Academic literature on the topic 'Toy and movale books'

The article outlines the problem of using the potential of toy books in preparing bachelor students for purposeful work on the formation of mathematical concepts in preschool children and suggests the idea of organizing the creative activity of students to design toy books with mathematical content.The article contains an overview of classifications of toy books, pedagogically characterized and methodically described examples-constructs of various types of toy books created by bachelor students. The pedagogical potential of these constructs allows us in this work to consider a toy book as a means of mathematical education for preschool children.The purpose of the study is a theoretical description and empirical understanding of the advantages of using the potential of a toy book with mathematical content in the educational activities of a university for the development of creative thinking of future preschool teachers. To achieve the goal, the following methods were used: theoretical analysis of literary sources, Internet resources, analysis of statistical data and a pedagogical experiment.The results of the study showed difficulties in mastering the method of designing a toy book with mathematical content, revealed the preferences of future educators-educators in choosing one or another type of toy book that dominates in its content a mathematical topic and methodological features of its implementation in the presented design form.The conducted research and analysis of the results allowed us to obtain data on the importance of including in the process of training future teachers-educators a creative technique - the design of toy books with mathematical content.

The toy presents a little discovered image of a culture. In addition to being an important object of nostalgia, it is also considered as a research and study subject. The rapidly increasing number of toy museums has also gained importance in transferring economic, sociological, social, and cultural characteristics of the toy. Toy museums have responsibilities such as protecting toys that are threatened with extinction during the rapid change in technology, conducting research on childhood and history of education, raising awareness of history, helping to establish intergenerational communication, and emphasizing the importance of toys in child development. Toy Museums develop educational activities for different ages and interest groups based on their collections. Effective use of collections in museums and the presentation of available resources for visitors with fun, attractive, and different learning methods is one of the characteristics of museum education. Learning from the object, which is one of the basic concepts of museum education, can provide an experience with real objects. The Ankara University Toy Museum can be used as an educational laboratory for courses in preschool, primary, and secondary school education programs within the context of its current collection. The museum can be visited with an appointment with a guide. Search and find activities through collection themes etc. are accompanied by the museum guides and educators. In this study, the evaluation of the design processes of the education booklets of the Toy Museum is determined. The booklets include museum guided tours, and structured educational activities like "before the museum, museum practice, and post museum" activities. Museum booklets have an evaluation section that enables the student to receive feedback where they are expected to make a sustainable contribution to the promotion of the museum. In this context, this paper evaluates the effectiveness of preschool, primary, and secondary school education books that were prepared for the toy museum in line with the feedback of students participating in museum education by establishing a link between the curriculum and the museum collection. Keywords: museum, toy museum, children’s culture, museum education, museum booklet

Animated comedy and adventure films are highly enjoyable to watch. In addition to being an enjoyable film, it is also suitable for viewers of all ages, ranging from children to adults. Furthermore, films of this genre are often sought after by families seeking weekend entertainment. In addition to being captivating to watch, films in this genre typically aim to impart a moral message. The "Toy Story" is a well-known animated comedy about friendship and adventure. It effectively conveys a message of friendship, a familiar theme to viewers. The film's soundtrack, "You've Got a Friend in Me", is highly memorable and strongly associated with the movie. This essay will examine the audio of this renowned film. In this study, we employed qualitative methodologies. Qualitative methods refer to research approaches that aim to comprehend phenomena in a research object by describing them using language. This study aims to analyze the musical composition of the film "Toy Story" theme song to understand its characteristics and elements comprehensively. Data collection was conducted through discography investigations, book reviews, and observations. Discographic study involves analyzing, describing, and explaining the results of auditory experiences. We examined the "Toy Story" theme song in audio format, accessible on platforms like Spotify and YouTube, and the musical score. The purpose was to facilitate the evaluation of the song's form, structure, and musical elements. "You've Got a Friend in Me" exhibits a higher level of complexity in terms of chords and melody than a usual song. It surpasses the average in chord complexity, melodic complexity, chord melodic tension, chord progression novelty, and chord-bass melodies.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present an adapted form of a qualitative research method, focus group interview, for use with small children and demonstrate its use in a small-scale study. Researchers often avoid direct study of children, and study them indirectly by asking adults. This was frequent before 1990s, but today, researchers increasingly discuss research with children rather than on children. Nevertheless, in research with young children it is not possible to use all research methods, therefore the authors modified and tested one. The additional research objectives, besides verification of methodology, were to determine the pre-school children’s attitudes to books, book-related places, reading. Design/methodology/approach – The adaptation of the focus group interview involved merging the content questions of the research with a story and using a toy as the storyteller. This resembled storytelling and enabled the children to directly participate by talking to the animation toy instead of the researcher. The authors tested the method on a purposive sample of 13 pre-school children aged four and five in one public kindergarten. Findings – Despite of the belief of some experts, who claim that focus group interview is not an appropriate method to explore habits or opinions of children, the authors found that adaptation of this method for the use with small children by means of storytelling and toy animation brings positive results because it enabled gathering data directly from the children. The content results show positive attitudes towards books and reading, differences in reading interests between boys and girls, daily exposure to books and reading, both in kindergarten and at home, and quite good knowledge of book-related places, especially libraries, somewhat less bookstores. Research limitations/implications – Since this is only the first attempt to use this adapted methodological approach, it is necessary that the method is tested on different user groups and in different circumstances to further validate its suitability for this user group. Regarding the content of the study, the results cannot be generalized due to non-probability purposive sampling. Originality/value – This is the first attempt to use the adapted methodological approach for researching young children. The research may serve as a beginning and incentive for further research in this area, since only high-quality results provide good modifications and adaptations of educational programmes and activities to ensure proper development of children’s reading competences and attitudes to books and reading.

