14th Annual International Conference on Languages & Linguistics
5-8 July 2021, Athens, Greece Program (Athens Local Time)
Monday 5 July 2021
08.30-09.00 Registration
09.00-09.30 Opening and Welcoming Remarks:
Gregory T. Papanikos, President, ATINER.
Valia Spiliotopoulos, Head, Languages & Linguistics Unit, ATINER and Instructor, Department of Language and Literacy Education, The University of British Columbia, Canada. (Video)
09:30-11:30
Cornelia Paraskevas, Professor , Western Oregon University, USA. Title: Ensuring Equity in Linguistics Classrooms: Contract Grading.
I teach linguistics to English majors and teacher candidates at a US access institution. This instructional context presents unique challenges: because the introduction to linguistics class is a required course, students view it as a ‘hoop’ with no apparent ‘practical’ application; they also find the content more challenging than other English and education courses they are taking, with the exception of math. The difficulty of the content, the frequent low scores and the lack of obvious ‘practical application’ can result in students’ loss of motivation and loss of sense of agency. There is an additional, broader challenge: for the past few years, there have been increasing calls to shift the focus in US college classrooms from teaching to learning. I wanted to heed that call: specifically, I wanted to find ways to not only present the content but also to help students develop their intellectual tools and learning strategies, increase their motivation and reduce their fear and, ultimately, to give them agency, to determine their grade. but also to strengthen their metacognitive awareness which is critical for learning; additionally, I want to establish a culture of “forgiveness’ (while maintaining high standards) and provide some flexibility since my students’ life challenges can affect their academic performance. The solution to all these challenges is a variation of contract grading called ‘specs grading’, a grading practice commonly used in science courses. In broad terms, the outcomes for the linguistics course are unpacked into a set of learning targets (skills) to be mastered. These targets are separated into foundational and advanced, distributed along different target grades. For example, if a student wants to pursue an A, they must meet all foundational learning targets and a number of advanced ones; for a target grade C, a student needs to simply meet the foundational targets. In addition to meeting learning targets, depending on the target grade, students “agree” to complete learning logs that strengthen their metacognitive awareness and encourage self-learning. Students initially found this level of freedom unsettling: however, their end of term comments in multiple sections reveal that they appreciated the freedom to pursue the grade they wanted to as well as the opportunity to understand themselves as learners. Using specs and contract grading in a linguistics class has the potential to transform teaching: it creates a learning environment that allows for student agency and self-learning. It is a learner-centered approach that can create self-directed learners regardless of their family background and prior learning experiences, ultimately democratizing the classroom.
Marija Drazdauskiene, Professor, Wszechnica Polska, Poland. Title: Idioms and the Directness of Language in Politics (Preliminary).
This is a functional study of the use of idioms in publications on politics, simultaneously deliberating on the question of how the directness of language forms its result and how it functions in the social context of native speakers. Idioms are shown to have been widely used in publications on politics and their expressive meaning has been exploited with a purpose in political contexts. Semantic and functional analysis of idioms has shown that, despite their direct and pointed meaning, idioms are favoured by journalists much to the satisfaction of their audience. An analysis of diplomatic language in one article indicated a contrast with the journalistic language without criticising it. Both styles of language are found to have their audience and appreciation. But the direct language of journalists appears to oblige the author to comply with a licence of usage, which only a native speaker can satisfy.
11:30-13:30
Gabrielle Malfatti, Director of Global Engagement, University of Missouri, USA. Stephen Whitney, Associate Professor, University of Missouri, USA. Title: Collaborative International Course A Constructivist Approach.
