Age and gender differences between pupils’ preferences in teaching general and compulsory technology education in Croatia

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - Today’s dynamic change of the pupils’ technological environment certainly affects their preferences towards technology, which...     

Reviewing the relations between teachers’ knowledge and pupils’ attitude in the field of primary technology education

This literature review reports on the assumed relations between primary school teachers’ knowledge of technology and pupils’ attitude towards technology. In order to find relevant aspects of technology-specific teacher knowledge, scientific literature in the field of primary technology education was searched. It is found that teacher knowledge is essential for stimulating a positive attitude towards technology in pupils. Particularly, teachers’ enhanced Pedagogical Content Knowledge is found to be related to pupils’ increased learning and interest in technology. Six aspects of technology-specific teacher knowledge that are likely to play a role in affecting pupils’ attitude are identified and schematically presented in a hypothetical diagram. It is concluded that more empirical evidence on the influence of technology-specific teacher knowledge on pupils’ attitude is needed. The hypothetical diagram will serve as a helpful tool to investigate the assumed relations between teacher knowledge and pupils’ attitude empirically.     

Identifying the gaps of fourth year degree pre-service teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge in teaching engineering graphics and design

Engineering Graphics and Design is a technological subject which is offered in the Bachelor of Education degree from third to fourth year of the degree course. Fourth year pre-service teachers find EGD difficult to teach because of various reasons. Therefore the aim of the paper was to investigate fourth year pre-service teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge gaps in teaching EGD during their teaching practice. The study was conducted using a qualitative approach and eight pre-service teachers were purposefully selected to take part in the study. Findings of the paper found that pre-service teachers found teaching practice very short to do all the teaching tasks that is required of them. Some pre-service teachers did not have drawing models to make learning concrete to their learners. Assessment was done partially just to impress the university tutors and to conform to the schools’ rule and not to evaluate the learners’ understandings and their teaching.     

How to analyze technology lifecycle from the perspective of patent characteristics? the cases of DVDs and hard drives

This study aims to analyze the technology lifecycle from the perspective of the dynamics of patent characteristics; the dynamics of patent characteristics are proposed as an approach for characterizing technology lifecycle in this study. DVD and hard drive technologies, which have already experienced their complete technology lifecycles, were selected for analyzing their patent characteristics as a function of the different stages of their technology lifecycles to thus obtain the objective of this research. The results obtained in this study provide a channel to assess the nature of firms’ innovation strategies along technology lifecycles. It can be observed that (1) patents attempt to cite more prior patent or non-patent references at the latter stages to find more technological or scientific sources that can contribute to technological innovation, (2) most litigated patents are granted in the Growth stage, so it is expected that patents in the Growth stage should be more important and, thus, more relevant to dominant design than the patents granted in other stages.     

Inclusive design in the Key Stage 3 classroom: an investigation of teachers’ understanding and implementation of user-centred design principles in design and technology

This paper starts out with a discussion of the importance of user-centred design, outlining its history and current embodiment in national and international standards and considers its particular relevance in addressing the needs of ageing populations. The paper moves on to examine how the premise of user-centred design has been taken up in education and focuses on the specific example of user-centred approaches as part of the Design and Technology requirement of the English National Curriculum, taught in England’s schools since 1989. The initial stage of the Designing our Tomorrow project presented in this paper was an investigation of the extent to which user-centred design was integrated in current teaching practice. Analysing baseline data collected from teachers and pupils at two state secondary schools the project team found that many of the tasks teachers planned for pupils did not provide opportunities to identify users’ needs when solving design problems. Finally, the paper presents a discussion of the project’s implications for pupils’ learning and understanding of Design and Technology.     

Women’s empowerment boosts the gains in dietary diversity from agricultural technology adoption in rural Kenya

Using new survey data from rural Kenya, this paper assesses the moderating effect of women’s empowerment on the relationship between agricultural technology adoption and women’s dietary diversity. We use a multiple treatment endogenous switching regression framework to control for potential endogeneity of women’s empowerment and technology adoption. We find that women’s empowerment has a positive and significant effect on the women’s dietary diversity score regardless of technology adoption status. We further show that women’s empowerment enhances the positive effects of technology adoption on women’s dietary diversity. Although technology adoption has a positive impact on women’s dietary diversity regardless of empowerment status, its effect is stronger for households with empowered vs. disempowered women. Study results suggest that individual and household welfare could be enhanced to a greater degree through interventions that promote women’s empowerment and technology adoption simultaneously rather than separately.     

Exploring the relationship between in-service teachers’ beliefs and technology adoption in Brazilian primary schools

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - The paper analyses possible reasons for the gap between teachers’ actions and intentions, reported by research on practices with the...     

