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Educational accountability and student achievement polarization, which result in high dropout rates, pose significant challenges and pressures on teachers' pedagogical leadership. Whether pedagogical leadership, which originates in the Western educational environment, can significantly improve student achievement in Chinese high schools remains unclear. This concept has not yet been fully explored in the Chinese educational environment, and its direct impact on student achievement and the mediating role of English teaching methods remain to be investigated. However, existing research has concentrated on the effectiveness of principals' pedagogical leadership, with variations in teachers' pedagogical leadership practices. Many reform measures have been implemented in China to improve student achievement, but past educational practices have analyzed the impact on student achievement from a single instructional leadership, school capital or teaching method perspective. Furthermore, there is a lack of multidimensional and systematic assessments of the direct effects of teacher pedagogical leadership on student achievement and the mediating effects of English teaching methods.

To address this gap, this study analyzed the impact of teachers' pedagogical leadership on student achievement and the mediating effect of English teaching methods with the support of the theory of action for teacher leadership, specifically using pedagogical leadership and English teaching methods models.This study conducted a questionnaire survey of 968 participants in Taian City, China, and quantitatively analyzed the data using SmartPLS structural equation modeling (SEM).

This study revealed that pedagogical leadership has a positive direct effect on student achievement. Meanwhile, among the four mediating factors, the Direct Method, Audio-Lingual Method and Communicative Language Teaching had significant mediating effects.

This study shows that the effective use of academic and professional capital allocation in pedagogical leadership, combined with effective measures of using multiple effective English teaching methods, helps achieve high-quality student achievement.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the sealing performance of different deep groove mechanical seals by considering the changing law of dynamic pressure effect and temperature gradient caused by high speed and high pressure.

A thermohydrodynamic lubrication model (THD) of the mechanical seal was constructed and solved using the commercial software FLUENT. The pressure and temperature distributions of the fluid under different groove types, as well as the sealing performance under different pressures, rotational speeds and sealing gaps, are obtained.

The annular groove (AG) can effectively reduce the temperature, and the T-type spiral groove (STG) can effectively inhibit the leakage. The increase of pressure and rotational speed leads to the enhancement of dynamic pressure effect and the increase of leakage, while the sealing gap increases and the leakage increases while taking away more heat. The choice of groove type is very important to the impact of sealing performance.

In consideration of the beneficial effect of deep grooves on cooling performance, the viscous temperature equation and the impact of the thermodynamic lubrication model are evaluated in conjunction with the sealing performance of four distinct groove types. This approach provides a theoretical basis for the optimal design of mechanical seals.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-05-2024-0184/

To incentivize innovation, support competitiveness, lower skill scarcities, and alleviate the housing affordability difficulty, proponents underscore the pertinence of embracing contemporary construction methodologies, with particular emphasis on volumetric modular construction (VMC) as a sustainable paradigm for production and consumption. However, construction industry stakeholders in Australia have encountered profound challenges in adopting VMC, as its adoption remains significantly low. Therefore, this study investigated the constraints that hinder VMC in the Australian construction industry.

The study used qualitative methodology using semi-structured interviews as a core approach to glean professional experts' perspectives and insights, along with Pareto and mean index score analyses.

The study identified 77 reported and validated VMC constraints by professionals, categorizing them into eight categories: cultural, economic, knowledge, market, regulatory, stakeholder, supply chain, and technological. The mean index score analysis reveals stakeholder (µ = 9.67) constraints are the most significant, followed by cultural (µ = 9.62) and regulatory (µ = 9.11) constraints. Pareto analysis revealed 25 of the 77 constraints as ‘vital few” among different categories. This study presented causal relationships and mitigation strategies for VMC constraints, followed by an argument on whether VMC adoption in Australia requires a nudge or mandate.

This study offers guidance for efficient resource allocation, aiding management and government policy formulation. It's also valuable for global audiences, especially countries transitioning to modular construction.

This is one of the first studies to identify VMC constraints and delineate them into different categories in Australia, identify their causal interrelationships, and deliver countermeasures to overcome them.