AbstractChildren’s books often feature complex material aspects. Despite that fact, little research has been done on questions of materiality in children’s and youth books. The article aims at outlining the field of the materiality of historical German-language children’s books. By analyzing historical author’s pedagogical statements as well as the design of historical children’s and youth fiction, the article summarizes different approaches concerning the materiality of children’s books. Based on the historical development and the generic study on how children modify the materiality of their books, the article further investigates the book-as-object and emphasizes the child’s point of view by scrutinizing the adult-culture book-toy distinction. It will become apparent that the specific forms of children’s book reception emerge since the materiality of the book and its exploration present a new embodied experience. The specific reception forms can be embedded into a semiotic model of the text-reader interaction in reference to Roland Barthes’ concept of écriture and scription.

We developed the “innovative multi-functional teaching toy inside and outside the tent” with situational picture books, which had several game modes for parents and children to play the game together. The result of this research was filed for an invention patent and won the Gold Medal in the International Invention Competition. We analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of commercially available tents and conducted quantitative research to understand the effectiveness of the products. In the quantitative research, a self-written questionnaire was created and tested for reliability and validity. 34 research subjects were invited to use traditional backpacks and innovative “innovative multi-functional teaching toys inside and outside the tent” and fill out a questionnaire. The result was analyzed to understand the new products.

In the article, the main tendencies of modern developing of toys industry are outlined. It is certain that the development of toys industry is intended to renewal and advance of interactivity of toys, popularization of some brands (movies, books, toys, sweets with the same characters) and intrusion of series of same toys what in a result do not meet age needs of preschool child development. In the situation of supersaturation of toys market modern toy has a range of new characteristics. And its` influence on the formation of personality not always can be predicted. In particular, the great bulk of popular toys between consumers do not promote the strengthening of the mechanism of socialization of preschool age child, maintaining of family relations, propagandize values which are not common for our nation and provoke a variety of strategies of behavior in a situation of moral choice. A toy for preschool age children is the main method in the formulation of a sign-symbolic system of representation the surrounding reality. In modern sociocultural situation cooperation with this integral feature of childhood requires constant pedagogical support, which involves the selection of toys with taking into account their educational potential and forecasting their potential results on the personality.

A new monograph by M. S. Kostyukhina, author of the books “Toy in Chil- dren’s Literature”, “Children’s Oracle”. Through the Pages of Desk-Printed Books”, explores the dynamics of the principles and methods of creating the image of a dog in the Russian literature of the 19th-20th century. The review characterizes the principles of systematization of literary material, notes the role of illustrative and reference apparatus, and points out the practical significance of the monograph for educators, teachers of literature, as well as parents. Cross-cutting ideas of the monograph are identified: the relevance of children’s literature about animals to the general historical and cultural situation and the dominant literary trend, the high educational potential of such works, the gradual strengthening of not only the socially critical but also the philosophical component of such literature addressed to children.

Feast for the Eye Joan Steiner has created a series of children’s picture books, entitled Look-Alikes, based on her observations that some objects look like others. Each book consists of about 10 illustrations intended as puzzles; readers are invited to enumerate the substitutions of look-alikes for their real counterparts. A barn, for instance, is a green metal toolbox and its silo is an aerosol can with toy train tracks as its ladder. The high incidence of food and food-related items in her work flaunts our expected purpose for and context of edibles. Steiner’s inventiveness is reminiscent of the Italian mannerist painter Arcimboldo whose portraits also employ food substitutions.

This thesis examines the book in the nineteenth century by way of an unusual corpus: movable and novelty books for children, drawn from the Opie Collection of Children’s Literature at the Bodleian Library. It argues that these items, which have been either ignored or actively dismissed by scholars of children’s literature, are of two-fold significance for the history of the book: they encourage a sense of the book as a constitutively (rather than an incidentally) material object, and they demand an understanding of reading as not just a mental activity, but a physical one as well. Each of the first five chapters of the thesis centres on a different format. The opening chapter discusses the Regency-era paper doll books produced by Samuel and Joseph Fuller, exposing the tension between form and content in these works. The second chapter looks at Victorian panorama books for children, showing how the panorama format affects space, time, and the structure of any text accompanying the image. The third chapter reads the pop-up book’s key tension—the tension between surface and depth in the pursuit of an illusion of three dimensions—in terms of flat, theatrical, and stereoscopic picture-making, three other nineteenth-century pictorial modes in which an illusion of three-dimensionality is important. The fourth chapter traces self-reflexive accounts of printing, publishing, and the material book in dissolving-view books produced by the German publisher and printer Ernest Nister at the end of the nineteenth century. The fifth chapter positions the late nineteenth-century mechanical books designed and illustrated by Lothar Meggendorfer in terms of two material analogies, the puppet and the mechanical toy or automaton. The final chapter synthesizes evidence as to how the movable book could and should be read from across formats, foregrounding in particular the ways in which the movable embodies reading.

