Articoli di riviste sul tema "Commission on Post-School Certificate and Higher Education"

The life path, scientific-pedagogical and public activity of Volodymyr Sokurenko – a prominent Ukrainian jurist, doctor of law, professor, talented teacher of the Lviv Law School of Franko University are analyzed. It is found out that after graduating from a seven-year school in Zaporizhia, V. Sokurenko entered the Zaporizhia Aviation Technical School, where he studied two courses until 1937. 1/10/1937 he was enrolled as a cadet of the 2nd school of aircraft technicians named after All-Union Lenin Komsomol. In 1938, this school was renamed the Volga Military Aviation School, which he graduated on September 4, 1939 with the military rank of military technician of the 2nd category. As a junior aircraft technician, V. Sokurenko was sent to the military unit no. 8690 in Baku, and later to Maradnyany for further military service in the USSR Air Force. From September 4, 1939 to March 16, 1940, he was a junior aircraft technician of the 50th Fighter Regiment, 60th Air Brigade of the ZAK VO in Baku. The certificate issued by the Railway District Commissariat of Lviv on January 4, 1954 no. 3132 states that V. Sokurenko actually served in the staff of the Soviet Army from October 1937 to May 1946. The same certificate states that from 10/12/1941 to 20/09/1942 and from 12/07/1943 to 08/03/1945, he took part in the Soviet-German war, in particular in the second fighter aviation corps of the Reserve of the Supreme Command of the Soviet Army. In 1943 he joined the CPSU. He was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree and the Order of the Red Star (1943) as well as 9 medals «For Merit in Battle» during the Soviet-German war. With the start of the Soviet-German war, the Sokurenko family, like many other families, was evacuated to the town of Kamensk-Uralsky in the Sverdlovsk region, where their father worked at a metallurgical plant. After the war, the Sokurenko family moved to Lviv. In 1946, V. Sokurenko entered the Faculty of Law of the Ivan Franko Lviv State University, graduating with honors in 1950, and entered the graduate school of the Lviv State University at the Department of Theory and History of State and Law. V. Sokurenko successfully passed the candidate examinations and on December 25, 1953 in Moscow at the Institute of Law of the USSR he defended his thesis on the topic: «Socialist legal consciousness and its relationship with Soviet law». The supervisor of V. Sokurenko's candidate's thesis was N. Karieva. The Higher Attestation Commission of the Ministry of Culture of the USSR, by its decision of March 31, 1954, awarded V. Sokurenko the degree of Candidate of Law. In addition, it is necessary to explain the place of defense of the candidate's thesis by V. Sokurenko. As it is known, the Institute of State and Law of the USSR has its history since 1925, when, in accordance with the resolution of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of March 25, 1925, the Institute of Soviet Construction was established at the Communist Academy. In 1936, the Institute became part of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and in 1938 it was reorganized into the Institute of Law of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1941–1943 it was evacuated to Tashkent. In 1960-1991 it was called the Institute of State and Law of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In Ukraine, there is the Institute of State and Law named after V. Koretsky of the NAS of Ukraine – a leading research institution in Ukraine of legal profile, founded in 1949. It is noted that, as a graduate student, V. Sokurenko read a course on the history of political doctrines, conducted special seminars on the theory of state and law. After graduating from graduate school and defending his thesis, from October 1, 1953 he was enrolled as a senior lecturer and then associate professor at the Department of Theory and History of State and Law at the Faculty of Law of the Lviv State University named after Ivan Franko. By the decision of the Higher Attestation Commission of the Ministry of Higher Education of the USSR of December 18, 1957, V. Sokurenko was awarded the academic title of associate professor of the «Department of Theory and History of State and Law». V. Sokurenko took an active part in public life. During 1947-1951 he was a member of the party bureau of the party organization of LSU, worked as a chairman of the trade union committee of the university, from 1955 to 1957 he was a secretary of the party committee of the university. He delivered lectures for the population of Lviv region. Particularly, he lectured in Turka, Chervonohrad, and Yavoriv. He made reports to the party leaders, Soviet workers as well as business leaders. He led a philosophical seminar at the Faculty of Law. He was a deputy of the Lviv City Council of People's Deputies in 1955-1957 and 1975-1978. In December 1967, he defended his doctoral thesis on the topic: «Development of progressive political thought in Ukraine (until the early twentieth century)». The defense of the doctoral thesis was approved by the Higher Attestation Commission on June 14, 1968. During 1960-1990 he headed the Department of Theory and History of State and Law; in 1962-68 and 1972-77 he was the dean of the Law Faculty of the Ivan Franko Lviv State University. In connection with the criticism of the published literature, on September 10, 1977, V. Sokurenko wrote a statement requesting his dismissal from the post of Dean of the Faculty of Law due to deteriorating health. During 1955-1965 he was on research trips to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Austria, and Bulgaria. From August 1966 to March 1967, in particular, he spent seven months in the United States, England and Canada as a UN Fellow in the Department of Human Rights. From April to May 1968, he was a member of the government delegation to the International Conference on Human Rights in Iran for one month. He spoke, in addition to Ukrainian, English, Polish and Russian. V. Sokurenko played an important role in initiating the study of an important discipline at the Faculty of Law of the Lviv University – History of Political and Legal Studies, which has been studying the history of the emergence and development of theoretical knowledge about politics, state, law, ie the process of cognition by people of the phenomena of politics, state and law at different stages of history in different nations, from early statehood and modernity. Professor V. Sokurenko actively researched the problems of the theory of state and law, the history of Ukrainian legal and political thought. He was one of the first legal scholars in the USSR to begin research on the basics of legal deontology. V. Sokurenko conducted extensive research on the development of basic requirements for the professional and legal responsibilities of a lawyer, similar to the requirements for a doctor. In further research, the scholar analyzed the legal responsibilities, prospects for the development of the basics of professional deontology. In addition, he considered medical deontology from the standpoint of a lawyer, law and morality, focusing on internal (spiritual) processes, calling them «the spirit of law.» The main direction of V. Sokurenko's research was the problems of the theory of state and law, the history of legal and political studies. The main scientific works of professor V. Sokurenko include: «The main directions in the development of progressive state and legal thought in Ukraine: 16th – 19th centuries» (1958) (Russian), «Democratic doctrines about the state and law in Ukraine in the second half of the 19th century (M. Drahomanov, S. Podolynskyi, A. Terletskyi)» (1966), «Law. Freedom. Equality» (1981, co-authored) (in Russian), «State and legal views of Ivan Franko» (1966), «Socio-political views of Taras Shevchenko (to the 170th anniversary of his birth)» (1984); «Political and legal views of Ivan Franko (to the 130th anniversary of his birth)» (1986) (in Russian) and others. V. Sokurenko died on November 22, 1994 and was buried in Holoskivskyi Cemetery in Lviv. Volodymyr Sokurenko left a bright memory in the hearts of a wide range of scholars, colleagues and grateful students. The 100th anniversary of the Scholar is a splendid opportunity to once again draw attention to the rich scientific heritage of the lawyer, which is an integral part of the golden fund of Ukrainian legal science and education. It needs to be studied, taken into account and further developed.

An investigation of Year 11 students’ (n=1580) responses to possible reasons contributing to subject selection for the Higher School Certificate in New South Wales indicated that the most important reasons were related to assistance in obtaining work or with future studies. The perception that particular subjects would be “scaled up” for inclusion in the Tertiary Entrance Rank was of limited importance in subject choice with the exception of Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry. Furthermore, interest in course content and the belief that they would do well were important in the selection of Creative Arts and Social Science subjects. Results are discussed in light of related research and the implications for career education in schools.

The impact of VET in Schools on transition outcomes is currently receiving considerable policy attention in Australia. Almost 50% of Australian senior secondary students participate in VET in Schools, either by taking VET subjects, engaging in structured workplace learning, or enrolling in school-based apprenticeships and traineeships. School-based traineeships are of particular interest because these relatively compact programs contribute to a senior secondary certificate, provide students with considerable workplace exposure and lead to qualifications recognised under the Australian Qualifications Framework. What has remained unclear is whether school-based traineeships have a positive impact on training completion compared with post-school workplace-based traineeships. While there is much support for VET in Schools programs, the effectiveness of school-based compared with post-school vocational programs is of policy interest as school-based VET programs have been criticised as not leading to productive employment outcomes. This paper uses data from the Apprentice and Trainee Destinations Survey, administered by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research, to examine whether students who commence a school-based traineeship exhibit higher completion rates when compared to similar young people who undertake a traineeship post-school. We find that school-based traineeships have higher completion rates than post-school traineeships, especially for females.

Abstract One of the important determinants of development during the transition to adulthood is the undertaking of social roles characteristic of adults, also in the area of finishing formal education, which usually coincides with beginning fulltime employment. In the study discussed in this paper, it has been hypothesized that continuing full-time education above the age of 26, a phenomenon rarely observed in Poland, can be considered as an unpunctual event that may be connected with difficulties in the process of identity formation. Relationships between identity dimensions and identity statuses, and age and educational context were analyzed. 693 individuals aged 19-35 took part in the study. The participants attended three types of educational institutions: (1) full-time university studies (BA or MA level), (2) part-time university studies (BA or MA level), and (3) full-time post-secondary school (certificate courses such as: medical rescue, massage therapy, cosmetology, occupational therapy). Among the students of full-time university studies predictable dependencies, also in respect of highlevels of indicators of identity crisis and a high frequency of diffused identity occurrence, were observed. Such dependencies were not found in the group of full-time post-secondary school students.

Work-based learning is a key component of career and technical education programs. A variety of certificated and non-certificated work-based learning programs exist for high schools to implement. Wisconsin's Youth Apprenticeship program is a widely used model of work-based learning in high school Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs across the state, yet there is limited research on the impact of these programs related to student outcomes.<br/> This paper describes the findings from a study in which educational and employment outcomes of secondary CTE concentrator-completers participating in a Youth Apprenticeship and/or Employability Skills program were analyzed. Findings indicate that participating in a Youth Apprenticeship program while concentrating in a secondary CTE program of study may lead to a higher rate of continuing into one's area of concentration after high school than students earning Wisconsin's Employability Skills Certificate.

Studies revealed that college readiness promotes college success and higher education student learning outcomes. This study opted to 1) analyze the total effect and the conditional effect of college readiness on college success by university generations and departments; 2) analyze the differences in the probability of college success across departments and university generations; 3) describe the quality of university generations in terms of the conditional effects and the probabilities of college success. The study is an ex post facto research. The Ethiopian 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation universities; and the Ethiopian National Assessment and Evaluation Agency officers were the population of the study. The total sample size was 551. The Ethiopian General Education School Leaving Certificate Examination Grade Point Average, the Ethiopian Higher Education Entrance Examination score, and the College Cumulative Grade Point Average of the students were sources of the data. Using the Process Procedure for Software Package for Social Sciences, the binomial logistic regression was conducted. Maintaining the highest total conditional effect of college readiness on college success while heightening the probability of college success at a value of college readiness has been interpreted as a trait of the high performing university generation.

The National Certificate (Vocational) (NC(V)) was introduced into South Africa’s system of vocational training to ‘solve problems of poor quality programmes, lack of relevance to the economy, as well as low technical and cognitive skills of TVET [technical and vocational education and training] graduates’. The NC(V) did not, however, meet expectations, partially because of systemic difficulties. This article reports on research conducted among students who studied on the NC(V) Civil and Construction programme in an effort to identify appropriate corrections that could be made by college management. The research project made use of Tinto’s Student Integration Model to identify reasons for both student attrition and student persistence. The study provides information on the predicament facing TVET Civil and Construction students and has broad relevance for practitioners operating in higher and post-school education.

The aim of this study is to evaluate the status and drawbacks of current table tennis curricula in higher vocational college. Literature review, questionnaire survey, and logic analysis were used to discover the discrepancy between school education and position requirements of enterprises. The results indicated that new course reformation should focus on the change of teaching concept and update of course content and evaluation methods through the guidelines characterized by professionalization, modularization, and miniaturization. This new teaching mode of course-certificate integration can favor the cooperation of faculty training in curriculum content for table tennis coach between school and enterprise, achieving a complete match among various courses and jobs. We wish this knowledge might lead to a clue toward the cultivation of applied talents for table tennis. The development of this research can not only promote the healthy development of the sports training market but also help to standardize the compensation system of the private sports training market in the field of teachers.

In spite of constitutional guarantees, ambitious policy promises, some initial enthusiasm for adult basic education and a well-run literacy campaign, South Africa has signally failed to construct a viable and vibrant adult and community education system that would parallel or enhance not only existing schooling, but also technical and vocational education systems. This article considers the current state of adult and community education and of technical and vocational education and training; in addition, it assesses the relevant recommendations in the Report of the commission of inquiry into higher education and training released in late 2017. Finally, it evaluates the extent to which the commission’s recommendations correspond to the reality and also to what is required for South Africa’s post-school offerings in the future.

