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Psychological distance (PD) can be a barrier to how students perceive climate change impacts and severity. Localizing climate change using place-based approaches is one way instructors can structure their curricula to help combat students' PD, especially from a spatial and social viewpoint. We created a novel classroom intervention that incorporated elements of place-based education and the Teaching for Transformative Experiences in Science model that was designed to lower undergraduate biology students' spatial and social distance of climate change. Our research questions sought to determine whether students' PD changed following our intervention and whether variables beyond our intervention might have contributed to changes we identified. To measure the efficacy of our intervention, we administered a survey that contained several instruments to measure students' recognition and psychological distance of climate change pre- and post-intervention. We found that students' psychological distance to climate change decreased after participating in our classroom intervention. Additionally, course level was the only outside variable we identified as a predictor of students' post-activity scores. Participation in our activity lowered our students' spatial and social psychological distance, which could have impacts beyond the classroom as these students become the next generation of scientists and voters.

While males have predominantly held leadership positions in national-level parliaments, the rising visibility of females as heads of government, despite their underrepresentation, is a significant trend. This study investigated the political resignation speeches of four female leaders in national parliaments: Australia, England, New Zealand, and Scotland. Examining their speeches revealed a strategic utilization of self-praise to construct their identity as effective leaders. A comparative analysis of these speeches highlighted distinct self-praise strategies employed. These speakers interacted with varied levels of familiarity with their audience influencing their self-praise strategies. Addressing familiar individuals prompted the use of diverse strategies, notably emphasizing direct self-praise with modifications. In contrast, when addressing less familiar recipients, leaders tended to lean more towards straightforward strategies. Across these speeches, a multimodal discourse analysis uncovered the diverse communication modes utilized by leaders including variations in bodily movements, hand gestures, and eye contact. These modes of communication reflected the perceived social distance between the speakers and their audience.

This study aims to examine the diverse strategies employed in apology and request, investigate the influence of cultural factors, social power, and social distance on these strategies, and explore the existing limitations and gaps in the literature for future research. Data collection is conducted using the qualitative technique. Qualitative content analysis is employed for data analysis. The SLR process provides a structured framework for analyzing various strategies employed in speech acts and investigates the impact of cultural variables and social distance on these strategies. Through the implementation of a predetermined review procedure, a total of 16 papers published between 2018 and 2022 were identified and analyzed. The findings demonstrated that many studies examined apologies and requests using different strategies and sub-strategies. Notably, politeness usage by Indonesian English teachers reflected social power dynamics, while linguistic strategies among Thai students and EFL learners were shaped by social distance. Thai study underscored the importance of cultural immersion, variations among interactants, and teaching factors in pragmatic competence. The PRISMA-guided systematic review effectively synthesized existing literature. The gaps, novel insights, and unresolved issues identified provided a roadmap for researchers to propel the field forward. This systematic review contributed a snapshot of current knowledge, charted a course for future investigations, identified gaps, and leveraged the strengths of systematic approaches.

Background: The present study examines the relationship between stereotypical beliefs about people with intellectual disabilities, desire for social distance, and general knowledge about human sexuality with attitudes towards the sexuality of adults with mild intellectual disabilities. Method: Two hundred fifty participants from staff, family and community samples completed an online set of questionnaires. Results: Higher agreement with stereotypical beliefs and lower sexual knowledge were associated with less normalising and more paternalistic attitudes towards the sexuality of adults with mild intellectual disabilities. Higher agreement with stereotypical beliefs was also associated with more negative attitudes. On the other hand, willingness to interact with these adults was associated with more normalising and less paternalistic attitudes. Conclusions: Interventions that aim to support adults with intellectual disabilities in relation to their sexuality should also address the perceptions of their support network towards them as individuals with disabilities, as well as their knowledge about sexuality.

This article critically assesses the hospitality premise on which the project-practice of decolonizing the curriculum rests, investigating the texture and limitations of the hospitality that Global North universities seem willing to offer their many Others, including students, staff, and stakeholders, particularly in the form of knowledges and pedagogies. It investigates how the guests-strangers are treated within the Global North Universities, their knowledges posited as a separate category within the epistemic system rather than integrated into being a part of the system; guests relegated to unpaid servants when obliged to shoulder the lion's share of the work in addressing the unfair, racist systems which devalue them and their knowledges. Embedding the discourse of decolonizing the university in and with postcolonial concepts, the article highlights the profoundly unequal power relationships between hosts and guests that continue to inform even the best-intentioned Global North higher education institutions, self-declaredly dedicated to decolonization efforts. It argues for pressing need on the part of the Global North universities to deepen their awareness of the historical legacies of coloniality and its matrix of power, and consequently reflect on the treatment of Global South guests and knowledges. This long, hard look at their role of host is necessary for a true committment to decolonising the university spaces and rendering them genuinely hospitable, and to transforming the unequal power dynamics and the impacts on guests-stranger Others.

