bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Agonistic Queer TV Studies for Western Europe
Authors: Vanlee Florian
Published: May 2021

Queer TV studies have until now focused predominantly on U.S. TV culture, and research into representations of sexual and gender diversity in Western European, Asian, and Latin American programming has only recently found traction. Due to this U.S. focus, queer television in Western Europe has yet to be comprehensively documented in scholarly sources, and Western European queer television studies hardly constitute an emancipated practice. Given that U.S.-focused queer theories of television remain the primary frame of reference to study LGBT+ televisibility in Western Europe, but its domestic small screens comprise a decidedly different institutional context, it is at this time necessary to synthetically assess how the U.S. television industry has given way to specific logics in queer scholarship and whether these logics suit conditions found in domestic television cultures.

Queer analyses of U.S. TV programming rightly recognize the presence and form of non-heterosexual and non-cisgender characters and stories as a function of commerce; that is to say, television production in the United States must primarily be profitable, and whether or how the LGBT+ community is represented by popular entertainment is determined by economic factors. The recognition hereof pits queer scholars against the television industry, and the antagonistic approach it invites dissuades them from articulating how TV could do better for LGBT+ people rather than only critiquing what TV currently does wrong. While it is crucial to be attentive toward the power relations reflected and naturalized by television representations, it is also important to recognize that the discretion of prescriptive, normative interventions by queer TV scholars relates to conditions of U.S. television production.

The dominance of public service broadcasters (PSBs) and their historical role in spearheading LGBT+ televisibility highlights the distinctive conditions queer TV scholarship is situated in in Western Europe and troubles established modes of engaging the medium. Where the modest scale of national industries already facilitates more direct interaction between academics and TV professionals, PSBs are held to democratic responsibilities on diverse representation and have a history of involving scholars to address and substantiate their pluralistic mission. Consequently, Western European television cultures offer a space to conceive of an agonistic mode of queer TV scholarship, premised not only on contesting what is wrong but also on proposing what would be right. Hence, future engagements with domestic LGBT+ televisibility must look beyond established analytics and explore the value of articulating openly normative propositions about desirable ways of representing sexual and gender diversity.
Queer Safer Sex Communication
Authors: Kosenko Kami
Published: May 2021

Although communication scholars have been exploring the role of partner communication in sexual health promotion since the 1960s, the term safer sex, and its corollary safer sex communication, emerged in the late 1980s in the wake of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which was and still is disproportionately affecting queer individuals. Numerous studies, along with some meta-analyses, point to the protective potential of safer sex discussions, defined here as the communicative management of health concerns with sex partners. Despite scholarly agreement regarding its importance, the term safer sex communication has received little explication, and much of what is known about it comes from studies with predominantly heterosexual samples. A review of the literature on queer safer sex communication points to some key issues related to age, race, trauma history, place, and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), and suggests important considerations for future research efforts.
Terrestrial Processes and Their Roles in Climate Change
Authors: de Noblet-Ducoudré Nathalie , Pitman Andrew J.
Published: May 2021

The land surface is where humans live and where they source their water and food. The land surface plays an important role in climate and anthropogenic climate change both as a driver of change and as a system that responds to change. Soils and vegetation influence the exchanges of water, energy and carbon between the land and the overlying atmosphere and thus contribute to the variability and the evolution of climate. But the role of the land in climate is scale dependent which means different processes matter on different timescales and over different spatial scales.

Climate change alters the functioning of the land with changes in the seasonal cycle of ecosystem growth, in the extent of forests, the melt of permafrost, the magnitude and frequency of disturbances such as fire, drought, … Those changes feedback into climate at both the global and the regional scales. In addition, humans perturb the land conditions via deforestation, irrigation, urbanization, … and this directly affects climatic conditions at the local to regional scales with also sometimes global consequences via the release of greenhouse gases.

Not accounting for land surface processes in climate modelling, whatever the spatial scale, will result in biases in the climate simulations.
Regulatory Governance: History, Theories, Strategies, and Challenges
Authors: Levi-Faur David , Kariv-Teitelbaum Yael , Medzini Rotem
Published: May 2021

