Group items tagged

Sport for Development and Peace (sdp) has been adopted as a 'development tool' by Western development practitioners and a growing number of development organisations. Sport is frequently referred to as a 'global language' and used to promote international awareness and cross-cultural understanding-two key themes in global citizenship literature. In this paper I examine the language adopted by organisations promoting sdp-specifically, what sdp organisations say they do as well as the nature and implications of their discourses. Drawing on a large and growing body of literature on global citizenship and post-structuralism, and on post-colonial critiques, I argue that sdp narratives have the potential to reinforce the 'Othering' of community members in developing countries and may contribute to paternalistic conceptions of development assistance. In so doing, they weaken the potential for more inclusive and egalitarian forms of global citizenship. The article examines the discourse of sdp organisational material found online and analyses it in the context of broader sport and colonialism literature. The work of SDP organisations is further examined in relation to global citizenship discourse with a focus on the production- and projection-of global subjects, or objects of globalisation, and what this means for development 'beneficiaries'

The purpose of this paper is to show the relationship between co-development projects with transnational interests and the governance of migration by the Spanish and Ecuadorian governments. On one hand, the emergence of co-development is linked with the political dimension of migration, and therefore, with the challenges that its management poses for both the sending and receiving states. Simultaneously, the state exists in a context of the reconfiguration of its traditional functions, and above all, the manner in which it goes about performing them. For these reasons, co-development projects form part of state governance strategies, based on a special understanding of the nexus between migration and development in European social space, involving international organizations, state governments, and civil society, linked by migratory flows. This is demonstrated in the case of Ecuador and Spain. Since Spain stimulated co-development, the implementation of projects with Ecuador has been emphasized, due to the dimensions achieved by Ecuadorian migration. Co-development politics and projects are analyzed in this paper as areas of intervention integrated by values, guide lines and cultural understandings about migration, including appropriate forms of control and management.

"This study draws on the application of sociocultural theory to second-language learning and teaching to examine the impact of a design-based research approach on teacher development and literacy instruction to English-language learners (ELLs). Design-based research methodology was employed to derive theoretical suppositions relating to the process of learning as well as the means by which this process is supported. Our research questions were: (a) How will this professional development model result in shifts in teacher thinking about language and literacy learning for ELLs; (b) what innovations in teachers' repertoires of practice will be developed; and (c) in what ways will these shifts in teachers' thinking and innovations in their repertoire of practice bring about new forms of language and literacy learning? Our findings point to the need to place development in the forefront of teacher professional development models. Also foregrounded is the importance of promoting teachers' critical reflection on classroom practices and of creating hypotheses for pedagogical change vis-à-vis new understanding about students' linguistic, cognitive and academic needs."

"This article aims to report a single case study of how an Islamic boarding school (pesantren) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, prepared students for a multicultural Indonesia. Despite negative portrayal by the Western media about increasing Islamic radicalism in some pesantren, many pesantren are in fact transforming into modern Islamic institutions, incorporating the teaching of democratic values and practices, endorsing civil society and community development, and inculcating cultural/religious diversity and tolerance in students. Using schoolyard and classroom ethnographies, along with in-depth interviews and focus group discussions (FGD) with teachers and students, the study found that classroom and non-classroom practices of the pesantren promote the development of multicultural education. Several subjects within both curriculum developed by the government and curriculum developed by pesantrens discuss a considerable number of issues that relate to cultural and religious diversity, tolerance, citizenship and democracy. The non-classroom practices of pesantren offer invaluable and intensive experiences for students to socialise with peers from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. However, challenges remain for the kyai (the pesantren's great leader) and other leaders, such as teachers' lack of competency, unclear multicultural objectives in both the pesantren's curricula and the pesantren's traditions, and unequal relations among students and among teachers. These challenges must be overcome to further develop education for cultural diversity."

