bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Creating Engaging Classrooms for All Learners
Authors: Myers Diane , Simonsen Brandi , Sugai George
Published: June 2020

Actively engaging learners in the classroom has been associated with increases in learners’ academic and behavioral performance. Multiple empirically supported strategies exist for actively engaging learners, including increasing opportunities for learners to respond and planning highly engaging lessons. In support of these engagement strategies, educators also systematically implement empirically supported classroom management strategies to increase the likelihood of appropriate behaviors and decrease the likelihood of inappropriate behaviors. These classroom management strategies include: (a) maximizing structure, which includes both the physical (e.g., desk arrangement) and embedded (e.g., classroom routines) aspects of structure; (b) establishing, operationally defining, teaching, prompting, and monitoring students’ expected classroom behaviors; (c) developing a continuum of acknowledgment strategies to reinforce (i.e., increase the future likelihood of) those expected behaviors; and (d) establishing a continuum of responses for behaviors that do not meet expectations. In addition, educators collect relevant data to evaluate if learners are engaged and meeting academic and behavioral expectations. Finally, to create a classroom environment conducive to engaging all learners, academic and behavioral instruction and support must be: (a) contextually and culturally relevant for learners, and (b) differentiated to meet the diverse learning and behavioral needs within the classroom.

If educators explicitly and routinely implement empirically supported academic and behavioral instruction and support for all learners, the majority of learners will engage in instruction and demonstrate behaviors that meet expectations, reducing the number of learners who require additional levels of support. Meanwhile, effective educators review academic and behavioral data to determine if learners require more intensive support at a group or individual learner level.
International Policies on Inclusion
Authors: Byrne Bronagh
Published: June 2020

The education of children and young people with disabilities and the appropriate form this should take is an issue with which countries across the world are grappling. This challenge has not been assisted by the diverse interpretations of “inclusion” within and between States. The international community, in the form of the United Nations (UN), its associated treaty bodies, and its related agencies have taken on an increasingly critical role in working with countries to develop some kind of global consensus on how inclusion should be defined, its core features, and what it should look like in practice. The conclusions of discussions on these issues have emerged in the form of declarations, treaties, general comments, and guidelines, which countries across the world are expected to adhere to, to varying extents. Together, these constitute a set of international policies and benchmarks on inclusion in an educational context, informing and shaping contemporary national policy and practice. At its core is the underlying principle that children and young people with disabilities have a fundamental right to education without discrimination. Examination of international discourse on inclusion indicates that its meaning, form, and content has become more refined, with increasing emphasis being placed on the quality of inclusive practice as opposed to merely questioning its merits.
Inclusive and Special Education in the Middle East
Authors: Elhoweris Hala , Efthymiou Efthymia
Published: June 2020

In the culturally diverse Middle Eastern Arabian world, there are incompatible ideas about and definitions of “inclusion” and “inclusive education,” which result in these terms being multifaceted and complex. The issues surrounding policies, the legislative frameworks—but also the attitudes and practices and their implications for individuals with Special Educational Needs and Disorders (SEND)—are explored in this paper, starting with some consideration of the official guidelines for providing inclusive education and how these are enacted according to the social or local conceptualizations that influence practice. Around the world, the tendency is to support special needs in mainstream classes with other children at all school levels in order to prevent marginalization, labeling, and social stigmatization. However, in the process of developing effective educational policies that benefit students with SEND in practice, it is useful to consider whether inclusion actually serves their needs. Though some progress has been reported in the social integration and inclusion of individuals with SEND, more light needs to be shed on whether, under current circumstances inclusion does indeed benefit people with special needs and disabilities. An analysis of the necessary parameters for supporting a learning environment for the benefit of all children in an inclusive mainstream class is necessary. The examination of inclusion-based practices can help to dispel the misconceptions that consistently surround the practice of educating students with disabilities in any inclusive environment. Recommendations are made for community-oriented sensitization programs and education campaigns but also school-based disability awareness programs and teacher training that could be promoted by governmental organizations, human rights bodies, and other stakeholders in the Arab world to support and empower people with disabilities.
Autism, Neurodiversity, and Inclusive Education
Authors: Acevedo Sara M. , Nusbaum Emily A.
Published: June 2020

