Search

The research assessed waste-based briquettes consumption compared to conventional fuels in the Andes. Laboratory tests were conducted together with on-field analysis in Colquencha (Bolivia). The laboratory study shows that the performances of briquettes are better in terms of PM2.5 (933.4 ± 50.8 mg kg -1 ) and CO emissions (22.89 ± 2.40 g kg -1 ) compared to animal dung (6265.7 ± 1273.5 mgPM2.5 kg -1 and 48.10 ± 12.50 gCO kg -1 ), although the boiling time increased due to the lower fuel consumption rate and firepower compared to shrubs. The social survey organized with 150 Bolivian citizens suggested that low-income households are not able to pay for an alternative fuel: about 40% would pay less than 4 USD per month, while methane use for cooking is positively correlated with the income level (r = 0.244, p < 0.05). On field analysis suggested that local cookstoves are not appropriate for briquettes combustion since indoor air pollution overcomes 30 ppm of CO and 10 mgPM2.5 m -3 . On balance, local small manufactures can be the main target for selling waste-based briquettes to reduce shrubs and wood consumption. However, briquettes production costs seem not yet competitive to natural easy-to-obtain fuels (i.e., animal dung). The research encourages the use of cellulosic and biomass waste-based briquettes in the Andean area for cooking, heating, or manufacturing and strongly advises policy-makers to introduce economic incentives for the recovery of secondary raw materials., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Could the standardisation of language narrow disparities in achievement in education amongst people of different social class, and within and across ethnicities and genders, and could this have implications for injustices and inequities in wider society? In analysing socio-economic diversity through the lens of its correlation with language, this paper examines how the standardisation of language could be used as a means to reduce such diversity. It examines links between the standardisation of language, and the reduction of inequalities between socio-economic groups, in regard to achievement in education. It also examines the correlation between language and social class, and propensity towards being a perpetrator and/or victim of hostility and violence, as well as their relationship with health and life expectancy etc. The paper further examines the effect of the use of technology and teaching methods on the acquisition of knowledge, and how this impacts upon children of different social class within the learning environment. In order to help address some of these questions, an auto-ethnographic methodology is adopted with the aim of being able to explore, and reflect upon, personal experience, and to be able to weave greater understanding and connections between apparently disparate factors related to diversity, all through the lens of language and its relationship to aspects of culture relating to social class. Amongst its conclusions, the paper argues that the standardisation and enhancement of spoken language would narrow the disparities in academic achievement between socio-economic groups. The paper also argues that in order to challenge inequitable power structures which have arisen from historical injustices, then rather than concentrating on underrepresentation of groups of people within high status positions in society, the focus of diversity should be directed towards challenging the over representation, in a range of settings, of groups of people within low status positions in society.

Host immune activation is common under a pathogen invasion. This physiological response can promote changes in the body surface compounds, thus providing chemical cues related to health that might be useful to conspecifics. By recognizing the current immunological status of social partners, individuals can modulate their behavior to minimize the risk of infection. Tegument wounding, an immune elicitor, is a required step for many parasites to become established in a host. By using the neotropical eusocial paper wasp Mischocyttarus metathoracicus as a model organism, we first performed a lure presentation experiment in the field to test if wasps discriminate conspecific immunological status (experimentally manipulated by wounding) during on nest social interactions. Then, we performed gas chromatography–mass spectrometry analyses to test if immunostimulation by wounding alters the wasps' cuticular hydrocarbon profile. We found that wasps reduce the duration of aggressive physical contact when interacting with wounded lures, despite displaying a similar frequency of inspective and aggressive behaviors toward both the wounded and the control lures. Besides, we found a subtle increase in a single cuticular hydrocarbon in the wounded wasps. Thus, wasps recognize conspecific immunological status, likely by chemical cues, and modulate their behavior in order to defend the colony against intruders while minimizing the personal risk of infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article extends existing sociological scholarship on doing and displaying family by developing the concept of documenting families. We suggest that documenting is conceptually rich insofar as it showcases the relationship, and tensions, between institutional practices and individual experiences of family display. Drawing on our research with men who became parents without partners, we argue that the process of documenting family is made especially evident in studies of what Finch originally referred to as 'non-conventional' family relationships. We explain that documenting sheds light not only on the official and unofficial means through which families are recognised on paper, but also on family practices as work – in this case paper-work – that involves negotiation between different social actors who are generally unequal in terms of their authority and agency to impose situational meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paper wasps are a model system for the study of social evolution due to a high degree of inter- and intraspecific variation in cooperation, aggression, and visual signals of social status. Increasing the taxonomic coverage of genomic resources for this diverse clade will aid comparative genomic approaches for testing predictions about the molecular basis of social evolution. Here, we provide draft genome assemblies for two well-studied species of paper wasps, Polistes exclamans and Mischocyttarus mexicanus. The P. exclamans genome assembly is 221.5 Mb in length with a scaffold N50 of 4.11 Mb. The M. mexicanus genome assembly is 227 Mb in length with a scaffold N50 of 1.1 Mb. Genomes have low repeat content (9.54–10.75%) and low GC content (32.06–32.4%), typical of other social hymenopteran genomes. The DNA methyltransferase gene, Dnmt3  , was lost early in the evolution of Polistinae. We identified a second independent loss of Dnmt3 within hornets (genus: Vespa). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focused Clinical Question: In adult patients with persistent low back pain, what relationship do social determinants of health have on pain frequency or severity? Bottom Line: This systematic review identified several particular social risk factors (including education status, socioeconomic status, and occupational factors) that are consistently associated with adverse low back pain outcomes. In addition, the analysis of the population-representative (cross-sectional) studies demonstrated support for important associations between specific social determinants of health, such as low socioeconomic status/income status and employment status and chronic low back pain prevalence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Using nationally representative longitudinal data from 2010 to 2018 in China, this study systematically investigates the relationship between Subjective Social Status (SSS) and health (physical health and mental health) in the Chinese adult population., Methods: By applying between-within model, we disentangle the relationship between health outcomes and: (1) between-individual differences in SSS and (2) within-individual variations of SSS across time. In addition, to explore SSS mobility and trajectory, we further decomposed SSS into lagged SSS and the change between the current and lagged SSS (mobility)., Results: We find that there is significantly positive and unique relationship (independent of Objective Social Status (OSS)) between SSS and physical and mental health. However, for physical health, we observed an Inverse-U effect of average SSS, after some point (SSS = 3.93), higher average SSS is associated with a score decrease. Through heterogeneity analysis, we find that for physical health, within- and between-effects decreases with age and for mental health, the within effect is only significant among the urban population. Individuals with high expected mobility are also found to have significantly better health., Conclusions: These findings show that the personal relative deprivation has negative, particularly salient and unique effects on the health of the Chinese population, and it is important to consider the dynamic nature of SSS., (© 2022 The British Psychological Society.)