This reflection, using auto-ethnography as method, explores the value of attunement to feedback in the teaching of a professional postgraduate course for allied mental health professionals. This is, therefore, a story of two halves: a narrative of my learning based on my reflections of my own teaching, and a story of how I have integrated feedback from students and their clinical supervisors to refine my teaching and course development in the programme. The resulting model of teaching and learning I have developed involves a process of 'creative attunement'. 'Attunement' is a psychodynamic concept involving 'contact' or a quality of relationship based on availability, presence, empathy, respect and selective disclosure. The learning activities of the programme aim to develop an awareness of the students' own 'craft knowledge' as graduate social workers and occupational therapists during their intern year in the health services. Through a process of growing the students' awareness of self in the clinician's role by attuning to students' feedback, learning from undergraduate education becomes more available to be applied in a new field of practice. Designing learning activities that incorporate stories of practice and align with clinical supervisors and service user narratives provides access to a variety of learning experiences. I explore the implications for developing critical-reflective practice within a 'community of learners' model.

"In this paper we develop a conceptual framework for understanding the co-evolution of a virtual community and a hybrid governance regime. The research site is the Eclipse software development community led by IBM and based on data collected from activities of community members, we examine the attempts of participants to construct and refine a hybrid governance structure while developing and expanding the community. Drawing on strategy-as-practice approach and institutional theory, we bring arguments at two instances of this co-evolution process: the initiation and enactment. For the initiation of the community we argue that, beyond market-driven considerations, tensions and polarisation in the existing proprietary regimes, governance structures, and philosophies promote new practices. For the establishment process we emphasise the role of member-driven horizontal and vertical structural adjustments, and the maintenance of open-source developer spirit."

Mobile communication has become a common phenomenon in most parts of the world. There are indeed more mobile subscriptions than there are people who use the internet. For many people outside of the metropolitan areas of Europe and North America, this is literally their first use of electronically mediated interaction. This preface to the special issue of New Media & Society examines mobile communication in a global context. Through an overview of eight articles situated in the global south, we describe how mobile communication sheds light upon notions of information, appropriation and development and how it is challenging, and in many cases changing, notions of gender. While the mobile phone reshapes development and micro dynamics of gendered interactions, it is not necessarily a revolutionary tool. Existing power structures may be rearranged, but they are nonetheless quite stable. The analysis of mobile communication in the global south helps us to understand the rise of innovative practices around information and communication technologies and, in turn, enables us to develop theory to understand these emergent empirical realities.

Systems of governance are legitimised as an almost indispensable response to global co-ordination over matters of environmental degradation. Considering sustainable development as the key label for 'common-sense' political approaches to environmental degradation and a key informant for international environmental policy-making activity, this article seeks to problematise such a widespread discourse as (re)productive of (hetero)sexist power relations. As such, this article, informed by Foucault's conceptions of governmentality and biopower, contends that the global thrust towards sustainable development projects works to construct identities and discipline power relations with regard to gender and sexuality. Specifically, I argue that the disciplinary narratives and apparatuses of international sustainable development initiatives work to construct gendered identities and naturalise heterosexual relations. To demonstrate this, this article focuses on the discourses surrounding one of the most important international documents directed at informing national environmental policy, Agenda 21.

This article considers the emergence of large-scale "commons-based peer production" projects such as Wikipedia.org from an institutional development perspective. The argument it makes is threefold. First, that that the lowered transaction costs and information abundance found online transform a subset of public goods problems, essentially replacing free ridership with mass coordination as the central challenge. Second, that the boundaries of this subset are defined by a "power law topology" that leads to the emergence of online hub spaces and serves to resolve search problems endemic to the anti-geographic online landscape. These boundary conditions limit the overall impact of commons-based peer production for the political space. Third, that all such hubs move through a common five-stage institutional development process, directly related to standard models of the diffusion of innovation. Identification of the institutional development process behind Wikipedia leads in turn to the stipulation of seven hypotheses: the "Field of Dreams" Fallacy, the "Interest Horizons" thesis, "Political Strategy is Not Like Computer Code," the "Location-based Wave" thesis, "Power Law Fragility Under Moore's Law," the "Punctuated Equilibrium" thesis, and "Code-Forking the Public Sphere." Each thesis holds direct implications for the potential and limitations of "open source" applications in the political arena