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Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES
To contribute to the recent discussions about the relationship literature and infants, the present master thesis aims at answering the following research questions: (1.) Which are some of the main trends, in terms of graphic design, illustration, and text, in books that are preferably addressed to toddlers (zero to three years old) in Brazilian contemporaneity? (2.) How can the language's symbolic values contribute to the education of a child at such early age? To follow our course, we've selected, as a corpora of research, ten titles that compose the collection of 2014 PNBE, addressed to children between zero and three years old. As a hypothesis, we suggest that these books, addressed preferably to children who do not read yet, bring specific and particular elements that characterize trends on books for toddlers in terms of graphic design, illustration, and text, and that they are, therefore, amenable for literary analysis; and that, in contact with Literature, babies can learn the aesthetic language, which corroborates their individual and relational potential, providing a profitable environment for developing global skills. To pursue the present study – qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive – it was developed in three chapters. In chapter I, the reasons for approaching the subject are discussed, presenting the development of the young child and the encounter between Literature and toddlers, resorting on reflections by Bernard Golse, Antonio Candido, and Betina Kümmerling-Meibauer. In Chapter II, we present the corpora of this study and justify its choice. In addition, we address the PNBE program and its collection for early childhood, as well as the assessment criteria established in the present study for the analysis of the corpus, based, therefore, on the 2014 PNBE edict and the handbook that accompanies this specific collection. In chapter III, the books are analyzed in terms of graphic design, illustration, and text, using considerations by Rosinha, Sophie Van der Linden, and Ana Margarida Ramos on graphic design aspects; by Adriana Baptista and Annete Werner's regarding illustration; and by Antonio Candido, Octavio Paz, and Kathleen Ahrens's in terms of the literary text
No intento de contribuir com as discussões recentes acerca da relação literatura-bebê, o presente estudo tem como objetivo responder às seguintes questões direcionadoras: Quais são algumas das principais tendências, em termos de projeto gráfico, ilustração e texto, nos livros preferencialmente endereçados aos bebês (zero a três anos) na contemporaneidade brasileira? Como os valores simbólicos da linguagem podem contribuir para a educação da criança em sua tenra idade? Para efetuarmos esse percurso, selecionamos como corpus de pesquisa dez títulos que compõem o acervo do PNBE 2014, endereçados a crianças entre zero e três anos. Sugerimos, como hipótese, que estes livros, endereçados preferencialmente às crianças que ainda não leem, trazem elementos específicos e particulares que caracterizam tendências dos livros para bebês no projeto gráfico, na ilustração e no texto, sendo, portanto, passíveis à análise literária; e que, ao contato com a Literatura, os bebês apreendem a linguagem estética, o que corrobora com o seu potencial individual e relacional, proporcionando um ambiente profícuo às habilidades globais em desenvolvimento. Para tal, o presente estudo – qualitativo, exploratório e descritivo – foi desenvolvido em três capítulos. No capítulo I, entram em discussão as razões para a abordagem do tema na atualidade, apresentando o desenvolvimento da criança pequena e o encontro entre a Literatura e o bebê, recorrendo-se, para isso, às reflexões de Bernard Golse, Antonio Candido e Betina Kümmerling-Meibauer. No capítulo II, apresenta-se o corpora deste estudo e a justificativa de sua escolha. Em adição, aborda-se o programa PNBE e seu acervo para primeiríssima infância, bem como os critérios de avaliação estabelecidos no presente estudo para a análise do corpora, pautando-se, para tanto, no edital PNBE 2014 e no Manual que acompanha esse acervo em específico. No capítulo III, analisa-se os livros em termos de projeto gráfico, de ilustração e de texto, valendo-se das considerações de Rosinha, Sophie Van der Linden e Ana Margarida Ramos no que se refere ao projeto gráfico; de Adriana Baptista e Annete Werner no tocante à ilustração; e de Antonio Candido, Octavio Paz e Kathleen Ahrens nas reflexões acerca do texto literário

碩士
國立臺東大學
兒童文學研究所
103
The research is to classify and analyze different kinds of "Children's Toy Books" in Taiwan. The research is not only to explain the appellation, creation, function and limitation of toy books, but also to discuss the relation of Children's Play. 　Since Children's toy books are combined with "Toy" and "Book", allowing readers to play while reading, they emphasize children's learning demand and interaction model. Therefore, most parents prefer to choose Children's toy books for their children. However, the definition of toy books is often confused with Pop-Up Books and Play Books resulting in varieties on classification. Thus, it motivates the author to proceed the Study. 　The research method is to do documentary analysis from "Toy Books", "Pop-Up Books", "Children" and "Game/Play", in order to discuss the appellation and types of toy books, and then pick model texts from toy books to analyze and classify. There are six chapters in this thesis. Chapter 1: "Introduction" which illustrates the Research motive, purpose, questions, literature review, Research method, Research steps, Field of Research and limitations of the Study. Chapter 2: "Child and Toy Books" discusses children development and the establishment, origin and introduction of toy books. The author divided toy books into three types: "design", "operation" and "perception" which are the topics of following chapters and have detailed introduction on corresponsive types. Last, the author concludes: 　First, with respect to definition of “toy book”, it is designed for pre-school children. It combines functions of read and play, providing cognition and educational learning effect. 　Second, different kinds of toy books are featured by design elements emphasized. Some toy books are mixed with more than one kind. 　Last, the relation between children and toy books is established on fun interactions, to achieve the effect of receiving messages through active participation.

碩士
國立臺北科技大學
創新設計研究所
95
Children are by nature playful. Play is the focus of their everyday life. Learning is also another vital element in a child’s growth. The most common form of learning is through books. Therefore toy books, which are a combination of toys and books, are a great way to learn to play and play to learn. Play has a crucial role in the physical, perceptual, sensory and cognitive development of children. Playing with a group of children helps them to learn about the world and the rules of society . It also stimulates concentration and learning capability. These are all goals that producers of toy books hope to achieve. The present study is a research on children’s toy books currently available on the market through literature review, conduct of survey, and in-depth interviews. The aim is to investigate the current state and shortcomings, if any, of the role toy books play in the cognitive development learning process of children. 1. Research results found that in general the suitable age groups on domestically published toy books are not labeled clear enough. 2. The learning purpose of the books dominate the play side. 3. They are too complex for children to grasp. 4. Domestically published toy books lack variety and creativity compared to imported ones. 5.Toy books that are not designed to match the physical capability of their target age group may result in lack of willingness to learn.

Children’s books often feature toys coming to life and present an exciting interplay between the organic and the inorganic. Relying on the theoretical framework of posthumanism and vital materialism, this chapter explores how the material body of the toy is simultaneously real and artificial, tugging at the binaries by which humanity is circumscribed. My readings of The Velveteen Rabbit, The Indian in the Cupboard and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane describe the toy stage in the life course of objects. Toys in these narratives upset the boundaries of real/unreal, organic/inorganic, human/nonhuman that were drawn between these categories to validate the supremacy of human subjects.

