Progress in Language, Literature and Education Research Vol. 9

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has gravely impacted the education system across the world. The imposition of the worldwide lockdown in order to prevent the spread of the deadly virus has led to the unprecedented shutting down of educational institutions. The UNESCO report suggests that nearly 90% of the student population has been hit by coronavirus during the month of April 2020. The migration of the teaching learning process to online mode during the pandemic has posed a plethora of difficulties and challenges for young students across the world. It highlights the difficulties faced by students and the stress on the education system during times of medical health emergencies and lockdown situations in the past. The primary objective of this study is to undertake a narrative review of studies assessing the impact of the lockdown crisis on student well-being and education.

Methods: Keyword searches of PubMed and Google Scholar databases led to the identification of 25 studies for the present review.

Results: Studies (n = 25) exploring the students’ experience of lockdown and the impact of pandemic situations on their education were identified. Analysis of the results of these studies revealed the following main themes: Impact on students’ mental health, causes of deteriorated mental health of students: multiple heterogeneous stressors, socio-economic divide in education, gendered impact of epidemics and impact on the educational system: challenges of e-learning.

Conclusion: Lockdown situations not only disrupt the normal study routine of students and cause a slowdown in their learning curve, it also creates a significant mental burden causing adverse impacts on their mental health. The lack of appropriate technological devices and the lack of sufficient internet bandwidth has deepened the educational divide. Remote education systems have proven inadequate in replicating the chalk-and-talk methodologies of teachers. The study suggested future direction including teachers should be professionally trained and motivated to upgrade their pedagogy to meet the demands arising from the shift to online education.

India has the second-largest tribal population after Africa, and Schedule Tribes account for over 9% of the country's population, with over 705 identified STs now existent. The Ministry of Tribal Affairs is making far too many efforts to help tribal people with their economic, medical, and educational growth, and has also launched a number of initiatives to manage these enormously complicated undertakings, notably in higher education. Another important purpose of the Indian Government is to nurture indigenous young who, for whatever reasons, are unable to exhibit their skills on an appropriate platform. This article attempts to focus on the core premise of government initiatives for developing youthful talent for which an informal approach of employing Boolean operators was applied for the primary database searching as a result of which numerous research articles, public platforms, news articles and governmental portals were reviewed. Based on the study, it is concluded that the tribal people need to be educated about all government programs in order to create a strong bridge between the primitive tribal groups and the society. Initiatives such as the National Talent Pool will help with this, and young people of indigenous descent may facilitate the same.

The purpose of the review is to explore the main methodological approaches used to research leadership in the field of education. This article offers a small-scale systematic review spanning three years of empirical research (from 2016 to 2019) on educational leadership. Practice within the field focused on stories told by former educational leaders, and their prescriptions for practice were based on their ideological beliefs and personal experiences in life. To identify suitable empirical research studies a bounded search was carried out into specific bibliographic databases such as, “Educational Resources Information Centre” (ERIC), and “The British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society” (BELMAS). In total, 23 empirical studies on educational leadership were sampled from 11 peer-reviewed journals. The findings suggest that from 2016 onward mixed methods and case study research designs have become increasingly important in the field of educational leadership. Interviews, observations, focus groups and document analysis have been the most common data collection methods in qualitative studies, while surveys and close-ended questionnaires have been dominant methods to collect quantitative data in this area. The average number of participants involved in the qualitative studies was 30, and 400 was a good sample size for quantitative studies. The most widely used methods for analyzing qualitative data were grounded theory, thematic analysis, and content analysis. The primary methods for analyzing quantitative data were factor analysis and descriptive statistics analysis.  This systematic review represents diverse and rich resources for current and future scholarship. Studying these resources provides a better appreciation of how methodological approaches have been developed in the field of educational leadership and management over time.

This study aims to investigate the challenges faced by undergraduate and graduate students of English language and translation in interpreting and translating English idiomatic expressions (IEs) into Arabic. The significance of this research lies in the fact that while native speakers frequently use IEs in social interactions, there is insufficient emphasis on developing students' pragmatic competence in undergraduate education. IEs are language-specific and may or may not have equivalents in other languages, making their study crucial for speakers of other languages to acquire adequate pragmatic competence in English.