As school demographics around the world shift due in part by global human mobility patterns, it becomes ever more imperative for in-service and pre-service teachers to understand educational systems from countries other than where they are based. Even as demographics change, the process of integrating globally-minded education into K-12 classrooms in the United States is still within its beginning phase and presents an opportunity to infuse deeper global perspectives into teacher preparation. The authors developed a new course primarily aimed at undergraduate students in the teacher degree program at a large midwestern university to provide an opportunity for these future educators to take a comparative, critical look at how education is imparted in various regions of the world. During the course, students learned about educational policies, innovations, approaches and promising practices from various countries. During class meetings, we held discussions, reflections and fact-checking for implicit biases and newly acquired information. One of the methods used for fact checking were two virtual meetings with pre-service teachers studying at universities in South Africa and Colombia. During these meetings, the U.S. based students had the opportunity to ask questions about the practices they had encountered in their readings and the African and Latin American students also had their questions answered about education in the U.S. This presentation will examine the design, implementation and review of that international collaborative undergraduate course through constructivist learning theory. Constructivist learning theory postulates that learning occurs within the contextual social/cultural interaction with an individual’s prior knowledge as an important filter. The authors will discuss how students’ prior experiences, current knowledge and their social/cultural lived experiences influenced the learning and classroom environment. The authors will also discuss practical issues raised over the semester. These topics include: limited knowledge of other places and peoples among future educators, finding international collaborators who share similar goals for the interaction, developing an online discussion etiquette for all involved to maximize the time spent on screen, and the limitations created by time zone differences. While the authors strove to create a balanced reciprocal learning experience for the U.S., South African and Colombian students and collaborating faculty, we recognized the privilege inherent in hosting the event, holding it in English, and working from a reading list we controlled. As we work on developing the second version of this course, we are engaging partners earlier in the planning process, identifying ways for more interaction among students, and developing more reflective assignments leading up to the virtual discussions. In the presentation, we will interact with colleagues from the international community who can learn from our process and also illumine the path ahead for this and other international collaborative educational endeavors.
Raphael Bar-El, Professor, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. David Bentolila, Senior Lecturer, Zefat Academic College, Israel. Dafna Schwartz, Director of the Research Authority, Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya – IDC, Israel. Title: A New Model of Reverse Mentoring for the Promotion of Innovation In SMEs.
In the rapid changes that are taking place in the business and technology environment, companies are making efforts to tune their antennae to new technology and innovation trends and to promote innovation accordingly. One of the programs for promoting innovation that has gained popularity in recent years in large companies is the Reverse Mentoring (RM). The idea is to pair talented junior employees who have up-to-date knowledge with senior employees. This interaction provides the senior employees with updated knowledge, tends and technology and infuses the organization with ideas and technology to promote innovation with relatively low cost and effort. The program is operated internally by each company. This program could be very beneficial for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that often encounter difficulties in promoting innovation. However, it appears that RM programs are not implemented by SMEs due to their size disadvantage, lack of organizational capacities, and primarily because they lack junior employees with the requisite up-to-date know-how. The current study contributes to the field of promoting innovation in SMEs by presenting a new RM model that could also be adapted to the specific SME characteristics and demonstrates its viability by presenting an experimental case study implemented in 2014 in the state of Ceara, Brazil. The main features of the new RM model are: a. The mentor is not one of the employees of the enterprise, but rather a graduate student or a young alumnus, with a specialization in innovation. b. Given the assumption that the lack of RM programs in SMEs is due to the existence of a market failure, the initiative for such a program is taken by a public organization, such as a government agency or a professional association. c. The role of the mentor is not to provide advisory recommendations to the mentee about specific professional activities, but rather to research and provide the mentee with appropriate relevant information, such as: a. Existing relevant technologies that can be adopted and adapted. b. Published relevant research relevant to the enterprise. c. Potential markets. d. National or global trends in relevant markets or technologies. This model was implemented by FIEC – the Federal Industry association of the state of Ceara within 22 companies, most of them SMEs. This experimental case study shows that this new RM model could be implemented effectively in SMEs for promoting innovation.
Samuel Kosolapov, Senior Lecturer, ORT Braude Academic College of Engineering, Israel. Title: Time-Effective Logistics of ZOOM-Based Image Processing Laboratory.