Computer vision (CV) offers a promising approach to transforming the conventional in-person inspection practices prevalent within the construction industry. However, the reliance on centralized systems in current CV-based inspections introduces a vulnerability to potential data manipulation. Unreliable inspection records make it challenging for safety managers to make timely decisions to ensure safety compliance. To address this issue, this paper proposes a blockchain (BC) and CV-based framework to enhance safety inspections at construction sites.

This study adopted a BC-enhanced CV approach. By leveraging CV and BC, safety conditions are automatically identified from site images and can be reliably recorded as safety inspection data through the BC network. Additionally, by using this data, smart contracts coordinate inspection tasks, assign responsibilities and verify safety performance, managing the entire safety inspection process remotely.

A case study confirms the framework’s applicability and efficacy in facilitating remote and reliable safety inspections. The proposed framework is envisaged to greatly improve current safety inspection practices and, in doing so, contribute to reduced accidents and injuries in the construction industry.

This study provides novel and practical guidance for integrating CV and BC in construction safety inspection. It fulfills an identified need to study how to leverage CV-based inspection results for remotely managing the safety inspection process using BC. This work not only takes a significant step towards data-driven decision-making in the safety inspection process, but also paves the way for future studies aiming to develop tamper-proof data management systems for industrial inspections and audits.

Does the history of the bureaucratic system, along with the establishment of the Great Wall during the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1911), affect firm behavior across the borderlands of the Great Wall?

The Ming and Qing dynasties built a centralized administrative system in the borderlands on the south side of the Great Wall, in contrast to the “feudal lordship” system on the north side. Employing a regression discontinuity analysis framework with the Great Wall as a geographical discontinuity, we examine the long-run effects of the Great Wall on firms’ earnings management.

Using a large sample of nonlisted firms in the central core frontier region, we show that the earnings management of firms in the region south of the Great Wall is significantly curtailed compared with firms in the north of it, and this effect is more pronounced for non-SOEs. Our findings are robust to a battery of tests to account for alternative explanations.

Overall, by emphasizing the role of institutions, like legal system, shaped in history on firms’ earnings management, this study sheds new light on institutional determinants of firms’ behaviors in earnings information disclosure.

First, we enrich our understanding of the institutional determinants of firms’ financial reporting outcomes. Second, our findings shed new light on the long-term effects of historical ruling styles on modern corporate behavior.

The sudden COVID-19 epidemic in 2019 has frustrated China's overall economy, and the implementation and development of the National Fitness Program has encountered huge obstacles. At a new historical starting point, in order to realize the dream of becoming a powerful country in sports, it is necessary to transform the successful experience gained since the reform and opening up into regular understanding and systematic theories, so as to make a theoretical response to the new contradictions and challenges faced in development and give full play to the National Fitness has comprehensive values and multiple functions in improving people's health, promoting people's all-round development, promoting economic and social development and demonstrating the country's cultural soft power.

Taking the topic of national fitness as an example, this paper sets out from the three dimensions of knowledge input, knowledge output and knowledge production, using citation analysis, social network analysis, co-word analysis and cluster analysis, to measure the characteristics and knowledge structure of interdisciplinary knowledge exchange.

China's national fitness is still in the primary development stage, and the strong boost of the national top-level policy is the biggest driving force of its development, driven by the policy together with the settlement of many major events, constantly improving and enriching the wings. The main body of knowledge production on the topic of national fitness is mainly colleges and universities, with low participation of government and enterprises, high degree of cooperation among authors, obvious interdisciplinary characteristics and strong application of research themes.

This study provides a strong theoretical basis for the promotion of the Healthy China strategy. Especially under the influence of COVID-19, this paper can contribute to the comprehensive value and multimodal functions of national fitness in improving the health of people, promoting economic and social development and demonstrating the soft power of national culture.