During a post-independence phase (1922-mid-sixties), Irish secondary schooling was characterised by low participation rates, elitism, and careerist perceptions of students. Phase two (1967-mid 1980s) saw participation rates expand dramatically as Ireland became more open and industrialised, and policymakers focused on relationships between education, human capital and economic development. During this phase, the Irish Times began to include careers and examinations information. With school completion rates continuing to increase from the mid-1980s (phase three), the two main daily newspapers realised that the growing need for information about access to an increasingly complex and highly-prized higher education system, which was dependent on academic achievement, afforded an opportunity to boost sales and advertising. In response, examinations’ coverage reached a level recently described as ‘exceptional by a team of researchers from the Oxford University Centre for Educational Assessment and Queen’s University Belfast.

The Ministry of Higher Education and Training has significantly transformed the technical and vocational education and training sector to respond to socio-economic ills such as poverty, unemployment and inequalities. With the mission of the White Paper for Post-School Education and Training, TVET programmes are prioritised as a significance in responding to societal challenges by offering skills that are aligned to industry to enable youth and young adults to successfully enter the industry for their sustainable livelihoods. This study provides a critical analysis on alignment of the National Certificate (Vocational): Building and Civil Engineering programme) offered by TVET Colleges. This article is based on a case study of two vocational training institutions in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa. A qualitative research approach was followed. The article used interviews and observations as data collection tools. The population for the study consisted of ten TVET teachers. The data were analysed by transcribing the data, coding, and thematic discussion using thematic analysis. The study's findings show that the NCV: Building and Civil Engineering programme is not aligned with the industry, as the workshop’s practical training is given inadequate time. The NCV: Building and Civil Engineering programme contains too many theoretical sections. The theoretical part is mainly offered to the students rather than hands-on practical training. The study concludes that the TVET sector faces challenges to meet the demand for industrial skills. This study recommends that the NCV program be evaluated urgently to address this issue and to ensure that it remains aligned with industry.

Abstract Introduction The General Pharmaceutical Council’s standards for pharmacy technician education state that the learner should be able to “accurately perform pharmaceutical calculations to ensure the safety of people”1. It is important that any calculations taught reflect current practice and ensure patient safety. Previous research identified four calculation types (moles, molarity, displacement value, dilutions) currently taught in the University of East Anglia (UEA) Certificate of Higher education in pharmacy technician practice that are rarely or never used in the workplace by pharmacy technicians2 resulting in a need to consider the inclusion of these in the future curriculum. Aim To explore whether certain calculations should continue to be taught and/or examined as part of the Certificate in Higher Education in pharmacy technician practice. Methods Ethical approval was obtained through the UEA’s school of education and lifelong research ethics subcommittee (ETH2223-0713). The project team (BS, HK) identified inclusion criteria for prospective participants as registered pharmacy technicians who are current, or previous, educational supervisors of pre-registration pharmacy technicians undertaking the UEA certificate. Prospective participants were invited via email by the project lead (BS) to take part in focus groups to discuss the calculations taught to pre-registration pharmacy technicians. Due to the small number of responses (9 total), two focus groups were undertaken (with a total of 7 participants within the groups). During focus groups, four calculation types and their teaching/assessment within the curriculum were discussed: moles, molarity, displacement value, dilutions. The group then voted to either: 1) continue teaching and examination 2) continue teaching and do not examine 3) remove from teaching/examination and teach as a post-qualification advanced course 4) remove from teaching/examination and do not teach in post-qualification. Transcripts from each focus group including the votes submitted were downloaded from the platform being used and analysed using descriptive statistics and inductive thematic analysis by the project lead (BS)3. Results Participants discussed that there was no expectation for newly qualified pharmacy technicians to be able to complete the discussed calculations in modern practice. Most agreed that that teaching the calculations would support understanding of the underlying scientific concepts but examination on the specific calculations is unnecessary. Votes highlighted the majority (4 out of 7) of participants wanted teaching to continue but not be examined for moles, molarity and dilution calculations, while there was a less consensus on displacement values, though most agreed teaching of this should not be examined. Discussion/Conclusion The changing landscape of pharmacy practice has meant that certain calculations are no longer used in everyday practice and consensus is that examining these is of no benefit to students. Teaching the theory around these calculations may still have a role in allowing students to understand the underlying concepts but examination on the student’s ability to perform these calculations is not considered necessary by workplace supervisors. One highlighted limitation of this study is the limited number of participants resulting in a small sample size to work with. Further review and a change in curriculum should be undertaken to reflect findings. References 1. General Pharmaceutical Council. Standards for the initial education and training of pharmacy technicians. 2017 2. Smith, B., Kinsey, H. It doesn’t add up! Calculations in the modern pharmacy technician curriculum, International Journal of Pharmacy Practice. 2022;30(supplement2): ii50–ii51. doi:10.1093/ijpp/riac089.060 3. Braun V, Clarke V. Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology. 2006;3(2):77–101. doi:10.1191/1478088706qp063oa

Purpose: This paper describes and documents an innovative blended learning Global Mental Health: Trauma and Recovery certificate training course. This course combines a two-week face-to-face training in Orvieto, Italy with a five-month follow-up online virtual training as a learning experience for global health care practitioners. Continuing medical education (CME) accreditation is offered upon completion. This course utilized an innovative blended learning model with a community of practice approach, a combination of lectures and discussions, and online in-depth group case study discussions. Methodology: Data was collected by self-reported anonymous evaluation by participants of three continuous years of the CME Global Mental Health: Trauma and Recovery certificate training course sponsored by Harvard Medical School. One hundred fifty-five participants (n= 39 in 2011; n = 57 in 2012; n=59 in 2013) underwent a pre- and post-course evaluation to determine sustained confidence in performing medical and psychiatric care to traumatized patients and communities, as well as to determine their learning of the Global Mental Health Action Plan (GMHAP). Results: Over the course of three independent years, a total of 155 participants were evaluated. There was evidence for significant improvement in their confidence levels in all clinical areas (diagnosis; treatment of trauma; use of psychotropic medication) when comparing baseline to completion of the six-month course. All ten dimensions of the GMHAP and nine medical and psychiatric aspects of treatment revealed significant improvement in confidence levels. Regression analysis also indicated similar results after the adjustment of demographic covariates. Physicians and participants with mental health and social work background had significantly higher confidence. Participants who were MD’s or psychiatrists had higher confidence in most of the categories of confidence except for self-care, understanding culture, collaboration, and policy and financing. The model showed no difference in learning based upon gender and level of development of country of origin. Conclusion: The evaluation of this blended learning CME program provides evidence of significant enhancement of clinical practice and planning skills in health care practitioners working with highly traumatized patients and communities worldwide. This successful training over the past 18 years has gone far to achieve the health and mental health capacity building as requested by the Ministers of Health from post-conflict societies in the historic Rome meeting in 2004.

Role of talent management in higher education has improved in the first years of the21st century all over the word. Prior to the social-economic transformation, the Hungarian higher education was characterized by special elite education. Only 10-15% of students with GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) were admitted to the universities or colleges. Due to the stricter selection system the eminence was sort of precondition of continuing the studies at higher levels. At the same time the students’ scientific activity was introduced more than sixty years ago, and developed at higher educational institutions as a further screen: the ambitious students could take part in special activities in addition to their compulsory curriculum studies, they could carry out research works independently or within the frame of teamwork. Following the post-socialist transition the number of students in higher education swelled significantly: almost 50% of high school graduate students were admitted to universities or colleges. The increased number of students in higher education and the three-cycle transformation of training also urged the reconstruction of the framework of former talent management. In the paper we give a short outlook of the popular forms of talent management, their experimental results, as well as the related problems. We examine the questions that need to be answered in the transformed higher education. These could lead back to the problems induced by the Bologna-system (multi-cycle training). They are the followings: problems of selection of talents in the shortened training time, respectively the shortened time available for those students’ research works which lasted for several years previously, problems of changing tutorial and student scales of values and attitudes, questions of requirements of continuity in the training chain of bachelor – master – PhD level etc. The situation of the students’ scientific research work– a unique movement in Europe – was the focus of the study, furthermore its results and connection with the third level (Ph.D.) of the Bologna-system higher education. Key words: competition, eminence, mass education, students’ scientific activity.

47 years of life and activity of the Doctor of Historical Sciences, professor of the Foreign Countries History and Culture Department at the Chuvash State University T.N. Ivanova are inextricably linked with the university. She entered the leading university of the republic immediately after school, returned here after studying at the post-graduate school of Leningrad University, worked her way from assistant to the head of the department, at some stages she was the deputy dean of the Faculty, the head of General History Department and the head of the University’s Student Research Society, now she heads the research laboratory named after I.N. Ulyanov – I.Ya. Yakovlev. T.N. Ivanova is the author of more than 340 scientific and educational works, including 7 monographs, 4 textbooks and 4 textbooks for secondary schools, 10 teaching aids for universities and secondary schools, 3 teaching aids, 52 articles of the Higher Attestation Commission, 6 WoS articles. There are several directions in her scientific work. These are the history of Russian science and education of the XIX century, the national historiography of universal history, biographistics, research on oral history and historical memory. Her monographs and articles on the history of Russian education and science of the XIX century are known and recognized in scientific circles.

Abstract: Dantuluri Narayana Raju College (DNR) was founded in 1945, before Indian independence, and was an offshoot of the national movement and Renaissance thought. Being agrarian, the Godavari region had been kept away from higher academic activities during the pre-independence period. Sri Dantuluri Narayana Raju, a freedom fighter, activist and visionary wanted to provide the uneducated rural masses with the hitherto unthinkable and inaccessible source for their general development and welfare, namely higher education. This visionary, with the help of a limited number of lieutenants and committed philanthropists, worked hard with missionary zeal and brought about the establishment of a boarding school in Bhimavaram, known as West Godavari Bhimavaram (W.G.B) College in 1945.In 1964 it was renamed as Dantuluri Narayana Raju (D.N.R) College in memory of its founder. The introduction of post graduate courses in 1971 is a milestone in the history of the college. The infrastructure available in the college became an impetus for starting an Engineering College in 1980. In view of the outstanding academic excellence maintained by the college since its inception, the college was conferred autonomy in the year 1987, by the University grants commission, India. Consequently, the college has academic freedom to introduce new courses. Keyword: Dantuluri Narayana Raju College (DNR), Bhimavaram, Higher Education, West Godavari Bhimavaram (W.G.B)

There are many factors that effect the post-secondary completion rate of Indigenous students. The Indigenous student completion rate is a reflection of the number of students entering post-secondary education but is significantly affected by withdrawal rates (institutional withdrawals and student voluntary withdrawals). In the Saskatchewan Polytechnic School of Nursing, the Indigenous student withdrawal rate was 4.2% higher than the total nursing student population. Lower success rates among Indigenous students is a concerning issue in nursing programs. Continuing to operate programs and teach in the same fashion is not improving success rates. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action (2012) highlighted the need to examine strategies and develop policies to enhance Indigenous student success. To this end, recent literature was reviewed to determine trends among Indigenous nursing students, their struggles, and more importantly, the successful strategies currently being implemented. Indigenous peoples are not a homogenous group; rather, they are a mosaic of cultures, languages and nations. The authors examined the literature to determine key factors that enabled or prevented the success of post-secondary Indigenous students. Twenty-one articles on current research regarding Indigenous student success facilitators and barriers were examined. These articles encompassed research from Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. The purpose of this literature review was to identify themes and gaps, drive positive change in education, and guide future research. The research team found four common themes: academic preparedness, cultural safety, intrinsic student factors, and student support.

