Journal articles on the topic 'Vision language navigation'

The vision-language navigation (VLN) task requires an agent to reach a target with the guidance of natural language instruction. Previous works learn to navigate step-by-step following an instruction. However, these works may fail to discriminate the similarities and discrepancies across instruction-trajectory pairs and ignore the temporal continuity of sub-instructions. These problems hinder agents from learning distinctive vision-and-language representations, harming the robustness and generalizability of the navigation policy. In this paper, we propose a Contrastive Instruction-Trajectory Learning (CITL) framework that explores invariance across similar data samples and variance across different ones to learn distinctive representations for robust navigation. Specifically, we propose: (1) a coarse-grained contrastive learning objective to enhance vision-and-language representations by contrasting semantics of full trajectory observations and instructions, respectively; (2) a fine-grained contrastive learning objective to perceive instructions by leveraging the temporal information of the sub-instructions; (3) a pairwise sample-reweighting mechanism for contrastive learning to mine hard samples and hence mitigate the influence of data sampling bias in contrastive learning. Our CITL can be easily integrated with VLN backbones to form a new learning paradigm and achieve better generalizability in unseen environments. Extensive experiments show that the model with CITL surpasses the previous state-of-the-art methods on R2R, R4R, and RxR.

Vision-and-Language Navigation (VLN) is a task designed to enable embodied agents carry out natural language instructions in realistic environments. Most VLN tasks, however, are guided by an elaborate set of instructions that is depicted step-by-step. This approach deviates from real-world problems in which humans only describe the object and its surroundings and allow the robot to ask for help when required. Vision-based Navigation with Language-based Assistance (VNLA) is a recently proposed task that requires an agent to navigate and find a target object according to a high-level language instruction. Due to the lack of step-by-step navigation guidance, the key to VNLA is to conduct goal-oriented exploration. In this paper, we design an Attention-based Knowledge-enabled Cross-modality Reasoning with Assistant’s Help (AKCR-AH) model to address the unique challenges of this task. AKCR-AH learns a generalized navigation strategy from three new perspectives: (1) external commonsense knowledge is incorporated into visual relational reasoning, so as to take proper action at each viewpoint by learning the internal–external correlations among object- and room-entities; (2) a simulated human assistant is introduced in the environment, who provides direct intervention assistance when required; (3) a memory-based Transformer architecture is adopted as the policy framework to make full use of the history clues stored in memory tokens for exploration. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our method compared with other baselines.

Due to the development of computer vision and natural language processing technologies in recent years, there has been a growing interest in multimodal intelligent tasks that require the ability to concurrently understand various forms of input data such as images and text. Vision-and-language navigation (VLN) require the alignment and grounding of multimodal input data to enable real-time perception of the task status on panoramic images and natural language instruction. This study proposes a novel deep neural network model (JMEBS), with joint multimodal embedding and backtracking search for VLN tasks. The proposed JMEBS model uses a transformer-based joint multimodal embedding module. JMEBS uses both multimodal context and temporal context. It also employs backtracking-enabled greedy local search (BGLS), a novel algorithm with a backtracking feature designed to improve the task success rate and optimize the navigation path, based on the local and global scores related to candidate actions. A novel global scoring method is also used for performance improvement by comparing the partial trajectories searched thus far with a plurality of natural language instructions. The performance of the proposed model on various operations was then experimentally demonstrated and compared with other models using the Matterport3D Simulator and room-to-room (R2R) benchmark datasets.

In the vision and language navigation task (Anderson et al. 2018), the agent may encounter ambiguous situations that are hard to interpret by just relying on visual information and natural language instructions. We propose an interactive learning framework to endow the agent with the ability to ask for users' help in such situations. As part of this framework, we investigate multiple learning approaches for the agent with different levels of complexity. The simplest model-confusion-based method lets the agent ask questions based on its confusion, relying on the predefined confidence threshold of a next action prediction model. To build on this confusion-based method, the agent is expected to demonstrate more sophisticated reasoning such that it discovers the timing and locations to interact with a human. We achieve this goal using reinforcement learning (RL) with a proposed reward shaping term, which enables the agent to ask questions only when necessary. The success rate can be boosted by at least 15% with only one question asked on average during the navigation. Furthermore, we show that the RL agent is capable of adjusting dynamically to noisy human responses. Finally, we design a continual learning strategy, which can be viewed as a data augmentation method, for the agent to improve further utilizing its interaction history with a human. We demonstrate the proposed strategy is substantially more realistic and data-efficient compared to previously proposed pre-exploration techniques.

Recent advances in the areas of multimodal machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) have led to the development of challenging tasks at the intersection of Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, and Embodied AI. Whereas many approaches and previous survey pursuits have characterised one or two of these dimensions, there has not been a holistic analysis at the center of all three. Moreover, even when combinations of these topics are considered, more focus is placed on describing, e.g., current architectural methods, as opposed to also illustrating high-level challenges and opportunities for the field. In this survey paper, we discuss Embodied Vision-Language Planning (EVLP) tasks, a family of prominent embodied navigation and manipulation problems that jointly use computer vision and natural language. We propose a taxonomy to unify these tasks and provide an in-depth analysis and comparison of the new and current algorithmic approaches, metrics, simulated environments, as well as the datasets used for EVLP tasks. Finally, we present the core challenges that we believe new EVLP works should seek to address, and we advocate for task construction that enables model generalizability and furthers real-world deployment.

The object of this paper is to create a system that can control any vehicle in any gaming environment to simulate, study, experiment and improve how self-driving vehicles operate. It is to be taken as the bases for future work on autonomous vehicles with real hardware devices. The long-term goal is to eliminate human error. Perception, localisation, planning and control subsystems were developed. LiDAR and RADAR sensors were used in addition to a normal web Camera. After getting information from the perception module, the system will be able to localise where the vehicle is, then the planning module is used to plan to which location the vehicle will move, using localisation module data to draw up the best path to use. After knowing the best path, the system will control the vehicle to move autonomously without human help. As a controller a Proportional Integral Derivative PID controller was used. Python programming language, computer vision, and machine learning were used in developing the system, where the only hardware required is a computer with a GPU and powerful graphical card that can run a game which has a vehicle, roads with lane lines and a map of the road. The developed system is intended to be a good tool in conducting experiments for achieving reliable autonomous vehicle navigation.

