by considering the value of stories as sense‐making tools for reflective questioning of what is worth teaching, how and why. By employing the idea of ‘repertoire’, the study regards teachers’ stories about their environment‐related personal and teaching experiences as offering angles with which to understand teachers’ motivation and reflection in curricular development and implementation. Furthermore, three empirical cases present ways in which the nature of knowledge and understanding is recognised and potentially integrated into pedagogies through teachers’ narratives. Finally, the paper argues for the need to reconsider the role of the science teacher in addressing environmental and sustainability‐related issues, in ways that facilitate teachers’ reflexive interpretation of meanings in cultural texts and the construction of pedagogic text.     

Metafrontier Production Function Analysis of Horizontal and Vertical Integration in Korea's Cable TV Industry

With its remarkable growth, the cable TV industry has witnessed increasing business integration continuously. This study categorizes technology-based operators into 3 groups on the basis of business integration—vertically integrated, horizontally integrated, and isolated system operators-and estimates the efficiency of each group. In addition, metafrontier analysis is employed to compare the efficiencies of the groups. The results suggest that vertically and horizontally integrated system operators can improve technical efficiency by accomplishing economies of scope and scale, respectively.     

Using eight trigrams (BaGua) approach with epistemological practice to vitalize problem-solving processes: A confirmatory analysis of R&D managers

Eight trigrams (BaGua) is a philosophy that has played an essential role in Chinese life. The purpose of the present study is to extend the theory to organizational problem-solving, so that individuals can engage in creative problem solving and justification to discover the most effective approaches. Questionnaires were returned by 259 research and development managers, and were analyzed using the SEM statistical method. The results indicate that the interaction among each trigram in the model of BaGua was significantly correlated. Most of the hypotheses were supported. The more an individual interacted with others, with data and with devices, the higher the problem sensitivity and evaluation performance. Despite the finding that the Tui trigram was not significantly related to the Ken trigram, all other trigram elements significantly affected each other. This finding is discussed in terms of the confirmatory situation and the conceptualization of epistemology in problem-solving.     

Does the MBA Experience Support Diversity? Demographic Effects on Program Satisfaction*

Using data provided by graduates from 128 MBA programs, we examined the extent to which age, gender, and ethnicity predicted student perceptions of the MBA experience. We found that women and minorities were more likely to see program costs and the availability of financial support as significant factors in their program enrollment decisions than were Caucasian males. The most consistent predictor of students’ perceptions of their educational experience was whether the MBA program was full time or part time, with full‐time programs generally perceived more favorably. Our findings suggest that because diversity measures of age, gender, and ethnicity were not consistent predictors across the different perception areas, at minimum, MBA programs presently do not consistently inhibit diversity. However, given the increasing percentage of women and minorities that comprise the undergraduate population, maintaining the present path in program accessibility may create enrollment problems for MBA programs perhaps in the very near future. Therefore, we conclude with a discussion of the changing demographics in higher education and their potential implications for MBA programs and suggestions for how MBA programs might respond.     

Improving learning achievements,motivations and problem-solving skills through a peer assessment-based game development approach

In this study, a peer assessment-based game development approach is proposed for improving students’ learning achievements, motivations and problem-solving skills. An experiment has been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in a science course at an elementary school. A total of 167 sixth graders participated in the experiment, 82 of whom were assigned to the experimental group and learned with the peer assessment-based game development approach, while 85 students were in the control group and learned with the conventional game development approach. From the empirical results, it was found that the proposed approach could effectively promote students’ learning achievement, learning motivation, problem-solving skills, as well as their perceptions of the use of educational computer games. Moreover, it was found from the open-ended questions that most of the students perceived peer assessment-based game development as an effective learning strategy that helped them improve their deep learning status in terms of “in-depth thinking,” “creativity,” and “motivation.”     

Whole Class Dialogic Discussion Meets Taiwan’s Physics Teachers: Attitudes and Culture

There is a distance between the power that whole class dialogic discussions (WCDD) may offer to the science class and their use in practice. Teachers’ attitudes toward WCDD are part of the problem. The aims of this study were twofold: (a) to examine Taiwanese physics teachers’ attitudes toward WCDD by considering cultural perspectives and describe how these attitudes changed as a result of a special workshop designed for this purpose, and (b) to report on how these attitudes should be taken into account in designing such workshops in the future. Nine experienced physics teachers participated in the WCDD workshop. The workshop was based on the WCDD model developed by Eshach (2010). Inductive analyses were performed on interviews with the teachers and their students, which were composed of 36 questions and developed specially for the purpose of this study, yielded the following categories: (1) In-school reasons for opposing WCDD—reasons belonging to school ways/tradition of teaching that may cause barriers to WCDD implementation; (2) External Factors—cultural reasons relating to Taiwanese views concerning education in general, which cause barriers to WCDD implementation; and (3) Cognitive aspect—refers to what teachers know about WCDD. The paper concludes with a discussion on what should be done in order to successfully bring WCDD to the Taiwanese physics class.     

Microfluidic conformal coating of non-spherical magnetic particles

We present the conformal coating of non-spherical magnetic particles in a co-laminar flow microfluidic system. Whereas in the previous reports spherical particles had been coated with thin films that formed spheres around the particles; in this article, we show the coating of non-spherical particles with coating layers that are approximately uniform in thickness. The novelty of our work is that while liquid-liquid interfacial tension tends to minimize the surface area of interfaces—for example, to form spherical droplets that encapsulate spherical particles—in our experiments, the thin film that coats non-spherical particles has a non-minimal interfacial area. We first make bullet-shaped magnetic microparticles using a stop-flow lithography method that was previously demonstrated. We then suspend the bullet-shaped microparticles in an aqueous solution and flow the particle suspension with a co-flow of a non-aqueous mixture. A magnetic field gradient from a permanent magnet pulls the microparticles in the transverse direction to the fluid flow, until the particles reach the interface between the immiscible fluids. We observe that upon crossing the oil-water interface, the microparticles become coated by a thin film of the aqueous fluid. When we increase the two-fluid interfacial tension by reducing surfactant concentration, we observe that the particles become trapped at the interface, and we use this observation to extract an approximate magnetic susceptibility of the manufactured non-spherical microparticles. Finally, using fluorescence imaging, we confirm the uniformity of the thin film coating along the entire curved surface of the bullet-shaped particles. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of conformal coating of non-spherical particles using microfluidics.     

Of human bodies in scientific communication and enculturation

This paper argues against a view of curriculum as a means for moulding students into, and making teachers accountable for, something pre‐determined and singularly governed by qualification demands of the labour market. It makes a case for the value of inter‐subjective teacher–student relationships in education and addresses the significance of negotiations and their open‐endedness. This paper draws its empirical material from case studies for which interviews were the main source for gathering data. The data analyses were made using the AtlasTi software designed for qualitative analysis. In the empirical material were found instances of negotiations in which inter‐subjective relationships are established and maintained; negotiations that are rendered obscured or even invisible from a qualification purpose but that influence the educational processes. The results show that teachers and students creatively use potentials within contextual conditions to attain relationships which sometimes constitute a precondition for education.