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Election campaigns are constantly regarded as a persuasive campaign to convince the nation to vote for the leader of a country. Being said such, this study investigates the discourse of twitter of two political premiers in Asia: Former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Tun Razak (henceforth, Najib) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi (henceforth, Modi), in the aspects of discursive strategies and speech acts during election campaigns. The discourse of Najib and Modi are selected due to their active participation on Twitter throughout election campaigns. The data were collected over 3 months throughout the national elections of both the countries, which were from February to April 2013 in Malaysia and January to March 2014 in India. This qualitative study employs Wodak's discursive strategies to analyze the lexical choices utilized in the election tweets and Searle's speech act taxonomy to analyze the speech acts used. The presence of two major speech acts was highlighted during the elections: commissives and directives. These two speech acts collaborated under the hood of discursive strategies of predication and perspectivation that empowered Najib and Modi to establish a strong contact with citizens while creating a sense of integrity and oneness. This study is significant as it creates political and language awareness to citizens by denoting how political figures establish power through mutual consent with citizens using Twitter. Furthermore, this study enlightens citizens on how the 140-character tool can influence the political decision-making of a community.

Numerous studies have attested to the consensus-orientation and cooperative nature of English as a lingua franca (ELF) interactions. However, limited attention has been given to moments of disagreements in ELF communication, with most of the little existing work focusing on disagreements in ELF academic or informal contexts. Consequently, little is known about how ELF users display disagreement in real-life business contexts. For this reason, this study examined disagreement expressions in five ELF business meetings drawn from the VOICE corpus to understand the nature of disagreement in ELF interactions. Following the identification of disagreement instances, the study used Stalpers's (1995) framework to investigate whether the disagreement was accompanied by a mitigation strategy that reduces its impact. It was found that the examined ELF business speakers express their disagreement in both mitigated and unmitigated forms with a marked preference for using mitigated expressions, indicating that the appropriate linguistic choice for expressing disagreements in a between-company business meeting is a mitigated disagreement form. Another main finding is the frequent use of disagreement utterances, suggesting that ELF speakers do not merely seek consensus, but they also raise objections and state their different opinions. One implication of these findings is that ELF encounters might not be as consensus-seeking and mutually supportive as suggested in previous works. Taken together, the findings of the present study extended the existing body of work on ELF disagreement and, in general, added further to our understanding of ELF interaction.

Code-switching is related to the shift between the first and second languages done by the speakers in conversational contexts. Based on the theories of code-switching, second language learners frequently apply their first language when communicating with others to deliver the messages clearly, maintain group solidarity, and avoid unintended misunderstandings. This paper investigated some factors influencing the use of code-switching in foreign/second language learning processes. Data were collected through a classroom survey and interviews with 12 English Education Master's Program students of Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta. Qualitative content analysis was applied to obtain clearer interpretations. The results showed the lecturers and students utilized code-switching more sensibly in the second language classroom context. Further, code-switching will be better to be implemented in informal social interactions rather than foreign/second language classroom settings since it will hamper EFL learners' success in attaining more fruitful target language competencies.

The purpose of this study was to develop teacher-parent communication competence scale in order to measure the communication competences utilized by teachers while communicating with the parents of their students. In the development phase of the scale, an item pool was generated and draft form was designed which were later subjected to expert opinion for content and face validity. The finalized scale was administered to 196 teachers teaching fourth and fifth grade students, and explanatory factor analysis was performed. As a result of these procedures, 4 factors including 33 items in total were generated in the "teacher-parent communication competence scale". Apart from these, the reliability coefficients (Cronbach's [alpha]) of all scales and their sub-dimensions, factor-based differentiation operations, matter-remaining and matter-total correlations were calculated. After all these validity and reliability processes, it was concluded that the scale is valid in determining teacher-parent communication competences.

Today, organizations have to give a positive image to their internal and external stakeholders. There is a need for a positive image for employees to strive for the benefit of the organization. The aim of this study is to determine the relationship between the perception of organizational image and organizational citizenship behavior of academicians. In order to address this objective the organizational image questionnaire which was developed by Uluçay (2012), and organizational citizenship questionnaire which was developed for higher education institutions by Tasçi and Koç (2007) were used. The questionnaire was applied to 340 academicians. The results show that organizational image perception of the academicians differs significantly according to gender and type of university. According to the findings, organizational image perceptions of female academicians are higher than male academicians, and it is found that organizational image of foundation universities is higher compared to state universities. Also, there is a significant relationship between academicians' organizational citizenship behavior and certain variables such as age, vocational seniority and working year in university. As academicians' age, professional seniority and working year in university increase, so does their performance of organizational citizenship behavior. The results show that there is a positive relationship between organizational citizenship behavior and organizational image.