A brief history of the emergence of the inclusive schools movement demonstrates its reliance on the pathologizing paradigms that are both the foundations and frameworks of traditional special education. Throughout this recent history, the utilization of a positivist approach to research and practice for autistic students, both those who are segregated and those who have access to mainstream classrooms, has maintained a person-fixing ideology. Instead, a neurodiversity framework adopts an integrative approach, drawing on the psychosocial, cultural, and political elements that effectively disrupt the systematic categorization of alternative neurological and cognitive embodiment(s) and expressions as a host of threatening “disorders” that must be dealt with by cure, training, masking, and/or behavioral interventions to be implemented in the classroom. Centering the personal, lived experiences and perspectives of autistic and otherwise neurodivergent activists and scholars affiliated with the U.S. neurodiversity movement offers an emancipatory lens for representing and embodying neurological differences beyond traditional special education’s deficit-based discourses and practices. This emphasis on political advocacy and cultural self-authorship effectively challenges unexamined, universalizing assumptions about whose bodyminds are “educable” and under what auspices “educability” is conceptualized and written into special-education curricula.
Inclusive Educational Principles, Policies, and Practices in Italy
Authors: Aiello Paola , Pace Erika Marie
Published: June 2020

The Italian education system has gained prominence worldwide thanks to its pioneering history in initiating the process of mainstreaming students with disabilities, in providing educational plans tailored to students’ needs, and in the gradual broadening of the vision of inclusion as a means to guarantee quality education for all. At the same time, teacher education programs have reinvigorated their key role in preparing and supporting teachers who are inclusive of all students. Several factors over the past 50 years have been fundamental in shaping the way inclusion is perceived in the 21st century. First, the theoretical frameworks underpinning pedagogy and teaching practices have undergone a complete paradigm shift from an individualized-medical model to a biopsychosocial model, bringing about a new challenge for all stakeholders involved. Second, in line with this evolution, latest reforms and ministerial provisions in initial teacher education and continuous professional development are evidence of the change in perspective regarding the teachers’ pivotal role in promoting and facilitating inclusive practices. However, this shift has not only called for a rethinking of the teachers’ pedagogical and didactic stances. It has also entailed a reconsideration of the necessary professional competencies, understood as a complex interplay of pedagogical knowledge, values, attitudes, and skills to be able to implement effective teaching methods and strategies that favor inclusion. Thus, it has placed a heavy responsibility on teacher education institutions to ensure that current and future teachers are ready, willing, and able to face the complexity characterizing 21st-century classrooms. Italian schools have also been doing their utmost to ensure better school experiences for all their students. An array of projects, both ministerially funded and school-based schemes, have been designed and implemented to create universally functional curricula to meet all the students’ learning styles and promote inclusion. One of the most important lessons to be learned from these intricate developments and initiatives is that collaboration among all stakeholders on micro, meso, and macro levels lies at the heart of effective and sustainable inclusive education.
Practicing Care and Compassion
Authors: Schubert William H. , He Ming Fang
Published: June 2020

To understand the practice of care and compassion in education and curriculum it is necessary to begin with its contextual sources in a diverse array of spheres: historical, religious, social, and educational theory and practice. The legacy of practicing care and compassion in education is embedded in the history of human civilization and the multiple meanings of care and compassion in the Western and Eastern worlds and in the Global South, including dominant cultures and those they dominated. The contributions of women to the understanding and practice of care and compassion in education have been underemphasized, as well as those by unofficial educators, who are not governed by nation-states or wealthy institutions that dominate those who rarely experience care and compassion. By the mid-1800s, an array of cultures and nations began to see a need for public education that attended to all citizens and not just the elite. At the same time, science had become a prime mover in consideration of education and questions were raised by Herbert Spencer and others about what and how knowledge should be selected for members of society. Eventually, a range of ways to conceptualize education were introduced, making curriculum development a site of debate.

The practice of care and compassion must be integrated into the development and design of curriculum. Thus, it is important to present curriculum orientations that facilitate the practice of care and compassion. Those who wish to practice care and compassion in education should begin by studying time-honored and still practiced orientations by Ralph Tyler, Joseph Schwab, Paulo Freire, John Miller, Daisaku Ikeda, Nel Noddings, and Martha Nussbaum. The work of these curriculum scholars illustrates the ways in which care and compassion can be incorporated into the practice of teaching and learning. For example, Tyler offers an empirical-analytic perspective; Schwab provides a practical or eclectic approach; Freire provides a critical reconstructionist or radical love orientation; Miller proffers holistic possibilities; Ikeda advocates and exemplifies dialogic and value creation; Noddings calls for a feminine basis for caring; and Nussbaum invokes the intelligence of emotions.

