Synthesis Of Empirical Studies Research Articles

Embracing Christian Values: Positive Relationships and Academic Achievement in Higher Education

<p class="abstracttextDILIGENTIA">This literature review and analysis intricately examines the dynamic interplay between educators and students within the realm of higher education, with a keen focus on the spiritual dimensions elucidated by Christian principles and biblical wisdom. Rooted in the fundamental belief that education embodies a sacred journey, this study delves deep into the profound impact of positive relationships on both academic achievements and spiritual maturation. By establishing meaningful connections between contemporary educational practices and timeless biblical teachings, the research sheds light on how Christian virtues, such as love, compassion, and empathy, serve as foundational pillars in cultivating a spiritually enriching learning environment. The synthesis of empirical studies, theoretical frameworks, and biblical insights not only enhances our understanding of the transformative potential of positive relationships in higher education but also underscores their pivotal role in fostering holistic development on a spiritual level. Through this comprehensive exploration, the study contributes significantly to the discourse on the symbiotic relationship between academic success and spiritual growth, emphasizing the importance of nurturing positive relationships as a cornerstone of holistic education in higher learning institutions.</p>

Enhancing Pre-Service Teacher Education Curriculum for English Language Instruction in South African Classrooms: Navigating Technological Advancements and Cultural Diversity

The educational environment in South Africa is characterised by linguistic diversity and technological advancements, which present particular difficulties and opportunities for pre-service teacher education programmes. This systematic literature review explores the effectiveness of current pre-service teacher training programmes in addressing the demands of teaching the English language in South African classrooms. Drawing upon a synthesis of empirical studies, theoretical frameworks, and policy documents, this review critically examines how existing teacher education curricula prepare educators to navigate the complexities of English language instruction within diverse cultural and linguistic contexts. The review follows the PRISMA guidelines, systematically searching and synthesising relevant literature published between 2000 and 2022. The findings reveal a range of insights into the strengths and limitations of current pre-service teacher education programmes in South Africa concerning English language instruction. Key themes emerge around the integration of technology in language teaching, strategies for addressing linguistic diversity, and the alignment of curriculum with the needs of diverse learners. The review highlights the importance of incorporating pedagogical approaches that leverage technology to enhance English language learning outcomes while fostering intercultural competence among pre-service teachers. Furthermore, it underscores the need for a culturally responsive pedagogy that acknowledges and respects the linguistic diversity present in South African classrooms.

The Relationship between Study Habits and Academic Performance among University Students

Abstract: This paper examines the intricate relationship between study habits and academic performance among university students. Drawing upon a synthesis of empirical studies, theoretical frameworks, and psychological models, the abstract delves into the multifaceted dynamics shaping students' study habits and their consequent impact on academic achievement. Key factors such as time management, learning strategies, motivation, self-regulation, and environmental influences are explored within the context of diverse student populations and academic disciplines. Moreover, the abstract elucidates the reciprocal nature of this relationship, wherein effective study habits not only enhance academic performance but also contribute to holistic student development. Additionally, it sheds light on the role of technology, social media, and other contemporary influences in shaping modern study habits and their implications for academic success. Finally, the abstract underscores the importance of tailored interventions and educational strategies aimed at optimizing study habits to foster optimal academic outcomes and lifelong learning skills among university students

Socio-Cultural Impact of Virtual Reality Technology on Art Appreciation and Cultural Engagement