While the bond between teachers and students continues to remain at the center of any quality education, of late technology has played an expanding role in reshaping instruction, daily operations, facilities management, as well as communication within and outside of schools. As it would happen, much of the innovation education increasingly relies upon is actually driven by designers and distributors largely responding to market forces more so than educational pedagogy, research or policy. This research-based policy-centered article concerns itself with how well educational leaders have kept up with technological innovation, including how communication has or has not been addressed from a school governance standpoint. Specifically, it presents direct findings from a newly completed study in Arizona that focused on parent perceptions and the implications of digitally-based communication efforts between schools and home. This original research was limited to Arizona, though it revealed multiple areas where policy may easily overlook important elements of the bond between educators and parents in addition to legal requirements tied to federal funds. Ultimately this article advances important policy and practice considerations aimed at helping to ensure a quality working relationship with parents and guardians.

This study examined the preferences of high school seniors (N = 2901) for receiving college and career information, an area not well-studied previously. Key findings are: Parents and peers are rated to be very helpful sources of college and career information; school counselors are a helpful source of information for first-generation and low-income students; and the internet is a helpful source of information, but email and one-on-one are more preferred sources of information. The findings of this study are useful for K-12 education, college access, and higher education professionals to consider when developing policies and programs to provide college and career information to students.

Since its inception, pragmatic competence has been studied vastly; the majority of these studies, however, have examined pragmatic production, and pragmatic comprehension is chiefly under-researched. This lack of adequate research also stands true for the underlying pragmatic comprehension processes and strategies. Therefore, the present investigation aimed to find out L2 pragmatic comprehension strategies used by 40 (F=20, M=20) Iranian EFL learners and to discover whether there would be any differences between interlanguage pragmatic comprehension strategies used by male and female learners. Participants, selected based on stratified random sampling, were chosen on the basis of their performance on a paper-based TOEFL out of the initial sample of 90 students. Three data collection instruments were employed: a validated pragmatic test (Tajeddin & Ahmadi Safa, 2010), concurrent verbal think-aloud protocols, and retrospective verbal think-aloud protocols. Data analysis revealed three classes of pragmatic comprehension strategies. First, socio-pragmatic strategies that included politeness, formality, indirectness, and distance/power influences. Second, lexico-pragmatic strategies which were more frequent than grammatical strategies in the second category. Third, the cognitive strategies that comprised both top-down and bottom-up processing strategies in L2 pragmatic comprehension. Furthermore, it was found that gender did not play any significant role in the use of pragmatic comprehension strategies. Study findings suggest that explicit teaching of pragmatic comprehension strategies helps learners promote their L2 pragmatic comprehension.

The hospitality industry is one of Thailand's most important sectors that contributes to the national economy. Human capital has become so vital that a strong foundation and development of undergraduate students in this discipline are needed. Their internship experience is part of the process of learning and integrating their knowledge into practice, especially concerning intercultural communicative encounters. There are, however, few studies related to this particular issue. This research aims to study Thai undergraduate hotel interns' intercultural communication challenges and strategies while undertaking their internship at an in-house hotel training center located on a university campus. Drawing upon a mixed-method approach based on questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, the results based on calculated mean scores suggest that the interns ranked five intercultural communicative strategies from highest to lowest as follows: (i) critical cultural awareness ([x-bar] = 3.94), (ii) attitudes ([x-bar]= 3.81), (iii) knowledge ([x-bar]= 3.71), (iv) skills to interpret and relate (x¯ = 3.63), and (v) skills to discover and interact ([x-bar] = 3.62). This study suggests that academic programs should equip Thai undergraduate hotel interns with proficiency in foreign languages and cultures, problem-solving skills, and cross-cultural and interpersonal understanding. This study contributes to awareness and the need to incorporate intercultural communicative competence into the hospitality programs that can produce graduates who are well-equipped and prepared for multilingual and multicultural working environments.