In “normal” time students of the ORT Braude Academic College of Engineering, enrolled to the course “Image Processing”, visit frontal lectures and, additionally, participates in the laboratories provided in the class equipped with computers. During the laboratories, students (organized by pairs) are asked to implement image-processing algorithms learned during frontal lectures by writing C and C++ code. Specifically, PC with Windows 10 and Visual Studio 2019 installed, is used to write the code. Additionally to the code, students are asked to prepare PowerPoint presentation, describing the code and results obtained. During the laboratory students may ask for help and, in case of need, the educator provides additional explanations. When ready, students demonstrate the presentation and the working code to the educator and answer the questions asked by the educator. The accepted policy is that if the presentation is good enough, and students reasonably answered the questions, they get a grade and, as a backup, E-Mailed a presentation and the code by using the special format developed specifically for that course. However, because of COVID-19 limitations, laboratories were requested to be executed by using ZOOM, and then, some of the elements of this logistics became problematic. Hence, the following changes were provided: students work by using their PC while being connected to the ZOOM. Students may still ask the educator for help. However, when ready, they E-Mailed the prepared presentation and the code to the educator by using the special format modified for the online laboratory specifics. During the laboratory educator monitors a specific E-Mail address and checks presented reports. Additionally, the educator checks if the code works. In case of problems, the educator asks for rework. The policy is that at the end students are expected to create a reasonably good report, and thus, to achieve a high grade. This logistics was tested during three semesters and was found to be adequate for the goals of the course.
Barbara Pavlock, Professor, Lehigh University, USA. Title: The Problem of Dido’s Desire for Fame in Vergil’s Aeneid.
14:30-15:00 Nadiia Kirnosova, Associate Professor, Taras Shevshenko National University of Kyiv Ukraine. Yulia Fedotova, Assistant Professor, Taras Shevshenko National University of Kyiv Ukraine. Title: Chinese and Japanese Characters from the Perspective of Multimodal Studies.
Texts written in characters seem to be very interesting from the perspective of multimodal studies, as characters when percepted and interpreted by a recipient activate more than one (usually audial) channel of processing information in our mind. This article aims to demonstrate, that a character can generate simultaneously at least three different modalities – visual, audial and vestibular, and influence a recipient in a deeper and more powerful way (than a sign from a phonetic alphabet). To show this, we choose modern Chinese and Japanese characters as live signs, and analyzed them functioning in texts with obviously utilitarian purposes – in advertisements. The main problem we were interesting in during conducting this research was the “information capacity” of a character. We find this problem very actual, because our life is full of messages aimed to influence us, and there is quit a big amount of these messages (advertisements, novels etc) written in characters, which need to be translated into other languages with non-character writing systems, in other words, they need to be recoded from multimodal way of conveying information into monomodal one, so translators in this case have to know how to shift between different channels of transmitting information, activated in any particular case, and how to use special means to convey maximum of possible information. We find out, that any character exists in three dimensions simultaneously and generates three modalities at the same time. Its correspondence with morphemes opens two channels for encoding information – first of all, it brings a space for audial modality through the acoustic form of a syllable, and then it opens a space for visual modality through the graphical form of a character. The latter form implies a space for vestibular modality, because as a “figure”, any character occupies its “ground” (a particular square area), which becomes a source of a sens of stability and symmetry, enriching linguistic message with non-verbal information. So, any text, written in characters, should be considered as verbal, visual and motoric at the same time and the history of Chinese and Japanese writing systems show that characters had been developing from image to scheme, from depicting a situation to recording a language. In other words, there was a precedent in the history of processing information when the image dominated messages and linguistic texts and there are writing systems (Chinese and Japanese characters), in which images still dominate, but they developed to reduce visual mode and increase verbal (audial) one.
15:00-15:30
Anita Stasulane, Professor, Daugavpils University, Latvia. Title: Heritage Site as Non-Formal Educational Environment.
Analysis presented in this paper is a part of a broader H2020 collaborative research project “Cultural Heritage and Identities of Europe’s Future” (CHIEF, agreement no. 770464) which is innovative in its approach to the cultural literacy of young people by privileging the importance of production and transition of cultural knowledge in both formal educational settings initiated from above, and a variety of informal social interactions. Heritage sites are important environments for young people’s socialization. To carry out qualitative investigation of young people’s experiences of engagement with the conventional and alternate forms of cultural heritage representation, the researchers selected one mainstream heritage site and one alternative heritage site in each of the consortium member countries: UK, Latvia, Croatia, Georgia, Turkey, Spain, Slovakia, India and Germany. These countries have a distinctive historical, cultural, political and social background that has shaped the experiences of youth and influenced various aspects of young people engagement and relationship with cultural heritage. The fieldwork conducted at heritage sites was aimed at finding out: (1) what is the understanding of culture and cultural heritage by visitors to heritage sites; (2) what determines the level of their engagement with the heritage sites; (3) what kind of experience young people gain when learning about cultural heritage; (4) what are young people’s practices of engaging with cultural heritage at the mainstream and alternative heritage sites. By addressing places of cultural socialisation and inter-cultural dialogue both in terms of various types of localities (big urban centres, small towns, and rural areas), and different socio-cultural environments (museums, theatres, art centres, memorial sites, youth groups and networks) the researchers examined the political and practical limitations of elitist and historically static understanding of European cultural heritage by unpacking its underlying politics of cultural selectivity, with reference to ‘heritage in making’. Each country research findings consider the factors influencing young people’s cultural socialisation, with a view to mapping both their cultural references and the existing and emerging forms of inter-cultural dialogue in which young people are engaged.
