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The ongoing theory vs practice debate reinforces the problems facing teacher training institutions which need to challenge traditional programmes and work towards a tighter coherence between coursework and practical experience. Working more closely with schools to restructure teaching practice is necessary in order to create better tuition experience for students. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This project is situated within an interpretivist paradigm and is qualitative in nature. A sample of four South African education faculties was included. Semi-structured and focus group interviews were used to collect data from fourth-year BEd students, lecturers and in-service practitioners.

The findings indicated that the participants believed that the lack of actual classroom experience, and ineffective organisation of teaching practice, resulted in students feeling ill-equipped. Suggestions are made to improve the organisation of teaching experience and mentorship programmes.

This is an original research paper and it has value for teacher education.

A plethora of youth development programmes exist across South Africa that can be characterised as social crime prevention or building youth resilience. However, many of these programmes can be seen as one dimensional, focussing largely on skills development and preparing youth for the labour market. In addition, a large number of these programmes are short-term interventions, with the long-term impact not always measured. A number of scholars over the last two decades have emphasised the importance of sustainability and envisioning a continuum of development, particularly for youth who have become disengaged from social institutions. Consequently, there is an urgent need to examine the different approaches to youth development and their value, and more importantly, to provide a platform for youth voices to be heard on their perceptions of what they need to enhance their growth and development, particularly in the context of the growing number of youth who are not in employment, education or training (NEET). An approach that is gaining currency in South Africa with NEET youth is that of a holistic approach. The purpose of this chapter is to explore a holistic approach to personal transformation in the youth sector as implemented by the Chrysalis Academy (CA) over the past 18 years. Its approach embraces the development of the whole person and encourages education in its broadest sense, including the arts, technical and vocational training, emotional intelligence, psychosocial support and spiritual development.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the education service quality factors, for online education context, that drive the brand equity of a higher education institute. In the times of emerging online education programmes by otherwise traditional institutes, assessing the service quality of educational institutions and its effect on the institute’s brand represents an extant research gap.

This study addresses the gap by empirically measuring higher education institution (HEI) service quality and explores its impact on student engagement, satisfaction and brand equity. This research analyses structured data from 250 students, through partial least squares-based structural equation modelling, to test the proposed hypotheses.

Within the overall service quality of an HEI, all components of institutional service quality are found to affect student engagement strongly; however, only some dimensions of learning management system service quality do. Student engagement is found to positively impact student satisfaction which, in turn, strongly affects all elements of HEI brand equity.

This study adds value to the extant research in higher education service quality by adding a layer of online platform service quality and offers actionable insights for HEI administrators.

Online shoppers feel insecure due to the various unethical practices of e-tailers. It is, therefore, crucial for online retailers to alleviate customer concerns. Extant literature indicates that country-of-origin (COO) cues influence consumer perception. A relatively underexplored phenomenon in an emerging market context, the COO image of the online retailer, i.e. a foreign-origin online retailer (FOOR) or an Indian-origin online retailer (IOOR), needs validation. The current study investigates customer expectations of online retailers' ethical behaviour against the backdrop of online retailer-based signals in emerging markets.

The researchers floated an online questionnaire using a seven-point Likert scale. The authors sought recipient responses in Google Forms shared via e-mails and social media connections. The authors analysed 1,018 useable responses using partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) in Smart PLS 3.

The empirical study examined the influence of the consumer perception of ethics of online retailers (CPEOR) and COO on consumer purchase intention. It validated the proposed research model. The research findings inform that the CPEOR and the COO influence purchase intention through the mediation effects of trust and satisfaction. Results indicate that privacy, security, non-deception, fulfilment, customer service, FOOR and IOOR strongly predict consumer trust. In contrast, privacy, non-deception, fulfilment, customer service and FOOR strongly predict consumer satisfaction. However, security and IOOR did not influence consumer satisfaction.

The study results have theoretical and practical implications for academic researchers and online retailing managers. Future studies can validate the model in different geo-demographic scenarios and e-commerce settings.

The study enriches the extant literature on CPEOR in the Indian context. This study is pioneering work examining consumer purchase intention by adding the COO construct to the CPEOR model.