The present study aims to identify the factors that can potentially affect code switching in a college classroom in Malaysia. The participants were twenty bilingual international students enrolled in an English course in Malaysia. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with the participating students. The findings of the study indicated that the main factor behind code switching among the students was incompetence in the second language. Other factors that could account for code switching were maintaining privacy, the ease of speaking in the first language compared to speaking in English, avoiding misunderstanding, and unfamiliarity with similar words in English. Therefore, code switching was found to be an effective strategy used by the students to make their intended meaning explicit and to transmit some knowledge to other students in classroom interactions. This study provides some implications for English teaching community including language learners, teachers, and curriculum developers.

This teacher reflection includes tips on family communication during a crisis. The reflection includes notes from the field on the transition to digital learning due to COVID and how to increase family communication when students are not able to be physically present in school.

This paper details an experiential influencer marketing project in which students acted as micro-influencers to develop and promote their personal brands using social media accounts and blogs. Students reflected on their strategic decisions and performance in six weekly Slack posts. The pre-launch preparation, along with students' successes, challenges, and overall feedback are presented. Considerations for professors teaching Generation Z students social media marketing are described. The project empowered students to experiment with social media marketing strategies and tactics in a real, hands-on environment. They considered the assignment a powerful, valuable, relevant, and applicable learning experience.

Growing interest in online learning has instructors looking for new ways to engage learners in asynchronous discussions. Building on experiences with hashtag use to connect on social media platforms, the purpose of this study is to investigate the contexts of hashtag use and its associated impact on learner engagement in asynchronous online discussions. In more detail, this mixed-methods case study will answer the following questions: 1) How and in what context do students use hashtags in online discussions? and 2) In what ways, if any, does the use of hashtags promote engagement in an online community? Findings suggest that while classifying and organizing course information was a strong motivator for tagging posts, hashtags were also used to connect to others in the learning community, express opinions, and encourage knowledge building. The results from our study contribute to a better understanding of engagement with and through hashtag use.

Global student mobility is growing in importance as students increasingly turn their interest worldwide. International student spouses and their personal experiences is an emerging problem of practice in higher education due to their connection to international student retention rates. In particular, what support systems are provided to this demographic is especially important. Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used to examine international student spouses' perception of support services at an urban private institution of higher education in the United States. A qualitative approach addressed the following research question: What role do international student spouses perceive institutions of higher education have in terms of offering support services? This study focused on five international student spouses who came to the United States on F2 dependent visa status.

The ubiquity of smartphones and the growing popularity of smart speakers have given rise to cloud-based, intelligent personal assistants (IPAs), such as Siri and Google Assistant. However, little is known about the use of IPAs for Autonomous Second Language Learning (ASLL). Thus, the aims of this study were twofold: to assess Japanese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students' perceptions towards IPAs, also known as virtual assistants, for ASLL, and to better understand learner behavior of these technologies. A total of 14 Japanese university students were given smart speakers and interacted with a companion IPA, Amazon Alexa, over a two-month period in their homes. Moreover, the participants completed a survey consisting of Likert-scale items and open-ended questions to obtain their views of the IPA for ASLL. While the results indicated that the students had mostly favorable views of Alexa for L2 learning, many of them did not actively engage with the virtual assistant during the data collection period. Furthermore, students tended to give up when faced with communication difficulties with the IPA. These findings highlight the potential of IPAs for ASLL and underscore the gap between what students say, and what they actually do, with language learning technology.

With the booming of Chinese internet corporations, various wrongdoings have been frequently exposed to the public, which damages their corporate image. To face the challenge, these companies usually resort to apologies for image restoration. This study investigates how apology strategies are employed by Chinese internet corporations to restore image in the event of wrongdoings. Based on a self-built corpus and by means of textual analysis, we identified different apology strategies characterized by various linguistic features. The results show that "Illocutionary Force Indicating Devices (IFIDs)" and "damage repair" are two of the most frequently used move types which are normally marked by such key linguistic features as personal pronouns, modal verbs, performative verbs and intensifiers. It is also found that IFIDs, "giving account" and "admitting mistakes", "offering repair" and "inviting further interaction" are often incorporated together to show the company's sincere apologetic stance which contributes to the ultimate goal -- rebuilding corporate image and regaining the public's trust. However, direct expressions of "asking for forgiveness" are seldom found in apologies crafted by Chinese internet corporations. This study on apologies in the domain of internet corporations is believed to shed light on research on corporate apology in particular and corporate image restoration in general.