AbstractRepresentation and reasoning with qualitative spatial relations is an important problem in artificial intelligence and has wide applications in the fields of geographic information system, computer vision, autonomous robot navigation, natural language understanding, spatial databases and so on. The reasons for this interest in using qualitative spatial relations include cognitive comprehensibility, efficiency and computational facility. This paper summarizes progress in qualitative spatial representation by describing key calculi representing different types of spatial relationships. The paper concludes with a discussion of current research and glimpse of future work.

The paper proposes a facet vision system composed from identical facet elements. Each facet element contains an optical system, several photodetectors, a preamplifier, and a universal microcontroller. In such a system, all facet elements operate independently of each other. Each facet element performs fast measurements of the angular velocity of objects in its field of view by calculating the discrete correlation functions of the signals from the photodetectors. The paper considers the possibility of using economical microcontrollers in facet elements for fast calculation of the discrete correlation functions. The authors perform a comparative analysis of the techniques based on the direct calculation and the calculation with fast Fourier transform. The investigation of the corresponding program code for microcontrollers in assembly language is done with calculations of the number of machine instructions and their execution time. The study confirms that economical universal microcontrollers are able to perform fast measurements by finding the maximum values of discrete correlation functions. In the case of receiving signals from 4 photodetectors, the calculation time is less than 10 milliseconds for input data arrays of 384 elements and less than 1.2 milliseconds for input data arrays of 128 elements. These results make the proposed facet vision systems applicable in navigation, orientation, and collision avoidance with moving and stationary objects in automatic vehicles, including unmanned aerial vehicles.

Navigating and understanding the real world remains a key challenge in machine learning and inspires a great variety of research in areas such as language grounding, planning, navigation and computer vision. We propose an instruction-following task that requires all of the above, and which combines the practicality of simulated environments with the challenges of ambiguous, noisy real world data. StreetNav is built on top of Google Street View and provides visually accurate environments representing real places. Agents are given driving instructions which they must learn to interpret in order to successfully navigate in this environment. Since humans equipped with driving instructions can readily navigate in previously unseen cities, we set a high bar and test our trained agents for similar cognitive capabilities. Although deep reinforcement learning (RL) methods are frequently evaluated only on data that closely follow the training distribution, our dataset extends to multiple cities and has a clean train/test separation. This allows for thorough testing of generalisation ability. This paper presents the StreetNav environment and tasks, models that establish strong baselines, and extensive analysis of the task and the trained agents.

Advances in machine learning have generated increasing enthusiasm for tasks that require high-level reasoning on top of perceptual capabilities, particularly over visual data. Such tasks include, for example, image captioning, visual question answering, and visual navigation. Their evaluation is however hindered by task-specific confounding factors and dataset biases. In parallel, the existing benchmarks for abstract reasoning are limited to synthetic stimuli (e.g. images of simple shapes) and do not capture the challenges of real-world data. We propose a new large-scale benchmark to evaluates abstract reasoning over real visual data. The test involves visual questions that require operations fundamental to many high-level vision tasks, such as comparisons of counts and logical operations on complex visual properties. The benchmark measures a method's ability to infer high-level relationships and to generalise them over image-based concepts. We provide multiple training/test splits that require controlled levels of generalization. We evaluate a range of deep learning architectures, and find that existing models, including those popular for vision-and-language tasks, are unable to solve seemingly-simple instances. Models using relational networks fare better but leave substantial room for improvement.

In recent years, researchers from the fields of computer vision, language, graphics, and robotics have tackled Embodied AI research. Embodied AI can learn through interaction with the real world and virtual environments and can perform various tasks in virtual environments using virtual robots. However, many of these are one-way tasks in which the interaction is interrupted only by answering questions or requests to the user. In this research, we aim to develop a two-way interactive navigation system by introducing knowledge-based reasoning to Embodied AI research. Specifically, the system obtains guidance candidates that are difficult to identify with existing common-sense reasoning alone by reasoning with the constructed home ontology. Then, we develop a two-way interactive navigation system in which the virtual robot can guide the user to the location in the virtual home environment that the user needs while repeating multiple conversations with the user. We evaluated whether the proposed system was able to present appropriate guidance locations as candidates based on users’ speech input about their home environment. For the evaluation, we extracted the speech data from the corpus of daily conversation, the speech data created by the subject, and the correct answer data for each data and calculated the precision, recall, and F-value. As a result, the F-value was 0.47 for the evaluation data extracted from the daily conversation corpus, and the F-value was 0.49 for the evaluation data created by the subject.

In recent years, researchers from the fields of computer vision, language, graphics, and robotics have tackled Embodied AI research. Embodied AI can learn through interaction with the real world and virtual environments and can perform various tasks in virtual environments using virtual robots. However, many of these are one-way tasks in which the interaction is interrupted only by answering questions or requests to the user. In this research, we aim to develop a two-way interactive navigation system by introducing knowledge-based reasoning to Embodied AI research. Specifically, the system obtains guidance candidates that are difficult to identify with existing common-sense reasoning alone by reasoning with the constructed home ontology. Then, we develop a two-way interactive navigation system in which the virtual robot can guide the user to the location in the virtual home environment that the user needs while repeating multiple conversations with the user. We evaluated whether the proposed system was able to present appropriate guidance locations as candidates based on users’ speech input about their home environment. For the evaluation, we extracted the speech data from the corpus of daily conversation, the speech data created by the subject, and the correct answer data for each data and calculated the precision, recall, and F-value. As a result, the F-value was 0.47 for the evaluation data extracted from the daily conversation corpus, and the F-value was 0.49 for the evaluation data created by the subject.

