No abstract

No abstract

After introducing new curriculum guidelines during education reform, the Taiwan Ministry of Education has taken the lead in integrating a communicative approach into the new English language curriculum. Task-based language teaching (TBLT) is viewed as a realisation of communicative language teaching and is one of the most popular English language teaching (ELT) methods. In East Asian contexts, only a limited number of case studies focus on TBLT. This article applies a mixed methods approach to explore junior high school English teachers' perceptions of TBLT in central Taiwan. The themes to be addressed are teachers' perceptions and understandings of TBLT and teachers' views on the feasibility of TBLT in the Taiwanese context, with a special focus on ELT in junior high schools. The main source of data is a survey with 136 respondents from 30 junior high schools in four counties in central Taiwan. The article also draws on supplementary qualitative data from semistructured interviews with four teachers who have various teaching experiences. The article offers insights into the feasibility of TBLT in Taiwan and enriches the current literature on TBLT-or in a broader sense the communicative approach-in the East Asian context.

PurposeThe concept of “servant leadership” becomes increasingly relevant in organizations while the “authoritative leadership” style continues to be in place as one of the effective styles. The purpose of this paper is to explore which leadership style is perceived a preferred one in the public sector in Singapore. Empirical data come from a survey with school leaders in several school clusters in Singapore, with instruments designed by the researchers.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is written up on the data drawn from the authors' research project. Both quantitative and qualitative analysis approaches were applied to analyzing the preference between “Servant leadership” and “Authoritative leadership” styles.FindingsIt was found in the study that servant leadership is more acceptable than authoritative leadership and that servant leadership is more effective because it reflects a better use of leaders' power. The findings are displayed in this paper to demonstrate comparisons in the acceptability of servant and authoritative styles.Practical implicationsThe paper demonstrates the perceptions of organizational members towards the leadership styles with positive impact on their professional life. Drawing on the insights from the analyses, the paper provides organizational leaders with insights on the relevance and effectiveness of their leadership styles.Originality/valueThe paper is original and is the product of empirical research, with instruments designed by the researchers.

BackgroundCompared with the traditional ways of gaining health-related information from newspapers, magazines, radio, and television, the Internet is inexpensive, accessible, and conveys diverse opinions. Several studies on how increasing Internet use affected outpatient clinic visits were inconclusive.ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to examine the role of Internet use on ambulatory care-seeking behaviors as indicated by the number of outpatient clinic visits after adjusting for confounding variables.MethodsWe conducted this study using a sample randomly selected from the general population in Taiwan. To handle the missing data, we built a multivariate logistic regression model for propensity score matching using age and sex as the independent variables. The questionnaires with no missing data were then included in a multivariate linear regression model for examining the association between Internet use and outpatient clinic visits.ResultsWe included a sample of 293 participants who answered the questionnaire with no missing data in the multivariate linear regression model. We found that Internet use was significantly associated with more outpatient clinic visits (P=.04). The participants with chronic diseases tended to make more outpatient clinic visits (P<.01).ConclusionsThe inconsistent quality of health-related information obtained from the Internet may be associated with patients’ increasing need for interpreting and discussing the information with health care professionals, thus resulting in an increasing number of outpatient clinic visits. In addition, the media literacy of Web-based health-related information seekers may also affect their ambulatory care-seeking behaviors, such as outpatient clinic visits.