Social media has become an important platform where users share, comment, discuss, communicate, interact, and play games. Aside from using social media for personal, social, and business purposes, the use of social media has gained attention, particularly for collaborative learning in the educational sector. This paper examines the role of social media in computing education based on the use of WhatsApp social media group. Additionally, the study explores how social media usage by students influences their perceived learning outcomes. Given these aims, the study formulated four research hypotheses and tested using Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling. With the participants of three hundred and thirteen (n=313) students, the study found a positive relationship between social media usage for computing education and perceived learning outcomes. In addition, the study found a linear relationship between communication in- group and perceived learning outcomes. Finally, the study revealed that social media positively relates to tie strength, and that tie strength influences in-group communication.

Student mobility across national borders has been increasing at an extraordinary pace. Correspondingly, much research has been conducted into issues concerning learners that move internationally to pursue learning in a culturally different country. To a great extent, vigorous debate and research did promote cross-cultural diversity, understanding and communication. However, few studies have looked into international Chinese students' use of laughter in much detail, given that laughter plays a significant part in shaping or molding meaning. This article demonstrates with examples of a group of ICSs on how their use of laughter alters the meaning of utterance in speech. The findings offer insights that aim at promoting cross-cultural understanding and communication so that a much smoother and a more inclusive and successful adjustment of these learners can be facilitated.

Laughter is a common feature found in daily conversations as an element showing amusement. However, laughter can also appear in serious talk such as business meetings (Murata, 2007; Markaki, et al., 2010). This paper scrutinizes laughter use between Thai and Burmese participants in a business meeting held in Yangon, Myanmar, and examines laughter functions and factors stimulating laughter to occur. The business meeting data was collected using the ethnographic method - a participant observation, extensive field notes, interviews and audio recordings. The data were analyzed based on the framework of laughter adapted from Hayakawa (2003) and Murata & Hori (2007); the findings reveal that laughter was used as a communication strategy and occurred in the meeting both in a relaxed atmosphere and in a serious discussion with different intentions - to have fun, to make fun of work, to ease the tension and to threaten other interlocutors.

This paper examined the effectiveness of Ekiti State secondary school principals in disseminating information; investigated the types of social media that are mostly used by principals to disseminate information; examined how frequently the principals used social media to disseminate information; and examined the relationship between the use of social media and the communication skills of the principals. The study adopted a descriptive research design. The population of the study comprised all 187 principals and 7323 teachers in Ekiti State secondary schools. The sample of 54 principals and 378 teachers was randomly selected. Two self-designed questionnaires were used. The data were analysed descriptively and inferentially. The findings showed that principals in Ekiti State secondary schools were highly effective in disseminating information (59.8%), and they were using social media such as What'sApp (38.1%), Facebook (28.6%), Twitter (21.4%), and YouTube (11.9%) respectively, in disseminating information. The study further showed that the principals of secondary schools in Ekiti State were always using social media to disseminate information (42.2%). Further, there was a significant relationship between the use of social media and the communication skills of the principals (r = 0.631, df = 418 & p<0.05). The study concluded that the use of social media by the principals had positive outcomes and enhanced their communication skills in the secondary schools of Ekiti State.

