Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Gender positioning in the visual discourse of Algerian secondary education EFL textbooks: Critical image analysis vs teachers’ perceptions

The present study revisits the issue of gender positioning within the visual discourse of three Algerian secondary education EFL textbooks. Unlike many similar previous studies, however, the examination of gender representation in this current research is carried out from a theoretician’s as well as a practitioner’s perspective. First, the selected visual corpus was scrutinized for gender bias through critical image analysis. The seven questions in this framework have addressed the major aspects in which bias can be embedded. Second, the perceptions that secondary education EFL teachers have of this issue were surveyed by dint of a self-report questionnaire which was submitted to a conveniently selected sample. The comparative analysis of the results indicate that while the majority of the images display clear signs of bias against females, most teachers hardly view any imbalances between the two genders as far as visual representation is concerned. This mismatch seems arguably related to the fact that gender bias is still considered a peripheral area of interest by the majority of EFL language practitioners.
HOW TO BE AUTHENTIC: a visual social semiotic approach to travel photography on Instagram

Due to their high level of authenticity, travel bloggers started to be an important part of the influencer strategies adopted by corporations in the travel industry and are becoming increasingly popular among social media users, especially on Instagram. However, their practices under this commercial pressure, on a platform known to present an idealized version of reality and by expressing themselves through a medium (photographs) that has lost its status as a credible representation of reality, raise dilemmas as to how authenticity is created and maintained. Most existing research regards the notion of authenticity as ontologically stable and fixed and therefore fails to acknowledge it as a dynamic concept that can be created. By adopting a processual conceptualization of authenticity and through a detailed visual analysis of a travel influencer’s profile, this study drew from the perspectives of Eco and Kress & van Leeuwen and investigated how different semiotic cues participate in the creation of authenticity in the staged circumstances that surround travel blogging. The results suggest that what is important for creating authenticity does not rely on the authenticity of the picture itself, but on the configuration of different cues, such as positioning of the participants, their actions, salience, colors, symbolic elements, angle, social distance, etc. that together form a consistent construction of an authentic experience. Thus, the research contributes to the existing body of knowledge by explaining how travel influencers’ visual communication is used on social media to create authenticity for their audience.
Word recall is affected by surrounding metrical context

ABSTRACT It has been claimed that English has a metrical structure, or rhythm, in which stressed and unstressed syllables alternate. In previous research regular, alternating patterns have been shown to facilitate online language comprehension. Expanding these findings to downstream processing would lead to the prediction that metrical regularity enhances memory. Research from the memory literature, however, indicates that regular patterns are less salient and therefore less well remembered, and strings of similar sounds are harder to remember. This work suggests that, like lists of words with similar sounds, lists of words with similar metrical patterns would be less accurately remembered than comparable metrically irregular patterns. This study investigates these conflicting predictions by examining metrical regularity in a recall task. We find that words are better recalled when they do not match their metrical context, suggesting a regular metrical structure may not be beneficial in all contexts.
Conceptual semantics as grounded in personal experience

Semantic memory for an object encompasses multi-modal knowledge gained through personal experience over the lifetime, and coded in grounded sensory-motor brain systems, independently of the level of subjective awareness. Linguistic access to semantic memories in verbal format relies on the functional coupling between perisylvian language regions and the grounded brain systems implied by our lifetime experience with the concept’s referents. Linguistic structure exerts modulatory influences on this functional coupling, as in the case of sentential negation, which reduces the interactions between perisylvian language regions and the grounded brain systems.
The role of culture in consumer-generated content engagement : A cross-cultural examination of ‘liking’, commenting, sharing, and creating posts about brands on Facebook

Even though the underlying factors behind engaging with Br-UGC, and consumers’ motivations to do so, appear to be similar across cultures, differences in cultural collectivism-individualism still exist and do have an effect on consumer engagement with Br-UGC. The evidence of cultural differences that has been presented in this dissertation helps to emphasize that Br-UGC engagement on SNSs does not occur in a cultural void. In particular, we should be aware that 1) consumers’ motivations for engaging with Br-UGC are not always the same between consumers in individualistic Western and collectivistic Eastern societies, 2) how consumers use Br-UGC to develop and maintain social relationships with others differs between cultures, and 3) the effect of Br-UGC characteristics on consumers’ decision to engage with the Br-UGC also differs between cultures.
Cultural and Individual Differences in Metaphorical Representations of Time