Regulation, that is, rulemaking, rule monitoring, and rule enforcement, is both a key policy and legal instrument and a pillar of the institutions that demarcate political, social, and economic lives. It is commonly defined as a sustained and focused control mechanism over valuable activities using direct and indirect rules. Most frequently, regulation is associated with the activity of public independent regulatory agencies, designed to promote economic, social, risk-management, integrity, or moral goals. Since the 1990s, more and more states worldwide are establishing such agencies and placing more emphasis on the use of authority, rules, and standard-setting, thus partially displacing earlier emphasis on public ownerships and directly provided services. Alongside this rise of the “regulatory state,” the expansion of regulation is also reflected in the rapidly growing variety of regulatory regimes that involves nonstate actors, such as private regulation, self-regulation, and civil regulation. Regulatory regimes can be explained and assessed from three theoretical perspectives: public-interest theories, private-interest theories, and institutional theories. Each perspective shines a different light on the motivations of the five regulatory actors: rule-makers, rule intermediaries, rule-takers, rule beneficiaries, and citizens. Over the years, diverse regulatory strategies evolved, including: prescriptive strategies that attempt to mandate adherence in precise terms what is required from the rule-takers; performance-based strategies that set in advance only the required outcomes; and process-based strategies that attempt to influence the internal incentives and norms of rule-takers. Although it appears that regulation is here to stay as a keystone of society, it still faces fundamental challenges of effectiveness, democratic control, and fairness.
East Asian Models of Public Administration: Issues, Challenges, and Prospects
Authors: Nakamura Akira
Published: May 2021

Is the Asian model of public administration (AMPA) plausible as a concept or discipline? This is one of the topics that many Asian specialists and especially those in East Asia have been interested to explore. One of the opinions considers that the idea of AMPA is difficult to ascertain because Asia is not a unified region. The area is culturally and traditionally so diverse that a single model, AMPA, would be implausible. There are, however, several leading scholars in Asia who have argued that the Asian experience in public administration has been rich in achievements and is generalizable to many other countries. In their view, the rise of Asia’s economic presence in general and China in particular highlights the importance of AMPA, which has increasingly become distinct and worthy of attention. The nature and content of AMPA would become crystalized once the characteristics of the study of public administration in the United States are juxtaposed to the Asian experience and more specifically that of the East Asian countries. AMPA stands distinct and looks salient when it is compared to the U.S. model from three essential features: the separation of administration from politics, the relationships between public and business administrations, and the inductive or deductive approaches to the study of public management. In the context of these three characteristics, AMPA essentially differs from the feature that has been studied and practiced in the United States.
Projective Psychodiagnostics: Inkblots, Stories, and Drawings as Clinical Measures
Authors: Eby Marla
Published: May 2021

Projective psychodiagnostics refers to the use of psychological instruments through which the subject is asked to respond to a set of ambiguous (though often suggestive) stimuli, thereby “projecting” aspects of their personality into these responses. The most prominent of these instruments includes the Rorschach Inkblot Technique, in which the subject is confronted with ten inkblots and is asked what these stimuli look like, and then what perceptual features make them look that way. Another common projective technique is the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), a storytelling exercise in which the subject responds with a narrative to a series of ambiguous but sometimes highly charged black and white pictures depicting human interactions. Over time, new pictures have been developed for similar storytelling instruments targeted to children (the Children’s Apperception Test) or different ethnic populations. Both of these tests emerged under the influence of psychodynamic theories, and of the work of Carl Jung, whose Word Association Test served as a projective measure of psychological conflicts. Finally, there is a series of drawing tests which, while less commonly used, have had a projective history, including human figure drawings, the Bender–Gestalt Test, and the Wartegg Drawing Completion Test.

Projective instruments have been used in a variety of psychiatric settings and have been criticized for being insufficiently grounded in either quantitative measures or scientific validity. The Rorschach has emerged with increasingly statistically based scoring systems addressing perceptual features, language, and content in the assessment of risk and diagnosis. The TAT is essentially a structured interview (since most scoring systems are not used by clinicians), but it nonetheless appears to be useful in gleaning information about a subject’s relationships with other people. Drawing tasks and sentence completion tests (derived from word association tests) are less commonly used, though more prevalent with children whose verbal abilities may be more limited. In general, projective tests appear to have some limited ability to define diagnosis and risk (and can be especially helpful in defining thought disorder and prognosis), but they may be most useful in helping clinicians obtain a deeper picture of conflicts and resources within the person tested.
K–12 School Employee Perpetrated Student Sexual Abuse, Misconduct, and Exploitation
Authors: Shakeshaft Charol
Published: May 2021

K–12 school employee perpetrated student sexual abuse, misconduct, and exploitation is the sexual boundary crossing of school employees to include verbal, visual, physical, and/or social media conduct of a sexual nature by a school employee directed toward a student. The sexual abuse of students by school employees is a worldwide problem that is under-documented and systematically ignored. Empirical work published since the first studies in the early 1980s explore five questions. How prevalent is the sexual abuse of students in schools? Who abuses? Who is abused? How does it happen? And, how can it be prevented?
Value Creation and Value-Creating Education in the Work of Daisaku Ikeda, Josei Toda, and Tsunesaburo Makiguchi
Authors: Goulah Jason
Published: May 2021