Although multiple agricultural literacy campaigns exist, studies have found many people struggle to grasp agriculture topics. In order to process and learn information, individuals use a limited pool of cognitive resources. When topics or media messages are complex, those resources can be overwhelmed, thus hindering the learning process. Visual aids can prevent this from occurring. The purpose of this research was to test the use of infographics to communicate the topic of genetically modified foods. One-hundred-thirty undergraduate students were exposed to one of two randomly assigned stimuli. Both stimuli contained the same information about genetically modified foods, but one was presented in the form of an infographic, while the other was a text-only narrative. After viewing, participants were tested in a variety of ways on their ability to recall information. Sixty-nine of these participants took part in a delayed survey a week after stimuli exposure to again test recall and retention of the information they viewed. No significant difference was found in retention and recall rates when using an infographic versus a narrative to communicate a complex topic. However, this study provides several implications for future research in the area of visual communications in agricultural literacy.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the most commonly used L2 learning strategies, especially those of communicative type, of undergraduate students and how these strategies are related to their language performance. Additionally, this study also aims to examine the effect of gender on the type of strategies they use and how this fact affects learning. We make a comparative study of the use of L2 learning strategies by Spanish undergraduates and by those coming from the Erasmus+ program and from the Republic of Korea. In terms of data collection, two instruments have been used, a self-made profile questionnaire and the SILL inventory (Oxford, 1990), in order to evaluate students' use of L2 learning strategies, data on the similarities and differences in the use and level of frequency of use of strategies employed by our students. Furthermore, the emerging profile of the data analysis obtained has been described and we have made an assessment by comparing our data with that of previous research. In addition, we also find that gender is a significant factor among all students regardless their nationalities. We discover that the female students make a greater use and with more frequency of all type of learning strategies, especially those of communicative type, with special relevance in the socio-affective strategies. In our conclusion, we point out that training in learning strategies for second language acquisition can help learners learn better by increasing their awareness of L2 learning strategies, and by increasing the number of strategies they use. Moreover, knowing the L2 learning strategies used by our students becomes a guarantee of success when designing teaching methodologies aimed at achieving significant learning results.

This study aims to explore the use of politeness strategies which occur in EFL classroom interactions in a senior high school. This study applied a descriptive qualitative research design to explore the politeness strategies used by the teacher and the students in their interactions. The participants in this study were an English teacher and 30 students. The data in this study were in the form of utterances which contain politeness strategies. The data were taken from a 90-minutes English lesson which was video-recorded. The findings showed there were a total of 13 excerpts containing three politeness strategies: positive politeness strategy, negative politeness strategy, and bald-on-record strategy. The interactions were dominated by the teacher. Moreover, the politeness strategies which occurred in the classroom interactions were influenced by some factors such as age difference, institutional position, power, and social distance.

This study highlighted the willingness of knowledge sharing practices of university teachers. It also identified the intervening role of work culture and organizational commitment on the willingness of knowledge sharing of faculty. It was a quantitative study with survey research design. The sample of the study was selected through simple random sampling technique. Data were collected from 1130 faculty members of 13 public sector universities of Punjab. Tools of the study were two in numbers, i.e., open ended questionnaire and a five-point Likert scale. Data were collected about three variables: knowledge sharing, work culture and organizational commitment. Collected data were analyzed and presented in the form of different tables, graphs and charts. It was concluded from the analysis of data that university faculty involve themselves in knowledge sharing practices and their willingness for knowledge sharing was affected by work culture and organizational commitment. A friendly, cooperative and motivated environment may facilitate to boost the organizational commitment and the culture of knowledge sharing for the faculty members at university level.

Despite intelligence research being among the most replicable bodies of empirical findings--a Rosetta stone across the social sciences--the communication of intelligence research with non-intelligence researchers and the public remains a challenge, especially given ongoing public controversies throughout the history of the field. Hunt argued that "we have a communication problem." This article is a call for intelligence researchers to consider communication at multiple levels--communication with other intelligence researchers, communication with non-intelligence researchers, and communication with the public, defined here as policymakers, practitioners, students, and general readers. It discusses ongoing tensions between academic freedom and social responsibility and provides suggestions for thinking about communication and effective research translation and implementation of intelligence research from the frameworks of science and policy research communication. It concludes with some recommendations for effective communication and stresses the importance of incentivizing more scholars to responsibly seek to educate and engage with multiple publics about the science of intelligence.

The aim of this study is to determine how primary school pre-service teachers approach environmental issues via public service announcements and their opinions on them. This study was conducted with case survey model. The study group consisted of 34 primary school pre-service teachers. Data were gathered via public service announcements which are prepared by primary school pre-service teachers and structured interview form. For the analysis of the data, descriptive and content analysis was used. It is determined that pre-service teachers addressed mostly environmental issues about wastes. Primary school pre-service teachers' opinion is more effective to raise awareness if individuals see their behaviors' negative effects and its results on environment on public service announcements. Content which is not definitive does not make sense to primary school pre-service teachers. They appreciate more if the content is more emotional and unique. For this reason, in environmental education, it can be recommended that environmental issues should be reviewed with their different aspects during environmental education. Also it can be recommended that there should be different perspectives about this matter and environmental issues should be associated with real life at environmental education. [This study was presented as an oral presentation at ERPA International Congresses on Education, April 10-12, 2020.]

