Asian Journal of Education and Training

Ethnographic lens: Understanding managerial and operational level perspectives on ESP teachers roles

Dwi Poedjiastutie — 2024-11-07

This study investigates the managerial level (the deans of the faculties and the director of ESP) perspectives and ESP teachers’ perspectives (operational level) on how they assume their roles in teaching ESP. This study used an ethnographic approach. The phenomena of an ethnography are commonly examined from a collective perspective. This suggests analyzing the culture under investigation from an insider's viewpoint by emphasizing the significance that the members of that society attribute to it. The findings show that sociocultural factors are assumed to influence the deans’ expectations of what teachers must do in comparison to what teachers themselves should be doing. ESP teachers at the operational level assume their roles in teaching and learning ESP as motivation builders, classroom controllers, teaching strategy innovators and lifelong learners. Meanwhile, the deans of the faculty’s (managerial level) expectations of ESP teacher roles entail a material developer, a curriculum contributor, a language trainer, a student mental safeguarding, a collaborator and a program evaluator. While deans and teachers share a common goal of educating students, their roles, responsibilities and perspectives differ significantly leading to different expectations. Both cohorts namely managerial level and ESP teachers should intensively discuss to obtain a satisfactory agreement in executing roles and responsibilities. Besides, when designing professional development, it is suggested to focus on two areas: enhancing and sustaining instructors' English proficiency and expanding language teaching knowledge and skills.

Development of a creative digital curriculum for the elderly: A participatory approach to enhance potential for alternative career opportunities in the digital era

Parit Saisee — 2024-11-07

This research aimed to develop a curriculum for empowering the elderly to create alternative careers in the digital society era through digital platforms and to study the effects of the curriculum and online educational channels on enhancing the elderly’s capabilities. Participatory Action Research (PAR) methods combined with qualitative and quantitative approaches were employed in this study. The study involved 555 participants including personnel and elderly individuals in Lampang Province that were selected by using multi-stage sampling. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data and compare the group mean by t-test. The research findings revealed that the “Creative Digital Retirees” curriculum for empowering the elderly to use digital technology, digital media literacy and utilizing digital media to create alternative careers met the effective criteria, the 80/80 efficiency criteria with E1 = 80.00 and E2 = 87.16. The effective curriculum consists of five learning units including Unit 1: Using technology media for the elderly, Unit 2: Understanding and digital literacy for the elderly, Unit 3: Creating social media for the elderly, Unit 4: Accessing, efficient use of technology and technology management for the elderly, and Unit 5: Electronic law. The elderly’s capabilities significantly improved at a significance level of 0.05. For curriculum users’ satisfaction, the result showed the highest level of satisfaction with an average score of 4.59. It is concluded that the curriculum is effective and can genuinely enhance the elderly’s learning achievements.