Daisaku Ikeda (b. 1928), Josei Toda (1900–1958), and Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871–1944) are Japanese educators, Buddhist activists, and the progenitors of the global Soka movement for peace, culture, and education. As such, their perspectives and practices shape curriculum in multilingual, multicultural, and multiracial contexts around the world. While each has established his own unique ideas and contributions to curriculum, together they share important commitments and perspectives, introduced by Makiguchi and developed successively by Toda and Ikeda, that have had a remarkable impact on human being and becoming. Arguably the most important among these is the principle of value creation, or “sōka,” and its implications for value-creating approaches to education and the actualization of a meaningful, contributive, and genuinely happy life.

Makiguchi was an elementary school teacher and principal who introduced his theory of value and value-creating pedagogy in the 1930 work Sōka kyōikugaku taikei, or The System of Value-Creating Pedagogy. Drawing on decades of his own classroom practice, Makiguchi distinguished truth, or facticity, from value, seeking to clarify the psychological processes of cognition and evaluation. While objective truth matters, he argued, it is not in and of itself the source of value or meaning in our lives. Rather, value is derived from the subjective and contingent meaning we create from that truth. Thus, Makiguchi maintained that creating value in terms of beauty, gain, and good—that is, value that serves oneself and others—is the means of cultivating happiness. Toda was a close colleague of Makiguchi and applied value-creating approaches to great success in his Jishu Gakkan, a tutorial school he founded.

If Makiguchi introduced and practiced value-creating approaches at an individual level, and Toda applied them institution-wide, then Ikeda, who was Toda’s direct disciple, must be recognized for distilling them into their crystalline essence, expanding this essence globally, and memorializing it as the foundational ethos and namesake of the Soka schools and universities he founded. Moreover, whereas Makiguchi theorized value creation as a pedagogical concept and, with Toda, broadened it to include the realm of Buddhist humanism, Ikeda has continued and expanded upon these, also characterizing value creation as an ontological orientation for all people in all aspects of life, from children to senior citizens and from civil society to professionals and activists in areas ranging from peace, culture, and human rights to biospheric sustainability and social movements. In all this, value creation and value-creating approaches constitute a curriculum of content, context, engagement, agency, hope, and becoming for oneself and others.
Learning from Disequilibrium and Educating the Feminine Voice in Philosophy
Authors: Saito Naoko
Published: May 2021

This article broaches what can sometimes be seen as the suppression of the female voice, sometimes the repression of the feminine. To address these matters involves the reconsideration of the political discourse that pervades education and educational research. This article is an attempt to disclose inequity in apparently equitable space, through the acknowledgment of the voice of disequilibrium. It proposes to re-place the subject of philosophy, and the subject of woman, through an alternative idea of the feminine voice in philosophy. It tries to reconfigure the female voice without negating its fated biological origin and traits, and yet avoiding the confining of thought to the constraints of gender divides.

In terms of education, it shall argue for the conversation of justice as a way of cultivating the feminine voice in philosophy: as the voice of disequilibrium. This is an occasion of mutual destabilization and transformation of man and woman, crossing gender divides, and preparing an alternative route to political criticism that not only reclaims the rights of women but releases the thinking of men and women, laying the way for a better, more pluralist, and more democratic politics. The feminine voice can find a way beyond the dominance of instrumental rationality and calculative thinking in the discourse on equity itself. And it can, one might reasonably hope, have an impact on the curriculum of university education.
South African Male Foundation Phase Teachers Distancing from Homosexuality
Authors: Msiza Vusi
Published: May 2021

Men teaching in the foundation phase (Grade R-3) in the province of Mpumalanga, in South Africa, distance themselves from homosexuality, femininity, and care. These men do so in a context where homophobia is prevalent and masculinities are toxic. Mpumalanga is a neglected site for research on men, masculinities, and sexuality. It is a site in which men’s work is defined largely as manual labor, such as working in the mines. A career such as teaching children in the foundation phase is perceived as a female occupation. These men are in a space that was previously deemed to be for women and therefore are positioned in a less dominant position, a position that is less desired by South African men. The male teachers do not want to be seen as gay and soft, so they distance themselves from such work as changing diapers, feeding, and providing emotional support, that would associate them with care and femininity. They articulate homophobic language when they distance themselves. While their work is perceived to place them in a subordinate role, they also undermine women and other subordinated masculinities. Developing and encouraging new forms of masculinities carries a potential to transform men and the society, particularly in the context like South Africa where violence, homophobia, absent fathers, and toxic masculinities are still prevalent.
Ethical Issues in Higher Education Pedagogy
Authors: Mancovsky Viviana
Published: May 2021

This article proposes thinking of a higher education pedagogy called into question by ethics. In particular, the focus is on two significant moments in the life of a university student: the decision to begin an undergraduate course of studies and the decision to continue and/or resume graduate studies, specifically, doctoral training.