This chapter concerns the transnational character of children’s literary culture across media and genres in Danish and German homes around 1830. Furthermore, it addresses the interaction between reading and playing in and around books. German author Karl Blumauer’s Der kleine Robert und sein Steckenpferd (Little Robert and his Hobby Horse, 1833, Danish translation 1835) is the prism used to view the interaction between the market for illustrated books in Denmark and Germany; concepts of childhood and literature presented in the German and Danish prefaces; the ludic and media culture represented in texts and images; the traces of use in specific copies, and literary and ludic practices. The chapter concludes that, taken together, such combinations of sources allow a fuller insight into transnational aspects of childhood, children’s expected and actual use of children’s books, toy and media, and the book as a commodity that afforded playful as well as readerly uses.

AbstractWhen a person recommends a restaurant, movie or book, he or she is usually thanked for this recommendation. The person receiving the information will then evaluate, based on his or her knowledge about the situation, whether to follow the recommendation. With the rise of AI-powered recommender systems, however, restaurants, movies, books, and other items relevant for many aspects of life are generally recommended by an algorithm rather than a person. This volume aims to shed light on the implications of this transnational development from both legal and ethical perspectives and to spark further interdisciplinary thinking about algorithmic recommender systems.

AbstractThe discussion is focused on the view that technological innovation, in order to move toward a green transition, must take advantage of the opportunities and focus on quality-based design rather than quantity-based design. It is argued that true technological innovation requires a major mental shift. It is not about making processes better and more efficient, but about rethinking them outright. Three strategies are proposed at the urban and building level that support this higher quality as a way to go toward a sustainable approach as stated in the Brundtland report. The strategies proposed to reduce the amount of resources required to satisfy citizens’ demands are based on a more in-depth study of their real needs. Innovative design and technological solutions could lead us to a healthier and more environmentally friendly life.

This chapter examines the emergence of the musical comedy. Musical comedy was invented by George Edwardes, famed for being the manager of the Gaiety Theatre. Therefore, the dawn of musical comedy became known as the Gaiety Era. This was a period that lasted roughly from the 1890s to about 1915. Interestingly, though, Edwardes' first such production, In Town (1892), did not quite fit in with this new genre. In Town, was a hit, lasting some thirty-five weeks. Next, A Gaiety Girl (1893) was a smash at 413 performances, and this one at least had a plot. It soon became a favorite on the English-speaking musical comedy scene and was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic. The chapter then considers the move toward the modern story musical, looking at librettist Owen Hall, who wrote the books for two of the most successful Edwardian shows: The Geisha (1896) and Leslie Stuart's Florodora (1899).

We investigated a speech training support system targeting students in special needs education classes who are engaged in training to acquire a binary relationship where their vocalizations elicit reactions from others. Previously, there was a challenge in maintaining interest and achieving learning effectiveness when teachers intervened to encourage vocalizations using teaching aids such as picture books. To address this, we designed and integrated an electronic circuit with a movable toy that captures the interest of the supported students. The circuit includes a switch that turns on and activates a secondary circuit only when vocalizations are detected. In this paper, we report on the training using the developed speech support system and validate its functionality.

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted family lifestyles, children's capabilities, and parent-child interactions. This study aimed to explore the influences of parent-child interactions with toys and playing time on children’s problem-solving abilities in post-COVID-19. The research process included two phases: (1) Literature Review: The relationship among playtime, toy types, and children’s capability to solve problems.; and (2) Questionnaire Analyses. The questionnaire focuses on the influences of different types of parent-child toys and the time of playing together for age 2-6 kids on problem-solving skills. Choosing 32 questions from Social Problem-Solving Questionnaire (SPSQ) and Problem-Solving Style Questionnaire (PSSQ), preschool education specialists designed this questionnaire. Questionnaires were distributed in December 2023, and 30 of them were collected. The results are as follows. (1) Learning toys with numbers and symbols that aid in reading can help develop children’s logical thinking, thereby enhancing problem-solving skills. When parents and children engage in studying picture or illustration books together, it nurtures children's language capabilities and fosters interest in learning. Furthermore, sensory-motor playthings have a significant impact on the language development of children.; and (2) Children from families with accompanying playtime during 17:00-18:00 (before school time) or 21:00-22:00 (before/during bedtime) showed good analytical problem-solving capabilities. When faced with a complex problem, these children could identify the most crucial factor and, if they encountered a bottleneck, they would review the problem's context and related conditions to devise alternative solutions.

Nowadays, graphic arts bindery sector has shown growing environmental awareness in reaching the targets regarding economic, social, environmental, and technological aspects. Croatian bindery small entrepreneurship sector provides a piece of work done for clients in a sheetfed offset lithographic printing manufacturing which isn’t involved in any manner in bindery manufacturing. On top of that, sustainable bindery concepts are strictly related to effective printed resources usage, in which the generated waste is reduced through numerous binding manufacturing activities. In binding sector, designing concepts help achieve less negative environmental impact. Sustainable awareness is beginning from practical work, from preparing plans and a modelling shape, in which the process of designing the three-dimensional book presents its proposed structure on a printed original scale. Bindery eco-efficiency concepts cope with manufacturing service activities, in which the printed paper sheets (or outputs) together with binding raw materials move in a specific direction through the machine operations (cutting, folding, gathering, binding, trimming, joining and surface finishing), which are predictable in edition binding. This study provides a comprehensive overview on how a new approach in book designing might contribute to reducing “nonhazardous” printed or/and bound paper output residuals which gradually appear in a specific way during book binding process. What’s more, it offers “eco-friendly book binding”, which has “the best book in class” value. This eco-efficient bound production is monitored as well as the indices of graphic arts materials are followed up throughout the working procedures under standardized circumstances. These innovative creative thinking might bring up sustainable engineering solutions or frameworks in which “the business as usual” shifts towards “the eco-friendly business”. Eco-labelled printed paper sheets, from Croatian markets, are a sustainable choice which encourages responsible business and leads to zero pollution and circular economy. However, scientists have been worried about the fact that many manufacturing sectors rely on using adhesives with non-renewable resources, which are harmful to humans. Present published literature gives a general overview on the existing advanced adhesives which have less harmful impact on environment, but at the same time have promising performances.

