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This paper includes an analysis of academic papers that focus on cultural aspects written by MA students in the ‘Teach & Learn in Spain’ program at Instituto Franklin-UAH. The percentage of academic papers focusing on cultural aspects written by these students who acted as Language Assistants (LAs) in bilingual schools in Spain is quite high. This suggests the importance of the cultural component in the teaching of English as a second language and their high level of sociocultural awareness. Thus, this paper has several objectives: a) to determine the existence of a specific sociocultural awareness in research papers; b) to identify the cultural aspects that were considered essential by the LAs in this program and show the strategies used to provide information; and c) to compare findings considering the theoretical background. The method will rely on a mixt approach considering quantitative and qualitative analyses and will be specific for each of the objectives.

Contemporary artistic practices were provided with a space for reflection and the creation of opinion in the galleries of the Fundació Espais and in the pages of its art magazine, Papers d'Art. A group of independent voices of multidisciplinary artistic production was made audible thanks to this publication that provided a critique which forged dynamic connections between artistic meaning and social and cultural contexts. This paper highlights a shift in meaning of the conception of contemporary art as a key element in intellectual culture, including politics, philosophy, science and other creative formats such as music and literature. Based on an analysis of the critical awareness of the various contributors to the magazine and on the historiographic study of certain aesthetic and symbolic questions, a review of the articles published in the Studies and Research section is detailed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advance in employing digital technology in education is often accompanied by a dominance of Anglophone digital corporations and tools, and a dominance of Western models of education, resources, practices, and concepts. This influences many aspects of teaching and learning and causes ongoing threat to societies, cultures and communities outside the global and national mainstream, especially those that are small, marginal or fragile in terms of the preservation and enhancement of their own culture and institutions. This paper addresses these threats within the Palestinian context by reporting on a study that explored educators' perceptions of the influence of culture on social media use in education. The conceptual framework that guided this study includes theories of Connectivism such as Siemens' and theories of cultural dimensions such as Hofstede's'. The study used semi-structured interviews with 18 educators at three Palestinian educational institutions who apply different teaching modes. The findings reveal nine cultural aspects that influence educators' perceptions of social media and its use for educational purposes. They also demonstrate the influence of culture on some Connectivist practices in the Palestinian context. Other factors, such as the Israeli occupation were found to affect educators' practices and perceptions. The study reveals cultural aspects that are not included in Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions theory, and this serves to underline that Hofstede's cultural dimensions only provides a partial or incomplete understanding of how culture influences educational technology use in the Palestinian context. The study provides a foundation for future thinking about decolonizing research methods, developing modern pedagogies and appropriating some global concepts within the Arab context.

This paper assesses the dangers of the use of the concept 'culture' in present political and educational rhetoric. The first section offers a critique of the use of the term 'culture' in the so-called intercultural educational efforts. It asserts that 'culture' in its present use is a proxy for 'race' and supports views, which ignore diversity and suggest, purposely or not, an homogeneity which can easily spread into the sphere of biological resemblances and differences. The paper, then, identifies possible alternative understandings of culture through the examination of the contribution of anthropology to cultural research. In the last section of the paper suggestions are made to overcome current approaches to intercultural education through a call to diversify the understanding of diversity to include not only ethnic/cultural differences but also, physical, and cognitive ones. To achieve this goal a turn to the ontological and the training of teachers as 'critical experts of design' is suggested.

The article focuses on advocacy, inspired by an interview with Dr. Raj Rasasingham, Vice President of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists. Topics include the expansion of the revised ALAN column to include community-focused topics like advocacy, the concept of advocacy according to the Mind group, and the paper series "Supporting Young Children of Immigrants in PreK-3" which highlights the importance of a systemic approach to advocacy for young immigrant children.