Deep learning is a predominant branch in machine learning, which is inspired by the operation of the human biological brain in processing information and capturing insights. Machine learning evolved to deep learning, which helps to reduce the involvement of an expert. In machine learning, the performance depends on what the expert extracts manner features, but deep neural networks are self-capable for extracting features. Deep learning performs well with a large amount of data than traditional machine learning algorithms, and also deep neural networks can give better results with different kinds of unstructured data. Deep learning is an inevitable approach in real-world applications such as computer vision where information from the visual world is extracted, in the field of natural language processing involving analyzing and understanding human languages in its meaningful way, in the medical area for diagnosing and detection, in the forecasting of weather and other natural processes, in field of cybersecurity to provide a continuous functioning for computer systems and network from attack or harm, in field of navigation and so on. Due to these advantages, deep learning algorithms are applied to a variety of complex tasks. With the help of deep learning, the tasks that had been said as unachievable can be solved. This paper describes the brief study of the real-world application problems domain with deep learning solutions.

Falls is a common and debilitating condition among the older population, intensifying the need to educate older persons about falls. Technology advancement enables effective and efficient delivery of falls education to the older population. However, there is paucity of information on the perception of Malaysian older population on falls and their preferred website characteristics such as font size, design, layout, colour, navigation, and use of graphics or videos. Physiological changes in vision, cognition and psychomotor skills can affect how the older persons use the website. As Malaysia is a multicultural country, the needs of the website characteristics and falls perception of older persons may differ greatly. The aim of this study was to explore the perceptions of the older persons about falls and their desired website characteristics. Twenty-five community-living older persons (n = 25) of age 60 years and above were involved in the focus group discussions. NvivoTM software was used for data management and thematic analysis was undertaken. Emerging themes included ’Perceptions of falls in older persons’, ’Actions taken when falls occurred’, ’Perceived prevention strategies for falls’ and ’End user requirements for falls educational website’. Falls were perceived as both an avoidable and a non-avoidable incident. Although the participants mentioned physical activity and home hazard modifications as strategies to prevent falls, they mainly discussed self-initiated precautionary approaches in falls prevention. Regarding desired website characteristics, the participants emphasized on easily readable text, appealing design, clear information, use of images/videos, and simple website navigation. Special requirements for colour selection and multi-language options were also raised. The delivery of falls education through website can be made possible by understanding the perception of older persons about falls and their requirements for the website. This is especially important as ethnic and cultural influences may play a role on their perceptions about falls and desired website characteristics.

Visual representations of node-link diagrams are very important for the software development process. In many situations, large diagrams have to be explored, whereby diagram elements of interest are often clipped from the viewport and are therefore not visible. Thus, in state-of-the-art modeling tools, navigation is accompanied by time-consuming panning and zooming. One solution to this problem is offscreen visualization techniques. Usually, they indicate the existence and direction of clipped elements by overlays at the border of the viewport. In this article, we contribute the application of offscreen visualization techniques to the domain of node-link diagrams in general and to Unified Modeling Language class diagrams in particular. The basic idea of our approach is to represent offscreen nodes by proxy elements located within an interactive border region around the viewport. The proxies show information of the associated offscreen nodes and can be used to quickly navigate to the respective node. In addition, we contribute techniques that preserve the routing of edges during panning and zooming and present strategies to make our approach scalable to large diagrams. We conducted a formative pilot study of our first prototype. Based on the observations made during the evaluation, we suggest how particular techniques should be combined. Finally, we ran a user evaluation to compare our technique with a traditional zoom+pan interface. The results showed that our approach is significantly faster for exploring relationships within diagrams than state-of-the-art interfaces. We also found that the offscreen visualization combined with an additional overview window did not improve the orientation within an unknown diagram. However, an overview should be offered as a cognitive support. CR categories: D.2.2 [Software Engineering]: Design Tools and Techniques— User Interface; H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: User Interfaces— Graphical User Interfaces General terms: Design, Human Factors

The ability to precisely classify different types of terrain is extremely important for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). There are multiple situations in which terrain classification is fundamental for achieving a UAV’s mission success, such as emergency landing, aerial mapping, decision making, and cooperation between UAVs in autonomous navigation. Previous research works describe different terrain classification approaches mainly using static features from RGB images taken onboard UAVs. In these works, the terrain is classified from each image taken as a whole, not divided into blocks; this approach has an obvious drawback when applied to images with multiple terrain types. This paper proposes a robust computer vision system to classify terrain types using three main algorithms, which extract features from UAV’s downwash effect: Static textures- Gray-Level Co-Occurrence Matrix (GLCM), Gray-Level Run Length Matrix (GLRLM) and Dynamic textures- Optical Flow method. This system has been fully implemented using the OpenCV library, and the GLCM algorithm has also been partially specified in a Hardware Description Language (VHDL) and implemented in a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)-based platform. In addition to these feature extraction algorithms, a neural network was designed with the aim of classifying the terrain into one of four classes. Lastly, in order to store and access all the classified terrain information, a dynamic map, with this information was generated. The system was validated using videos acquired onboard a UAV with an RGB camera.

After surveying visions of the future, this article engages some of the most interesting conceptualisations coming from the ‘new sciences’ and resonating with the perspective of civilisational renewal. The focus is on the environment, as the most accessible point of departure for visions of the future, and ‘transition’, as the best description of where we are. From here, the language of Islamic civilisational renewal is brought out to both deepen and sharpen the contemporary discourse.

