Journal articles on the topic 'Overseas-trained professionals'

Accompanying an increasing emphasis on accepting skilled migrants into Australia is an increasing demand for recognition of overseas-gained qualifications and experience. Scant consideration has been given by the Australian early childhood profession into the possibilities and appropriateness of recognising and supporting skilled and experienced migrant early childhood professionals. This article explores one type of program which attempted such recognition and makes several key recommendations to the field on this issue.

Background: Health professionals, including physical therapists (PTs), are known to migrate for better jobs, as well as for personal and professional development. However, this involves risks of maladjustment, discrimination, and exploitation. We conducted this study to investigate the experiences of overseas trained PTs in Saudi Arabia (SA) and their perceptions about physical therapy practice and problems regarding the profession in the country. Methods: A questionnaire and accompanying explanation of the study was sent to 175 members of the Saudi Physical Therapy Association (SPTA) working in SA who had been trained outside SA and had a minimum of one year of work experience before moving to SA. Results: One hundred and fifty (86%) respondents completed the questionnaire. Among the respondents, the majority had more than five years of work experience after moving to SA. While 54% of the respondents reported that they were satisfied with their work experiences in SA, the remaining respondents reported their dissatisfaction for various reasons. Conclusions: With the increase in aged population and rise in disability, the need for PTs has simultaneously increased in the health care sector around the world, including in SA. Until PTs of local origin are ready to fill the requirements, the services of PTs from other countries will be required in SA. Although the majority of respondents reported having positive work experiences in SA, the negative aspects and challenges faced by PTs in SA have also been highlighted in this study. These problems need to be addressed in order to promote the development of a better and more holistic approach to patient care.

There is an oversupply of Australian junior doctors, but significant training bottlenecks are developing, and geographical maldistribution in rural and remote areas remains. Last year, the Federal Minister for Immigration rejected a Department of Health recommendation for the removal of 41 health roles from the Skilled Occupation List after concerns that rural and regional communities would be left without access to medical services in areas currently serviced by international medical graduates. In an effort to achieve workforce self-sufficiency, Australia must ensure access to high-quality vocational training places in rural and regional settings while managing immigration of overseas-trained health professionals.

How nursing as a profession is valued may be changing and needs to be explored and understood in a global context. We draw on data from two empirical studies to illustrate our argument. The first study explored the value of nursing globally, the second investigated the experiences of overseas trained nurses recruited to work in a migrant capacity in the UK health care workforce. The indications are that nurses perceive themselves as devalued socially, and that other health care professionals do not give nursing the same status as other, socially more prestigious professions, such as medicine. Organizational and management structures within the NHS and the independent care home sector devalue overseas nurses and the contribution they make to health care. Our conclusions lead us to question the accepted sociocultural value of the global nursing workforce and its perceived contribution to global health care, and to consider two ethical frameworks from which these issues could be discussed further.

Abstract Oral performance tests designed to assess candidates’ ability to function in a particular professional role typically involve role plays which simulate aspects of professional interaction between a candidate, in his/her professional role, and an interlocutor, in the role of client or consumer of the professional services. The validity of such tests is dependent both on the incorporation of appropriate content and on the extent to which the interaction between candidate and interlocutor simulates authentic professional interaction. Materials for such role plays are commonly produced according to specifications developed by language testers following consultation with professional informants, but there has been little investigation of how well tasks reflect their purpose (i.e. the aims/intentions of the professional experts). Test interlocutors, generally language teachers, normally undergo some form of training in the test administration procedure, but there has been little analysis of how well their behaviour reflects client behaviour. This paper reports on an investigation into the role which expert professional informants can play in providing post hoc content validation of tasks used in this kind of occupation-specific test, focusing on both the content of the tasks and the behaviour of the interlocutors. The study draws on data from the oral interaction component of an occupation-specific test, the Occupational English Test (McNamara 1996), a 4-skills test for overseas-trained health professionals (with attention in this study to nurses). The study involved a two-day workshop where representatives of the nursing profession, in conjunction with the researchers, analysed both written test materials and audiotaped test data, contributing to an analysis of the realism of the tasks and the features of interlocutor behaviour.

In the mid-nineteenth century European settlers discovered prehistoric vertebrates in the northern part of the Colony of New South Wales, which later became the State of Queensland in 1859. Most of these finds were dealt with by overseas professionals, of whom Richard Owen at the British Museum (Natural History) (BM(NH)) was pre-eminent. By the late nineteenth century Australian-based vertebrate palaeontologists, who were usually self-educated, were beginning to work on Australian material. At this time, under the direction of Charles Walter De Vis, the Queensland Museum in Brisbane became the focal point for this science in Queensland; a programme of collecting was initiated which continued as funds allowed. The early twentieth century saw a new phase of exploration undertaken with the specific objective of collecting, carried out by large overseas scientific institutions. Thanks mainly to individual donations, new finds kept appearing regularly in the first half of the twentieth century. As a result there were scientific contributions from a few notable people, Heber A. Longman for example. Yet vertebrate palaeontology in Queensland languished, following the fortunes of the Museum between wars and it did not flourish again until after the Second World War. Since then both trained and amateur palaeontologists have been on the increase, and greater financial assistance has been made available from private, and State and Commonwealth Government sources, allowing progress in this science to be made.

Health services across the world are on the one hand the most regulated of all professions, the workforce planning is the most advanced and the restrictions on licence to practice most stringent, especially across borders- yet the workforce is dependent on the ability of large scale movement of professionals across nation-states. The UK NHS has over 41% of its doctors and a quarter of all nurses who were born / trained overseas. This is not much different to many other advanced health systems. It is also recognised that patient outcomes, recruitment and retention of healthcare professionals who are in great demand depends on autonomy, job satisfaction and a sense of value, equality and a just environment. A fundamental tenet of equality, celebrating diversity and inclusion is how organisation or society deals with the immigrant professionals or ‘foreigners’. The ability to correctly pronounce ‘foreign’ names is one of the fundamental and most obvious demonstration of respect one accords to a fellow human. There is a long standing practice of transfiguring foreign sounding names to anglicised or westernized versions for ease of use. The westernization of foreign names is predominantly imposed by the dominant segments of populations on those considered inferior. There is clear evidence of social inequalities linked to one’s race, ethnicity, immigration and gender. Transfiguring one’s name is a clear example of such discrimination, microaggression and a form of bias. It is time that we understood the impact of such microaggressions of colleagues and our patients. It should be vital for all professionals to take the time and attention needed to get the pronunciation right and in the process understand the cultural diversity, identity and demonstrate due respect and equality. It is also imperative on those of us with foreign sounding names that we help colleagues navigate the rich heritage of our culture and identity and do so with humility. It can only then be a win-win for all.

The authors predict that South Africa will need approximately 200 000 new executives within the next 15 years. Simultaneously the organizations will become more complex and difficult to manage. They suggest that the development of such a large number of managers within the black and white community will be difficult and furthermore, managers will also require new knowledge. Even highly trained professionals may quickly become obsolete unless they continue to receive further training and development. Future-oriented courses are already being developed and taught in a number of overseas universities. The authors suggest four approaches to this future orientation: studying of future trends and projections, coping with rapid change, impact analysis, and scenario writing.Die skrywers van hierdie artikel voorspel dat Suid-Afrika binne die volgende 15 jaar bykans 200 000 nuwe uitvoerende beamptes sal moet ontwikkel om aan die behoeftes van organisasies te voldoen. Terselfdertyd sal organisasies egter meer kompleks en moeilik bestudeerbaar word. Nie alleen sal die ontwikkeling van so 'n groot getal bestuurders problematies wees nie, maar bestuurders sal ook nuwe kennis benodig. Selfs hoogsopgeleide bestuurders sal vinnig onbruikbaar raak tensy hulle voortdurend aan nuwe opleiding en opvoeding blootgestel word. Toekomsgerigte curricula word alreeds aan verskeie oorsese universiteite ontwikkel en aangebied. Die skrywers stel vier benaderings tot hierdie toekomsgerigte opleiding voor: indringende studie van toekomstige tendense en voorspellings, metodes om tred te hou met veranderinge, impakanalise en die skryf van moontlike scenarios.

The objective of this descriptive study was to map mental health research in Brazil, providing an overview of infrastructure, financing and policies mental health research. As part of the Atlas-Research Project, a WHO initiative to map mental health research in selected low and middle-income countries, this study was carried out between 1998 and 2002. Data collection strategies included evaluation of governmental documents and sites and questionnaires sent to key professionals for providing information about the Brazilian mental health research infrastructure. In the year 2002, the total budget for Health Research was US$101 million, of which US$3.4 million (3.4) was available for Mental Health Research. The main funding sources for mental health research were found to be the São Paulo State Funding Agency (Fapesp, 53.2%) and the Ministry of Education (CAPES, 30.2%). The rate of doctors is 1.7 per 1,000 inhabitants, and the rate of psychiatrists is 2.7 per 100,000 inhabitants estimated 2000 census. In 2002, there were 53 postgraduate courses directed to mental health training in Brazil (43 in psychology, six in psychiatry, three in psychobiology and one in psychiatric nursing), with 1,775 students being trained in Brazil and 67 overseas. There were nine programs including psychiatry, neuropsychiatry, psychobiology and mental health, seven of them implemented in Southern states. During the five-year period, 186 students got a doctoral degree (37 per year) and 637 articles were published in Institute for Scientic Information (ISI)-indexed journals. The investment channeled towards postgraduate and human resource education programs, by means of grants and other forms of research support, has secured the country a modest but continuous insertion in the international knowledge production in the mental health area.