To this end, the specificity of pedagogy is defined as an “exercise of reflection” and as “accompaniment,” and on the basis of this conception, it is called into question by ethics. Several authors shed light on some ethical matters from the perspective of education philosophy in order to explore and challenge teaching practices, with a view to welcoming and hosting students in their diversity, that is, accepting “otherness.” This idea is summarized in the figure of a “host professor” capable of building a pedagogical relationship that will accompany the students’ learning processes.

The university teaching practice is problematized by posing questions rather than providing answers or closed statements that prescribe an “ought to be” model of professor. Thus, these open questions are intended to encourage university professors to reflect on how to improve their pedagogical relationship called into question by ethics from a contemporary perspective.
School Reform, Educational Governance, and Discourses on Social Justice and Democratic Education in Germany
Authors: Gomolla Mechtild
Published: May 2021

In Germany, at the beginning of the 2000s, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) not only served as a catalyst for the development and implementation of an overall strategy for quality assurance and development of the state school systems. The school effectiveness movement has also brought the issue of educational inequality, which had been lost out of sight in the 1980s, back on the agenda. In ongoing reforms, the improvement of the educational success of children and young people with a migration history and/or a socioeconomically deprived family background has been declared a priority. However similar to the situation in Anglo-American countries, where output-oriented and data-driven school reforms have been implemented since the 1980s, considerable tensions and contradictions became visible between the New Educational Governance and a human rights- and democracy-oriented school development.

A Foucauldian discourse analysis of central education and integration policy documents at the federal political level from 1964 to 2019 examined how, and with what consequences, demands of inclusion, social justice, and democracy were incorporated, (re)conceptualized, distorted, or excluded in the New Educational Governance, which was a new type of school reform in Germany. The results of the study indicate that the new regulations of school development are far from shaping school conditions in a human rights–based understanding of inclusion and democratic education. The plethora of measures taken to improve the school success of children and young people with a history of migration (in interaction with other dimensions of inequality such as poverty, gender, or special educational needs) is undermined by a far-reaching depoliticization of discourse and normative revaluations. In the interplay of epistemology, methodology, and categories of school effectiveness research with managerialist steering instruments, spaces for democratic school development and educational processes, in which aspects of plurality, difference, and discrimination can be thematized and addressed in concerted professional action, appear to be systematically narrowed or closed. But the case of Germany also discloses some opposed tendencies, associated with the strengthened human rights discourse and new legislation to combat discrimination.
The History of Education in Australia
Authors: Heffernan Troy
Published: May 2021

Education in Australia’s history stretches back tens of thousands of years, but only a small number of changes have altered its shape in that time. The first period of education lasted for thousands of years and was an Indigenous education as knowledge of religious beliefs, society, and laws was shared from one generation to the next. Knowledge of Australia’s significant environmental diversity was also taught because possessing the skills to find appropriate shelter for the conditions, while developing methods of hunting, gathering, and fishing, was knowledge that needed to be taught to ensure survival.

Education changed when Europeans invaded Indigenous lands. Settlers who brought children as well as those who gave birth to children wanted their offspring to be part of an education system that mimicked England’s. Ex-convicts and later members of the Church provided this service and began the tradition of non-Indigenous education in Australia. It was during the 19th century as cities and towns increased in size, and the population more generally, that the final two significant periods of Australian education began. The nation’s wealthiest required religious and grammar schools that prepared children for secondary education and for university overseas, as well as in Australia as universities were established and slowly increased in number. When private education began, it was largely the only option for those seeking university degrees for their children, but this began a series of events in Australia that still sees approximately one-third of all school students attending private schools.