ABSTRACT Background: Children who are first hospitalized may experience higher anxiety levels than children who have been hospitalized. The preliminary study in 2018 showed that when general surgery was to be done, as many as 90%school-age children were scared and nervous. It is important to provide play therapy to children who are going to undergo surgery. In addition to reading and seeing through photos, pop-up toy story books will also be offered to school-age children. This study aimed to examine the relationship between pop up toys as story play therapy on the level of anxiety on general anesthesia surgery among children around 6-12 years old. Subjects and Method: This was an experimental study with pre-post test with control group design. This study was conducted in Yogyakarta Province hospital. Study subjects were children around 6-12 years old and will performed general anesthesia surgery. The data were collected using questioner and in-depth interview. The data were analyzed using Mann-Whitney test. Results: There was a decrease number of children with moderate level of anxiety after the intervention group using pop up toys as story play therapy from 30 children (81.1%) to 6 children (16.2%). While in the control group, a total of 25 children had moderate level of anxiety (87.6%) before the theraphy, and after therapy a total of 2 children also had moderate level of anxiety (5.4%), and they were statistically significant. Conclusion: Playing pop up toys story therapy has an effect on the level of anxiety among children around 6-12 years old and will performed general anesthesia surgery. Keywords: pop up toys story therapy, anxiety level, general anesthesia, school age children Correspondence: Ni Ketut Mendri. School of Health Sciences, Yogyakarta. Email: mendriniketut@yahoo.com DOI: https://doi.org/10.26911/the7thicph.03.29

Goal-Oriented (GO) Dialogue Systems, colloquially known as goal oriented chatbots, help users achieve a predefined goal (e.g. book a movie ticket) within a closed domain. A first step is to understand the user's goal by using natural language understanding techniques. Once the goal is known, the bot must manage a dialogue to achieve that goal, which is conducted with respect to a learnt policy. The success of the dialogue system depends on the quality of the policy, which is in turn reliant on the availability of high-quality training data for the policy learning method, for instance Deep Reinforcement Learning. Due to the domain specificity, the amount of available data is typically too low to allow the training of good dialogue policies. In this paper we introduce a transfer learning method to mitigate the effects of the low in-domain data availability. Our transfer learning based approach improves the bot's success rate by 20% in relative terms for distant domains and we more than double it for close domains, compared to the model without transfer learning. Moreover, the transfer learning chatbots learn the policy up to 5 to 10 times faster. Finally, as the transfer learning approach is complementary to additional processing such as warm-starting, we show that their joint application gives the best outcomes.

Ours is an age of pervasive political turbulence, and the scale of the challenge requires new thinking on politics as well as public ethics for our world. In Western countries, the specter of Islamophobia, alt-right populism, along with racialized violence has shaken public confidence in long-secure assumptions rooted in democracy, diversity, and citizenship. The tragic denouement of so many of the Arab uprisings together with the ascendance of apocalyptic extremists like Daesh and Boko Haram have caused an even greater sense of alarm in large parts of the Muslim-majority world. It is against this backdrop that M.A. Muqtedar Khan has written a book of breathtaking range and ethical beauty. The author explores the history and sociology of the Muslim world, both classic and contemporary. He does so, however, not merely to chronicle the phases of its development, but to explore just why the message of compassion, mercy, and ethical beauty so prominent in the Quran and Sunna of the Prophet came over time to be displaced by a narrow legalism that emphasized jurisprudence, punishment, and social control. In the modern era, Western Orientalists and Islamists alike have pushed the juridification and interpretive reification of Islamic ethical traditions even further. Each group has asserted that the essence of Islam lies in jurisprudence (fiqh), and both have tended to imagine this legal heritage on the model of Western positive law, according to which law is authorized, codified, and enforced by a leviathan state. “Reification of Shariah and equating of Islam and Shariah has a rather emaciating effect on Islam,” Khan rightly argues. It leads its proponents to overlook “the depth and heights of Islamic faith, mysticism, philosophy or even emotions such as divine love (Muhabba)” (13). As the sociologist of Islamic law, Sami Zubaida, has similarly observed, in all these developments one sees evidence, not of a traditionalist reassertion of Muslim values, but a “triumph of Western models” of religion and state (Zubaida 2003:135). To counteract these impoverishing trends, Khan presents a far-reaching analysis that “seeks to move away from the now failed vision of Islamic states without demanding radical secularization” (2). He does so by positioning himself squarely within the ethical and mystical legacy of the Qur’an and traditions of the Prophet. As the book’s title makes clear, the key to this effort of religious recovery is “the cosmology of Ihsan and the worldview of Al-Tasawwuf, the science of Islamic mysticism” (1-2). For Islamist activists whose models of Islam have more to do with contemporary identity politics than a deep reading of Islamic traditions, Khan’s foregrounding of Ihsan may seem unfamiliar or baffling. But one of the many achievements of this book is the skill with which it plumbs the depth of scripture, classical commentaries, and tasawwuf practices to recover and confirm the ethic that lies at their heart. “The Quran promises that God is with those who do beautiful things,” the author reminds us (Khan 2019:1). The concept of Ihsan appears 191 times in 175 verses in the Quran (110). The concept is given its richest elaboration, Khan explains, in the famous hadith of the Angel Gabriel. This tradition recounts that when Gabriel appeared before the Prophet he asked, “What is Ihsan?” Both Gabriel’s question and the Prophet’s response make clear that Ihsan is an ideal at the center of the Qur’an and Sunna of the Prophet, and that it enjoins “perfection, goodness, to better, to do beautiful things and to do righteous deeds” (3). It is this cosmological ethic that Khan argues must be restored and implemented “to develop a political philosophy … that emphasizes love over law” (2). In its expansive exploration of Islamic ethics and civilization, Khan’s Islam and Good Governance will remind some readers of the late Shahab Ahmed’s remarkable book, What is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic (Ahmed 2016). Both are works of impressive range and spiritual depth. But whereas Ahmed stood in the humanities wing of Islamic studies, Khan is an intellectual polymath who moves easily across the Islamic sciences, social theory, and comparative politics. He brings the full weight of his effort to conclusion with policy recommendations for how “to combine Sufism with political theory” (6), and to do so in a way that recommends specific “Islamic principles that encourage good governance, and politics in pursuit of goodness” (8).