Using the literature on transnationalism, this article explores overseas-trained Turkish scholars’ experiences and whether these have had any effects on their identity construction/transformation, professional and personal lives after returning home. This exploration is informed by quantitative and qualitative data collected from Turkish scholars who completed their MA and/or PhD degrees in English-speaking countries and are now working in universities as academics. Besides highlighting the differences between educational values and practices in Turkey and Western countries, this article also examines how these differences influence professional trajectories and negotiations of identities among overseas-trained academics, with follow-up references to the author’s autoethnography as a Western-trained scholar to spotlight the commonalities in the lived experiences of returnees. The results highlight the dynamic nature of overseas experiences and returning home with new competences, skills and a broadened worldview which results in returnees’ distinguishing themselves from those around them in their personal and professional transactions.

Abstract The experience of some 500 Canadian and Newfoundland women who served overseas as Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurses during the Great War has been eclipsed by the British record. Sent as auxiliary assistants to trained nurses in the military hospitals, Canadian VADs confronted a complex mix of emotional, physical, and intellectual challenges, including their “colonial” status. As casually trained, inexperienced amateurs in an unfamiliar, highly structured hospital culture, they were often resented by the overworked and undervalued trained nurses, whose struggle for professional recognition was necessarily abandoned during the crisis of war. The frequently intimate physical needs of critically ill soldiers also demanded a rationalisation of the VAD's role as “nurse” within a maternalist framework that eased social tensions for both VAD and patient. As volunteers assisting paid practitioners, the Canadian VAD experience offers new insights into a critical era of women's developing professional identities.

Australian-trained doctors are often reluctant to work in rural and remote areas and overseastrained doctors (OTDs) are recruited to practise in many rural Aboriginal medical services. This paper focuses on recent research carried out in Australia to analyse factors affecting OTDs? professional, cultural and social integration and examine their training and support needs. Ten case studies were conducted throughout Australia with OTDs, which also included interviews with spouses/partners, professional colleagues, co-workers, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community members associated with the health service. Key themes emerging from the data across all informants included the need to better address recruitment, orientation and cross-cultural issues; the importance of effective communication and building community and institutional relationships, both with the local health service and the broader medical establishment.

This paper challenges the conventional view that the 1907 miners' strike constituted a landmark in the history of Afrikaner employment in the Witwatersrand gold mining industry. According to this view, the participation of Afrikaners during the dispute, as first-time miners and strike-breakers, gained them a permanent and proportionally large niche in the industry, for the first time. In sharp contrast, this paper demonstrates that Afrikaners already constituted a substantial percentage of white underground workers, particularly as a discrete category of workmen, the miners, well before the strike had even begunThe Afrikaner miners lacked training and mining skills. Yet, like the overseas professional miners, most of whom were British-born, they were classed as skilled workmen, eligible for skilled wages. This anomaly occurred because the so-called skills of the overseas professional miners were fragmented by the labour practices peculiar to the Rand. The expertise of the foreign miner derived from his all-round capabilities and experience. These were exclusively defined to constitute his so-called skill, and hence his skilled wage. But on the Witwatersrand, the overseas professional miners were required to draw on only one of their numerous accomplishments in a ‘specialized’, but only semi-skilled, capacity. They were employed either as supervisors of Africans, who performed drilling tasks, or as specialist pit men doing a single pit task among many: pump minding, pipe fitting, timbering or plate laying. Such fragmentation of the foreign miners' a11-round skills facilitated the entry of lesser trained men as miners, notably the Afrikaners.To become a miner, more specifically a supervisor, the Afrikaner needed only a brief period of specific instruction, which he acquired in one of several ways: through mine-sponsored experiments with unskilled white labour, rather than black; through the informal assistance of qualified miners; and through management-sponsored learner schemes intended to provide a core of compliant Afrikaner miners who would break the monopoly of skills and collective strength of the overseas professional miners. Such training enabled the Afrikaner to earn the compulsory, but readily available, blasting certificate, the award of which was confined to whites. Although most Afrikaners possessed this certificate, the hallmark of a skilled miner, they could not earn the customary white skilled wage because they were obliged to work under a System of contracts and not on day's pay.The incompetent Afrikaner miners nevertheless obtained billets easily, partly because of the industry's growth, but mainly because the overseas pioneer miners were decimated by the preventable occupational mining disease, silicosis: the locally born simply filled their places. The Afrikaners, of course, were also vulnerable to silicosis; but it was only from 1911 onwards that this gradually developing disease claimed them in significant numbers too.The overseas miners shunned the Afrikaners not only for ethnic reasons but also for material ones: they feared that the local miners, who were inefficient and had not been trained in the lengthy apprenticeships traditional in the industry, would undercut skilled wage rates. Management also scorned them because of their incompetence. Despite their relatively large numbers – they comprised at least one-third of the miners – the Afrikaners, who were unsuccessful, isolated and spurned, made little impact on the socio-economic and cultural fabric of the industry's work-force, either at the time of the 1907 strike or during its immediate aftermath.

The United Kingdom is a sought-after destination to gain overseas experience and long-term employment for doctors trained in India. However, for many the path is unclear. This article aims to explain the various opportunities and the steps involved in securing a job in the National Health Service (NHS) for an Indian dermatologist. The steps to obtain the General Medical Council license to practice include demonstrating competency in English and passing the Professional and Linguistic Assessments Board examinations. Once the doctor is eligible to practice, career options are working as Core Medical trainee, Staff grade and Associate Specialists and Specialty doctors (SAS) or a locum consultant. One can become a consultant in the UK without retraining in dermatology through Certificate of Eligibility for Specialist Registration. In the NHS, a dermatologist typically works for 8 h a day on the weekdays. Time is allotted for professional development through the Continuing Professional Development sessions. Doctors earn well in the UK although the cost of living is high.

BackgroundAmbitious overseas recruitment targets have been set by the UK government to help alleviate the current GP shortage. European Economic Area (EEA) doctors can join the UK’s GP register under European law. Non-EEA doctors must obtain a Certificate of Eligibility for General Practice Registration (CEGPR), demonstrating equivalence to UK-trained doctors. CEGPR applications can be time-consuming and burdensome. To meet overseas recruitment targets, it is important to facilitate the most efficient route into UK general practice while maintaining registration standards and patient safety.AimTo develop a methodology to map postgraduate GP training and healthcare contextual data from an overseas country to the UK.Design & settingDesk-based research and stakeholder interviews.MethodFour stages were undertaken: 1) developing a data collection template; 2) conducting a case study (using Australia as a test case); 3) refining the data collection template; and 4) creating a mapping framework. The case study used the 2016 curricula for the UK and Australia.ResultsFive ‘domains’ were identified: healthcare context, training pathway, curriculum, assessment, and continuing professional development (CPD) and revalidation. The final data collection template comprised 49 mapping items across the domains. The methodology incorporated the application of a red, amber, or green (RAG) rating to indicate similarity of data across the five domains. Australia was rated ‘green’ for training pathway, curriculum, and assessment, and ‘amber’ for healthcare context and CPD and revalidation. The overall rating was ‘green’.ConclusionImplementing this systematic methodology for mapping GP training between countries may support the UK’s ambitions to recruit more GPs, and alleviate current GP workforce pressures.

When the Imperial War Museum was founded in early 1917, the subcommittee in charge of collections related to “Women's Work” solicited contributions from Dr. Flora Murray of the Military Hospital at Endell Street in London. Murray and Dr. Louisa Garrett Anderson had formed the Women's Hospital Corps and, with the French Red Cross, opened hospitals in Paris and Wimereux in the early stages of the war. After successful cooperation with British military and medical authorities overseas, they were asked to open the Endell Street facility, the only hospital operating under the auspices of the War Office to be staffed entirely by women. Murray refused to cooperate with the museum committee “because she wished her hospital to be considered purely professionally as a military hospital and not as women's war work.”This was not just rhetoric of women's equality from someone who described herself as “one of Mrs. Pankhurst's lot,” but reflected the new emphasis on professionalism that had developed in the preceding fifty years. The First World War provided new opportunities for work in a variety of fields more or less closely related to the perpetuation and advancement of the armed conflict; scholars have recently focused in particular on working-class women in industry and paramilitary organizations. Though opportunities for educated women increased throughout civil society, my focus here is on work that was perceived as explicitly on behalf of the war effort, with a special concentration on three populations of women working in hospitals: doctors, trained nurses, and volunteers.

Attempting to ensure an adequate anaesthesia workforce for New Zealand requires many variables to be taken into consideration. The difficulty lies in trying to predict and match the future needs of the population and the future needs of the workforce itself. This paper examines variables that affect anaesthesia trainees’ decisions in regard to future work plans which will affect anaesthesia distribution and manpower in New Zealand, particularly in smaller hospitals. It is already apparent that with distribution problems and/or actual shortages, the gaps in workforce availability for any professional group tend to be in the smaller centres. All New Zealand anaesthesia trainees were sent a questionnaire in 2002, with 110 of 138 trainees responding (79.7%). It appears enough specialists are being trained, with 80% indicating a desire to remain in New Zealand and 13% stating Australia as their choice of destination. The influence of student debt or encouragement of overseas training experience did not appear to be important in their decisions. Having a rotation during training to smaller hospitals had a positive effect on attitudes to working in smaller hospitals as specialists. The recruitment of these future specialists into smaller hospitals also depends upon broader lifestyle choices. Selection of smaller hospitals for anaesthesia practice is encouraged by good financial incentives, adequate professional support, including support by junior doctors, access to ongoing professional development and inclusion into a wider rotation with a larger hospital.

