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Research has confirmed that people's attitudes towards starting their own business may be influenced by their education, age, gender and prior entrepreneurial experiences. To support the employability and economic success of tourism graduates, this study, conducted in the South African context, aimed to explore the predictors of tourism students' interest and motivation towards starting their tourism-related businesses after graduation. A survey questionnaire was employed to gather information from 154 randomly selected tourism students at a comprehensive university in South Africa. The first phase of data analyses dealt with the assessment of the measurement model, while the second phase tested the structural model using the partial least square-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) method implemented on SmartPLS software. The results indicate that certain student profile characteristics (such as age, gender, completing entrepreneurship module, self-assurance and satisfaction level) had significant effects on entrepreneurial desirability and feasibility (DF), entrepreneurial attributes (EA) and entrepreneurship education (EE). Further, the results reveal that EE did not differ by age, EA did not vary by gender and DF was not influenced by tourism students' self-assurance (SA). The study suggests that the institution under investigation uses appropriate experiential pedagogical approaches to provide tourism students with the 'know-how' and other necessary 'hands-on skills' to improve their capacity to launch new businesses. Contribution: This article is important for higher education in general, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, because it not only contributes to the literature on entrepreneurship but equally helps higher education institutions to integrate tourism entrepreneurship modules into their curricula

Purpose: The present study explores the primary characteristics of employee training practices by way of analysing the employee training policies of the top two companies with the highest sales revenue in Turkey. The primary characteristics of employee training practices are examined within the scope of the corporate employee training activities and the practices to cope with the challenges in the organization of employee training. Methods: Employing qualitative approach, document analysis was conducted within the context of two cases. The two companies with the highest sales revenue in Turkey were selected as cases in the study. The companies were determined through criterion sampling in line with the financial performance based on net sales revenue, stability of financial performance and potential for corporate training policy development criteria. The six years of sustainability and activity reports of the companies were analysed through thematic analysis. The documents were analysed through thematic analysis using open coding. Employee training policies and practices were presented under the sub-themes of personnel training types, subjects of personnel training, training infrastructure, factors considered in the design of training processes and supportive practices for training processes. Findings: Employee training of the companies mostly consists of formal and non-formal training activities designed according to the needs of employees. These training activities aim at both occupational and personal development of the employees. The training activities, which are mostly organized with the use of internal resources, also allow employees to make their own personal development plans. The dominant common aspects of the employee training policies of the companies show that the successful integration of employee training to the career management systems increases the efficiency of training activities. The study results also illustrate that the employee training policies can be strengthened through corporate capacity development activities. Conclusion: Institutionalization of training practices that contribute to workplace learning has an important role in the financial gains of highly competitive organizations. The success of corporate training practices for employees requires both an effective design in terms of content and process and a strong establishment of corporate training infrastructure. The provision of formal and informal learning opportunities structured according to employee needs through a strong corporate training infrastructure and planning the career development of employees based on the outputs of training activities are the indicators of successful company performance. [Note: The page range (1-31) shown on the PDF is incorrect. The correct page range is 1-32.]

It is well known that there are disparities in access to education around the world, with developed countries generally having better educational resources and opportunities compared to developing countries. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have been proposed as a way to bridge this gap by providing free or low-cost online education to anyone with an Internet connection. This study aimed to better understand the effects of location, both country and region, on the use of MOOCs, using data from 3.5 million learners who registered for MOOCs offered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The data set provided a broad picture of how MOOCs are being used around the globe. The results of the study indicated significant differences in the use of MOOCs among students from different countries and their corresponding economic levels. In order to address these differences and improve access to education through MOOCs, the study suggested several actions that could be taken. These include providing better infrastructure and support for MOOC learners in developing countries, increasing awareness of and access to MOOCs in these regions, and working to improve the quality and relevance of MOOC offerings. Overall, the study highlighted the potential of MOOCs to bridge the educational gap between developed and developing countries, but also emphasized the need for continued efforts to remove barriers and improve access to these resources.