The study employed an interpretation/translation task consisting of three English formulaic expressions to assess the semantic and pragmatic competence of 83 undergraduate English language students and 13 graduate students of Applied Linguistics and Translation. The results, based on their written interpretations/translations and informal responses, confirmed that 'inter-lingual transfer' occurs when foreign students translate from their mother tongue to a foreign language. The findings revealed that graduate students significantly outperformed their undergraduate counterparts, likely due to their ongoing training in translating material to and from the target language and culture.

The study emphasizes the difficulty non-native English speakers experience in encountering IEs, as comprehending some expressions requires both semantic and pragmatic competence. It also highlights the discrepancies between undergraduate and graduate students at An-Najah National University.

In conclusion, this study underscores the importance of providing students with sufficient training in pragmatics, intercultural communication, and translation to enhance their ability to interpret and translate idiomatic expressions accurately. It recommends that educators allocate more effort to developing students' pragmatic competence in undergraduate education to facilitate effective cross-cultural communication.

In the scenario of increasing demand for management education, the number of B-schools has mushroomed, but unfortunately, required quality is not maintained, which has led to a lack of job opportunities and high expectations from employers. Knowing the dearth of quality education and increased rate of faculty member attrition in the last few years with the increase in the number of B-schools in Bangalore, the management has the challenge of conjoining its goals with the faculty aspirations, in order to successfully overcome the problem of high attrition and attracting and retaining the best performers. To solve the problem of attrition of faculty members, retention of faculty members is inevitable for the success of B-schools. In order to ensure quality education, there is a need for strategies for recruiting and retaining talented faculty members. The researcher has used 12 variables/dimensions to address the research questions. For the study, the sample size is 455 (407 faculty members from VTU and BU affiliated B-schools and 48 management members from the same VTU and BU affiliated B-schools). The proposed study is a descriptive qualitative research. The investigation is carried out at B-schools affiliated with VTU and BU in the city of Bangalore. The data collected is tabulated and analyzed using the SPSS 20.0 version, correlation analysis, group statistics, and ANOVA with more emphasis on factor analysis, percentage and ranking methods. To know in detail the general causes of attrition of faculty members in B-schools and its impact on individuals and organizations has also been studied and presented.

The important findings depicted that the majority of the management respondents agree that the attrition is less. But the majority of the faculty members, have agreed that, they joined the institution because of vacant positions, and this has recorded the highest percentage against the joining of faculty members because of the increase in the intake of students. An interaction with a few ex-faculty members, based on their exit interviews in a few institutions revealed that there is a gap between the responses of management and faculty members. The need of the hour for every B-school is, motivating and retaining such faculty members and to think and adopt a vigorous human resource policy which would really give confidence about the institute in their minds. Faculty members are keen on such strategic career moves which assure employment and satisfaction towards job security.

This paper aims to investigate the interpretation of anaphors in Dholuo in different contexts to ascertain their relevance in utterances. A number of studies on languages all over the world indicate the presence of anaphors such as reflexives and reciprocals. These anaphors occupy different positions with regard to their occurrence, hence determining their varied interpretations. This could probably be due to anaphors deriving reference from the antecedent that occurs before them in an utterance. These anaphors are also marked as morphemes or lexically marked. Dholuo an African language, for instance, marks the reflexive and the reciprocal by the same morpheme, which poses some ambiguity in their interpretation. A descriptive design was employed to describe the anaphors using Relevance Theory (RT) as the tool for analysis. The corpus of primary data used in this paper consists of a string of sentences with anaphors elicited through the researcher’s intuition as a native speaker, and also from the participants through semi-structured interviews. In order to ensure validity, data was verified by six adult native speakers selected through a purposeful sampling technique. Data collected was presented systematically and then analyzed procedurally. RT Cognitive and Communicative Principles were employed to describe the relevance of the anaphoric utterances in the utterance. To guarantee a clear interpretation of the utterance in various situations, a Relevance Comprehension Procedure (RCP) was added. The outcome shows that when context is added, Dholuo anaphors can be distinguished between reflexives and reciprocals. Because the anaphora is used so frequently, it is clear that both the speaker and the listener understand the utterance's inferred meaning.  However, RT may fail to provide an immediate interpretation of the utterance with the prevailing context. This led to violation of the RCP as more contexts are presented to ensure the right interpretation is reached. This calls for the theory to accommodate utterances that require a lot of effort to interpret.