Public and compulsory education began in the late 19th century and gradually became more accessible. Public education, in some respects, began as governments saw the benefit in the social advantages of education, and economic incentives in creating educated laborers. However, even through the austerity of world wars and financial depression, successive generations of publicly educated individuals saw the need for increasingly continuing education beyond the compulsory school age. Public education subsequently increased in popularity through the 20th century as a growing number of students stayed beyond compulsory schooling age. Education in Australia is still seeing policies change to make schooling accessible and open to all members of society regardless of background. In the 21st century, secondary schooling is being completed by most demographic groups, and university has become accessible to a diverse group of students, many of whom may not have had access to such options only a few decades ago. This is not to suggest that systemic issues of racism and ostracism have been eradicated, but steps have been made to begin addressing these issues.
Philosophical Issues in Critical Thinking
Authors: Ritola Juho
Published: May 2021

Critical thinking is active, good-quality thinking. This kind of thinking is initiated by an agent’s desire to decide what to believe, it satisfies relevant norms, and the decision on the matter at hand is reached through the use of available reasons under the control of the thinking agent. In the educational context, critical thinking refers to an educational aim that includes certain skills and abilities to think according to relevant standards and corresponding attitudes, habits, and dispositions to apply those skills to problems the agent wants to solve. The basis of this ideal is the conviction that we ought to be rational. This rationality is manifested through the proper use of reasons that a cognizing agent is able to appreciate. From the philosophical perspective, this fascinating ability to appreciate reasons leads into interesting philosophical problems in epistemology, moral philosophy, and political philosophy.

Critical thinking in itself and the educational ideal are closely connected to the idea that we ought to be rational. But why exactly? This profound question seems to contain the elements needed for its solution. To ask why is to ask either for an explanation or for reasons for accepting a claim. Concentrating on the latter, we notice that such a question presupposes that the acceptability of a claim depends on the quality of the reasons that can be given for it: asking this question grants us the claim that we ought to be rational, that is, to make our beliefs fit what we have reason to believe. In the center of this fit are the concepts of knowledge and justified belief. A critical thinker wants to know and strives to achieve the state of knowledge by mentally examining reasons and the relation those reasons bear to candidate beliefs. Both these aspects include fascinating philosophical problems. How does this mental examination bring about knowledge? What is the relation my belief must have to a putative reason for my belief to qualify as knowledge?

The appreciation of reason has been a key theme in the writings of the key figures of philosophy of education, but the ideal of individual justifying reasoning is not the sole value that guides educational theory and practice. It is therefore important to discuss tensions this ideal has with other important concepts and values, such as autonomy, liberty, and political justification. For example, given that we take critical thinking to be essential for the liberty and autonomy of an individual, how far can we try to inculcate a student with this ideal when the student rejects it? These issues underline important practical choices an educator has to make.
Tagore’s Perspective on Decolonizing Education
Authors: Mukherjee Mousumi
Published: May 2021

Decolonization is a historic process that picked up momentum in the second half of the 20th century, whereby several countries of the Global South in Asia, Africa, and Latin America successively gained independence from European colonial rule and became sovereign modern nation-states. However, territorial independence from an external ruling power alone could not bring an end to all the social, political, and economic problems ushered in by hundreds of years of imperialism. This fact was realized long before independence from colonial rule by Rabindranath Tagore within the context of British colonial India. Hence, even before territorial and political decolonization, Tagore sought to decolonize the minds of people through education reform by first setting up his own school in 1901 and then establishing Visva-Bharati University in 1921. In fact, Tagore, who is the author of the national anthems of two independent modern South Asian nation-states, never saw independent India. He died in 1941 as a British colonial subject, six years before the independence of India from colonial rule in 1947. While many indigenous intellectuals of his era adopted violent and nonviolent methods to fight against British imperialism, Tagore devoted much of his adult life to the pursuit of freedom through pedagogic reforms.

Tagore’s philosophy and practice of pedagogic reform sought to “decolonize education” in British colonial India. Tagore’s own writings on education beginning in 1892 reveal that his philosophy and practice to “decolonize education” was based on the memory and critical reflections on his own experiences as a student in mainstream schools during the British colonial era in India. Tagore’s philosophy of education, institutionalized through his decolonizing pedagogic reform work in his school and university at Bolepur, Shantiniketan, were concrete responses of a highly creative and critical-thinking indigenous intellectual to the problems of the mainstream education system during his time. Hence, studying Tagore’s perspective on “decolonizing education” can provide us with a deeper understanding of the educational problems posed by British imperialism in India, as well as the evolution of these problems in the colonial metropole, which became global in nature through the process of colonialism, as has been argued by a number of academics, including modern British historian Michael Collins and postcolonial Indian academic Sanjukta Dasgupta.
Black Male Teachers and Gender Equity in Early Childhood Education
Authors: Bryan Nathaniel
Published: May 2021