The aim of this research is to reveal the relationship between the life satisfaction of mothers and the happiness-increasing strategies they use for their children. Within the scope of the general purpose of the study, it was also examined whether the life satisfaction of the mothers and the happiness-enhancing strategies they used for their children differed in terms of some demographic variables. The correlational model, one of the quantitative research designs, was used in the study, and the sample group consisted of 298 mothers with children aged 3-5 years. A Demographic Information Form, a Scale for Determining Happiness-increasing Strategies Used by Mothers, and a Life Satisfaction Scale were used as data collection tools. In the research; t test and single-factor analysis of variance (ANOVA) were performed for independent samples with differentiation tests to examine the differences between the life satisfaction levels of the mothers and the happiness-increasing strategies they applied according to variables such as education level, economic status, and working status. Pearson moments multiplication correlation analysis was performed to examine the relationship between mothers' life satisfaction levels, happiness-increasing strategy levels, age of mothers, and child age, and multiple linear regression analysis was performed to determine the predictive power of the independent variable (happiness-enhancing strategies) to the dependent variable (life satisfaction). At the end of the research, it was concluded that the level of life satisfaction increased as the education level and economic status of the mothers increased, and the levels of happiness-increasing strategies showed a significant difference according to the economic status. It was seen that there was a significant relationship between the life satisfaction levels of the mothers and the strategies to increase happiness. Recommendations were developed in line with the findings obtained as a result of the research.

This study was conducted to reveal the role of 4th grade students' level of metacognitive awareness in predicting their academic achievement. The Relational Survey Method, one of the quantitative data collection methods, was used in the study. The study group was selected through random sampling method. It consists of 526 fourth grade students working in five different primary schools affiliated to the Directorate of National Education in the province of Nigde during the 2021-2022 academic year. The "Metacognitive Awareness Scale for Children" (MCAS-C) A-form, the personal information form and the academic achievement test were used as data collection tools of the study. The Construct Validity of the Metacognitive Awareness Scale was examined, and the Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was applied. When the data analyzed based on selected variables, the SPSS 25 program was used for the Quantitative Data Analysis. In the study, the Mann Whitney U-test was used for the variables of gender, the pre-school education status, and the Kruskall Wallis test was used for the variables of the parental education status, the economic status and the number of siblings. In terms of the variables of the study, a significant difference was found between the level of metacognitive awareness and gender, the pre-school education status, the parental education status, the economic status of the family and the number of siblings. A Structural Equation Model (SEM) was created to test the academic achievement model and analyses were performed with the IBM AMOS 23 programme. According to the findings of the study, metacognitive awareness, which was assessed through the Metacognitive Awareness Scale, has a moderate, positive and direct effect on academic achievement.

Employing an institutional logics framework and critical discourse analysis, this study examines the discourse of participants in a stakeholder-feedback meeting about a proposal by the Denver Public School board to extend collective bargaining rights to teachers in the district's innovation schools. The findings provide insight into the logics that control how teacher unions and collective bargaining agreements are understood by proponents of autonomous schools and portrayed to the general public through media. The analysis explores how connections to power and status allowed some stakeholder groups to influence the board to revise the policy to one more favorable toward market-oriented school reform. In this case, the dominant narrative that emerged from the stakeholder feedback cycle was one in which the collective bargaining rights of teachers were positioned as a threat to autonomous schools' ability to provide "what's best for kids" in their classrooms.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the level of sustainability consciousness (SC) and sustainable development (SD) awareness of medical students, as well as to identify the factors associated with them. Design/methodology/approach: This cross-sectional and descriptive study was conducted among 1,435 medical students. The socio-demographic questionnaire and the sustainability consciousness questionnaire (SCQ-L) were the data collection instruments. Findings: A significant proportion of medical students had not heard of the concept of SD (63.6%), only 7.9% of the participants reported that they could define the SD concept. Female gender and good economic status were associated with significantly higher median SCQ-L total score (p = 0.001). Although all SD goals are closely related to health, almost half of the medical students reported no impact on SD. Besides, 47.8% of the medical students reported that physicians could have an active role in achieving SD. Social implications: As the realization of SD and health services are closely linked, it is important to examine the sustainability knowledge, attitude and behavior of health professionals. Originality/value: This study examined the SD awareness and SC knowledge, attitude and behavior among medical students, the leading health-care professionals of the future.