Adoption and policy implications of Japan’s new corporate governance practices after the reform

In this paper we explain the process and policy implications of Japanese firms’ adoption of recently reformed corporate governance practices. We use a selective adaptation framework in doing so. We present some qualitative predictions about the possible outcome of their adoption process. One advantage of our approach is that we can describe various aspects of the evolutionary process of Japan’s corporate governance reform as a system in a consistent manner, rather than as independent pieces. Our predictions provide policy implications and are empirically testable. Japan’s post-bubble corporate governance reform has been extensive and involves the enactment and revisions of many relevant laws and affected institutions. Japan’s aim has been to install US-like practices (the de facto global standard), with these practices replacing the now tarnished bank-centered practices, and to facilitate Japanese industry in regaining global competitiveness. However, we show that Japanese businesses’ adoption of US practices has been selective and efficiency and other policy implications of such behavior are potentially dysfunctional.     

Women’s empowerment and gender equity in agriculture: A different perspective from Southeast Asia

Women’s empowerment is considered a ‘prerequisite’ to achieving global food security. Gender systems, however, are diverse and complex. The nature and extent of gender inequity and the conditions necessary to empower women vary across countries, communities and regions. The study of different gender systems is thus fundamental to capture cross-cultural variations in gender specific needs and constraints to effectively address gender gaps. Although the status of women in agriculture has received extensive attention in the literature in recent decades, a research gap persists regarding the state of gender inequity in Southeast Asian agriculture. The current paper contributes to the geographical scope of the literature by presenting empirical evidence of gender inequity from four Southeast Asian countries: Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. Using the framework recommended by the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), 37 focus group discussions were conducted with 290 women farmers in the above mentioned countries. The results reveal trends that contradict the conventional narratives of gender inequity in agriculture in certain domains of empowerment. In all four countries, women appear to have equal access to productive resources such as land and inputs, and greater control over household income than men. Important intra-regional heterogeneity is observed in terms of community-level empowerment. While women play an active role in agricultural groups in Thailand and in the Philippines, this is predominantly men’s territory in Indonesia and Myanmar. These findings imply that country-specific gender intervention frameworks are necessary to overcome gender gaps in agriculture.     

Understanding MNEs׳ decline in the adoption of locally developed technology standard in China: A positioning and cognitive perspective

Asian countries are becoming more and more active in participating technology standard development. In this paper we study the impact of this change on multinational enterprises (MNEs) using the case of TD-SCDMA, an international technology standard of 3G mobile communications. During the development of this technology standard, MNEs׳ market share dropped dramatically. A major contribution of this study is analyzing the underlying mechanism governing MNEs׳ interpreting TD-SCDMA as a threat rather than an opportunity by integrating two streams of literature. We also discuss the possible strategies for MNEs to maintain their market leadership position when local firms are able to lead international technology standard development.     

STEM education in the twenty-first century: learning at work—an exploration of design and technology teacher perceptions and practices

Teachers’ knowledge of STEM education, their understanding, and pedagogical application of that knowledge is intrinsically linked to the subsequent effectiveness of STEM delivery within their own practice; where a teacher’s knowledge and understanding is deficient, the potential for pupil learning is ineffective and limited. Set within the context of secondary age phase education in England and Wales (11–16 years old), this paper explores how teachers working within the field of design and technology education acquire new knowledge in STEM; how understanding is developed and subsequently embedded within their practice to support the creation of a diverse STEM-literate society. The purpose being to determine mechanisms by which knowledge acquisition occurs, to reconnoitre potential implications for education and learning at work, including consideration of the role which new technologies play in the development of STEM knowledge within and across contributory STEM subject disciplines. Underpinned by an interpretivist ontology, work presented here builds upon the premise that design and technology is an interdisciplinary educational construct and not viewed as being of equal status to other STEM disciplines including maths and science. Drawing upon the philosophical field of symbolic interactionism and constructivist grounded theory, work embraces an abductive methodology where participants are encouraged to relate design and technology within the context of STEM education. Emergent findings are discussed in relation to their potential to support teachers’ educational development for the advancement of STEM literacy, and help secure design and technology’s place as a subject of value within a twenty-first Century curriculum.     

Objectives and incentives: Evidence from the privatization of Great Britain’s power plants

Does privatization increase plant productivity because the private owner’s objective is different, or because they are better able to control management? And, is privatization sufficient to improve productivity, or is it only effective in combination with competition? We answer these questions using the quasi-experiment of Great Britain’s electricity industry privatization. To separate the effect of a change in objectives from a change in incentives we assume, that the former only affects labor but not fuel productivity. And, assuming that effective competition was only introduced after privatization, we are able to separately identify the effects of privatization and competition. We find that privatization increased labor but not fuel productivity: evidence for the importance of objectives. There is no evidence that the introduction of effective competition after privatization increased labor or fuel productivity: evidence that privatization increases productivity by itself.     