The article covers the theoretical, methodical and practical aspects of the implementation of information technologies in vocational education and training. The purpose of the article is to find factors for improving the educational process, management, methods and information work via the introduction of information/information and communication technologies in institutions of vocational and technical education. The following methods were used in the research process: theoretical and substantive analysis of primary sources and advanced pedagogical experience, analysis, generalization and systematization of scientific approaches in the use of information and communication technologies in the educational process of vocational education institutions, as well as methods of modelling and designing the “Teacher’s Road Map”. It has been established that information/information and communication technologies in vocational education are an important area of activity of an educational institution and a tool for increasing the teacher’s productivity. It has been found out that the pedagogical terms contributing to the effectiveness of the use of information technologies in vocational education institutions are a high level of information culture of teachers and students; implementation of innovative technologies including information and communication pedagogical ones based on subject-subject interaction; ensuring the reflection of the subjects of the educational process, their capability of adequate self-assessment of their personality. A virtual road map for the teacher has been developed as an electronic public resource (for example, a website). The map shows all mandatory points and routes that a teacher should take during educational activities in a vocational education institution. The main directions in the teacher’s virtual road map which are consistent with the similar ones of the teacher’s activity in a real educational situation are defined. The virtual road map covers educational and methodical work, has a hyperlink to the plan of methodical work of the cycle commission for the year, a hyperlink to methodical manuals or guides on the organization work in a vocational education institution; provides teachers with system suggestions and hyperlinks to electronic educational resources; a hyperlink to cloud storage for downloading documents for advanced training courses or internships; certificates, diplomas regarding participation in scientific and methodical events and self-education; a hyperlink to the cloud storage for uploading planning documents and methodological developments for review and approval. The virtual road map is differentiated by subject area which allows for providing meaningful instructions to occupational safety teachers, road safety teachers, industrial training masters, and teachers of special disciplines. The result of the research is the development of a meaningful module “Digital technologies in education: cloud services, online platforms for the creation of an educational environment by the teacher and the improvement of the qualifications of the pedagogical staff of the vocational educational institution.” It has been concluded that due to the testing of the information educational environment model at the Kostyantyniv Higher Vocational School, the approaches to the internal management of the institution, the organization of methodical, educational and study work, the forms and methods of teaching the profession, the culture of designing theoretical and industrial training lessons, the system assessment of educational achievements of students, and ways of involving parents in the educational process at the institution have been enhanced.

The study describes the role of cantors as an essential factor in the service to the Church and incarnates a mission by her to save the souls. Because of losing constant material support at the end of the XIX century by them this post was usually held by people without proper qualifications, endows, and principles. This was extremely negative to the level of service to the Greek Catholic church and its authority in society. Pointed out that clergy and activists of the clergy’s movement identified the issue of professional qualification of church singers as one of the keys within a complex of tasks for the revival clergy’s layer in the land. At the end of the XIX century functioned both eparchial professional clergy schools and private courses in Halychyna, and the list of them is given. Applicants for training at eparchial clergy schools had to meet the established criteria. Additionally, they had to have a good voice and complete primary school. Indicated that evidence of a singer’s professional qualification became a certificate that was taken as a result of a successfully passed exam in front of a special commission. Determined that as the factors for improvement of clergy’s education in the land the contemporaries named programs and methods improvement of study in professional educational institutions and widening of its net. Underlined the gaps in the educational program of clergy schools and the ways to solve them separately through laying special textbooks. Accented that the required component of the church singer’s education was named study of crafts as the mean for stable earning, organization of tighter communication with parishioners, and also to form clergy’s layer as a Ukrainian middle class. Pointed out that the task of clergy’s schools also should have been the education of people with a deep Christian and patriotic worldview. Based on statistics proved that at the end of the XIX century the vast majority of valid Greek Catholic clergy did not have a proper professional qualification. Determined that even after finishing professional institution, a significant part of graduates did not proceed to qualification exam. Contemporaries saw a solution for the situation in an obligatory professional exam for all unskilled singers and giving posts only to singers with certificates. Indicated that the relevant order was firstly issued by the spiritual authority of Stanislav diocese which became a push for qualitative changes in the level of Greek Catholic regency in Halychyna.

This manuscript unfolds in the context of a Faculty of Education course that was designed in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s call to post-secondary institutions to identify and meet teacher-training needs relating to the history and legacy of Canada’s Indian residential school system. The course instructor (Madden) begins by tracing how she is theorizing truth and reconciliation education through engagement with literature produced by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, and those who respond to their efforts. The pedagogical activity Wandering With/In the University of Alberta animates how she attempted to mobilize these emerging understandings through course design. We then introduce the collective processes we carried out as co-authors (i.e., course instructor and three graduate students who completed the course): creating, analyzing, and representing data, as well as generating the knowledge claims offered throughout. Next, data fragments that weave photographs of and narrative writing about campus sites anchor exploration of three central themes: wandering in relation to (a) evolving understandings of self, (b) a situated and significant historical moment (i.e., Canada 150), and (c) the (imagined) classroom as a site of reconciliation. We conclude with a discussion that explores the relationship between Faculty of Education coursework, identity, and place-based pedagogies for truth and reconciliation education. Keywords: truth and reconciliation education, higher education, decolonizing, place-based education, teacher identity Cette étude s’est déroulée dans le contexte d’un cours offert par la Faculty of Education et développé en réponse à l’appel de la Commission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada aux établissements postsecondaires pour qu’ils identifient les besoins en formation des enseignants quant à l’histoire et les séquelles du système des pensionnats indiens au Canada et qu’ils répondent à ces besoins. La chargée de cours (Madden) débute en expliquant ses démarches pour théoriser l’éducation de vérité et réconciliation en se penchant sur la littérature produite par la Commission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada et sur la réaction des gens aux efforts de la commission. L’activité pédagogique Wandering With/In the University of Alberta est une animation de ses efforts pour mobiliser ces nouvelles connaissances par la conception de son cours. Ensuite, nous présentons les processus collectifs que nous avons entrepris comme co-auteurs (c’est-à-dire, la chargée de cours et les trois étudiants aux études supérieures ayant complété le cours): la création, l’analyse et la représentation des données, ainsi que l’élaboration des déclarations présentées dans l’ensemble du cours. Par la suite, des fragments de données tissent des photos et des récits narratifs portant sur des sites sur le campus et offrent des balises pour l’exploration de trois thèmes centraux: errer par rapport à: (a) une compréhension en évolution de soi-même, (b) un moment historique significatif (par ex., Canada 150) et (c) la salle de classe (imaginée) comme site de réconciliation. Une discussion portant sur le rapport entre les cours de la Faculty of Education, l’identité et les pédagogies reposant axées les lieux au service de l’éducation de vérité et réconciliation vient terminer l’article. Mots clés: éducation de vérité et réconciliation, études supérieures, décolonisation, identité des enseignants

Lyzohub V. S. –Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor,Director of the Institute of Physiology named after Mikhail Bosey.November 7, 1946 –was born, Cherkasy, Ukrainian.1969 –graduatedfrom Cherkasy State Pedagogical Institute, Physical Education. Professor Lyzohub V. has been working at Cherkasy National University as a lecturer, associate professor, dean, professor, head of the department of anatomy and physiology of humans and animals, director of the Institute of Physiology named after M. Bosey since 1972.His scientific school has 15candidates of sciences (Phds), which are prepared through postgraduate studies. Lyzohub Volodymyr is one of the authors of the new scientific direction of the physiology of neurodynamic brain functions. The problem developed by teachers and post-graduate students under his leadership is marked by urgency and scientific novelty, which has practical value.The obtained scientific results, created new methods and software of research are the basis for manufacturing of a series of devices “Diagnost”. Devices are implemented in the educational and scientific process and are used in higher educational establishments of the Ministry of Education and Science, the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, the institutes of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences and the Academy of Medical Sciences.Lyzohub V. is the initiator and organizer of 10 international conferences and symposiums. He is a member of the Scientific and Methodological Council of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, specialized academic councils for the protection of dissertations and editions of scientific journals and collections, member of the Higher Attestation Commission of Ukraine.Одержано редакцією:20.10.21Прийнято до публікації:13.12.21

Biology is a teaching and learning subject at secondary school level in Kenyan schools. Biology plays a key role in industrialization and other sectors of the economy. Biology is a practical subject, which equips students with concepts and skills that are useful in solving the day-to day problems of life. The study of biology aims at providing the learner with the necessary knowledge with which to control or change the environment for the benefit of an individual, family or community. However, the secondary school students’ performance in biology as a learning subject in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) in Bungoma District has been quite low over the years. The public outcry and concern by parents, teachers, educationists and students about poor performance in science subjects and mathematics in national examinations is a clear indication that factors influencing student’s performance in these subjects need urgent investigation. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of teacher related factors on performance of secondary school students in biology. The Cross-sectional descriptive research design and the Ex post facto were employed in this study. Nine (9) secondary schools were randomly selected for study out of 139 schools in Bungoma district. Different categories of schools were used depending on the school set-up and these were (i) Single- gender boys boarding schools (ii) Single- gender girls boarding schools (iii) Single- gender girls day schools (iv) Co-educational boarding schools (v) Co-educational day schools (vi) Co-educational boarding / day schools. A total of three hundred and sixty (360) form three students were randomly selected for the study. A student questionnaire (SQ) and a teacher questionnaire (TQ) were used as the main instruments for data collection. Class mark lists were used as tracking records of performance in biology. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The study established that boys perform better than girls in biology. Female teachers were found to have a higher level of science anxiety in the teaching of biology compared to the male teachers. It was established that most teachers still used the traditional lecture method in the teaching of biology and only a smaller percentage were using the new approaches. This study was expected to significantly contribute in the provision of information that could be used by teachers, parents, educationists and policy makers to improve on the teaching, learning and performance of students in biology.

Ralph Ambrose Kekwick was born on 11 November 1908 at Leytonstone, Essex. Records of the Kekwick family go back to 1750, when they were living near Warrington in the parish of Daresbury. They were then Quakers and were involved in the local dye industry. In about 1800 they started to move south, and Ralph's grandfather, John Kekwick (1815–82), lived first in Abingdon and then, after the death of his first wife, moved to Bromley-by-Bow, where he worked as a corn factor. A second marriage outside the sect made him unacceptable to the Society of Friends and thus broke the family association with the Quakers. John Kekwick had two daughters and six sons by his second wife; of these, Ralph's father, Oliver A. Kekwick (1865–1939), was the youngest but one. He eventually became a managing clerk in a firm of ships' chandlers in Albert Docks, London. Ralph's maternal great-grandfather, James Price (1820–1900) had an administrative post at the Guildhall, London, and was responsible for the organization of the Lord Mayor's procession and banquets at the Guildhall. His eldest son, James Price (1840–1911), Ralph's grandfather, followed his father into employment at the Guildhall. James Price had three daughters and a son; Ralph's mother, Mary E. Price (1868–1958) was his eldest child. At the age of 13 she became a pupil-teacher at Bromley St Leonard's Church school, Bromley-by-Bow, where she had been a scholar. She was compelled to give up teaching when she married in 1898, in accordance with the regulations then in force, but she was called back to teach in Leyton during World War I at a boys' elementary school and, although Essex reinstated their ‘no married women’ rule after the war, London County Council had less strict regulations and she continued to teach until she reached retirement age. Ralph was the youngest of her three children; she had an elder boy, Leslie Oliver (1899–1975) and a girl, Phyllis Mary (1902–78); with her strong character and interest in education she was a considerable formative influence in Ralph's early life and had taught him to read before he started school. Ralph attended infants' and elementary schools in Leytonstone and then in 1919 gained a scholarship to Leyton County High School for boys. He remembered two outstanding masters, W.F. Woolner-Bird, who taught mathematics, and W.E. (later Sir Emrys) Williams, who aroused his interest in English literature. Ralph enjoyed his schooldays and was keen on all forms of sport. His elder brother, Leslie, lived at home while studying for a degree in chemistry at University College London (UCL), and it was his accounts of the experiments that they were doing that excited Ralph and firmly set him on a course towards a career in science. .In 1925, aged 16, Ralph passed the School Certificate with a sufficient number of subjects and distinctions to make him immediately eligible for university entrance. His father was in poor health at the time and it was decided that Ralph should go up to university rather than stay on at school for two more years to take the Higher School Certificate.

Purpose - The purpose of this experimental study is to investigate the impact of teaching Oriental Music using Blended Learning (BL) approach for the students of senior secondary level in Sri Lanka specifically focusing on their achievement on required competencies of Oriental Music at Ordinary Level. The study analyzes the academic performance of students with detailed comparison of BL environment and traditional learning environment. Authors propose the application of BL approach to teach Oriental Music and study its impact on improvement of students’ competency. The study conducted with the application of a mixed instructional design model of objectivist and constructivist approaches for the design of the blended learning course in a student centred learning environment. Methodology - The study was directed by using true experimental study design with pretest and posttest control groups. BL was applied to the experimental group and the traditional instruction method was applied to control group. 9 schools from Colombo district were randomly selected for the experimental and control groups covering all the three existing school types of Sri Lanka. The study group consisted of 360 students of Grade 10 and Grade 11 who has been studying Oriental Music as a subject for General Certificate of Education Ordinary Level. To analyze the data Descriptive statistics, Paired samples t test, Independent samples t test were utilized. Findings - The findings of the experiment indicated that students who has studied Oriental Music under BL strategy showed a significant improvement in their music academic performances after the intervention. The mean post-test of the experimental group was 71.75 which is significantly higher than the mean control group which was 52.07. The mean difference was 19.68 1.91. Hence, there is a statistically significant increase in the performance of students who studied Oriental Music under blended learning. Thus, it is clearly evident that the blended instruction was effective. Significance - This study indicated a positive platform to mould and cater the entire teaching learning process by introducing BL strategy to Sri Lankan secondary education system and fulfilled an existing research gap by utilizing BL to teach highly traditional abstract art. Results of the study contributes to the curriculum designing field with novel ideas to adapt blended instructions to teach secondary level students effectively.