Objectives: WhatMakesUs is a digital media campaign aimed at reducing mental health stigma in the Greater Omaha-Council Bluffs metropolitan area. This study evaluated the campaign's impact at the end of the second year of the campaign by examining different aspects of mental health stigma, including social distance, attitudes, behaviours and self-efficacy, among campaign-aware (CA) individuals and non-campaign-aware (NCA) individuals. The study also explored the campaign's feasibility and potential for adaptation to other parts of the USA. Design, Setting, and Method: A cross-sectional online survey was conducted in the campaign's implementation area. Respondents were recruited through a panel recruiting company using non-probabilistic methods. Digital metrics from the campaign's social media accounts and website were collected and analysed using Google Analytics. Results: CA respondents exhibited lower social distance and stigmatising attitudes and beliefs, and more positive behaviours and self-efficacy towards people with mental health conditions (MHCs) compared to NCA respondents. A significantly higher proportion of CA respondents reported living with (p = 0.001), working with (p = 0.005), and having close friendships with individuals with MHCs (p = 0.043). CA respondents found therapy and counselling effective treatments for MHCs (p = 0.005), greater comfort in providing support to individuals with MHCs (p < 0.001), pursued steps to improve their own mental health (p = 0.032) and perceived their workplaces taking an active role in their mental health (p = 0.029), when compared to NCA respondents. Digital metrics indicated successful engagement with the campaign's intended audience. Conclusion: Findings highlight the impact of digital campaigns in addressing the stigmatisation of MHCs and provide valuable insights for future campaigns.

Purpose: This article explores how pandemic-induced instructional changes and remote learning, in particular, affected teachers' relational work with students. Research Methods/Approach: It draws on semistructured interviews with 33 teachers and three instructional coaches across three secondary schools in one urban district. Interviews were conducted remotely over two school years (2020-21, 2021-22). Findings: Teachers' changing instructional conditions dramatically limited their relational work with students and tended to negatively affect their sense of success and overall satisfaction. Teachers found various ways to cope, but most experienced loss and diminished commitment as teaching grew unfamiliar and teacher-student interactions grew complicated. As participants became estranged from students, they also became estranged from teaching more generally. Many increasingly questioned their careers, and some left their positions. Implications: These findings offer a needed, detailed view of teachers' everyday work during the pandemic. They raise implications for districts continuing to reorient teaching and learning after COVID-19 and urge policy makers and school leaders to respond to teachers' and students' relational losses after a period of disrupted schooling. They showcase teacher-student relations' contextualized nature, an underexamined area. Finally, they advance conceptual understanding of teacher-student relationships, introducing the concept of "estrangement" to explain the consequences of instructional contexts that create social distance between teachers and students.

The insistence on knowledge accumulation in modern educational discourses has led to the formation of exclusive dichotomies in various forms, most tangibly observable in the division of people into 'knowledgeable' and 'unknowledgeable'. What underlies this dichotomy is a conception of rationality based on which knowledge is seen as an 'instrument' which must necessarily result in a usable, "profitable" product. From a Levinasian perspective, the latter situation inevitably, if not purposefully, leads to the formation of the Other being located at the side of irrationality, hence an unnecessary entity within the knowledge economy. Analysing Werner Herzog's film, "The Enigma of Kasper Hauser's" (1974), this paper aims to show how irrationality, contrary to the belief of dominant educational/pedagogical discourses, can act as a source for creative thinking. The paper argues that by accepting the Other as the unknowable, we allow them to resort to their singularity as a source for imaginative thinking.

Many institutions of higher education have committed to the principles of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). This collective move signifies an effort to identify and confront systemic issues of marginalisation and exclusion of minoritised groups in contexts of higher education. Nevertheless, international students are not always considered an equity-seeking group, despite the structural barriers international students face. As a result, international students' experiences of EDI remain underexplored and are typically examined from a perspective of internationalisation. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the experiences of five international students from the broader perspective of EDI at a Canadian university through a case study design. The findings demonstrate that, in spite of the university's long-standing commitment to aspects of EDI, international students felt excluded and othered in the community. Their experiences pointed to a lack of intercultural awareness and sensitivity on the part of the superficially multicultural community, a lack of institution-led initiatives to include the students through socialisation with peers, and the limited internationalisation of the curriculum. This paper is concluded with a call for universities to recognise international students as a marginalised group in their EDI efforts and, potentially, address structural issues that internationalisation frameworks have neglected.

Two of the goals of elementary school are to help students to develop a healthy sense of identity and learn social communication skills. However, there are many factors figure into students' experience during their early years of school. Othering by the other sex is one of these factors, especially in Saudi Arabia, which has just sex-desegregated their elementary schools for the first time. Through in-depth, semi-structured interviews and field observations, the authors explore the role of othering in the experience of students in first to third grade. Open and focused coding of the interviews and structured observations help to identify the mechanisms of othering and resistance, which shape the students' sense of identity, their understanding of gender roles, and their social interactions with one another.

Muslims may not experience integration or assimilation in European countries, as they have certain values regarding hijab, eating restrictions, and lifestyle. They may therefore face more challenges than other migrants. With the insight that religiosity may have an impact on migrants' national and/or ethnic identities, we look at the role of religion in acculturation. The study investigated emerging patterns and challenges in sociocultural adaptation processes, including host-community interactions with (Iranian) migrants and Iranian international PhD students' future intentions. Positive evaluations of the attitudes of Spaniards towards Iranians are thought to improve the drive to seek out intergroup contact and facilitate integration or assimilation in Spain. The paper's key finding is that religion has an impact on Iranian international students. It is possible to imagine religion as a unifying factor that binds many migrant populations under a single ethnic identity. When regarded as a threat to the migrants' ethnic identity, it also appears to create social distance between the migrants and the local population. The results of this study can be used to address factors that threaten successful acculturation and boost those that encourage sociocultural adaptation and learning the local language.