This is a publication about citizen-led urbanism processes in Latin America. It follows the recent life of a movement originating from, and driven by and for citizens, who out of a compelling love for their cities, have brought together actors from all fields to co-create new, more inclusive and equitable public space models. By using tools such as innovation, creativity and co-responsible solidarity, citizen-led urbanism has been able to complement the traditional approaches to urban planning and city governance. This publication also invites us to move from the theory and concepts that provide the rationale for citizen-led urbanism to the actual practical experiences which are helping to shape it and consolidate it as a regional movement. It thus takes us on a journey through successful projects developed in different places and contexts of Latin America and looks at the experience of the first urban innovation labs, as a means to consider the paths that may lead to new horizons of an inclusive future, in view of the challenges, both known and yet to be known, of the first half of the 21st century. In less than one decade, with their impressive diversity and vigorous urban activity, members of the citizen-led urbanism movement have brought about changes in the streets, neighborhoods and cities where they live: changes in the way of thinking of authorities and fellow citizens; changes in public policies, which have an impact not only on the urban landscape, but also on how we relate to each other through our relationship with what we call “the urban” and with ecosystems, with our individual needs and with the urgency of organizing ourselves collectively to identify solutions for the common good. This is why this book became a superbook, i.e., an extensive compilation about a fabulous collective adventure, undertaken by thousands of people whose common denominator is creativity and their will to think and do things differently. We hope it may serve as an inspiration to its readers so that they, too, may take a leading role in this story.

