A Peasant or Not? A Test of Chinese Rural Laborers’ Identity status and Their Cultivated Land

Zhang Jie , Cai Guangqian

Background: Urbanization was intended to lead to comprehensive city development. Peasant laborers must achieve psychological and social adaptation to realize individual urbanization.

Aims: The aim of this paper is to identify the factors affecting identity status among Chinese rural laborers.

Methods: Survey data for this paper, entitled Survey Data of Rural Laborers in the Pearl River Delta in 2006, were obtained from the Center for Social Survey, Sun Yat-sen University. Multinomial logistic regression was used to test the data. Retaining cultivated land and self-meaning constituted self-reported items. Independent variables included three identity statuses for rural laborers.

Results: Age and self-meaning variables were not significantly associated with identity status. Another dependent variable involved retaining cultivated land, which was significantly associated with identity status.

Conclusions: A lower level of identity status was related to satisfaction of self-meaning, whereas a strong relationship was found between identity status and cultivated land. Chinese peasants appeared to emphasize the meaning of cultivated land as the cornerstone of life in their agricultural civilization in the past as well as in modern society.

Retrospective Time Estimation: Comparing the Judgment of Resolving Time (JoRT) with Actual Resolving Time (ART) to Assess over- and Underconfidence

Lisa Son, Seok-sung Hong, Jini Tae, Tae Hoon Kim, Yoonhyoung Lee

The commonly touted description of hindsight bias, where we believe that “we knew it all along,” has us assume that after having learned something, we were, to some degree, a “natural.” One's time estimation of a prior task, -- what we call the Judgment of Resolving Time (JoRT) --however, has not been tested. That is, do people "forget" all of the past time that they had invested into learning? Or, do they believe that they “knew it only somewhat faster” than the time it actually took to complete prior tasks? In the current study, we compared individual's JoRTs with time actually taken to resolve problems, and used the difference as a proxy for confidence. Specifically, we hypothesized that participants’ JoRTs would be slightly shorter than the actual time it took to resolve problems, given the prevalence of the hindsight bias. Surprisingly, this overconfidence was not found. On the contrary, people’s JoRTs, in both the United States (Experiment 1) and South Korea (Experiment 2), turned out to be longer than their actual resolving times, suggesting, we propose, a type of underconfidence. These results offer a potential new strategy for countering the bias -- retrospective time estimation -- while also providing a new tool in which to examine both over- and underconfidence.

Is Career Adaptability a Double-edged Sword? The Mediating Role of Person-organization Fit and the Moderating Role of Seniority

Huimin Liu, Lulu Zhou, Yuan Jiang

Purpose - Career adaptability is a crucial skill for employees to cope with the changing job market and working environment. Despite the fact that researchers are becoming more interested in the topic, few managers pay attention to the many variables that influence its link with organizational outcomes. Drawing on the theory of career construction and career development, this study examines the influence of career adaptability on two organizational outcome variables, namely, job performance and turnover intention, through the mediating effect of personal-organization fit and the moderating effect of seniority.

Design/methodology/approach - Using questionnaires, information was gathered from 375 employees of Chinese state-owned firms, private businesses, and public agencies. The hypothesis effect is examined using multi-level analysis.

Findings - 1) Career adaptability partially affected job performance through the mediation of person-organization fit.; The effect of career adaptability on job performance was moderated by seniority, and compared to employees with longer seniority, job performance of those with shorter seniority was enhanced by career adaptability. 2) Career adaptability affected turnover intention completely through the mediation of person-organization fit; The effect of person-organization fit on turnover intention was moderated by seniority, and compared with longer seniority employees, person-organization fit reduced the turnover intention of those with shorter seniority.

Originality - This study enriches the existing literature on variables influencing the link between career adaptability and work outcomes, emphasizing in particular the significance of seniority and person-organization fit. In addition, it offers Chinese organization administrators a theoretical framework for considering career adaptability, which has consequences for the development of "personalized and flexible" systems.

The Necessity for Evidence-Based Education Reform in Barbados

Garry Hornby, Marcia Pilgrim

Long-term concern about the poor academic outcomes and violent behaviour in schools in Barbados have led to calls for reform of the education system with proposals recently being made by the Ministry of Education and many citizens with experience of the education system. In the main these proposals are not based on sound research evidence for which interventions will have a significant positive impact on the education system. This article outlines eight components of proposed education reform that are based on evidence from the field of educational psychology that highlight policies found in the international research literature to underpin effective education systems. These are: creating community secondary schools serving their local primaries; opening a small number of sixth form colleges; implementing comprehensive policy and procedures for the education of children with special educational needs; ensuring effective parental involvement at all levels of the education system; ensuring rigorous initial and ongoing teacher education at the pre-primary, primary and secondary levels; modernising all primary and secondary school buildings and classrooms; adding vocational options to the secondary school curriculum; re-focusing teaching at primary schools on ensuring all pupils develop adequate literacy and numeracy skills for them to be successful at secondary school.

Lecturers' Perceptions of Using Information and Communication Technology in Nepalese Higher Education Institutions

Thapaliya Mukti , Rana Lal , Gyawali Yadu Prasad , Adhikari Minraj , Neupane Padam Prasad

This study explored Nepalese faculty members’ perspectives on the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) for teaching and learning activities. The study employed a convergent mixed-method research design collecting quantitative data from 102 randomly selected participants who responded to questionnaires in Google survey form. Qualitative data were collected from 10 participants who had expressed their interest to participate in the semi-structured interview while responding to the Google survey form. The quantitative and qualitative data were analysed using SPPS (20.0) and thematic analysis respectively. Findings indicated that faculty members were believed to have built technological knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and technological pedagogical knowledge. Participants also thought that the COVID-19 pandemic was a stepping stone of a paradigm shift in the use of ICTs in their institutions. Faculty members having experience of less than 15 years were found to have been more comfortable in using the Google survey form compared to faculty members having experience of more than 15 years. Similarly, lecturers who have more than 15 years’ experience and above explained the lesson’s objectives to students than those who have less than 15 years' experience. Such association of teachers’ experience on explaining lesson’s objectives to  students was also found statistically significant. Likewise, male faculty members were found to be better in applying ICT tools for teaching students with additional learning needs than female faculty members.