Cloud computing has started to transform economic activities in the global South. Many businesses are taking advantage of the pay-as-you-go model of the technology, and its scalability and flexibility features, and government agencies in the South have been investing in cloud-related mega-projects. Cloud-based mobile applications are becoming increasingly popular and the pervasiveness of cellphones means that the cloud may transform the way these devices are used. However, findings and conclusions drawn from surveys, studies and experiences of companies on the potential and impact of cloud computing in the developing world are inconsistent. This article reviews cloud diffusion in developing economies and examines some firms in the cloud's supply side in these economies to present a framework for evaluating the attractiveness of this technology in the context of evolving needs, capabilities and competitive positions. It examines how various determinants related to the development and structure of related industries, externality mechanisms and institutional legitimacy affect cloud-related performances and impacts.

"ABSTRACT: Over the last three decades scholars promoting the world Englishes paradigm (WE) have worked towards establishing a more positive attitude towards international varieties of English. However, despite the best intentions of Western linguists working in this field, there is an obvious imbalance between the developed and developing world in many contexts of English language education. Educators and teachers in many Outer Circle and Expanding Circle contexts face difficulties in terms of conditions, facilities, and resources very different from those of Western institutions. Academics in developing societies have parallel difficulties in publishing research, both in journals and in books with international publishers, while local options for publishing are often restricted. This paper suggests a number of ways in which linguists and other scholars might begin to engage with a range of issues related to 'developmental world Englishes'"

"The development of individuals' digital skills has received much attention as a remedy for digital inequality. Although some researchers favor courses and guided learning for skills development, others propose learning by trial-and-error. Unfortunately, studies examining the value of the so-called "do-it-yourself approach" for the development of digital skills remain lacking. One difficulty lies in the vicious circle of lack of skill leading to infrequent Internet usage and vice versa, which limits the value of cross-sectional data for assessing the impact of this approach. We present longitudinal data on a random sample of Internet users in a Dutch city, which show that more frequent Internet use leads to more digital skills, but not the other way around. However, contrary to expectations about the potential of trial-and-error learning to reduce inequality, results also suggests that this approach is not always more beneficial to the "have-little" as compared to the "have-more." The only inequality-reducing effect of this approach is that that older users profit more from it than younger users do."

Many UK universities offer degree programmes in English Language specifically for non-native speakers of English. Such programmes typically include not only language development but also development in various areas of content knowledge. A challenge that arises is to design courses in different areas that mutually support each other, thus providing students with a coherent degree programme. In this article, I will discuss a Bachelor of Arts programme involving Cultural Studies and Translation, as well as English Language and Linguistics. I will offer a rationale for a course in critical text analysis, which is offered in the final year of the programme. It is intended to promote language development and cultural awareness as well as skills of linguistic analysis and critical thinking.

"Research has demonstrated that second language immersion is an effective means of facilitating primary school students' second language acquisition without undermining their competence in their first language. Despite the rapid growth of Chinese-English bilingual programmes in China, limited empirical research has been conducted thus far by which to evaluate the programme effectiveness in relation to students' academic achievement, their cognitive development and the teaching and learning processes with regard to teacher education. This article presents evidence from several related empirical studies recently conducted in three schools affiliated with the China-Canada-United States English Immersion (CCUEI) project. These studies focus on three broad categories of findings: first, on student academic achievement represented by English (L2), Chinese (L1) and mathematics (both literacy and numeracy); second, on cognitive predictors of English reading and listening achievement of these immersion students; and third, on immersion teachers who teach within the context of Chinese-English bilingual education. These combined results present a complex developmental picture of students' academic achievement and cognitive development; and an insight into the teachers who teach within the context of an aggressive fast growth of Chinese-English bilingual programmes in China."