Those who wish to teach care and compassion must heed caveats raised by scholars who address individuals and groups who suffer the most, including the so-called wretched of the earth as well as those who have experienced imperialism and colonialism or have had their culture and history removed. Deep and abiding questions must be asked about how care and compassion for these oppressed persons, who make up the majority of the world’s population, can be taught and learned.
Comparison in Qualitative Research
Authors: Bartlett Lesley , Vavrus Frances
Published: June 2020

Comparison is a valuable and widely touted analytical technique in social research, but different disciplines and fields have markedly different notions of comparison. There are at least two important logics for comparison. The first, the logic of juxtaposition, is guided by a neopositivist orientation. It uses a regularity theory of causation; it structures the study by defining cases, variables, and units of analysis a priori; and it decontextualizes knowledge. The second, the logic of tracing, engages a realist theory of causation and examines how processes unfold, influenced by actors and the meanings they make, over time, in different locations, and at different scales. These two logics of comparison lead to distinct methodological techniques. However, with either logic of comparison, three dangers merit attention: decontextualization, commensurability, and ethnocentrism. One promising research heuristic that attends to different logics of comparison while avoiding these dangers is the comparative case study (CCS) approach. CCS entails three axes of comparison. The horizontal axis encourages comparison of how similar policies and practices unfold across sites at roughly the same level or scale, for example across a set of schools or across home, school, religious institution, and community organization. The vertical axis urges comparison across micro-, meso-, and macro-levels or scales. For example, a study of bilingual education in the United States should attend not only to homes, communities, classroom, and school dynamics (the micro-level), but also to meso-level district, state, and federal policies, as well as to factors influencing international mobility at the macro-level. Finally, the transversal axis, which emphasizes change over time, urges scholars to situate historically the processes or relations under consideration.
Designing Research for Meaningful Results in Educational Leadership
Authors: Jackson Karen Moran , Brown Ric
Published: June 2020

Making appropriate methodological and analytic decisions in educational research requires a thorough grounding in the literature and a thorough understanding of the chosen methodology. Detailed preplanning is important for all method types and includes an understanding of the assumptions, limitations, and delimitations of the study. For quantitative research, researchers should be cautious with data analysis decisions that give preference to statistically significant results, noting that quantitative research can proceed with intents other than confirmatory hypothesis testing. Decisions and procedures that are used to search for low p values, rather than answer the driving research question, are especially problematic. Presentation of quantitative results should include components that clarify and account for analytic choices, that report all relevant statistical results, and that provide sufficient information to replicate the study. Consideration should also be given to joining recent initiatives for more transparency in research with the use of preregistered studies and open data repositories. For qualitative research, researchers should be thoughtful about choosing a specific method for their project that appropriately matches the method’s framework and analytic procedures with the research aim and anticipated sample. Qualitative researchers should also strive for transparency in their method description by allowing for a view of the analytic process that drove the data collection and iterative dives into the data. Presentation of qualitative results requires a balance between providing a compelling narrative that establishes the trustworthiness of results with the judicious use of participant voices. Mixed methods research also requires appropriate integration of different data types.
Place-Based Educational Leadership
Authors: Arnold Noelle W.
Published: June 2020

Understanding, shaping, and mediating the unique contexts and communities in which schools are located offers a unique approach to educational-leadership preparation. The emerging frame of PLACE describes a place-based leading and learning framework for educational-leadership preparation that uses a combination of concept-based curricula that includes practice and problem-solving in context, bridging culture and community, arts and humanities pedagogies, creative evaluation and engagement, and leadership for context rather than for region that includes followership models. Place-based educational leadership focuses on context-based professional practice that has a direct bearing on the well-being of individuals in the school ecology and the larger ecologies in which they live and work.
Aesthetics of Leadership
Authors: English Fenwick W. , Papa Rosemary
Published: June 2020

Aesthetics of leadership pertain to leadership activities and actions in contemporary educational settings, expanded to include a range of human sensory experiences, from clothing and cosmetic choices to pragmatic somaesthetics, an area of human decision making that involves choices regarding norms and prescriptions in all human contexts. Considering aesthetics in leadership runs up against a long tradition in educational administration and leadership of conventional social science methods of inquiry and what is considered evidentiary. There are at least six dimensions of organizational issues that are judged to be cultural: determination of normative procedures; organizational rituals, rites, and ceremonies; organizational myths, stories, and legends; statements regarding mission, vision, and philosophy; personnel issues such as mentoring, recruitment, promotion, and role modeling; and architectural and physical structural issues. School culture emerged as a concern of educators and policy change agents engaged in introducing a variety of alternatives in education. It soon became apparent that to be successful, proposed changes in human behavior had to move beyond trying to persuade through the use of facts, data, and logic. Human behavior is in part responsive to psychosocial norms. Only a few of these norms may be written; the majority may be unwritten and learned through living them on a daily basis. The unwritten rules and rituals of a group such as a school or university department, when considered holistically, may be called a “culture.” The art of leadership is not contained by the science of management; it is found in aesthetics, somaesthetics, and connoisseurship, and is embodied by human elements, or accoutrements.
Indigenous Education and Leadership Challenges
Authors: Faircloth Susan C.
Published: June 2020