For the child, the loss is experienced as a painful and traumatic experience. This paper deals with the role of the teacher towards the grieving child. As the school space is de facto a space where students spend a large part of their daily life, it is particularly important to determine in which ways, through which techniques the modern school will contribute decisively to the modification of students' perceptions of loss and how he will handle his students who experience the specific situations, taking into account that there is a deficit in the Greek educational reality and the required attention has not been given to the specific taboo subject, which teachers often find difficult to handle. The present study was based on bibliographic data, such as empirical, theoretical studies, or other bibliographic research and writings. The study concludes on three basic principles of managing a grieving child a) to help children feel safe and recognize the reality of death, b) to create an environment that will facilitate children to talk about their feelings, c) to form appropriate learning opportunities aiming to educate children about death.

The purpose of this article is to review the theoretical and practical basis of teacherhood in graphic design education. Experiences in the art teacher education program inspired us to discuss and analyze the essence of teacherhood in graphic design. In Finland, graphic designers are currently trained at the Aalto University, Helsinki, and at the University of Lapland, Rovaniemi. The review is based on research on and other literature discussing graphic design education. In addition, experiences in graphic design education provided at the University of Lapland provided the basis for the analysis of the essence of teacherhood in graphic design. The most essential expertise in the work of teachers of graphic design includes natural artistic skills and creativity and the ability to get pupils to throw themselves into the world of creativity. I will discuss the phenomenon from two points of view: What internal and external factors do teacherhood in graphic design education theoretically and practically consist of? By answering these questions my aim is to create a model of the basics of teacherhood in graphic design education that can help the study and development of graphic design education and the profession of teachers of graphic design education. The teachers of graphic design who have a clear understanding of the goals and contents of their work can handle their work without support by leaning on their strong professional identity.

The article studies the conceptual metaphors of time in the sonnets of Shakespeare in light of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) of Lakoff and Johnson [1] presented in their book, Metaphors We Live By, and Kovecses’ [2] informative views in his book, Metaphor: A Practical Introduction. The sonnets of Shakespeare also reflect some of St. Augustine’s views on the passage of time, which divide time into the three components of past, present, and future. Indeed, the subject of time is a pervasive theme in the sonnets of Shakespeare. The extracted metaphors selected from a variety of sonnets that tackle the theme of time will be divided into three sub-categories: structural, ontological, and orientational. Using the cognitive approach to understand the abstract concept of time in terms of a variety of concrete concepts with an experiential dimension allows the reader to perceive this concept from different perspectives. Under ontological metaphors, the study addresses metaphors in the forms of personification, metonymy, and synecdoche. The study endeavors to show that the cluster of source domains Shakespeare provides in the metaphors map an association of multidimensional possibilities that improve our understanding of time. Also, this consortium of possibilities points to the creativity and wide scope of Shakespeare’s vision. The study hopes to add another vantage point from which to view Shakespeare’s presentation of time in light of modern progress in the studies of conceptual metaphors and cognitive poetics. Shakespeare’s creativity expands the human consciousness of time and initiates more perspectives from which to evaluate the human experience with that concept. These perspectives are based on the human experience of nature, society, and culture.

Aims: The aim of this study is to determine and evaluate the problems and solution suggestions experienced in vocational education centers according to the opinions of apprentice students studying at the vocational education center, employer-master instructors who send students to the vocational education center, and administrators-teachers working in the vocational education center. 

Study Design:  The research was conducted in accordance with a qualitative study. This study, which was conducted with the Vocational Education Center and master instructors in a city located in the Black Sea region, was accepted as a master's thesis in 2019. 

Methodology: The study group of the research, which was conducted in accordance with qualitative research techniques, consists of 50 students studying at a city in the black sea region Vocational Education Center, 25 employers-master instructors from different branches who send students to the vocational education center, and five managers and 15 teachers working at the vocational education center, a total of 95 people.  

Results: As a result of the research; apprentice students studying at a vocational training center; It is understood that they have difficulty adapting to working life due to reasons such as family, employer and working conditions. It has been observed that employers have difficulty in adapting to changing apprentice student profiles and that they work towards the solution of student problems and their development in vocational training centers. However, it has been understood that the existing workshops are insufficient due to their condition and lack of equipment, the importance given by the State to vocational education has increased and studies have been carried out in this direction.