15:30-16:00
Maria Rosaria D’Acierno, Associate Professor, University of Naples Parthenope, Italy. Title: Phonetics, Phonology and Prosody in English as a Foreign Language.
16:00-16:30
Noreen Powers, Assistant Professor, Northeastern Illinois University, USA. Russell Wartalski, Assistant Professor, Northeastern Illinois University, USA. Title: In the Words of Our Students: Perspectives on Support through Advising.
Adult learners are an essential student demographic in postsecondary education. Colleges and universities cannot ignore this student population as they are projected to become the learner majority at many institutions in the near future. As enrollment of adult learners’ increases, faculty advisors are playing a more critical role in the retention and success of this student population. The faculty advisor provides significant support to adult learners in achieving their professional goals and providing other supports and resources to ensure their academic success. Junior faculty (new faculty) are not always aware of the practices that suit adult learners’ needs when beginning their new teaching role. With this in mind, the researchers addressed a gap in the literature by conducting a qualitative case study that explored the student perceptions of advising with their junior faculty advisors. This presentation will provide participants with practices for working with adult learners in advising contexts, the supports to help this student demographic succeed, and a will conclude with a discussion concerning the implications for practice and future research. Individuals who hold positions such as faculty, program coordinator, department chair, and academic dean, as well as other support professionals who are connected to the process of advising adult learners, may benefit from this presentation. Finally, doctoral students looking to pursue a faculty role upon graduation in an adult-focused undergraduate or graduate program would also benefit from attending this presentation.
16:30-17:00
Sara Quintero-Ramírez, Professor, University of Guadalajara, Mexico. Title: Syntactic – Textual Functions of Verb Forms in Oral Chess Narratives.
The aim of this presentation is to analyze the syntactic-textual functions that the verb forms used in chess broadcasts display. To do so, on the one hand, we took the broadcasts of two blitz games, i.e., two games in which each player has less than ten minutes to develop all his game (cf. FIDE). On the other hand, we considered two other events that took place in classical rhythm, i.e., games in which each player has more than sixty minutes to do all his moves (cf. FIDE). The two classical rhythm games were obtained from Chess24 en español, whereas the blitz games were obtained from Chess.com ES. We selected the broadcasts from these two websites, because they are among the few media to which many chess fans in the Hispanic world have access to follow chess games. After having constituted the corpus for this research, we transcribed the broadcasts. Afterwards, we identified all the verb forms used in each broadcast. It is important to point out that, for the analysis of the corpus, we followed the proposals of Togeby (1953) and Hernández Alonso (1984), in which only simple verbs and non-finite forms are considered as verb forms, since the others, whether periphrastic or compound, are constructed from the previous ones. Once the verb forms of the corpus were identified, we proceeded with their respective classification. Finally, we determined the functions of the most recurrent verb forms not only at the level of the sentence, but also at the level of the text, in order to determine the communicative purpose of the verbal system used by the chess game commentators in our corpus. According to our results, on the one hand, the present indicative tense is the most recurrent verb form in chess broadcasts, since more than 50% of the verbs used in the corpus are in this tense and mood. Present indicative is used with various functions: a) to describe the actions carried out by the players in a game, b) to express opinions about a move that has just taken place, c) to evaluate the qualities of a chess player, d) to formulate hypotheses and suppositions derived from a move about what might happen in the immediate future, e) to present didactic explanations. On the other hand, the non-finite forms, namely infinitive, gerund, and past participle, constitute 34 % of the corpus and display functions in common. Indeed, the three non-finite forms are used in verbal periphrases and as a technique for linking clauses with different semantic values. Furthermore, the infinitive is found as a complement of the verb and the noun, the gerund is used in independent constructions and the participle is observed in passive constructions, as well as in compound tenses. Finally, with this study we intend to contribute to the studies on sports discourse, especially those focused on the analysis of texts about intellectual sports such as chess.