Empirical studies, to date, show that financial inclusion (FI) enhances financial stability (FS) by promoting a large deposit base, reducing information asymmetry, and strengthening market power on the one hand, and leads to financial fragility by expanding credit without proper screening, increasing operational costs, and provoking borrowers' moral hazard on the other. Thus, the most important issue is to maintain FS while extending formal financial services to the impoverished and disadvantaged segments of society. Therefore, this paper investigates the efficacy of macroprudential regulations (MPRs) to align these policy divergences.

To accomplish the objective and facilitate policy implications, the authors use aggregated and disaggregated measures of both FI and MPRs, employ advanced econometric models that minimize endogeneity and ensure robustness, and investigate their joint effectiveness in upholding FS using data of 138 countries spanning the 2004–2017 years.

The findings indicate that the effectiveness of MPRs is instrument specific. Some MPRs that obstruct access to formal financial services, in particular, moderate the advantage of FI in achieving FS, while others boost the effect of inclusion in attaining financial sector stability. Therefore, prudence should be emphasized while designing MPRs as a tool for aligning the policy trade-off between FI and FS.

To the best of the authors knowledge, this paper extends previous empirical research by investigating the conditioning impact of MPRs in the FI-FS nexus.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of the replacement of natural coarse aggregate (NCA) with different percentages of recycled coarse aggregate (RCA) on properties of low calcium fly ash (FA)-based geopolymer concrete (GPC) cured at oven temperature. Further, this paper aims to study the effect of partial replacement of FA by ground granulated blast slag (GGBS) in GPC made with both NCA and RCA cured under ambient temperature curing.

M25 grade of ordinary Portland cement (OPC) concrete was designed according to IS: 10262-2019 with 100% NCA as control concrete. Since no standard guidelines are available in the literature for GPC, the same mix proportion was adopted for the GPC by replacing the OPC with 100% FA and W/C ratio by alkalinity/binder ratio. All FA-based GPC mixes were prepared with 12 M of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and an alkalinity ratio, i.e. sodium hydroxide to sodium silicate (NaOH:Na₂SiO₃) of 1:1.5, subjected to 90^°C temperature for 48 h of curing. The NCA were replaced with 50% and 100% RCA in both OPC and GPC mixes. Further, FA was partially replaced with 15% GGBS in GPC made with the above percentages of NCA and RCA, and they were given ambient temperature curing with the same molarity of NaOH and alkalinity ratio.

The workability, compressive strength, split tensile strength, flexural strength, water absorption, density, volume of voids and rebound hammer value of all the mixes were studied. Further, the relationship between compressive strength and other mechanical properties of GPC mixes were established and compared with the well-established relationships available for conventional concrete. From the experimental results, it is found that the compressive strength of GPC under ambient curing condition at 28 days with 100% NCA, 50% RCA and 100% RCA were, respectively, 14.8%, 12.85% and 17.76% higher than those of OPC concrete. Further, it is found that 85% FA and 15% GGBS-based GPC with RCA under ambient curing shown superior performance than OPC concrete and FA-based GPC cured under oven curing.

The scope of the present paper is limited to replace the FA by 15% GGBS. Further, only 50% and 100% RCA are used in place of natural aggregate. However, in future study, the replacement of FA by different amounts of GGBS (20%, 25%, 30% and 35%) may be tried to decide the optimum utilisation of GGBS so that the applications of GPC can be widely used in cast in situ applications, i.e. under ambient curing condition. Further, in the present study, the natural aggregate is replaced with only 50% and 100% RCA in GPC. However, further investigations may be carried out by considering different percentages between 50 and 100 with the optimum compositions of FA and GGBS to enhance the use of RCA in GPC applications. The present study is further limited to only the mechanical properties and a few other properties of GPC. For wider use of GPC under ambient curing conditions, the structural performance of GPC needs to be understood. Therefore, the structural performance of GPC subjected to different loadings under ambient curing with RCA to be investigated in future study.

The replacement percentage of natural aggregate by RCA may be further enhanced to 50% in GPC under ambient curing condition without compromising on the mechanical properties of concrete. This may be a good alternative for OPC and natural aggregate to reduce pollution and leads sustainability in the construction.