BackgroundThere are ambitious overseas recruitment targets to alleviate current GP shortages in the UK. GP training in European Economic Area (EEA) countries is recognised by the General Medical Council (GMC) as equivalent UK training; non-EEA GPs must obtain a Certificate of Eligibility for General Practice Registration (CEGPR), demonstrating equivalence to UK-trained GPs. The CEGPR may be a barrier to recruiting GPs from non-EEA countries. It is important to facilitate the most streamlined route into UK general practice while maintaining registration standards and patient safety.AimTo apply a previously published mapping methodology to four non-EEA countries: South Africa, US, Canada, and New Zealand.Design & settingDesk-based research was undertaken. This was supplemented with stakeholder interviews.MethodThe method consisted of: (1) a rapid review of 13 non-EEA countries using a structured mapping framework, and publicly available website content and country-based informant interviews; (2) mapping of five ‘domains’ of comparison between four overseas countries and the UK (healthcare context, training pathway, curriculum, assessment, and continuing professional development (CPD) and revalidation). Mapping of the domains involved desk-based research. A red, amber, or green (RAG) rating was applied to indicate the degree of alignment with the UK.ResultsAll four countries were rated ‘green’. Areas of differences that should be considered by regulatory authorities when designing streamlined CEGPR processes for these countries include: healthcare context (South Africa and US), CPD and revalidation (US, Canada, and South Africa), and assessments (New Zealand).ConclusionMapping these four non-EEA countries to the UK provides evidence of utility of the systematic method for comparing GP training between countries, and may support the UK’s ambitions to recruit more GPs to alleviate UK GP workforce pressures.

The standards recommended at the United Nations Inter regional Seminar on Standards for the Training of Prosthetists in Holte, Denmark, in 1968 were universally accepted as being ideal, practical and economical. As these standards and the services to patients are not always observed, world wide, a study was made to investigate the situation in Australia. Australia is a federation with responsibility for health and education vested in six States. The Federal Government is the principal taxing authority with the States dependent on it for financing services. The isolation of Australia led the Government during 1960 to send a rehabilitation medical officer to survey the system in Europe and North America. The best features of overseas practice became the basis for updating an Australian Service and establishing the Central Development Unit. The Artificial Limb Service is based on clinical care, formal in-service training of limb makers and fitters, patient training by therapists and the purchase of components from mass producers. The Service is answerable to lay and medical staff in the State Branches and to the Central Office of the Department, located in Canberra. The division of responsibility between the State and Federal Governments seems to lead to competition for control of services rather than to an integrated plan for Prosthetic-Orthotic training with services. Industrial conflict due to a perceived threat of the supplanting of apprentices by formally trained prosthetists-orthotists has also adversely affected development. In this paper the views of Government authorities, medical prosthetic prescribers and of personnel who conducted a pilot study in delivery of a prosthetic service are discussed.

ROMAN LAW AS A PART OF THE ENGLISH DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE OF THE INTERNATIONAL LAWSummary This paper presents views on the role played by Roman Law as a factor in creating the roots of international law which developed within the English legal doctrine from the 16,h to the 19th century. In addition, it exemplifies applications of the institutions of Roman law in international legal practice. The general theory discounts the influence of Roman law on the British system of law. This, however, should be reviewed, as the evidence shows that Roman law has always played a vital role in the English legal system (e. g. Courts of Chancery, Admiralty, Constable and Marshall, Ecclesiastical Courts, Doctors’ Commons organisation). The Roman influences on the doctrine of English international law (Gentilis, Zouche, Duck, Wiseman, Westlake, Maine, Phillimore) indicate a positive, or even enthusiastic attitude towards the use of Roman law as a source of international law. One of the public branches where English practitioners and theorists of civil law could always find employment was in HM Foreign Service, which had a strong need for lawyers qualified in Roman law who were often educated and trained at English universities.One of the earliest authors describing the use of the theory and practice of Roman law in international law was Alberigo Gentili. Although he was Italian, his professional life and career was bound to England as both a Regius Professor at Oxford University and as a legal counsellor for the Privy Council. He gained much prominence and his works on international law, De Jure Belli, De Legationibus and Advocationis Hispanicae have become frequently quoted in the theory of international law. Another Oxford Regius Professor, and a judge in the Admiralty Court, Sir Richard Zouche, together with Gentili and Grotius, is regarded as the father of international law. Among his many works, Jus inter Gentes and Juris et Judicii Fecialis illustrate the influences of Roman law on the developing theory (and practice) of international law. The Roman ideas are particularly visible in Jus Inter Gentes, where Zouche had used the Roman systematic of status, dominium., delictum and judicium to classify and explain international law theory. Another 17th century civil lawyer, Sir Robert Wiseman, in The Excellency o f the Civil Law above all other Human Law glorifies the Roman law as universal law for all nations, applicable to many international debates. One of the most famous British civilians and international law experts, Sir Henry Maine considered the Roman law as an important resource and element of the 19th century doctrine of international law. According to Sir Robert Phillimore, the Roman law could be used in the controversies between independent States. As an example he described the cases between the USA and Spain concerning navigation in the Mississipi River, boundary disputes and arbitration. He proposed application of the Roman law to numerous cases concerning overseas properties.Apart from theory, hundreds of international cases bear traces of successful application of the Roman law to resolve situations when there was no actual law institution to bridge the legal divide. This paper presents five international cases in which an important role was played by Roman law. Arbitration of the Behring Sea dispute in 1893, where the UK and the USA argued about the UK’s right to hunt seals outside the three miles boundary area of the Pribilof s Isles. Both sides used arguments based on Roman law. The Americans view was that seals born on the isles would always return to the shore, not losing animus revertendi of Roman law, thus not becoming res nullius and not subject to „occupation” by the UK fishermen. The British delegates claimed that the seals were born ferae naturae (another Roman law category), and so everyone should be entitled to hunt them.The Alaskan Boundary Tribunal proceedings of 1903 declared that Roman law rules, as a source of international law, should take precedence over the rules of common law.During the Venezuelan arbitration before the Hague Tribunal in 1903, the opponents dealt with many Roman law institutes (like pignus> hypotheca, cessio bonorum, negotiorum gestio and others), trying to adjust them to their actual position.In 1910 the Arbitration Tribunal concerning fishing on the North Atlantic coast allowed the Roman definition of servitude and attempted to treat a state’s territory as a Roman property.The last case dealt with in the paper is the famous Indian Oil Corp. Ltd v. Greenstone Shipping dispute of 1987. The British judge applied the Roman law of confusioy declaring that no previous common law precedent was applicable to this case in which crude oil had been accidentally mixed on board the tanker.Taking into consideration these examples, one may draw the conclusion that Roman law has been an inspiration for European lawyers, as well as English common lawyers, in both the theory and practice of international law.

