پرویز احمدی

In recent years, the construction of shopping Malls has been increasingly grown across the country. But only some of them have been successful to accommodate a large number of visitors while the other ones are constantly changing the commercial units’ use. Meanwhile the lack of demand for commercial units in form of multi-purpose complexes as well as recent general recession in country’s business has aroused this situation. Research conducted on shopping Malls are mostly focused on sale of place, marketing and financing as well as a few studies on the factors associated with success of these complexes. So it is necessary to discuss about the factors affecting the success of shopping Malls which is a very new subject. The main issue of this research is to provide a success model of shopping Malls considering the unique characteristics in Iran. The method used for this research is qualitative one (grounded theory) and its nature is applied-developmental. Data was collected through a deep interview with professors, experts in construction, handover and operation of shopping Malls and sale brokers for commercial real estate and sampling is done via snowball method. Data has been collected by clarifying the subject and when it reaches the saturation point, "open coding" is carried out. Then concepts are extracted and the factors are completed after focusing on the subject and finding links by “axial coding”. Finally, the specific dimensions and a conceptual model called “success model for shopping Malls” have been presented by “selective coding”.

This study investigated how several pre-service EFL teachers in an undergraduate programme engaged in a series of collegial discussions after their student teaching experiences over the third year of the programme and how the collegial interactions nurtured their professional development. The individual interviews and group discussions were audio-recorded and transcribed in verbatim. The findings indicated that the active participation of the participant teachers in collegial discussions following their student teaching experiences facilitated learning in a collaborative learning community. The participants shared their personal practical experiences, scaffolded their peers and developed their professional knowledge in several aspects. Their awareness of pedagogical challenges was raised and they addressed their learners' needs and learning strategies in real classroom settings more effectively. The collegial interactions focused on the transfer of theories learned from the disciplinary textbooks to the pedagogical realities of the EFL educational settings. The engagement of the student teachers in collegial discussions made them reconsider their pedagogical beliefs and practices.

The purpose of this study is to conceptualize the Integrated Brand Engagement (IBE) with inductive approach based on data collected through interviews at Iran Khodro, Saipa, Bahman Group, Kerman Motor and Pars Khodro (during 2008-2010). The interviewees are Iranian automobile brand experts. Applying the grounded theory (GT), we could theorize the process in shaping IBE with the aim of proposing an integrated picture of brand engagement as a third paradigm. Bearing in mind the strategic role of the proposed topic in companies’ survival, we got into introducing brand for recognizing the engagement factors and then created the integrated brand engagement which let automobile industries’ owners foresee and determine better. In this theory, "Brand Equity" is the central phenomenon whereas “Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) " is the causal condition. The central phenomenon is expressed in a set of actions and interactions, which is referred as “Customer Engagement". On the other hand, the Integrated Brand Communication (IBC) (as context conditions) and Shareholders Engagement elements (as intervening conditions) stabilize and expand the concept of engagement in the proposed model. The main consequence of this phenomenon is “Brand Engagement” leading to increase the long-term loyalty of customers, staffs and shareholders. These conditions lead all people who directly and/or indirectly involve with brand to advocate the brand because they have sense of belongingness and engagement to the brand even if they do not buy that product.

The active participation of several pre-service EFL teachers in discourse socialization practices facilitated learning in a collaborative learning community. The participants shared their personal practical experiences, scaffolded their peers and engaged with assigned academic texts. Their engagement in collegial discussions and with academic texts developed their professional identity in several aspects. Through involvement in discourse practices, the participants underwent the process of identity construction as a legitimate member of their discourse community. As a non-stop process, the identity construction of the participants was continuously influenced by their prior learning and teaching experiences, knowledge from disciplinary materials and fieldwork experiences as pre-service English teachers. The influence of the discourse practices was overwhelming as they experienced a shift of professional identity to feel like relative experts. The participants reconstructed their identity. They felt more committed to their EFL local community and they saw themselves as members who could be more contributing to their local community. The group discussions provided enough chances for the participants to feel like a community member and voice their professional identity through participating in discussions.