Black male teachers represent 2% of the teaching profession. When grade level and area of specialization are added, for example early childhood education, even fewer Black males are visibly present in classrooms. Because of the underrepresentation of Black male teachers, clarion calls have been made in extant research, media, and popular press for racial and gender equity at and above the early childhood level. Black male teacher recruitment and retention initiatives including Call Me Mister have played an instrumental role in attempting to diversify early childhood classrooms by bolstering the percentage of Black male teachers who teach young children, and by illuminating the importance and benefits of the pedagogies and schooling practices of Black male teachers in supporting Black boys in classrooms. Black boys are often misperceived as disinterested in school, and Black male teachers are summoned to classrooms to serve as role models, father figures, and pedagogues who can meet the academic and social needs of Black boys at all grade levels. However, persistent challenges to the recruitment and retention of Black male teachers to classrooms remain daunting tasks in the teaching profession. More than 85% of teachers are White, middle-class, and female, and this overwhelmingly White female majority has concretized the idea that early childhood teaching is essentially women’s work. In doing so, White female teachers are socially constructed as the hallmark of early childhood education, possessing the White hegemonic feminine characteristics and dispositions essential to teaching young children. To that end, anti-Black misandric normative discourses such as early childhood teaching as women’s work have created barriers for and has stymied the recruitment and retention of men, regardless of race and ethnicity, but especially Black men who desire to teach young children.
Gender and Transformative Education in East Africa
Authors: Openjuru George Ladaah
Published: May 2021

Gender and transformative education are a unique combination that needs careful consideration. One is drawn to focusing on gender and education in an attempt to bring about gender perspective transformation. Gender-related transformation of education can be accomplished in a variety of scales and approaches. This approach could change how education is organized in ways that recognize gender differences or inequality, do not exacerbate gender inequity, and enhance gender awareness, and aim to promote gender equity and equality in education. This intervention could take the form of gender mainstreaming and other affirmative actions which can be achieved through gender policies, gender-responsive pedagogy, and curriculum development. There is no doubt that, regardless of all the efforts that have been put in place to overcome gender inequality in education, gender inequality still exists and continue to persist at all levels of education and hence the need for transformative education which is education for change. Educators should follow transformative education to enable them to identify practices and ways of teaching and learning that are not gender sensitive and can take corrective measures in the direction that can overcome gender disparity in education by avoiding action that promotes gender disadvantages.
A Culturally Affirming Approach to Research Methodology Through the Caribbean Practice of Liming and Ole Talk
Authors: Nakhid Camille
Published: May 2021

A culturally affirming approach to research methodology centers Indigenous, Black, People of color in the research process and recognizes the value of our own ways of knowing and sharing knowledge. Unlike a decolonizing methodology that remains tied to a colonial discourse against which it seeks to argue its relevance, an affirming methodology originates from within the worldviews, realities, and practices of the people from whom knowledge is sought and shared. Culturally affirming research is surrounded by its own traditions and ways of knowing so that its worth is in its own right, and it is valuable in and of itself.

The Caribbean region, with its indigenous history and localized present forged from peoples both local and global, has created social interactions, rituals, and cultural practices that signify and affirm themselves and their ways of knowing. Indigenous knowledges affirm the diversity of histories and experiences that shape our human development, and indigenous scholarship challenges the oppression by Western academia of indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing. Liming and ole talk is a uniquely Caribbean way of knowing, having its origins in the islands of Trinidad and Tobago. Liming explains the way we have learned to share knowledge and is reflective of our thinking, experiences, values, and principles. Ole talk is not only what knowledge we share but how we share that knowledge. Liming methodology, incorporating liming as research methodology and ole talk as research method, is not derived from Western interpretations but grounded within a Caribbean context. Liming methodology has been developed and employed as a culturally affirming research methodology for use with Caribbean peoples and in Caribbean contexts. Understanding ourselves can only be done when we center our cultures without the shadow of a colonial or decolonizing framework and when the questions that we ask and the solutions that we seek emanate from what we truly affirm and embrace to be ours. Liming methodology emphasizes the relational aspects of sharing knowledge and the solidarity that this brings to the practices, experiences, and histories of Black, Indigenous, and People of color. Research methodologies such as liming and ole talk, based on regionally relevant theoretical frameworks intrinsic to Caribbean social and historical authenticities, allow us to gain a more accurate and true knowledge of the world of our people.
Wrongful Influence in Educational Contexts
Authors: Tillson John
Published: May 2021