Background: Persons with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) risk exclusion, both in research and as members of society. Because of their embodied communication, they face the challenges in being understood. Oftentimes, others speak on their behalf making inferences on what their perspective might be. Methods: Empathy is suggested as an approach to grasp the perspective of a person with profound and multiple learning disabilities through engaging with embodied communication. The account of empathy suggested by Stein will be unfolded through an ethnographic study including persons with profound and multiple learning disabilities and their professional supporters. Given this background, the intent is to discuss the potential empathy can have in recognising persons with these disabilities as subjects of knowledge. Findings and Conclusions: The characteristics of persons with profound and multiple learning disabilities provide energy to empathic situations in ways that advocate for the possibility of being recognised as subjects of knowledge. This is related to the competencies of the individual, ambiguous communication and the dependency relations in which they are involved. It is of utmost importance to respect the alterity of the other.

The application of information technology in the classroom is not a new thing. There have been many studies on the impact of information technology on teachers' teaching and students' learning. However, few studies focus on how information technology affects classroom interaction and instructional proxemics. In this study, 43 exemplary lessons with the application of information technology in teaching were analyzed to investigate the interaction types and instructional proxemics, as well as the relationship between them. The results show that the interaction between students and tools or environment is the most frequent among student-centered interactions. Instructional proxemics shows that teachers spend nearly one-third of their classroom time in the student area. There are significant differences in the spatial location of teachers for different types of classroom interaction. Finally, teachers interacted most with students who were at a social distance, followed by the public, personal, and intimate distance. This study not only makes up for the gap in the research of classroom interaction and instructional proxemics under the environment supported by information technology but also provides a reference for novice teachers to use instructional proxemics to carry out interactive teaching.

The first lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in school closures and homeschooling for families across the world. This provided a unique scenario to investigate multilingual family language interaction, and specifically, challenges and opportunities for home language (HL) use. This study is rooted in Family Language Policy (FLP) research, building on previous models of language policy as language beliefs, practices and management, as it addresses the effects of the lockdown on the use of, and exposure to, HLs. An online survey was used to assess the language beliefs, practices and management in a sample of families in Norway, a country with a significant and complex linguistic diversity. Our results indicate overall positive attitudes towards multilingualism in Norway, which are associated with an increased use of, and exposure to, Norwegian and HLs during the lockdown. Furthermore, we find a unique presence of English in multilingual families in Norway, especially across online spaces. Lastly, our study shows that the perception of multilingualism as a source of well-being is associated with positive effects of the lockdown in the use of HLs during the pandemic. We contend that this result can be taken as an example that, even in dire times of despair, families can find opportunities to promote multilingualism and language maintenance.

This article presents an ethnographic case study of pre-service teachers' transformative learning in a Culture-Writing course at a Chinese university. In recounting three stories with fieldwork data gleaned from moments of students' pre-class discussions, reflective writings, and reports on term-paper projects, this study showcases how a group of student-teachers transformed "the self" through getting to know and/or re-understanding "other(s)." Learning to 'write culture', as their teacher led them to see, is to appreciate the lifeworlds of others and further to destabilise taken-for-granted assumptions, beliefs, and understandings, thereby leading towards transformation. I argue that transformative learning takes place in the process of knowing and rebuilding the self in relationships with other(s). It constitutes moments of critical shift that place the self and identity in a more reflexive, relational, and reversible position within specific socio-cultural contexts. This study contributes to the ongoing discussions on transformative education by illuminating how other(s) play a role in promoting pre-service teachers' transformation in a classroom-based course.

Tibetan Buddhism has played a shifting role in the official identity discourse of the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan. Established for the administration of Tibet, Mongolia, and other frontier regions in 1928, the ROC's Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission (MTAC) continued research and publication activity on Taiwan (1949-2017). A major focus of this work was Tibetan Buddhism. This article examines how MTAC portrayals of Tibetan Buddhism evolved in response to changes in the ROC's legitimating ideology and to Taiwan's shifting political and cultural context. During the martial law era (1949-1987), Tibetan Buddhism was largely portrayed as an exotic religion facing brutal Communist oppression. By the twenty-first century, the MTAC was repositioning itself as a supporter of Tibetan Buddhism within Taiwan. MTAC discourse on Tibetan Buddhism reflects both the growing detachment of ROC politics from Mainland affairs and the persistence of Orientalist views of Tibetans and their culture.

Sharing resources is fundamental for human cooperation and survival. People tend to share resources more with individuals they feel close to compared to those who are more socially distant. This decline in generosity at increasing social distance is called social discounting and is influenced by both social traits and abilities, such as empathy, and non-social psychological factors, such as decision-making biases. People who receive a diagnosis of autism show differences in social interaction as well as displaying differences in non-social domains, such as more restricted and repetitive behaviours. We investigated social discounting in autism and found that autistic adults were more generous than neurotypical participants, which was driven by greater generosity to socially distant others. Crucially, we also investigated framing effects during prosocial decision-making. Autistic participants were less susceptible to whether decisions were framed as causing monetary gains, compared to preventing monetary losses, for the potential recipient. Our results support the view of 'enhanced rationality' in autism as participants' prosocial decisions were less influenced by potential biasing information, such as the closeness of the recipient or how choices were framed. Therefore, the differences seen in autism, as well as posing certain challenges, can also have prosocial consequences.