Despite decades of policies to widen participation in medical degrees, students selected for Medicine continue to reflect a socially elite group, rather than the diversity of the communities that graduates will serve. While research has documented experiences of students from disadvantaged backgrounds, this paper examines the "cultures of success" that enable advantaged students to gain entry to medical school. It documents how these students' school and home environments enable the development and realisation of "aspirational capacity". Aspirational capacity is not just about having a dream, but also the resources and knowledge to realise one's dream. The paper also examines a negative side of a narrow aspirational focus. "Aspirational constriction" describes the premature foreclosure of career ambitions, which can have negative implications for both the students and for society, and for less advantaged students, who are effectively excluded from degrees such as Medicine.

This paper proposes a new theory of Conditional Social Equality (CSE) which in some ways challenges the theory of cumulative advantage/disadvantage (CAD), which postulates that inequalities and social divisions necessarily increase over time. Using evidence from informal learning groups in Men's Sheds in three countries, we conclude that some social divisions between homosocial groups, in this case groups of older men, may actually decrease -- but only under certain conditions. Male-gendered learning groups that were relatively homogeneous by age helped erase class divisions and softened gender stereotypes. Our theory of conditional social equality (CSE) predicts the following: (1) in-group homogeneity can enable the acceptance of some aspects of heterogeneity; (2) some other aspects of in-group heterogeneity may not be tolerated, thus maintaining in-group cohesion; and (3) in-group homogeneity and boundary setting towards out-groups may be prerequisites for the acceptance of (some) aspects of in-group heterogeneity. All of this has important implications for adult learning in both heterogeneous and homogenous groups.

Primary and secondary education under capitalism serves as an ideological apparatus to construct productive workers who will participate in the extractive economy and consent to their own exploitation. However, some school children are marked as deficient--impaired, disabled, and mad--incapable of being good workers who facilitate capitalist accumulation. Just as capital banishes incapacitated workers to the reserve army of labor, so too do school children learn to "surplus" and "disable" their peers who do not meet school norms. In this paper, I use a revolutionary Marxist perspective to analyze empirical data from a grade 1 United States classroom where students were teasing a neurodivergent classmate and excluding her from participation. I explore how the teacher intervened by using critical literacy to design a curricular unit on hidden disabilities that would engage her students in transformative, disability justice, and how students built a community around their disabled peers. Along the way, I explore how disability is a relation under capitalism rather than an identity; how nature gives us diverse bodyminds but it is capitalism that disables us; how the education system in capitalist societies is a vehicle for the dissemination of ruling class ideologies of productivity; how some school children are surplused and labeled as incapable of being good workers who facilitate capitalist accumulation; and possible solutions--what educators, parents, caregivers, and others can do about it.

This paper examined the impact of the 2017 Recognition of Irish Travellers as an Ethnic Minority through the lens of Fraser's model of justice. A number of interviews were held with a community development worker, a Traveller support worker, a Traveller education officer and three groups of Traveller women in relation to the impact of the recognition, and several themes emerged. Overall, the recognition as an ethnic minority was celebrated by Traveller organisations but for Travellers in the community there was little to no impact on their daily lives and on education provision, and no impact on Traveller status and recognition of the Traveller culture. Gaps in educational provision persisted with insufficient literacy and other learning supports. Awareness of Traveller culture was needed in schools for staff and students, and discrimination continued to be an issue.

