This case study of Florida International University is part of a 12-year line of research on intentional change in public metropolitan research universities. Using IPEDS data, this study focuses on changes (2011-2020) in 20 intersectional, full-time faculty categories that combine Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Appointment Type. In these results, the analysis explores diversity, equity, and inclusion issues connected to metric-centric faculty hiring policies. The answers to the study’s three research questions are all affirmative: (a) during the study period, 2011-2020, the FIU full-time faculty composition changed in intersectional categories of Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Appointment Type; (b) the results reveal patterns of change; and (c) these patterns of change have diversity, equity, and inclusion implications. FIU’s metric-centric policies appear to favor the exchange of full-time Permanent lines (tenured or tenured-track) for full-time Contingent contracts (non-tenure). If gains are made by non-White faculty, they tend to be in Contingent categories rather than Permanent. The discussion situates the results in the Culture Wars currently occurring in Florida that involve attacks on academic freedom and tenure.

The primary purpose of this paper is to shed light on the difficulties and potential practices involved in meeting the educational requirements of English Language Learners (ELs) who live in rural locations. It explores how new people’s movement into rural regions has resulted in an inflow of English Language Learners (ELs) with varied histories, languages, and cultures into schools that once had a homogeneous student body.

This is a qualitative study in the Eastern Caribbean that describes the lived experiences of transgender and gender nonconforming individuals.

Character building (CB) is important for basic psychologists. This study aims to investigate the implementation and interpretation of character building (CB) in the three-year Bachelor of Psychology program at Tilburg University. Five dimensions of CB, including intellectual independence, critical mindset, social responsibility, scientific responsibility, and entrepreneurship, were analyzed using a review and template thematic analysis as part of the regular quality assurance assessment in 2021-2022. The results of the full program assessment plan and additional data collection on course practices revealed that the five dimensions of CB were well-integrated into most educational processes at both the program and course level. We submitted this previously as a preprint and received the following comments: Nicholas’s comment: Dear Dr Sabita Soedamah, Thank you for your interest in Advance, the preprint server for social science research offered by SAGE Publishing. We have successfully received your submission; however, your paper appears to include research on human participants without any indication of participant consent or approval from an Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board within your paper. Please complete the following (where applicable): 1. Please add a note to your Method’s section that states you obtained participant consent as well as the full name and institution of the ethics review committee, in addition to the approval number, if available. 2. If you did not receive consent or get approval from an ethics committee OR if it was not necessary for your study, we ask that you please note this in your paper. 3. Please update your Ethics Statement in the submission form to match the statement within the body of your paper. Author’s reply: we have now updated the manuscript accordingly and addressed these points requested by the reviewer.

This paper offers a scoping review of literature on mixed reality frameworks and the use of mixed reality environments in initial teacher education to simulate classroom interactions and conversations with parents and colleagues. It synthesises findings on mixed reality across 4 key articles and conference proceedings on mixed reality frameworks and across 42 peer-reviewed journal articles on mixed reality simulations in initial teacher education. The findings inform the development of a conceptual framework, Teacher-Identity- Discourse-Efficacy (TIDE). TIDE presents a teacher-oriented view of using mixed reality simulations to prepare pre-service teachers for real-world practice and interactions. The framework highlights key areas requiring further research. Investigations triangulating mixed reality simulation data on pre-service teachers’ evolving identity, discourse and efficacy as teachers are recommended.

Understanding the role regulators and innovation processes play on innovation success or failure is the aim of this paper. The sequential mixed-method approach on 321 lead users and eight regulators quantitative responses, 36 lead users, and five qualitative ones provides new insights.

This paper describes a qualitative study of educational outcomes for 0–8-year-old children with blindness and low vision (BLV) who are learning sonification concepts. Children with BLV experience barriers to accessing education and careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), fields which traditionally rely heavily on visual representation of information. There is growing awareness of the potential of sonification, a technology to represent data and information in non-speech audio, to improve education access. While early learning of assistive technology skills is deemed essential for equity of access to education across the curriculum, children are generally not introduced to the concept of sonification at school until at academic level in secondary or tertiary education. Little is known about how young children with BLV engage with this promising technology. Phase 1 of the project consisted of the development of ‘CosmoBally on Sonoplanet’, an accessible, educational game application for iPads and Android tablets. In phase 2, an online qualitative survey collected formal responses from users of this app to Likert scale and open-ended questions. The majority of the 17 respondents were (specialist) educators, and five of the respondents identified as having BLV. The survey investigated respondents’ perceptions of the capabilities of young children with BLV in using basic sonification in ‘CosmoBally on Sonoplanet’ to identify shapes - including a circle-, orientate in a digital grid and create drawings on a touch screen. Results suggest that young children with BLV can learn sonification skills and that they additionally build relevant non-sonification skills during this learning process. This paper aims to provide a first insight into best practice around early learning of sonification as a potential tool for increased access and inclusion of children with BLV to STEM subjects in school.