Policy Implications of the Effects of Concentration and Multimarket Contact in China’s Airline Market

Unlike many other mergers in developed countries, which might have been assessed and their effects estimated by antitrust authorities before being granted antitrust immunity, the airline mergers that swept China’s airline industry in 2002 occurred with no antitrust challenge. These mergers provide the opportunity to study important market power issues in China’s airline markets. Given that increased concentration and multimarket contact are the main legacies of an airline merger, the effects of mergers on these variables can raise the potential for the exercise of market power. However, an examination of the period 2002–2004 during which the Chinese airline mergers occurred shows that the resulting increased concentration and enhanced multimarket contact did not have important consequences for airfares in Chinese city-pair markets. The presence of Hainan Airlines appears to have played an important role in suppressing the airfares charged by China Eastern and China Southern.     

Recognition of entrepreneur’s social ties and firm innovation in emerging markets: explanation from the industrial institutional environment and survival pressure

Despite the extensive attention to the role of entrepreneurs’ business or political ties, few studies have distinguished the basis of those social ties. The aim of this study is to explore the different roles of the entrepreneurs’ personalized and formal social ties on the firms’ innovation performance. Based on renqing and formal rules, this study extends the social ties’ typology into four categories, namely, transactional business ties, transactional political ties, guanxi business ties, and guanxi political ties. Using data collected from 209 Chinese firms, we further identify the distinctive contributions of the different ties on the entrepreneurial firm’s innovation performance under different institutional environments and entrepreneurs’ survival pressure. This paper will help researchers and managers better understand the function of social ties in innovation in emerging markets, such as China.

     

Researchers’ willingness to engage in knowledge and technology transfer activities: an exploration of the underlying motivations

Increasingly, universities have become conscious of their important role as centres of knowledge generation and diffusion. Accordingly, they have put in place policies, methods and resources to increase knowledge and technology transfer (KTT) activities. However, succeeding in this endeavour is not that easy. An active involvement of researchers is fundamental. Literature examining researchers’ attitude towards KTT activities is limited, offering a partial view on the subject. This study aims at bringing new light to this issue. First, we identify those factors that influence researchers’ willingness to engage in KTT activities. From a comprehensive literature review, we distinguish between intrinsic motivations, extrinsic motivations and university support and services as critical elements. A scale is developed and validated. Second, the scale is applied to the case of R&D contracts. The sample consists of 249 researchers from one of the biggest Spanish universities. Results suggest that the proposed scale has a good fit, indicating that it can be considered as a good instrument for measuring researchers’ willingness to get involved in KTT activities. Policy implications and directions for future research are provided.     

Legal form of the firm and overseas market choice in India’s software and IT industry

Drawing upon the economics, international business, and law literatures, we hypothesize that variations in governance characteristics, associated with firms being public limited companies, private limited companies, or unincorporated enterprises, influence the internationalization patterns of the software and information technology (IT) companies in India. The results provide some support for our hypotheses, as variations in legal form were found to significantly impact regional sales in the US and Canada, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. Organizational size and business type were also significantly related to sales in a number of regions. Implications of our findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

Organization,technology and management innovations through acquisition in China’s pork value chains: The case of the Smithfield acquisition by Shuanghui

This paper reviews the changes in Shuanghui’s operations after the Smithfield acquisition as well as transformations in China’s pork industries. As income grows and diets change, there has been an increasing demand for high-quality pork and more processed pork products. However, China’s swine and pork industries are still at an early stage of development as evidenced by the low market concentration, intensive use of labour, a proliferation of intermediaries, and low levels of technology. Bounded by the established consumer preferences for freshness and the status quo in the midstream and upstream segments, Shuanghui is in a slow process of upgrading its domestic operations with Smithfield’s leading brands, import of chilled and frozen pork, advanced technologies, and the vertically integrated business model after this acquisition. In particular, it remains unclear whether Shuanghui can follow Smithfield’s experience to establish stable and safe hog supplies by multiplying self-owned hog farms, maintain and expand its current contracts with large-scale commercial hog farms, or rely more on global sourcing of pork primarily from the U.S.     

Examining professionals’ identification in the workplace: The roles of organizational prestige,work-unit prestige,and professional status

Drawing on social identity theory, we hypothesize that professionals develop their organizational and work-unit identifications through organizational prestige and work-unit prestige respectively. We further hypothesize that professional status negatively interacts with organizational prestige and work-unit prestige to affect the development of their organizational and work-unit identifications from the perspectives of self-enhancement and uncertainty reduction. A two-phase survey on 386 hospital nurses in central China provides general support for the hypotheses. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.