Purpose: The main objective of this study was to explore the socio-cultural impact of virtual reality technology on art appreciation and cultural engagement.
 Methodology: The study adopted a desktop methodology. Desk research refers to secondary data or that which can be collected without fieldwork. Desk research is basically involved in collecting data from existing resources hence it is often considered a low cost technique as compared to field research, as the main cost is involved in executive’s time, telephone charges and directories. Thus, the study relied on already published studies, reports and statistics. This secondary data was easily accessed through the online journals and library.
 Findings: The findings revealed that there exists a contextual and methodological gap relating to the socio-cultural impact of virtual reality technology on art appreciation and cultural engagement. The empirical review revealed that in the wake of rapid technological advancements, virtual reality technology has emerged as a powerful tool in transforming the landscape of art appreciation and cultural engagement. Through a synthesis of empirical studies, it is evident that VR has brought about profound changes, unlocking new dimensions of artistic experiences and redefining cultural engagement paradigms. Virtual reality has succeeded in reinvigorating art appreciation, transcending the boundaries of physical space and time. Users are now able to immerse themselves fully in artworks, experiencing them in ways that were previously unimaginable.
 Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: The Cultural Proximity theory, Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and the Cultural Capital theory may be used to anchor future studies on the socio-cultural impact of virtual reality technology on art appreciation and cultural engagement. The study recommended that cultural institutions and art organizations should actively integrate virtual reality technology into their exhibits and educational programs. A concerted effort must be made to ensure that virtual reality remains inclusive and accessible to all individuals, including those with disabilities. Ethical guidelines and regulations should be established to govern the collection and use of user data in virtual reality experiences. Emerging artists should embrace virtual reality as a means to gain exposure and access new audiences.

‘Writing to Learn’ Research: A Synthesis of Empirical Studies (2004-2019)

<p style="text-align:justify">This paper adds to writing to learn research by reporting on empirical and conceptual studies on the subject matter but also by speculating on the learning virtues that writing offers besides its function as an assessment tool, namely that it can provide students with an adequate avenue to reflect on their learning. For this purpose, I reviewed 17 studies spanning a 17-year period (2004-2020) and representing both the L1 and L2 contexts. Reviewed studies examined writing to learn in different disciplines and grade levels across countries, including the US, Canada, Turkey, Norway, Spain etc. Later in this paper, I set out to elaborate on thematic patterns if these existed and identify areas where further research may be warranted. Findings indicated that writing to learn is an effective instructional strategy across different grade-levels and disciplines both in the L1 and L2 teaching and learning contexts. Finally, this paper overviews relevant pedagogical implications and future research directions.</p>

Incentivizing stewardship in a biodiversity hot spot: land managers in the grasslands

Federal and provincial governments of Canada recently signed onto a Pan-Canadian Approach to Transforming Species at Risk Conservation. The approach is based on collaboration among jurisdictions and stakeholders to enhance multiple species and ecosystem-based conservation in selected biodiversity hot spots. In this review paper, we focus on one of the biodiversity hot spots—the South of the Divide area in the province of Saskatchewan—to propose appropriate mechanisms to incentivize stewardship on agricultural Crown lands. Through a focused review and synthesis of empirical studies, we propose a range of policy instruments and incentives that can help deliver multi-species at risk conservation on Crown agricultural lands in Saskatchewan. We outline a range of policy instruments and incentives that are relevant to conservation on Crown agricultural lands and argue that a portfolio of options will have the greatest social acceptability. More germane is the need to foster collaboration between the government of Saskatchewan, other provincial/territorial governments, and the federal government, nongovernmental organizations, and land managers. Such collaboration is critical for enhanced decision-making and institutional change that reflects the urgent call for creating awareness of species at risk policies, building trust, and leveraging the local knowledge of land managers for conservation.

Content and language integrated learning in Latin America 2008-2018: Ten years of research and practice

Bilingual education, usually a community’s L1 and English continues spreading geographically and across educational systems worldwide. With this expansion, the development of bilingual education approaches is under constant scrutiny. One recent approach is content and language integrated learning (CLIL). European in origin, CLIL can be viewed as an educational or language teaching approach and it refers to the teaching of curricular content and L2 in an integrated manner. This approach has received international attention, yet, how CLIL unfolds in settings outside Europe appears underrepresented in international publications. The aim of this article is to provide a critical review of CLIL in Latin America between 2008 and 2018. We surveyed 64 items (articles, book chapters, and dissertations) published in regional and international outlets: 41 empirical studies, 19 practice-oriented publications, and four reviews. It begins by summarizing the CLIL continuum with a focus on content- and language-driven CLIL and CLIL frameworks. It then provides a synthesis of empirical studies and practice-oriented publications about CLIL in different Latin American settings. The corpus is analyzed following these unifying themes: pedagogy, perceptions and beliefs, teacher education, global citizenship, and language development. From this review, it transpires that Latin American CLIL is mostly implemented and examined from a language-driven perspective in private primary, secondary and higher education. Suggestions and implications for further research and practice are included.