Gun violence within Latine communities in New Mexico is on the rise and shows no signs of slowing down. The disparities in gun violence experiences mirror the structural and social position factors which negatively and disproportionately impact Latine people. In response to firearm-related deaths nearly doubling over the last decade, New Mexican legislators have been pressured to implement gun violence prevention policies. However well intended, these strategies often fail to address the structural inequities that underlie the rise in gun violence within Latine communities. There is an urgent need for research to better understand the unique experiences of Latine persons and their experiences in both gun violence and prevention. From a social ecological perspective, examining the structural barriers and facilitators which impede Latine involvement in gun violence prevention is critical to interrupting the cycles which render this group more susceptible. A deeper understanding of the factors associated with both gun violence and prevention is crucial for developing informed and culturally sensitive policies and interventions. This conceptual paper explores theory and research to better understand how gun violence impacts Latine communities and creates a conceptual framework to improve healthcare workers' ability to encourage empowerment and efficacy regarding Latine engagement in gun violence prevention efforts. The objective of this paper is to analyze research from disciplines in the social and health sciences focusing on the experiences of Latine persons and groups experiencing gun violence and engaging in gun violence prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social interactions have large effects on individual physiology and fitness. In the immediate sense, social stimuli are often highly salient and engaging. Over longer time scales, competitive interactions often lead to distinct social ranks and differences in physiology and behavior. Understanding how initial responses lead to longer-term effects of social interactions requires examining the changes in responses over time. Here we examined the effects of social interactions on transcriptomic signatures at two times, at the end of a 45-minute interaction and 4 hours later, in female Polistes fuscatus paper wasp foundresses. Female P. fuscatus have variable facial patterns that are used for visual individual recognition, so we separately examined the transcriptional dynamics in the optic lobe and the non-visual brain. Results demonstrate much stronger transcriptional responses to social interactions in the non-visual brain compared to the optic lobe. Differentially regulated genes in response to social interactions are enriched for memory-related transcripts. Comparisons between winners and losers of the encounters revealed similar overall transcriptional profiles at the end of an interaction, which significantly diverged over the course of 4 hours, with losers showing changes in expression levels of genes associated with aggression and reproduction in paper wasps. On nests, subordinate foundresses are less aggressive, do more foraging and lay fewer eggs compared to dominant foundresses and we find losers shift expression of many genes in the non-visual brain, including vitellogenin, related to aggression, worker behavior, and reproduction within hours of losing an encounter. These results highlight the early neurogenomic changes that likely contribute to behavioral and physiological effects of social status changes in a social insect. Author summary: Aggressive interactions often create inequalities–some individuals win while others lose. Winning versus losing can lead to large physiological differences between individuals, including different neurogenomic profiles between winners and losers. How this information about contest outcome leads to distinct neurogenomic profiles is poorly understood. Here we examine gene expression in response to aggressive social encounters in paper wasps, which naturally form dominance hierarchies on their nests in the wild. Shortly following encounters winners and losers have similar expression profiles, likely because similar mechanisms are engaged by social experiences. Four hours later, we find divergent neurogenomic profiles between winners and losers, with losers showing larger shifts in expression compared to winners. Many of the most dynamically expressed genes have been previously associated with dominance and caste differences in paper wasps showing how a single interaction can engage many of the same genomic networks that are involved in mediating more dramatic differences in queen-worker behavioral differences are also involved in responses shortly following social interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper represents a fragment of a multi-year project focused on everyday speech interaction and, particularly, on verbal mechanisms of granting speech efficiency and effectiveness. The introductory statement of the research is more precise the speaker organizes his/her message verbally, the easier it is understood by the listener. Special attention is paid to the methodological approach to verbal identification of literary characters' social strata. The paper also elicits how Gestalt analysis can be successfully applied to different practical linguistic tasks. Hence, the article deals with the advantages of Gestalt, used for unmasking the virtual speaker's social identity and his social status. Besides, a close study of speech situations has revealed some cases when the speaker tries to play a verbal trick on the audience, thus consciously or unconsciously imposing a false image and hiding his/her true identity. The phenomenon of speech imposters, discovered in literary dialogues termed "speech, or verbal mimicry," while the speakers who use such verbal masks are called "mimics." In the presented research, two types of mimicry are distinguished: progressive and regressive speech mimicry. Hence, the characters' speech was analyzed through the prism of his/her actual or imposed social status, which allowed to single out sufficiently reliable syntactic indicators of the speaker's real social profile.