Banco de la República is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2023. This is a very significant anniversary and one that provides an opportunity to highlight the contribution the Bank has made to the country’s development. Its track record as guarantor of monetary stability has established it as the one independent state institution that generates the greatest confidence among Colombians due to its transparency, management capabilities, and effective compliance with the central banking and cultural responsibilities entrusted to it by the Constitution and the Law. On a date as important as this, the Board of Directors of Banco de la República (BDBR) pays tribute to the generations of governors and officers whose commitment and dedication have contributed to the growth of this institution.1 Banco de la República’s mandate was confirmed in the National Constitutional Assembly of 1991 where the citizens had the opportunity to elect the seventy people who would have the task of drafting a new constitution. The leaders of the three political movements with the most votes were elected as chairs to the Assembly, and this tripartite presidency reflected the plurality and the need for consensus among the different political groups to move the reform forward. Among the issues considered, the National Constitutional Assembly gave special importance to monetary stability. That is why they decided to include central banking and to provide Banco de la República with the necessary autonomy to use the instruments for which they are responsible without interference from other authorities. The constituent members understood that ensuring price stability is a state duty and that the entity responsible for this task must be enshrined in the Constitution and have the technical capability and institutional autonomy necessary to adopt the decisions they deem appropriate to achieve this fundamental objective in coordination with the general economic policy. In particular, Article 373 established that “the State, through Banco de la República, shall ensure the maintenance of the purchasing power of the currency,” a provision that coincided with the central banking system adopted by countries that have been successful in controlling inflation. In 1999, in Ruling 481, the Constitutional Court stated that “the duty to maintain the purchasing power of the currency applies to not only the monetary, credit, and exchange authority, i.e., the Board of Banco de la República, but also those who have responsibilities in the formulation and implementation of the general economic policy of the country” and that “the basic constitutional purpose of Banco de la República is the protection of a sound currency. However, this authority must take the other economic objectives of state intervention such as full employment into consideration in their decisions since these functions must be coordinated with the general economic policy.” The reforms to Banco de la República agreed upon in the Constitutional Assembly of 1991 and in Act 31/1992 can be summarized in the following aspects: i) the Bank was assigned a specific mandate: to maintain the purchasing power of the currency in coordination with the general economic policy; ii) the BDBR was designatedas the monetary, foreign exchange, and credit authority; iii) the Bank and its Board of Directors were granted a significant degree of independence from the government; iv) the Bank was prohibited from granting credit to the private sector except in the case of the financial sector; v) established that in order to grant credit to the government, the unanimous vote of its Board of Directors was required except in the case of open market transactions; vi) determined that the legislature may, in no case, order credit quotas in favor of the State or individuals; vii) Congress was appointed, on behalf of society, as the main addressee of the Bank’s reporting exercise; and viii) the responsibility for inspection, surveillance, and control over Banco de la República was delegated to the President of the Republic. The members of the National Constitutional Assembly clearly understood that the benefits of low and stable inflation extend to the whole of society and contribute mto the smooth functioning of the economic system. Among the most important of these is that low inflation promotes the efficient use of productive resources by allowing relative prices to better guide the allocation of resources since this promotes economic growth and increases the welfare of the population. Likewise, low inflation reduces uncertainty about the expected return on investment and future asset prices. This increases the confidence of economic agents, facilitates long-term financing, and stimulates investment. Since the low-income population is unable to protect itself from inflation by diversifying its assets, and a high proportion of its income is concentrated in the purchase of food and other basic goods that are generally the most affected by inflationary shocks, low inflation avoids arbitrary redistribution of income and wealth.2 Moreover, low inflation facilitates wage negotiations, creates a good labor climate, and reduces the volatility of employment levels. Finally, low inflation helps to make the tax system more transparent and equitable by avoiding the distortions that inflation introduces into the value of assets and income that make up the tax base. From the monetary authority’s point of view, one of the most relevant benefits of low inflation is the credibility that economic agents acquire in inflation targeting, which turns it into an effective nominal anchor on price levels. Upon receiving its mandate, and using its autonomy, Banco de la República began to announce specific annual inflation targets as of 1992. Although the proposed inflation targets were not met precisely during this first stage, a downward trend in inflation was achieved that took it from 32.4% in 1990 to 16.7% in 1998. At that time, the exchange rate was kept within a band. This limited the effectiveness of monetary policy, which simultaneously sought to meet an inflation target and an exchange rate target. The Asian crisis spread to emerging economies and significantly affected the Colombian economy. The exchange rate came under strong pressure to depreciate as access to foreign financing was cut off under conditions of a high foreign imbalance. This, together with the lack of exchange rate flexibility, prevented a countercyclical monetary policy and led to a 4.2% contraction in GDP that year. In this context of economic slowdown, annual inflation fell to 9.2% at the end of 1999, thus falling below the 15% target set for that year. This episode fully revealed how costly it could be, in terms of economic activity, to have inflation and exchange rate targets simultaneously. Towards the end of 1999, Banco de la República announced the adoption of a new monetary policy regime called the Inflation Targeting Plan. This regime, known internationally as ‘Inflation Targeting,’ has been gaining increasing acceptance in developed countries, having been adopted in 1991 by New Zealand, Canada, and England, among others, and has achieved significant advances in the management of inflation without incurring costs in terms of economic activity. In Latin America, Brazil and Chile also adopted it in 1999. In the case of Colombia, the last remaining requirement to be fulfilled in order to adopt said policy was exchange rate flexibility. This was realized around September 1999, when the BDBR decided to abandon the exchange-rate bands to allow the exchange rate to be freely determined in the market.Consistent with the constitutional mandate, the fundamental objective of this new policy approach was “the achievement of an inflation target that contributes to maintaining output growth around its potential.”3 This potential capacity was understood as the GDP growth that the economy can obtain if it fully utilizes its productive resources. To meet this objective, monetary policy must of necessity play a countercyclical role in the economy. This is because when economic activity is below its potential and there are idle resources, the monetary authority can reduce the interest rate in the absence of inflationary pressure to stimulate the economy and, when output exceeds its potential capacity, raise it. This policy principle, which is immersed in the models for guiding the monetary policy stance, makes the following two objectives fully compatible in the medium term: meeting the inflation target and achieving a level of economic activity that is consistent with its productive capacity. To achieve this purpose, the inflation targeting system uses the money market interest rate (at which the central bank supplies primary liquidity to commercial banks) as the primary policy instrument. This replaced the quantity of money as an intermediate monetary policy target that Banco de la República, like several other central banks, had used for a long time. In the case of Colombia, the objective of the new monetary policy approach implied, in practical terms, that the recovery of the economy after the 1999 contraction should be achieved while complying with the decreasing inflation targets established by the BDBR. The accomplishment of this purpose was remarkable. In the first half of the first decade of the 2000s, economic activity recovered significantly and reached a growth rate of 6.8% in 2006. Meanwhile, inflation gradually declined in line with inflation targets. That was how the inflation rate went from 9.2% in 1999 to 4.5% in 2006, thus meeting the inflation target established for that year while GDP reached its potential level. After this balance was achieved in 2006, inflation rebounded to 5.7% in 2007, above the 4.0% target for that year due to the fact that the 7.5% GDP growth exceeded the potential capacity of the economy.4 After proving the effectiveness of the inflation targeting system in its first years of operation, this policy regime continued to consolidate as