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the emergency pivot to online learning that this health crisis prompted, has inevitably impacted teaching and learning across all study disciplines in higher education. This article presents a case study conducted by tertiary visual arts educators who shifted their social constructivist teaching methods from the face-to-face classroom to the online setting during the first wave of the pandemic in Australia. In exploring the challenges and opportunities posed by this transition, this article outlines the affordances and limitations of the digital learning tools employed by the teaching staff within a pilot study. The success of this pilot was measured through data analytics, student surveys, and teacher observations and reflections. Based on the findings, the researchers propose several ways visual arts education can be adapted online, while still maintaining the integrity of the discipline and its concomitant pedagogies.

Extant research suggests that students at predominantly white institutions (PWIs) rate faculty of color (FOC) more negatively than White faculty. Despite these trends, efforts to promote the equitable interpretation of end-of-course evaluations remain elusive. In this self-study, we examined portfolio construction's practical and empirical utility as a tool to combat biased student evaluations. Thematic content analysis was used to explore how students evaluated a Black female tenure-line and a Black male non-tenure-line professor at a PWI in the southern region of the United States. We investigated the effects of instructors' perceived race and gender on students' course evaluations. Data saturation was achieved after analyzing the open-ended responses, and three themes emerged: 1) values/biases, 2) intellectual inferiority, and 3) 'othering'. Utilizing the tenets of critical race theory (CRT) and the phenomenon of 'teaching while Black', we reveal how race trumped gender and how negative student comments impacted our course evaluations. We constructed a reflective inquiry teaching portfolio to unpack these themes and engage in self-study. Implications and recommendations for using portfolio construction for reflective self-study are provided.

Although visual aids are widely considered a valuable source of scaffolding, the nature and active utilization of these aids in current science classrooms are not well understood. This qualitative study explores interaction in the teaching of concepts related to evolution, with a specific focus on a teacher's use of different visual support material. Based on a classroom study in a linguistically diverse Grade 4 classroom, we employed the perspective of discourse-bridging interaction to develop three broad categories of interactional examples, which we related to three kinds of visual support material used in the instruction: generic visual support images, naturalistic images, and disciplinary images showing examples of natural selection. The findings show that the interaction moved in and out of science discourse in a way that reflected the images' properties. A generic visual support image illustrated the concept of "adaption" as puzzle pieces fitting together, which promoted everyday and anthropomorphic examples of animals and people striving to fit in. When the teacher used naturalistic images, the discourse shifted between a range of perspectives, while visual aids and whiteboard drawings showing the classic examples of giraffes evolving (a disciplinary image) were employed to clarify the notion of natural selection. We discuss the study's implications for using visual support material in a planned way that supports disciplinary understanding.

The present study focuses on email communication in the multilingual university setting. Previous studies dealing with similar settings point to the lack of politeness markers in students' email messages [Bjorge, A. (2007). Power distance in English lingua franca email communication. "International Journal of Applied Linguistics", 17(1), 60-80], requests tend to be more direct and they may not match with the degree of imposition or social distance involved. Students' lack of netiquette and the lack of physical presence on the Internet may influence their pragmatic behaviour. In addition to that, other studies [Barón, J., & Ortega, M. (2018). Investigating age differences in e-mail pragmatic performance. "System", 78, 148-178] point to age effects and further confirm the preference for direct pragmatic forms. Nevertheless, very few studies have adopted a multilingual perspective. For this reason, we have examined 250 email requests to faculty. Openings and requests produced in Catalan, Spanish or English were analysed. Our main goal was to confirm whether students' requests would devoid politeness markers and whether openings would show a lack of netiquette. We were also interested in identifying age and gender effects and in finding out if the pragmatic forms chosen would be in line with the politeness orientation of the language involved. Results are in line with previous studies but they also contradict them adding interesting information on the way multilingualism is displayed in email interaction.

The aim of this research is to examine the relationship between the power types used by school principals and the power distance perceptions of teachers. The population is composed of the teachers in Mugla (Turkey) and Tamale (Ghana). The sample is made up of 384 teachers from Mugla and 407 teachers from Tamale. The data used in this research were collected using Power Type Scale and Power Distance Scale, both of which were developed in schools. In the analysis of the data, descriptive statistics were used in determining teachers' views of the power types used by school principals and the teachers' power distance perceptions. T-test was used in determining the differences in opinions and perceptions regarding the power types and power distance according to the demographic variables considered in this study. In the statistical analysis made; 0.5 was chosen as the significant value. According to the findings of the research, Mugla and Tamale principals exhibited the same order of preference in the power types they employ. Mugla principals and Tamale principals used reward power and legitimate power respectively at statistically significant levels. Regarding power distance, Tamale teachers' perceptions in all the dimensions of power distance were higher than Mugla teachers' perceptions at statistically significant levels. In both Mugla and Tamale samples, power types used by principals were found to be very good predictors of teachers' power distance perceptions.

Resuming in-person teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic implies that schools must deploy strategies to enforce adherence to the safety protocols to help contain and reduce the spread of the corona virus disease among school children. Thus, the current qualitative study adopted a case study design to explore strategies that were deployed to enforce adherence to the COVID-19 safety protocols among elementary school students. A semi-structured interview guide was used to gather data from 30 teachers enrolled in a one-year master's degree in Educational Leadership and Management program at a public university in Ghana. The study showed that strict and compulsory handwashing before entering the school was deployed to ensure adherence to handwashing safety protocol, provision of veronica buckets contributed to adherence to handwashing. Also, interventions that were deployed to enforce social distancing were spacing of desk, having mealtime in class, eating meals in turns, suspension of assembly and other social gatherings, split class for shift system. Additionally, schools ensured students wore nose masks by providing nose masks to students who could not afford.

