Leading Efforts (Asynchronous Session)
Characteristics of a Caribbean Nation's Secondary School Structure View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mabel Payne, Mary Joseph, Anthony Joseph
According to the international classification of educational programs, the secondary educational level focuses on disciplinary instruction with the goal of students entering employment or tertiary level education. The English speaking Caribbean's education system is fashioned from the United Kingdom's education system. This paper investigates key features of a sample of secondary education schools in an English speaking Eastern Caribbean Nation to gain better insight into the schools' relative performance. The content and structure of the secondary level exit examinations of the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) influence the nation's school structure. The researchers interviewed the Ministry of Education's chief researcher, the education officer, and seven principals; and surveyed 11 principals including those interviewed. Some main results of these data include: the school system is centrally controlled ; all schools received government resources and three raised funds from more than five different sources; most schools' faculty have at least a baccalaureate degree in their disciplines; five schools have special examination preparation programs; and the retention rate for six of the schools is 95%-100%.
In Search of Particularism in Cross-cultural Leadership Theory and Praxis: Barriers to Learning (and Unlearning) Effective Leadership Principles View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Michael Linville
Expansive changes in global communications and the rapidly emerging and integrated global economy have led to the widespread emergence of cross cultural teams. These developments are consequential with respect to learning cross-cultural understandings of leadership theories and practices. Learning effective leadership practices should be heavily influenced by the extent to which similarities exist within and between the respective cultures, though this often is not the case. Adopting Western cultural bound theories and practices requires considerable caution, as the constraints and assumptions upon which leadership is taught may be faulty or counterproductive. This study focuses on the barriers or challenges faced in teaching and learning effective leadership theory and praxis across cultural contexts. Obstacles to effectively learning and teaching culturally relevant leadership principles and practices include, but are not limited to, issues such as: language, research methods, cultural dimensions, societal norms, pedagogical rather than andragogical approaches to learning, and conflicting world views and value systems.
Professional Continuing Education for Senegalese Bioethicists in Gender Mainstreaming View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Farah Nabil, Carme Campoy Guerrero, Elhadji Mbaye, Guillermo Z. Martínez Pérez, Sarr Samba Cor
The “Building Capacities in Gender Mainstreaming for Ethics Committee Members from Senegal to West Africa” project aims to develop the careers of members of West African National Research Ethics Committees through continuing capacity-building programs in mainstreaming sex and gender approaches in research monitoring and evaluation. In January 2020, the Training Programme in Gender Mainstreaming and Sex and Gender Approaches to Evaluating and Inspecting Health Research was conducted for collaborators of the Senegalese National Health Research Ethics Committee (CNERS). Following the training, all the trainees were invited to answer a Career Assessment survey, and based on their responses, received mentorship and career development opportunities. An internship at the Aragon Research Ethics Committee (Spain) was offered to four trainees to encourage North-South knowledge and skills transfer and exchange. The 2020 training was replicated as a trainees-led refreshment training in January 2021. A mixed-methods evaluation of knowledge acquisition, satisfaction, and the trainees’ post-training attitudes concerning gender mainstreaming was conducted. Twenty participants attended the first training and 18 attended the refreshment version. Ten participants attended both. Knowledge acquisition had an overall improvement of 8.54% in 2020 (11.25% for women and 4.58% for men), and an increase of 16.67% in 2021 (equal for women and men). Concerning attitudinal changes, 74% agreed on gender mainstreaming’s importance for all phases of their research projects and their lines of work. This training is expected to empower the CNERS to design and implement continuing gender equality training to contribute to the reduction of gender and health inequalities
Using Role-play and Explicit Strategy Instruction to Improve First-year Students' Academic Reading Proficiency View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Naomi Boakye
Many first-year students find the reading of academic texts to be challenging and overwhelming. In particular, first-year students studying sociology at a South Africa institution complain of comprehension challenges. This may be due to the presence of numerous theoretical and abstract concepts in sociology texts, which have to be unpacked in order to gain a greater understanding of social phenomena. A high level of reading proficiency is required in the reading of sociology texts; however, a number of students are poor readers. The paper reports on an intervention programme aimed at improving first-year sociology students’ academic reading proficiency. In addition to explicit strategy instruction, which has been used by many researchers to improve reading proficiency, role-play was introduced to the reading of sociology texts during tutorials in order to promote deep reading and improve comprehension. Pre- and post-tests, together with closed- and open-ended questionnaires, were used to determine the efficacy of the intervention. The pre- and post-tests were analysed using t-test, and the questionnaires were analysed using descriptive statistics for the closed-ended section and content analysis for the open-ended questions. The findings showed that a significant number of students had improved their reading proficiency and reported of both cognitive and affective benefits after the intervention. Recommendations are made in relation to the use of role-play in addition to explicit strategy instruction in order to maximise the improvement of students’ academic reading proficiency.
Effective Leadership through Teamwork: Expanding Means of an Organization View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Iván Vázquez Cenil, América Celeste González Navarrete, Fernando Elí Ortiz-Hernández
A leader does not always choose the best option to achieve the objective of an organization or system due to the decision-making process conditioned by personal experiences throughout life, including academic training. For this reason, teamwork is described as an alternative to achieve an effective leadership that overcomes the obstacle of limited rationality and expands the means. The effectuation process obtains an effect through a combination of abilities and experiences of the members of the organization in a cycle that creates new means and goals in a system oriented to the innovation by the interaction of the limited rationality, teamwork, and the principles of entrepreneurship. The effectuation process is based on the following entrepreneurship principles: i) bird in hand - an effect should be sought based on the means we have, ii) affordable loss - there is an economic and personal cost for not creating or creating the desired effect within the system, iii) crazy quilt - seeks commitment and professionalism from the project participants from the beginning till the end, iv) lemonade - seeks to take advantage of unforeseen and unfortunate events and v) pilot on the plane - faced with the crisis, a person who knows how to deal with it is required. Teamwork helps an entrepreneur or decision marker to consider different points of view to choose the best option, the leader must keep an open mind to different opinions and be able to observe the overlooked aspects.
Teaching and Learning English during Covid-19 in Mexico: Teachers’ Responses to Unexpected Situations View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Nora M. Basurto-Santos, Tania P. Millán Librado
This paper reports part of a research project focused on documenting Mexican teachers' and students' voices about their teaching practices during the current Covid-19 pandemic. The study describes the challenges teachers have faced regarding factors such as dealing with technology, the relationship with students and parents, the institution, among others. The participants are 193 teachers from most Mexican States and different education levels. Data were collected through a questionnaire via Google Forms. The preliminary results reveal that most teachers are struggling to meet the demands of this new way of teaching due to challenges that are related to the aforementioned factors. The implications of these results indicate that Mexican teachers should be properly trained in the use of technology for educational purposes. It also appears that most teachers are struggling emotionally to adjust to this new situation which severely impacts their teaching performance.