Language is a communication tool for every human being and is used to convey ideas, messages, intentions, feelings, opinions to others or even to meet daily needs. Intercultural communication is a communication that frequently occurs in the community. Pragmatics is a branch of linguistics that discusses aspects of language as a communication tool. When combined with culture, intercultural communication that occurs in society can be understood. In order for a speaker's language to be accepted in a society, he needs to fully understand the rules that apply in that society, including an understanding of the appropriate use of certain language functions or speech acts. There is a close relationship between pragmatics and the concept of politeness. Politeness is fundamental in pragmatics because this is a universal phenomenon in the use of language in social contexts. The focus of this research is to identify the politeness strategies used by the two main characters in the Shanghai Knights film, Chon Wang and Roy O'Bannon, and analyze them in terms of the cultural background of the two main characters. This is a qualitative descriptive study. The results show that the politeness strategy used is strongly influenced by their cultural background. The strategy used most often is the bald-on record strategy while the Off-record politenses strategy is the strategy that is the least used by the two main characters of the film. This suggests that an understanding of politeness strategies is needed to realize face-threatening actions (FTA). In other words, politeness strategies are used to maintain continuity and success in communicating.

This study investigates the initial encounters of 30 Thai senior citizens and the four Thai musician-celebrity coaches in the blind auditions of "The Voice Senior Thailand season 1". The analysis was drawn from studies on compliments, politeness, and face work. The analysis found that both overt-oriented and covert-oriented compliments were used extensively when the coaches evaluated the senior contestants' vocal performances. The use of such compliments exhibits the shift from a distant relationship to a closer one. The prominent use of covert-oriented compliments as face-maintenance and face-enhancing strategies and as distance-minimization or imposition-mitigation strategies (Blum-Kulka, 2005) suggests rapport management between the four coaches and the senior contestants. Such interconnectedness of the multidirectional functions of compliments in Thai as well as face and politeness found in this study could exemplify how both younger and older generations of Thai people interact to form and shape a closer relationship in their first encounters in contemporary Thai language. This study could shed some lights on cross-cultural studies of complimenting behaviors and politeness in similar contexts or in other contexts related to younger and older generations in aging societies (e.g., workplace contexts or senior-education settings).

Translation receives a lot of attention from sociology, psychology, computer sciences, information technologies and from linguistics, from which it originates. With the advances in technology in the 21st century, studies show that translation is not a sterile linguistic activity, but a reflection of a set of skills and capabilities of the translator/interpreter (T/I). In this respect, the formation of translation competence and related practices requires a thorough perception of worldwide affairs embodying value systems that a language holds framed through sociocultural practices. The achievement of the nature of both source and target languages, henceforth, allows for the establishment of effective linguistic competencies. In turn, such sociolinguistic, communicative, strategic, pragmatic and semiotic competencies provide the T/I with the opportunity to consider the translation/interpretation task from a variety of perspectives, all of which might initially seem independent of each other, but inherently correlated in their nature. Especially, the study of the physical properties of speech helps interpreters perceive a wide range of sounds for fluency and strategic thinking. Therefore, translation/interpretation is said to be a communicative activity, to be recognized and acknowledged by practitioners more in the sense that language -- the tool of the craft -- is a reflection of value systems framed through sociocultural practices and a mindset formulated with critical and creative thinking. This is believed to play a key role in the way translation/interpretation is perceived and, hence, its success upon implementation. In accordance with this framework, this paper provides a set of key qualities accounting for a T/I's success.

Despite organizations increasingly seeking talent to identify data to make better business decisions, many assignments provide the data for the students. This article encourages curriculum to introduce data and information request dimensions, identify data sources, write data and information requests, and reflect on data request examples. We propose a three-step writing exercise with a data and information request rubric. A pilot study for an operations management data and information request revealed that participants struggled to specify four data request dimensions: an appropriate recipient, adequate data, a data format, and an information security level.

Cultivating inclusive classrooms, where all students are heard, affirmed, and validated, is an equity issue. As an instructional coach and a supervisor of coaches, the author has a moral obligation to work against the system that was designed to and continues to oppress some students and benefit others. This work often brings up difficult emotions. Those emotions are an important part of the work. The author has found and developed strategies to help teacher teams metabolize, or work in and through, the emotions, rather than ignoring them. The author presents the strategies in this article.