The ability to effectively lead schools serving Indigenous students in the United States is contingent upon one’s ability and willingness to acknowledge and honor the cultural, linguistic, and tribal diversity of Indigenous peoples and communities, coupled with a commitment to abiding by the federal trust responsibility for the education of Indigenous peoples—a federal responsibility unique to American Indian and Alaska Native peoples. This also requires educational leaders to create and sustain educational environments that are culturally relevant and responsive and that respect the rights of Indigenous Peoples and their tribal nations to be involved in, and ultimately to determine, the educational pathways and futures of their tribal citizens.
Culturally Proficient Leadership
Authors: Lindsey Randall B. , Lindsey Delores B. , Terrell Raymond D.
Published: June 2020

Culturally proficient leadership is an inside-out process of personal and organizational change. Cultural proficiency reflects educational leaders’ values through their actions in service of all students. Culturally proficient leaders demonstrate their capability and willingness to embrace change as an inside-out process in which school leaders become students of their assumptions about self, others, and the context in which they work.

The willingness and ability to assess and examine self, school, and school district are fundamental to addressing educational access and achievement disparity issues. Cultural proficiency provides a comprehensive, systemic structure for school leaders to identify, examine, and discuss educational equity in their schools. Cultural proficiency provides the means to assess and change school leaders’ values and behaviors through their school’s policies and practices to serve students, schools, communities, and society in an equitable and inclusive manner. Culturally proficient school leaders engage in processes of self-growth as a philosophical and moral imperative.

Cultural proficiency is a mindset for how we interact with all people, irrespective of their or others’ cultural memberships. Cultural proficiency is a world view that carries explicit values, language, and standards for effective personal interactions and professional practices. Cross, Bazron, Dennis, and Isaacs were motivated to develop cultural competence and cultural proficiency when they recognized that only a few mental health professionals and institutions were effective in cross-cultural settings. They devised the elements of cultural competence to identify why some health professionals were successful irrespective of culture of the professional or client. From their work came the cultural proficient framework. The work is profound in causing shifts in thinking and actions. Educators who commit to culturally proficient leadership practices represent a paradigmatic shift from demonstrating a value for tolerating diversity to a transformative commitment to equity.

The Cultural Proficiency Framework comprises an interrelated set of four tools: the Cultural Proficiency Continuum, Overcoming Barriers to Cultural Proficiency, the Guiding Principles of Cultural Proficiency, and the Essential Elements of Cultural Competence. The guiding principles inform individual and organizational core values and the essential elements inform and guide individual actions and organizational policies and practices.
Teacher Equity and Cultural Implications for Educational Administration
Authors: Padilla-Valdez Nena , Awang Hashim Rosna
Published: June 2020

Monumental shifts in education, in situations of leading global changes in the local culture, trigger profound repercussions on teachers. In view of reconstructionism, this article enquires into the evolving nuances of administrative reforms, unfolding the cultural links and reciprocal influences between teacher equity and educational administration. On the premise that reforms are triggers of administrative development, it positions teacher equity—a flexible individualization in a networked relationship—both as an enabling platform and as a cultural tool, to maintain a system in action. It argues that impacting change is envisaged as an arduous initiative when competing interests thrive within the system. To maintain administrative coherence and teaching force productivity, people’s perspectives and responses to change are coherent for the advancement and benefit of the entire system. Developing learning capacities such as adaptation and reconstruction form the critical core of an equity-driven culture. Such is a reiterated call for reciprocal change, a catalytic stimulus generative of equitable pathways that, more often than not, remain unscathed and oblivious to culturally diverse groups. As scholars and experts in administration and development studies grapple with complicated notions about policy reforms and pragmatic practices, this exposition rouses resilience in the discipline, as implicated in the pretext of greater autonomy and accountability. Essentially, it dispels scholarly revulsions and nuances, while newer investigative tools and culturally responsive reforms are underway to be explored and articulated, respectively.
Professional Socialization in Schools
Authors: Toker Gökçe Asiye
Published: June 2020

Socialization is a process through which someone learns to become a member of society. Individuals learn how to perform their social roles, internalizing the norms and values of the community via socialization. Professional socialization is a type of adult socialization. It is a process through which newcomers internalize the norms, attitudes, and values of a profession. They receive instructions, and they learn the knowledge and skills necessary to satisfy professional expectations they are supposed to meet. Thus, they can adjust to the new circumstances and new roles of the profession. Individuals gain a professional identification and feel a commitment to a professional role during the process. In some way, the interpretation of newcomers, the agents of the profession, and the organization produce this.