Individuals face numerous challenges with many disorders, particularly when multiple disfunctions are diagnosed and especially for visually effected wheelchair users. This scenario, in reality creates in a degree of incapacity on the part of the wheelchair user in terms of performing simple activities. Based on their specific medical needs confined patients are treated in a modified method. Independent navigation is secured for individuals with vision and motor disabilities. There is a necessity for communication which justifies the use of virtual reality (VR) in this navigation situation. For the effective integration of locomotion besides, it must be under natural guidance. Electroencephalography (EEG), which uses random brain impulses, has made significant progress in the field of health. The custom of an automated audio announcement system modified to have the help of Virtual Reality (VR) and EEG for training of locomotion and individualised interaction of wheelchair users with visual disability is demonstrated in this study through an experiment. Enabling the patients who were otherwise deemed incapacitated to participate in social activities, as the aim was to have efficient connections. The natural control, feedback, stimuli, and protection these subsequent principles founded this project. Via properly conducted experiments, a multilayer computer rehabilitation system was created that integrated natural interaction assisted by EEG, which enabled the movements in the virtual environment and real wheelchair. For blind wheelchair operator patients this study involved of expounding the proper methodology. For educating the value of life and independence of blind wheelchair users, outcomes proven that VR with EEG signals has that potential. To protect their life straightaway and to report all these disputes, the military system should have high speed, more precise portable prototype device for nursing the soldier health, recognition of solider location and report about health sharing system to the concerned system. FPGA-based soldier’s health observing and position gratitude system is proposed in this paper. Reliant on heart rate which is centred on EEG signals the soldier health is observed in systematic bases. By emerging Verilog HDL programming language and executing on Artix-7 development FPGA board of part name XC7ACSG100t the whole work is approved in a Vivado Design Suite. Classification of different abnormalities, and cloud storage of EEG along with type of abnormalities, artifact elimination, abnormalities identification based on feature extraction, exist in the segment of suggested architecture. Irregularity circumstances are noticed through developed prototype system and alert the physically challenged (PHC) individual via audio announcement. An actual method for eradicating motion artefacts from EEG signals that have anomalies in the PHC person's brain has been established, and the established system is a portable device that can deliver differences in brain signal variation intensity. Primarily the EEG signals can be taken and the undesirable artifact can be detached, later structures can be mined by DWT these are the two stages through which artifact deletion can be completed. The anomalies in signal can be noticed and recognized by using machine learning algorithms known as Multirate SVM classifiers, when the features have been extracted using a combination of HMM and GMM. Intended for capable declaration about action taken by a blind person, these result signals are protected in storage devices and conveyed to the controller. Pretending daily motion schedules allows the pretentious EEG signals to be caught. Aimed at the validation of planned system, the database can be used and continued with numerous recorded signals of EEG. The projected strategy executes better in terms of re-storing theta, delta, alpha, and beta (TDAB) complexes of the original EEG with less alteration and a higher signal to noise ratio (SNR) value of the EEG signal which illustrates in the quantitative analysis. The projected method used Verilog HDL and MATLAB software for both formation and authorization of results in order to yield improved results. Since from the achieved results, it is initiated that 32% enhancement in SNR, 14% in MSE and 65% enhancement in recognition of anomalies, hence design is effectively certified and proved for standard EEG signals datasets on FPGA.

With the advent of multitier and service-oriented architectures, the presentation tier is more detached from the rest of the web application than ever. Moreover, complex web applications can have thousands of linked web pages built using different technologies. As a result, the description of navigation maps has become more complex in recent years. This paper presents NMMp, a UML extension that: (i) provides an abstract vision of the navigation structure of the presentation tier of web applications, independently of architectural details or programming languages; (ii) can be automatically transformed into UML-WAE class diagrams, which can be easily integrated with the design of the other tiers of the web application; (iii) encourages the use of architectural and multitier design patterns; and (iv) has been developed according to OMG standards, thus facilitating its use with general purpose UML CASE tools in industry.

Following the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Calls to Action, Canadian universities and colleges have felt pressured to indigenize their institutions. What “indigenization” has looked like, however, has varied significantly. Based on the input from an anonymous online survey of 25 Indigenous academics and their allies, we assert that indigenization is a three-part spectrum. On one end is Indigenous inclusion, in the middle reconciliation indigenization, and on the other end decolonial indigenization. We conclude that despite using reconciliatory language, post-secondary institutions in Canada focus predominantly on Indigenous inclusion. We offer two suggestions of policy and praxis— treaty-based decolonial indigenization and resurgence-based decolonial indigenization—to demonstrate a way toward more just Canadian academy.

This essay takes a historical view on “citizen science” by exploring its socialist version via the case of a Soviet amateur seismologist Vladimir Mannar. In the wake of the 1948 Ashgabat earthquake, which coincided with Lysenko’s victory in his campaign against genetics, Mannar launched an aborted campaign for a participatory “socialist seismology.” Mannar co-opted Lysenkoist language of science for the people and gained professional status within professional seismology but was shut out by the experts capitalizing on a “big science” imperative of cold war. Mannar’s personal experiences of navigating competing pulls of cold war seismology and his vision of “people’s seismology,” marginalized within increasingly technical and instrumental cold war science, shed light on oxymoronic nature of citizen science, and the clash between participatory vision of science and an increasing reliance on high-level technical expertise. This case provides a vantage point from which to examine the dual nature of citizen science with its dual loyalties, ambiguities, and the constantly renegotiated status of data—the raison d’être and the most tangible outcome of the initiatives unfolded on the outer fringes of academic science.

Abstract Research is a political activity. Researchers are responsible for theories and methods used to explore, explain, or ignore injustices. A need exists for developing new tools and pathways of knowledge based on experiences, language, and intellect of older adults from Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities. This presentation argues for the utility of visual methods in critical qualitative research as a medium that allows researchers and participants to co-construct knowledge. Lessons learned about implementing projects using visual methods from the intersectional standpoint of the authors – three younger women of color – will be discussed. Promises and complexities of navigating interpersonal dynamics, decolonizing knowledge-production, and scaling visual methods on multiple levels will be elucidated. Collectively, we argue that visual methods are rigorous for subverting power dynamics rooted in extractive research practices, and provide a vehicle for community-engaged participatory action research that has potential to advance social justice in gerontology.

