Where tradition and ‘modern’ knowledge meet: exploring two Islamic schools in Singapore and Britain

Muslims live in a ‘modern’ world where subjects such as the English language, mathematics, sciences, and information and communication technology (ICT) are highly valued and enthusiastically transmitted in schools. How some Islamic schools attempt to equip their students with ‘modern knowledge’ while remaining faithful to their religious traditions is the focus of this exploratory study. Using two Islamic schools in Singapore and Britain as illustrative case studies, this paper examines their history, aims, curriculum and pedagogy in their aspiration to acquire ‘modern’ knowledge within their Islamic world views. It further explores some common challenges faced by students and teachers in both schools in their quest for a balanced curriculum. By highlighting the Islamic schools in two Muslim minority countries, this paper aims to contribute towards the international literature on how religious schools assert their cultural heritage and negotiate their learning in the modern age.     

The Crafting of Community: Recoupling Discourses of Management and Womanhood

The construction of organizations around images of masculinity makes the position of ‘women managers’ a problematic one which calls for ‘remedial work’ (Gherardi 1995). Women managers have sought to reconcile their dualistic positions by deploying various individual and collective coping strategies typically articulated within the boundaries of their organizations. In contrast, we research a group of senior women from a British city in the Midlands who attempt to renegotiate their conflicting identities as ‘female’ and ‘senior managers’ by creating a collective forum outside their organizations. Through the construction of a ‘learning set’, they created a space where members could explore their terms of participation, as women and as managers, in their respective work organizations and in the local community. This space was articulated implicitly and explicitly around values typically associated with ‘community’ (e.g. sharing, support, trust, loyalty), a controversial concept in feminist politics. The article documents the (fragile and contested) processes by which these women mobilize the imagery of community in order to create a safe space where ‘remedial work’ could be performed. The conclusion stresses the ambivalent effects of the learning set in both reproducing and transgressing gendered positions.     

In/visible dimensions: framing the intercultural communication course through a critical intercultural communication framework

This article highlights how course material on ‘culture’ and ‘intercultural communication’ faces a distinctive challenge in crafting an engaged power‐focused positionality for students. I discuss the importance of incorporating a ‘critical intercultural communication perspective and practice’ into an upper‐division diversity/intercultural communication course in the US academic context.     

Markets,contingency and preferences: contemporary managers’ narrative identities1

We explore work identity amongst managers, a key group in the ‘new’ capitalism. Some existing accounts of such workplace identities emphasize new ‘cultures of control’, others focus on new requirements and possibilities of individual autonomy through reflective identity formation, while others identify a crisis in workplace identity formation. Focusing on these issues, we analyse the career narratives of 136 managers and show that our empirical data do not neatly fit any existing models. Managers’ career stories were dominated by a ‘market’ narrative, in which they placed themselves as strategic actors making choices in a social world constituted by market‐like interactions. We show that the market narrative frames how managers understand risks to their careers arising from the contingent actions of firms, and how it provides a space for managers to reflectively identify their preferences and pleasures. We consider the consequences of this analysis for contemporary understandings of work and identity.     

Improving citizens’ online engagement via community managers: an explanatory study

The role of community manager is gaining importance as the proper usage of social media becomes a key factor for achieving more active involvement of citizens in social and political issues. Focused on Spanish local governments and in line with the literature of Excellence Theory, this paper aims to analyze whether some characteristics of the community manager function are determinant in their fostering of citizens’ online engagement via social media. In particular ‘independence’, ‘having access to the dominant coalition’, ‘gender diversity’, ‘continuous training’ and ‘culture of the organization’ are the characteristics considered in this paper. As to the main findings, this study confirms that community managers have not as yet achieved their goal of embedding the use of social media by citizens as a means of establishing more direct contact with their local governments. Moreover, in line with Excellence Theory, community managers of local governments should be aware of the importance of having direct access to key managers of the organization in order to better achieve the objectives of the organization and, more specifically, to increase citizens’ engagement. Furthermore, continuous training in issues related to social media truly helps develop the skills and potential of community managers. Likewise, an excellent communication department should rely on good professionals no matter their gender, and, in this sense, the gender of community managers is not a significant factor in their performance. However, the results of this study also reveal that in the case of public sector community managers, an authoritarian culture seems to be a determining factor for obtaining better results in enhancing citizens’ engagement.     

