Obed Norman

Patrice Juliet Pinder

Mack Clayton Shelley

Aletha Harven

Maurice Nkusi

This paper contains some historical views and will demonstrate how issues related to identity impact the stigmatization and marginalizing that underlie the underrepresentation of Black people in the STEM fields. In this paper, identity is defined within the educational context and a framework is provided for exploring how STEM students and professionals author and perceive their own identities in relation to their educational and professional aspirations. This paper will also demonstrate how these authored identities are impacted by those with whom they share the STEM learning and work environments. The authors will present their own data to further demonstrate how a focus on STEM identity development results in significantly enhanced STEM academic outcomes for Black students.

Zheng Zhou

Jinyan Huang

Xiaodong Fei

Tiantian Shu

Shuo Zhao

This national study investigated the learning strategies and overall satisfaction of 262 Chinese students (42 doctorate students, 116 Master’s students, and 104 non-regular students) at 63 colleges and universities across all eight regions in Japan. A web-based six-point Likert scale survey with open-ended questions was used for data collection. The results indicated that the doctorate students could handle their academic learning significantly more strategically than the Master’s and non-regular students. Overall, 67.4% of them were satisfied with their cross-cultural learning in Japanese higher education. Specifically, 73.1% of the doctoral students, 66.6% of the Master students, and 66.2% of the non-regular students expressed their overall satisfaction. The participants offered their suggestions for the future incoming Chinese students. Implications for Chinese students studying in Japan, incoming Chinese students, and their Japanese advisors and institutions are discussed.

Peng Guo

Grace Phang Ing

Gamification, in the context of marketing, is an essential approach to promoting consumer engagement and purchasing. However, little research focused on the system of factors affecting gamification in a marketing context. The purpose of the article reviews these factors by synthesizing 43 related research articles. Specifically, this article reviews game design factors, consumers’ personality-related factors, and brand/product-related factors. Game design factors include immersion-related factors, achievement-related factors, and social-related factors. Consumers’ personality-related factors include consumers’ gender and consumers’ age and experience. Brand/product-related factors include brand familiarity and congruence. Implications for designing effective gamification in a marketing context are discussed.

Nicholas Sun-Keung PANG

This paper reports an investigation into the strategic thinking of school leaders in Hong Kong. By adapting Pisapia’s (2009) theoretical framework for strategic thinking in the school context, three cognitive practices with strategic thinking were identified: reflection, systems thinking and reframing. The study determined that a) the use of the strategic thinking could distinguish between more and less successful leaders, b) school leaders’ understandings of system dynamics had significant effects leadership effectiveness, and c) while systems thinking explained much of the variance in the success variable, there was a cumulative impact of the use of all three practices. These findings have implications for training, professional development, and selection of aspiring leaders.