21:00-22:00 Greek Night
Tuesday 6 July 2021
07:30-09:30 Urban Walk
09:30-10:00 Dan Cui, Professor Harbin Engineering University, China. Xingyu Liu, Graduate Student Harbin Engineering University, China. Title: Research on Chinglish in the Internet Hot Words from the Perspective of Sociolinguistics.
As more and more young people rush into the Internet, they create many buzzwords to show their aspirations and preferences. These buzzwords which are never seen before are seem not incompatible with traditional linguistics. They combine multiple languages and culture and have huge impact on the linguistic as well as the word. Consequently, this paper will introduce some buzzwords and explain their meanings. Also, it will make comparisons between these hot words and some traditional linguistics which have similar meanings. At last, it will explore why these words are created, how they become popular and what influence they caused in linguistic as well as the word.
10:00-10:30 Dianyong Zhu, Professor, Harbin Engineering University, China. Kuoyu Shi, Graduate Student, Harbin Engineering University, China. Title: A Study of Endangered Languages in China from an Ecological Linguistic Perspective.
The endangerment of ethnic languages has now become a hot issue of general concern for all ethnic groups in China. The languages that make up multiculturalism provide humans with a wide variety of ways to view the world. As an emerging branch of linguistics, ecolinguistics views language as an integral part of the ecological environment and aims to study the relationship between language and the environment. A comprehensive investigation of the endangered status and causes of China’s endangered languages from the perspective of ecolinguistics and the search for ways to protect our endangered languages can help realize the meaning of cultural pluralism and contribute to national unity and social stability.
Japan is one of the fastest aging societies in the world. In order to live happily without suffering from age-associated depression, many seniors are trying to find some activities in which they can participate easily. One of them is reading English books. Many seniors who were high school or college students during the World War II did not receive any formal English education. Even after the war, the main teaching method of English education in Japan has been grammar-translation method. As a result, most Japanese people, retired seniors, in particular, have never experienced reading enjoyment in English. Extensive Reading has been gaining popularity not only among EFL students but also adults and senior citizens in Japan. As they had never read English books during their school days, they take interest in extensive reading and enjoy reading. In addition, the information from two studies on brain science motivate them to read books in English. One study is that bilingualism influence cognitive ageing and delay the onset of dementia (Bak, et al. 2014). The other study is that extensive reading practitioner’s brain worked similarly as bilingual people’s brains (Mayuzumi et al., 2015). This suggests that extensive reading is likely to have a positive impact on delaying the onset of dementia. The purpose of this study is to investigate how extensive reading in English will stimulate in broad range of the participant’s lifestyle, and if ER will help delay the onset of dementia or prevent her from becoming dementia. The participant is an 85-year-old lady who has been reading English books extensively for three years. At first she attended an extensive reading seminar which was organized by a private English cram school. As her house is far from the school, the presenter started to lend her books periodically so that she could read them at home whenever she has time and feels like reading. She has read over 300 books in three years. At the presentation, what motivates her to continue reading English books, and how her life style has changed since she started reading English books will be presented.
11:00-11:30
Nina Weimann-Sandig, Professor, University of Applied Sciences for Social Work, Education and Nursing, Germany. Title: New Didactics for Occupation-Accompanying Studies – Experiences from the Field of Social Work.
Occupation-accompanying studies are gaining more and more interest in Germany. The number of students who choose this way of studying, is constantly rising (BiBB 2015). Especially the social and care studies – Social Work as well as Nursing – state a significant rise of occupation-accompanying students (IAQ 2016). The organization of these studies are quite heterogeneous within the German educational system: some universities provide distance learning, others put emphasis on the need of attendance study. This might be challenging, as the group of occupational-accompanying students is quite different from those studying undergraduate courses. The most important difference is the challenge to reconcile occupation, family and university. Therefore, this paper analyses possibilities of an active teaching and learning process through implementing webinars in occupation-accompanying studies. As an example, the field of Social Work, taught at the University of Applied Sciences of Social Work, Nursing and Education in Dresden, Germany, is given. The paper comprises three steps. At first the special features and challenges of occupation- accompanying studying are examined in general. Didactical implications are further explained. The second step analysis the situation before introducing webinars in the field of Social Work and the perceptions of the students with regard to the quality and workload of their studies. The last step is the presentation of the new webinar idea and the reflection of the necessary changes that had to be done within the curriculum. The perceptions of the students towards this new teaching methods were empirically analyzed by qualitative focus group discussions as well as short questionnaires. Central findings will be presented and analyzed by reflecting modern theories of adult education (Tietgens 2011 ; Arnold/Gomez 2007) and discussing and constructivist approach (Berryman 1993; Rosenstiel 1994) .