The ‘Feminization’ of Management? Issues of ‘Sameness’ and ‘Difference’ in the Roles and Experiences of Female and Male Retail Managers

Explanations of women’s poor representation in senior management usually emphasize differences between women and men managers’ experiences, circumstances and aspirations, and the gendered character of organizational structures and processes. Whilst these may all disadvantage women, some writers have suggested recently that women managers may differ in style and orientation in ways particularly appropriate for today’s developing organizations. This paper explores issues of ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’ between women and men managers in retailing. Whilst both male and female store managers wanted to downplay gender differences and adopt a ‘gender neutral’ approach, they also associated a number of advantages and disadvantages with being a woman manager in certain contexts. Rapid sectoral change had caused companies to reassess the desired attributes and competences of managers; associated both with an enhanced valuing of ‘feminine’ qualities and with a more ‘objective’ and ‘clinical’ approach to assessment. Despite their equal numbers at entry points women remained poorly represented at senior levels, suggesting that subjective and informal processes were important determinants of women and men’s progress. Given management is inherently a process enacted by individual managers within a social context the extent to which it can be conceived in gender neutral terms is questioned since individuals are inevitably discussed and identified in terms of their gender.     

Youth Justice

This paper illustrates how mindfulness and reflection exercises can be integrated into the teaching and learning of active listening skills, an integral component of relationship skills training. This pedagogy was first trialled on a small cohort of 15 students and the improved version was applied with a second cohort of 53 students. Through the mindfulness and reflection exercises which were built in throughout the module, students identified the three most prominent ‘bad habits’ that hindered active listening as ‘mind wandering’, ‘multi-tasking’ while listening and ‘thinking ahead’. The mindfulness and reflection exercises appeared to bring the usually-unnoticed ‘bad habits’ into awareness so that a conscious effort could be channelled into preventing them from interfering with relationship building. This expanded awareness facilitated the strengthening of ability to observe oneself in interactions. This paper proposes a combination of exercises that expand students' awareness of their own habitual listening styles, together with skills training through conventional methods of role play, video-taping and skills drilling, in order to strengthen motivation to change and bring about deeper learning.     

Colour as a visual signifier in screen typography: ‘less means more’

This article makes a (programmatic) plea for constraints in the use of colour in electronic writing. ‘Spontaneous’, ‘free’, ‘unconstrained’ use of colour, it is argued, impoverishes both the creative and the communicative aspects of typographic design in digital environments, whereas constrained or rule‐governed design can prove a powerful strategy in enhancing creativity and communication. A special plea is made for minimalism, which can be considered one of the most efficient forms of constrained writing.     

Inequalities in students’ union leadership: the role of social networks

Drawing on a national survey of students’ union officers and staff, and a series of 24 focus groups involving both union officers and institutional senior managers, this article explores the characteristics of those who take up leadership roles in their (higher education) students’ union. We show that, in several areas – and particularly in relation to gender, ethnicity and age – union leaders do not represent well the diversity of the wider student body. In explaining these inequalities, we argue that friendship groups and other peer networks play a significant role in determining who does and does not take up leadership positions. Moreover, as friendship groups are often formed on the basis of ‘differential association’ and are thus frequently socially homogenous, inequalities tend to be perpetuated. Wider institutional cultures and societal norms are also implicated.     