An integral perspective on teacher evaluation: a review of empirical studies

Teacher evaluation has been used for decades in schools as a human resource management practice to hold teachers accountable and to help them develop professionally. This paper provides a synthesis of empirical studies about teacher evaluation. We use an overarching theoretical framework, the value chain, as a guide to collect and map insights from empirical research about teacher evaluation. First, we mapped the variables that are described as significant for teacher evaluation from a quantitative viewpoint. Second, by adding the qualitative insights, we gained a more detailed understanding about how these significant relationships work. After a screening of the literature, 15 quantitative and 21 qualitative studies were included in this review. The results elaborate on the definition and measurement of teacher evaluation, the outcomes of teacher evaluation and important context variables for teacher evaluation, all found in empirical research on teacher evaluation. This review provides an overview of the empirical results from the teacher evaluation research literature about antecedents and consequences of teacher evaluation. We conclude with paths for future research.

Corporate Governance and Voluntary Disclosure: A Synthesis of Empirical Studies

Voluntary disclosure (VD) is considered potentially important for efficient functioning of the capital market as it communicates firms’ performance and governance to shareholders and potential investors, which boost their confidence. This article attempts to provide a brief conceptual framework of VD and corporate governance (CG), and also reviews the empirical literature dealing with relationship between them. To this end, the article uses systematic electronic literature search method, which takes into account 65 empirical studies published over the period 1998–2018. An investigation of empirical findings points to some factors that may have contributed toward the apparent inconsistent findings observed to date. In particular, the article focuses on two intervening factors for variation of results—such as CG system and measurement of explanatory variables. The findings suggest that studies mostly from Anglo-Saxon system (ASS) show complementary relationship between different attributes of CG with VD, whereas in case of communitarian system, studies mostly depict an insignificant impact of CG attributes on VD except for few studies showing their positive/negative impact on VD. However, in case of emerging market system (EMS), some studies show substitutive relationship between board independence (BI) and VD while other CG attributes such as board size (BS), (GD), and audit committee independence (ACI) in most of the studies complement VD supporting the resource-based perspective. Furthermore, the association of ownership structure (OS) and role duality (RD) with VD is mixed. Another factor, which is considered to be added to variation of results, is measurement of explanatory variables whereby albeit studies employed same concepts, operational definition of variables intervenes into the relationship between CG and VD. The findings of this article provide some deeper insights about the complementary and substitutive relationships between CG and VD by integrating diverse empirical findings under different research contexts. Future research can extend to analyze some other institutional factors like investors’ protection rights and legal enforcement, which might also have played some role in influencing the relationship between CG and VD. Furthermore, it is also evident from the review that BS and BI are the most commonly studied CG attributes in relation to VD, whereas attributes like GD and ACI, despite their theoretical relevance and practical importance are least studied in relation to VD, thus signaling the need to focus on these attributes in future studies.

Critical consciousness development: a systematic review of empirical studies.

Developing an understanding of the social and political basis of marginalization is an important educational task for health education guided by frameworks of social justice. With the intention of developing an evaluative framework for use in further research, the aim of this review article is to present a synthesized framework of critical consciousness development, developed from a systematic search and qualitative synthesis of empirical studies that have examined the processes by which individuals come to critically reflect upon and act on oppressive social relations. A systematic search was conducted examining English-language literature produced between January 1970 and May 2017 within databases of PsycINFO, SCOPUS and ProQuest. A total of 20 articles were selected following a two-stage screening process and an assessment of methodological quality. Thematic analysis of findings from these texts produced a framework of critical consciousness development consisting of six qualitative processes and the relationships between them, including the priming of critical reflection, information creating disequilibrium, introspection, revising frames of reference, developing agency for change and acting against oppression. This synthesized framework of critical consciousness development is presented as a useful tool for assessing learning within critical pedagogies, albeit requiring some modification to suit specific cultural contexts and epistemologies.