When and why are coercion, indoctrination, manipulation, deception, and bullshit morally wrongful modes of influence in the context of educating children? Answering this question requires identifying what valid claims different parties have against one another regarding how children are influenced. Most prominently among these, it requires discerning what claims children have regarding whether and how they and their peers are influenced, and against whom they have these claims. The claims they have are grounded in the weighty interests they each equally have in their wellbeing, prospective autonomy, and being regarded with equal concern and respect. Plausibly children have valid claims regarding the content and means of influence they themselves are subjected to. For instance, considerations of concern and respect for children confer duties on others enable them to know important information and develop important skills. Children also plausibly have valid claims to be free from certain means of influence, including indoctrination. This is because indoctrinatory practices threaten to diminish both their capacity to reason soundly, thereby constituting a wrongful harm, and their opportunities to form judgements and choices in response to relevant evidence and reasons, thereby constituting a wrong of disrespect.
English Education Reform in Asian Countries
Authors: Sun Wenyang , Rong Xue Lan
Published: May 2021

Language education is becoming an increasingly important topic in education in Asian countries, especially as schools in Asian countries have become more multilingual and multicultural as a result of rapid urbanization and globalization. A comparative analysis of the issues in language education reform in Asian countries—using China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore as examples—shows that, historically and currently, English language education policies are shaped by various underpinning ideologies such as linguicism, nationalism, and neoliberalism. English can serve as a vehicle for upward socioeconomic mobility, or an instrument of linguistic imperialism, or both, in Asia contexts. These ideologies, through language education policies and reforms, impact the status as well as the pedagogy and promotion of the English language. There is a trend and a need with regard to addressing critical consciousness in English education in order to counter the forces of linguicism and neoliberalism in an increasingly multilingual, multicultural, and globalized world.
The Kazakhs, 16th–19th Centuries
Authors: Noda Jin
Published: May 2021

The Kazakh khans considered themselves the descendants of Juchi, the son of Chinggis Khan. Leading a group of Turkic Muslim nomads, they established their own authority on the Kazakh steppe (previously called the Qipchaq steppe) by the end of the 15th century. During the 16th century, the Kazakhs further expanded their territory, by fighting with the Shibanid Uzbek dynasty, the Noghays, and the Moghuls. However, the 17th century found the Kazakhs in turn being pressured from without by the Junghars, a group of Mongolian nomads. While it was through this struggle with the Junghars that the Kazakhs gradually attained a unique identity, this identity came at the price of a loss of unity between the three clan confederations (known as Zhuz).

After the fall of the Junghars during the mid-18th century, the Kazakhs began conducting a policy of “bilateral diplomacy” with the Russian Empire and Qing China. Simply put, the Kazakh khans sent envoys to both Russia and the Qing court. The relations between the Kazakhs and the Qing are worthy of particular attention as several members of the Kazakh dynasty were even bestowed official titles by the Qing emperor. This bestowal guaranteed the right to trade in Xinjiang and further strengthened Kazakh authority throughout the steppe as well.

During the 19th century, the territory of the Kazakh nomads was split up by the Russian and Qing empires. This fracturing was mainly caused by Russia’s expansion into Central Asia. From this time, great political changes began occurring on the Kazakh steppe, leading to mass rebellions and other social unrest. During this tumultuous period under Russian influence, however, Kazakh society also produced many intellectuals, further strengthening their national identity.

Significant changes in Kazakh historiography after the onset of the Soviet era are characterized by a focus on two elements: namely, the close relationship between the Kazakhs and the Qing Empire, and the impact of Islam on Kazakh society. Historical research on these topics has been influenced by newly available archival sources in both Russia and China.
The Commerce and Economy of Ancient China
Authors: Zhaoyang Zhang
Published: May 2021

Initially, commerce did not play an important role in ancient China. However, starting from the 6th century bce, China experienced unprecedented growth in this area. Land became privatized and a highly sought-after commodity, contracts began to be widely used in transactions, some sort of market network emerged, and merchants started to exert influence on society. This transformation was due to the various reforms and policies that reshaped the overall structure of ancient Chinese economy and emancipated the strength of merchants. Furthermore, the sophistication and advancement of agriculture meant ordinary farmers had a surplus of labor and products, providing them with incentives to go to market.
Slave Trades and Diaspora in the Middle East, 700 to 1900 CE
Authors: La Rue George
Published: May 2021

In the Middle East, Africa was only one of multiple sources of enslaved and servile labor. Building on the legacy of earlier civilizations, the region drew on all of its immediate neighbors for slaves. Local kingdoms and empires arose, clashed, expanded, and adapted old and new slaving strategies from internal and external rivals. From the 7th century, the rapid expansion of Islam and the building of Muslim empires are salient features in this history, but many other historical developments played key roles. Ensuing encounters with other civilizations, empires, and trading networks frequently resulted in friction, mutual adaptation, or new cultural, political, or economic synergies. In the Middle East, Islamic practices toward slaves influenced all regional cultures, yet many variants emerged due to local customs; changing economic and political considerations; specific environmental conditions; and the experiences, cultures, and talents of the enslaved.