Abstract concepts cannot be directly perceived through senses. How do people represent abstract concepts in their minds? According to the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, people tend to rely on concrete experiences to understand abstract concepts. For instance, cognitive science has shown that time is a metaphorically constituted conception, understood relative to concepts like space. Across many languages, the “past” is associated with the “back” and the “future” is associated with the “front”. However, space-time mappings in people’s spoken metaphors are not always consistent with the implicit mental metaphors they are using to conceptualize time in their minds, suggesting a dissociation between temporal language and temporal thought. Beyond the influences of language, the Temporal Focus Hypothesis proposes that people’s spatial conceptions of time are shaped by their attentional focus on temporal events. In general, people conceptualize the past as being in front to the extent that their culture is past-oriented, and the future as being in front to the extent that their culture is future-oriented. Recent lines of research have provided preliminary evidence that people’s implicit space-time mappings are malleable and likely result from multiple factors related to temporal focus, ranging from those relating to contextual features, such as cultural attitudes toward time, to those more tightly tied to the individual, such as age-related differences. By building upon and extending these findings, the overall aim of this thesis is to ascertain the generalizability of the Temporal Focus Hypothesis and further investigate the range of factors that may influence people’s spatializations of time, focusing specifically on previously unexplored within-cultural differences (Study 1), political ideology (Study 2), religion (Studies 3-6), real life experiences (Studies 7 to 9), pregnancy (Study 10), temporal landmarks (Studies 11 to 13), circadian rhythms and chronotype (Studies 14 to 16), and personality (Studies 17 to 19). Together, these studies demonstrate that people’s implicit space-time mappings may vary according to their temporal focus, which can be explained by the Temporal Focus Hypothesis. The findings of these studies also shed new light on the Temporal Focus Hypothesis by extending the range of factors that may influence people’s conceptions of time, and reveal the malleability and flexibility of time representations.
Teaching linguistic argumentation through a writing-intensive approach

Abstract:We present the results of a study on whether writing-intensive learning techniques can assist beginner students in learning linguistic argumentation. The analysis is based on student submissions (eighty submissions from twenty students, 22,328 words) from a typical Introduction to Linguistics course, which were analyzed with the Coh-Metrix tool (McNamara et al. 2014), a suite of tests that measures cohesion of the linguistic formulation of the text and coherence of the mental representation. The essays show improvement in descriptive measures (lexical diversity, use of content words) and greater simplicity in terms of readability, suggesting a growth in the sophistication of the students' argumentation and disciplinary knowledge.
Differential Validity and Prediction of the SAT®: Examining First-Year Grades and Retention to the Second Year.

This study examines the validity of the current SAT® as a predictor of first-year academic performance and retention to the second year by student and institutional subgroups across more than 223,000 students from 171 four-year institutions. Results show that institutions can feel confident using SAT scores and HSGPA for admission, scholarship, and advising/retention decisions across various student and institutional subgroups. Similar to previous research, we found that the SAT and HSGPA tend to have slightly stronger predictive relationships with FYGPA for female students, Asian and white students, students with higher parental education levels, and students whose best language is English Only. Across institutional subgroups, SAT and HSGPA tended to have slightly stronger predictive relationships with FYGPA at private institutions and small institutions. Also, compared to HSGPA, SAT scores tended to have stronger relationships with FYGPA at more selective institutions. However, the reverse was true at less selective institutions. As previously found, SAT scores and HSGPA tended to overpredict FYGPA for underrepresented minority students, male students, and students with lower parental education levels; SAT and HSGPA slightly underpredict FYGPA for female students. SAT scores showed clear positive relationships with retention to the second year across all student and institutional subgroups examined. Additional retention analyses indicated that monitoring student underperformance (calculated using the difference between the actual FYGPA and a predicted FYGPA based on SAT scores and HSGPA) can be a useful approach in identifying which students may be less likely to return, across all student and institutional subgroups. In general, we find that the utility of the SAT, and its added informational value above HSGPA to predict FYGPA and retention, holds across the student and institutional subgroups examined in this study.
Sikap Penyuluh Pertanian terhadap Undang-Undang Nomor 23 Tahun 2014 tentang Pemerintahan Daerah di Kabupaten Malang