Education in Oceania continues to reflect the embedded implicit and explicit colonial practices and processes from the past. This paper conceptualises a cultural approach to education and leadership appropriate and relevant to the Republic of the Marshall Islands. As elementary school leaders, we highlight Kanne Lobal, a traditional Marshallese navigation practice based on indigenous language, values and practices. We conceptualise and develop Kanne Lobal in this paper as a framework for understanding the usefulness of our indigenous knowledge in leadership and educational practices within formal education. Through bwebwenato, a method of talk story, our key learnings and reflexivities were captured. We argue that realising the value of Marshallese indigenous knowledge and practices for school leaders requires purposeful training of the ways in which our knowledge can be made useful in our professional educational responsibilities. Drawing from our Marshallese knowledge is an intentional effort to inspire, empower and express what education and leadership partnership means for Marshallese people, as articulated by Marshallese themselves. Introduction As noted in the call for papers within the Waikato Journal of Education (WJE) for this special issue, bodies of knowledge and histories in Oceania have long sustained generations across geographic boundaries to ensure cultural survival. For Marshallese people, we cannot really know ourselves “until we know how we came to be where we are today” (Walsh, Heine, Bigler & Stege, 2012). Jitdam Kapeel is a popular Marshallese concept and ideal associated with inquiring into relationships within the family and community. In a similar way, the practice of relating is about connecting the present and future to the past. Education and leadership partnerships are linked and we look back to the past, our history, to make sense and feel inspired to transform practices that will benefit our people. In this paper and in light of our next generation, we reconnect with our navigation stories to inspire and empower education and leadership. Kanne lobal is part of our navigation stories, a conceptual framework centred on cultural practices, values, and concepts that embrace collective partnerships. Our link to this talanoa vā with others in the special issue is to attempt to make sense of connections given the global COVID-19 context by providing a Marshallese approach to address the physical and relational “distance” between education and leadership partnerships in Oceania. Like the majority of developing small island nations in Oceania, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) has had its share of educational challenges through colonial legacies of the past which continues to drive education systems in the region (Heine, 2002). The historical administration and education in the RMI is one of colonisation. Successive administrations by the Spanish, German, Japanese, and now the US, has resulted in education and learning that privileges western knowledge and forms of learning. This paper foregrounds understandings of education and learning as told by the voices of elementary school leaders from the RMI. The move to re-think education and leadership from Marshallese perspectives is an act of shifting the focus of bwebwenato or conversations that centres on Marshallese language and worldviews. The concept of jelalokjen was conceptualised as traditional education framed mainly within the community context. In the past, jelalokjen was practiced and transmitted to the younger generation for cultural continuity. During the arrival of colonial administrations into the RMI, jelalokjen was likened to the western notions of education and schooling (Kupferman, 2004). Today, the primary function of jelalokjen, as traditional and formal education, it is for “survival in a hostile [and challenging] environment” (Kupferman, 2004, p. 43). Because western approaches to learning in the RMI have not always resulted in positive outcomes for those engaged within the education system, as school leaders who value our cultural knowledge and practices, and aspire to maintain our language with the next generation, we turn to Kanne Lobal, a practice embedded in our navigation stories, collective aspirations, and leadership. The significance in the development of Kanne Lobal, as an appropriate framework for education and leadership, resulted in us coming together and working together. Not only were we able to share our leadership concerns, however, the engagement strengthened our connections with each other as school leaders, our communities, and the Public Schooling System (PSS). Prior to that, many of us were in competition for resources. Educational Leadership: IQBE and GCSL Leadership is a valued practice in the RMI. Before the IQBE programme started in 2018, the majority of the school leaders on the main island of Majuro had not engaged in collaborative partnerships with each other before. Our main educational purpose was to achieve accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), an accreditation commission for schools in the United States. The WASC accreditation dictated our work and relationships and many school leaders on Majuro felt the pressure of competition against each other. We, the authors in this paper, share our collective bwebwenato, highlighting our school leadership experiences and how we gained strength from our own ancestral knowledge to empower “us”, to collaborate with each other, our teachers, communities, as well as with PSS; a collaborative partnership we had not realised in the past. The paucity of literature that captures Kajin Majol (Marshallese language) and education in general in the RMI is what we intend to fill by sharing our reflections and experiences. To move our educational practices forward we highlight Kanne Lobal, a cultural approach that focuses on our strengths, collective social responsibilities and wellbeing. For a long time, there was no formal training in place for elementary school leaders. School principals and vice principals were appointed primarily on their academic merit through having an undergraduate qualification. As part of the first cohort of fifteen school leaders, we engaged in the professional training programme, the Graduate Certificate in School Leadership (GCSL), refitted to our context after its initial development in the Solomon Islands. GCSL was coordinated by the Institute of Education (IOE) at the University of the South Pacific (USP). GCSL was seen as a relevant and appropriate training programme for school leaders in the RMI as part of an Asia Development Bank (ADB) funded programme which aimed at “Improving Quality Basic Education” (IQBE) in parts of the northern Pacific. GCSL was managed on Majuro, RMI’s main island, by the director at the time Dr Irene Taafaki, coordinator Yolanda McKay, and administrators at the University of the South Pacific’s (USP) RMI campus. Through the provision of GCSL, as school leaders we were encouraged to re-think and draw-from our own cultural repository and connect to our ancestral knowledge that have always provided strength for us. This kind of thinking and practice was encouraged by our educational leaders (Heine, 2002). We argue that a culturally-affirming and culturally-contextual framework that reflects the lived experiences of Marshallese people is much needed and enables the disruption of inherent colonial processes left behind by Western and Eastern administrations which have influenced our education system in the RMI (Heine, 2002). Kanne Lobal, an approach utilising a traditional navigation has warranted its need to provide solutions for today’s educational challenges for us in the RMI. Education in the Pacific Education in the Pacific cannot be understood without contextualising it in its history and culture. It is the same for us in the RMI (Heine, 2002; Walsh et al., 2012). The RMI is located in the Pacific Ocean and is part of Micronesia. It was named after a British captain, John Marshall in the 1700s. The atolls in the RMI were explored by the Spanish in the 16th century. Germany unsuccessfully attempted to colonize the islands in 1885. Japan took control in 1914, but after several battles during World War II, the US seized the RMI from them. In 1947, the United Nations made the island group, along with the Mariana and Caroline archipelagos, a U.S. trust territory (Walsh et al, 2012). Education in the RMI reflects the colonial administrations of Germany, Japan, and now the US. Before the turn of the century, formal education in the Pacific reflected western values, practices, and standards. Prior to that, education was informal and not binded to formal learning institutions (Thaman, 1997) and oral traditions was used as the medium for transmitting learning about customs and practices living with parents, grandparents, great grandparents. As alluded to by Jiba B. Kabua (2004), any “discussion about education is necessarily a discussion of culture, and any policy on education is also a policy of culture” (p. 181). It is impossible to promote one without the other, and it is not logical to understand one without the other. Re-thinking how education should look like, the pedagogical strategies that are relevant in our classrooms, the ways to engage with our parents and communities - such re-thinking sits within our cultural approaches and frameworks. Our collective attempts to provide a cultural framework that is relevant and appropriate for education in our context, sits within the political endeavour to decolonize. This means that what we are providing will not only be useful, but it can be used as a tool to question and identify whether things in place restrict and prevent our culture or whether they promote and foreground cultural ideas and concepts, a significant discussion of culture linked to education (Kabua, 2004). Donor funded development aid programmes were provided to support the challenges within education systems. Concerned with the persistent low educational outcomes of Pacific students, despite the prevalence of aid programmes in the region, in 2000 Pacific educators and leaders with support from New Zealand Aid (NZ Aid) decided to intervene (Heine, 2002; Taufe’ulungaki, 2014). In April 2001, a group of Pacific educators and leaders across the region were invited to a colloquium funded by the New Zealand Overseas Development Agency held in Suva Fiji at the University of the South Pacific. The main purpose of the colloquium was to enable “Pacific educators to re-think the values, assumptions and beliefs underlying [formal] schooling in Oceania” (Benson, 2002). Leadership, in general, is a valued practice in the RMI (Heine, 2002). Despite education leadership being identified as a significant factor in school improvement (Sanga & Chu, 2009), the limited formal training opportunities of school principals in the region was a persistent concern. As part of an Asia Development Bank (ADB) funded project, the Improve Quality Basic Education (IQBE) intervention was developed and implemented in the RMI in 2017. Mentoring is a process associated with the continuity and sustainability of leadership knowledge and practices (Sanga & Chu, 2009). It is a key aspect of building capacity and capabilities within human resources in education (ibid). Indigenous knowledges and education research According to Hilda Heine, the relationship between education and leadership is about understanding Marshallese history and culture (cited in Walsh et al., 2012). It is about sharing indigenous knowledge and histories that “details for future generations a story of survival and resilience and the pride we possess as a people” (Heine, cited in Walsh et al., 2012, p. v). This paper is fuelled by postcolonial aspirations yet is grounded in Pacific indigenous research. This means that our intentions are driven by postcolonial pursuits and discourses linked to challenging the colonial systems and schooling in the Pacific region that privileges western knowledge and learning and marginalises the education practices and processes of local people (Thiong’o, 1986). A point of difference and orientation from postcolonialism is a desire to foreground indigenous Pacific language, specifically Majin Majol, through Marshallese concepts. Our collective bwebwenato and conversation honours and values kautiej (respect), jouj eo mour eo (reciprocity), and jouj (kindness) (Taafaki & Fowler, 2019). Pacific leaders developed the Rethinking Pacific Education Initiative for and by Pacific People (RPEIPP) in 2002 to take control of the ways in which education research was conducted by donor funded organisations (Taufe’ulungaki, 2014). Our former president, Dr Hilda Heine was part of the group of leaders who sought to counter the ways in which our educational and leadership stories were controlled and told by non-Marshallese (Heine, 2002). As a former minister of education in the RMI, Hilda Heine continues to inspire and encourage the next generation of educators, school leaders, and researchers to re-think and de-construct the way learning and education is conceptualised for Marshallese people. The conceptualisation of Kanne Lobal acknowledges its origin, grounded in Marshallese navigation knowledge and practice. Our decision to unpack and deconstruct Kanne Lobal within the context of formal education and leadership responds to the need to not only draw from indigenous Marshallese ideas and practice but to consider that the next generation will continue to be educated using western processes and initiatives particularly from the US where we get a lot of our funding from. According to indigenous researchers Dawn Bessarab and Bridget Ng’andu (2010), doing research that considers “culturally appropriate processes to engage with indigenous groups and individuals is particularly pertinent in today’s research environment” (p. 37). Pacific indigenous educators and researchers have turned to their own ancestral knowledge and practices for inspiration and empowerment. Within western research contexts, the often stringent ideals and processes are not always encouraging of indigenous methods and practices. However, many were able to ground and articulate their use of indigenous methods as being relevant and appropriate to capturing the realities of their communities (Nabobo-Baba, 2008; Sualii-Sauni & Fulu-Aiolupotea, 2014; Thaman, 1997). At the same time, utilising Pacific indigenous methods and approaches enabled research engagement with their communities that honoured and respected them and their communities. For example, Tongan, Samoan, and Fijian researchers used the talanoa method as a way to capture the stories, lived realities, and worldviews of their communities within education in the diaspora (Fa’avae, Jones, & Manu’atu, 2016; Nabobo-Baba, 2008; Sualii-Sauni & Aiolupotea, 2014; Vaioleti, 2005). Tok stori was used by Solomon Islander educators and school leaders to highlight the unique circles of conversational practice and storytelling that leads to more positive engagement with their community members, capturing rich and meaningful narratives as a result (Sanga & Houma, 2004). The Indigenous Aborigine in Australia utilise yarning as a “relaxed discussion through which both the researcher and participant journey together visiting places and topics of interest relevant” (Bessarab & Ng’andu, 2010, p. 38). Despite the diverse forms of discussions and storytelling by indigenous peoples, of significance are the cultural protocols, ethics, and language for conducting and guiding the engagement (Bessarab & Ng’andu, 2010; Nabobo-Baba, 2008; Sualii-Sauni & Aiolupotea, 2014). Through the ethics, values, protocols, and language, these are what makes indigenous methods or frameworks unique compared to western methods like in-depth interviews or semi-structured interviews. This is why it is important for us as Marshallese educators to frame, ground, and articulate how our own methods and frameworks of learning could be realised in western education (Heine, 2002; Jetnil-Kijiner, 2014). In this paper, we utilise bwebwenato as an appropriate method linked to “talk story”, capturing our collective stories and experiences during GCSL and how we sought to build partnerships and collaboration with each other, our communities, and the PSS. Bwebwenato and drawing from Kajin Majel Legends and stories that reflect Marshallese society and its cultural values have survived through our oral traditions. The practice of weaving also holds knowledge about our “valuable and earliest sources of knowledge” (Taafaki & Fowler, 2019, p. 2). The skilful navigation of Marshallese wayfarers on the walap (large canoes) in the ocean is testament of their leadership and the value they place on ensuring the survival and continuity of Marshallese people (Taafaki & Fowler, 2019; Walsh et al., 2012). During her graduate study in 2014, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner conceptualised bwebwenato as being the most “well-known form of Marshallese orality” (p. 38). The Marshallese-English dictionary defined bwebwenato as talk, conversation, story, history, article, episode, lore, myth, or tale (cited in Jetnil Kijiner, 2014). Three years later in 2017, bwebwenato was utilised in a doctoral project by Natalie Nimmer as a research method to gather “talk stories” about the experiences of 10 Marshallese experts in knowledge and skills ranging from sewing to linguistics, canoe-making and business. Our collective bwebwenato in this paper centres on Marshallese ideas and language. The philosophy of Marshallese knowledge is rooted in our “Kajin Majel”, or Marshallese language and is shared and transmitted through our oral traditions. For instance, through our historical stories and myths. Marshallese philosophy, that is, the knowledge systems inherent in our beliefs, values, customs, and practices are shared. They are inherently relational, meaning that knowledge systems and philosophies within our world are connected, in mind, body, and spirit (Jetnil-Kijiner, 2014; Nimmer, 2017). Although some Marshallese believe that our knowledge is disappearing as more and more elders pass away, it is therefore important work together, and learn from each other about the knowledges shared not only by the living but through their lamentations and stories of those who are no longer with us (Jetnil-Kijiner, 2014). As a Marshallese practice, weaving has been passed-down from generation to generation. Although the art of weaving is no longer as common as it used to be, the artefacts such as the “jaki-ed” (clothing mats) continue to embody significant Marshallese values and traditions. For our weavers, the jouj (check spelling) is the centre of the mat and it is where the weaving starts. When the jouj is correct and weaved well, the remainder and every other part of the mat will be right. The jouj is symbolic of the “heart” and if the heart is prepared well, trained well, then life or all other parts of the body will be well (Taafaki & Fowler, 2019). In that light, we have applied the same to this paper. Conceptualising and drawing from cultural practices that are close and dear to our hearts embodies a significant ontological attempt to prioritize our own knowledge and language, a sense of endearment to who we are and what we believe education to be like for us and the next generation. The application of the phrase “Majolizing '' was used by the Ministry of Education when Hilda Heine was minister, to weave cultural ideas and language into the way that teachers understand the curriculum, develop lesson plans and execute them in the classroom. Despite this, there were still concerns with the embedded colonized practices where teachers defaulted to eurocentric methods of doing things, like the strategies provided in the textbooks given to us. In some ways, our education was slow to adjust to the “Majolizing '' intention by our former minister. In this paper, we provide Kanne Lobal as a way to contribute to the “Majolizing intention” and perhaps speed up yet still be collectively