Suchergebnisse

Purpose
The purpose of this study is to shed light on the association between stakeholders' materiality and the sustainable development goals (SDGs), highlighting how higher education institutions (HEIs) can pursue sustainable development and provide a holistic perspective by mapping material issues. This paper provides a clear understanding of the universities' role, specifically a state university in a developing country in fostering sustainable development. Particularly, this study identifies where the service industry and Yildiz Technical University (YTU) can contribute to the SDGs.


Design/methodology/approach
This methodology contains three stages. In the first stage, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board categories have been mapped to the SDGs, in the second stage mapping of the service sector and its industries has been carried out. Additionally, the methodology was based on an exploratory case study.


Findings
This paper provides empirical results on the significance of the service sector, education and YTU in contributing to the SDGs. Moreover, this paper provides a framework by mapping the material issues on how the education sector can make contributions to the SDGs.


Practical implications
Exhibiting how HEIs' implement integrated thinking and voluntarily implemented International Integrated Reporting Council guidelines can assist policymakers to make regulations based on the voluntary reporting framework.


Social implications
This paper contributes to increasing academics' awareness of sustainability practices. The research process and findings of this study can assist policymakers to make regulations based on the HEIs' voluntary reporting framework.


Originality/value
This study is the first to identify specifically where the service industry and specifically a state university in a developing country can contribute to the SDGs and one of a few in the emerging academic studies. Additionally, how integrated reporting can contribute to value creation by establishing and proactively achieving the SDGs.

This article investigates an intergenerational information and communications technology (ICT) program that seeks expressly to enhance children's civic participation by placing them in mutually educational encounters with seniors. Applying Devine's model of the interrelationship among structure, power, and agency, it problematizes this goal by analyzing the dialectics of the power relations between seniors and children who maintain a technology-driven relationship. The data were gathered via qualitative participant-observation in two elementary schools. The results reveal clashing implications for children's empowerment as computer "teachers" and their experiencing of agency. Implementation of Devine's theoretical model sheds light on the meanings of the stereotyped terms "digital natives" and "digital immigrants," as well as on the a-stereotyped senior's identity as "digital consumers." The conclusions suggest that the technological gap may not be definitive in confirming young people's supremacy in the generational hierarchy, signaling the need for caution in handling this gap via civic empowerment in an educational setting.

This article examines the political geography of state building in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. The absence of interstate war has produced a unique situation for contemporary state builders in Africa—they have inherited states with relatively fixed borders encapsulating a variety of environmental and geographic conditions, compounded by varying distributions of population densities. The author examines the effects of a variety of strategies that African rulers have employed to enhance their state-building efforts given the type of national design they inhabit. These strategies include the allocation of citizenship, interventions in land tenure patterns, and the adoption and management of national currencies. The author tests the effects of these strategies on several dimensions of state capacity in sub-Saharan Africa from 1960 to 2004 using a variety of statistical analyses. The results indicate that the strategies currently adopted by African rulers have generally failed to substantially augment their capacity.

AbstractCost‐effectiveness analyses, especially in education, are too rare. Yet they offer powerful and valuable insights for evaluators and can provide information that is counter to common sense, popular appeal, and traditional ideas.

AbstractMany Guatemalan parents migrate to the United States with the intention of returning earned income to improve the human capital prospects of their left-behind children. This laudable goal is achieved by many – arguably benefiting girls more than boys. However, negative international migration externalities including migration failure, familial abandonment, psychosocial harms and a culture of migration that disproportionally limits the educational prospects of boys need to be considered. Based on qualitative field interviews in western Guatemala with parents and educators, this article presents a nuanced view of economic migration and left-behind children's education, capturing both its remittance-related benefits and parental absence harms.

The present research focussed on how the adoption of common frameworks for curriculum redesign impacts the processes of higher education differentiation and the preservation of cultural diversity. Such debate was based on the experiences of implementation of the international cooperation programmes Tuning Higher Education Structures in Europe (Tuning EU) and Tuning Latin America (Tuning LA). The programmes were analysed drawing on the perspectives of their creators and directors. Tuning was originally conceived in the European Union, in the year 2000. Its project is linked to the cultural and economic integration aims promoted by the Bologna Process and the Lisbon Strategy, concerning the higher education sector. Over time, Tuning has developed into an approach to evaluate quality, enhance learning mobility, and redesign curriculum, based on the common implementation of a competence-based education framework in 1st, 2nd and 3rd levels degree programmes. Tuning Latin America was the first attempt at internationalisation developed by Tuning in the replication of its model, in 2004. The programme has now spread to other thirteen regions and countries around the world. Given its international dimension, Tuning claims to value and protect cultural diversity among participant institutions. Considering that cultural diversity and institutional differentiation are deeply intertwined, the main research question posed by the present study was: do data reveal elements indicating that the programmatic and procedural redesign proposed by Tuning affect institutional differentiation? The possible results foreseen were: positive impact, if Tuning would contribute to the increase of institutional differentiation; negative impact, if Tuning would contribute to the decrease of institutional differentiation; or neutral impact, if there were not identified any elements pointing to a significant relation between the implementation of Tuning and the development of institutional differentiation. These possible results were verified utilising a qualitative approach. The methodology adopted was situational analysis and the method was integrative mapping. The primary data consisted of eighteen interviews with the creators and directors of Tuning EU and Tuning LA and one external specialist invited by Tuning to evaluate Tuning LA progress. The secondary data consisted of seven of Tuning's main publications regarding Tuning EU and Tuning LA experiences. In addition to those sources, the researcher observed Tuning's office in the European Union for two months, between May and June, 2014, and attended the Brazilian Tuning conference, in August 2014. The data were analysed with the support of two main concepts: academic capitalism, when discussing the economic elements involved; and coloniality, when referring to the specificities of the relation between the European Union and Latin America. The results indicate that Tuning offered benefits to Latin America when it served as a tool to promote communication among countries in the region. Nevertheless, according to data, Tuning has presented an overall negative effect, as it contributed to the decrease of institutional differentiation. Tuning was shown to add to the convergence of programmatic and procedural institutional aspects, which could endanger cultural diversity. The conclusions point to the need for developing alternatives for enhancing learning mobility without contributing to the structural standardisation of higher education.

