The purpose of this article is to illuminate the conceptualisations and applications of the Belmont Report’s key ethical principles of respect for persons, beneficence, and justice based on a document analysis of five of the most relevant disciplinary guidelines on internet research in the social sciences. These seminal documents are meant to provide discipline-specific guidance for research design and implementation and are regarded as key references when conducting research online. Our analysis revealed that the principles of respect and beneficence were explicitly conveyed in the documents analysed, offering nuanced interpretations on issues of informed consent, privacy, and benefits and risks as well as providing recommendations for modifying traditional practices to fit the online setting. However, the invocations of the principle of justice were rather implicit and reflect an important shift from the Belmont Report’s protectionist ethical position towards more situational and dialogic approaches. With the rapidly evolving nature of internet technologies, this analysis is projected to contribute to the ongoing developments in research ethics in the social sciences by outlining the tensions and implications of the use of the internet as a methodological tool. We also seek to provide recommendations on how disciplinary associations can proceed to facilitate ethically sensitive internet research.

Intercultural Virtual Collaboration (IVC) has been a growing field in recent decades as it allows students from different cultures to work together without having to move physically. Besides providing students with an authentic experience that they are going to encounter in their future professional careers in increasingly globalised and digitised workplaces, more recently, IVC has also been used as a means to engage university students from different cultures in social and political issues that are common across societies. In this paper, we present an analysis of an IVC project that involved undergraduate Business students from a university in Spain and a university in the Netherlands where students from both universities were asked to collaborate online to develop a business case to analyse how companies communicate about the way they integrate SDGs in the different cultures involved. A content analysis of group reports delivered by students was carried out. In addition, intercultural competence development was measured through a questionnaire. Results show that the IVC project contributed to raising students’ awareness of how companies approach SDGs and adapt their products to different cultures. Students were also perceived to have developed intercultural knowledge, intercultural virtual teamwork, intercultural attitudes and intercultural awareness.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report the findings from a case study of an action research project in the context of a secondary school in Kazakhstan where, for the first time in their teaching practice, three English as a Foreign Language teachers introduced student voice (Flutter and Rudduck, 2004) into their practice within the Lesson Study (LS) framework. The research aimed at conceptualizing Student Voice Space in LS as one of the valuable factors capable of triggering situations of disjuncture (disorienting dilemma, disruption) for teachers which could potentially lead to teacher’s transformative learning, educational beliefs change and improved practice. Design/methodology/approach: The study adopts the qualitative research design and follows narrative inquiry methodology (Lyons and LaBoskey, 2002) with a series of narrative interviews (Bauer, 1996) as the main method of data collection within a single case study (Bassey, 1999) of an action research project. The data were analyzed as text following a general inductive approach (Thomas, 2003) where emerging themes were identified by means of data reduction. Findings: The findings suggest that listening to student voice triggers teachers’ going through certain stages of Mezirow’s transformative learning theory including critical assessment of own assumptions, testing new options for behavior and reflecting critically on the teaching practice. Therefore, the authors suggest that Student Voice Space in LS is one of the important factors capable of triggering the teacher’s transformative learning. Moreover, it has an enormous potential not only to bring about positive changes in teachers’ practice but also challenge the ossified teachers’ educational beliefs, and thus, potentially, pave the way for a gradual change from “inappropriate beliefs” (Mayrhofer, 2019), or subconscious assumptions that lie in the core of teachers’ folk pedagogies (Torff, 1999), or taken-for-granted frames of reference (Mezirow, 2000) into true, justified or informed educational beliefs. Research limitations/implications: Further analysis of teachers’ narratives is required to elicit and categorize reported changes (shifts, transformations) concerning specific teachers’ educational beliefs, and draw a more clear line between student voice and its impact on the research lesson planning and its modification in LS. Finally, a supplementary study utilizing classroom observation methods is needed to explore if student voice intervention results in tangible (actual) changes in teachers’ classroom practice and educational beliefs, rather than potential transformations that are mainly reported in this study. Originality/value: Carried out in the largely overlooked by the academic literature context of the Reform at Scale (Wilson et al., 2013) in Kazakhstan and building on the original combination of theoretical lenses, the research contributes to the academic literature aiming at illuminating “the black box of teachers’ learning” in Lesson Study (in Widjaja et al., 2017, p.358) since it is one of the rare studies attempting to connect teacher learning, student voice and Lesson Study (Warwick et al., 2019). Additionally, approaching teacher learning in Lesson Study from the transformative learning perspective combined with the literature on teachers’ educational beliefs and student voice, this study contributes to the further development of a shared vocabulary for discussing teacher learning in Lesson Study.