responsible to all involved in education. Kajin Wa and Kanne Lobal “Wa” is the Marshallese concept for canoe. Kajin wa, as in canoe language, has a lot of symbolic meaning linked to deeply-held Marshallese values and practices. The canoe was the foundational practice that supported the livelihood of harsh atoll island living which reflects the Marshallese social world. The experts of Kajin wa often refer to “wa” as being the vessel of life, a means and source of sustaining life (Kelen, 2009, cited in Miller, 2010). “Jouj” means kindness and is the lower part of the main hull of the canoe. It is often referred to by some canoe builders in the RMI as the heart of the canoe and is linked to love. The jouj is one of the first parts of the canoe that is built and is “used to do all other measurements, and then the rest of the canoe is built on top of it” (Miller, 2010, p. 67). The significance of the jouj is that when the canoe is in the water, the jouj is the part of the hull that is underwater and ensures that all the cargo and passengers are safe. For Marshallese, jouj or kindness is what living is about and is associated with selflessly carrying the responsibility of keeping the family and community safe. The parts of the canoe reflect Marshallese culture, legend, family, lineage, and kinship. They embody social responsibilities that guide, direct, and sustain Marshallese families’ wellbeing, from atoll to atoll. For example, the rojak (boom), rojak maan (upper boom), rojak kōrā (lower boom), and they support the edges of the ujelā/ujele (sail) (see figure 1). The literal meaning of rojak maan is male boom and rojak kōrā means female boom which together strengthens the sail and ensures the canoe propels forward in a strong yet safe way. Figuratively, the rojak maan and rojak kōrā symbolise the mother and father relationship which when strong, through the jouj (kindness and love), it can strengthen families and sustain them into the future. Figure 1. Parts of the canoe Source: https://www.canoesmarshallislands.com/2014/09/names-of-canoe-parts/ From a socio-cultural, communal, and leadership view, the canoe (wa) provides understanding of the relationships required to inspire and sustain Marshallese peoples’ education and learning. We draw from Kajin wa because they provide cultural ideas and practices that enable understanding of education and leadership necessary for sustaining Marshallese people and realities in Oceania. When building a canoe, the women are tasked with the weaving of the ujelā/ujele (sail) and to ensure that it is strong enough to withstand long journeys and the fierce winds and waters of the ocean. The Kanne Lobal relates to the front part of the ujelā/ujele (sail) where the rojak maan and rojak kōrā meet and connect (see the red lines in figure 1). Kanne Lobal is linked to the strategic use of the ujelā/ujele by navigators, when there is no wind north wind to propel them forward, to find ways to capture the winds so that their journey can continue. As a proverbial saying, Kanne Lobal is used to ignite thinking and inspire and transform practice particularly when the journey is rough and tough. In this paper we draw from Kanne Lobal to ignite, inspire, and transform our educational and leadership practices, a move to explore what has always been meaningful to Marshallese people when we are faced with challenges. The Kanne Lobal utilises our language, and cultural practices and values by sourcing from the concepts of jouj (kindness, love), kautiej (respect), and jouj eo mour eo (reciprocity). A key Marshallese proverb, “Enra bwe jen lale rara”, is the cultural practice where families enact compassion through the sharing of food in all occurrences. The term “enra” is a small basket weaved from the coconut leaves, and often used by Marshallese as a plate to share and distribute food amongst each other. Bwe-jen-lale-rara is about noticing and providing for the needs of others, and “enra” the basket will help support and provide for all that are in need. “Enra-bwe-jen-lale-rara” is symbolic of cultural exchange and reciprocity and the cultural values associated with building and maintaining relationships, and constantly honouring each other. As a Marshallese practice, in this article we share our understanding and knowledge about the challenges as well as possible solutions for education concerns in our nation. In addition, we highlight another proverb, “wa kuk wa jimor”, which relates to having one canoe, and despite its capacity to feed and provide for the individual, but within the canoe all people can benefit from what it can provide. In the same way, we provide in this paper a cultural framework that will enable all educators to benefit from. It is a framework that is far-reaching and relevant to the lived realities of Marshallese people today. Kumit relates to people united to build strength, all co-operating and working together, living in peace, harmony, and good health. Kanne Lobal: conceptual framework for education and leadership An education framework is a conceptual structure that can be used to capture ideas and thinking related to aspects of learning. Kanne Lobal is conceptualised and framed in this paper as an educational framework. Kanne Lobal highlights the significance of education as a collective partnership whereby leadership is an important aspect. Kanne Lobal draws-from indigenous Marshallese concepts like kautiej (respect), jouj eo mour eo (reciprocity), and jouj (kindness, heart). The role of a leader, including an education leader, is to prioritise collective learning and partnerships that benefits Marshallese people and the continuity and survival of the next generation (Heine, 2002; Thaman, 1995). As described by Ejnar Aerōk, an expert canoe builder in the RMI, he stated: “jerbal ippān doon bwe en maron maan wa e” (cited in Miller, 2010, p. 69). His description emphasises the significance of partnerships and working together when navigating and journeying together in order to move the canoe forward. The kubaak, the outrigger of the wa (canoe) is about “partnerships”. For us as elementary school leaders on Majuro, kubaak encourages us to value collaborative partnerships with each other as well as our communities, PSS, and other stakeholders. Partnerships is an important part of the Kanne Lobal education and leadership framework. It requires ongoing bwebwenato – the inspiring as well as confronting and challenging conversations that should be mediated and negotiated if we and our education stakeholders are to journey together to ensure that the educational services we provide benefits our next generation of young people in the RMI. Navigating ahead the partnerships, mediation, and negotiation are the core values of jouj (kindness, love), kautiej (respect), and jouj eo mour eo (reciprocity). As an organic conceptual framework grounded in indigenous values, inspired through our lived experiences, Kanne Lobal provides ideas and concepts for re-thinking education and leadership practices that are conducive to learning and teaching in the schooling context in the RMI. By no means does it provide the solution to the education ills in our nation. However, we argue that Kanne Lobal is a more relevant approach which is much needed for the negatively stigmatised system as a consequence of the various colonial administrations that have and continue to shape and reframe our ideas about what education should be like for us in the RMI. Moreover, Kannel Lobal is our attempt to decolonize the framing of education and leadership, moving our bwebwenato to re-framing conversations of teaching and learning so that our cultural knowledge and values are foregrounded, appreciated, and realised within our education system. Bwebwenato: sharing our stories In this section, we use bwebwenato as a method of gathering and capturing our stories as data. Below we capture our stories and ongoing conversations about the richness in Marshallese cultural knowledge in the outer islands and on Majuro and the potentialities in Kanne Lobal. Danny Jim When I was in third grade (9-10 years of age), during my grandfather’s speech in Arno, an atoll near Majuro, during a time when a wa (canoe) was being blessed and ready to put the canoe into the ocean. My grandfather told me the canoe was a blessing for the family. “Without a canoe, a family cannot provide for them”, he said. The canoe allows for travelling between places to gather food and other sources to provide for the family. My grandfather’s stories about people’s roles within the canoe reminded me that everyone within the family has a responsibility to each other. Our women, mothers and daughters too have a significant responsibility in the journey, in fact, they hold us, care for us, and given strength to their husbands, brothers, and sons. The wise man or elder sits in the middle of the canoe, directing the young man who help to steer. The young man, he does all the work, directed by the older man. They take advice and seek the wisdom of the elder. In front of the canoe, a young boy is placed there and because of his strong and youthful vision, he is able to help the elder as well as the young man on the canoe. The story can be linked to the roles that school leaders, teachers, and students have in schooling. Without each person knowing intricately their role and responsibility, the sight and vision ahead for the collective aspirations of the school and the community is difficult to comprehend. For me, the canoe is symbolic of our educational journey within our education system. As the school leader, a central, trusted, and respected figure in the school, they provide support for teachers who are at the helm, pedagogically striving to provide for their students. For without strong direction from the school leaders and teachers at the helm, the students, like the young boy, cannot foresee their futures, or envisage how education can benefit them. This is why Kanne Lobal is a significant framework for us in the Marshall Islands because within the practice we are able to take heed and empower each other so that all benefit from the process. Kanne Lobal is linked to our culture, an essential part of who we are. We must rely on our own local approaches, rather than relying on others that are not relevant to what we know and how we live in today’s society. One of the things I can tell is that in Majuro, compared to the outer islands, it’s different. In the outer islands, parents bring children together and tell them legends and stories. The elders tell them about the legends and stories – the bwebwenato. Children from outer islands know a lot more about Marshallese legends compared to children from the Majuro atoll. They usually stay close to their parents, observe how to prepare food and all types of Marshallese skills. Loretta Joseph Case There is little Western influence in the outer islands. They grow up learning their own culture with their parents, not having tv. They are closely knit, making their own food, learning to weave. They use fire for cooking food. They are more connected because there are few of them, doing their own culture. For example, if they’re building a house, the ladies will come together and make food to take to the males that are building the house, encouraging them to keep on working - “jemjem maal” (sharpening tools i.e. axe, like encouraging workers to empower them). It’s when they bring food and entertainment. Rubon Rubon Togetherness, work together, sharing of food, these are important practices as a school leader. Jemjem maal – the whole village works together, men working and the women encourage them with food and entertainment. All the young children are involved in all of the cultural practices, cultural transmission is consistently part of their everyday life. These are stronger in the outer islands. Kanne Lobal has the potential to provide solutions using our own knowledge and practices. Connie Joel When new teachers become a teacher, they learn more about their culture in teaching. Teaching raises the question, who are we? A popular saying amongst our people, “Aelon kein ad ej aelon in manit”, means that “Our islands are cultural islands”. Therefore, when we are teaching, and managing the school, we must do this culturally. When we live and breathe, we must do this culturally. There is more socialising with family and extended family. Respect the elderly. When they’re doing things the ladies all get together, in groups and do it. Cut the breadfruit, and preserve the breadfruit and pandanus. They come together and do it. Same as fishing, building houses, building canoes. They use and speak the language often spoken by the older people. There are words that people in the outer islands use and understand language regularly applied by the elderly. Respect elderly and leaders more i.e., chiefs (iroj), commoners (alap), and the workers on the land (ri-jerbal) (social layer under the commoners). All the kids, they gather with their families, and go and visit the chiefs and alap, and take gifts from their land, first produce/food from the plantation (eojōk). Tommy Almet The people are more connected to the culture in the outer islands because they help one another. They don’t have to always buy things by themselves, everyone contributes to the occasion. For instance, for birthdays, boys go fishing, others contribute and all share with everyone. Kanne Lobal is a practice that can bring people together – leaders, teachers, stakeholders. We want our colleagues to keep strong and work together to fix problems like students and teachers’ absenteeism which is a big problem for us in schools. Demetria Malachi The culture in the outer islands are more accessible and exposed to children. In Majuro, there is a mixedness of cultures and knowledges, influenced by Western thinking and practices. Kanne Lobal is an idea that can enhance quality educational purposes for the RMI. We, the school leaders who did GCSL, we want to merge and use this idea because it will help benefit students’ learning and teachers’ teaching. Kanne Lobal will help students to learn and teachers to teach though traditional skills and knowledge. We want to revitalize our ways of life through teaching because it is slowly fading away. Also, we want to have our own Marshallese learning process because it is in our own language making it easier to use and understand. Essentially, we want to proudly use our own ways of teaching from our ancestors showing the appreciation and blessings given to us. Way Forward To think of ways forward is about reflecting on the past and current learnings. Instead of a traditional discussion within a research publication, we have opted to continue our bwebwenato by sharing what we have learnt through the Graduate Certificate in School Leadership (GCSL) programme. Our bwebwenato does not end in this article and this opportunity to collaborate and partner together in this piece of writing has been a meaningful experience to conceptualise and unpack the Kanne Lobal framework. Our collaborative bwebwenato has enabled us to dig deep into our own wise knowledges for guidance through mediating and negotiating the challenges in education and leadership (Sanga & Houma, 2004). For example, bwe-jen-lale-rara reminds us to inquire, pay attention, and focus on supporting the needs of others. Through enra-bwe-jen-lale-rara, it reminds us to value cultural exchange and reciprocity which will strengthen the development and maintaining of relationships based on ways we continue to honour each other (Nimmer, 2017). We not only continue to support each other, but also help mentor the next generation of school leaders within our education system (Heine, 2002). Education and leadership are all about collaborative partnerships (Sanga & Chu, 2009; Thaman, 1997). Developing partnerships through the GCSL was useful learning for us. It encouraged us to work together, share knowledge, respect each other, and be kind. The values of jouj (kindness, love), kautiej (respect), and jouj eo mour eo (reciprocity) are meaningful in being and becoming and educational leader in the RMI (Jetnil-Kijiner, 2014; Miller, 2010; Nimmer, 2017). These values are meaningful for us practice particularly given the drive by PSS for schools to become accredited. The workshops and meetings delivered during the GCSL in the RMI from 2018 to 2019 about Kanne Lobal has given us strength to share our stories and experiences from the meeting with the stakeholders. But before we met with the stakeholders, we were encouraged to share and speak in our language within our courses: EDP05 (Professional Development and Learning), EDP06 (School Leadership), EDP07 (School Management), EDP08 (Teaching and Learning), and EDP09 (Community Partnerships). In groups, we shared our presentations with our peers, the 15 school leaders in the GCSL programme. We also invited USP RMI staff. They liked the way we presented Kannel Lobal. They provided us with feedback, for example: how the use of the sail on the canoe, the parts and their functions can be conceptualised in education and how they are related to the way that we teach our own young people. Engaging stakeholders in the conceptualisation and design stages of Kanne Lobal strengthened our understanding of leadership and collaborative partnerships. Based on various meetings with the RMI Pacific Resources for Education and Learning (PREL) team, PSS general assembly, teachers from the outer islands, and the PSS executive committee, we were able to share and receive feedback on the Kanne Lobal framework. The coordinators of the PREL programme in the RMI were excited by the possibilities around using Kanne Lobal, as a way to teach culture in an inspirational way to Marshallese students. Our Marshallese knowledge, particularly through the proverbial meaning of Kanne Lobal provided so much inspiration and insight for the groups during the presentation which gave us hope and confidence to develop the framework. Kanne Lobal is an organic and indigenous approach, grounded in Marshallese ways of doing things (Heine, 2002; Taafaki & Fowler, 2019). Given the persistent presence of colonial processes within the education system and the constant reference to practices and initiatives from the US, Kanne Lobal for us provides a refreshing yet fulfilling experience and makes us feel warm inside because it is something that belongs to all Marshallese people. Conclusion Marshallese indigenous knowledge and practices provide meaningful educational and leadership understanding and learnings. They ignite, inspire, and transform thinking and practice. The Kanne Lobal conceptual framework emphasises key concepts and values necessary for collaborative partnerships within education and leadership practices in the RMI. The bwebwenato or talk stories have been insightful and have highlighted the strengths and benefits that our Marshallese ideas and practices possess when looking for appropriate and relevant ways to understand education and leadership. 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Introduction: In the past decade, there has been an influx of migrant nurses from India to Australia. Migrant professionals have specific transition needs associated with working in Mental Health (MH). This study aimed to explore the transition experience of overseas trained nurses from India working in Australian MH settings. Method: Hermeneutic phenomenology was the methodological approach used in the study. The participants ( N = 16) were overseas trained nurses from India. Data were collected through in-depth interview and analysed using thematic analysis. Results: The findings resulted in the identification of the following themes: (1) Living in dual culture, (2) Loneliness, (3) Discrimination, and (4) Feeling incomplete. Discussion: It is evident that the transition to work in MH in Australia was a journey of mixed experiences. While certain findings of this study are comparable with experiences of migrant nurses in other settings, it provides insight into those that are working in MH.