This paper examines debates over the nature, purpose, and reform of geographical education in schools in the eighteenth-century German-speaking territories. Attention is paid to contemporaries' concerns over the cognitive content of geography -- what geography was -- and, in greater detail, to their views concerning how the subject might be taught, its teaching improved, and the end in view of teaching it, namely to produce informed citizens. The paper shows that while there was widespread agreement over the utility of geography, opinions differed over how best to teach it, and to whom. These differences centred less on religion, between the largely Catholic southern German territories and the chiefly Protestant northern German territories, and more upon the age, social status, gender, and intended future of the pupil. Proposals for the reform of geographical education argued that geography be taught first with reference to the pupil's locality and to notions of "homeland" from which local setting attention would be paid to other states, countries, and continents.

This paper explores the relationship between education policy and the trajectory of English fever in Korea. English fever refers to a fervent desire to become proficient in English at almost any cost. English fever started with governments' globalisation efforts in the 1980s and further intensified in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Drawing on policy enactment theory and analysing policy documents, this paper shows how English fever, once having taken root in Korean society, defied all policy measures to tackle it. The English language having a close relationship with social equity, these policies pursued an additional aim of increasing educational equity for students from low-income families. Their impact, however, proved minimal, partly due to educational stakeholders' resistance. In order to relieve pressure on students, presidents Pak Geun-hye and Mun Jae-in tried to decrease the strong emphasis on English in curricula during the last decade.

The form of Physical Education (PE) teacher selection matters in that, as a system of rules (i.e. institution), it shapes the practices of Initial Teacher Education (ITE), including pre-service PE teachers' daily preparation for teaching qualification and employment. This article examines the secondary PE teacher selection examination as one of the locations of teacher socialisation and identity (re)formulation. Focusing on South Korea's National Secondary Teacher Selection and Employment Examination (STSEE), the paper addresses two main research questions: (a) how does the STSEE structure everyday practices of pre-service PE teachers who prepare for the exam for a year at least; and (b) what does this intensive year-long routine of commitment bring to the social and professional identities of the applicants? Drawing on a micro-sociological concept of 'reinventive institutions' (Scott, 2010, 2011), this study analyses qualitative data from a number of documents and in-depth interviews with 11 pre- and in-service PE teachers. Our analysis reveals two main findings. First, the STSEE features key attributes of reinventive institutions, including "total" commitment to exam preparation, deference to gurus and communities of comradeship, all of which operate on the basis of individuals' aspirations to success in the STSEE. Second, distinguished from the stereotype of physical educators in previous generations (e.g. incompetent, violent and unprofessional), PE teachers who have passed the exam acquire reinvented identities as smart, passionate and professional PE teachers who can enjoy 'permanent job security' with their advanced social positionality. The paper concludes by discussing the significance of teacher employment examinations in studying PE teachers' socialisation into the profession.

Purpose: This paper presents a descriptive analysis of elite women's biographical sketches in Who's Who-type collections, now out of copyright, published in Australia in the 1930s--Victoria (1934), New South Wales (1936) and Queensland (1939). It concentrates on information given about their schooling. Design/methodology/approach: The biographical sketches of the women, defined as "elite" by their inclusion in three collections from the 1930s, were examined for information about their and their daughters' education. Using mixed methods in a prosopographical approach, this is mainly a quantitative analysis. It outlines and compares the schools they attended where given as well as providing basic demographic details of the 491 women. Findings: The paper shows that, for those who gave educational details, the women and their daughters attended private schools almost exclusively. Three types of schools were listed -- private venture, corporate, and a very few state schools. The paper demonstrates that the landscape for girls' secondary schooling was not a settled terrain in terms of type, place, religion, or age of schools available for elite girls' education in the late 19th and early 20th century. Private schools are shown to be part of the "machinery of exclusiveness which characterised the inter-war years" (Teese, 1998, p. 402) and private venture schools survived well into the third decade of the 20th century. Originality/value: Beyond the histories of individual schools, little is known about the educational profile of Australian elite women in the past. This largely quantitative analysis helps to uncover and compare across state-based cohorts, previously unknown demographic, and schooling details for interwar women who recorded their educational details, as well as for the NSW and Victorian daughters where given.

Recent years have witnessed a heightening of interest in the role of teachers working in EAP (English for Academic Purposes), particularly with regard to defining and debating their professional identity. However, it must be said that most authors have painted a rather dismal picture, when comparing the status and professional standing of English language teachers in Higher Education with that of academics working in other disciplines. Drawing on concepts and models developed by the educational sociologists Basil Bernstein and Pierre Bourdieu, this reflective paper proposes a theoretical framework to account for why these differences in status might be so. The paper concludes that EAP as an academic discipline currently faces some significant threats. However, the paper also argues that if EAP practitioners are to gain the professional recognition they desire, then they themselves must strive to trade more explicitly on the forms of capital valued by the academy.

Teacher educators and teacher education scholars can play a critical role in challenging how society views the work of teachers and their role in society. To improve the morale of current teachers and attract teachers who see their work as intellectual and driven by educational justice, teachers' work and the structures that support them need to be reimagined to position teachers as public intellectuals who further the idea of education as a public good. This issue of "TEQ" brings together 4 papers, all of which contribute to understanding the beliefs of educators and how these impact on the quality of their teaching. In response to these papers, this article opens up a wider discussion on teacher agency and the possibility of enhancing and re-professionalizing teaching.