Toward an integrative model for online incivility research: A review and synthesis of empirical studies on the antecedents and consequences of uncivil discussions online

Toward an integrative model for online incivility research: A review and synthesis of empirical studies on the antecedents and consequences of uncivil discussions online

Minding the gap and overlap: a literature review of fragmentation of primary care for chronic dialysis patients

BackgroundCare coordination is a challenge for patients with kidney disease, who often see multiple providers to manage their associated complex chronic conditions. Much of the focus has been on primary care physician (PCP) and nephrologist collaboration in the early stages of chronic kidney disease, but less is known about the co-management of the patients in the end-stage of renal disease. We conducted a systematic review and synthesis of empirical studies on primary care services for dialysis patients.MethodsSystematic literature search of MEDLINE/PubMED, CINAHL, and EmBase databases for studies, published until August 2015. Inclusion criteria included publications in English, empirical studies involving human subjects (e.g., patients, physicians), conducted in US and Canadian study settings that evaluated primary care services in the dialysis patient population.ResultsFourteen articles examined three major themes of primary care services for dialysis patients: perceived roles of providers, estimated time in providing primary care, and the extent of dialysis patients’ use of primary care services. There was general agreement among providers that PCPs should be involved but time, appropriate roles, and miscommunication are potential barriers to good primary care for dialysis patients. Although many dialysis patients report having a PCP, the majority rely on primary care from their nephrologists. Studies using administrative data found lower rates of preventive care services than found in studies relying on provider or patient self-report.DiscussionThe extant literature revealed gaps and opportunities to optimize primary care services for dialysis patients, foreshadowing the challenges and promise of Accountable Care / End-Stage Seamless Care Organizations and care coordination programs currently underway in the United States to improve clinical and logistical complexities of care for this commonly overlooked population. Studies linking the relationship between providers and patients’ receipt of primary care to outcomes will serve as important comparisons to the nascent care models for ESRD patients, whose value is yet to be determined.

Ownership structure and voluntary disclosure: A synthesis of empirical studies

In this article, we meta-analyse 69 empirical studies assessing the association between corporate voluntary disclosure and ownership concentration and types, and how institutional characteristics and research design moderate these relationships. Our overall analyses show that state, foreign and institutional ownerships have a positive effect but managerial ownership and ownership concentration have a negative effect on voluntary disclosure. Since the overall effect may conceal the underlying factors that cause heterogeneity in the effect size distribution, we select two important institutional factors: country-level investor protection and the equity market development, and research design and journal quality, to explain the mixed and conflicting findings. Our results emphasise the need to consider legal and institutional characteristics, and researcher induced-artefacts, in understanding the role of ownership structure and identity in corporate voluntary disclosure.

Farmers’ Perceptions and Adaptations to Climate Change in Sub-Sahara Africa: A Synthesis of Empirical Studies and Implications for Public Policy in African Agriculture

The problem of climate change in Africa has the potential of undermining sustainable development efforts if steps are not taken to respond to its adverse consequences. This study reviews existing and available literature on farmers’ perceptions and adaptations to climate change in sub-Sahara Africa. It is evident that the majority of farmers in sub-Sahara Africa are aware of warmer temperatures and changes in precipitation patterns. To respond to these changes, farmers have adopted crop diversification, planting different crop varieties, changing planting and harvesting dates to correspond to the changing pattern of precipitation, irrigation, planting tree crops,water and soil conservation techniques, and switching to non-farm income activities. Years of farming experience, household size, years of education, access to credit facilities, access to extension services and off-farm income are among the signicant determinants of adopting climate change adaptation measures. To enable sub-Sahara African farmers to develop more effective climate change adaptationstrategies,there is the need for African governments to support farmers by providing the necessary resources such as credit, information and extension workers to train farmers on climate change adaptation strategies and technologies, and investing in climate resilient projects like, improving on existing or building new water infrastructure and building climate change monitoring and reporting stations.

