Leadership Development in Students as Part of Attitude Development

Leadership development corresponds to the focus on the individual’s success and competitiveness strategy. This is the optimal direction of the organization of attitude development because it covers two aspects of the student’s personality development: professionally-oriented and self-centric. The aim of the study is to identify and compare the leadership level in second- and fourth-year students to see dynamics of development and implementation of the leadership phenomenon in the professional and personal making up of future specialists. The task was to: (1) diagnose the existing educational impact of the university environment on the formation of leadership competencies; (2) clarify the relationship between the objective level of leadership skills development and assessment of leadership characteristics by students themselves; (3) determining tactics for further support and / or stimulation of personal and professional leadership skills of students; (4) elucidating the relationship between leadership skills and academic performance; (5) determining the universal prerequisites for the formation of leadership qualities of students. Based on the theoretical analysis of the issue, the authors developed an objective and subjective diagnostic model for leadership skills. In this study, data of the objective diagnostic technique are the key. Subjective diagnostic technique for leadership skills provides insights for problem interpretation. At the level of the first group of respondents, the average Leadership Skills Level of the second-year students was quite low and was found within the medium level. The second group of respondents consisting of the fourth-year students showed a slight but effective improvement. The Leadership Skills of this group were found at a sufficient level. Positive dynamics was revealed for all criteria of leadership skills as a result of applying objective diagnostic methods: decreased percentage of students with negative and relatively low markers of Leadership Skills Level and corresponding increase in percentage of students with positive markers of Leadership Skills Level. Further research can be organized in the direction of identifying and developing successful universal and professionally-oriented tactics for leadership development in students as part of attitude development.

Impact of antecedents of online learning on learner’s satisfaction in higher education: An empirical investigation on Commerce and Management students in the COVID era.

The essence of digitization is rooted in almost all the field in daily routine of every individual, thoroughly. Digital inclusions in education have not been very focused in the past in developing countries like India. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, even schools at primary level education also started using digital platforms for transmitting knowledge. It is due to the advancement in the field of Information and Communication Technology (ITC) that exchange of knowledge between teachers and students never stopped. In this study, the researcher has focused on evaluating the perception of students towards online learning and analyzing the impact of it on their perceived satisfaction from such electronic plinth. A model was developed taking perceived satisfaction as dependent variable while technology, instructor’ role, student’s role, interaction and class management as independent variable. A total of 233 valid responses were collected from graduate and post graduate students of commerce and management from Varanasi city using 5-point Likert scale standard questionnaire. Multiple regression analysis revealed that instructor’s role and student’s role were found significant affecting perceived satisfaction. The study suggested that rather than getting distracted due to unfriendly disturbances in the teaching environment, instructor should focus on attitude development, timeliness and quick response, solving queries and providing feedback to students. Students should give more stress on attitude development and self-motivation. The study will be a great help to the institutions in strengthening their learning environment and further improve learner satisfaction.

An Investigation of Learners’ Perception of an Online Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) Training Model

Developing students’ Intercultural communicative competence (ICC) has been viewed as the English as a foreign language teachers’ responsibility in the globalized world, especially after the birth of COVID-19 pandemic. Amidst the flourishing development of ICC cultivation studies, a noted absence is on the study of how to actualize ICC in the online teaching based English language teaching. This study, by presenting a pedagogical case, explores the application of the online ICC training model, and focuses on how the online teaching can be established at the four teaching stages, namely, attitude development, knowledge construction, skills practice, and reflection. Attitude development is a pre-class activity to motivate students’ learning curiosity. In the stage of knowledge construction, various kinds of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are selected as teaching resources for students to learn the key concepts and theories for the course. Skills practice requires students to make full use of WeChat or Bulletin Board System (BBS) to have online intercultural encounter, in this process students practice both their linguistic and intercultural communicative competence. The last stage provides chances for both students and teacher to rethink about their learning and teaching and move to the new circle of teaching stages. An eight-weeks’ action research with a class of second-grade English Majors in a Chinese university has been conducted. Questionnaire and interview are the main methods for data collection, combined with teacher and students’ reflective journals. The results of both quantitative and qualitative evaluation show that adopting online-teaching may serve as an effective way to develop students’ ICC during epidemic and in the future.

An imitation-game approach to the development of a humanistic attitude towards a person among cadets – prospective employees of the penitentiary system

The paper is devoted to the problem of training a cadet a prospective employee of the penitentiary system (PS), capable of realizing a humanistic attitude towards a person, regardless of his social status, personal characteristics, etc. This problem is urgent since willingness to recognize the value of another person as a person, tolerance in relation to another person, ability to show empathy, ability to look at the situation from the perspective of another person, ability not to show anger, irritation, aggression towards people, ability to find positive traits in each person, implemented in a humanistic attitude to a person, prevent personal and moral deformation of penitentiary system employees. The provisions on the essence and characteristic features of the imitation-game approach in training are extrapolated to the problem of a humanistic attitude development among prospective employees of the penitentiary system to a person. The author has revealed some possibilities of an imitation-game approach to the development of a humanistic attitude towards a person among cadets. The unification of the game and simulation technologies in the simulation-game approach is substantiated. The paper also contains the principles of imitation-game approach implementation, they become the principles of simulation technology implementation: a problem principle, a personal interaction principle, a principle of each participant and group development, a self-learning principle based on reflection. The role of these principles for humanistic attitude development among prospective employees of the penitentiary system to a person is revealed. The value of play and the significance of non-play methods in the context of imitation-play approach implementation to the development of a humanistic attitude towards a person among cadets is grounded. An example of simulation-role approach implementation is also given.

Incipient Racism? When Does it Start? Racial Attitude Development in Young Children

The present study examined the forerunners of racial attitudes in two groups of children (from Black families and White families). Assessments of various cognitive and perceptual skills were conducted longitudinally at seven age points from six months to three years of age. Racial attitudes were present in almost half of the children by three, although not all had yet exhibited mastery of underlying skills. Both groups of children exhibited similar pro-same race attitudes at 36 months, but some divergence in developmental patterning began at 30 months of age. Some parental behaviors such as parental willingness to discuss race and diversity of the child’s environment were related to attitudes at three.

Does the curriculum of a Bachelor program in International Business meet the competency requirements of internationalizing SMEs?

This paper contributes to the research on discrepancy between employers´ needs and graduates’ competencies acquired at bachelor education. Given the fact that internationalizing SMEs have considered international relation competency (IRC) to be the key competency for starting export professionals, this qualitative study examines whether this key competency with its selected knowledge, skills and attitudes has been integrated into the curriculum of a bachelor program in International Business at a Dutch University of Applied Sciences. Based on a document analysis of this bachelor program and interviews with lecturers and alumni of this program, we found that the training of international relationship competency is almost absent in the curriculum. Both lecturers and alumni envision skills and attitude development to be incorporated into the curriculum of this internationally oriented bachelor program. The findings offer some suggestions for further research concerning developing cooperation between business and education and the assessment of international relation competency within the context of IB education.