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After 5 decades of the Urban Affairs Association, more than 4 decades of the Journal of Urban Affairs (JUA), and with the departure of an editorial team, this seems an opportune moment to assess the contribution made by the journal to the field of urban affairs. This paper takes both an historical and analytical approach to this evaluation, detailing the institutional challenges associated with the journal's production, coupled with identification of key themes in its catalog of papers. The historical exploration of defining articles and notable authors provides a retrospective of the key urban issues that have defined the JUA over the last 4 decades. We also undertake a content analysis of the JUA, utilizing Web of Science data, which dates back to 1993. This bibliometric analysis sheds further light on influential JUA authors, articles and topics, as well as key conceptual, intellectual, and social patterns and trends in the journal over the last four decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits the question "Who Owns Religion?", in the context of a recent analysis of debates in religious studies, marked by controversy and friction between members of religious traditions and scholars writing about those traditions. Habermas's concept of a public sphere is at the center of an analysis by Laurie Patton that uses six case studies, including one involving the Sikh tradition. The paper reviews this conceptual framing and the accompanying analysis, provides a reconsideration of the Sikh case, which pertains to the construction of religious boundaries in that tradition, and draws more general lessons, including the functioning of academia as well as the contextual appropriateness of the concept of the public sphere. It argues that "eruptions" in the public sphere can be reduced by improvements in academic knowledge production, to provide a better foundation for navigating differences in modes of reasoning, or between the religious and the secular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the development and implementation of restorative justice policy and practice for First Nations Peoples in Queensland. Using diverse public source materials to produce a summary history and assessment of the Queensland experience, the study found that restorative justice can provide an appropriate response to crime within First Nations communities, but that programmes have had limited application and utilisation to-date. The findings suggest that programmes must involve First Nations Peoples in programme design and delivery, while addressing the systemic disadvantages faced by these communities through a substantial increase in government investment. The study identified the need for increased application of restorative justice and enhanced research on programme outcomes; acknowledging the need to increase attention to victims’ needs and experiences. The paper also recognised the need for more First Nations led research to explore how restorative justice programmes can be enhanced to improve outcomes for First Nations Peoples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractFinding a way to make a living may be difficult if one lives in a small island with few possibilities for regular full-time jobs. Focusing on how co-habiting couples negotiate their livelihood options with each other and with the island setting, the paper shows how the local labour market and its inherent (im)possibilities are shaped by a specific history, geography and set of gender relations. Empirically, the paper draws on couple interviews from the Danish island of Læsø, with approximately 1800 inhabitants. The analysis shows how history, traditions, geography and gender relations impact on livelihoods and possibilities for developing new lines of work. It also shows how these factors continuously interact with one another and are negotiated by both individuals and couples. Underscoring the argument that island labour markets are different from mainland labour markets, the analysis suggests that the need for negotiation may be more obvious in an island setting which is demographically and economically under pressure. Islands cannot simply be treated as ‘smaller’ versions of mainland communities. They pose qualitatively different contexts. The palpable geographic borders of the island community entail that ‘everybody knows everybody’, thus enhancing visibility of individual choices and roles in the local labour market. Therefore, the impact of intangible factors may be enhanced in island settings, where deviations from tradition become immediately observable as people live in close proximity to one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The video game Valiant Hearts, released in 2014 for the First World War centenary, sold over 2.5 million copies and can be considered one of the major contemporary pop-culture historical representations of this war shaping public interpretations of this event. The paper explores how Valiant Hearts, as a kind of informal institution affecting historical remembrance, constructs and encourages a specific framing through the deployment of Europeanizing elements of anti-war narrative, Franco-German reconciliation narrative, and the de-nationalizing logic that indirectly legitimizes the European integration. The analysis of the videogame in the context of the historical film Merry Christmas (2005) is complemented with a close reading of illustrative empirical examples of Let's Plays (paratextual user-generated videos where people record themselves while playing videogames) that indicate how Europeans of different national backgrounds interact with the game Valiant Hearts. The examined cases point to how the everyday, seemingly apolitical leisure activity of playing and watching videogames dealing with history can advance Europeanizing narratives and present occasions for informal Europeanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research in Applied Linguistics has explored how teachers mobilise diverse resources in order to make connections between the students' out-of-school knowledge and experiences and the abstract content knowledge. Nevertheless, how teachers can transcend the boundaries of disciplinary knowledge by incorporating relevant content knowledge from other academic subjects to facilitate students' learning of new content knowledge is a topic that is under-researched in the field. Adopting translanguaging as an analytical perspective, this study examines how the creation of a translanguaging space can afford opportunities for an English-Medium-Instruction (EMI) teacher to connect content-related knowledge for supporting students' learning of new historical knowledge in EMI Western History classrooms. The data is based on a larger linguistic ethnographic project in a Hong Kong EMI secondary Western History classroom. Multimodal Conversation Analysis is used to analyse the classroom interaction data. The classroom interaction data is triangulated with the video-stimulated-recall-interviews that are analysed with Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. This paper argues that a translanguaging classroom space can be -created for activating students' prior learnt subject knowledge for -supporting students' learning of new academic knowledge. Such a translanguaging space provides opportunities for classroom participants to not only engage in fluid language practices, but also encourages the teacher and students to bring in multiple epistemologies that help students understand new academic knowledge in a new classroom interactional context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on flexible assessment suggests that providing students with choice in assignments can increase motivation and deepen investment in learning. Although instructors are often advised to adopt flexible assessment, they are also warned about potential detriments such as perceived lack of rigour among colleagues, the stress that decision-making can bring to students, and increased workload for themselves. This paper draws upon student responses to a survey, a class discussion, and instructor observations to identify benefits and costs of flexible assessment in a fourth-year history course. Among the benefits are that students can pursue their interests more freely in both content and form, while the instructor can enjoy creative and original student work. The costs include anxiety among students who may be unsure how best to choose their assessments, and additional