The emotional costs of computers: an expectancy-value theory analysis of predominantly low-socioeconomic status minority students’ STEM attitudes

There is a strong push to increase American students’ interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematic (STEM) careers. However, minority and female students remain underrepresented in the STEM fields. Therefore, it is essential that we continue to examine the potential factors that both incite and dissuade STEM interest. We apply Expectancy-Value Theory (EVT) to examine STEM attitudes of predominantly low-socioeconomic status minority elementary school students over the course of a computing intervention. Furthermore, we integrate the digital inequality mental access conceptualization of ‘emotional costs’ into the EVT model in order to predict students’ negative STEM attitudes. Data are from a large-scale computing intervention that took place in a primarily minority, high poverty, urban elementary school district located in the southeastern USA. Results indicate that positive expectancies for success and subjective task values predict students’ positive STEM attitudes. Emotional costs toward technology primarily predict negative STEM attitudes. Students’ expectancies/values and emotional costs may have a ‘push-and-pull’ effect on the formation of STEM attitudes. This study successfully links digital disparities to STEM disparities by integrating the digital inequality concept of emotional costs. Practically, we conclude that future computing interventions should increase students’ academic-related expectancies and values while also minimizing their emotional costs in order to address both digital and STEM inequalities. Theoretically, we conclude that broad conceptualizations of emotional costs should be included in future studies to help explain negative attitudes/motivations toward STEM-related topics.     

Educators and synoptic prudentialism: Educator reflections on educator training,student surveillance and using technology for student outreach

Surveillance plays several interrelated and essential roles in contemporary education. In the current article, we explore the understandings and experiences of educators related to surveillance; especially the ‘vertical’ surveillance ‘from below’ students themselves direct towards educators both inside and outside of the classroom (referred to as ‘sousveillance’). We also explore the prudential ‘intrapersonal’ and reflexive surveillance undertaken by educators to align and adjust to the expectations of educator professionalization, including during educator training, especially in terms of their social media use and under a context of synoptic prudentialism in schools. Synoptic prudentialism refers to the reflexive actions and adjustments by individuals and organizations in response to an acute awareness of widespread social surveillance—the many watching the few. Educators noted risks posed by surveillance, including sources of potential harm, both personal and professional. Findings reveal that, reinforced by the legal scare stories encountered during educator training programs, educators feel overwhelmingly vulnerable to the potential sousveillance of students, and are receiving little advice beyond the requirement to ‘be careful’. We explore educators’ privacy management strategies in response, for example, in response to concerns over students capturing videos in the classroom where situations may be taken out of context. This prudential framework, moreover, may also be inhibiting educators’ ability to conduct outreach with students to detect and respond to online mediated conflict and harm.     

Supporting the transition of disabled students from university to practice placement

A modified action research project was undertaken to evaluate the effectiveness of a pre-placement procedure in facilitating eight disabled physiotherapy students’ transitions from university to practice. Feedback was gathered from the students, practice educators, visiting and academic tutors via questionnaire. Thematic analysis identified four main themes: ‘Procedure’; ‘Student in Control’; ‘Communication’; and ‘Disclosure’. The procedure was generally effective in supporting these students. Recommendations were made for: the need for ownership of the procedure from all stakeholders; the development of more effective communication systems; and the need for appropriate disability awareness training for all academic and practice-based staff.     

Hegemonic irrationalities and psychoanalytic cultural critique

‘Whiteness’ is no longer an invisible or marginal racial category. Within the last decade, ‘whiteness’ has become increasingly understood as an ideological, racial and political marker in both the rhetoric of right-wing conservatives and in the ‘new’ critical scholarship on ‘whiteness’. This article analyses both of these discourses while focusing on the strengths and limitations of the ‘new’ critical scholarship on ‘whiteness’. Finally, it raises the pedagogical and political issue of what it means to rearticulate ‘whiteness’ in oppositional terms in order to enable white students to have a stake in anti-racist and democratic struggles being waged by other groups.     

Social exchange and common agency in organizations

We study the relation between formal incentives and social exchange in organizations where employees work for several managers and reciprocate a manager’s attention with higher effort. To this end we develop a common agency model with two-sided moral hazard. We show that when management attention is not contractible, the first-best can only be achieved by granting autonomy to employees together with incentive pay for both managers and employees. When neither attention nor effort are contractible, an ‘attention race’ arises, as each manager tries to sway the employee’s effort his way. While this may result in too much social exchange, the attention race may also be a blessing because it alleviates managers’ moral-hazard problem in attention provision. Lastly, we show how organizational structure can be used to motivate managers and employees in the absence of formal incentives.     