Slaves were captured directly or purchased. In wars and raids, Middle Eastern armies captured enemy combatants and civilians to ransom or enslave. The mix of enslaved and servile persons brought into the region varied in its composition, reflecting the geographical areas of military actions, the development of powerful trading partners, and the extent of trading networks. Foreign merchants imported additional slaves from the Balkans, the Black Sea region, the islands and shores of the Mediterranean, Central Asia, and Africa—including the West African savanna, the Lake Chad region, Sudan, Ethiopia, and the Horn of Africa, particularly via the Swahili coast.

These practices brought new servile populations as workers, domestic staff, concubines, soldiers, or bureaucrats to serve in imperial outposts, trading towns, or centers of agricultural, handicraft, or industrial production. The constant demand for servile labor was driven not only by expanding empires and new economic enterprises but also by growing urban populations, the multiple options for manumission under Islamic law, high mortality rates and low rates of reproduction among enslaved populations for social and medical reasons, and the resultant scarcity of second-generation slaves. Broadly speaking, enslaved Africans were more common in the southern tier of the Middle East and demand for them generally increased over time, as northern and internal sources of slaves dwindled. Enslaved persons, including Africans, served in numerous capacities and were dispersed throughout the Middle East and its areas of slave supply.
African Religions in Brazil
Authors: Parés Luis Nicolau
Published: May 2021

Despite their diverse political and cultural backgrounds, West Africans and West Central Africans shared some basic religious orientations. With a strong pragmatic focus on solving problems in this world, the dynamism and flexibility of their religious practices were critical for their quick reactivation within Brazilian slave society. The Atlantic transfer, however, deprived African institutions of their structural social basis so a complex innovative process of re-institutionalization was necessary to allow new forms of Afro-Brazilian religions to emerge. Ritual associativism first occurred around the colonial Calundu, mostly concerned with interpersonal healing and divination interactions, but rapidly saw the formation of parallel religious congregations inspired by an ecclesiastical mode of organization based on the initiatory recruitment of novices and the worship of multiple deities. Despite common elements of healing, divination, sacrifice, spirit possession, initiation, and celebration, the genesis of Afro-Brazilian religions was marked by astounding pluralism and eclecticism that led to a wide range of regional variation. The demographics and cultural specificities of the enslaved in each place, as well as local historical circumstances, determined distinct processes of creative synthesis among the various African traditions and between these and hegemonic Iberian Catholicism, Amerindian healing practices, and others. The circulation of ideas and priests across the country and between Africa and Brazil after the end of the Atlantic slave trade also added to the 19th-century consolidation of an Afro-Brazilian religious field. Despite a history of continuous discrimination and persecution, alongside occasional selective tolerance, Afro-Brazilian religions offered a unique space for the transformative reproduction of African values, behaviors, and forms of sociability, which had a long-lasting effect on Brazilian national culture. The temples’ struggles for legitimacy and recognition was expressed in a latent tension between those which claimed an alleged African ritual purity and those accused of syncretism, a divide to which scholars greatly contributed to and which has oriented their classificatory efforts.
Fetal Deaths in High-Income Countries
Authors: Lisonkova Sarka , Joseph K. S.
Published: May 2021

Fetal death refers to the death of a post-embryonic product of conception while in utero or during childbirth, and it is one of the most distressing events faced by women and families. Birth following spontaneous fetal death is termed “miscarriage” if it occurs early in gestation, and “stillbirth,” if it occurs beyond the point of viability. There are substantial between-country differences in the criteria used for reporting stillbirths and these differences compromise international comparisons of stillbirth rates.

In high-income countries, a majority of fetal deaths occur due to genetic causes, fetal infection, or other pregnancy complications. Congenital anomalies, placental insufficiency, and/or intrauterine growth restriction are frequent antecedents of fetal death. Maternal risk factors include advanced maternal age, high body mass index, smoking and substance use during pregnancy, prior stillbirth, chronic morbidity, and multifetal pregnancy. Disparities in education and socioeconomic status and other factors influencing maternal health also contribute to elevated rates of stillbirth among vulnerable women.