Company-Specific Risk Premiums: Update on the Scholarly Evidence

We provide a comprehensive and up-to-date synthesis of empirical studies examining company-specific risk premiums (CSRPs). We cover a number of new papers that have revived an academic debate as to whether or not company-specific risk is priced into the cost of capital. We show that the current evidence supports the original Fama and MacBeth (1973) finding that company-specific risk does not explain variation in cross-sectional stock returns and that holders of risky securities do not appear to receive compensation for bearing company-specific risk. Thus, the most recent empirical evidence does not support the assertions of some practitioners that the CSRP should be included in the cost of capital.

Frontline Welfare Work: Understanding Social Work's Role

From a synthesis of empirical studies examining worker–client interactions under welfare reform, this article identifies frontline workers' responsibilities and the social work profession's role in ensuring qualified workers provide services. Frontline workers impact service delivery through three mechanisms: assessment, information provision, and interpretation of program regulations. However, few workers receive social work training and clients often receive limited, nonindividualized services. Specific recommendations for agency administrators reflect that administrators are critical to improving frontline delivery. They should recognize social work's role, give workers reasonable and achievable job expectations, and collaborate with educators, researchers, and policy makers to support a stipend-based training program for social work students. To buttress the need for such a program, research needs to examine how workers' education levels influence service quality and client outcomes.

Literacy for Middle School Students: Challenges of Cultural Synthesis

In this manuscript, the author explores the question, What does research suggest for middle level readers? To answer it, she conducts a synthesis of empirical studies published between 1990 and 2001 that appeared in journals linked to the author’s professional membership (i.e., Research in Middle Level Education (RMLE), Reading Research Quarterly (RRQ), Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (JAAL), American Educational Research Journal (AERJ), Reading Research and Instruction (RRI), and Review of Educational Research (RER)). This examination noted attention to eight categories: (1) interests, (2), strategy instruction, (3) vocabulary, (4) student attributes, (5) comprehension, (6) context, (7) discussion, and (8) tutoring. The author then explores the implications of these findings for researchers and practitioners. Specifically, the author calls for a stronger attention to the literacy learning of middle level students and a greater degree of interplay between researcher and practitioner agendas.

"Internautes et joueurs". La nouvelle culture des loisirs chez les jeunes Danois

Discourse on cultural practices does not always correspond to the reality revealed by surveys. The difference between this reality and the image some people have is partly due to generation gaps. The author supports her argument with a synthesis of empirical studies in Denmark on children's and adolescents' uses of various media. Among other differences, she notes the widening gap between young boys and girls.

Sex Differences in Attitudes, Achievement and Use of Computers

While there is much literature suggesting reasons why there are differences between males and females with respect to computer usage, achievement and attitudes, there is a paucity of empirical research. This study discusses a meta-analysis or synthesis of empirical studies and finds small differences in attitude and no differences in achievement between males and females. Two Australian studies are then reported. One study investigated differences between male and female students, parents, and teachers in 32 schools that have been involved with computers for some time. The second study was based on a representative sample of 1000 schools throughout Australia. The research supported the conclusion of small differences in attitudes, but pointed to a polarity in that as many males as females liked computers, but many more girls ardently disliked computers. There were no differences between primary male and female students in usage and attitudes towards computers, but as the students progressed through secondary schools, the differences became marked. Various reasons for these findings are evaluated and some strategies suggested to encourage girls to use computers.

After the Ax Falls: Job Loss as a Career Transition

Despite the improving economy, consolidation and staff reductions characterize the human resource staffing policies of many firms. Furthermore, economic and demographic pressures indicate that involuntary job loss will be an increasingly common experience for managers and professionals in the coming decade. Based on a synthesis of empirical studies, this paper proposes a model showing factors which may generate career growth from job loss. Organizational strategies are recommended for creative management of this career transition and suggestions are provided to focus future research.