Purpose - The purpose of this experimental study is to investigate the impact of teaching Oriental Music using Blended Learning (BL) approach for the students of senior secondary level in Sri Lanka specifically focusing on their achievement on required competencies of Oriental Music at Ordinary Level. The study analyzes the academic performance of students with detailed comparison of BL environment and traditional learning environment. Authors propose the application of BL approach to teach Oriental Music and study its impact on improvement of students’ competency. The study conducted with the application of a mixed instructional design model of objectivist and constructivist approaches for the design of the blended learning course in a student centred learning environment. Methodology - The study was directed by using true experimental study design with pretest and posttest control groups. BL was applied to the experimental group and the traditional instruction method was applied to control group. 9 schools from Colombo district were randomly selected for the experimental and control groups covering all the three existing school types of Sri Lanka. The study group consisted of 360 students of Grade 10 and Grade 11 who has been studying Oriental Music as a subject for General Certificate of Education Ordinary Level. To analyze the data Descriptive statistics, Paired samples t test, Independent samples t test were utilized. Findings - The findings of the experiment indicated that students who has studied Oriental Music under BL strategy showed a significant improvement in their music academic performances after the intervention. The mean post-test of the experimental group was 71.75 which is significantly higher than the mean control group which was 52.07. The mean difference was 19.68 1.91. Hence, there is a statistically significant increase in the performance of students who studied Oriental Music under blended learning. Thus, it is clearly evident that the blended instruction was effective. Significance - This study indicated a positive platform to mould and cater the entire teaching learning process by introducing BL strategy to Sri Lankan secondary education system and fulfilled an existing research gap by utilizing BL to teach highly traditional abstract art. Results of the study contributes to the curriculum designing field with novel ideas to adapt blended instructions to teach secondary level students effectively.

Deep conceptual understanding enables learners to transfer new knowledge into new situations and apply it in new contexts. Individuals’ understandings of their thought processes as well as monitoring their progress is fundamental for deepening learners’ understanding and that may lead to improved performance. The overall students’ performance in mathematics at the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) has been low compared to other subjects. Students’ knowledge of facts and skills need to occur in the context of a meaningful and conceptual framework of subject matter that deepens learners’ understanding. The purpose of the study was to investigate effect of Metacognitive awareness on secondary school students’ achievement in mathematics. The Research employed a Quasi-experimental design and in particular Solomon, Four Design. A stratified random sampling technique was used to draw four boys’ and four girls’ extra county participating secondary schools. Assignment of the four schools in each category to either experimental or control group was done through simple random sampling. A sample size of 360 Form three students was used. Students in the experimental groups were taught Formulae and Variations using Metacognitive IMPROVE programme while control groups were taught the same topic using Conventional Teaching Approach (CTA). The instrument for data collection used was metacognitive Awareness Inventory Questionnaire (MAIQ). The overall reliability coefficient of MAIQ using Cronbach alpha obtained was 0.754. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (mean, percentages and Standard Deviation) and inferential statistics (test, one-way ANOVA and Post hoc Analysis). The hypotheses was tested at 0.05 level of significance. Data analysis was undertaken with the help of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25.0 software. The results showed that students’ Metacognitive awareness resulted to students’ development of the skills of planning, monitoring and evaluating about their own cognitive activities and monitoring the approach they expected to be important for problem solving. The study recommends that teachers should organize the course contents to increase cognitive awareness of the students. Higher cognitive awareness demonstrates high levels of mathematics achievement therefore teacher proficiency need to be adjusted for better teaching and learning.

Memoirs dedicated to Sigismund Natanovich Valk were written by his student Gennady Leontyevich Sobolev, Russian historian, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Honorary Professor of St. Petersburg State University, Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation, specialist in the history of Russia of the 20th century, founder of the scientific school of historians of Russian revolutions and the Civil War, the most respected researcher of the history of the Siege of Leningrad. S. N. Valk (1887–1975) was an outstanding theorist of source studies, archival studies and archaeography. He graduated from the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University in 1913. He was the employee of the Petrograd Historical and Revolutionary Archives (1918–1922), teacher (since 1923) and professor at Leningrad State University, Doctor of Historical Sciences (1936), head of the Archaeographic Commission of the USSR Academy of Sciences, researcher at the Leningrad Branch of the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences (since 1931). The article presents memories about S. N. Valk when the author was a student at the Faculty of History of the Leningrad State University in 1954–1959. G. L. Sobolev describes the narratives that shaped him as a historian: S. N. Valk’s seminars on ancient Russian history with firstyear students, the work in the archive under Valk’s supervision, conducting research for the thesis and the help of the teacher in choosing a direction of future professional activity. In addition, the memoirs reflect the university life of students of Leningrad State University in the 1950s, the principles of organizing the educational process at the faculty during this period, the work of the university library, and much more. The memories have important historical context, reflecting the everyday life of post-war Leningrad, and the system of secondary and higher education in the USSR.

Introduction. The theoretical foundations of the new ecological disciplines "Urban Ecology" and "Phytomeliora-tion" were laid in the mid-80's and 90's of the last century at the Department of Ecology and Landscape Architecture of the Ukrainian National Forestry University, which at that time was headed by Lviv scientist Volodymyr Kucheryavyi famous by his monographs “Green Zone of the City” (Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 1981) and “Natural Environment of the City” (Lviv: Higher School, 1984).Purpose and methods. The methodological basis of urban ecological research is the ecological-comparative method, which involves gradation ordination with the allocation of four ecological and phytocenotic zones on the territory of cities into the study of the urban ecosystem (suburban forests - city parks – public gardens - street plantings) (V. Kucheryavyi, P. Hnativ, M. Kurnytska, N. Siroochenko, N. Stepanyak, K. Myronchuk, T. Pushkaryova, Yu. Kozak) This approach is used in dissertation research not only by graduate students and applicants of the Department of Ecology and Landscape Architecture of UNFU, but also young scientists of Kyiv, Lutsk and Chernivtsi.Results and discussion. Taking into account the growth of the "recreational boom" among urban residents in the 80's and 90's, scientific researches of park and forest park phytocenoses are developed (V. Kucheryavyi, A. Zhyrnov, Yu. Khrystuk, R. Danylyk, V. Kramarets, N. Lukyanchuk, O. Kaspruk, R. Dudyn, N. Imshanetska, N. Kovalchuk, S. Marutyak, O. Oleynyuk). During this period, visual methods of diagnosing of urban ecosystems state are widely used, which confirm the feasibility of using of ecowedge ordination. The influence of complex urbogenic gradients of the environment on the adaptation processes of living organisms and their significance for the evaluation of the results of woody plants introduction into the urbogenic environment was determined (V. Kucheryavyi, M. Kurnytska, O. Kaspruk, O. Gorbenko, M. Les, V.S. Kucheryavyi, T. Shuplat, N. Gotsiy). Electro-physiological methods of impedance and polar-ization capacity measuring, fluorescence of plastid pigments, temperature gradients of the environment are used for establishing the level of plant viability (V. Kucheryavyi, H. Krynytskyi, V. Mokryi, A. Kuzyk, M. Hozdog, S. Hridzhuk, Yu. Pankivskyi, V. Kucheryavyi, T. Shuplat). Investigations of the phytogenic field of vegetation begin, its role in the formation of the continuum in conditions of urbogenic and manmade devastation is determined (V. Kucheryavyi, V. Popovych, T. Levus, T. Shuplat). The formation of a scientific school on urban ecology and phytomelioration is ensured by the three generations of scientists succession. A significant number of scientists have passed the scientific path from post-graduate student in the 80's - 90's to the candidate or doctor of sciences (P. Hnativ, V. Mokryi, V. Mazepa, S. Myklush, M. Nazaruk, Ya. Henyk, V. Popovych).Conclusions. The authoritative leader of the scientific school on urban ecology, phytomelioration and landscape architecture is Professor Volodymyr Kucheryavyi, who has supervised four doctors and 22 candidates of science. During the years of his scientific activity he published about 300 scientific articles, more than 30 monographs and textbooks. Heading the scientific and methodological commission of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine on environmental education in the 80's and 90's, he started training specialists in "applied ecology" in Ukraine. Thanks to the initia-tive of prof. V. Kucheryavyi scientists of the Scientific School of Urban Ecology, Phytomelioration and Landscape Architecture took an active part in many international projects (V. Kucheryavyi, Ya. Henyk, L. Kalahurka, M. Chernyavskyi, O. Oleynyuk, L. Parkhuts, Z. Sheremeta, S. Melnychuk, V. Popovych, T. Shuplat, M. Fitak, V.S. Kucheryavyi). The scientists worked closely with research teams from Germany, Austria, Belgium, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Norway. Scientific research on urban ecology, phytomelioration and landscape architecture, which began in the 1980s, continues thanks to the succession of scientific generations.

To develop a database on growth promoters and feed additives in cattle fattening a purposive survey was carried out. It is done among 30 cattle fattening farmers covering 1 Upazilla under 3 union in Mymensingh district of Bangladesh, who were involved in cattle fattening activities before Eid-Ul-Azha (August to November2015). The survey was done covering farmer’s information, livestock population and production system, feed sources, manpower involvement, availability, types of hormones, feed additives use with negative opinion and probable suggestions for controlling whereas the researcher had no control or could not manipulate the variables as the appeared. All the farmers interviewed during the survey period were literates, and about 52% of them had primary education, 27% had secondary school certificates, 14% obtained higher secondary certificate and the rest were graduates and post-graduates, 7%. Irrespective of literacy about 10% of the interviewed farmer had training on cattle fattening and the rest fattened cattle without having any sort of training. About 35% respondents use skilled personal for cattle fattening. In the study areas, most of the farmers (55%) were using roughage and 45% of them use concentrate. The fattened cattle were marketed by farmers is 98% and rest 2% by butcher or others. About 72% of the farmer use Tracoll and 28% use Ketofox as feed additives and as hormone 30% farmers use Betamethasone, 55% use Decasone and 15% use Periactin. In public perception 89% farmers use growth promoters in wrong period and 80% use harmful feed additives, feeding natural feed in low amount is (65%). Consumers are less concern to buy fattened bull (93%). The mean of the suggestions like veterinary services (1.26), doses in proper ages (2.06), feeding balanced feed (1.62), organic growth promoters program (0.60) and knowledge through ICT program (0.03). From the above results it may be concluded that, major number of cattle are fattened by small farmers in the survey area. For this fattening purpose different types of hormones and feed additives available in the market are used by them. It can be concluded that, the percentages of different negative opinions on using hormones and feed additives is higher.J. Environ. Sci. & Natural Resources, 9(2): 109-113 2016