Reproduction provides direct fitness benefits; therefore, it is important to determine why in some societies certain individuals have disproportionate access to reproductive opportunities. The social interactions that underlie reproductive hierarchies can occur in multiple situations, yet they are rarely studied in unison. The reproductive heir in the social wasp Ropalidia marginata is cryptic to human observers until the queen dies or disappears. To determine whether a reproductive heir can be identified through her behaviour, we examined four types of social situations: aggression, spatial overlap, trophallaxis and exchange of solid food. We asked whether accounting for all four social situations in a multilayer network provides more information about the structure of the society than examining each situation on its own or in an aggregate network that does not distinguish between social situations. We found that the reproductive heir had the most social interactions in the multilayer network but not in each of the social situations when considered separately or when all situations were lumped together. Our work demonstrates that multilayer networks can uncover new insights on social organization by explicitly considering the links between multiple situations of social interactions. • Social status is determined by synergies among interactions in multiple situations. • We use a novel multilayer network approach to identify a cryptic reproductive heir. • We test whether centrality in four social situations can predict an heir's identity. • Multilayer networks outperformed single or aggregate networks. • Multifaceted analysis of sociality provides previously unknown information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proposed by Ivan Illich in the 1970s, the deschooling society was one of the most contentious and radical thoughts in education in terms of its critics against compulsory education around the globe and proposals in the name of networks in which everyone in need of learning and teaching can participate to learn and teach anywhere and anytime without any prescriptions or proscriptions. With the advent of the internet and technology, the paradigmatic change towards post-method pedagogy in education and ELT, and the constricting current pandemic state, we have been much closer than ever to the actualization of deschooling society. This work, as a caveat, was not solely formed to deliver brief information about the contents of the book but rather also to reassess, renew, and readapt the deschooling concept of the 1970s into the 21st-century digital era at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic with the implications of a post-modern understanding of ELT. The issue discussed in the present paper is in general about the way of formal compulsory education through schooling, yet in specific the implications of deschooling on ELT in the current chaotic state of the world. Therefore, a brief reappraisal of the book was preliminarily outlined, and later its connections with ELT within the framework of post-method pedagogy were explicated in the revival part.

This study explored secondary school teachers' feelings about their teaching profession and the factors responsible for their feelings. This phenomenology study draws its findings from the lived experience of secondary school teachers with varying working experience levels. Informed by the qualitative inquiry, the paper is mainly empirical and employs interviews and focus group discussions in the data collection process. Findings reveal that teachers and the teaching profession have lower status nowadays than before and after independence, which makes teachers feel bad about their profession. Society regards the teaching profession as the last choice for those who have no other choice and poor living and working conditions. The findings further revealed that low salaries, rare or no teacher professional development, misconduct of teachers and lack of board are factors responsible for negative feelings in the teaching profession. Hence, the revival of the lost status of the teaching profession remains in the hands of educational authorities and education stakeholders. Future studies should focus on the impact of teachers' feelings on their professional well-being and its influence on teaching practices.

Whilst other sporting narratives of girls and women from the Global North have been well explored, there is limited research about girls from a Fijian background. Furthermore, within this ethnic/cultural group, their diverse voices are not well understood. Indo-Fijian girls who are of a South Asian background, and were born and reside in Fiji, are marginalised to a triple degree in the country's sporting platforms: they face gender inequalities emanating from a patriarchal society; secondly, they are marginalised in terms of race and ethnicity, thus not having access to the same sporting opportunities that their iTaukei (Fijian natives) counterparts do, especially in mixed-race team sports. Finally, Indo-Fijian girls are economically disenfranchised, living in the peripheries of the Global South, where they struggle with a lack of funding, inequitable policies and an unstable political climate. This triple layer of marginalisation deprives Indo-Fijian girls/young women of real opportunities and rights in the sporting fields to play sports for better health and fitness as equal Fijian citizens. This study reports on a one-year ethnographic research and presents sporting narratives of young Indo-Fijian women aged between 16 and 25 years from the capital city of Fiji. The data was collected employing photo-elicitation interviews aiming to illuminate the experiences and trajectories within formal and recreational sport and physical activity of Indo-Fijian girls. The paper draws upon critical, intersectional and poststructuralist theories to thematically analyse the data. The young women's narratives reveal that many times their athletic pursuits and passion disrupt the Fijian gender, racial and class orders as they consistently exercise their daily and sporting agency; sometimes these girls also find themselves complying with the hegemonic gender/racial order. This study amplifies local and marginalised voices of Indo-Fijian girls and emphasises the urgent need for inclusive and innovative educational pathways for Indo-Fijian girls in Fiji's schools, thus fulfilling the country's ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

This paper scrutinizes the nature and scope of deleterious consequences arising from the pursuit of unattainable pedagogical exemplars on social media. We cash out this phenomenon using exemplarist theory to emphasize the fact that social media (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, TikTok) are platforms in which the vast majority of users present idealized and curated versions of themselves. We focus specifically on educational practitioners and show that attempting to emulate unattainable pedagogical exemplars has negative impacts on agents' emotional well-being: It can cause burnout and self-conflict, decrease motivation, and also inflict detrimental outcomes on agents' self-esteem. We conclude that attainable, relevant, relatable, and authentic exemplars are key to a successful exemplarist approach and that safeguarding against unattainable pedagogical exemplars is of paramount importance for the wellbeing of pedagogues, and by extension, the success of educational systems.