With the aim of addressing an immediate (and uncertain) future regarding, the COVID-19 sanitary crisis, a group of professors from the three design degrees (architecture, graphic design and industrial design) offered at the Metropolitan Autonomous University (MAU), decided to share experiences and reflections about the actions necessary to ensure a better way to deal to the health emergency and the resulting social estrangement. To this end, we used a strategy known as SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) to analyze, assess and diagnose the experiences lived under the Emerging Remote Teaching Program (ERTP), a strategy that was undertaken by the University to continue its educational activities. Here we present the results of the analysis and our reflections.

The research purpose was to conduct an empirical investigation into students' use behavior of e-learning tools during the COVID-19 pandemic, a case study of higher educational institutions in Thailand. The study applied the UTAUT2 theoretical model. Primary data was collected using a structured questionnaire from a total of 1,493 students across institutions of higher learning in Thailand. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was conducted using AMOS. The findings indicated that student's behavioral intention to use e-learning tools is positively and significantly influenced by performance expectancy ([beta]=0.22, p<0.05); effort expectancy ([beta]=0.14, p<0.05); social influence ([beta]=0.20, p<0.05); facilitating condition ([beta]=0.50, p<0.05); hedonic motivation ([beta]=0.35, p<0.05); learning value ([beta]=0.51, p<0.05); and social distance ([beta]=0.46, p<0.05). Similarly, behavioral intention by the students to use e-learning tools have a positive and significant effect on actual use of e-learning tools ([beta]=0.82, p<0.05). Learning value and social distance had the largest positive effects on the student's behavioral intention to use e-learning tools. It is important for the higher education institutions in Thailand to consider them. They are major factors driving students towards adopting e-learning tools during disruptions as witnessed during the COVID19 pandemic period.

The aim of this study is to examine the geometric thinking levels of middle school mathematics preservice teachers regarding the problem situations regarding the concept of social distance according to the SOLO taxonomy. The research was conducted using the special case method, one of the qualitative research methods. The working group, studying at a state university in Turkey in middle school mathematics teaching department consists of 80 preservice teachers. While determining the participants, purposeful sampling method was used because the preservice teachers who took "Basics of Mathematics II" and "Special Teaching Methods II" courses were selected. In the study, semistructured interviews were conducted with 15 preservice teachers since it was aimed to examine remarkable situations from the answers given to open-ended questions. Descriptive analysis technique was used while analyzing the data. Most of the answers given in the study were found to be below the relational geometric thinking level. As a result, it was determined that most of the answers given reflected quantitative learning. In line with this result obtained in the study, it is suggested that openended questions about life should be included frequently in teaching in order to reach the relational and extended abstract level answers that reflect qualitative learning.

This study explored the relationship between metapragmatic knowledge and transfer of learning from one speech act to another. Using a digital application, 105 Chinese learners of English received implicit instruction on how to formulate a high-imposition request to someone in a higher social status and larger social distance. Immediately after the instruction, they reported what they thought they learned or noticed during the instruction, which served as an indication of their metapragmatic knowledge. After this, they completed immediate and delayed post-tests that assessed their knowledge of the instructed speech act (request-making) as well as their knowledge of the uninstructed speech act, advice-giving (transfer item). Results showed that the participants made significant gains in their productive knowledge of both speech acts after the instruction. The participants' metapragmatic knowledge significantly correlated with their test performance for both speech acts. These findings indicate that transfer of learning from one speech act to another can occur after instruction. The findings also support that metapragmatic knowledge established during instruction is related to the transfer.

The Dunning-Kruger (DK) effect is a form of meta-ignorance of knowledge (Kruger & Dunning, "Journal of Personality and Social Psychology," 77(6), 121-1134, 1999) that has not been explored regarding mental illness public stigma. The current study examined the DK effect in this field by comparing participants' actual stigma (measured by a social distance scale) and their perceived stigma (measured by a self-rating scale compared to their peers). In addition, the effectiveness of two types of feedback on stigma reduction was explored. Undergraduate participants (N = 393) with low actual public stigma perceived their public stigma level to be higher than it was, while those with high actual public stigma perceived it to be lower, supporting the DK effect. Generalized feedback did not reduce public stigma, whereas personalized feedback reduced public stigma for participants with high public stigma. This study revealed the existence of meta-ignorance in the field of mental illness public stigma and the effectiveness of personalized feedback.

During the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, anxiety and depression were common among caregivers and parents more prone to adopt harsh disciplinary techniques when angry or stressed. The purpose of this study was to investigate if there are any differences in parents' disciplinary strategies following social distancing efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic. An online questionnaire was completed by a convenience sample of parents (N = 605) and mothers (n = 533; 88.1%) aged 37.80 years old (SD = 5.66; range = 20-59) who lived with children aged 6-12 years in Iran during the COVID-19 pandemic. Iran's Multiple Indicator Demographic and Health Survey questionnaire was used to gauge child discipline. There was an increase in shaking (1.8%), shouting and yelling (15.5%). The findings of this study serve as a reminder to researchers and government officials that child abuse and violence are more likely to occur during stressful times and provide the scientific foundation for the development of tailored psychological treatment.