e4974049Teacher training for the development of digital skills is a key factor for in pedagogical innovation in Distance Higher Education. Taking into account the difficulties of many professors to work in this modality and the lack of training programs for online education, this study focus on professors’ competencies for online teaching in Higher Education. This article presents results regarding professors' perception about their competences for the exercise of teaching online. Under an online survey was used as data collection instrument. It was applied to professors who carry out online teaching activities in public or private higher education institutions in Brazil and Portugal, as they represent the Portuguese speaking countries with the greatest international relevance in the field of provision in this context. The study involved a simple non-probability sampling process, composed of 277 university professors, of which 236 from Brazil and 41 from Portugal. Descriptive statistical analysis and parametric tests were conducted to assess the differences between the professors’ perceptions of both nationalities. The results show that these teachers have favorable self-perceptions regarding their knowledge of content, pedagogy, technology as well as regarding their transversal skills associated with online education. However, they perceive some difficulty in effectively integrating different knowledges (scientific and pedagogical) with technology in their pedagogical practices. The differences found between countries were not statistically significant. The need to invest in professors’ training is detected, especially in the area of technologies and their integration with pedagogical and content knowledge. ResumoA formação docente para o desenvolvimento de competências digitais é fator primordial para a inovação pedagógica no Ensino Superior na modalidade a distância. Tendo-se em conta as dificuldades de muitos docentes para atuar nesta modalidade e a carência de programas de formação para a educação online, realizou-se um estudo sobre as competências de professores para a docência superior online. Este artigo apresenta resultados relativos à percepção dos docentes acerca de suas competências para o exercício da docência online. Utilizou-se o survey online como instrumento de recolha de dados. Este foi aplicado a professores que exercem atividades docentes online em instituições de ensino superior, públicas ou privadas, no Brasil e em Portugal, por representarem os países lusófonos com maior relevância internacional no domínio da oferta neste contexto. O estudo envolveu uma amostra aleatória simples, não probabilística, composta por 277 docentes universitários, dos quais 236 do Brasil e 41 de Portugal. Foram realizadas análises estatísticas descritivas e testes paramétricos para avaliar as diferenças entre as percepções docentes das duas nacionalidades. Os resultados mostram que estes docentes apresentam autopercepções favoráveis relativamente aos seus conhecimentos de conteúdo, pedagógico, tecnológico e em relação às competências transversais associadas à educação online. Demonstram, contudo, dificuldade em integrar efetivamente os seus diferentes saberes (cientifico e pedagógico) com a tecnologia em suas práticas pedagógicas. As diferenças encontradas entre os países não foram estatisticamente significativas. Detecta-se a necessidade de se investir na formação docente, especialmente, na área das tecnologias e da sua integração com os conhecimentos pedagógicos e de conteúdo.Palavras-chave: Educação à distância, Competência docente, Ensino Superior, Formação docente.Keywords: Distance education, Higher Education, Teacher Education, Teacher Competencies.ReferencesALI, Radwan; WRIGHT, James. Examination of the QM Process: Making a Case for Transformative Professional Development Model. International Journal on E-Learning, v. 16, n. 4, p. 329-347, 2017. Disponível em: https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/151548/. Acesso em: 22 out. 2020.ALMEIDA, Beatriz Oliveira; ALVES, Lynn Rosalina Gama. Letramento digital em tempos de COVID-19: uma análise da educação no contexto atual. Debates em Educação, v. 12, n. 28, p. 1-18, 2020. Disponível em: https://www.seer.ufal.br/index.php/debateseducacao/article/view/10282. Acesso em: 24 out. 2020.AMORIM, Ana Paula. 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Student access to technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges and pathways into higher education are critical issues in South Africa. Powell and McGrath (2014) draw on theories of agency to explain why students access TVET colleges. Using sociological and social–psychological theories of agency, our study explores a theoretical perspective on student access to TVET colleges, their barriers, success, and aspirations to study at university. We selected a TVET college in the Western Cape as our research site and interviewed 30 students who had completed the National Certificate in Educare. Our analysis of the data shows that the students had enrolled at the TVET college as an alternative pathway when barriers prevented their access to universities. Evidence shows that they also encountered barriers during the course of their studies but that, despite these barriers, their desire to study at university persisted. Theoretical insights derived from the empirical evidence suggest that student success at TVET colleges may provide them with prior learning and practical work experience in order to gain access to universities.

This paper examines the place of geography in the school- level curriculum in Nepal. The rearm curriculum defines as the totality of student experiences that occur in the educational process. Specifically, it is referred to a planned sequence of instruction, or a view of the student'; experiences in terms of the educator; or school's; instructional goals. After the establishment of Durbar High School in Nepal in 1910 and the School Leaving Certificate Board in 1990, the subject of Geography was formally introduced. This subject had recognized as a compulsory subject at the school level curriculum before the NESP. After the NESP (1971), the issue had allocated 50 marks, becoming has becomes an optional subject since 1982. Geographic concepts have been taught after the introduction of the social studies curriculum at the secondary level since 1992.At present, geography is teaching in Nepal as an elective subject from secondary level to higher education. However, this subject seems less of a priority for students than mathematics, computer, and account. For this purpose, data collected from the review of the report published from the Education Commissions, Curriculum Development Center, the records of the National Examination Board, e-resources, and other concerned bodies. This paper concludes that geography subject at the school level is in a crisis. However, with the inclusion of geographic information systems (GIS) and spatial planning in the curriculum from the school level, the future of this subject looks bright.

ObjectivesThis is descriptive analysis of post-16 education and labour market activities, pathways and outcomes based on different socioeconomic, demographic and education factors. This research uses powerful administrative data from England to carry out analysis of over 3.6 million individuals doing their General Certificate of Secondary Education exams (GCSEs) between 2002 and 2007. MethodEducation records and combined with tax and social security records (from the National Pupil Database). Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) data allowing these individuals to be tracked in their post compulsory education over a 10-15 year period. The analysis makes comparisons using of a range of background characteristics including socioeconomic status, special educational needs (SEN) status, gender, ethnicity, first language and location (region). It also observes how these differ for different education levels, doing comparisons of: 1) graduates and non-graduates and 2) non-graduates achieving level 3 or above and level 2 or below. ResultsIt finds that Post 16 (i.e. compulsory in England) Education and labour market pathways are incredibly diverse and they differ significantly based on individual characteristics. Higher levels of education lead to better labour market outcomes and most sub-groups achieving a higher education level leads to better labour market outcomes than their comparators (with different characteristics). For example, there are higher proportions of graduates that were Free School Meals eligible (a proxy for lower socioeconomic status) in employment and lower proportions claiming benefits than non-Free School Meals (FSM) eligible non-graduates, 15 years after their GCSEs (63 percent versus 58 percent and five versus nine percent respectively). Of those in employment, the FSM eligible graduates earn around £5,000 more per year than non-FSM eligible non-graduates and their earnings potential seem to have different trajectories. ConclusionThere are some interesting and insightful findings, but it should be noted that findings are descriptive. It is recommended that in depth, technical analysis is undertaken to explored further.

In compliance with RA 10931(the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act), the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) allows State Universities and Colleges (SUCs) in the Philippines to admit students regardless of their senior high school track and strand taken, through CMO 105, Series of 2017. This would cause future problems because the nature of these graduates' high school studies would be disregarded when evaluating applicants for a certain bachelor's degree. This study was conducted to determine if a specific Senior High School strand produces high-achieving students in science-related programs. Using a causal-comparative research design, it engaged sixty-one (61) undergraduate students enrolled in Two Philippine State Universities offer Science-related courses: Bachelor of Science in Biology, Bachelor of Science in Chemistry, and Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science. One-way ANOVA was done to find if there is a significant difference among the academic performance of the respondents grouped by their senior high school strands. Dunn’s Test for Multiple Comparisons was used as post-hoc analysis. The ANOVA test showed a significant difference between academic performance in science-related programs and senior high school strands p = 0.015, while no significance was found in sex and annual household income. Conducting post-hoc analysis using Dunn’s Test for Multiple Comparisons showed that STEM graduates have a statistically significant academic performance between ABM, GAS, HUMSS, Home Economics, and ICT graduates. The findings show significant implications in the admission of students in college, especially in science-related programs. Strands in senior high school must be considered and that short-bridging programs may be conducted for non-STEM graduates enrolled in science-related programs.

“An Online Program for Teacher Learning to Enhance Students' Media Literacy Skills” was a product of employing Research and Development (R&D) methodology. It consisted of the teachers' learning development project and the utilized the teachers’ learning outcomes for the student development project. The first project yielded six teachers’ learning handbooks, whereas the second project was composed of one action handbook that utilized the teachers’ learning outcomes to foster student development. The handbooks were evaluated in a school that represented the opportunity expansion schools under the Commission on Basic Education. In the experimental research model, which was designed with a one group pre-test/post-test, there was an experimental group of 12 teachers and 59 students. The results revealed that the invented online program had been effective and consistent with the study’s assumptions. The findings illustrated the following: 1) the post-experimental test for teachers had met the standard of 90/90, 2) the teachers’ post-test mean scores had been statistically significantly higher than before the experiment, and 3) after the experiment, the students’ mean score on media literacy skills assessment had been statistically significantly higher than before the experiment. In addition, the results verified that the created online program would be appropriate for the dissemination in the target opportunity expansion schools under the Office of the Basic Education Commission throughout the country.

The National Institute of Library and Information Sciences (NILIS), an Institute affiliated with the University of Colombo, in Sri Lanka, was established in 1999, with the main objective of training Sri Lankan school librarians and other library staff, under the World Bank project. Accordingly, in 2002, NILIS commenced Certificate, Diploma, and Post-graduate courses for teacher librarians. Concurrently the Ministry of Education selected and trained 4000 teacher librarians with the assistance of NILIS. The training consisted of short term and long term programs commencing at the certificate level and leading to the post graduate level . Teacher librarians were mainly trained to manage school libraries; while being empowered to teach the subjects in which they specialized in the university, or Information literacy, in order to give them the same status as the other teachers. To date NILIS has trained around 2000 teacher librarians under the different categories. In this study, the number of training sessions conducted, number of teachers trained, and the outcome of the programs are elaborated and discussed. Finally, the performance of the teacher librarians after the completion of the masters in teacher librarianship course conducted by NILIS is critically discussed, using the data collected by the interview method with the random sampling technique. The results show that most of the teacher librarians trained at NILIS are performing school library organization activities at a more satisfactory level than prior to receiving their training. Nevertheless, the teaching of information literacy by the teacher librarians to the school children is not being fulfilled at a satisfactory level. Most of the teacher librarians who have obtained higher professional qualifications at NILIS are unsatisfied due to problems with regard to their promotional schemes. Since 2005, NILIS and other relevant bodies have been striving to resolve the problems of the teacher librarians, but so far their efforts have not been successful.

The education reform in Kenya recommended phasing out of the 8-4-4 education system to embrace the 2-6-3-3-3 competency based curriculum (CBC). The embraced curriculum has three learning pathways or pillars at senior secondary and university education. The three pathways are Talent Pillar, Languages and Social Sciences Pillar, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) pillar. The Higher Education Curriculum Framework (HECF) and universities are yet to provide clear policy guidelines for training teachers and align their skill and competencies with the CBC curriculum framework. The phenomenon is compounded by the fact that, the Ministry of Education through teacher service commission without any empirical data suggested the bedrock of education training programs, the Bachelor of education arts (B. Ed, arts) and Bachelor of Education science (B.Ed. arts) programs to be eradicated in favor of Bachelor of Arts (B.A) and Sciences (B.Sc.) as the pathways to teaching profession through a Post Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE). The Teachers Service Commission is championing multi-tasking competences where those graduates teaching in secondary schools should be trained to teach more than the traditional two teaching subjects. The Basic Education Curriculum Framework (BECF) has categorized Junior and Senior Secondary School levels which the training of teachers in the university education program must align itself with. While students study all the compulsory subjects in junior secondary, they branch to specialize in their preferred pathways at senior secondary levels. The recruitment of students to both public and private universities for teaching career is based on high school credentials that have now to consider talent including talents in sports, creative and performing arts. The study was designed to explore the teacher training programs embracing talent for university education in order to address both the needs of Junior and senior secondary schools under the three pillars embraced in the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) in Kenya.

This study aims to employ Research and Development (R&D) Methodology to create an "Online Program to Empower Teacher Learning to Develop Students' Digital Literacy Skills" based on the notions of "Knowledge and Action is Power" and "Students are the Ultimate Goal of Any Educational Management." It consists of teacher learning development projects and a project where teachers use learning outcomes to help students progress. Six sets of teacher learning manuals and one workshop manual for instructors to apply learning outcomes to student development were created as a result of the R1&D1 to R4&D4 stages. According to the results of experimenting with manuals in the R5&D5 stage with 10 teachers and 60 students using one group pretest-posttest design experimental research in a school that is representative of educational opportunity expansion schools under the Office of the Basic Education Commission, it was found that the developed manuals were effective according to the research hypothesis: 1) teachers had test results of learning outcomes that met standard criteria 90/90, 2) the teachers' post-test results were significantly higher than the pre-test-results, and 3) the students' post-test results were significantly higher than the pre-test results. It demonstrates that the manuals for learning and implementation for teachers in the developed online program are effective and can be disseminated for the benefit of the population of educational opportunity expansion schools under the Office of the Basic Education Commission across the country.

Student dropout, also called ‘early departure’, is a significant problem in South Africa’s post-school education and training (PSET) landscape, specifically in the technical and vocational education and training (TVET) sector. The challenge of student retention and programme completion (the antithesis of dropping out) is equally significant and important to TVET institutions, the state department responsible (Department of Higher Education and Training) and the South African economy. Early departure negatively influences the success rates of educational institutions. It also influences the chances of personal employment and financial well-being of individual students, causing financial ripple effects on society and government. Students’ decisions to remain or leave college or a programme are influenced by a variety of individual and social factors, both internal and external, including people close to the students and the policies, systems and structures within which students interact. These factors also encompass the quality and friendliness of teachers, social interaction with teachers and peers, and the role played by friends in academic achievement. This article reports on a study of student perspectives on the internal and external factors that influence their retention in, and completion of, a TVET college Business Studies National Certificate (Vocational) (NC(V)) programme in the Western Cape, South Africa. An improved understanding of student experiences, intentions, and decision-making processes leading to persistence provides a foundation for improving student retention and programme completion in a TVET environment.