The paper investigates reputational status dynamics (coolness and popularity) in a Hungarian primary school sample. The data derives from an emergent mixed methods research study, where one wave of a panel data collection (N = 754) was complemented with focus group interviews (N = 144) among sixth grade students (age 12-13). The quantitative analysis applied multilevel regression models, while the qualitative part relied on thematic analysis. Our results, mostly in line with the international literature, underlined the importance of athletic abilities, verbal aggression, and physical appearance, while some interesting gendered and ethnic patterns also emerged. For instance, verbal aggression was associated with status for girls and non-Roma boys, while physical aggression was only associated with status for Roma girls. The novelty of the research study lies in the mixed approach, while the paper also contributes to our knowledge about status dynamics in the Hungarian, and Eastern European, context.

In order to address the paucity of research on Chinese teachers and to foreground their 'Other (ed)' ways of knowing and experiencing, this paper draws on interviews with 15 host country Chinese teachers from three internationalised schools in China. Specifically, this paper explores the participants' pathways into internationalised schooling. These pathways include an attachment to the local, a way to escape the vicissitudes and precarity of private language school teaching, a (re)entry point for teachers returning to China after studying/working overseas, and a vehicle for social mobility. The findings suggest that host country teachers as a group are far more diverse than has been assumed, with many of teachers migrating into internationalised school teaching from other educational sectors (such as language tutoring) or non-educational sectors (such as I.T.). The findings have implications for educational policy making for internationalised schooling in China, particularly in terms of notions of professionalism and what this might mean within the context of internationalised schooling.

"My most special place is my home(land) country ["Heimatland"], because there I always feel so comfortable." The spatial dimension of children´s well-being has been receiving more attention in child well-being research recently. Empirical studies show for example the effects of the built and natural environments on children´s objective and subjective well-being or the subjective meanings that children attach to the concept of well-being in respect to place and space. What is not well understood so far is the cultural dimension of these phenomena and understandings. The aim of this paper is therefore to outline a cultural analytical approach to the spatial constitution of well-being and to provide analytical heuristics to reconstruct the spatial constitution of well-being as a cultural construct in discursive practices that children take part in. The paper also provides an empirical example that illustrates this heuristic approach and shows how belonging(s) are constituted as a spatial construct beyond local and national territories. The paper ends with a summary of how the findings and the cultural approach might inform child well-being research and the spatial (re)constitution of well-being in the context of migration and digital technologies.

Studies are largely optimistic about the ability of standardized procedures to constrain decision-makers' biases and produce more equitable results across fields. However, work that embraces standardization as an equalizing force stands in contrast to research on standardization and street-level bureaucrats, which asserts that standardized procedures are not self-actuating and cannot be understood apart from the environments in which they are used. I examine how frontline workers vary in their approach to an actuarial-based tool intended to standardize judgments. In a highly controlled decision-making environment, child welfare workers whose racial and sex characteristics afford them higher status report subverting the tool; conversely, workers in the same position whose ascriptive characteristics yield them lower status in terms of race and sex describe following the rules. In an environment where the same tool is adopted only ceremonially, all workers experience decision-making as unconstrained, regardless of their ascriptive characteristics. This work fills gaps in knowledge about how social status and organizational context intersect to affect rule abidance. Examining these dynamic relationships advances understanding of how organizations reproduce inequality and the limits and potential for standardization to transform social hierarchies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper explores teachers' contribution to quality education in the midst of political, economic and social struggles in post-conflict Liberia. The paper adopts the qualitative research method and interviews were conducted with teachers and educational stakeholders to examine the needed contributions of teachers to quality education in post-conflict Liberia. In addition, the capability approach was adopted as an analytical lens to unpack quality education in post-conflict Liberia. This research paper finds that teachers' contribution to quality education in Liberia is minimal due to existing political and socioeconomic challenges in the country, which also affect the teaching profession. The paper, therefore, concludes that teachers' challenges need to be properly understood by concerned educational stakeholders and addressed before teachers can effectively contribute to quality education in post-conflict Liberia.

