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Stimulating the development of students' personal professional theory through contingent modelling.

This article displays a quasi-experimental case-study into how vocational educators stimulate the development of students' PPTs. No differences were found between the contingent modeling condition and the student condition concerning the development of PPTs. The two vocational domains did show differences. These results are explained by the relatively small extent of diagnosing in vocational educators' contingent modeling as well as the lack of high-level interactions in the discussions.

Online conversation and corporate reputation: a two-wave longitudinal study on the effects of exposure to the social media activities of a highly interactive company

In this paper, we investigate whether and to what extent exposure to a company's social media activities over time is beneficial for corporate reputation, and whether conversational human voice mediates this relation. In a two-wave longitudinal survey among 1969 respondents, we assessed consumers' exposure to an international airline's social media activities, perceived level of conversational human voice and perception of corporate reputation. The results show that consumers' level of exposure to company social media activities precedes perceptions of corporate reputation. Also, conversational human voice mediates the relation between consumers' level of exposure to company social media activities and perceptions of corporate reputation. We discuss the implications of the results for the presence of organizations in social media.

Teacher Educators’ Understanding of Their Language-Oriented Development in Content-Based Classroom Interaction

Many studies have suggested that personal practical knowledge is essential for professional development. Recently, there has been growing recognition of the importance of teacher educators’ personal practical knowledge of ‘language’ for student learning development. However, the need for teacher educators to first understand their own language-oriented development in content-based classroom interaction has not received as much emphasis. The current intervention study investigates how eleven experienced teacher educators understand their language-oriented development through the control of task difficulty, small-group instruction and directed response questioning. Data were examined by conducting content and constant comparison analyses. The results showed that the intervention affected the educators’ language-oriented development, which in turn affected their awareness and decisions made to improve their methods of initiation and response during classroom interaction. The results call for more concrete ways to expend teacher educators’ practical knowledge of language to further develop and enhance their language-oriented teaching performance in content-based classroom interaction.

Narrative recognition and identification: a qualitative pilot study into reading literary texts with advanced cancer patients

This qualitative study describes the experiences of five patients with advanced cancer who participated in a guidedreading and discussion about selected literary texts. The intervention consisted of reading a selected story, after which eachpatient was interviewed, using the reading guide as a conversation template. The interviews were then thematically analyzed fortheir conceptual content using a template analysis.First experiences with our newly developed reading guide designed to support a structured reading of storiescontaining experiences of contingency suggest that it may help patients to express their own experiences of contingency andto reflect on these experiences.

Customer value in legal services : a contingency approach

Purpose Due to the recent economic crisis, competition has considerably increased in the legal profession in the Netherlands. However, marketing in legal services is mostly in its infancy and value research in this context is scarce. We therefore used a contingency approach in exploring the origin of customer value and the association with loyal behaviour in legal services for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Methodology Because professional services are effectively provided by means of a relationship, the emergence of value was studied in the interaction between lawyers and clients in an explorative way, by means of a case study: in-depth interviews with ten lawyers and ten SMEs led to provider and client perspectives on value driving in twenty-eight legal cases. The underlying research model was based on the Service logic for marketing (e.g. Grönroos and Voima, 2013), which proposes that interaction is conditional for the emergence of value. Findings We assumed that value could only derive from the interaction during the service encounter. Field findings however, confirmed that previous, current and anticipated service experiences influences value. Due to the credential character of legal services, antecedent recommendation of others and the track record of lawyers, for example, are also important value drivers. The relational value perspective appears to be insufficient in analysing the emergence of value in credence services, because value drivers outside the joint sphere help clients to reduce perceived purchase risks. Originality Our study enriches the limited literature and offers a more holistic understanding of the origin of value in credential contexts like legal services. Our findings agree not only with insights from the Service logic (e.g. Grönroos and Voima, 2013) but also from the Customer-dominant logic (e.g. Heinonen et al., 2013).

From monologues to dialogues: interactivity in company social media use