Science communication aims to equip the public to become critical consumers of, advocates for, and sometimes producers of science. However, many studies suggest that audiences participating in such programs already benefit from strong cultural messages and social resources that encourage their engagement with science. The field is thus seeking to develop new models of science communication that can engage those who do not already seek out science engagement opportunities. In this article, we share findings from a study of an emerging sector of science communication that stages events in non-science settings, such as nightclubs or music festivals. In particular, we examine a science communication program that leverages the genre of immersive storyworlds to engage non-science-seeking audiences at an annual country fair. Leveraging Bakhtin's conceptualization of carnival as a theoretical lens, we ask the questions: How do immersive storyworlds operate to attract and engage non-science seeking public audiences in science conversations? In what ways do immersive storyworlds afford opportunities for participants to see science in relationship to themselves? We find that the storyworld creates an aesthetically and emotionally saturated context, with improvisational roles and routines that accommodate diverse perspectives and position participants' prior experiences and interests as the means for productive participation. Jointly producing the storyworld affords opportunities for belonging, which in turn appear to support sustained science conversations among participants and science communicators. The study contributes to the nascent evidence base for how such approaches might serve as an inclusive form of science communication, in particular by proposing new ways to think about "belonging" in science.

The internationalization of Anglophone universities could allow English-dominant students to benefit from experience with English speakers from a wide variety of backgrounds, but US students have often complained of difficulty communicating with such instructors, especially International Teaching Assistants (ITAs). Research has largely focused on helping ITAs assimilate linguistically and culturally, although many applied linguists suggest that ITAs' students would also benefit from training in skills for communication across linguistic difference, through attention to their language attitudes, familiarity with diverse Englishes, and communication strategies. We report on an intervention designed to address all three, here focusing on students' willingness to engage in collaborative communication strategies. The intervention, conducted in a computer science department and reaching over 300 first-year students from varied linguistic backgrounds, included an online and an in-class component, each lasting about an hour. This brief intervention resulted in small but significant gains in domestic undergraduates' (n = 174) stated intention to engage in collaborative behavior with their ITAs, although our detailed examination of qualitative responses suggests important areas for continued improvement of the intervention. We discuss the potential for such interventions to facilitate institutional and cultural change, encouraging the recognition of the shared responsibility for successful communication.

To expand the field component of our secondary education program, we added service-learning field experiences to three courses. This qualitative study (n = 99) was designed to determine what our students learned from participating in these experiences and to examine whether the experiences supported our programmatic goals. The findings demonstrate that students developed an increased awareness of diversity in the local schools and community, they acquired knowledge of strategies for engaging and communicating with parents, they developed a more nuanced understanding of learners, and they improved their foundation of effective pedagogy for English language learners.

Objectives: The incidence of type 2 diabetes in UK Black African and Caribbean communities is up to three times higher than in the general population, and engagement with self-management advice is poorer. This study explores the perspective of those living with diabetes to understand how the cultural salience of advice could be improved. Design: Participants were recruited via community venues, faith institutions and primary care. Eight focus groups were conducted with 41 individuals (Black African n = 23, Black Caribbean n = 18). Grounded theory methods were used for analysis. Results: Although motivated to manage the condition, individuals experienced a misalignment between elements of the care provision and cultural norms. Explanatory models of diabetes differed from the biomedical model reducing trust in treatment protocols. A lack of cultural salience reduced the accessibility of advice. Furthermore, elements of self-management advice were seen to conflict directly with some cultural traditions and practices. Individuals had to reconcile the two perspectives in order to proceed with self-management, often prioritising cultural norms and advice from informal sources over healthcare advice. Building personal relationships with the healthcare team improved trust and engagement. Conclusion: Findings suggest the needs in these communities were not being fully met. The healthcare interaction was pivotal in improving trust and engagement and reducing misinformation. However, appropriately informed community support also offers the potential to mitigate misalignment and to improve equity of access.