Purpose: In recent years, though a growing body of research has emerged on world-class universities (WCUs), studies in this field remain limited. The purpose of this study is to identify and describe the research gap and provide a future direction for WCU research. This paper highlights the key theoretical approaches, methods, journals, unit analyses, authors, themes, countries and papers in this field. It also outlines the antecedents and consequences of WCU status. Design/methodology/approach: This study collected all research related to WCUs published from 2004 to 2020. In total, 47 studies of the 435 found on Scopus and Web-of-Science are included in the review. Findings: The results show that though the body of WCU literature is growing, it is fragmented in terms of theoretical frameworks, methodology, countries studied and unit analyses. This study also found that national, organisational and individual factors are among the antecedents and organisational and individual consequences of WCUs. Originality/value: This study investigates existing gaps in the WCU literature and identifies new research directions for future research. Further, this study scrutinises existing studies to determine how universities have used a variety of methods and theories to achieve WCU status across numerous countries and settings. Finally, this study develops an antecedents and consequences WCU framework to synthesise existing studies.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to offer direct tests of the effectiveness of renaming vocational education and training (VET) in enhancing the image and popularity of the subject. Although many proponents of renaming argue that the word "vocational" is associated with lower levels of skills and knowledge and should therefore be supplemented by better recognised words, empirical evidence regarding the effectiveness of this strategy is scant. Design/methodology/approach: This study exploits a rare policy change in Hong Kong, where VET was renamed as vocational and professional education and training (VPET) and conducted an original survey experiment of 1,004 parents in the city to test if the new name would improve respondents' perceptions of the subject. Findings: The findings reveal a complex picture regarding the effects of renaming. Although renaming does not seem to improve the overall popularity of vocational education, it may widen the support base for vocational education by diluting its class character. Specifically, while attitudes toward VET are significantly and negatively correlated with family income, no such association is found in regard to VPET. Originality/value: This paper offers the first direct and comprehensive test of the effectiveness of renaming vocational education -- a popular policy suggestion in many countries. Its findings complicate conventional expectations and contribute to the study of educational preferences in advanced economies.

Since ancient times, gold is treated asone of the most desirable metals in the world. It is often used as a fiat currency by many countries due to its robustness. Gold will always be valued as the most priced possession even after the downfall of a country or loss of the worth of paper money. The demand for gold varies from person to person depending on their financial goals, social beliefs and status in society. Even though gold is more popular in its physical formbut there are varied forms of gold which can be opted for investment purposes like Gold ETFs (exchange traded funds), Gold Mutual funds, Sovereign Gold Bonds etcGold has some different benefits as an investment option. In order to popularize these forms, there is an urgent need to create the awareness among the common masses. The current study aims at finding out the perception of investors towards different forms of gold as an investment avenue and the awareness level of investors about them.This paper also endeavours to explore various factors affecting the investor behaviors towards gold investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does a regime change influence elite mobility? By collecting data on elites after the Meiji Restoration in Japan in 1868, through which Japan transitioned from a feudal regime to a modern regime, we provide new evidence that the impact of the regime change on elite mobility varies across the stages of the regime change. We analyze the impact of the regime change from two aspects: (1) the composition of elites or elite membership and (2) the internal hierarchy within them. The regime change opened an opportunity for commoners to join the elite group. After the Meiji Restoration, the share of elites whose fathers were commoners in the former regime increased, as did the influence of meritocracy on elite ranks. However, once the new regime was established, the elite hierarchy started to reflect the social stratum of the former regime and the influence of meritocracy declined., (© 2023 The Authors. The British Journal of Sociology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of London School of Economics and Political Science.)

The attribution of status carries significant social and reproductive advantages as it reflects individual qualities. However, the traits conveyed and those perceived do not always align with reality. It is crucial to understand how the status associated with different professions can influence the perception of traits, as it assists in decision-making during social interactions. This study aimed to investigate whether the status derived from university education influences the assessment of social status, mate value and personality traits among Brazilians. A quasi-experimental design with nonrandom assignment was used, employing online questionnaires administered through Google Forms. A total of 252 participants, both male and female, over 18 years of age, and residing in Brazil, took part in the study. These participants evaluated the social status, mate value, and personality traits of stimulus subjects with high and low-status university education. The results revealed that stimulus subjects with high-status university education were regarded as possessing higher status in society and scored higher on Dark Triad traits. In contrast, stimulus subjects with low-status university education were perceived as having greater agreeableness, emotional stability, and openness to experiences. In conclusion, university education signals social and personality traits, serving as a parameter to shape social perceptions. • Subjects with high-status backgrounds are rated higher on Dark Triad traits. • Low status indicates greater agreeableness, emotional stability, and openness. • University education serve as an indicator of social and personality traits. • University education affects the perception of the individuals in social hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigates the frequently used speech acts related to positive and negative politeness techniques employed in requests and apologies by faculty members at King Abdulaziz University. Social interaction on University Campus reflects Hejazi culture located in the Western Region of Saudi Arabia. The significance of the study arises from its focus on university-life interaction between faculty members as it provides an investigation of positive and negative politeness strategies. The paper tries to answer two questions: (1) Is there a relationship between the faculty's years of experience and the request strategies employed?; and (2) Is there a relationship between the faculty years of experience and the apology strategies used? To answer these questions, a Discourse Completion Test was developed and given to 30 faculty members. The findings of the study show that social power, which is derived from having more years of experience, affects the request and apology strategies used among Saudi female faculty members. Faculty members of an older generation tend to use syntactically more extended sentences in requests compared to their younger colleagues, to alleviate the sense of their social power and save others' sense of face. In contrast, the more youthful faculty members tended to use syntactically longer sentences in apologies compared to their older colleagues to show more respect. The study was conducted in Women Campus, and it is recommended to implement it on a larger scale with more participants to get more complete results.