Vocational training is a contentious issue in South Africa, where large per centages are regularly cited for unemployment statistics, and in particular for youth and post-school unemployment. Vocational study programmes at Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges are often seen as one possible remedy to these problems. The Department of Higher Education and Training’s (DHET) long-term objective is to increase the number of learners that will qualify as artisans, which represent a major scarce/critical skills area in South Africa. However, the throughput and certification rates of TVET students are disconcertingly low, with National Certificate (Vocational) (NC(V)) Engineering courses regularly cited as having some of the lowest rates. This article reports on a small research study on the perceptions of TVET staff and students about NC(V) Engineering programmes, conducted at two TVET colleges in South Africa. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to collect data from NC(V) Engineering students and lecturers. The most important findings of the study include that there is a critical collaboration gap between industry and the TVET sector and that both NC(V) staff and students experience the need for addressing the (im)balance of time spent on practical versus theoretical training as part of NC(V) programmes. A clear understanding of the perceptions and concerns of TVET NC(V) Engineering lecturers and students may assist in addressing issues locally, at individual TVET colleges, and globally, at national policy and Sector Education and Training Authority (SETA) level, that could in future serve to contribute to improved academic performance, including higher throughput and certification rates, of NC(V) Engineering students.

Vocational training is a contentious issue in South Africa, where large per centages are regularly cited for unemployment statistics, and in particular for youth and post-school unemployment. Vocational study programmes at Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges are often seen as one possible remedy to these problems. The Department of Higher Education and Training’s (DHET) long-term objective is to increase the number of learners that will qualify as artisans, which represent a major scarce/critical skills area in South Africa. However, the throughput and certification rates of TVET students are disconcertingly low, with National Certificate (Vocational) (NC(V)) Engineering courses regularly cited as having some of the lowest rates. This article reports on a small research study on the perceptions of TVET staff and students about NC(V) Engineering programmes, conducted at two TVET colleges in South Africa. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to collect data from NC(V) Engineering students and lecturers. The most important findings of the study include that there is a critical collaboration gap between industry and the TVET sector and that both NC(V) staff and students experience the need for addressing the (im)balance of time spent on practical versus theoretical training as part of NC(V) programmes. A clear understanding of the perceptions and concerns of TVET NC(V) Engineering lecturers and students may assist in addressing issues locally, at individual TVET colleges, and globally, at national policy and Sector Education and Training Authority (SETA) level, that could in future serve to contribute to improved academic performance, including higher throughput and certification rates, of NC(V) Engineering students.

PurposeGiven the implementation of a new Certified Public Accountant (CPA) licensure exam and the CPA Evolution Model Curriculum, accounting educators must integrate more advanced skills in their coursework. We illustrate how a commonly-used project in accounting classes, which teaches technical accounting content, can address skills and competencies identified by the Pathways Commission and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and, as a result, enhance skills all business school graduates need in the workplace.Design/methodology/approachWe incorporate a financial statement analysis research project under a group work format in three levels of financial accounting classes. Using both quantitative and qualitative analysis, we evaluate changes in student perceptions of skills and competencies important for business graduates.FindingsWe find students perceive improvement in critical thinking, problem-solving, the ability to work with other people, their understanding of the course material, and data analysis abilities after completion of the project. We also find statistically significant increases pre-to post-project in student perceptions of their knowledge, confidence, competence, and enthusiasm with respect to accounting material.Originality/valueWe provide an example of how educators can align a commonly-used project with the CPA Evolution Model Curriculum, yet still meet the needs of non-accounting majors and prepare all students for future business careers. Group work has been studied and similar financial statement analysis projects have been implemented in the classroom for years. We contribute by not only extending and updating this research, but also by re-evaluating a project to determine whether it meets the shifting needs of a rapidly changing profession. By doing so, we answer recent researchers’ call for research in higher education that addresses employability and workplace skills.

As the Covid-19 pandemic takes its disproportionate toll on African Americans, the historical perspective in this working paper provides insight into the socioeconomic conditions under which President-elect Joe Biden’s campaign promise to “build back better” might actually begin to deliver the equal employment opportunity that was promised by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Far from becoming the Great Society that President Lyndon Johnson promised, the United States has devolved into a greedy society in which economic inequality has run rampant, leaving most African Americans behind. In this installment of our “Fifty Years After” project, we sketch a long-term historical perspective on the Black employment experience from the last decades of the nineteenth century into the 1970s. We follow the transition from the cotton economy of the post-slavery South to the migration that accelerated during World War I as large numbers of Blacks sought employment in mass-production industries in Northern cities such as Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Chicago. For the interwar decades, we focus in particular on the Black employment experience in the Detroit automobile industry. During World War II, especially under pressure from President Roosevelt’s Fair Employment Practices Committee, Blacks experienced tangible upward employment mobility, only to see much of it disappear with demobilization. In the 1960s and into the 1970s, however, supported by the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Blacks made significant advances in employment opportunity, especially by moving up the blue-collar occupational hierarchy into semiskilled and skilled unionized jobs. These employment gains for Blacks occurred within a specific historical context that included a) strong demand for blue-collar and clerical labor in the U.S. mass-production industries, which still dominated in global competition; b) the unquestioned employment norm within major U.S. business corporations of a career with one company, supported at the blue-collar level by mass-production unions that had become accepted institutions in the U.S. business system; c) the upward intergenerational mobility of white households from blue-collar employment requiring no more than a high-school education to white-collar employment requiring a higher education, creating space for Blacks to fill the blue-collar void; and d) a relative absence of an influx of immigrants as labor-market competition to Black employment. As we will document in the remaining papers in this series, from the 1980s these conditions changed dramatically, resulting in erosion of the blue-collar gains that Blacks had achieved in the 1960s and 1970s as the Great Society promise of equal employment opportunity for all Americans disappeared.

Every crisis at the same time reveals, forewarns and implies changes with cyclical trends that can be analyzed from different disciplinary perspectives, building scenarios to anticipate the future, despite uncertainties and risks. And the current crisis certainly appears as one of the most problematic of the modern era: recently, Luigi Ferrara, Director of the School of Design at the George Brown College in Toronto and of the connected Institute without Boundaries, highlighted how the pandemic has simply accelerated undergoing dynamics, exacerbating other crises – climatic, environmental, social, economic – which had already been going on for a long time both locally and globally. In the most economically developed contexts, from North America to Europe, the Covid emergency has led, for example, to the closure of almost 30% of the retail trade, as well as to the disposal and sale of many churches. Places of care and assistance, such as hospitals and elderly houses, have become places of death and isolation for over a year, or have been closed. At the same time, the pandemic has imposed the revolution of the remote working and education, which was heralded – without much success – more than twenty years ago. In these even contradictory dynamics, Ferrara sees many possibilities: new roles for stronger and more capable public institutions as well as the opportunity to rethink and redesign the built environment and the landscape. Last but not least, against a future that could be configured as dystopian, a unique chance to enable forms of citizenship and communities capable of inhabiting more sustainable, intelligent and ethical cities and territories; and architects capable of designing them. This multifactorial and pervasive crisis seems therefore to impose a deep review of the current unequal development models, in the perspective of that “creative destruction” that Schumpeter placed at the basis of the dynamic entrepreneurial push: «To produce means to combine materials and forces within our reach. To produce other things, or the same things by a different method, means to combine these materials and forces differently» (Schumpeter, 1912). A concept well suiting to the design practice as a response to social needs and improving the living conditions. This is the perspective of Architectural Technology, in its various forms, which has always placed the experimental method at the center of its action. As Eduardo Vittoria already pointed out: «The specific contribution of the technological project to the development of an industrial culture is aimed at balancing the emotional-aesthetic data of the design with the technical-productive data of the industry. Design becomes a place of convergence of ideas and skills related to factuality, based on a multidisciplinary intelligence» (Vittoria, 1999). A lucid and appropriate critique of the many formalistic emphases that have invested contemporary architecture. In the most acute phases of the pandemic, the radical nature of this polycrisis has been repeatedly invoked as a lever for an equally radical modification of the development models, for the definitive defeat of conjunctural and emergency modes of action. With particular reference to the Italian context, however, it seems improper to talk about a “change of models” – whether economic, social, productive or programming, rather than technological innovation – since in the national reality the models and reference systems prove to not to be actually structured. The current socio-economic and productive framework, and the political and planning actions themselves, are rather a variegated and disordered set of consolidated practices, habits often distorted when not deleterious, that correspond to stratified regulatory apparatuses, which are inconsistent and often ineffective. It is even more difficult to talk about programmatic rationality models in the specific sector of construction and built environment transformation, where the enunciation of objectives and the prospection of planning actions rarely achieve adequate projects and certain implementation processes, verified for the consistency of the results obtained and monitored for the ability in maintaining the required performance over time. Rather than “changing the model”, in the Italian case, we should therefore talk about giving shape and implementation to an organic and rational system of multilevel and inter-sectorial governance models, which assumes the principles of subsidiarity, administrative decentralization, inter-institutional and public-private cooperation. But, even in the current situation, with the pandemic not yet over, we are already experiencing a sort of “return to order”: after having envisaged radical changes – new urban models environmentally and climatically more sustainable, residential systems and public spaces more responsive to the pressing needs of social demand, priority actions to redevelop the suburbs and to strength infrastructures and ecosystem services, new advanced forms of decision-making decentralization for the co-planning of urban and territorial transformations, and so on – everything seems to has been reset to zero. This is evident from the list of actions and projects proposed by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), where no clear national strategy for green transition emerges, even though it is repeatedly mentioned. As highlighted by the Coordination of Technical-Scientific Associations for the Environment and Landscape1, and as required by EU guidelines2, this transition requires a paradigm shift that assumes eco-sustainability as a transversal guideline for all actions. With the primary objective of protecting ecosystem balances, improving and enhancing the natural and landscape capital, as well as protecting citizen health and well-being from environmental risks and from those generated by improper anthropization phenomena. The contents of the Plan explicitly emphases the need to «repair the economic and social damage of the pandemic crisis» and to «contribute to addressing the structural weaknesses of the Italian economy», two certainly relevant objectives, the pursuit of which, however, could paradoxically contrast precisely with the transition to a more sustainable development. In the Plan, the green revolution and the ecological transition are resolved in a dedicated axis (waste management, hydrogen, energy efficiency of buildings, without however specific reform guidelines of the broader “energy” sector), while «only one of the projects of the Plan regards directly the theme Biodiversity / Ecosystem / Landscape, and in a completely marginal way» (CATAP, 2021). Actions are also limited for assessing the environmental sustainability of the interventions, except the provision of an ad hoc Commission for the streamlining of some procedural steps and a generic indication of compliance with the DNSH-Do not significant Harm criterion (do not cause any significant damage), without specific guidelines on the evaluation methods. Moreover, little or nothing in the Plan refers on actions and investments in urban renewal, abandoned heritage recovery3, of in protecting and enhancing areas characterized by environmental sensitivity/fragility; situations widely present on the national territory, which are instead the first resource for a structural environmental transition. Finally yet importantly, the well-known inability to manage expenditure and the public administration inefficiencies must be considered: a limit not only to the effective implementation of projects, but also to the control of the relationship between time, costs and quality (also environmental) of the interventions. In many places, the Plan has been talked about as an opportunity for a real “reconstruction”, similar to that of post-war Italy; forgetting that the socio-economic renaissance was driven by the INA-Casa Plan4, but also by a considerable robustness of the cultural approach in the research and experimentation of new housing models (Schiaffonati, 2014)5. A possible “model”, which – appropriately updated in socio-technical and environmental terms – could be a reference for an incisive governmental action aiming at answering to a question – the one of the housing – far from being resolved and still a priority, if not an emergency. The crisis also implies the deployment of new skills, with a review of outdated disciplinary approaches, abandoning all corporate resistances and subcultures that have long prevented the change. A particularly deep fracture in our country, which has implications in research, education and professions, dramatically evident in the disciplines of architectural and urban design. Coherently with the EU Strategic Agenda 2019-2024 and the European Pillar of Social Rights, the action plan presented by the Commission in March 2021, with the commitment of the Declaration of Porto on May 7, sets three main objectives for 2030: an employment rate higher than 78%, the participation of more than 60% of adults in training courses every year and at least 15 million fewer people at risk of social exclusion or poverty6. Education, training and retraining, lifelong learning and employment-oriented skills, placed at the center of EU policy action, now require large investments, to stimulate employment transitions towards the emerging sectors of green, circular and digital economies (environmental design and assessment, risk assessment & management, safety, durability and maintainability, design and management of the life cycle of plans, projects, building systems and components: contents that are completely marginal or absent in the current training offer of Architecture). Departments and PhDs in the Technological Area have actively worked with considerable effectiveness in this field. In these regards, we have to recall the role played by Romano Del Nord «protagonist for commitment and clarity in identifying fundamental strategic lines for the cultural and professional training of architects, in the face of unprecedented changes of the environmental and production context» (Schiaffonati, 2021). Today, on the other hand, the axis of permanent and technical training is almost forgotten by ministerial and university policies for the reorganization of teaching systems, with a lack of strategic visions for bridging the deficit of skills that characterizes the area of architecture on the facing environmental and socio-economic challenges. Also and precisely in the dual perspective of greater interaction with the research systems and with the world of companies and institutions, and of that trans- and multi-disciplinary dimension of knowledge, methods and techniques necessary for the ecological transition of settlement systems and construction sector. Due to the high awareness of the Technological Area about the multifactorial and multi-scale dimension of the crises that recurrently affect our territories, SITdA has been configured since its foundation as a place for scientific and cultural debate on the research and training themes. With a critical approach to the consoling academic attitude looking for a “specific disciplinary” external and extraneous to the social production of goods and services. Finalizing the action of our community to «activate relationships between universities, professions, institutions through the promotion of the technological culture of architecture [...], to offer scientific-cultural resources for the training and qualification of young researchers [...], in collaboration with the national education system in order to advance training in the areas of technology and innovation in architecture» (SITdA Statute, 2007). Goals and topics which seem to be current, which Techne intends to resume and develop in the next issues, and already widely present in this n. 22 dedicated to the Circular Economy. A theme that, as emerges from the contributions, permeates the entire field of action of the project: housing, services, public space, suburbs, infrastructures, production, buildings. All contexts in which technological innovation invests both processes and products: artificial intelligence, robotics and automation, internet of things, 3D printing, sensors, nano and biotechnology, biomaterials, biogenetics and neuroscience feed advanced experiments that cross-fertilize different contributions towards common objectives of circularity and sustainability. In this context, the issue of waste, the superfluous, abandonment and waste, emerge, raising the question of re-purpose: an action that crosses a large panel of cases, due to the presence of a vast heritage of resources – materials, artefacts, spaces and entire territories – to be recovered and re-functionalized, transforming, adapting, reusing, reconverting, reactivating the existing for new purposes and uses, or adapting it to new and changing needs. Therefore, by adopting strategies and techniques of reconversion and reuse, of re-manufacturing and recycling of construction and demolition waste, of design for disassembly that operate along even unprecedented supply chains and which are accompanied by actions to extend the useful life cycle of materials , components and building systems, as well as product service logic also extended to durable goods such as the housing. These are complex perspectives but considerably interesting, feasible through the activation of adequate and updated skills systems, for a necessary and possible future, precisely starting from the ability – as designers, researchers and teachers in the area of Architectural Technology – to read the space and conceive a project within a system of rationalities, albeit limited, but substantially founded, which qualify the interventions through approaches validated in research and experimental verification. Contrarily to any ineffective academicism, which corresponds in fact to a condition of subordination caused by the hegemonic dynamics at the base of the crisis itself, but also by a loss of authority that derives from the inadequate preparation of the architects. An expropriation that legitimizes the worst ignorance in the government of the territories, cities and artifacts. Education in Architecture, strictly connected to the research from which contents and methods derive, has its central pivot in the project didactic: activity by its nature of a practical and experimental type, applied to specific places and contexts, concrete and material, and characterized by considerable complexity, due to the multiplicity of factors involved. This is what differentiates the construction sector, delegated to territorial and urban transformations, from any other sector. A sector that borrows its knowledge from other production processes, importing technologies and materials. With a complex integration of which the project is charged, for the realization of the buildings, along a succession of phases for corresponding to multiple regulatory and procedural constraints. The knowledge and rationalization of these processes are the basis of the evolution of the design and construction production approaches, as well as merely intuitive logics. These aspects were the subject of in-depth study at the SITdA National Conference on “Producing Project” (Reggio Calabria, 2018), and relaunched in a new perspective by the International Conference “The project in the digital age. Technology, Nature, Culture” scheduled in Naples on the 1st-2nd of July 2021. A reflection that Techne intends to further develop through the sharing of knowledge and scientific debate, selecting topics of great importance, to give voice to a new phase and recalling the practice of design research, in connection with the production context, institutions and social demand. “Inside the Polycrisis. The possible necessary” is the theme of the call we launched for n. 23, to plan the future despite the uncertainties and risks, foreshadowing strategies that support a unavoidable change, also by operating within the dynamics that, for better or for worse, will be triggered by the significant resources committed to the implementation of the Recovery Plan. To envisage systematic actions based on the centrality of a rational programming, of environmentally appropriate design at the architectural, urban and territorial scales, and of a continuous monitoring of the implementation processes. With the commitment also to promote, after each release, a public moment of reflection and critical assessment on the research progresses. NOTES 1 “Osservazioni del Coordinamento delle Associazioni Tecnico-scientifiche per l’Ambiente e il Paesaggio al PNRR”, 2021. 2 EU Guidelines, SWD-2021-12 final, 21.1.2021. 3 For instance, we can consider the 7,000 km of dismissed railways, with related buildings and areas. 4 The two seven-year activities of the Plan (1949-1963) promoted by Amintore Fanfani, Minister of Labor and Social Security at the time, represented both an employment and a social maneuver, which left us the important legacy of neighborhoods that still today they have their own precise identity, testimony of the architectural culture of the Italian twentieth century. But also a «grandiose machine for the housing» (Samonà, 1949), based on a clear institutional and organizational reorganization, with the establishment of a single body (articulated in the plan implementation committee, led by Filiberto Guala, with regulatory functions of disbursement of funds, assignment of tasks and supervision, and in the INA-Casa Management directed by the architect Arnaldo Foschini, then dean of the Faculty of Architecture), which led to the construction of two million rooms for over 350,000 families. See Di Biagi F. (2013), Il Contributo italiano alla storia del Pensiero – Tecnica, Enciclopedia Treccani. 5 From Quaderni of the Centro Studi INA-Casa, to Gescal and in the Eighties to the activity of CER. Complex theme investigated by Fabrizio Schiaffonati in Il progetto della residenza sociale, edited by Raffaella Riva. 6 Ferruccio De Bortoli underlines in Corriere della Sera of 15 May 2021: «The revolution of lifelong learning (which) is no less important for Brussels than the digital or green one. By 2030, at least 60 per cent of the active population will have to participate in training courses every year. It will be said: but 2030 is far away. There’s time. No, because most people have escaped that to achieve this goal, by 2025 – that is, in less than four years – 120 million Europeans will ideally return to school. A kind of great educational vaccination campaign. Day after tomorrow».

“Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them [...] life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.” (Garcia Marquez 165) Introduction The refugee experience is, at heart, one of rebirth. Just as becoming a new, distinctive being—biological birth—necessarily involves the physical separation of mother and infant, so becoming a refugee entails separation from a "mother country." This mother country may or may not be a recognised nation state; the point is that the refugee transitions from physical connectedness to separation, from insider to outsider, from endemic to alien. Like babies, refugees may have little control over the timing and conditions of their expulsion. Successful resettlement requires not one rebirth but multiple rebirths—resettlement is a lifelong process (Layton)—which in turn require hope, imagination, and energy. In rebirthing themselves over and over again, people who have fled or been forced from their homelands become both mother and child. They do not go through this rebirthing alone. A range of agencies and individuals may be there to assist, including immigration officials, settlement services, schools and teachers, employment agencies and employers, English as a Second Language (ESL) resources and instructors, health-care providers, counsellors, diasporic networks, neighbours, church groups, and other community organisations. The nature, intensity, and duration of these “midwives’” interventions—and when they occur and in what combinations—vary hugely from place to place and from person to person, but there is clear evidence that post-migration experiences have a significant impact on settlement outcomes (Fozdar and Hartley). This paper draws on qualitative research I did in 2012 in a regional town in New South Wales to illuminate some of the ways in which settlement aides ease, or impede, refugees’ rebirth as fully recognised and participating Australians. I begin by considering what it means to be resilient before tracing some of the dimensions of the resettlement process. In doing so, I draw on data from interviews and focus groups with former refugees, service providers, and other residents of the town I shall call Easthaven. First, though, a word about Easthaven. As is the case in many rural and regional parts of Australia, Easthaven’s population is strongly dominated by Anglo Celtic and Saxon ancestries: 2011 Census data show that more than 80 per cent of residents were born in Australia (compared with a national figure of 69.8 per cent) and about 90 per cent speak only English at home (76.8 per cent). Almost twice as many people identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander as the national figure of 2.5 per cent (Australian Bureau of Statistics). For several years Easthaven has been an official “Refugee Welcome Zone”, welcoming hundreds of refugees from diverse countries in Africa and the Middle East as well as from Myanmar. This reflects the Department of Immigration and Citizenship’s drive to settle a fifth of Australia’s 13,750 humanitarian entrants a year directly in regional areas. In Easthaven’s schools—which is where I focused my research—almost all of the ESL students are from refugee backgrounds. Defining Resilience Much of the research on human resilience is grounded in psychology, with a capacity to “bounce back” from adverse experiences cited in many definitions of resilience (e.g. American Psychological Association). Bouncing back implies a relatively quick process, and a return to a state or form similar to that which existed before the encounter with adversity. Yet resilience often requires sustained effort and significant changes in identity. As Jerome Rugaruza, a former UNHCR refugee, says of his journey from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Australia: All the steps begin in the burning village: you run with nothing to eat, no clothes. You just go. Then you get to the refugee camp […] You have a little bread and you thank god you are safe. Then after a few years in the camp, you think about a future for your children. You arrive in Australia and then you learn a new language, you learn to drive. There are so many steps and not everyone can do it. (Milsom) Not everyone can do it, but a large majority do. Research by Graeme Hugo, for example, shows that although humanitarian settlers in Australia face substantial barriers to employment and initially have much higher unemployment rates than other immigrants, for most nationality groups this difference has disappeared by the second generation: “This is consistent with the sacrifice (or investment) of the first generation and the efforts extended to attain higher levels of education and English proficiency, thereby reducing the barriers over time.” (Hugo 35). Ingrid Poulson writes that “resilience is not just about bouncing. Bouncing […] is only a reaction. Resilience is about rising—you rise above it, you rise to the occasion, you rise to the challenge. Rising is an active choice” (47; my emphasis) I see resilience as involving mental and physical grit, coupled with creativity, aspiration and, crucially, agency. Dimensions of Resettlement To return to the story of 41-year-old Jerome Rugaruza, as related in a recent newspaper article: He [Mr Rugaruza] describes the experience of being a newly arrived refugee as being like that of a newborn baby. “You need special care; you have to learn to speak [English], eat the different food, create relationships, connections”. (Milsom) This is a key dimension of resettlement: the adult becomes like an infant again, shifting from someone who knows how things work and how to get by to someone who is likely to be, for a while, dependent on others for even the most basic things—communication, food, shelter, clothing, and social contact. The “special care” that most refugee arrivals need initially (and sometimes for a long time) often results in their being seen as deficient—in knowledge, skills, dispositions, and capacities as well as material goods (Keddie; Uptin, Wright and Harwood). As Fozdar and Hartley note: “The tendency to use a deficit model in refugee resettlement devalues people and reinforces the view of the mainstream population that refugees are a liability” (27). Yet unlike newborns, humanitarian settlers come to their new countries with rich social networks and extensive histories of experience and learning—resources that are in fact vital to their rebirth. Sisay (all names are pseudonyms), a year 11 student of Ethiopian heritage who was born in Kenya, told me with feeling: I had a life back in Africa [her emphasis]. It was good. Well, I would go back there if there’s no problems, which—is a fact. And I came here for a better life—yeah, I have a better life, there’s good health care, free school, and good environment and all that. But what’s that without friends? A fellow student, Celine, who came to Australia five years ago from Burundi via Uganda, told me in a focus group: Some teachers are really good but I think some other teachers could be a little bit more encouraging and understanding of what we’ve gone through, because [they] just look at you like “You’re year 11 now, you should know this” […] It’s really discouraging when [the teachers say] in front of the class, “Oh, you shouldn’t do this subject because you haven’t done this this this this” […] It’s like they’re on purpose to tell you “you don’t have what it takes; just give up and do something else.” As Uptin, Wright and Harwood note, “schools not only have the power to position who is included in schooling (in culture and pedagogy) but also have the power to determine whether there is room and appreciation for diversity” (126). Both Sisay and Celine were disheartened by the fact they felt some of their teachers, and many of their peers, had little interest in or understanding of their lives before they came to Australia. The teachers’ low expectations of refugee-background students (Keddie, Uptin, Wright and Harwood) contrasted with the students’ and their families’ high expectations of themselves (Brown, Miller and Mitchell; Harris and Marlowe). When I asked Sisay about her post-school ambitions, she said: “I have a good idea of my future […] write a documentary. And I’m working on it.” Celine’s response was: “I know I’m gonna do medicine, be a doctor.” A third girl, Lily, who came to Australia from Myanmar three years ago, told me she wanted to be an accountant and had studied accounting at the local TAFE last year. Joseph, a father of three who resettled from South Sudan seven years ago, stressed how important getting a job was to successful settlement: [But] you have to get a certificate first to get a job. Even the job of cleaning—when I came here I was told that somebody has to go to have training in cleaning, to use the different chemicals to clean the ground and all that. But that is just sweeping and cleaning with water—you don’t need the [higher-level] skills. Simple jobs like this, we are not able to get them. In regional Australia, employment opportunities tend to be limited (Fozdar and Hartley); the unemployment rate in Easthaven is twice the national average. Opportunities to study are also more limited than in urban centres, and would-be students are not always eligible for financial assistance to gain or upgrade qualifications. Even when people do have appropriate qualifications, work experience, and language proficiency, the colour of their skin may still mean they miss out on a job. Tilbury and Colic-Peisker have documented the various ways in which employers deflect responsibility for racial discrimination, including the “common” strategy (658) of arguing that while the employer or organisation is not prejudiced, they have to discriminate because of their clients’ needs or expectations. I heard this strategy deployed in an interview with a local businesswoman, Catriona: We were advertising for a new technician. And one of the African refugees came to us and he’d had a lot of IT experience. And this is awful, but we felt we couldn't give him the job, because we send our technicians into people's houses, and we knew that if a black African guy rocked up at someone’s house to try and fix their computer, they would not always be welcomed in all—look, it would not be something that [Easthaven] was ready for yet. Colic-Peisker and Tilbury (Refugees and Employment) note that while Australia has strict anti-discrimination legislation, this legislation may be of little use to the people who, because of the way they look and sound (skin colour, dress, accent), are most likely to face prejudice and discrimination. The researchers found that perceived discrimination in the labour market affected humanitarian settlers’ sense of satisfaction with their new lives far more than, for example, racist remarks, which were generally shrugged off; the students I interviewed spoke of racism as “expected,” but “quite rare.” Most of the people Colic-Peisker and Tilbury surveyed reported finding Australians “friendly and accepting” (33). Even if there is no active discrimination on the basis of skin colour in employment, education, or housing, or overt racism in social situations, visible difference can still affect a person’s sense of belonging, as Joseph recounts: I think of myself as Australian, but my colour doesn’t [laughs] […] Unfortunately many, many Australians are expecting that Australia is a country of Europeans … There is no need for somebody to ask “Where do you come from?” and “Do you find Australia here safe?” and “Do you enjoy it?” Those kind of questions doesn’t encourage that we are together. This highlights another dimension of resettlement: the journey from feeling “at home” to feeling “foreign” to, eventually, feeling at home again in the host country (Colic-Peisker and Tilbury, Refugees and Employment). In the case of visibly different settlers, however, this last stage may never be completed. Whether the questions asked of Joseph are well intentioned or not, their effect may be the same: they position him as a “forever foreigner” (Park). A further dimension of resettlement—one already touched on—is the degree to which humanitarian settlers actively manage their “rebirth,” and are allowed and encouraged to do so. A key factor will be their mastery of English, and Easthaven’s ESL teachers are thus pivotal in the resettlement process. There is little doubt that many of these teachers have gone to great lengths to help this cohort of students, not only in terms of language acquisition but also social inclusion. However, in some cases what is initially