This comment examines the impact of United States Trust on traditional contract clause doctrines and policies. After an initial discussion of the factual and legal background, a historical survey will show the decision employs a new approach to contract clause analysis. Next, this comment will analyze the Court's new approach, especially the Court's treatment of impairments when a state is a contractual party, its willingness to make policy judgments formerly left to legislative discretion, and the decision's probable effect on any future municipal debt crises. Finally, in accord with Justice Brennan's dissent in United States Trust, this comment will conclude that the Court's former approach to contract clause issues was superior because the Court recognized the need for broad state powers to regulate governmental obligations.

We study the effect of divisions within the elite on the probability of internalconflict in the Papal States between 1295 and 1846. We assemble a new databaseusing information on cardinals that participated in conclaves during this period,and construct measures of polarization and fractionalization based on the cardinals'places of birth. The deaths of popes and cardinals provide plausible exogenousvariation in the timing of the conclave and the composition of the Collegeof Cardinals, which we exploit to analyze the causal effect of a divided conclaveon conflict. We find that an increase of one standard deviation in our measure ofpolarization raised the likelihood of internal conflict by between 2 and 3 percentin a given year and by up to 18 percent in a given papacy. The effect is largestin the initial years after the conclave, to gradually vanish over time. Our resultsconfirm that cardinals' influence on the politics of the Papal States decreased afterreforms introduced between 1586 and 1588. Our measure of religious productivity,however, is negatively and significantly linked to polarization in the post-reformperiod. These reforms were successful in shifting the effect of divisions among theelite of one of the largest and oldest organizations from violent conflict to religiousmatters. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published

The aim of this paper is to analyse how learning assessment, particularly the Continuous Assessment system, has been defined in the Public Administration and Management Diploma Course of the University of Barcelona (Spain). This course was a pioneering experiment at this university in implementing the guidelines of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), and thus represents a good case study for verifying whether one of the cornerstones of the EHEA has been accomplished with success. Using data obtained from the Teaching Plans elaborated by the lecturers of each subject, we are able to establish that the CA system has been progressively accepted to such an extent that it is now the assessment formula used by practically all of the lecturers, conforming in this way to the protocols laid down by the Faculty of Law in which this diploma course is taught. Nevertheless, we find that high dispersion exists in how Continuous Assessment is actually defined. Indeed, it seems that there is no unified view of how Continuous Assessment should be performed. This dispersion, however, seems to diminish over time and raises some questions about the advisability of agreement on criteria, considering the potential which CA has as a pedagogical tool. Moreover, we find that the Unique Assessment system, which students may also apply for, is an option chosen only by a minority, with lecturers usually defining it as merely a theoretical and/or practical test, of little innovation in relation to traditional tests.

The pandemic has adversely impacted children. The vaccine roll-out to children aged 12 - 17 years is important to curb the spread of the virus and allow children to revert to some form of normality. Children's rights to equality, education, health and food have been impeded during the pandemic. However, there is a persistent hesitancy towards the vaccine roll-out. This is apparent from a case before the High Court in Pretoria, in the pending matter between the African Christian Democratic Party and others v The Minister of the National Department of Health: Dr M Phaahla and Others. SECTION27's intervention as amicus curiae highlights the importance of vaccines, and provides evidence to illustrate the adverse impact of the pandemic on learners' rights to equality, education, food and health. Further, the evidence illustrates the inequalities that exist among learners.

Introduction: In humans, live male births slightly exceed females and this ratio is conventionally expressed as male live births divided by total live births (M/F). A wide variety of factors have been shown to influence M/F including latitude, stress, socio-economic status and race. This study was carried out in order to ascertain whether there are differences in M/F in different states and in different geographical regions in the United States of America (USA). Methods: Annual live births by gender for the period 1995–2012 were obtained from the website of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These were grouped according to the four regions devised by the United States Census Bureau, Geography Division. Results: This study encompassed 52 601 559 live births for the period 1995–2012 (M/F: 0.5117; 95% CL: 0.5116, 0.5118). Southern states tended to have a lower male-to-female ratio. Hawaii had a high M/F (p < 0.0001). The male-to-female ratio for the South region was significantly less (p = 0.004). This region had the highest proportion of Black mothers. Conclusion: The high Hawaiian M/F is in keeping with Micronesian island findings. The M/F latitude gradient accords with that previously noted in the USA. Historically, Blacks have been shown to have a lower M/F than other races. Long-term stress related to maternal socio-economic status has also been shown to influence M/F, and Blacks are known to be disadvantaged to this day. It is possible that the low M/F historically noted in this race may be due to chronically poor socio-economic circumstances. ; peer-reviewed