Many adolescents worldwide suffer from stress or unhealthy emotional states such as depression. There is a trend toward limited physical contact via social distancing practices that developed during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. An experimental study aimed at investigating the effects of a mindfulness program on stress, concentration, self-esteem, and self-control in high school students. A 10-week mindfulness intervention was provided to the experimental group (n = 89) from September-November 2020, while the control group (n = 89) received general health education. Four weeks after the program, the experimental group showed reduced stress and improved concentration, self-esteem, and self-control compared to baseline.

In the framework of this study, the phenomenon of transfer is probed pragma-linguistically and socio-linguistically concerning marriage situations among Iraqi EFL learners. The study also strives to look at the refusal strategies most commonly employed by Iraqi female English as a foreign Language (EFL) learners compared to their counterparts, American native speakers of English. The study involved 70 female participants who answered a Discourse Completion Task (DCT), which contained ten marriage proposals to be refused. Each situation entailed refusal of a person from a higher, an equal, and lower status. The researchers adapted Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss Weltz's (1990) taxonomy of refusal for analyzing the data comprehensively. The study's findings indicated that Iraqi female EFL learners followed similar patterns of refusing marriage situations to American speakers. The most prevalent strategies used by the two groups were "reasons/ excuses and explanations," followed by "statements of regrets," and then "non-performative statements" with slight variation in frequency. However, the Iraqi learners' native language and culture affected how they formulated their refusal; hence they manifested pragma-linguistic and socio-pragmatic transfer in particular areas. The areas of pragma-linguistic transfer included the literal translation of words, expressions, and structures into their refusal in English. As for the socio-pragmatic areas, the transfer occurred in certain Arabic culture features like elaboration, exaggeration, repetition, endearing terms, and many others in expressing the target language, English.

The present study investigated the production of the speech act of disagreement among Tunisian non-native students of English and American native speakers of English. Discourse completion test (DCT) was used to elicit disagreement strategies by the informants. Non-native informants produced a total of 376 acts and native informants produced 395 acts. The acts were categorized based on Brown and Levinson's (1987) Politeness Model. The speakers' performance of disagreement in variation with the contextual factors of Social Distance and Social Power was examined. Data was analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Results showed that there were significant differences between native and non-native speakers of English with regard to the frequency of direct and indirect strategies of disagreement. Non-native informants used a higher percentage of direct strategies (47%) and a lower percentage of indirect strategies (13%) than their native counterparts, who produced indirect strategies considerably (30%). NNSE opting for direct disagreement strategies might be attributed to their poor pragmatic and sociolinguistic knowledge of indirect strategies. This work can have pedagogical implications in teaching speech acts and pragmatics.

This paper addressed the under-investigated question whether speech act moves can be identified and classified in conversation by examining the content, positioning, and strategic role of utterances in turns and turn sequences. To this end, offering exchanges were analysed in the transcripts of 31 open role-plays. These were elicited from American native speakers through written prompts, and exemplified dialogues between interactants differing in terms of social distance and degree of power. In the data examined, the offerers and the offerees produced conversation management moves for opening, closing, and sustaining the interaction (e.g., summoning vs responding to summons), and goal-furthering moves for negotiating the offering exchange in line with their complementary initiating vs responding discursive and speech-act roles (e.g., motivating the offer vs the reaction to it). The study revealed that: the strategies realizing offers and reactions to them were similar across interactional role-relationships; clusters of moves showed preferred sequencing patterns; the interlocutors actively cooperated towards the co-construction of their interaction; and function-detecting heuristic prompts were particularly useful for the identification of moves in turns. Pedagogical implications were drawn from the findings, showing how model scripts may help language learners become familiar with the interactional strategies called for in goal-oriented communication.

Verbal text and images constitute the principal semiotic modes interacting to produce interpersonal meanings in multimodal science texts for young children. These meanings relate to pedagogical perceptions about children's learning. This study examined verbal text-image relations regarding the interpersonal meaning dimensions of address (the way the reader is addressed), social distance (the kind of the relationship between the reader and represented participants), and involvement (the extent to which the reader is engaged with what is represented) in multimodal text excerpts from science-related books for preschool children. The sample consisted of 300 randomly selected units of analysis. For each unit, the verbal and the visual content was analyzed along each dimension, and the relevant verbal text-image relation was determined. Results indicated that regarding address and involvement, relations of convergence appeared significantly more frequently than relations of complementarity and divergence. Concerning social distance, relations of complementarity and divergence were observed more frequently than relations of convergence. Results are discussed in the context of the Systemic Functional Grammar and the Grammar of Visual Design, in the light of the socio-cognitive perspective on science teaching and learning. Implications for the selection, design, and use of multimodal science texts for young children are also discussed.

Much research has been done in the realization of apology and request speech act but very few have explored this in the context of Arabic language. We perform a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) process in this paper to gather and analyze studies to identify the diverse apology and request strategies preferred by Arabic learners of English and the influence of culture and social distance on them. The strategies employed and the speech acts along with the native and foreign dialects and pragmatism involved are researched. Following a predefined review procedure, we identified 15 literature papers within the years 2016-2020 presenting research on apology and request strategies preferred by Arabic learners of English. The studies are gathered from various resources and illuminate the apology and request strategies in different contexts. We analyzed the papers to understand the preferred strategy method chosen and the logic behind it. Moreover, this study presents a related discussion and conclusions.