Apart from speaking competence and vocabulary used, refusal strategies play an important role in a communication scenario. This paper investigates how Thai students realise the speech act of refusals to the initiating acts of suggestions, offers, requests, and invitations with regard to the status of the interlocutor. To achieve this objective, 157 Thai university students were asked to respond to 12 scenarios listed in an Oral Discourse Completion Test (ODCT) eliciting refusals of three requests, three invitations, three suggestions, and three offers in lower, equal, and higher status scenarios. All responses were systematically collected, transcribed, coded, and classified based on the refusal taxonomy developed by Beebe, Takahasik, and Uliss-Weltz (1990). The results revealed some discrepancies in the frequency, shift, and content of linguistic forms used in the refusals. In particular, most Thai students reported the use of indirectness, and a combination of direct and indirect strategies was used most frequently. Particularly, excuses, reasons, and explanations were the strategies frequently used in refusals with the different interactants, suggesting that refusals should not be treated as a speech act but as speech act sets that include one or more components. The study sheds light on the importance of socio-cultural factors that affect successful communication. It contributes to the knowledge of pragmatic behaviour in the L2 or intercultural pragmatics and also provides suggestions for integrating pragmatic instruction to foster the pragmatic competence of L2 learners.

Antonio Iodice, I University of Exeter and University of Genoa i SESSION 2: HISTORICAL LABOR MARKETS The Economics of Gender-Specific Minimum-Wage Legislation During the 1910s, twelve U.S. states passed and implemented the country's first minimum-wage laws. First, where rivers shift states form, and existing states expand their capacity. Lee J. Alston, I Indiana University i , Marie Duggan, I Keene State College i , and Julio Ramos, I Pennsylvania State University i SESSION 11: FINANCIAL DEVELOPMENT Financing Industrialization in Russia and Germany A large literature debates what system best promotes the accumulation and allocation of capital, especially in late-industrializing countries, where capital market imperfections may be severe. In contrast, this paper leverages detailed firm-level data from late 19th-century Sweden showing that a sharp increase in industrial tariffs has a heterogeneous impact across firms: Initially low-productivity firms see an increase in productivity while initially high-productive firms experience a decline. [Extracted from the article]

The absence of discussions of identity that consider both subjective/personal and social aspects of identity is an important concern in mathematics education research. This paper proposes a framework to analyse the mathematical identities offered to and constructed by learners during peer interactions, by considering personal and social identities. To exemplify the framework, we discuss how two pairs of secondary school learners, who were engaged with similarly by their teachers and who performed similarly academically, interacted with each other and offered and constructed micro-identities during moments of a lesson, and macro-identities across lessons. We show that when learners were offered identities by a peer as higher, lower or equal status, they constructed their identities by affiliating with or resisting the identities offered by their peer. Their interactions and the identities that they constructed were informed by their personal identities, including their emotions when learning mathematics, and their social identities, including their choices to occupy certain roles in the classroom community.

The effect of high-stakes language tests on teaching and learning a language is usually known as washback. The true nature of test washback can be understood only by taking account of the educational, cultural, political and social contexts in which the test operates. Nevertheless, little research has explored the factors that affect the nature of washback. This paper reports on a study that explored the factors that affect the washback of the Secondary Education Examination (SEE) English test on students and parents in Nepal. The data generated through oral diaries (n=72) and semi-structured interviews with students and their parents (n=24) indicate that several factors including economic factors, social prestige associated with the test performance, parents' educational background, and perceived importance of English affect the nature of a high-stakes tests' washback. Finally, some of the pressing policy, pedagogical and research implications are discussed.

This paper introduces the results of a situational analysis that correlates the desire to teach with the wish to progress in the teaching career. This paper is based on reference literature, official data, as well as surveys, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews that we carried out with teachers. This study is based on the research findings on the male teacher figure working in public primary education in Portugal and Brazil. It envisages ascertaining the reasons and consequences of the professional choice to work in an area normally associated with women. Our findings - which are still partial - have highlighted the contingency of gender issues throughout the individual training process of the researched teachers, either arising from the school culture or from the culture underpinning their training. In this sense, the representations show "areas" occupied by both genders socially: men - either by pressure or privilege -- tend to occupy the most prestigious positions in education; women, on the other hand, have assumed the added value of educating better or more widely. However, today still, in our Western societies, men continue to enjoy a dominant position, although the picture is changing in certain areas of knowledge and work. Thus, the challenge of this research was to understand - from a gender perspective - some of the problems related to personal, social and professional training of teaching staff who are currently working in our schools. The objective is to obtain a differentiated narrative for the formation of teachers, including gender issues.