<p class="MsoBlockText" style="margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt;"><span style="font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">This study investigates the gender differences in job attribute preferences and job choice among a group of university students in China.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Due to the shortage of well-trained professionals and managers in China, both foreign and Chinese organizations compete for highly trained candidates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Correlation and regression analysis on data from 1,231 university students in China were used to test three hypotheses. Similarities between how men and women view the importance of advancement, compensation, and learning and overseas opportunities, in employment by foreign and national enterprises, were observed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But, on issues of job security, firm size, and nationality of supervisor, gender differences were present.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Implications on employee recruitment for Chinese and foreign enterprises are discussed and suggestions for future research are provided. </span></span></span></p>

Background. There is an increasing number of distressed Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) due to adverse working conditions and unresolved post-repatriation issues. The enactment of the Republic Act 11036 (Mental Health Act) in 2018 supports the commitment of the State in promoting and protecting the mental health of every Filipino. Methods. A systematic review of literature was conducted to generate evidence-based policy tools for the round table discussion conducted by the UP Manila Health Policy Development Hub, engaging all major stakeholders from all sides of the policy issue. Strengths and challenges of the current government initiatives in the phases of predeployment, deployment, repatriation, and reintegration were discussed to attain consensus policy recommendations. Results. Increased migration led to a cascade of distressed OFWs and their subsequent need for trained mental health professionals. In host countries, challenges in on-site services include (i) limited psychiatry practice as prescribed by law of the host countries, (ii) reciprocity of the host country in allowing more welfare officers, and (iii) budget to support more plantilla items of Assistance to Nationals (ATN) staff. The inter-agency collaboration and legal support for all phases of migration should be holistic and set. Conclusions and Recommendations. From the literature review and policy discussion, consensus recommendations included strengthening pre-deployment preparation, curbing the trafficking of minors, improving psychiatry practice through the Bilateral Labor Agreement, developing psychosocial counseling competencies among front line host country personnel, enhancing telecounselling services and exploring telemedicine, among others.