The emergence of internet in the 1990s transformed the cultural industry on a global scale in a gradual and definitive way and put print journalism at risk. This article aims to investigate, from the analysis of the Brazilian case, the dimension of these changes and try to answer the following issues. How have digital publications transformed the production and dissemination of content? Will the paper publications will still have space? Can alternative digital publications face the big media? Will they take the place of the political-cultural magazines of the past? finally, how can we think the relationships among intellectuals, culture and politcs in the field of cultural and mediatic production? The analysis of these and other issues will start from two temporal perspectives. The first one will be the 1970s, the peak of the military dictatorship, when the so-called alternative press worked as a bastion of resistance to the regime and magazines such as Versus, of Latin American character, circulated. The second will be the current context, with Brazil under a government of the extreme right, in which digital publications seek to act as a counterweight to the voice of the hegemonic media that yesterday supported the dictatorship of 1964, and today the political trial of Dilma Roussef in 2016 and the current government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Common sense in practice was a significant finding of a qualitative narrative research project investigating the professional practice and learning of police in an Australian police jurisdiction. Police officers in this research emphasised common sense as an intrinsic attribute of policing. Conceptions of policing as a craft or trade, learned on-the-job, and police officers as artisans, have dominated police training. In recent years, in response to global trends to professionalise policing, organisations in most Western nations have established partnerships with tertiary and higher education institutions to provide integrated programs of professional learning and practice for police. This paper draws on Bourdieu's practice theory to examine the narratives of traditionally trained police officers' perceptions of common sense. Police officers' narratives revealed three distinct perspectives that supported the unquestioning acceptance and application of common sense to their everyday practice.

Background: The aim of this study was to assess recent trends in medical research productivity in Arab countries.Methods: We collected bibliometric data for the world countries, Arab countries, and Arab institutions for 2007-2016, using Essential Science Indicators, Journal Citation Reports, and Web of Science database. We collected the number of published papers overall and per year, citations per paper, and number of papers published in top quartile and top 10% journals. For the 10 most productive institutions, we additionally collected the number of papers with correspondence authors affiliated with the institution.Results: The Arab world produced 189 papers per one million people, about a quarter of the value for other world countries. Four Arab countries (Qatar, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Kuwait) produced more than 695 papers per one million people, exceeding the world average. The average number of citations per paper was 9.2; it rose to more than 15 for papers with international collaboration. At the institutional level, the number of citations showed upward trends, with six institutions having an average citation per paper higher than that of all Arab countries. For the 10 most productive institutions in Arab countries, the percentage of papers involving international collaborations ranged from 42% to 79%; of these, 9% to 29% were led by authors from the same institution. For these 10 most productive institutions, the percentage of papers published in the top quartile journals and with a lead/corresponding author from the institution ranged from 7 to 32%; that percentage drops to 1% to 10% for papers published in top 10% journals.Conclusions: Although medical research output in Arab countries at both the country and the institution levels has increased over the past 10 years, it is still lagging behind the rest of the world. The percentage of papers involving international collaborations was relatively high, but the majority of these papers were led by authors from outside the local institution, particularly when published in the top 10% journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes a promotional video of the Chinese city of Hangzhou from the perspective of multimodal discourse analysis informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics. By drawing on Visual Grammar as well as frameworks of intersemiotic complementarity, the paper examines how various semiotic resources, namely, the visual, audio and verbal, construe meanings and how they work together to create synergy in the video. It is concluded that the deployment of various modes in this dynamic discourse contribute to constructing city images that are glorious in history, unique in culture, picturesque in landscapes, innovative in spirits, vital in city life, and beautiful in people's hearts. The video also proves to be effective in engaging and aligning the viewers, thus functioning as a vital tool to market the city. It is hoped that this paper will provide a new perspective for semiotic studies of promotional videos in China.

An editorial is presented which discusses the collaborative writing with multiple authors which has additional challenges including varied levels of engagement of coauthors, provision of fair credit through authorship or acknowledgements and acceptance of diversity of work styles. Also discussed are the 10 simple rules for collaboratively writing a multi-authored paper which include to build a writing team wisely; to create a data management plan and to jointly decide on authorship guidelines.