This study explores a multimodal approach to teaching contemporary Chinese culture to foster university students' intercultural awareness and intercultural communication competence via a third space. Two universities in the UK took part in the study where the course contents moved from static notions of culture-as-fact in terms of national traditions to digital presentation of and live discussion about contemporary China. The pedagogy includes discussing Chinese celebrities' digital videos and films on digital platforms, and students' digital presentations in multimodal modes. Findings from students' comments in the module evaluations, students' reflective essays, and lecturers' observations prove the viability of this approach, and the data analyzed via themes address the function of the third space, the application of multimodality, and approaches to intercultural awareness and intercultural communication competence. The paper suggests that multimodality can be an effective approach to advancing theory and practice in future contemporary culture teaching.

For more than a decade, libraries, archives, and museums (LAM) have been discussing digital access to collections and digital asset management. Coordinating successful interfaces for users, who also may be internal to an organization, requires multiple areas of expertise: vision from administrators; content and context from archivists, librarians, and curators; and technical skills from catalogers, specialists in digital curation, and web developers. Rarely can effective systems be developed by just one of these specialties. It takes collaboration, resources, and navigation of the “languages” of each separate, but related, discipline. Practitioners in these fields know that working together for such projects can be challenging, despite similar goals of preserving and providing access to historical materials. In Libraries, Archives, and Museums Today: Insights from the Field, authors Peter Botticelli, Martha R. Mahard, and Michèle V. Cloonan present 14 case studies that document the current issues, successes, and failures related to collaboration around technology at a number of diverse cultural institutions, as well as overall challenges in the digital age.

Speeches are products of human minds reflecting ideas and opinions of the speakers. Crystal (1987) mentions that the way people use language does not only give us information about their geographical, ethnic and social background, but it also reflects the type of context in which they are communicating. As an interesting feature of a language, metaphors in political speeches can be powerful and persuasive. This research aimed at finding the source domains of political metaphors in Joko Widodos speeches, namely: his victory speech and his inaugural speech. These speeches were chosen to be analyzed due to their distinct context and setting. To achieve the goal of the study, the paper explicated Lakoff and Johnsons Contemporary Theory of Conceptual Metaphor (1980, 1992). The findings and discussion argue that the speeches use more positive metaphors of unity rather than metaphors of battle or competition. Furthermore, the texts also conceptualize Indonesian political realm as a journey and navigation, which give the audience a sense of progress. The maritime metaphors in particular are abundant in the two speeches because they reflect one of Widodos visions to strengthen Indonesian maritime.DOI: https://doi.org/10.24071/llt.2016.190204

Abstract In A Modern Utopia (1905), H. G. Wells prophesised that emergent technologies of personal identification such as fingerprinting and central registries would enable the dismantling of national borders. Situating Wells’s novel as a literary expression of a period of experimentation in European mobility control at the turn of the twentieth century, this essay argues that Wells’s ideas about controlled borderlessness were indeed highly prescient, anticipating the recent rise of supranational mobility control à la the EU’s Schengen cooperation. If Wells’s theorisation of mobility control was ahead of its time, then so was his suspenseful narrative about undocumented aliens in utopia fearfully navigating a supranational surveillance state. In this essay I emphasise the correspondences between Wells’s delineation of controlled borderlessness and modern-day supranational mobility control, whilst also highlighting discrepancies and discordant notes in Wells’s bureaucratic-technocratic utopian vision.

Researchers have long been preoccupied with the issue of role in healthcare interpreting. However, most studies approach this construct in the course of medical consultations, leaving somewhat unattended other spaces and activities in which interpreters also participate. This paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of the healthcare interpreters’ role in these areas. Drawing on participant observation, I examined the roles played by five interpreters at a hospital in Madrid for five months in activities different to provider-patient interactions (e.g. waiting with patients). Seven key roles were identified outside medical consultations: intercultural and moral mediator, patient advocate, institutional navigator, healthcare ambassador, information miner and companion/conversation partner. A key finding is that most events in which interpreters participate occur outside medical consultations, which makes it essential to shift the attention to the roles played in these alternative spaces. Understanding the role of healthcare interpreters in different activities within the realm of healthcare scenarios is essential to construct an accurate vision of what being just an interpreter really means.

The number of ‘small’ molecules that may be of interest to chemical biologists — chemical space — is enormous, but the fraction that have ever been made is tiny. Most strategies are discriminative, i.e. have involved ‘forward’ problems (have molecule, establish properties). However, we normally wish to solve the much harder generative or inverse problem (describe desired properties, find molecule). ‘Deep’ (machine) learning based on large-scale neural networks underpins technologies such as computer vision, natural language processing, driverless cars, and world-leading performance in games such as Go; it can also be applied to the solution of inverse problems in chemical biology. In particular, recent developments in deep learning admit the in silico generation of candidate molecular structures and the prediction of their properties, thereby allowing one to navigate (bio)chemical space intelligently. These methods are revolutionary but require an understanding of both (bio)chemistry and computer science to be exploited to best advantage. We give a high-level (non-mathematical) background to the deep learning revolution, and set out the crucial issue for chemical biology and informatics as a two-way mapping from the discrete nature of individual molecules to the continuous but high-dimensional latent representation that may best reflect chemical space. A variety of architectures can do this; we focus on a particular type known as variational autoencoders. We then provide some examples of recent successes of these kinds of approach, and a look towards the future.

This article analyses the novel An Unnecessary Woman (2013) by the American-Lebanese writer Rabih Alameddine from the perspective of multilingual selfhood, echoing Borges's vision of ‘writing as translation’ as it expands to considerations of literary translingualism. The narrator/protagonist of the novel, Aaliya Saleh, is a translator whose main occupation is translation into Arabic from the existing English and French translations: from literary West into East. The significance of the author's creative choice of what is referred to as a twice-removed translator is explored with the following questions: How, while navigating between two languages, cultures, and identities, is the multilingual individual experiencing the balancing act between the ‘translation’ and the ‘original’? To what extent are characters, generated by writers' translingual imagination, indeed creative (re)incarnations of the author's fragmented self? Is there such a thing as the fidelity to an original' for an immigrant (the author)? What can we learn about this translingual polyphony of voices when it comes from the area of political conflict and deepening economic/humanitarian crisis?