This study sought to examine the relationship between family characteristics and Junior High School students' absenteeism in selected schools in the Asante Akyem Central Municipality of Ghana. A total of 408 students were included in this study. This study accentuates the instrumental role that family ties, parents' economic status, mothers' income and parents-teachers' association meeting attendance play in influencing students' absenteeism. For example, the study found that mothers' level of income negatively predicted the number of times students absent themselves from school in a term. As mothers' income increases, the number of times students absent themselves from school decreases. Understanding the significant role family characteristics play in student's school attendance is vital for promoting students' attendance and school engagement. Implications for policy and practices are discussed.

According to the author, "With Liberty and Justice for ALL: Multicultural ]Education in Wisconsin" is a most appropriate and befitting title for a National Association For Multicultural Education (NAME) conference in this moment -- an extraordinarily divided time -- in Wisconsin and U. S. history. As keynote speaker at this pre-voyage briefing, the author plans to share a few thoughts about the social structure and the aims of the society where the mission will take attendees to, to put in place multicultural education. NAME will be engaging in orchestrating plans for teaching and learning that are omitted and/or discouraged by many, whitewashed and/or misrepresented by many others, and taught and/or learned by few. To teach "liberty and justice for all" demands first acknowledging that the conceptualization and putting forth the idea ["liberty and justice for all"] was initially more exclusive than inclusive, in that only white men who own property were included. Black people, Indigenous people, and other People of Color, and all women were not included in the "All." Accomplishing what no one else has accomplish before -- Multicultural Education in all schools in Wisconsin -- demands putting into practice a harmonious working partnership between intercultural education and multicultural education at its highest conceptualization of social justice, where equality, equity, cultural recognition, persons with disability, economic differences, LBGTQ+ are included and flourishing in full blossom. The author's hopefulness is in part conditioned by the following: The belief America can be "that" America -- in spirit and action-- as the author states, we dream about where "We the People" is dedicated to the ideals -- as expressed in -- the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, with a special pride in the final five words of The Pledge of Allegiance -- acknowledging that a dichotomy existed between the authors' words stated within these documents and the authors' everyday actions.

Previous research shows that the lockdown of schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic increased the already existing inequalities in education but little is known about the processes underlying these outcomes. In this study we used Bourdieu's theories to explore how interactions between teachers' expectations of parents and parents' availability of cultural, social and economic capital could potentially influence educational inequalities in the context of distance education. The analysis is based on 24 qualitative interviews with parents from different social backgrounds, teachers and school coordinators, sampled from an inner-city primary school in Flanders (Belgium). The results indicate that teachers continue to have standardised expectations of the proper role that parents should perform in distance education, which were difficult for some families to meet due their availability of cultural and economic capital. However, this study suggests that teachers' exposure to familial issues can result in teachers adapting their expectations and responses so that they are more likely to respond to the needs of parents and students in the field of distance education.

Based on an ethnographic study at a middle school in a Midwestern city, this article examines the difficulty in creating anti-racist educational spaces, even in schools with a stated desire to do so. The school's curriculum was mainly based on teachers' abstract ideas of social justice and was not grounded in students' everyday realities. It failed to connect students to larger histories and stories of oppression and resistance, the central tenets of culturally relevant approaches. The school also failed in its attempts to shift its culture around discipline that disproportionately impacted Black students. The school's failure to implement culturally relevant and anti-racist curriculum and disciplinary practices illuminates various barriers to such implementation, including a lack of racial and experiential diversity among teachers, a focus on individual behavior rather than classroom and school culture, and a focus on maintaining enrollment as a charter school.

In a time of increasing economic inequality, lower levels of government investment in higher education, and rising tuition costs, students vying for a college degree experience financial concerns as important influences on their college experience. An emerging body of literature has focused on the relationship between student finances and academic outcomes. This study sought to understand how community college student financial situations are linked to academic outcomes. Specifically, we examined whether financial stress and financial precarity are associated with students' academic outcomes at 2-year institutions. Prior community college research on this topic has generally been limited to single institution studies. This study extends current research by using a multi-institutional dataset of 21 community colleges and accounting for multiple financial factors in our statistical models to describe community college students' financial situations and knowledge in a nuanced manner. Financial stress and financial precarity emerged as significant predictors of several academic outcomes. Financial stress explained more variance in academic outcomes than several other financial and demographic variables in the models, including financial knowledge. We discuss the importance of developing research that is more nuanced in its approach to financial influences on community college student trajectories toward a degree.