This paper comprehends the global research scenario about incorporating cultural components in contemporary urban planning practice. Various urban cultural elements have been analysed under the umbrella of 'Urban Cultural Dynamics' (UCD). This study aims to identify hot spots and explore influential sources through a bibliometric investigation of the evolutionary patterns of cultural dynamics in urban planning research. Data was collected from the Web of Science core collection (1965-2021). The data mining tools VOSviewer, Biblioshiny, KNIME, and WordStat were used to analyse hot topics, keywords, influential journals, core papers, top authors, and cooperation networks of countries and institutions. The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is employed in journal analysis. The analysis showed that publications on UCD increased exponentially between 2016 and 2022. Italy (32), China (26), and Spain (18) are the top countries in total publications. Technical universities of Dresden and Munich have the most significant influence on UCD's research, with 103 and 101 total citations, respectively. Landscape and Urban Planning, Journal of Cultural Heritage, and Tourism Geographies are the top three consistently influential journals. The top ten core papers were identified. The keywords and topic analysis charted out the evolution of multidisciplinary UCD research topics. The hotspot analysis revealed the significance of cultural dynamics in sustainable urban development. The results highlighted the need for intercontinental cooperation between developed countries and the third world. The future scope of research on UCD topics is discussed in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Klara and the Sun (2021) philosophizes on how in the current technologically saturated culture, the gradual evolution of the empathetic humanoids has, on one hand, problematized our normative notions of cognitive and affective categories, and on the other, has triggered an order of emotional uncanniness due to our reliance on hyperreal real objects for receiving solace and companionship. The novel may be conceived to be a commentary on the emerging discourse in the domain of cognitive and emotional computing that aspires to transform the inner life and social relationships of the human community. The novelty of the paper lies in its ability to showcase how Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun (2021) creates a rupture in the existing research and literary narrative by critiquing the theoretical underpinnings of emotional computing that optimistically foresees a future where simulated empathetic minds will be able to decode the complexities of the human emotions. It discusses how literature turns into an apt tool to reflect on the limitations of the programmed machines to decode the elusiveness of the human mind that defies the one-to-one correlation between words, multiple connotations, and their underlying emotions. Through the lenses of the fictional narrative, the paper foregrounds how the concept of the social robot designed to offer empathy, care, and companionship turns into a failed project. The paper draws on critical perspectives from disposability theory, posthuman affect, and immaterial bodies to foreground the noncodified feature of affective experientialities that emerge as a result of the interface between humans and nonanimate beings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teacher opinions and discussions about Visual Culture Theory and Material Culture in art education are examined in this paper. Both approaches were compared and evaluated within their contents and fundamentals. Visual Culture Art Education (VCAE) in art education, specifically, has been criticized as having a "Neo-Marxist" or "Cultural Marxist" agenda stemming from "Critical Theory," nonetheless, it is also viewed as being just another recent Postmodernist approach. Being a controversial theoretical account, VCAE seems widely unknown and not understood in its conceptual frame among art teachers in Turkey. Its name also may have caused confusions. In this study, art teacher opinions of VCAE content, principles, applications and practices were collected through a survey questionnaire; and examined. Participants were 71 art teachers. Purposeful, convenient, random sampling method was employed to represent a population of art teachers from various backgrounds, with various experience levels, with educational experience from various universities, working at various geographical regions and towns in Turkey. The study was designed and structured as a descriptive survey research. Analyses revealed that art teachers usually are not aware of the typical discussions about VCAE. Having been criticized as an ideologically rooted theory, applicability of VCAE in Turkey seems controversial in many aspects.

The purpose of this paper is to present an argument for why there is a need to re-envision the underlying culture of undergraduate biology education to ensure the success, retention, and matriculation of Black students. The basis of this argument is the continued noted challenges with retaining Black students in the biological sciences coupled with existing research that implicates science contexts (i.e., the cultural norms, values, and beliefs manifesting through policies and practices) as being the primary source of the challenges experienced by Black students that lead to their attrition. In presenting this argument, we introduce the Re-Envisioning Culture Network, a multigenerational, interdisciplinary network comprised of higher education administrators, faculty, staff, Black undergraduate students majoring in biology, Black cultural artists, community leaders, and STEM professionals to work together to curate and generate resources and tools that will facilitate change. In introducing the REC Network and disseminating its mission and ongoing endeavors, we generate a clarion call for educators, researchers, STEM professionals, students, and the broader community to join us in this endeavor in fostering transformative change.