This paper critically examines the nexus between the scientific method and the study of race in the contemporary world. It begins by historicizing the emergence of the scientific method as indispensable to the advent of European modernity. The development of modernity collapsed into the racialization of black subjects as subhuman and criminal. This criminalization of blackness occurs at two critical junctures: the arrest of blacks via plantation enslavement and the concomitant imprisoning of black bodies of thought. The consequence of modernity’s carceral methods implicates the study of race, particularly the formation of Black Studies, by criminalizing black reason. As such, the paper contends for an Afromodern scientific revolution, understood as the emancipation of method and the decarceralizing of science in order to procure black liberation in the modern world.

A document by Marcio Gomes. Click on the document to view its contents.

SMEs were pushed to implement innovative procedures and transform from traditional operations into a Digital Transformation process of converting into more technologized and enhance the market needs to obtain new employment opportunities post to the covid-19 crisis, the expectations of development put the stockholders and investments under stress to adopt the new techniques of innovation to fill the market gaps and needs, keeping the low cost as the first target with quality of values in products and services at the same or better level, taking into consideration the customers' satisfaction as the main factor that affects the technology adoption, policies changing and the low-cost innovation due to the economic crisis. To take into consideration this issue, we built a conceptual framework model based on multi-model founds in different studies concerning different factors that affected the adoption, focusing on the digital transformation and had an impact on the Frugal Innovation in 50 of new established SMEs undergoing the new program adopted by SME's Society in Bahrain. The hypothesis of the adopted model will provide the relationship of some of the most founded factors affecting the Frugal Innovation Implementation, which had a link with Digital Transformation and a positive impact on Customer satisfaction, keeping in mind that the Covid-19 anxiety is considered a moderator that affected the adoption of Digital Transformation directly. To test the hypothesis, data would be collected with both Quantitative and Qualitative methods in a longitudinal study before applying the Digital transformation and after the technology adoption and expected that the data analysis will support the testing of the hypothesis.

1 Department of Community and social development, University of Zimbabwe, PO Box MP 167, Mount Pleasant, Harare, Zimbabwe. Email: [email protected] Department of Community and social development, University of Zimbabwe, PO Box MP 167, Mount Pleasant, Harare, Zimbabwe. Email: [email protected] Department of Community and social development, University of Zimbabwe, PO Box MP 167, Mount Pleasant, Harare, Zimbabwe. Email: [email protected] Department of Community and social development, University of Zimbabwe, PO Box MP 167, Mount Pleasant, Harare, Zimbabwe. Email: [email protected]

When customers complain, they express their dissatisfaction with a company or a service provider and request that their complaints are processed. Accordingly, this paper tries to determine the role of perceived responsibility in managing complaints following a service dysfunction. After a review of the relevant literature, we propose a research model that estimates how perceived responsibility mediates the contribution of justice dimensions to customer satisfaction and this latter’s effect on the relationship between perceived quality and perceived justice dimensions. The proposed model is tested on a sample of 350 patients from several private clinics located in Tunis.

The impact of easing labour regulations on the rate of entry of new small and medium industrial enterprises is examined for Indian manufacturing, taking additionally into account the effect of improved infrastructure, particularly augmented power availability, on the entry rate. Econometric analyses are undertaken using state-level panel data for 2006-2018. Inter-regional variations in the entry rate of small and medium enterprises are utilized to establish the causal effect. The results indicate that easing labour regulations in a region (state) significantly enhances the pace of setting up new small and medium industrial enterprises in the region, and the beneficial impact of labour reforms is greater in regions where power availability is relatively abundant. Another finding is that an increased rate of entry of new small and medium industrial enterprises leads to increased growth rate in employment in manufacturing.