10054 Background: More than half of childhood cancer survivors (survivors) will have neurocognitive deficits that impact schooling, most commonly reflecting attention and executive dysfunction. Schools are legally bound (IDEA, 2004) to support eligible students with Individualized Education Program (IEP) informed instruction and related services (e.g. assistive technology, speech-language, physical, or occupational therapy) to foster academic success. However, these service provision were not designed under the constraints of remote learning. The COVID19 shift to remote learning is likely to extend beyond the pandemic especially for medically fragile students. This quality improvement project describes challenges for survivors during remote learning and recently developed related patient education materials. Methods: Interviews with families were used to identify themes around challenges during remote learning, which informed development of a 29-question survey disseminated via flyer in local oncology clinics and social media posts by local childhood cancer organizations in Fall 2020. Results: The survey was completed by 67 parents describing their affected child (mean age= 8.6 years; 60% male; 78% White, 12% Black, 95% non-Hispanic). Most children (74%) had completed therapy (43% for leukemia, 18% for brain tumor; 39% other). The majority (86%) attended public school and 37% received special education or related services: speech-language (26%), occupational (23%), and physical (14%) therapies, and vision services (3%). Fully remote learning was reported for 73%, in-person 4%, and hybrid learning for 14%. The majority (57%) reported observing greater difficulty with attention and focus during RL, indicating difficulty occurred about half of the time during related services therapies, class and/or small group video instruction. Technology-related challenges included difficulty navigating online instruction/equipment (28%), reading difficulty (16%), and difficulty seeing materials/lack of vision supports (18%). Findings did not differ based on treatment or IEP status (p>0.50). Few (14%) reported their school team discussed assistive technology options for online learning. Parents indicated the most helpful supports for addressing challenges included speech-to-text tools, screen readers, and audio books. Parents reported their oncology team was helpful in making referrals to neuropsychology and therapies and completing documentation necessary to secure supports. Conclusions: Childhood cancer survivors, irrespective of diagnosis or IEP status, report challenges with remote learning. Families find a lack of information or special accommodations as roadblocks to success. Oncology providers were identified as valued resources, so educational materials ( https://tinyurl.com/nxbhj5or ) were developed for oncology teams to share with families.