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui sikap penyuluh pertanian di Kabupaten Malang terhadap UU No. 23 Tahun 2014 tentang Pemerintahan Daerah serta faktor-faktor yang mempengaruhi respon penyuluh pertanian terhadap Undang-Undang tersebut. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian survei yang dimaksudkan untuk memberikan penjelasan atau explanatory research yang bertujuan menjelaskan hubungan kausal antara variabel-variabel penelitian melalui pengujian hipotesis yang telah dirumuskan. Teknik pengumpulan data yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah melalui: (1) Kuesioner, (2) Wawancara, dan (3) Observasi. Untuk uji hipotesis menggunakan Uji Proporsi dan Uji Regresi. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa sikap para penyuluh pertanian di Kabupaten Malang adalah tinggi. Nilai signifikansi p<0,05 menunjukkan bahwa lebih dari 50% penyuluh pertanian di Kabupaten Malang memberikan sikap yang tinggi terhadap undang-undang ini secara signifikan. Sedangkan faktor-faktor seperti lama bekerja, tingkat pendidikan, motivasi kerja dan sosialisasi UU No. 23/2014 hanya mempengaruhi sikap sebesar 4,3% atau dengan kata lain tidak berpengaruh signifikan terhadap pembentukan sikap penyuluh. Kata kunci—Sikap, Penyuluh Pertanian, UU No. 23 tahun 2014 The aims of this study were to determine the attitudes of agricultural instructors in Malang Regency to Law No. 23 of 2014 concerning Regional Government and the factors that influence the agricultural extension officer's attitude to the Act. This research was survey research that was intended to provide explanations or explanatory research that aims to explain the causal relationship between research variables through testing hypotheses that have been formulated. Data collection techniques used in this study were through: (1) Questionnaire, (2) Interview, and (3) Observation. To test the hypothesis using the Proportion Test and Regression Test. The results showed that the attitudes of agricultural extension workers in the Malang Regency were high. Significant value p <0.05 indicates that more than 50% of agricultural extension workers in Malang Regency give a high attitude towards this law significantly. While factors such as length of work, level of education, work motivation and socialization of Law No. 23/2014 only affect attitudes of 4.3% or in other words does not have a significant effect on the formation of agricultural extension officer’s attitudes. Keywords—Attitude, Agricultural Extension Officer, Law 23/2014
The Ambivalent Effects of Participation on Performance and Job Stressors: The Role of Job Crafting and Autonomy

ABSTRACT Literature provides mixed results on the effect of participatory practices on outcomes such as individual performance and job stressors. By examining these relationships via the mediation of job crafting behaviors, while considering the moderating effect of autonomy, we help clarifying the reasons behind the apparently ambiguous effects of participation. We surveyed 318 employees in an Italian mass retail company. On the one hand, we found a positive effect of participation on performance and a reduction of both role conflict and role overload thanks to increased job crafting behaviors aimed at seeking job resources. On the other hand, we also found that participation and autonomy may augment job stressors because of an associated increase of job crafting behaviors aimed at seeking challenging demands.
Sharing And Jumping Task In Collaborative Teaching And Learning Process

Providing material in the forms of task in collaborative teaching and learning process is one way in tapping the potential of the student's ability both on the cognitive, affective or psychomotoric trait.The task material provided in this collaborative learning is to foster a dialogical situation, communicative atmosphere, mutual listening and learning among students. The material itself is an obligatory task which is in accordance with the capacity of each student. Material assignments or tasks in the learning process is not only as an evaluation tool but also as a tool triggering the implementation of the teaching procedures to deliver real results that makes the students understand and learn the actual learning. Therefore, the level of task must be considered to obtain real change for each student learning.
Using social network analysis to assess play efficacy according to game patterns: a game-centred approach in high-level men’s volleyball

ABSTRACT Match Analysis has provided valuable insights for understanding performance. Social Network Analysis has delivered powerful contributions, especially with its most recent game-centred approaches, coupled with the weighting of direct and indirect connections between game actions. The goal was to expand upon these applications, analysing whether different networks associate with distinct levels of play efficacy applied to high-level men’s volleyball. Eigenvector Centrality was used, and one network was created for each level of play efficacy: 0 (error), 1 (continuity) and 2 (scoring a point). The sample was composed by 1,618 game actions (9 matches from the 2015 World League Finals) of six functional game complexes (i.e. K0 to KV). Results showed similar networks for all efficacy levels, suggesting that game patterns may not be as relevant for discriminating efficacy as individual actions, and/or that the chosen variables were not sensitive enough to differentiate system dynamics. Overall, actions performed under non-ideal conditions were most central in almost all game complexes, which suggests that playing off-system is the rule instead of the exception. It is therefore important to promote tasks that stimulate playing under non-ideal conditions and expose the attackers to stressful conditions (e.g. cohesive blocks), potentially providing transfer from training to competing.
A study of the national curriculum for physical education (2005-2013): socialisation and the value orientations of male and female students and teachers, and male physical education teachers’ curricular interpretation and lesson delivery