Today, both Thailand and the United States face stalemate in addressing serious environmental problems. The lack of policy action seemingly occurs, in both countries, because of an unwillingness on the part of government to address the problem. Yet, we know there are instances of “punctuated equilibrium” or significant policy movement that upsets status quo arrangements and causes government to act. This research uses a case study approach and a Most Different Systems Design to study movement, or gridlock, in environmental policy in two countries half a world apart. By studying both successes and failures, in distinct socio-political settings, we are able to uncover systematic explanations for environmental policy progress. Specifically, we learn that political and public consensus is crucial for environmental policy success. Moreover, we learn that vested business interests often hinder policy advancement. Last, we learn that environmental interest groups and international pressure are neither necessary nor sufficient to produce policy change.

Service quality in the Malaysian telecom sector has been a major concern for consumers, who continue to inundate the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) with complaints about service providers. A suggested solution to this problem is the adoption of an automatic compensation scheme (ACS) in the Malaysian communications sector. Under the ACS, service providers will be required to compensate consumers, who receive poor service quality, without the requirement of a formal claim. This scheme already exists in other jurisdictions, particularly the UK, where it has been used since 2019. Nevertheless, the adoption of the ACS in Malaysia would likely contend with a number of obstacles. This article provides a pathway for Malaysia to overcome the legal obstacles that would likely undermine the adoption of the ACS in the country. The article combines a qualitative, library-based doctrinal research approach exploring laws and regulations applicable to the ACS, with a quantitative approach involving the use of questionnaire directed at telecom service providers. The aim of the questionnaire was to elicit feedback from the telecom sector with a view to devising an appropriate framework. The article concludes with recommendations to harmonise the ACS with the Malaysian legal system, including the objectives to be served, when to apply the scheme, methods of implementing it, as well as issues of force majeure.

This paper addresses insufficient effort responding (IER), a significant issue in survey research affecting data quality. We focus on IER prediction through nonreactive measures and gauge its prevalence in a pupil population, leveraging a sizable online survey of adolescents. The analysis uncovers IER as a nonmarginal issue that varies considerably by gender, migration status, and school type. Utilizing Random Forest models, we evaluate nonreactive measures’ predictive power for IER, notably response time, intra-individual response variability, and Mahalanobis distance. The findings highlight the future research value of these measures, emphasizing the strong influence of response time. We also explore the relationship between predictors and IER and find that shorter response times and less response variability correspond to a greater likelihood of IER. This study illustrates the potential of nonreactive measures and advanced machine learning techniques for predicting IER and highlights the necessity for further research.

The current business environment is characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). Organizations must adapt quickly to thrive. Strategic flexibility analysis (SFA) is a tool to improve adaptability. This conceptual article explores SFA's role in organizational adaptation and performance in VUCA environments. An integrated literature review examined research on SFA, adaptation, and VUCA. A conceptual framework illustrated SFA's impact on adaptation and performance. Analysis and discussion provided insights into SFA's role in VUCA adaptation. We conducted an integrative literature review, and the findings indicate SFA is valuable for improving adaptability and performance in VUCA environments. This study has implications for organizations and human resource development professionals seeking to understand SFA's importance for adaptation and performance improvement in turbulent conditions. Overall, SFA emerges as a critical tool for organizational agility and success in unpredictable business environments defined by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.

This paper provides a novel exploration of extreme global poverty using an original framework that combines critiques of cruelty with the concept of necro-economics. Departing from conventional perspectives on inequality and poverty that accept both as necessary, I contend that global inequality is inherently cruel in outcome and in the becoming cruel of necro-economic subjects. Necro-economics, conceptualized by Warren Montag, is an underutilized concept within the broader biopolitical discourse. Like necro-politics, necro-economics emphasizes the centrality of death within modern economic apparatuses. I show how the concept can be usefully applied to understanding the global economy. The study re-evaluates two perspectives on global poverty (human rights and structural violence) and suggests that both are inadequate for explaining the role of cruelty within the system. To address this gap, I turn to the work of Zygmunt Bauman to show how the global economy, as a necro-economic system engenders a process of cruel subjectivation. The necro-economic framework developed within this paper reveals the global economic system to be one that requires suffering from those at the margins while simultaneously cultivating a callous indifference amongst those at the center. This occurs through self-reinforcing processes of distancing and substituting technical for moral responsibility. In conclusion, the paper establishes that the global economic structure perpetuates suffering through the becoming cruel of necro-economic subjects, shedding new light on the intricate relationship between capitalism, inequality, and human suffering.