Internet of Things (IoT) is regarded as a next-generation wave of Information Technology (IT) after the widespread emergence of the Internet and mobile communication technologies. IoT supports information exchange and networked interaction of appliances, vehicles and other objects, making sensing and actuation possible in a low-cost and smart manner. On the other hand, cyber-physical systems (CPS) are described as the engineered systems which are built upon the tight integration of the cyber entities (e.g., computation, communication, and control) and the physical things (natural and man-made systems governed by the laws of physics). The IoT and CPS are not isolated technologies. Rather it can be said that IoT is the base or enabling technology for CPS and CPS is considered as the grownup development of IoT, completing the IoT notion and vision. Both are merged into closed-loop, providing mechanisms for conceptualizing, and realizing all aspects of the networked composed systems that are monitored and controlled by computing algorithms and are tightly coupled among users and the Internet. That is, the hardware and the software entities are intertwined, and they typically function on different time and location-based scales. In fact, the linking between the cyber and the physical world is enabled by IoT (through sensors and actuators). CPS that includes traditional embedded and control systems are supposed to be transformed by the evolving and innovative methodologies and engineering of IoT. Several applications areas of IoT and CPS are smart building, smart transport, automated vehicles, smart cities, smart grid, smart manufacturing, smart agriculture, smart healthcare, smart supply chain and logistics, etc. Though CPS and IoT have significant overlaps, they differ in terms of engineering aspects. Engineering IoT systems revolves around the uniquely identifiable and internet-connected devices and embedded systems; whereas engineering CPS requires a strong emphasis on the relationship between computation aspects (complex software) and the physical entities (hardware). Engineering CPS is challenging because there is no defined and fixed boundary and relationship between the cyber and physical worlds. In CPS, diverse constituent parts are composed and collaborated together to create unified systems with global behaviour. These systems need to be ensured in terms of dependability, safety, security, efficiency, and adherence to real‐time constraints. Hence, designing CPS requires knowledge of multidisciplinary areas such as sensing technologies, distributed systems, pervasive and ubiquitous computing, real-time computing, computer networking, control theory, signal processing, embedded systems, etc. CPS, along with the continuous evolving IoT, has posed several challenges. For example, the enormous amount of data collected from the physical things makes it difficult for Big Data management and analytics that includes data normalization, data aggregation, data mining, pattern extraction and information visualization. Similarly, the future IoT and CPS need standardized abstraction and architecture that will allow modular designing and engineering of IoT and CPS in global and synergetic applications. Another challenging concern of IoT and CPS is the security and reliability of the components and systems. Although IoT and CPS have attracted the attention of the research communities and several ideas and solutions are proposed, there are still huge possibilities for innovative propositions to make IoT and CPS vision successful. The major challenges and research scopes include system design and implementation, computing and communication, system architecture and integration, application-based implementations, fault tolerance, designing efficient algorithms and protocols, availability and reliability, security and privacy, energy-efficiency and sustainability, etc. It is our great privilege to present Volume 21, Issue 3 of Scalable Computing: Practice and Experience. We had received 30 research papers and out of which 14 papers are selected for publication. The objective of this special issue is to explore and report recent advances and disseminate state-of-the-art research related to IoT, CPS and the enabling and associated technologies. The special issue will present new dimensions of research to researchers and industry professionals with regard to IoT and CPS. Vivek Kumar Prasad and Madhuri D Bhavsar in the paper titled "Monitoring and Prediction of SLA for IoT based Cloud described the mechanisms for monitoring by using the concept of reinforcement learning and prediction of the cloud resources, which forms the critical parts of cloud expertise in support of controlling and evolution of the IT resources and has been implemented using LSTM. The proper utilization of the resources will generate revenues to the provider and also increases the trust factor of the provider of cloud services. For experimental analysis, four parameters have been used i.e. CPU utilization, disk read/write throughput and memory utilization. Kasture et al. in the paper titled "Comparative Study of Speaker Recognition Techniques in IoT Devices for Text Independent Negative Recognition" compared the performance of features which are used in state of art speaker recognition models and analyse variants of Mel frequency cepstrum coefficients (MFCC) predominantly used in feature extraction which can be further incorporated and used in various smart devices. Mahesh Kumar Singh and Om Prakash Rishi in the paper titled "Event Driven Recommendation System for E-Commerce using Knowledge based Collaborative Filtering Technique" proposed a novel system that uses a knowledge base generated from knowledge graph to identify the domain knowledge of users, items, and relationships among these, knowledge graph is a labelled multidimensional directed graph that represents the relationship among the users and the items. The proposed approach uses about 100 percent of users' participation in the form of activities during navigation of the web site. Thus, the system expects under the users' interest that is beneficial for both seller and buyer. The proposed system is compared with baseline methods in area of recommendation system using three parameters: precision, recall and NDGA through online and offline evaluation studies with user data and it is observed that proposed system is better as compared to other baseline systems. Benbrahim et al. in the paper titled "Deep Convolutional Neural Network with TensorFlow and Keras to Classify Skin Cancer" proposed a novel classification model to classify skin tumours in images using Deep Learning methodology and the proposed system was tested on HAM10000 dataset comprising of 10,015 dermatoscopic images and the results observed that the proposed system is accurate in order of 94.06\% in validation set and 93.93\% in the test set. Devi B et al. in the paper titled "Deadlock Free Resource Management Technique for IoT-Based Post Disaster Recovery Systems" proposed a new class of techniques that do not perform stringent testing before allocating the resources but still ensure that the system is deadlock-free and the overhead is also minimal. The proposed technique suggests reserving a portion of the resources to ensure no deadlock would occur. The correctness of the technique is proved in the form of theorems. The average turnaround time is approximately 18\% lower for the proposed technique over Banker's algorithm and also an optimal overhead of O(m). Deep et al. in the paper titled "Access Management of User and Cyber-Physical Device in DBAAS According to Indian IT Laws Using Blockchain" proposed a novel blockchain solution to track the activities of employees managing cloud. Employee authentication and authorization are managed through the blockchain server. User authentication related data is stored in blockchain. The proposed work assists cloud companies to have better control over their employee's activities, thus help in preventing insider attack on User and Cyber-Physical Devices. Sumit Kumar and Jaspreet Singh in paper titled "Internet of Vehicles (IoV) over VANETS: Smart and Secure Communication using IoT" highlighted a detailed description of Internet of Vehicles (IoV) with current applications, architectures, communication technologies, routing protocols and different issues. The researchers also elaborated research challenges and trade-off between security and privacy in area of IoV. Deore et al. in the paper titled "A New Approach for Navigation and Traffic Signs Indication Using Map Integrated Augmented Reality for Self-Driving Cars" proposed a new approach to supplement the technology used in self-driving cards for perception. The proposed approach uses Augmented Reality to create and augment artificial objects of navigational signs and traffic signals based on vehicles location to reality. This approach help navigate the vehicle even if the road infrastructure does not have very good sign indications and marking. The approach was tested locally by creating a local navigational system and a smartphone based augmented reality app. The approach performed better than the conventional method as the objects were clearer in the frame which made it each for the object detection to detect them. Bhardwaj et al. in the paper titled "A Framework to Systematically Analyse the Trustworthiness of Nodes for Securing IoV Interactions" performed literature on IoV and Trust and proposed a Hybrid Trust model that seperates the malicious and trusted nodes to secure the interaction of vehicle in IoV. To test the model, simulation was conducted on varied threshold values. And results observed that PDR of trusted node is 0.63 which is higher as compared to PDR of malicious node which is 0.15. And on the basis of PDR, number of available hops and Trust Dynamics the malicious nodes are identified and discarded. Saniya Zahoor and Roohie Naaz Mir in the paper titled "A Parallelization Based Data Management Framework for Pervasive IoT Applications" highlighted the recent studies and related information in data management for pervasive IoT applications having limited resources. The paper also proposes a parallelization-based data management framework for resource-constrained pervasive applications of IoT. The comparison of the proposed framework is done with the sequential approach through simulations and empirical data analysis. The results show an improvement in energy, processing, and storage requirements for the processing of data on the IoT device in the proposed framework as compared to the sequential approach. Patel et al. in the paper titled "Performance Analysis of Video ON-Demand and Live Video Streaming Using Cloud Based Services" presented a review of video analysis over the LVS \& VoDS video application. The researchers compared different messaging brokers which helps to deliver each frame in a distributed pipeline to analyze the impact on two message brokers for video analysis to achieve LVS & VoS using AWS elemental services. In addition, the researchers also analysed the Kafka configuration parameter for reliability on full-service-mode. Saniya Zahoor and Roohie Naaz Mir in the paper titled "Design and Modeling of Resource-Constrained IoT Based Body Area Networks" presented the design and modeling of a resource-constrained BAN System and also discussed the various scenarios of BAN in context of resource constraints. The Researchers also proposed an Advanced Edge Clustering (AEC) approach to manage the resources such as energy, storage, and processing of BAN devices while performing real-time data capture of critical health parameters and detection of abnormal patterns. The comparison of the AEC approach is done with the Stable Election Protocol (SEP) through simulations and empirical data analysis. The results show an improvement in energy, processing time and storage requirements for the processing of data on BAN devices in AEC as compared to SEP. Neelam Saleem Khan and Mohammad Ahsan Chishti in the paper titled "Security Challenges in Fog and IoT, Blockchain Technology and Cell Tree Solutions: A Review" outlined major authentication issues in IoT, map their existing solutions and further tabulate Fog and IoT security loopholes. Furthermore, this paper presents Blockchain, a decentralized distributed technology as one of the solutions for authentication issues in IoT. In addition, the researchers discussed the strength of Blockchain technology, work done in this field, its adoption in COVID-19 fight and tabulate various challenges in Blockchain technology. The researchers also proposed Cell Tree architecture as another solution to address some of the security issues in IoT, outlined its advantages over Blockchain technology and tabulated some future course to stir some attempts in this area. Bhadwal et al. in the paper titled "A Machine Translation System from Hindi to Sanskrit Language Using Rule Based Approach" proposed a rule-based machine translation system to bridge the language barrier between Hindi and Sanskrit Language by converting any test in Hindi to Sanskrit. The results are produced in the form of two confusion matrices wherein a total of 50 random sentences and 100 tokens (Hindi words or phrases) were taken for system evaluation. The semantic evaluation of 100 tokens produce an accuracy of 94\% while the pragmatic analysis of 50 sentences produce an accuracy of around 86\%. Hence, the proposed system can be used to understand the whole translation process and can further be employed as a tool for learning as well as teaching. Further, this application can be embedded in local communication based assisting Internet of Things (IoT) devices like Alexa or Google Assistant. Anshu Kumar Dwivedi and A.K. Sharma in the paper titled "NEEF: A Novel Energy Efficient Fuzzy Logic Based Clustering Protocol for Wireless Sensor Network" proposed a a deterministic novel energy efficient fuzzy logic-based clustering protocol (NEEF) which considers primary and secondary factors in fuzzy logic system while selecting cluster heads. After selection of cluster heads, non-cluster head nodes use fuzzy logic for prudent selection of their cluster head for cluster formation. NEEF is simulated and compared with two recent state of the art protocols, namely SCHFTL and DFCR under two scenarios. Simulation results unveil better performance by balancing the load and improvement in terms of stability period, packets forwarded to the base station, improved average energy and extended lifetime.