The graphic novel "Alpha: Abidjan to Paris" follows the fictional character Alpha from Côte d'Ivoire to Paris, France, detailing his struggles as a displaced person without legal status as well as the various barriers he encounters on his journey to finding safety. The story of Alpha demonstrates a multifaceted, intersectional, and complex experience illustrating the social, political, and economic "crisis" of displacement. The graphic novel also critiques the ways by which displaced persons experience the violence produced by the international refugee regime, especially among West Africa, North Africa, and the European Union. The idea of "crisis" is expressed in the graphic novel in multiple ways. The language and images used accurately portray the tragedy that so many displaced persons have to experience. By highlighting the reasons that people leave hopeless conditions in search of a more secure life, the novel redefines crisis not as an individual experience, but rather the result of harmful decisions produced at the state and global level. The graphic novel demonstrates how powerful institutions can open up their borders to particular types of migration while simultaneously closing it off to other groups, depending on their intersecting identities (including their national origin, race, age, sex, and socioeconomic status).

Women's empowerment is an important goal of the educational processes around the world. Women in developing countries need support and motivation for attaining higher education and empowerment. This qualitative-exploratory study sought to explore the perceptions of Pakistani female university academics living inside predominantly patriarchal social structures regarding their motivation for and issues in attaining higher education and empowerment. The study also aimed at understanding the notion of empowerment and areas where women academics have achieved empowered status. The study also investigated women academics' access to higher education, and its impact on their current social positioning in a traditional social setup. A total of 30 purposefully selected women academics from public sector universities in Northwest Pakistan constituted the study sample. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews and were analysed using thematic analysis. The findings revealed that patriarchal social structures in and outside workplaces influence women academics' motivation for higher education and empowerment. However, some motivational factors, including economic stability, professional identity in society, intellectual fulfilment and support of fathers and husbands seemed instrumental in contributing to women academics' pursuits of higher education and attainment of positions in academia.

This study was conducted to investigate student barriers to the prospect of online learning in Vietnam, in the context of Covid-19 pandemic. This mixed-method study attracted the participation of 1165 students from twelve universities and nine high schools across thirteen provinces in the Mekong Delta. The findings revealed the additional three obstacles from the qualitative data analysis including (1) geographical features, (2) the economic status of Vietnamese people, and (3) Vietnamese culture and traditions in addition to the six groups of barriers being re-confirmed from Berge's framework (2005). The results of Binary Logistic Regression testified the negative impacts of obstacles in Learner Motivation, Cost and Access to the Internet, and Social Interaction on the prospects of online learning, though it is predicted to go farther in education in Vietnam in the future.

A great deal has changed since March 2020, when executive and Congressional action paused payments on most federal student loans. Yet, following nine extensions, the payment pause on student loans remains in place at an approximate direct cost of $5 billion per month. The Biden Administration also has moved to end some repayments altogether, by forgiving hundreds of billions of dollars in federal student loans. These two policies may be tethered to one another in court, but they have strikingly different distributional impacts. This article examines the household student loan balances, payments, as well as earnings, to determine the relative impacts of the payment pause program on lower- and higher-income Americans. The analysis shows the across-the-board pause on federal student loan payments disproportionately benefits the most affluent borrowers. Continuing the payment pause without means-testing its benefits leads to ballooning costs for taxpayers.