India is home to almost one-third of the world's population that survive without adequate sanitation facilities. Bremen Overseas Research and Development Association (BORDA) in collaboration with the Consortium for DEWATS Dissemination (CDD) Society, has developed for the last 10 years, integrated solution packages for the provision of basic urban sanitation facilities. The customised packages include all or part of key sanitation elements like: toilets, decentralised wastewater treatment systems (DEWATS), health and hygiene education, solid waste management, drainage system, stakeholder participation measures. Over the last decade, with the support of its network partners CDD Society has been successful in delivering around 400 sanitation systems in South Asia. Due to the rapid growth of its population, India may require 1.3 million sanitation systems alone in the coming years. One of the key issues in meeting this huge target is the lack of trained professionals and implementing agencies. To upscale the efforts in delivering basic needs services in the sanitation sector, the Basic Needs Services (BNS) Network has started the establishment of a capacity building institution for decentralised sanitation solutions called Centre for Advanced Sanitation Solutions (CASS). CASS aims at providing the entire range of knowledge and skills required for the implementation of integrated sanitation solutions such as technical know-how for designing toilets, decentralised wastewater treatment systems (DEWATS), drainage systems, solid waste management and drinking water source protection; social support measures include health and hygiene education, community-based participatory planning tools as well as project management related aspects. For town and city managers, CASS will offer planning support for city and town-wide sanitation programmes. Furthermore, sanitation related R&D activities, knowledge management and exhibition is offered under CASS's ‘One-Stop-Shop’ concept; all components of sanitation are provided under one roof. This paper presents the basic components of the capacity building strategy developed by CDD/BORDA focusing on target groups, development of knowledge units (training module) and the didactical approach.

The prestige and values of higher education are traditionally high in Russia and overseas countries. For several generations, there has been a youth orientation towards higher education. Higher education and diplomas are perceived by a person primarily as a means of social mobility. Profession sets a certain “social background” for people’s life. At the same time, however, over the past few decades the assessment of the prestige associated with certain professions and specialties has dramatically changed and the labor market has changed, too. The the desire for higher education among young people continues to grow in Russia. Today’s students, future specialists, face new challenges of the labor market: firstly, availability of desired and demanded professions acquisition on the labor market; secondly, disappearance of old and the emergence of new professions; thirdly, digitalization of the labor market; fourthly, the formation of specialist competencies that are in demand both on the local and global labor markets. The major research objectives were to study the issues of students’ profession choice and their opinion on the demanded / non-demanded professions on modern labor market. The research methodology combines both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The primary data was collected using questionnaires and indepth-interviews. 250 freshmen of the Ural Federal University and 250 freshmen of Saint-Petersburg State University were questioned on the basis of quota sampling. In depth-interviews (15) were organized for the educators engaged in the system of higher education. The study has revealed the issue of inequality in access to higher education as well as of inequality in access to getting prestigious and demanded professions on labor market.The majority of the respondents look for occupation suited to abilities and to their own interests. For young people the main thing is that the profession should not only make profit, but also a career progress and give new professional knowledge. The research has fixed that the majority of the students believe that they have made the right choice of specialty and they are well aware of how their future professional activity will be. About 30.0% of young people do not often choose those professions that they would like to be trained at the university, but those that are possible due to their “accessibility”. The students’ professional choice does not correspond to their ideas about their future profession and their psychological characteristics. Keywords: Higher education, students, freshmen, Russia, labor market, future profession choice, digitalization