New teachers participate in the community of educators, and they learn how to be a member through the socialization process. They learn new skills, such as how to teach, and internalize new values, such as believing there will be cooperation among colleagues. They learn regulations and organizational contexts, while they develop a style of teaching. As a consequence, they construct a professional identity by internalizing values and norms of the profession and redefining it.This sometimes happens regardless of the school in their professional socialization process. Despite the many challenges inherent in the profession, new teachers are expected to be socialized while performing their duties. Thus, new teachers try to develop an identity and survive in the job through interaction and communication with other teachers. Some adjust easily, while others do not and leave the profession. Some use situational adjustments, while others prefer to strategically redefine the situation within the process. In addition to teachers, new school principals also need to be socialized in their roles in their first year. Becoming a school principal requires different procedures than teachers’ socialization. Nevertheless, models about the socialization of teachers and school principals explain professional socialization as happening through anticipatory, preservice, and in-service.
The Preservation of Museums and Archaeological Sites
Authors: Economou Agisilaos
Published: June 2020

Remarkable natural and cultural resources are factors that contribute to the economic development of an area. These resources attract tourists and contribute to the amount of traffic in an area. The more remarkable natural resources an area has, the more it becomes a tourist attraction. Archaeological sites and museums as well as their natural surroundings, are considered as such remarkable resources, among others. However, these sites are often degraded not only by the high amount of traffic but also by the lack of measures meant for their protection.

The preservation and protection of natural and cultural resources requires, inter alia, specialized personnel to guard them.

For the aim of preservation of archaeological sites and museums, staff are trained on environmental and cultural issues. This training is part of European programs and is completed through Lifelong Learning Centers. One of these Lifelong Learning Centers, the Public Institution for Vocational Training of the Plato Academy, was chosen to carry out the research.

Student education included study visits to archaeological sites that present natural and cultural resources (Archaeological sites of Athens, the Acropolis, the Temple of Olympian Zeus, the Ancient Agora, Keramikos and the Academy of Plato). At the same time, students attended lectures on both the preservation of archaeological sites and museums and the protection of the natural environment. An in-situ research and the questionnaire method were used to complete the survey.

Research has shown that the Lifelong Learning Center through the educational process (theory and practice) can increase environmental and cultural awareness among staff and improve knowledge of security matters. This awareness is essential to better guard and protect natural and cultural resources.
Defense Mechanisms
Authors: Cramer Phebe
Published: June 2020

Defense mechanisms are mental operations that function outside of awareness. In this sense, they operate in the unconscious mind. Such mechanisms were first identified by Sigmund Freud in connection with psychopathology but later were understood to be part of normal everyday functioning. Defenses serve the purpose of protecting the individual from excessive anxiety and loss of self-esteem.

Defense mechanisms have been found to change with age, based on the complexity of the mental operations involved. Once a child understands how a defense mechanism functions, the mechanism tends to be used less frequently and a cognitively more complex mechanism is adopted.
Teacher Education and its Effects on Teaching and Learning
Authors: Palincsar Annemarie , DellaVecchia Gabriel , Easley Kathleen M.
Published: June 2020