This contribution uses insights from the field of critical pedagogy to study North-South power relations. It analyses the attempts of the European Union to promote democracy in the 'developing world', or Global South. The metaphor of development helps to

This article analyzes the role of education in Latin America's development over the last two decades and recommends much greater emphasis on promoting learning, particularly among the poor. It documents significant progress in getting more children into school but little progress in making sure they reach minimum levels of learning (measured by scores on achievement tests). The authors find that the chief obstacles to improving the region's education systems are both technical (weak institutions and poor teaching) and political (teachers' unions that cling to the status quo and little political support for fundamental reform). The authors identify twelve policies they believe will improve the contribution education makes to development.

Over the past decade, international development policy has paid increased attention to social reproduction. While this offers an improvement over past practices in which care work was all but ignored, these policy frameworks continue to fall short of feminist goals. One reason for this is the way that dominant economic representations of social reproduction continue to rest on a universalizing portrayal of the household economy and family life as mired in patriarchal tradition, which fails to capture the diversity of economic and affective arrangements in which reproductive labor takes place at the local level. In this paper, I develop an alternative conceptualization of economic and affective life that challenges dominant understandings of the distinctions between market and non-market activity, paid and unpaid labor, and work and intimacy to provide space for new feminist conceptualizations of economy and care that can capture the diversity of its sites and practices.

This paper explores student experiences of learning to think critically. Twenty-six zoology undergraduates took part in the study for three years of their degree at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Vygotsky's developmental model of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) provided a framework as we examined how critical thinking was developed. There was very little evidence of critical thinking at first year as students experienced a high-level of material scaffold in the form of course documents, textbooks, problem solving-exercises and discussions that were primarily aimed at the acquisition of factual knowledge. In large classes students were anonymous to lecturers and they relied on each other for support. In years 2 and 3, learning to do research became the main scaffold for critical thinking and students gradually changed their views about the nature of knowledge. Verbal scaffolding and conversation with lecturers and peers allowed students to extend their ZPD for critical thinking. They began to accept responsibility for their own and their peers' learning as they practiced being a zoology researcher. These findings are discussed in relation to two approaches to scaffolding in the ZPD and it is suggested that research should be an integral part of the first year if critical thinking remains a key aim for higher education.

While there appears to be broad acceptance that university graduates must have the capacity to think critically in an increasingly complex, information-rich world, there remains a gap between aspiration and teaching practice in many faculties. We examine this issue through our experience of designing assessment to develop critical thinking in a first year management unit. This case highlighted three important pedagogical considerations. First, there is the need to articulate a conceptualisation of critical thinking that is both discipline- and unit-specific. Second, there is a need to consider the crucial link between critical thinking and academic literacy. Third, there is a need to consider the relationship between the capacity for critical thinking, student learning progression and the development of disciplinary knowledge. These factors will all assist higher education teachers in meeting the challenge of designing developmentally appropriate assessment of critical thinking at each year level.

"Brazilian education activist Paulo Freire ( 1970 12. Freire , P. 1970 . Pedagogy of the oppressed , New York , NY : Continuum . View all references ) argues that to create social change, oppressed people must have critical consciousness about their conditions, and that this consciousness is developed through dialogue. He theorizes that dialogue allows for reflection and unity building, tools needed to transform society. When considering racial oppression in K-12 schools, racial minority teachers have an often-untapped insight and power to transform classrooms and schools (Kohli, 2009 21. Kohli , R. 2009 . Critical race reflections: Valuing the experiences of teachers of color in teacher education . Race, Ethnicity and Education , 12 ( 2 ) : 235 - 251 . [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Web of Science ®] View all references ). Connected through a commonality of racial oppression, it is important for teachers of color to engage in cross-racial dialogues about manifestations of racial injustice in K-12 schools and to develop strategies for change. Utilizing Freire's conceptual lens and a critical race theory (CRT) framework, this article highlights critical race dialogue about the educational experiences and observations of 12 black, Latina, and Asian American women enrolled in a teacher education program. Through cross-racial discussions, the women were able to broaden their multicultural understanding of racial oppression as well as strategize solidarity building among diverse students in urban classrooms. This study demonstrates knowledge and insights of teachers of color and highlights the importance of interracial dialogue in school contexts."