11:30-12:00
Krasimir Kabakciev, Independent Researcher, Bulgaria. Title: Compositional Aspect in Languages Featuring Verbal Aspect: Biaspectuality on Bulgarian and Russian Data.
Aspect is the effectuation in any language around the world of the contrast between perfectivity and imperfectivity. Perfectivity is an eventuality (Vendlerian situation) bounded on the time axis by an initial- and an end-point; these two points can, together or separately, be subsumed in a sentence, or outwardly given. Apart from being temporally bounded, a prototypical perfective eventuality is also “brought to a natural end”, whereby the natural end is interpreted in broad pragmatic terms. Imperfectivity is a non-bounded eventuality, whether or not an initial- and/or an end-point are present or subsumed. Aspect is realized across languages in two ways that are radically different: as verbal aspect and as compositional aspect. When aspect is verbal, as in the Slavic languages or Greek, or in the progressive in English, it is directly encoded by the verb – either as a lexical or a syntactic entity. When aspect is realized in compositional terms, through Verkuyl’s aspectual schemata, the articles (definite, indefinite, zero) play an important role in the explication of temporal (non )boundedness on NPs that are situation participants. But aspect is realized in compositional terms in languages with verbal aspect also. Two Slavic languages, Bulgarian and Russian, are investigated here on how compositional aspect is effectuated in them alongside the much more widespread use of verbal aspect. The two languages differ significantly in structural terms. While Russian lacks articles, Bulgarian has a definite article, but no indefinite. Taking into account these and some other specificities, the so-called mapping of temporal features between referents of nominals and verbs is demonstrated in the two languages. The signaling of perfectivity in compositional terms prototypically takes place in the use of biaspectual verbs or when the imperfective aspect of a verb is so weak that it fails to stand its ground in specific semantico-syntactic conditions, and hence could also be labeled biaspectual instead of imperfective. In Bulgarian, biaspectuality is often disambiguated through the contrast between definite vs zero article, whereby the definite article explicates temporal boundedness and the zero article temporal non-boundedness. Biaspectuality disambiguation in Russian is more complex because of the absence of articles and is effected through a system in which nominals again play a major role despite the absence of articles, along with word order and the lexical meanings of nouns, quantifiers, adverbials, conjunctions and other elements capable of influencing aspectual meanings. In languages with verbal aspect and no articles like Russian it is natural for knowledge of the world to play an even more important part in biaspectuality disambiguation than in languages with compositional aspect. The analysis confirms the traditional understanding that Slavic biaspectuality is “disambiguated in the context”, but adds an important element – that it is the impact of nominals standing for situation participants that can crucially determine whether a biaspectual verb signals perfectivity or imperfectivity.
12:00-12:30
Jelena Osmanovic Zajic, Teaching Assistant University of Nis, Serbia. Title: The Bologna in the Field of Social Sciences and Humanities: A Precondition for Successful University Education.