The present study examines the influence of social distance and power factors on the use of internal and external mitigating devices and strategies in the production of requests by Korean learners of Russian. The data was collected by using a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) containing twelve situations that varied in the facts of power and social distance. The results of the study indicated that the learners showed preference for the use of interrogative, modal verb "moch" ('can') and politeness marker "pozhalujsta" ('please') among internal mitigating devices, and grounder and apology among external mitigating strategies. On the other hand, the learners demonstrated an underuse of such devices/strategies as negation, conditional/interrogative particles and imposition minimizer, which are frequently employed by native Russian speakers. It was concluded that the social distance and power factors influenced the choice of mitigating devices/strategies in the requests produced by Korean learners of Russian. In general, the learners employed more internal and external mitigating devices/strategies in the situations with greater social distance and greater social power.

Background: Maintaining physical distancing is one of the most important steps to enforce in educational institutions to reduce the risk of transmission of COVID-19. However, close proximity and physical contact between students are often considered 'normal' during physical education (PE) classes, making it challenging for PE teachers to ensure physical distancing. Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess the effect of the implementation of the Good Behaviour Game (GBG) in maintaining physical distancing in PE settings in times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Method: In a quasi-experimental design, two groups were separately designated as an experimental group (20 classes involving 220 students) and a control group (20 classes involving 231 students). They were all enrolled in the eighth grade of the Tunisian education system. In the experimental group, the PE teacher managed physical distancing by administering the GBG. Physical distancing was evaluated by direct observation of videos of filmed PE sessions using a code grid. It was measured twice for the two groups using Kinovea software. Results: Quantitative data analyses showed that the level of maintaining physical distancing increased after the GBG intervention in the experimental group (p<0.001). Furthermore, greater percent changes between pre- and postintervention were identified in the experimental group compared to the control group (120% vs 1%, respectively). Conclusion: The GBG was effective in ensuring students' physical distancing when implemented in PE settings.

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, classroom activities in the primary school, marked by physical distancing between students and teachers, raise some challenges. Thus, this article seeks to document the primary school students' perceptions regarding their socio-pedagogical environment in the context of a socially distanced classroom. For this purpose, responses to the "Questionnaire sur l'environnement sociopédagogique au primaire" (QESPP) provided by 1,002 students aged from six to 12 in the fall of 2020 were subjected to descriptive quantitative analyses and to some comparative inferential analyses (SPSS 23.0). Results show a strong tendency of students' positive perceptions toward the various climates of their socio-pedagogical environment, although the relational climate seems to be perceived somewhat less positively.

Inclusive policies in early childhood classrooms have in recent decades become mainstream [UNESCO. 1994. "The UNESCO Salamanca statement and framework for action on special educational needs." Paris: UNESCO]. Inclusive practices however are far from ideal [Slee, R. 2013. "How do we make inclusive education happen when exclusion is a political predisposition?" "International Journal of Inclusive Education" 17 (8): 895-907; Grace, R, G. Llewellyn, N. Wedgwood, M. Fenech, and D. McConnell. 2008. "Far From Ideal: Everyday Experiences of Mothers and Early Childhood Professionals Negotiating an Inclusive Early Childhood Experience in the Australian Context." "Topics in Early Childhood Special Education" 28 (1): 18-31] and although children with disabilities are often welcomed into early childhood classrooms, the dominant discourses that circulate continue to position them as different and as Other [Watson, K. 2017. "Inside the 'inclusive' early childhood classroom: The power of the 'normal'." New York: Peter Lang]. To build on our understanding of contemporary inclusive practices, an awareness of the complexities of the knowledge that informs practice is central. Some appreciation of the contribution made by historical discourses to the contemporary construction of disability in the classroom is necessary [Barnes, C. 2014. "A brief history of discrimination and disabled people." http://repositoriocdpd.net:8080/bitstream/handle/123456789/495/CL_BarnesC_BriefHistoryDiscrimination_1991.pdf?sequence = 1]. This ethnographic research, employing observation and conversations among children, brings into focus how remnants from the past affect everyday encounters in the classroom as deeply embedded fears and anxieties continue to circulate around disability. Seldom made visible, rarely talked about or openly challenged, bygone relics permeate the way educators and children position children with a disability as a comparison to the norm, hindering inclusivity. This paper aims to bring into focus how fear affects the way disability is positioned in our early childhood classrooms, fear that leads to exclusions, separation, and Othering. Recognition of the past and scrutiny of the fear that lingers provides some promise for inclusive practice.

Defined as the power to increase or lessen the capacity to act, affect is purported to be pedagogy's first lesson. In this article we explore the work of ordinary affects in relation to oppressive social norms with particular attention to race. Using feminist new materialist concepts, we trace the capacities of these affects as they play into two pedagogic encounters. We show how pedagogies of response-ability form through affective transmission and material practice. Race presents as an affective and material event that plays out differentially through bodies. Responsible pedagogy hinges on maintaining the ability of people in association with objects to respond to the learning possibilities that pedagogic encounters provide. Responsive to the humanand the non-human, pedagogies of responsibility and the affects that attend them matter on several fronts. They engender ethical subjectivity, unsettle dominant structures of power, and loosen the grip of the ontological privilege accorded the human.

