What should teacher educators know about technology? Perspectives and self-assessments

This article offers a first look at teacher educators’ (N = 336) perceptions of their technology competencies based on the Teacher Educator Technology Competencies (TETCs; Foulger, Graziano, Schmidt-Crawford, & Slykhuis, 2017). The participants generally rated their competence levels highly in relation to the TETCs. Although many participants reported that the TETCs adequately reflected the competencies required of them, they suggested various additions and changes to the TETCs. This mixed-method study advances understanding of teacher educators’ perceptions of the importance of various competences to their work and offers feedback from the field regarding which competencies might be missing from the TETCs.     

Trends in online networking among South Korean politicians — A mixed-method approach

In recent years, as information technologies have grown in sophistication and become more fully integrated into daily lifestyles, a general expectation has arisen that the internet has the potential to reconfigure social and political relationships, and to create new political configurations. Blogging, in particular, has been seen to have significant potential to merge the public and the personal in new ways, potentially altering the nature of politics, particularly in nations where political processes are formalistic and highly regulated. As an example, politicians who blog have developed a new approach to communicating with their constituencies, in that the private thoughts of the political actor are expressed in a relatively unmediated environment. This study, which examines trends in blog linkages among Assembly members in Korea, provides a longitudinal analysis of blog linkages in order to assess the long term implications of new media technologies in Korean society and politics. The data were gathered from the blogs of Korea's National Assembly members for 2005 and 2006. An analysis of these links indicates that, indeed, there is an increased use of blogs among National Assembly members. However, it seems that over time, the network becomes sparser, less integrated, and more decentralized. This study also suggests that offline imperatives for political organization figure prominently in the motives of establishing online linkages to other political blogs.     

A conceptualisation of privacy risk and its influence on the disclosure of check-in services information

Check-in services (CISs) are a highly relevant part of location-based services that provide customer value greater than other mobile services due to their technical possibilities; conversely, CISs also create various risks to privacy, as they enable the continuous live tracking of users. We investigate these risks and develop a third-order privacy risk construct based on communication privacy management (CPM) theory to explain how a set of concerns violates privacy boundary mechanisms and generates perceived privacy risk. A developmental mixed-method design is used to qualitatively derive the construct qualitatively through 20 interviews and evaluate it quantitatively using a privacy calculus model with structural equation modelling (N = 431). The results confirm the third-order privacy risk construct and reveal new underlying concerns that create this risk. The results of this study are useful for both practitioners and academics, as they provide insights into how context-specific privacy concerns emerge in advanced mobile services, such as CISs.     

The road to an international career: The “Erasmus effect” on resilience,intercultural interactions and cultural intelligence

This study is part of a framework that views study abroad programs as an opportunity for experiential and transformative learning. Using a mixed-methods approach with a quantitative multi-wave study, this research examined the relationship between cultural intelligence and the internationalism career anchor – the individual predisposition and desire for international mobility for work. This study considers the role of resilience and intercultural interactions as predictors of cultural intelligence. In addition, we examined the transformative learning process by relating the development of cultural intelligence to specific critical incidents or critical experiences in intercultural interactions that can be considered triggers of the learning process. A sample of 170 outgoing Italian Erasmus students completed a self-report questionnaire prior to departure and another upon return home. The study also included a control group (n = 52) consisting of students from the same university who had not participated in the Erasmus program. The results revealed the positive value of the Erasmus experience, particularly in terms of strengthening the internationalism career anchor, cognitive cultural intelligence and resilience. The results also showed that students’ pre-departure resilience and intercultural interactions with other international students from different countries can explain higher levels of cultural intelligence and the desire to work abroad or take on global work assignments. No significant change across time was found for the same variables in the control group. In addition, the critical experiences reported by students highlighted a strong cognitive and motivational component associated with the Erasmus program. Some practical implications for higher education are discussed.     

Effects of fieldwork experience on empowering prospective foreign language teachers

Teacher educators may have different views on what constitutes knowledge base for teacher education. Most of them, however, would agree that field experiences are indispensable for shaping and maintaining high-quality teachers. Unlike teacher training courses in the UK and US, fieldwork components are not always an option in Taiwan. This study, therefore, investigated the effects of a language teacher training course that integrated fieldwork components with traditional lectures. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected from 13 participants. Results indicate that field-based components help prospective foreign language teachers to become reflective of their weaknesses and strengths and enhance their teacher efficacy.