Background: Though prenatal nutrition information is critical, it is not known whether information is shared equitably by patient race, financial security, or English proficiency. Purpose: To evaluate whether delivery or receipt of ChooseYourFish.org nutrition information in the first prenatal visit differed by patient demographics. Methods: Analysis of clinician-document electronic health record (EHR) or patient-reported surveys compared delivery and receipt of fish-related nutrition information in the first prenatal visit. Inferential statistics were used to compare delivery or receipt and race, ethnicity, payor, or interpreter use. Results: EHR analysis (n = 2,329) revealed Medicaid patients who used an interpreter were half as likely to have the fish nutrition message in their after-visit summary compared to those with Medicaid who did not use an interpreter (OR = 0.54, 95% CL: 0.35-0.84). The same was not true for non-Medicaid patients. Survey analysis (n = 52) showed respondents identifying as Black or African American were 25% less likely to report receiving the after-visit summary compared to respondents who identified as white (p < 0.01). Discussion: The results presented here illustrate how nutrition communication in the prenatal period can differ by patient race, financial security, and language. Translation to Health Education Practice: Culturally humble efforts to understand drivers of healthcare communication are needed to eliminate inequalities. A AJHE Self-Study quiz is online for this article via the SHAPE America Online Institute (SAOI) http://portal.shapeamerica.org/trn-Webinars

India's expectation of a demographic dividend owing to an increase in the working age population necessitated government measures aimed at skilling youth. Considerable emphasis was therefore placed on skill development policies and programmes, including revamping formal vocational education and training (VET) institutions that provide skills to students completing secondary schooling and opting vocational training. Although the number of VET institutions in India more than doubled in the last decade, their underutilisation calls for an analysis of underlying reasons. This paper analyses socio-economic factors influencing participation in VET using data from nationally representative survey on education. Findings of a multinomial logit analysis in the paper suggest that students in upper secondary VET institutions tend to belong to socially disadvantaged households, and that students in vocational courses are more likely to be male, urban, and from households whose principal occupation is blue-collar. Children from households belonging to higher socio-economic status and pursuing white-collar jobs are more likely to participate in general and professional education as compared to VET because of higher status assigned to the former in the society. These findings call for fine-tuning of current polices of promotion of VET in India.

Analyzed in this investigation were the current Texas state-mandated assessments in reading and the extent to which test scores differed among English Language Learners who were Not Poor (i.e., did not qualify for the reduced or free lunch program), English Language Learners who were Moderately Poor (i.e., qualified for the reduced lunch program), and English Language Learners who were Extremely Poor (i.e., qualified for the free lunch program). In all cases, reading achievement was lowest for English Language Learners who were Very Poor, followed by English Language Learners who were Moderately Poor. English Language Learners who were Not Poor had the highest reading performance in all four school years. Implications for policy and practice, as well as recommendations for future research, are provided.

There is currently a clarion call to address social injustice in South African higher education (HE) in order to achieve greater equity in access. Within this context, current social injustices pertain to financial exclusion as well as epistemic marginalisation and are embodied in the predominance of expensive textbooks which are authored in the Global North, meaning that they are unaffordable for many students and do not represent local realities. This paper provides evidence from the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project at the University of Cape Town (UCT), on the potential of open textbooks to address social injustice in South African HE and the practices utilised by UCT staff to address these challenges. The paper uses Nancy Fraser's (2005) trivalent lens to examine inequality, specifically as relates to the following dimensions: economic (maldistribution of resources); cultural (misrecognition of culture and identities); and political (misrepresentation or exclusion of voice). This enables the authors to critically analyse the UCT context and the extent to which open textbook production as well as open education practices within the classroom promote social justice through "parity of participation". The findings presented demonstrate that open textbooks have the potential to disrupt histories of exclusion in South African HE institutions by addressing issues of cost and marginalisation through the creation of affordable, contextually-relevant learning resources. In addition to this, they provide affordances which enable lecturers to change the way they teach, include student voices and create innovative pedagogical strategies.

States and districts are increasingly incorporating measures of achievement growth into their school accountability systems, but there is little research on how these changes affect the public's perceptions of school quality. We conduct a nationally representative online survey experiment to identify the effects of providing participants with information about their local public schools' average achievement status and/or average achievement growth. Prior to receiving any information, participants already possess a modest understanding of how their local schools perform in terms of status, but they are largely unaware of how these schools perform in terms of growth. Participants who live in higher status districts tend to grade their local schools more favorably. The provision of status information does not fundamentally change this relationship. The provision of growth information, however, alters Americans' views about local educational performance. Once informed, participants' evaluations of their local schools better reflect the variation in district growth.