Exploring the relationships between teacher education, teaching, and student achievement is a complex undertaking for a host of reasons, including the complexity of teaching, the number of different approaches to teacher education, the challenges associated with measuring teacher knowledge and teacher effectiveness, and the multiple mediators that operate in the study of teaching and learning. Teaching expertise requires technical skills that support instruction, theoretical knowledge, codified knowledge that guides professional decision-making, and critical analysis, which, in turn, informs the enlistment of technical skills and the development of codified knowledge. There is little consensus regarding the specific teacher characteristics that consistently lead to student achievement, although one hypothesis that has received considerable attention in the literature is the importance of teacher subject-matter knowledge. One of the challenges to making definitive statements regarding teacher education and its effects on teaching is that there are multiple approaches to teacher training. These approaches differ in terms of the candidates recruited, admission requirements, course content, the duration of training, the roles and extent of field-based experiences, and relationships with schools. Among claims regarding alternative preparation programs (i.e., programs that are not university-based), for which there is emerging support, is that alternative route teacher education programs are attracting a pool of prospective teachers of diverse age and ethnicity. Furthermore, alternatively certified teachers are choosing to teach in urban settings or settings with large numbers of minoritized students. With respect to measuring the effects of teacher education, a number of methods have been deployed including correlational studies investigating, for example, the relationship between the number of reading courses a teacher has taken and student performance on reading assessments, descriptive case studies of educational systems that are identified as successful, syllabus studies, and quasi-experimental studies. The field is developing more sophisticated and comprehensive measures and methods, as well as theoretical constructs to guide the study of teacher education and its effects on teaching and learning. The study of teacher education and its effects on student learning will benefit from the use of multiple methods—for example, large-scale studies complemented by carefully constructed case studies. In addition, this area will benefit from interdisciplinary scholarship by teams that include scholars who have a deep understanding of teaching and learning, adult development, school systems, and economics so that the field can acquire a more coherent and comprehensive understanding of the complexity of becoming a teacher.
Dyslexia: Conceptualization, Assessment, and Intervention
Authors: Elliott Julian G.
Published: June 2020

Scholars, teachers, clinicians, and the general public have puzzled over the nature and consequences of severe reading (decoding) problems for more than a century. With the advances of genetics, neuroscience, and psychology, we know much about the underlying nature of reading disability. However, we still have much to learn, and fierce debate continues about whether there is a subgroup of poor readers who can, or should, be called dyslexic. This issue has become highly contentious, as gaining the label can bring significant benefits in terms of resourcing, various forms of test and classroom accommodation, and more positive and understanding responses from others.

Many clinicians argue that special cognitive tests are needed to identify and diagnose those with dyslexia. These may take the form of general tests of IQ, or measures of more specific cognitive or executive functioning. Despite their popularity, the evidence for the utility of such measures is low, and many of the processes examined are often problematic for all poor readers, not merely the subgroup deemed to have dyslexia.

A further difficulty concerns intervention. There is no strong scientific support for the notion that intervention programs designed to improve underlying cognitive processes (e.g., memory processes) can successfully improve the reading accuracy of those who struggle to acquire literacy. Similarly, interventions geared to improve visual or motor functioning have not proven successful, despite often vociferous support from adherents. The only approach that has strong scientific support takes the form of an educational program that utilizes systematic, structured phonics teaching as part of a broader literacy curriculum. This finding applies equally to those who have been diagnosed as dyslexic and those poor readers who haven’t. For this reason, it is unclear how a dyslexia diagnosis helps to inform the nature of subsequent intervention.

In establishing effective forms of intervention that can cater for any child who struggles with their reading, it would appear most efficacious to utilize what is known as a “response to intervention” approach. This requires early identification of, and intervention with, all those who are making limited progress. Intervention should only utilize those approaches that have strong scientific support. The nature and extent of additional educational support should be determined on the basis of the progress that is made when additional help is given. If insufficient progress has resulted, it may well be necessary to increase and intensify the intervention. Such an approach helps to ensure that all struggling children are helped at an early stage, and no one is missed because of an absence of parental advocacy or a lack of family resource that can cover the cost of diagnostic assessment.
An Emerging Framework for Inclusive Educational Leadership
Authors: Young Michelle D. , Arnold Noelle W.
Published: June 2020

Ongoing shifts in demographics, knowledge, and expectations require continuous critical reflection on the leadership of K-12 schools. The models of school leadership offered in the past, which focus on management, are no longer adequate. Today, leaders must also ensure that all the students in their care are being provided high-quality, developmentally appropriate, and challenging educational opportunities that prepare each student for college, careers, and life. In other words, leaders must engage in “Inclusive Educational Leadership.”

Inclusive Educational Leadership is a reconceptualization of traditional education leadership, which is dedicated to equity, quality and inclusion. We emphasize “inclusive” because it is our contention that providing a quality education experience that is both equitable and fosters equitable outcomes requires an intentional focus on inclusion.

Inclusive Educational Leadership has three key areas of emphasis: place, preparation, and practice. Place refers to social practices and policies that reflect competing meanings and uses of spaces, the role people play in a given space and articulations of locations (geographic positions), environments (conditions), and ranks (hierarchies). Preparation refers to education, training and mentoring that is provided to leaders, and practice refers to the work leaders do to cultivate dispositions that support inclusion, support inclusive and culturally responsive practice, and develop an inclusive school culture.