Schools and school districts are key to U.S. vaccination policies: They communicate immunization enrollment requirements and enforce them during registration. This article presents a mixed-methods study of how Michigan's 537 districts communicate about vaccine mandates through public-facing websites. It reports the results of a qualitative analysis (n = 50) of websites from Southeast Michigan and a quantitative analysis of all (n = 537) Michigan's district websites. School district websites engage in diverse health promotion practices surrounding immunization, from encouraging vaccination to neutral messaging and to encouraging exemptions. Most provide scant immunization information and few promote the importance of immunization for individual and community health. We recommend that school nurses, district staff, and health authorities collaborate to ensure that school district communication promotes immunization and does not promote nonmedical exemptions. This can lead schools to embrace immunization as an essential activity for their own functioning rather than as an unwelcome requirement imposed by outside agents.

The main objective behind this study was to investigate the association between EFL teachers' reflective behavior and their language learning and teaching beliefs. Accordingly, two respective questionnaires were given to 130 male and female EFL teachers who were conveniently sampled, and the elicited data were analyzed via correlational and multiple/multivariate regression analyses. Five components of teachers' beliefs such as foreign language aptitude, the difficulty of language learning, the nature of language learning, learning and communication strategies and motivation and expectations were taken into account in the analyses. The results indicated that although there is a significant relationship between teachers' reflectivity and their beliefs on language learning, teachers' reflection is not a significant predictor for teachers' beliefs and its constituting components.

This study aimed to investigate the dynamic patterns of two concepts of silence explicated as a communication strategy and impediment in a task-based instruction. A novel approach, Retrodictive Qualitative Modeling (RQM) tied in a Dynamic System Theory (DST), was utilized to identify learners' archetypes, to highlight the dynamic patterns underlying their silence, and to unveil the factors affecting the two concepts as dynamic signatures. Of eighteen learners of English department, we took three participants relying on their salient archetypes. Those participants were nominated based on the Focus Group Discussion (FGD) encompassing three lecturers. Furthermore, a stimulated recall interview was carried out on the three participants to get overarching factors affecting their silence. The results revealed twofold: (1) the participants' dynamic patterns of classroom trajectory explicating the variability of elements underlying the learners' silence vary across the learners' archetypes, (2) signature dynamics modeled manifest and distinguish the two concepts of silence. The implication of this study entails the EFL lecturers to have a background knowledge in distinguishing the two concepts of silence that encompass dynamic and fluctuative signature dynamics of motivation, cognition, English proficiency, positive and negative emotions interacting with the classroom contexts. Likewise, further study might provide more overarching factors underlying those two concepts of silence to provide a finer-grained result delineating such concepts.

Virtual humans are virtual characters within multimedia learning environments designed to aid the learning process. While there is a large variety of research examining how to design the physical appearance of the character or the teaching strategies it should embody, there is comparatively little work around the design of the narrative the virtual human uses to communicate with the learner. In this study, we examine the use of four different types of text structures to structure the character's narrative in an instructional video: expository, refutation text, deep reasoning questions, and refutation text and deep reasoning questions; and their effects on learning, perceptions, attitudes, and emotions about genetically modified foods. Our results largely indicated no significant differences between the different communication strategies. We hypothesize that the length, dosage, and pacing of the intervention could explain why we did not see benefits from the different narrative structures that have been found in other contexts.

The study aims to examine how higher education institutions (HEIs) in three countries responded to the challenges of COVID-19 over a six-month period at the outbreak of the global pandemic. Employing document analysis, we examined 732 publicly available communications from 27 HEIs in Canada, China, and the USA. Through theoretical frameworks of crisis management and Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), we explore how HEIs respond to the pandemic and protect campus stakeholders. The study revealed common patterns in communication strategies during different stages of the pandemic that include accepting responsibility, emotional reassurance, and compensating victims. It also revealed key differences across social contexts and environments and distinct leadership styles. Findings offer insight into how HEIs communicated at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic and inform the application of SCCT and crisis management theory to institutional behavior in the context of prolonged and intersecting disasters.

Design thinking, broadly understood as an organizational and entrepreneurial process aimed at innovative problem solving, has been productively incorporated by scholar-teachers in rhetoric, writing studies, and technical communication. Business communication offers similar opportunities. After briefly explaining design thinking and reviewing related scholarship and pedagogy, the article traces the process of creating an innovative course in business communication through each phase or mode of this recursive method: empathizing with users, defining the problem, ideating and prototyping solutions, and testing and evaluating the prototypes. The article positions course design as a project grounded in radical collaboration, with diverse colleagues as well as students.