This study considered how physical education teachers’ different value orientations (Ennis and Chen, 1993) may result in different interpretations of statutory guidance provided by National Curriculum for Physical Education (NCPE) statutory guidance. The value orientations, proposed by Ennis and Chen (1993), were disciplinary mastery, the learning process, self-actualisation, ecological integration and social responsibility. Interpretative coding and categorisation (Saldana, 2015) of value orientations within National Curriculum Aims, NCPE statutory guidance and the value orientations with which students arrived at, and left, teacher training programmes at a Higher Education Institution (HEI) was completed. The value orientations of serving teachers were investigated, observations of lessons delivered by four male teachers were undertaken and semi-structured interviews were completed. Data derived from observations utilised the same principles of coding to investigate whether, or not, the language used by physical education teachers, in their teaching, reflected the dominant value orientations that they held, as indicated by their Value Orientation Inventory results. Results indicated that NCPE statutory guidance was privileged towards disciplinary mastery and, to a lesser extent, the learning process and that assessment criteria did not relate strongly to National Curriculum or NCPE aims and statutory guidance. Significant statistical differences were identified between the proportions of early-stage students and serving teachers who held the learning process value orientation strongly. Otherwise no significant differences between early and late stage students and serving teachers were identified which suggested that HEI programmes had little effect in changing the attitudes, values and dispositions in all value orientations except the learning process. Findings derived from observations of lessons and semi-structured interviews suggested that serving teachers’ lessons reflected the value orientations that they held. Teachers whose value orientations were more closely aligned with those represented in NCPE documentation reported greater ease of curricular interpretation and delivery. Recommendations are made for future practice to promote greater breadth and balance in the holistic development of children and young people through all five value orientations to include development and assessment in, and of, physical, cognitive, intellectual, emotional, social and personal characteristics.
Evaluating Didactic and Exemplar Information: Noninvasive Brain Stimulation Reveals Message-Processing Mechanisms

People in their everyday lives encounter claims about various health, political, and economic issues. These claims are often supported by evidence based on didactic or exemplar information. In the research reported here, we use a noninvasive brain stimulation technique (transcranial Direct Current Stimulation [tDCS]) to examine the cognitive mechanisms underlying people’s ability to support or refute claims conveyed by messages that contain didactic or exemplar information. Our results are consistent with the notion that the evaluation of didactic-based evidence engages more deliberative cognitive processes than the evaluation of exemplar information. Our study highlights the utility of tDCS in the study of message processing by demonstrating how it can be used to test the assumptions of message-processing theories.
Use of narratives and collage in the exploration of the self and the meaning of a career

ABSTRACT A methodological challenge during my doctoral research led me to use collage to reflect upon my own life and career. The insights it allowed me into the relationship between who we are and what we do led me to conclude that such methods can also illuminate these connections for clients of career counselling. In this paper I argue that such constructivist approaches allow the examination of that psycho-social space within which career is shaped and understood, allowing access to both the conscious and unconscious meaning made of a career and life story. I further argue that in times of increasing complexity such methods will be an important tool for career counsellors to meet the holistic needs of clients.
The role of transformational leadership in citizenship behavior

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships among transformational leadership, organizational learning, interpersonal trust and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Design/methodology/approach The authors collected data from the manufacturing sector in South Korea. A total of 208 responses were analyzed by employing the structural equation modeling method. Findings The findings showed that transformational leadership directly affected organizational learning, interpersonal trust and OCB; interpersonal trust positively and significantly influenced organizational learning and OCB; organizational learning had direct and significant effects on OCB; and organizational learning mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and OCB. Research limitations/implications This study highlights the value of empirically establishing how employee citizenship behaviors are affected by transformational leadership as an integrative construct bringing together organizational learning and trust. Originality/value The study intends to encourage future research by assessing whether organizational learning and interpersonal trust mediates the link between leaders’ behavior and employees’ behavior.
Investigating the Relationship Between Financial Constraint and Growth of SMEs in South Eastern Europe

This study investigates the determinants of financial constraint and its impact on the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in South Eastern Europe (SEE). In this study, enterprise data from the fifth round of the Business Environment and Enterprise Survey (BEEPS V) undertaken in 2012-2016 were used, and an empirical analysis including ordered probit, probit, and feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) specifications was conducted. The findings evidence that financial constraint is significantly detrimental to SME growth in the region. Moreover, SMEs operating in trade sector perceive access to finance comparatively less, whereas mature enterprises perceive it as more constraining. Among country-specific factors, high banking sector concentration adversely affects access to finance, whereas more domestic credit provided to private sector mitigates the financial constraint perception of SMEs.