The goal of inclusive leadership is to cultivate an inclusive, caring, and supportive school culture that promotes the academic success and well-being of each student. In other words, its goal is to offer more than expectations that lightly touch on all students; its goal is to deliver results for each student. Thus, the work of Inclusive Educational Leadership involves a restructuring of the education experience to prevent marginalization, while creating school cultures based on dignity and respect and focused on achieving equity, high-quality educational experiences, and life success for all students.
Environmental Approaches to Soviet Central Asia
Authors: Cameron Sarah
Published: June 2020

The vast region known as “Soviet Central Asia” encompassed the territory of five Soviet republics, Kazakhstan, Kirgizia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. Because of the region’s environmental features, particularly its aridity, historically there had been a close linkage between people and the environment in this region. But the Soviet regime set out to radically reshape this relationship, focusing on the fields of agriculture and animal husbandry, large-scale water engineering, nuclear and biological weapons testing, and medicine and public health. By focusing on the environmental impact of these policies, scholars can see how Moscow’s efforts brought many benefits to the region. Cotton production boomed, and Moscow declared the eradication of malaria. But they also left horrific scars. Josef Stalin’s program of agricultural collectivization devastated Kazakhstan, resulting in the death of more than 1.5 million people. The Aral Sea, once one of the world’s largest bodies of water, began to shrink dramatically during the Soviet era, a development due in large part to Moscow’s efforts to divert the waters that fed the sea to cotton production.
The Qara Khitai
Authors: Biran Michal
Published: June 2020

The Qara Khitai or Western Liao dynasty (1124–1218) ruled in Central Asia in the period that preceded the rise of Chinggis Khan. Founded by Khitan refugees who escaped from north China when the Jurchen Jin dynasty (1115–1234) vanquished their Khitan Liao dynasty (907–1125), they soon carved out for themselves a multicultural empire in Central Asia that combined Chinese, nomadic, and Muslim elements. Vanquishing the Qarakhanids and the Seljuks and making the Khwārazm Shāhs, the Gaochang Uighurs, and various Mongolian tribes their vassals, at its height the Qara Khitai Empire stretched from the Oxus to the Altai Mountains (namely, from Uzbekistan to western Mongolia including most of Xinjiang, China). Their biggest victory in 1141 against the Seljuks even became the basis for the legend of Prester John. Practicing religious tolerance and mostly indirect rule—leaving local rulers largely intact apart from in their capital Balāsāghūn (Burana, Kyrgyzstan)—and, using their Chinese and nomadic cultural capital, the Sinicized Buddhist nomads ruled over their heterogeneous but mostly Muslim sedentary population in rare harmony. The aging dynasty, however, could not survive the repercussions of Chinggis Khan’s rise, which coincided with the bolstering of the Khwārazm Shāh’s power. In the early 13th century, after a Naiman prince who had escaped from Chinggis Khan usurped the Qara Khitai throne, the Mongols vanquished the Qara Khitai, incorporating most of their troops into the Mongol army and channeling their skilled subject population for imperial needs. A scion of the Qara Khitai established the Muslim Qutlughkhanid dynasty of Kirman (south Persia, 1222–1306) that ruled under Mongol and later Ilkhanid aegis.
Women in Mauritius
Authors: Ramtohul Ramola
Published: June 2020

The Indian Ocean Island of Mauritius has a population made up of the descendants of migrants from France, India, Africa, and China. Mauritius has a multicultural and multi-ethnic population and these divisions impact upon Mauritian women’s rights and political mobilization in the country. Women were expected to support the men of their community and, in the mid 1940s, female suffrage was proposed by men from the elite and wealthy groups to win votes for their communities. There is no evidence of a women’s lobby for the franchise. Despite the controversy surrounding female suffrage, Mauritius had two women members of parliament following the election after proclamation of female suffrage.

Under 19th-century Mauritian law the state treated women as the inalienable property of their husbands. The “Code Napoleon” or “Napoleon’s Civil Code of 1804,” adopted in 1808 in Mauritius, imposed the status of “minor” on a married woman and was characterized by severe patriarchalism, restricting women to the private domestic sphere. Despite these restrictions, women were not passive and they were drawn into the economic and political struggles of the early 20th century. One of the most vivid memories is that of Anjalay Coopen, a female agricultural laborer who was among the people killed during an uprising on the sugar estates in 1943.

