Value for learning during this time of transformation: the first-year students’ perspective

ABSTRACT

Formal education was used by the apartheid government to prepare black South Africans for manual labour, thus there was little curricular focus on the development of higher-order cognitive skills. With the abolition of apartheid in 1994, the education system was re-valued and re-evaluated to provide wider access to quality education; the focus of education policies moved towards the development of self-regulation and higher-order cognitive skills for all learners. There is now a generation of learners who have experienced their schooling in the transformed education system, and it would be useful to understand, from their perspective, what they value in their development of learning within the higher education space. This study answers the question ‘Post-apartheid, what learning methods and resources do first-years perceive to be valuable to their learning when they enter university?’ Participants included 344 students taking a Biology course provided to medical science students at a South African university in 2018. Two questionnaires were administered towards the end of a six-week lecture period, responses were evaluated quantitatively and qualitatively. The first survey, comprised of Likert-style questions, was conducted to determine the students’ views on the mechanisms which they used to support their learning. The second questionnaire comprised open-ended questions and focused on the students’ perception of their learning experience in the course. The findings show that there was a significant (p?<?.001) percentage of first-years who thought that rote-learning would suffice for examination preparation at university, and preferred to engage with their peers and the textbook before they engaged with their lecturers when navigating challenging concepts. Schwartz's model of social values is used to show that more needs to be done for the development of higher-order thinking and self-regulation when students enter university, and to mitigate alienation between students and staff.     

Measuring communication patterns and intercultural transformation of international students in cross-cultural adaptation

This study attempts to develop a brief scale for measuring cross-cultural adaptation of international students in China and to explore the main pathways to promoting their cross-cultural adaptation. Based on Kim’s structural model of cross-cultural adaptation, this study examined a series of reliability and validity analyses and constructed a structural equation model for exploring the main pathways of cross-cultural adaptation. The findings reveal that the revised scale is reliable and valid for measuring international students’ cross-cultural adaptation. Moreover, the findings also suggest that there exist four main pathways (host communication competence, host social communication, intercultural transformation basic, intercultural transformation advanced) that are essential for the development of international students' cross-cultural adaptation, and the interlocking bilateral relationships among these pathways are significant and positive. This study provides insightful theoretical foundation for investigating international students' cross-cultural adaptation in non-western contexts and the compelling empirical support on the structural model of cross-cultural adaptation.     

Digital government transformation: A structural equation modelling analysis of driving and impeding factors

Digital technologies are transforming the public sector by affecting applications, processes, culture, structure, and civil servants’ responsibilities and tasks. Yet, there is a void in research about driving and impeding factors influencing digital government transformation (DGT). The article contributes to the current debate on DGT by quantitatively assessing the transformation and its driving and impeding factors. The analyses were performed by collecting and analyzing through structural equation modeling 491 answers to a survey to Italian administrations. Results show that DGT is influenced by a combination of different factors, including the sense of urgency, the need for change, and the creation of a collaborative environment, suggesting that more effort is required for including public managers in the current debate on DGT. Organizational barriers and lack of support are impeding factors. Finally and counter-intuitively, resistance to change was not found to impede the transformation.     

浅谈美术作品中意境的生成

"景"是"境"产生的基础,"境"是"景"的升华和开拓。好的艺术作品需要由"景"上升到"境",这是个极其复杂的问题,也是意境产生的奥妙所在。     

奥运品牌与体育场馆设施的可持续利用

本文通过奥运品牌的传播效应,对场馆设施可持续利用提出对策,以期避免低谷效应并降低赛后营运风险。     

近代企业家朱志尧企业经营特色论

中国近代企业家朱志尧在创办求新厂取得成功的基础上,又接连投资了一系列民族工业企业。朱志尧身体力行,负责企业的经营和发展,集投资者和管理者于一身。在发展民族工业的过程中,朱志尧百折不挠,实干创新,努力生产适合中国国情的产品,并逐步形成独特的企业经营特色.     

浅析中小型建筑企业发展与管理思路

要解决中小型建筑企业发展存在的许多问题，应转变其思路，加强企业内部管理，重点要搞好项目成本管理、企业财务管理。     

私有产权的社会基础:历史的启示--以对民族资本主义企业的社会主义改造为例

本文从国家与产权之间的关系这一视角出发,对20世纪50年代民族资本主义的社会主义改造问题进行了分析。论文主要把这一改造理解为企业产权结构的政治性重构,并根据这种理解对整个改造历程进行了简要描述。从历史的角度来看,发生于城市的这一产权变迁历程充分反映了财产所有权与其赖以存在的政治社会基础之间的密切关系。     

乡镇企业和长江三角洲乡村人口的城镇化——以苏南地区为例

乡镇企业发源于20世纪50年代的社办工业,经历了曲折的发展历程后,在20世纪90年代为中国经济增长做出了重要贡献。在这样的历史背景下,长江三角洲乡镇企业的发展,带来了大量的就业机会,引发了长三角地区乡村人口的转移,促进了长江三角洲地区乡村人口城镇化。     

广义镜面反射

文[1]给出了广义镜面反射的概念，本文在文[1]的基础上给出了广义镜面反射的若干性质并详细讨论了广义镜面反射的生成性。