The Bologna Process represents the most significant extensive reform of higher education in Europe. The particular aspects of the Bologna Process still incite critical evaluations as regards the successfulness of its implementation. The theoretical part of the paper analyzes the fundamental principles defined in the Bologna Declaration, requirements and critical views of the Bologna Process, as well as the relevant research conducted on this issue used for the comparative analysis. The introduction of the Bologna Process into the Serbian university education has initiated numerous changes, the increase of the student mobility being the most striking one. The empirical part of the paper focuses on the study of the following problem: the manner in which students of social sciences and humanities perceive the Bologna Process fifteen years after its implementation into the Serbian university education. Consequently, the subject matter of the research is the observation and description of students’ attitudes to this phenomenon with the purpose of acquiring relevant information “firsthand”. The achievable objective of the presented research reviews the context and condition of the Bologna Process during 2019/2020 academic year and its feasible improvements, which can contribute to comparative study of similar researches in the time of the pandemics. The specific research tasks include the study of the Bologna requirements, attitudes to the Bologna Process, benefits and restrictions of this reform, and particularly the attempt to suggest the improvement of the Bologna Process realization from the perspective of students of social sciences and humanities. The research sample consisted of the Bachelor students of social sciences and humanities from the Faculty of Philosophy in Nis (N= 150). The survey technique and the scaling technique with a rating scale questionnaire were used (BOL-JM-JOZ). The questionnaire had eight closed-ended questions, while the Likert scale was comprised of 23 items. The test of the instrument consistency proved its reliability. The obtained results were shown by the chi square test, which proved a statistically significant difference in the respondents’ answers as regards the year of study, p< 0.05. The main factors were extracted from the assessment scale by the application of the factor analysis. These factors examined the students’ perceptions of the Bologna Process, comparing the answers provided by the students of the first, second, third and fourth year of study of social sciences and humanities, p< 0.05.
12:30-13:00 Rosa Maria Rodríguez Izquierdo, Associate Professor, University Pablo de Olavide, Spain. Title: Pathways to Diversity Institutionalization in Spanish Higher Education Institutions: Are Universities Doing Enough?
13:00-13:30
Vasiliki Kontou-Watson, Researcher, University of Sunderland, UK. Title: A Critical Review into the Educational Theorem of The History of British Education.
British education is facing a vital learning chasm as consistent changes have over the years impacted on the curriculum and mainstream education. Research has highlighted the need for a critical view on the political diversity on the theorem of best of British education practice for all classes. It is well-perceived that the historical reinforcement of grammar schools has created a social dichotomy between the UK demographic. The cultural promotion of elitism compared to the Labour market of comprehensive education provided a socio-economic disadvantage across the teaching population that saw national unions and HMI developing into governmental Big Brother forces. This study aims to critically review the history of British education in its political journey and establish the political agency for the consistent antagonism between comprehensive and grammar schools, and how the constant changes of the curriculum impacted on the teacher practice and pupil aptitude admissions.
13:30-14:30 Lunch
14:30-15:00
Elias Nyefolo Malete, Lecturer, University of the Free State, South Africa. Title: Evaluative Language in JJ Moiloa’s Humorous Text with Reference to his Collection of Stories in “Dipale le Metlae”.
15:00-15:30
Alīna Romanovska, Researcher, Daugavpils University, Daugavpils University, Latvia. Title: Teaching Excellence in Higher Education during a Pandemic: Results of Qualitative Research.
Assessing the quality of teaching has been a long-standing issue for higher education. There are different definitions of teaching excellence and these are located within a shifting social, economic and political context (Skelton 2007, Gibbs 2010, Bain 2006, Finkel 2008, Healey 2000). Due to the spread of Covid-19, the whole world is facing great challenges. Accessibility of learners, ensuring the content and quality of education, IT skills of educators and learners are just some of the challenges. It is important to look for the most productive ways and methods that could not only keep the student’s attention in the distance learning mode, but also help them study, acquire competencies, achieve the learning outcomes. The aim of the research is to analyse the challenges which students and lecturers have to overcome in order to achieve study excellence during distance learning and to determine the most productive methods to achieve it. It is now evident that distance learning will become an integral part of studies even after a pandemic, so the views of students and lecturers need to be analysed to provide useful support. The study was conducted at the regional university in Latvia involving students enrolled in different level and specialization study programmes. The main method of the research was a qualitative method, namely, an individual interview. Students acknowledge that it is difficult to promote the excellence of the study process during distance learning, it is necessary to look for specific methods that work successfully in such conditions. However, due to overload and lack of information, lecturers do not always have an opportunity to significantly modify the teaching methods by choosing the most suitable study methods for distance learning. Students emphasize that a productive dialogue between a student and a lecturer is crucial in creating an excellent study process. They propose more practice oriented studies, more examples from life by lecturers and more active engagement of students via informal study methods.
15:30-16:00
Abdulghani Muthanna, Associate Professor, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway. Title: Professional Identity Development and Adjustment: A Reflexive Approach.