Purpose: Cognitive mapping of spaces is vital to the progress of well-organized orientation and mobility skills. Mostly the information required for cognitive mapping is acquired through the sense of vision. Persons with visual impairment lack in this critical information, and in consequence, they face difficulties in mapping as well as navigating new spaces. This study was aimed to investigate the cognitive mapping abilities of persons with visual impairment for the purpose of improvement in their independent movement. Design/Methodology/Approach: The population of this quantitative study comprised persons with visual impairment residing in district Lahore, Pakistan. The convenient sampling technique was used for taking the sample of 30 persons having visual impairment. A self-developed questionnaire (Cronbach Alpha: 0.78) consisting of 36 items on five-point Likert scale (strongly agree to strongly disagree) was used to gather data through online mode. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze data. Findings: The findings of the study revealed that the persons with visual impairment used language audition and haptics to get a direct or indirect awareness of their physical environment. The usage of assistive devices play an important role in their lives. Implications/Originality/Value: The study suggested the strong need to assess the cognitive mapping abilities of persons with visual impairment through an increased sample and experimentation to improve their quality of life by increasing mobility and independence.

Background: Accessing healthcare for immigrants in Canada is complicated by many difficulties. With the continued and upward trend of immigration to Canada, it is crucial to identify the solutions to the barriers from the perspectives of different immigrant communities as they encounter them including the relatively smaller and less studied population groups of immigrants. As such, Nepalese immigrants in Canada are a South Asian ethnic group who have their own distinct language, culture, and socio-economic backgrounds, however, their experience with accessing healthcare in Canada is scarce in the literature. Methods: We conducted 12 focus group discussions with first-generation Nepalese immigrants who had experiences with primary care use in Canada. Informed consent and demographic information were obtained before each focus group discussion. The verbatim transcription of the focus groups was analyzed using thematic analysis. Results: The participants expressed a range of potential solutions to overcome the barriers, which we presented using the socio-ecological framework into 4 different levels. This includes individual-, community-, service provider-, and government/policy-levels. Individual-level actions included improving self-awareness and knowledge of health in general and navigating the healthcare system and proactively improving the language skills and assimilating into the Canadian culture. Examples of community-level actions included community events to share health information with immigrants, health literacy programs, and driving/carpooling to clinics or hospitals. Actions at the service provider level were mainly focused on enhancing communications, cultural competency training for providers, and ensuring to hire primary care workforce representing various ethnocultural backgrounds. Overall, focus group participants believed that the provincial and federal government, as appropriate, should increase support for dental and vision care support and take actions to increase the healthcare capacity, particularly by employing internationally graduated health professionals. Conclusions: Access to primary care is essential for the health of immigrant populations in Canada. Individuals, community organizations, health service providers, and governments need to work both individually and collaboratively to improve immigrants’ primary care access.

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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Vision-and-Language Navigation (VLN) has been an emerging and fast-developing research topic, where an embodied agent is required to navigate in real-world environment based on natural language instructions. In this paper, we present a Direction-guided Navigator Agent (DNA) that novelly integrates direction clues derived from instructions into the essential encoder-decoder navigation framework. Particularly, DNA couples the standard instruction encoder with an additional direction branch which sequentially encodes the direction clues in the instructions to boost navigation. Furthermore, an Instruction Flipping mechanism is uniquely devised to enable fast data augmentation as well as a follow-up backtracing for navigating the agent in a backward direction. Such way naturally amplifies the grounding of instruction in the local visual scenes along both forward and backward directions, and thus strengthens the alignment between instruction and action sequence. Extensive experiments conducted on Room to Room (R2R) dataset validate our proposal and demonstrate quantitatively compelling results.