Purpose: The study aims at exploring the perspective of three English as a Foreign Language teachers after their year-long involvement in the Lesson Study project in the context of Kazakhstan in order to capture and list any perceived changes in teachers’ educational beliefs over the period of the Lesson Study intervention. The main argument of the study suggests that the school-based Lesson Study initiative is conducive to triggering changes in teachers’ educational beliefs, and thus, might lead to positive changes in school culture in Kazakhstani schools. Shaped following Hill et al., (1982) in Swales, 1990 hour-glass model of a research project (Swales, 1990), the article reflects the third concluding part of the Ph.D. thesis focusing on the implementation of the Lesson Study methodology in Kazakhstan.Design/methodology/approach: The study adopts the qualitative research design and follows the narrative inquiry methodology. The three narrative interviews (Bauer, 1996) are utilized as the main method of data collection. The data were analyzed as text following a general inductive approach (Thomas, 2003), where emerging themes were identified employing data reduction and further sub-categorized through the conceptual and theoretical lenses of the study. The emerged categories reflecting the perceived shifts in teachers’ educational beliefs were dialectically linked to implications for school culture in Kazakhstani schools.Findings: As data suggest, the respondents’ active engagement in the Lesson Study professional learning community and exercising leadership through implementing changes in their classroom practice has made a positive impact on teachers’ rethinking their teaching practice, attitudes to students and their learning, collegiality, and professional self-identification. We conclude that, if organized properly, Lesson Study has enormous potential to facilitate changes of teachers’ educational beliefs: from direct transmission beliefs toward constructivist beliefs, from restricted professionals’ beliefs toward reflective practitioner beliefs and attitudes, toward beliefs in the power of student’s voice, and collaboration. Those shifts are linked to establishing a more positive, child-friendly and rights-based school culture with teachers’ shared visions and capacity for innovation.Research limitations/implications: We acknowledge that the abundance of the reported positive changes or perceived shifts in teachers’ thinking might not be the indicators of actual changes in their beliefs. We emphasize that the study was carried in a controlled context, i.e. the three ELF teachers were constantly supported, and the teacher talk was systematically guided by a trained facilitator. Warned by Giroux et al. (1999), we are aware of the major challenge of the fundamental assumption of critical pedagogy that teachers are willing and able to undertake “the practice of analyzing their practice” (p. 27) voluntarily. Thus, the question remains open: if the facilitator’s support is eliminated, will the results point to the occurrence of the disruption and disorientation as a necessary condition for the beliefs change?Originality/value: Carried out in the largely overlooked by the academic literature context of the Reform at Scale (Wilson et al., 2013) in Kazakhstan and building on the original combination of conceptual and theoretical lenses, the research contributes to the academic literature by connecting teachers’ educational beliefs, Lesson Study and school culture. The findings might be of value for the school leaders, educators, teacher trainers, and policymakers to advocate Lesson Study as a systematic approach to the whole-school improvement, as a tool to facilitate positive changes in school culture, as well as give impetus to studies employing the school culture perspective in developing Lesson Study impact evaluation tools.

Introducción. En esta investigación se presenta la propuesta validada de un perfil de competencias de la persona emprendedora. Para ello se ha partido de las fases del proceso emprendedor y de las funciones implicadas en cada una, con el objetivo de identificar las tareas implicadas en cada función y, por ende, las competencias específicas del emprendedor.Método. La propuesta se ha validado a partir del juicio de 6 expertos (emprendedores y académicos) en dos etapas. En la primera se han establecido las tareas vinculadas a cada una de las funciones propias de las fases del proceso emprendedor a través de la valoración de la mayoría de los expertos participantes. En la segunda etapa y con el mismo criterio, se han analizado las actitudes y las habilidades vinculadas a las competencias necesarias para desempeñar cada una de las tareasResultados. Se presenta un perfil de competencias de la persona emprendedora vinculado a funciones y tareas y se describe cada una de ellas en función de las actitudes y habilidades que las componen.Conclusión. La propuesta de perfil competencial es una herramienta fundamental para el diseño de la formación de emprendedores, a la vez que supone un primer paso en la planificación de dicha formación, ya que facilita el establecimiento de metas educativas y de propuestas metodológicas para su logro.