Mauritius became independent in 1968 and the role that women played in the negotiations leading to independence remains unclear to this day due to a paucity of research in this area, male domination of the political and historical writings of the country, and the fact that the Mauritian population was highly divided over independence. Women’s-movement activism peaked in the mid-1970s. This was when women’s organizations grouped together on common platforms to lobby for changes in the civil code and laws governing marriage and the Immigration and Deportation Act, which allowed for the deportation of foreign husbands of Mauritian women but not for foreign wives of Mauritian men. Women from different communities rallied together for equal rights for women, generating a strong national women’s movement.
Sufism, Islamic Philosophy, and Education in West Africa
Authors: Ogunnaike Oludamini
Published: June 2020

West Africa has been home to and contributed to the development of several important Islamic intellectual traditions, including logic (manṭiq), theology (kalām), Sufism (taṣawwuf), legal philosophy (uṣūl al-fiqh), and even philosophy (falsafa)—all of which influenced the distinctive forms of pedagogy that emerged in West Africa, in which ritual practice, physical presence, and the cultivation of virtue and adab (manners, a particular habitus) played an important role. The 20th and 21st centuries ce (14th and 15th centuries ah) witnessed the emergence of radically different forms of pedagogy and epistemology in Muslim West Africa, because of both increasing exposure to texts and ideas from other Muslim societies and the colonial encounter with Western philosophy and institutional education in the context of nation-states, which profoundly altered the intellectual landscape of the region. The contemporary situation in West Africa is quite plural and dynamic, in which traditions of Sufism, Salafism, Shiʿism, Western philosophies and pedagogies, Pentecostalism, and traditional African religions coexist, compete, interact, and influence each other across a wide variety of domains of life. Nevertheless, Sufism remains an important and prominent feature of many dimensions of life in Muslim West Africa, including Islamic education.
Guns in Africa
Authors: Brahm Felix
Published: June 2020

Guns have loomed large in many African societies since early modern times. This has much to do with their military and economic potential, but also with the influential social life they often obtained. Being instruments of destruction in the first place, the history of guns is closely connected with various forms of violence, especially with warfare and hunting; however, the significance of the gun went far beyond this. Guns were, for instance, applied in every-day protection of crops and livestock and integrated into ceremonies and festivities; they became signifiers of royal and chiefly power, objects of gender identification, attributes of professional groups, and markers of social status and racial difference. Studying the social life of guns allows for new insights into the material foundations of cultural domains and the construction of social hierarchies; at the same time, it demonstrates that the social and cultural meanings of objects, including guns, are never stable and are subject to constant change.

The history of guns in Africa is also one of appropriation and domestication of foreign technology, rising consumerism, and efforts to overcome dependency from importation. The presence of guns often had strong impacts on social and natural environments, both physically and mentally. Studying gun violence and arms regimes from an historical perspective helps us to better understand processes of political centralization and fragmentation, practices of resistance against colonial rule, and also the forming of authoritarian regimes and criminal organisations. The ambiguous history of the gun resonates in contemporary images and memories, connected with both order and violence and liberation and oppression.
Macroeconomics of the Euro
Authors: Bergin Paul
Published: June 2020

While it is a long-standing idea in international macroeconomic theory that flexible nominal exchange rates have the potential to facilitate adjustment in international relative prices, a monetary union necessarily forgoes this mechanism for facilitating macroeconomic adjustment among its regions. Twenty years of experience in the eurozone monetary union, including the eurozone crisis, have spurred new macroeconomic research on the costs of giving up nominal exchange rates as a tool of adjustment, and the possibility of alternative policies to promote macroeconomic adjustment. Empirical evidence paints a mixed picture regarding the usefulness of nominal exchange rate flexibility: In many historical settings, flexible nominal exchanges rates tend to create more relative price distortions than they have helped resolve; yet, in some contexts exchange rate devaluations can serve as a useful correction to severe relative price misalignments.

Theoretical advances in studying open economy models either support the usefulness of exchange rate movements or find them irrelevant, depending on the specific characteristics of the model economy, including the particular specification of nominal rigidities, international openness in goods markets, and international financial integration. Yet in models that embody certain key aspects of the countries suffering the brunt of the eurozone crisis, such as over-borrowing and persistently high wages, it is found that nominal devaluation can be useful to prevent the type of excessive rise in unemployment observed.

This theoretical research also raises alternative polices and mechanisms to substitute for nominal exchange rate adjustment. These policies include the standard fiscal tools of optimal currency area theory but also extend to a broader set of tools including import tariffs, export subsidies, and prudential taxes on capital flows. Certain combinations of these policies, labeled a “fiscal devaluation,” have been found in theory to replicate the effects of a currency devaluation in the context of a monetary union such as the eurozone. These theoretical developments are helpful for understanding the history of experiences in the eurozone, such as the eurozone crisis. They are also helpful for thinking about options for preventing such crises in the future.