The article attempts to understand the concept of peace through the prism of social realities. The central argument deconstructs violence and peace as a variable of social distance. Consequently, social interactions become the mechanism of inequalities to underscore how asymmetries of power restructure the social distance. However, interactions are not always actualization of the pre-existing vertical social structures (shaped by power) but how agentic dispositions can counter the course of these interactions and the resultant social distance. The recalibration or maintenance of this distance through the agency is then understood in light of peace or violence framework. The course of analysis builds upon "structural violence" and "Convivencia" as a measure of social distance in relationships. Highlighting the Foucauldian notion of "governmentality", the article concludes social distance enabled "informal" pedagogy as a more intrusive and more insidious form of pedagogy than the disciplinary one because it attends to the affective aspects of learning. The analysis is based upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted at an elite international residential school in India. As this builds an evaluative space of "peace thinking", it provides for complexities of peace research.

Social distance is operationalized as the willingness of respondents of the general population to engage in direct, immediate, reciprocal social interactions with persons of another group and to achieve a degree of closeness through these interactions. The aim of this study was to examine the willingness of students with typical development to accept a certain type of social relations with peers with disabilities in inclusive education, as well as the association of gender and age differences in social distance with the type of disability. A modified Bogardus social distance scale was used for research purposes. The sample consisted of students with typical development sand their peers with disabilities (N-398), aged from 7 to 15 years of age who attend inclusive primary schools on the territory of the Republic of Serbia. The results of the study showed that students with typical development do not generally reject social contacts with their peers with disabilities, as shown by the overall lower social distance, but social distance grew in areas of emotional and physical closeness. Students expressed the highest social distance toward peers with autism, while the lowest social distance was manifested towards peers with sensory impairments. Gender and age differences were confirmed. The girls expressed lower social distance, as did the students of higher school age (from 11 to 15 years of age).

The present study developed a brief school-based intervention focused on raising awareness about Cerebral Palsy. To assess the effectiveness of the intervention, 91 classes from the fourth and fifth grades were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: Control, Focused on the Domain (Cerebral Palsy), and Non-Focused on the Domain (promotion of inclusion in general). Groups were assessed in three waves: pre-test, post-test, and follow-up. Data from this longitudinal cluster randomised trial showed the efficacy of this brief intervention in decreasing reported social distance and increasing positive attitudes towards individuals with Cerebral Palsy. Results from the Focused on the Domain Group were more positive than the Non-Focused on the Domain Group. Implications for educational practice are discussed.

Researchers who wish to become insiders to children's cultural worlds need to genuinely engage with the difference in social power between them and their participants. Most published accounts of adult positionality have been provided by those who have explored children's school practices. The ethnography discussed in this paper focused on the home and school literacy practices of children in a rural village in India. Cognisant of the unequal teacher-student relationships in this part of the world, I positioned myself as a least-teacher which, I argue, presents a cultural approximant for the least-adult role extensively discussed in literature. The role enabled the children to view me differently from their teachers -- as a "madamii." In this paper, I discuss its various facets with the twin focus of examining the efficacy of the role for future research and its affordances for the vision of a teacher provided by Indian policy documents.

Although for many students' stress is a natural part of university life, new stress sources have come into the picture with the pandemic. A "phenomenological" method, one of the qualitative analysis methods, was used in this study, which seeks to reveal the effects of various aspects of the pandemic on the life of university students. The findings show that students want to return to face-to-face education in terms of educational life and, in parallel, find distance education inefficient, have difficulty in adjusting to the new order, have psychological problems, their work habits are negatively affected and they experience performance loss. In addition, they need social interaction since they are deprived of the university environment. On the other hand, limitation of social life, change in social behavior, personal development and devoting more time to themselves are the leading behavioral changes that students observe in themselves.

This study aims at exploring the linguistic habits of Iraqi Arab speakers and the situations wherein Iraqis invoke religion and the lexicon of Allah in their daily online communication. Throughout this work, it was sought to answer the question whether the religious belief of Iraqis is reflected in online chats Iraqi by involving situation-bound rituals in their CMC and the functions these expressions fulfil in this communication. Although computer-mediated communication lacks nonverbal behaviour and prosodic features support the speakers' polite intention, many researchers assert that there are many resources whereby individuals can resort to in demonstrating their solidarity. The Methods is based on examining synchronic messages exchanged on WhatsApp and Viber in four groups with the participation of 99 participants in total whose age ranged from 15 to 70 years old, with different educational qualifications and religious orientations. Social distance between the participants varied from intimate to neutral, and large. Likewise, social rank ranged from equal footing to low-high relationships and high-low relationships. The setting involved different occasions such as congratulations, greetings, farewell, thanking, offering condolences as well as receiving bad news. The findings of this research have shown that Iraqi Arabic speakers incline to enhance the politeness of their message by involving religious vocabularies that take mostly the form of supplication. Besides, the religious lexicon stands as a form of etiquette that promotes the speakers' and the addressee's faces. FIt is hoped that this work would lead to further studies related to religious expressions across computer mediated communication.

Drawn from interdisciplinary perspectives of special education, critical geography, and education policy, in this study, we examined the spatial patterns of residential areas, school attendance zones, and school discipline rates of an urbanizing school district in Wisconsin to understand the construction of spatial "Other." We measured the city's dissimilarity index to examine racial and economic segregation between neighborhoods and elementary schools. We also measured the school district suspension rates to examine racial disproportionality in school discipline. We then analyzed to what extent the redrawing of elementary school attendance zones in the 2007-2008 school year was able to reduce the spatial concentration of racially and economically minoritized students in one elementary public school. We found that despite the well-intentioned efforts of the rezoning committee to lower the percentage of students from low-income families, spatial othering at the neighborhood level continued to funnel students from racially and minoritized backgrounds into the school, due to the concentration of low-income housing in the neighborhood of the school.