work for the instructor who must manage a multiplicity of assignments within the confines of an institutional grading system. The implementation of flexible assessment is recommended provided that the flexibility is compatible with the course's learning outcomes, the students' level of independence, and the instructor's capacity to take on an unpredictable amount of extra work. Suggestions are offered for how to implement flexible assessment without creating too much of a burden for either students or instructors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People with a disability continue to experience barriers to service engagement such as mistrust of government services, lack of culturally appropriate support, marginalisation and disempowerment. This meta-synthesis reviews current literature regarding these experiences to explain why services are underutilised. Methods: The meta-synthesis was conducted using a meta-ethnographic approach to synthesise existing studies into new interpretive knowledge. The approach was supported by a search using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). Results: Ten original research papers utilising a qualitative methodology were extracted. Synthesis of the articles revealed four concepts that were developed into a conceptual model. These include:1) History Matters; 2) Cultural Understanding of Disability Care; 3) Limitations to Current Service Provision; and 4) Delivery of Effective Services. Conclusions: Disability services do not adequately consider the cultural needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People or communicate in a culturally appropriate manner. There are expectations that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People acknowledge their disability in alignment with western definitions of disability in order to access services. More work is needed to align disability services with culturally appropriate support to provide better health outcomes. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with a disability continue to experience barriers to service engagement which must be addressed. An essential gap that must be filled in providing disability services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is the acknowledgment of culture as a resolute influence on all client interactions with providers. A cultural model of disability may better align with the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people than current medical and social models used in healthcare. Disability services need to align better with culturally appropriate support to provide better health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research on classroom interaction has investigated how the teacher's feedback turn following students' responses can be used to transform students' turns into academic expressions during whole class discussions. Nevertheless, more empirical studies are needed to explore how teachers' translanguaging practices can play a role in shaping students' contributions into pedagogical opportunities for introducing academic terminologies in English-Medium-Instruction (EMI) classrooms. Adopting translanguaging as an analytical perspective, this study explores how an EMI history teacher deploys available linguistic and multimodal resources to connect students' responses with academic concepts and terminologies. The study draws its data from a larger linguistic ethnographic project that took place in an EMI secondary history classroom in Hong Kong. The classroom interaction data is examined using Multimodal Conversation Analysis, and this analysis is further triangulated with video-stimulated-recall-interviews that are analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. This paper argues that the EMI teacher's translanguaging practices facilitate the process of transforming student contributions into academic terminology and concepts. The process of deploying translanguaging for transforming student contributions highlights translanguaging as an important component of the teacher's classroom interactional competence for constructing new configurations of language practices and achieving specific pedagogical purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract, This paper explores a conception of justice through a reading of the Brazilian novel The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, written by João Guimarães Rosa. In this novel, the character of Zé Bebelo is tried by a group of jagunços, who were nomadic bandits that lived in the northeast of Brazil. What is analyzed in this scene is the spectral dimension of undecidability that involves a decision, and how a decision intervenes in a field of forces and reshapes the relationships and antagonisms of a conflict. I seek to show how this novel operates a counter-actualization of Brazilian history by updating and spotlighting the memory of violence and war that marks life in the peripheral regions of Brazil. Finally, I question how justice can be possible when war is a tendency internal to the functioning of societies. What concept of justice is possible when faced with this continuous tendency to disjoint the social body? I propose a concept of justice thought before the unbalanced, conflictive and differential relationships lived by the characters of this novel in the uncertain and contingent space of the Brazilian backlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the many foci and functions of the education system in Ireland in both the colonial era (up to 1921) and since, teacher selection, training/education, recruitment and management have been topical and contested issues. This article traces key trends in the historical evolution of initial teacher education (ITE) policy for primary teachers in Ireland over the past two centuries, moving from a period where training involved ‘sojourning’ around schools to the contemporary era where ITE programmes are underpinned by elaborate and prescriptive standards. Framed within the wider international socio-political context, a particular emphasis is placed on the implications of policy developments in the past decade that have fundamentally altered the landscape of ITE. The paper argues that Ireland’s contemporary ITE policy is characterised by a range of tensions and debates that arise from the interface of its historical lineage with contemporary global discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The British Government appointed a departmental committee to review anti-homosexuality laws in 1954 following a marked increase in the number of arrests for homosexuality after World War II. The committee invited the British Medical Association (BMA) and other institutions to provide scientific and medical evidence relating to homosexuality. In 1954, the BMA established the Committee on Homosexuality and Prostitution to present its view on how the law impacted upon homosexuals and society. This paper analyses the BMA's attitudes to homosexuality by examining its submission to the Departmental Committee. Whilst the BMA supported implicitly the decriminalization of certain homosexual acts, it remained strongly opposed to homosexuality from a moral perspective and insisted that it was an illness. It is concluded that the BMA's submission was driven primarily by a desire to control the "unnatural deviant" behavior of homosexuals and to protect society from that behavior rather than to protect homosexuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examined the effectiveness of using summative evaluation in developing a deep understanding and critical thinking skills among secondary school students. Preparing questions which contain an explanation of concepts in the question paper helps the students to develop a deep understanding and critical thinking skills while answering. The answers of the students were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The researchers identified five themes based on Bloom's theory of cognitive taxonomy to explore the critical thinking skills of the respondents. There were five components: comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Content analysis indicated that the above method limits the confirmation bias. A comparison of answers to three tests in history showed a significant difference (p < 0.01) between the control group (N = 151) and experimental group students (N = 129). Adding positive or negative content in the description of concepts in the essay question influences the response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]