This study examines resilience in home-based caregivers (HBCs) in Limpopo South Africa. The PEN-3 model is used to investigate cultural influences on care-giving and frame the relationships, expectations, and cultural identity of care-giving in the context of African cultures. Data were gathered from participants’ responses in 4 focus group interviews held in South Africa. The results highlight...

Independent learning and independent learning strategies are at present significant topics in educational research. The bulk of this research deals with independent learning in junior and higher education with little based upon the further education sector. The focus of this article is the interpretation of independent learning by 16to 19-year-old students at a further education tertiary colleg...

Due to the significance of beliefs in giving direction to the activities of educators, the present study examined the beliefs of 12 Iranian pre-service teachers about democratic education. Overall, the findings of focus group discussion and semi-structured interviews pointed to a technicist and often an apolitical view of teaching held by most of the participants. While these findings can be ex...

As a part of BC Hydro’s Advanced Metering Initiative (AMI), a time of use rate pilot project involving some 2,000 residential customers was implemented for winter 2006/07 and winter 2007/08. Customers participating in the project had an advanced meter installed at their house, and they also received information on how they could save energy during the peak period and shift load from the peak pe...

This paper summarizes research conducted by the authors on private sector stakeholders’ perceptions of challenges and potential of off-peak deliveries to congested urban areas. The paper analyzes the information gathered by a comprehensive outreach program which involved the use of focus groups, in-depth-interviews and Internet surveys. On the basis of the insights gained into the dynamic inter...

The main purpose of the paper is to investigate young peoples’ perspectives on mobile services in order to shed light on the acceptance of mobile services. The knowledge of and interest in mobile services of individuals using such services is analyzed. A second objective is to investigate the reasons for using/not using mobile services. In-depth focus group interviews and secondary empirical da...

This paper presents a survey of language teachers’ and their students’ attitudes and practice concerning the use of corrective feedback in pronunciation training. The aim of the study is to identify feedback strategies that can be used successfully in a computer assisted pronunciation training system with a virtual tutor giving articulatory instructions and feedback. The study was carried out u...

The overall aim of this article is to investigate Swedish preschool teachers’ perceptions of the interaction between home and institution in relation to children’s introduction to preschool. The focus of this article is on their talk about how they manage the gap between home and preschool in the introduction process. A discourse analysis is carried out, based on focus group interviews with sev...

Design/methodology/approach: Based on a review of extant theory, the authors posit a new definitional construct for SCM – the Four Fundamentals – and investigated four research questions (RQs) that emerged from the theoretical review. The empirical work comprised three main phases: focussed interviews, focus groups and a questionnaire survey. Each phase used the authors’ definitional construct ...

The broad aim of this paper is to further our understanding of the mobility of older people by investigating the outcomes of migrations to small regional retirement communities on the Canadian Prairies (i.e., Manitoba’s Interlake). A three-stage survey design includes (i) a interview survey of 34 recent older movers to the retirement communities; (ii) an interview survey of 10 community leaders...