Mobility of international university faculty has increased in recent years, fueled by such processes as the Bologna project and geopolitical circumstances in many parts of the world. Universities in many countries now actively recruit international faculty members, and these new recruits bring new expertise, new cultural perspectives, and generally diversify academic environments. When a university faculty moves from one country to another, they inevitably undergo an adjustment in their professional identity. By using a reflexive approach as the research method, this paper considers such professional identity development and adjustment through the experiences of a university faculty member who recently moved to Norway. The author recounts and analyzes the successes and challenges of their move and critically discusses aspects of professional identity formation that can provide insights to newly international recruits.
16:00-16:30
Lucia Campitiello, PhD Student, University of Salerno, Italy. Title: ASD-Robot: How an Open-Source Robot can Improve Social Skills in Children with ASD.
The binomial “robot and autism” is configured as a new therapeutic approach that is giving encouraging results in the development of therapies applied to subjects with autism [1]. Specifically, children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are able to interact more easily with robots than humans [2] this is due to the absence of emotions and the predictability of the robot’s actions that make it seem more reassuring. [3]. In this research field, numerous studies have been conducted [4-5] on the usefulness of robotics to promote the development of social skills in autistic subjects, confirming that social robots are able to open a channel of communication with children and make them learn new social behaviors. In these studies, positive aspects emerged from the use of robots such as social acceptability [6-7], motor communication by imitation [8], and maintenance of shared attention [9]. Therefore, robots can act as assistive technologies and foster the development of social skills in autistic children through daily activities, as they appear to be able to adapt in a modular way to the different needs of users and to provide physical and cognitive support. On the basis of these assumptions, at the Lab-H of the Department of Human, Philosophical and Education Sciences of the University of Salerno, a robot was designed and built with the aim of promoting the development of social skills in subjects affected by Autistic Spectrum. All experimental and didactic activities with ASD-robot can be done respecting the safety distances imposed by the pandemic COVID-19 social roles and therefore educators, children, and robots can coexist in the same environment and research is always in progress. Methodology, methods, research tools, or sources used Specifically, the robot was designed using Rhinoceros 3D modeling software [10] and physically built using the Prusa i3 MK3s 3D printer. In this way the robot can be customized and adapted to the different needs of autistic children and the production cost will be lower than the robots actually used for autistic children, moreover, ASD-Robot [11] is an open-source project (http: / / www.labh.it/asd-robot/), in more detail an OER – Open Educational Resource mainly follows the “Cape Town Open Education Declaration” (https://www.capetowndeclaration.org/) so this robot is an educational resource which could be easily shared through open licenses (in this case the Creative Commons configured like this: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International. Obviously, NoDerivatives “sounds” far from the “Cape Town Open Education Declaration” but this has no reflection on users but only on the defense of researchers’ rights to have control over this prototype. Conclusions expected results, or results When this robot becomes a final NoDerivatives version in the next year it will be changed to Derivatives. In this way, ASD-Robot could be modified by anyone to better support an open educational approach [12]. Considering the new dimension of the school, where the teaching process takes place remotely, it is possible to download the 3D model of the robot for free through the LabH website, so that everyone can create it with the 3D printer and customize it according to the different needs of users.
16:30-17:00
Lubaba Sanjana, Phd Student, Mount Saint Vincent University, Canada. Title: Productivity of Bangla Tense Inflections Among Bangla-Speaking Pre-School Children.
Although there have been different types of studies regarding Bangla verbs, acquisition of Bangla verbs and different types of Bangla tenses; there is a lack of research on relationship between age and productive tense inflections and development of these inflections for Bangla speaking children. This paper studies the relation between age and productivity of tense inflections of typically developing Bangla speaking pre-school children. Data has been collected through elicited production method from speech samples of 30 children aged 24 months to 48 months. The study finds out the different age range when different tense inflections become productive. It proposes an order of use of the morphological verb inflections of tense and tense inflections for the 30 children in this study. In addition, it explores the probability of a developmental sequence in these inflections in relation to Tomasello’s (2008) usage-based approach for typically developing Bangla speaking pre-school children. The findings of this research can be used to help future studies in the field of Bangla tense acquisition as well as to create a profile for typically developing children. Moreover, studies dealing with children with language impairments can be benefited from the findings.