the BDBR and the technical staff gained experience in its management and state-of-the-art economic models were incorporated to diagnose the present and future state of the economy and to assess the persistence of inflation deviations and expectations with respect to the inflation target. Beginning in 2010, the BDBR established the long-term 3.0% annual inflation target, which remains in effect today. Lower inflation has contributed to making the macroeconomic environment more stable, and this has favored sustained economic growth, financial stability, capital market development, and the functioning of payment systems. As a result, reductions in the inflationary risk premia and lower TES and credit interest rates were achieved. At the same time, the duration of public domestic debt increased significantly going from 2.27 years in December 2002 to 5.86 years in December 2022, and financial deepening, measured as the level of the portfolio as a percentage of GDP, went from around 20% in the mid-1990s to values above 45% in recent years in a healthy context for credit institutions.Having been granted autonomy by the Constitution to fulfill the mandate of preserving the purchasing power of the currency, the tangible achievements made by Banco de la República in managing inflation together with the significant benefits derived from the process of bringing inflation to its long-term target, make the BDBR’s current challenge to return inflation to the 3.0% target even more demanding and pressing. As is well known, starting in 2021, and especially in 2022, inflation in Colombia once again became a serious economic problem with high welfare costs. The inflationary phenomenon has not been exclusive to Colombia and many other developed and emerging countries have seen their inflation rates move away from the targets proposed by their central banks.5 The reasons for this phenomenon have been analyzed in recent Reports to Congress, and this new edition delves deeper into the subject with updated information. The solid institutional and technical base that supports the inflation targeting approach under which the monetary policy strategy operates gives the BDBR the necessary elements to face this difficult challenge with confidence. In this regard, the BDBR reiterated its commitment to the 3.0% inflation target in its November 25 communiqué and expects it to be reached by the end of 2024.6 Monetary policy will continue to focus on meeting this objective while ensuring the sustainability of economic activity, as mandated by the Constitution. Analyst surveys done in March showed a significant increase (from 32.3% in January to 48.5% in March) in the percentage of responses placing inflation expectations two years or more ahead in a range between 3.0% and 4.0%. This is a clear indication of the recovery of credibility in the medium-term inflation target and is consistent with the BDBR’s announcement made in November 2022. The moderation of the upward trend in inflation seen in January, and especially in February, will help to reinforce this revision of inflation expectations and will help to meet the proposed targets. After reaching 5.6% at the end of 2021, inflation maintained an upward trend throughout 2022 due to inflationary pressures from both external sources, associated with the aftermath of the pandemic and the consequences of the war in Ukraine, and domestic sources, resulting from: strengthening of local demand; price indexation processes stimulated by the increase in inflation expectations; the impact on food production caused by the mid-2021 strike; and the pass-through of depreciation to prices. The 10% increase in the minimum wage in 2021 and the 16% increase in 2022, both of which exceeded the actual inflation and the increase in productivity, accentuated the indexation processes by establishing a high nominal adjustment benchmark. Thus, total inflation went to 13.1% by the end of 2022. The annual change in food prices, which went from 17.2% to 27.8% between those two years, was the most influential factor in the surge in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Another segment that contributed significantly to price increases was regulated products, which saw the annual change go from 7.1% in December 2021 to 11.8% by the end of 2022. The measure of core inflation excluding food and regulated items, in turn, went from 2.5% to 9.5% between the end of 2021 and the end of 2022. The substantial increase in core inflation shows that inflationary pressure has spread to most of the items in the household basket, which is characteristic of inflationary processes with generalized price indexation as is the case in Colombia. Monetary policy began to react early to this inflationary pressure. Thus, starting with its September 2021 session, the BDBR began a progressive change in the monetary policy stance moving away from the historical low of a 1.75% policy rate that had intended to stimulate the recovery of the economy. This adjustment process continued without interruption throughout 2022 and into the beginning of 2023 when the monetary policy rate reached 12.75% last January, thus accumulating an increase of 11 percentage points (pp). The public and the markets have been surprised that inflation continued to rise despite significant interest rate increases. However, as the BDBR has explained in its various communiqués, monetary policy works with a lag. Just as in 2022 economic activity recovered to a level above the pre-pandemic level, driven, along with other factors, by the monetary stimulus granted during the pandemic period and subsequent months, so too the effects of the current restrictive monetary policy will gradually take effect. This will allow us to expect the inflation rate to converge to 3.0% by the end of 2024 as is the BDBR’s purpose.Inflation results for January and February of this year showed declining marginal increases (13 bp and 3 bp respectively) compared to the change seen in December (59 bp). This suggests that a turning point in the inflation trend is approaching. In other Latin American countries such as Chile, Brazil, Perú, and Mexico, inflation has peaked and has begun to decline slowly, albeit with some ups and downs. It is to be expected that a similar process will take place in Colombia in the coming months. The expected decline in inflation in 2023 will be due, along with other factors, to lower cost pressure from abroad as a result of the gradual normalization of supply chains, the overcoming of supply shocks caused by the weather, and road blockades in previous years. This will be reflected in lower adjustments in food prices, as has already been seen in the first two months of the year and, of course, the lagged effect of monetary policy. The process of inflation convergence to the target will be gradual and will extend beyond 2023. This process will be facilitated if devaluation pressure is reversed. To this end, it is essential to continue consolidating fiscal sustainability and avoid messages on different public policy fronts that generate uncertainty and distrust. 1 This Report to Congress includes Box 1, which summarizes the trajectory of Banco de la República over the past 100 years. In addition, under the Bank’s auspices, several books that delve into various aspects of the history of this institution have been published in recent years. See, for example: Historia del Banco de la República 1923-2015; Tres banqueros centrales; Junta Directiva del Banco de la República: grandes episodios en 30 años de historia; Banco de la República: 90 años de la banca central en Colombia. 2 This is why lower inflation has been reflected in a reduction of income inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient that went from 58.7 in 1998 to 51.3 in the year prior to the pandemic. 3 See Gómez Javier, Uribe José Darío, Vargas Hernando (2002). “The Implementation of Inflation Targeting in Colombia”. Borradores de Economía, No. 202, March, available at: https://repositorio.banrep.gov.co/handle/20.500.12134/5220 4 See López-Enciso Enrique A.; Vargas-Herrera Hernando and Rodríguez-Niño Norberto (2016). “The inflation targeting strategy in Colombia. An historical view.” Borradores de Economía, No. 952. https://repositorio.banrep.gov.co/handle/20.500.12134/6263 5 According to the IMF, the percentage change in consumer prices between 2021 and 2022 went from 3.1% to 7.3% for advanced economies, and from 5.9% to 9.9% for emerging market and developing economies. 6 https://www.banrep.gov.co/es/noticias/junta-directiva-banco-republica-reitera-meta-inflacion-3

We are continuing from our previous book, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Pastoralist Researchers on the Uganda/Kenya Border. That book showed the insecurity in Karamoja and Turkana in 2023. When we showed the first book to the government officials in Karamoja and Kam pala, they said, it’s a very nice thing. When we gave it to the Turkana County Government and Members of Parlia ment, they also complimented it. In the face of the problems, pastoralist leaders have decided a new strategy. This second book records what we learned from May 2023 to March 2024. For instance, a new Brigade Commander was appointed to Kotido. He had sittings with young people. He came among them, not like any other soldier to be feared. He found people, he sat, he shared. Even the warriors who feared the army were willing to meet him. In this book we characterise governments, security forces, raiders and thieves as animals who live among us. When we are living with lions, leopards, hyenas, and foxes in the bush, we get to know them and how they live. Then we assess ourselves. Are we the ones that are confusing the animals and causing any of them to act dangerously? It is as if we have been trying to attack these animals, but they have escaped us. We look at our own skills, strengths, and weaknesses. What energy do we have? It is not an easy thing to move from here. We must find ways to coax these animals to bring them to good relations with us.