IntroductionIn this article, I set out to accomplish two tasks. The first is to map coffee and cafés in Mainland China in different historical periods. The second is to focus on coffee and cafés in the socio-cultural milieu of contemporary China in order to understand the symbolic value of the emerging coffee/café-scape. Cafés, rather than coffee, are at the centre of this current trend in contemporary Chinese cities. With instant coffee dominating as a drink, the Chinese have developed a cultural and social demand for cafés, but have not yet developed coffee palates. Historical Coffee Map In 1901, coffee was served in a restaurant in the city of Tianjin. This restaurant, named Kiessling, was run by a German chef, a former solider who came to China with the eight-nation alliance. At that time, coffee was reserved mostly for foreign politicians and military officials as well as wealthy businessmen—very few ordinary Chinese drank it. (For more history of Kiessling, including pictures and videos, see Kiessling). Another group of coffee consumers were from the cultural elites—the young revolutionary intellectuals and writers with overseas experience. It was almost a fashion among the literary elite to spend time in cafés. However, this was negatively judged as “Western” and “bourgeois.” For example, in 1932, Lu Xun, one of the most important twentieth century Chinese writers, commented on the café fashion during 1920s (133-36), and listed the reasons why he would not visit one. He did not drink coffee because it was “foreigners’ food”, and he was too busy writing for the kind of leisure enjoyed in cafés. Moreover, he did not, he wrote, have the nerve to go to a café, and particularly not the Revolutionary Café that was popular among cultural celebrities at that time. He claimed that the “paradise” of the café was for genius, and for handsome revolutionary writers (who he described as having red lips and white teeth, whereas his teeth were yellow). His final complaint was that even if he went to the Revolutionary Café, he would hesitate going in (Lu Xun 133-36). From Lu Xun’s list, we can recognise his nationalism and resistance to what were identified as Western foods and lifestyles. It is easy to also feel his dissatisfaction with those dilettante revolutionary intellectuals who spent time in cafés, talking and enjoying Western food, rather than working. In contrast to Lu Xun’s resistance to coffee and café culture, another well-known writer, Zhang Ailing, frequented cafés when she lived in Shanghai from the 1920s to 1950s. She wrote about the smell of cakes and bread sold in Kiessling’s branch store located right next to her parents’ house (Yuyue). Born into a wealthy family, exposed to Western culture and food at a very young age, Zhang Ailing liked to spend her social and writing time in cafés, ordering her favourite cakes, hot chocolate, and coffee. When she left Shanghai and immigrated to the USA, coffee was an important part of her writing life: the smell and taste reminding her of old friends and Shanghai (Chunzi). However, during Zhang’s time, it was still a privileged and elite practice to patronise a café when these were located in foreign settlements with foreign chefs, and served mainly foreigners, wealthy businessmen, and cultural celebrities. After 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party established the People’s Republic of China, until the late 1970s, there were no coffee shops in Mainland China. It was only when Deng Xiaoping suggested neo-liberalism as a so-called “reform-and-open-up” economic policy that foreign commerce and products were again seen in China. In 1988, ten years after the implementation of Deng Xiaoping’s policy, the Nestlé coffee company made the first inroads into the mainland market, featuring homegrown coffee beans in Yunnan province (China Beverage News; Dong; ITC). Nestlé’s bottled instant coffee found its way into the Chinese market, avoiding a direct challenge to the tea culture. Nestlé packaged its coffee to resemble health food products and marketed it as a holiday gift suitable for friends and relatives. As a symbol of modernity and “the West”, coffee-as-gift meshed with the traditional Chinese cultural custom that values gift giving. It also satisfied a collective desire for foreign products (and contact with foreign cultures) during the economic reform era. Even today, with its competitively low price, instant coffee dominates coffee consumption at home, in the workplace, and on Chinese airlines. While Nestlé aimed their product at native Chinese consumers, the multinational companies who later entered China’s coffee market, such as Sara Lee, mainly targeted international hotels such as IHG, Marriott, and Hyatt. The multinationals also favoured coffee shops like Kommune in Shanghai that offered more sophisticated kinds of coffee to foreign consumers and China’s upper class (Byers). If Nestlé introduced coffee to ordinary Chinese families, it was Starbucks who introduced the coffee-based “third space” to urban life in contemporary China on a signficant scale. Differing from the cafés before 1949, Starbucks stores are accessible to ordinary Chinese citizens. The first in Mainland China opened in Beijing’s China World Trade Center in January 1999, targeting mainly white-collar workers and foreigners. Starbucks coffee shops provide a space for informal business meetings, chatting with friends, and relaxing and, with its 500th store opened in 2011, dominate the field in China. Starbucks are located mainly in the central business districts and airports, and the company plans to have 1,500 sites by 2015 (Starbucks). Despite this massive presence, Starbucks constitutes only part of the café-scape in contemporary Chinese cities. There are two other kinds of cafés. One type is usually located in universities or residential areas and is frequented mainly by students or locals working in cultural professions. A representative of this kind is Sculpting in Time Café. In November 1997, two years before the opening of the first Starbucks in Beijing, two newlywed college graduates opened the first small Sculpting in Time Café near Beijing University’s East Gate. This has been expanded into a chain, and boasts 18 branches on the Mainland. (For more about its history, see Sculpting in Time Café). Interestingly, both Starbucks and Sculpting in Time Café acquired their names from literature, Starbucks from Moby Dick, and Sculpting in Time from the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky’s film diary of the same name. For Chinese students of literature and the arts, drinking coffee is less about acquiring more energy to accomplish their work, and more about entering a sensual world, where the aroma of coffee mixes with the sounds from the coffee machine and music, as well as the lighting of the space. More importantly, cafés with this ambience become, in themselves, cultural sites associated with literature, films, and music. Owners of this kind of café are often lovers of foreign literatures, films, and cultures, and their cafés host various cultural events, including forums, book clubs, movie screenings, and music clubs. Generally speaking, coffee served in this kind of café is simpler than in the kind discussed below. This third type of café includes those located in tourist and entertainment sites such as art districts, bar areas, and historical sites, and which are frequented by foreign and native tourists, artists and other cultural workers. If Starbucks cultivates a fast-paced business/professional atmosphere, and Sculpting in Time Cafés an artsy and literary atmosphere, this third kind of café is more like an upscale “bar” with trained baristas serving complicated coffees and emphasising their flavour. These coffee shops are more expensive than the other kinds, with an average price three times that of Starbucks. Currently, cafés of this type are found only in “first-tier” cities and usually located in art districts and tourist areas—such as Beijing’s 798 Art District and Nanluo Guxiang, Shanghai’s Tai Kang Road (a.k.a. “the art street”), and Hangzhou’s Westlake area. While Nestlé and Starbucks use coffee beans grown in Yunnan provinces, these “art cafés” are more inclined to use imported coffee beans from suppliers like Sara Lee. Coffee and Cafés in Contemporary China After just ten years, there are hundreds of cafés in Chinese cities. Why has there been such a demand for coffee or, more accurately, cafés, in such a short period of time? The first reason is the lack of “third space” environments in Mainland China. Before cafés appeared in the late 1990s, stores like KFC (which opened its first store in 1987) and McDonald’s (with its first store opened in 1990) filled this role for urban residents, providing locations where customers could experience Western food, meet friends, work, or read. In fact, KFC and McDonald’s were once very popular with college students looking for a place to study. Both stores had relatively clean food environments and good lighting. They also had air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter, which are not provided in most Chinese university dormitories. However, since neither chain was set up to be a café and customers occupying seats for long periods while ordering minimal amounts of food or drink affected profits, staff members began to indirectly ask customers to leave after dining. At the same time, as more people were able to afford to eat at KFC and McDonald’s, their fast foods were also becoming more and more popular, especially among young people. As a consequence, both types of chain restaurant were becoming noisy and crowded and, thus, no longer ideal for reading, studying, or meeting with friends. Although tea has been a traditional drink in Chinese culture, traditional teahouses were expensive places more suitable for business meetings or for the cultural or intellectual elite. Since almost every family owns a tea set and can readily purchase tea, friends and family would usually make and consume tea at home. In recent years, however, new kinds of teahouses have emerged, similar in style to cafés, targeting the younger generation with more affordable prices and a wider range of choices, so the lack of a “third space” does not fully explain the café boom. Another factor affecting the popularity of cafés has been the development and uptake of Internet technology, including the increasing use of laptops and wireless Internet in recent years. The Internet has been available in China since the late 1990s, while computers and then laptops entered ordinary Chinese homes in the early twenty-first century. The IT industry has created not only a new field of research and production, but has also fostered new professions and demands. Particularly, in recent years in Mainland China, a new socially acceptable profession—freelancing in such areas as graphic design, photography, writing, film, music, and the fashion industry—has emerged. Most freelancers’ work is computer- and Internet-based. Cafés provide suitable working space, with wireless service, and the bonus of coffee that is, first of all, somatically stimulating. In addition, the emergence of the creative and cultural industries (which are supported by the Chinese government) has created work for these freelancers and, arguably, an increasing demand for café-based third spaces where such people can meet, talk and work. Furthermore, the flourishing of cafés in first-tier cities is part of the “aesthetic economy” (Lloyd 24) that caters to the making and selling of lifestyle experience. Alongside foreign restaurants, bars, galleries, and design firms, cafés contribute to city branding, and link a city to the global urban network. Cafés, like restaurants, galleries and bars, provide a space for the flow of global commodities, as well as for the human flow of tourists, travelling artists, freelancers, and cultural specialists. Finally, cafés provide a type of service that contributes to friendly owner/waiter-customer relations. During the planned-economy era, most stores and hotels in China were State-owned, staff salaries were not related to individual performance, and indifferent (and even unfriendly) service was common. During the economic reform era, privately owned stores and shops began to replace State-owned ones. At the same time, a large number of people from the countryside flowed into the cities seeking opportunities. Most had little if any professional training and so could only find work in factories or in the service industry. However, most café employees are urban, with better educational backgrounds, and many were already familiar with coffee culture. In addition, café owners, particularly those of places like Sculpting in Time Cafe, often invest in creating a positive, community atmosphere, learning about their customers and sharing personal experiences with their regular clients. This leads to my next point—the generation of the 1980s’ need for a social community. Cafés’ Symbolic Value—Community A demand for a sense of community among the generation of the 1980s is a unique socio-cultural phenomenon in China, which paradoxically co-exists with their desire for individualism. Mao Zedong started the “One Child Policy” in 1979 to slow the rapid population growth in China, and the generations born under this policy are often called “the lonely generations,” with both parents working full-time. At the same time, they are “the generation of me,” labelled as spoiled, self-centred, and obsessed with consumption (de Kloet; Liu; Rofel; Wang). The individuals of this generation, now aged in their 20s and 30s, constitute the primary consumers of coffee in China. Whereas individualism is an important value to them, a sense of community is also desirable in order to compensate for their lack of siblings. Furthermore, the 1980s’ generation has also benefitted from the university expansion policy implemented in 1999. Since then, China has witnessed a surge of university students and graduates who not only received scientific and other course-based knowledge, but also had a better chance to be exposed to foreign cultures through their books, music, and movies. With this interesting tension between individualism and collectivism, the atmosphere provided by cafés has fostered a series of curious temporary communities built on cultural and culinary taste. Interestingly, it has become an aspiration of many young college students and graduates to open a community-space style café in a city. One of the best examples is the new Henduoren’s (Many People’s) Café. This was a project initiated by Wen Erniu, a recent college graduate who wanted to open a café in Beijing but did not have sufficient funds to do so. She posted a message on the Internet, asking people to invest a minimum of US$316 to open a café with her. With 78 investors, the café opened in September 2011 in Beijing (see pictures of Henduoren’s Café). In an interview with the China Daily, Wen Erniu stated that, “To open a cafe was a dream of mine, but I could not afford it […] We thought opening a cafe might be many people’s dream […] and we could get together via the Internet to make it come true” (quoted in Liu 2011). Conclusion: Café Culture and (Instant) Coffee in China There is a Chinese saying that, if you hate someone—just persuade him or her to open a coffee shop. Since cafés provide spaces where one can spend a relatively long time for little financial outlay, owners have to increase prices to cover their expenses. This can result in fewer customers. In retaliation, cafés—particularly those with cultural and literary ambience—host cultural events to attract people, and/or they offer food and wine along with coffee. The high prices, however, remain. In fact, the average price of coffee in China is often higher than in Europe and North America. For example, a medium Starbucks’ caffè latte in China averaged around US$4.40 in 2010, according to the price list of a Starbucks outlet in Shanghai—and the prices has recently increased again (Xinhua 2012). This partially explains why instant coffee is still so popular in China. A bag of instant Nestlé coffee cost only some US$0.25 in a Beijing supermarket in 2010, and requires only hot water, which is accessible free almost everywhere in China, in any restaurant, office building, or household. As an habitual, addictive treat, however, coffee has not yet become a customary, let alone necessary, drink for most Chinese. Moreover, while many, especially those of the older generations, could discern the quality and varieties of tea, very few can judge the quality of the coffee served in cafés. As a result, few Mainland Chinese coffee consumers have a purely somatic demand for coffee—craving its smell or taste—and the highly sweetened and creamed instant coffee offered by companies like Nestlé or Maxwell has largely shaped the current Chinese palate for coffee. Ben Highmore has proposed that “food spaces (shops, restaurants and so on) can be seen, for some social agents, as a potential space where new ‘not-me’ worlds are encountered” (396) He continues to expand that “how these potential spaces are negotiated—the various affective registers of experience (joy, aggression, fear)—reflect the multicultural shapes of a culture (its racism, its openness, its acceptance of difference)” (396). Cafés in contemporary China provide spaces where one encounters and constructs new “not-me” worlds, and more importantly, new “with-me” worlds. While café-going communicates an appreciation and desire for new lifestyles and new selves, it can be hoped that in the near future, coffee will also be appreciated for its smell, taste, and other benefits. Of course, it is also necessary that future Chinese coffee consumers also recognise the rich and complex cultural, political, and social issues behind the coffee economy in the era of globalisation. 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