Great Expectations: The Growing Divide between Students and Social Work Educators

This article examines and reflects upon initial findings from a longitudinal study evaluating the experiences and views of students on professional social work programmes across four higher education institutes in the North West of England, on the BA and the MA routes. The paper focuses on one aspect of this study; the students' experience of assessment. In particular it examines how students experienced the process of learning, assessment, support and feedback, which was found to be in part shaped by previous educational experiences. The range of assessment methods previously experienced by students was diverse, some of which were more helpful than others in preparing them for their professional training. Lack of foundation subject knowledge presented a challenge to students on both courses, in particular for MA students who were being assessed at ‘M’ level. Unmet expectations of both the amount and type of support created anxiety, frustration and even anger for some. The ‘search for certainty’ led to anxiety amongst many first year students who believed that academics could facilitate the assessment process by providing ‘the answer’. This exploration of assessment reveals, we believe, a growing divide in the expectations of social work students and their educators.     

The passing of the Rex

This paper takes as its point of departure the ethical problematization of debating both sides – having students argue both affirmative and negative on a debate resolution – in order to highlight the role of communication as a cultural technology of liberalism. It argues that debating both sides contributed to the cultural governance of cold war liberalism by separating speech from conviction to cultivate the value of debate as a method of democratic decision-making. The valorization of free and full expression as a pre-requisite for ‘decision by debate’ prepared the ground for dis-articulating debate from cold war liberalism and re-articulating it as a game of freedom that contributes to the moral education of liberal citizens. In so doing, debate becomes a global technology of liberalism creating exceptional subjects by circulating the communicative norms of deliberative democracy.     

Student Rights in an Age of Austerity? ‘Security’, Freedom of Expression and the Neoliberal University

In this profile, we examine a worrying trend taking place in institutions of higher education around the world: a notable increase in their managerial corporatization and neoliberalization, combined with greater repression of freedom of expression on campuses under the aegis of ‘securitization’. We focus attention specifically on how these twinned trends have impacted student activism in a post-2008 austerity-driven economic environment. Drawing on examples from Canada and elsewhere, we highlight attempts to depoliticize and institutionalize student engagement, as well as evidence of students working to break free of myriad constraints to foment change in their respective communities.     

Transnational mobility and rootedness: the upper middle classes in European cities

Some authors argue that ‘mobilities’ form the distinctive feature of late modern societies and represent a new social cleavage between cosmopolitan mobile élites and urban residents more rooted in their local neighbourhoods. One assumption in contemporary discourses of rootedness is that this new transnational or global society entails an ongoing process of uprooting individuals and a mainly mobile élite packing up and relocating. In this article, we draw on empirical comparative research to examine the patterns and dynamics of mobility and belonging across European borders among upper‐middle‐class managers in four cities – Paris, Madrid, Milan and Lyon. We suggest that these new urban upper‐middle‐class managers display flight responses, or ‘partial exit’ strategies, which operate at various levels to enable them to protect and control their interests while holding onto the reins of power in their local communities. Our study adopts a micro‐level perspective to explore individual experiences, strategies, motivations and values based on interviews with 480 managers in these cities.     

On the learning journey: what helps and hinders the development of social work students’ core pre-placement skills?

The development and assessment of core skills, including communication skills, are essential prerequisites before social work students are judged ready for practice placement. This paper presents qualitative data from the first year of a three-year study of an undergraduate module taught jointly to undergraduate and postgraduate students on two qualifying programmes at a university in England. The study considers the impact of video recording in a ‘skills laboratory’ on social work students’ skills development, and compares this with other feedback mechanisms at the pre-placement ‘Readiness for Direct Practice’ threshold for the different student groups. Responses from 88 students to two questions on factors they identified as the most helpful/least useful for core skills development were collected, using the same questionnaire at three stages of the module. These were analysed using a grounded theory approach. A separate, quantitative analysis showed that assessment outcomes for undergraduate and postgraduate students were not statistically different. In contrast, this qualitative analysis showed that while there was common value for students from self-observation using video, there were key differences in learning preferences between undergraduates and postgraduates in relation to feedback. While undergraduates valued peer support in group work, postgraduates preferred feedback from authoritative, independent and credible sources.