This study, inspired by a life course approach, examines how former students with special educational needs that were met with different types of support, succeed in finding employment with sufficient pay to sustain livelihood and, thus, made themselves economically independent. The individuals in the sample (N = 295) are a part of a Norwegian research project that has lasted for 20 years. The study participants' difficulties and their special needs and the provision made to meet those needs were recorded when they were 16-17 years old. Beyond their teens, they reported the information about themselves every fifth year until their mid-thirties. At that age, more than half were economically independent. Logistic regression analysis revealed that independent variables in the analytic model influence economic independence in various ways. The main conclusion was that the use of teacher assistants and much special pedagogical teaching do not contribute to long-term economic independence. Other factors, including changes in the life course after leaving secondary school, vocational or academic competence registered when the individuals were in their late twenties and the birth of their first child seem to be of greater importance. Yet other factors, such as gender and functional level seem to be decisive.

Small area estimation (SAE) plays a crucial role in the social sciences due to the growing need for reliable and accurate estimates for small domains. In the study of well-being, for example, policy makers need detailed information about the geographical distribution of a range of social indicators. We investigate data dimensionality reduction using factor analysis models and implement SAE on the factor scores under the empirical best linear unbiased prediction approach. We contrast this approach with the standard approach of providing a dashboard of indicators or a weighted average of indicators at the local level. We demonstrate the approach in a simulation study and a real data application based on the European Union Statistics for Income and Living Conditions for the municipalities of Tuscany.

Forsyth County, North Carolina has one of the lowest rates of upward economic mobility in the entire United States. Researchers find that one of strongest correlates of upward mobility is the quality of schools in the local system. Using 2018 and 2017 NC Public School Report Card (SRC) data for Forsyth County elementary schools, I find that the percentage of experienced teachers at a school is a significant predictor of school performance. At high-performing schools, a much larger share of their faculties consist of highly experienced and educated teachers, compared to low-performing schools that predominately serve economically disadvantaged children. Experienced and high-quality teachers can have significant long-term impacts on elementary school children, especially those who come from underprivileged families. Yet in Forsyth County, schools with greater shares of economically disadvantaged children have lower percentages of teachers with these characteristics. I argue that the Forsyth County school system can assist in reversing low mobility rates by allocating more experienced teachers toward low-performing elementary schools that serve mostly disadvantaged children. This will insure that these schools have higher experienced-to-inexperienced teacher ratios, while also helping to reduce teacher turnover.

Reading motivation has a significant contribution to acquire the necessary reading skills, and it has an indisputable effect on continuing to read. When the importance of the role model effect of school teachers in acquiring reading skills is considered, it is expected that reading motivation of the students will be high whose teachers also have a high reading motivation. Considering these issues, this study aimed to determine the variables that affect the reading motivation of students studying at the Faculty of Education. For this purpose, Adult Reading Motivation Scale (ARMS) developed by Schutte and Malouff, and adapted into Turkish by Yildiz et al. was used as the data collection tool. This scale was used for 285 students studying at five different departments in Sinop University, Faculty of Education, in Turkey. For data analysis, relational screening model was used. From the analysis, it was noticed that the variables, gender, profession of father, economic status, frequency of buying newspapers, frequency of buying magazines, frequency of reading in electronic environment, and the reasons for unwillingness to read were efficient upon reading motivations of students whereas the variables such as department, educational level of father, educational level of mother, and profession of mother were not efficient.

This discursive paper uses the work of Freire and others to propose a critical pedagogy for precarity which is grounded in forms of radical (post)politics. A critical pedagogy for precarity is proposed that calls for a replacement of, or synthesis with, the UK government's employability in HE agenda. Through the conscientisation of prospective graduates towards a 'being-with-the-world' and the associated mental habits and bodily practices that focus on the principles of a Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE), solidarity, reciprocity and sustainability, as a response to precarity, is possible by creating local solidarity-based associational spaces for critical education and praxis, we advocate for critical pedagogical practices alongside more opportunities for collective action that engender solidarity, reciprocity and sustainability in graduates' bodily practices and modes of thinking and being, through a critical pedagogy that facilitates cultural action for freedom, self-help and collective forms of social provisioning of biological and social needs: housing, food, energy production, social caring and welfare needs in general. [Note: The page range shown on PDF (97-151) is incorrect. The correct page range is p97-123.]