supportive can, with time, begin to undermine refugees’ maturity into independent citizens. Sharon, an ESL teacher at one of the schools, told me how she and her colleagues would give their refugee-background students lifts to social events: But then maybe three years down the track they have a car and their dad can drive, but they still won’t take them […] We arrive to pick them up and they’re not ready, or there’s five fantastic cars in the driveway, and you pick up the student and they say “My dad’s car’s much bigger and better than yours” [laughs]. So there’s an expectation that we’ll do stuff for them, but we’ve created that [my emphasis]. Other support services may have more complex interests in keeping refugee settlers dependent. The more clients an agency has, the more services it provides, and the longer clients stay on its books, the more lucrative the contract for the agency. Thus financial and employment imperatives promote competition rather than collaboration between service providers (Fozdar and Hartley; Sidhu and Taylor) and may encourage assumptions about what sorts of services different individuals and groups want and need. Colic-Peisker and Tilbury (“‘Active’ and ‘Passive’ Resettlement”) have developed a typology of resettlement styles—“achievers,” “consumers,” “endurers,” and “victims”—but stress that a person’s style, while influenced by personality and pre-migration factors, is also shaped by the institutions and individuals they come into contact with: “The structure of settlement and welfare services may produce a victim mentality, leaving members of refugee communities inert and unable to see themselves as agents of change” (76). The prevailing narrative of “the traumatised refugee” is a key aspect of this dynamic (Colic-Peisker and Tilbury, “‘Active’ and ‘Passive’ Resettlement”; Fozdar and Hartley; Keddie). Service providers may make assumptions about what humanitarian settlers have gone through before arriving in Australia, how they have been affected by their experiences, and what must be done to “fix” them. Norah, a long-time caseworker, told me: I think you get some [providers] who go, “How could you have gone through something like that and not suffered? There must be—you must have to talk about this stuff” […] Where some [refugees] just come with the [attitude] “We’re all born into a situation; that was my situation, but I’m here now and now my focus is this.” She cited failure to consider cultural sensitivities around mental illness and to recognise that stress and anxiety during early resettlement are normal (Tilbury) as other problems in the sector: [Newly arrived refugees] go through the “happy to be here” [phase] and now “hang on, I’ve thumped to the bottom and I’m missing my own foods and smells and cultures and experiences”. I think sometimes we’re just too quick to try and slot people into a box. One factor that appears to be vital in fostering and sustaining resilience is social connection. Norah said her clients were “very good on the mobile phone” and had links “everywhere,” including to family and friends in their countries of birth, transition countries, and other parts of Australia. A 2011 report for DIAC, Settlement Outcomes of New Arrivals, found that humanitarian entrants to Australia were significantly more likely to be members of cultural and/or religious groups than other categories of immigrants (Australian Survey Research). I found many examples of efforts to build both bonding and bridging capital (Putnam) in Easthaven, and I offer two examples below. Several people told me about a dinner-dance that had been held a few weeks before one of my visits. The event was organised by an African women’s group, which had been formed—with funding assistance—several years before. The dinner-dance was advertised in the local newspaper and attracted strong interest from a broad cross-section of Easthaveners. To Debbie, a counsellor, the response signified a “real turnaround” in community relations and was a big boon to the women’s sense of belonging. Erica, a teacher, told me about a cultural exchange day she had organised between her bush school—where almost all of the children are Anglo Australian—and ESL students from one of the town schools: At the start of the day, my kids were looking at [the refugee-background students] and they were scared, they were saying to me, "I feel scared." And we shoved them all into this tiny little room […] and they had no choice but to sit practically on top of each other. And by the end of the day, they were hugging each other and braiding their hair and jumping and playing together. Like Uptin, Wright and Harwood, I found that the refugee-background students placed great importance on the social aspects of school. Sisay, the girl I introduced earlier in this paper, said: “It’s just all about friendship and someone to be there for you […] We try to be friends with them [the non-refugee students] sometimes but sometimes it just seems they don’t want it.” Conclusion A 2012 report on refugee settlement services in NSW concludes that the state “is not meeting its responsibility to humanitarian entrants as well as it could” (Audit Office of New South Wales 2); moreover, humanitarian settlers in NSW are doing less well on indicators such as housing and health than humanitarian settlers in other states (3). Evaluating the effectiveness of formal refugee-centred programs was not part of my research and is beyond the scope of this paper. Rather, I have sought to reveal some of the ways in which the attitudes, assumptions, and everyday practices of service providers and members of the broader community impact on refugees' settlement experience. 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Harris, Vandra, and Jay Marlowe. “Hard Yards and High Hopes: The Educational Challenges of African Refugee University Students in Australia.” International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education 23.2 (2011): 186-96. Hugo, Graeme. A Significant Contribution: The Economic, Social and Civic Contributions of First and Second Generation Humanitarian Entrants—Summary of Findings. Canberra: Department of Immigration and Citizenship, 2011. Keddie, Amanda. “Pursuing Justice for Refugee Students: Addressing Issues of Cultural (Mis)recognition.” International Journal of Inclusive Education 16.12 (2012): 1295-1310. Layton, Robyn. "Building Capacity to Ensure the Inclusion of Vulnerable Groups." Creating Our Future conference, Adelaide, 28 Jul. 2012. Milsom, Rosemarie. “From Hard Luck Life to the Lucky Country.” Sydney Morning Herald 20 Jun. 2013. 12 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.smh.com.au/national/from-hard-luck-life-to-the-lucky-country-20130619-2oixl.html>. 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Introduction Eating is one of the most quintessential activities of human life. Because of this primacy, eating is, as food anthropologist Sidney Mintz has observed, “not merely a biological activity, but a vibrantly cultural activity as well” (48). This article posits that the current awareness of climate change in the Western world is animating such cultural activity as the Slow Food movement and is, as a result, stimulating what could be seen as an evolutionary change in popular foodways. Moreover, this paper suggests that, in line with modelling provided by the Slow Food example, an increased awareness of the connections of climate change to the social injustices of food production might better drive social change in such areas. This discussion begins by proposing that contemporary foodways—defined as “not only what is eaten by a particular group of people but also the variety of customs, beliefs and practices surrounding the production, preparation and presentation of food” (Davey 182)—are changing in the West in relation to current concerns about climate change. Such modification has a long history. Since long before the inception of modern Homo sapiens, natural climate change has been a crucial element driving hominidae evolution, both biologically and culturally in terms of social organisation and behaviours. Macroevolutionary theory suggests evolution can dramatically accelerate in response to rapid shifts in an organism’s environment, followed by slow to long periods of stasis once a new level of sustainability has been achieved (Gould and Eldredge). There is evidence that ancient climate change has also dramatically affected the rate and course of cultural evolution. Recent work suggests that the end of the last ice age drove the cultural innovation of animal and plant domestication in the Middle East (Zeder), not only due to warmer temperatures and increased rainfall, but also to a higher level of atmospheric carbon dioxide which made agriculture increasingly viable (McCorriston and Hole, cited in Zeder). Megadroughts during the Paleolithic might well have been stimulating factors behind the migration of hominid populations out of Africa and across Asia (Scholz et al). Thus, it is hardly surprising that modern anthropogenically induced global warming—in all its’ climate altering manifestations—may be driving a new wave of cultural change and even evolution in the West as we seek a sustainable homeostatic equilibrium with the environment of the future. In 1962, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring exposed some of the threats that modern industrial agriculture poses to environmental sustainability. This prompted a public debate from which the modern environmental movement arose and, with it, an expanding awareness and attendant anxiety about the safety and nutritional quality of contemporary foods, especially those that are grown with chemical pesticides and fertilizers and/or are highly processed. This environmental consciousness led to some modification in eating habits, manifest by some embracing wholefood and vegetarian dietary regimes (or elements of them). Most recently, a widespread awareness of climate change has forced rapid change in contemporary Western foodways, while in other climate related areas of socio-political and economic significance such as energy production and usage, there is little evidence of real acceleration of change. Ongoing research into the effects of this expanding environmental consciousness continues in various disciplinary contexts such as geography (Eshel and Martin) and health (McMichael et al). In food studies, Vileisis has proposed that the 1970s environmental movement’s challenge to the polluting practices of industrial agri-food production, concurrent with the women’s movement (asserting women’s right to know about everything, including food production), has led to both cooks and eaters becoming increasingly knowledgeable about the links between agricultural production and consumer and environmental health, as well as the various social justice issues involved. As a direct result of such awareness, alternatives to the industrialised, global food system are now emerging (Kloppenberg et al.). The Slow Food (R)evolution The tenets of the Slow Food movement, now some two decades old, are today synergetic with the growing consternation about climate change. In 1983, Carlo Petrini formed the Italian non-profit food and wine association Arcigola and, in 1986, founded Slow Food as a response to the opening of a McDonalds in Rome. From these humble beginnings, which were then unashamedly positing a return to the food systems of the past, Slow Food has grown into a global organisation that has much more future focused objectives animating its challenges to the socio-cultural and environmental costs of industrial food. Slow Food does have some elements that could be classed as reactionary and, therefore, the opposite of evolutionary. In response to the increasing homogenisation of culinary habits around the world, for instance, Slow Food’s Foundation for Biodiversity has established the Ark of Taste, which expands upon the idea of a seed bank to preserve not only varieties of food but also local and artisanal culinary traditions. In this, the Ark aims to save foods and food products “threatened by industrial standardization, hygiene laws, the regulations of large-scale distribution and environmental damage” (SFFB). Slow Food International’s overarching goals and activities, however, extend far beyond the preservation of past foodways, extending to the sponsoring of events and activities that are attempting to create new cuisine narratives for contemporary consumers who have an appetite for such innovation. Such events as the Salone del Gusto (Salon of Taste) and Terra Madre (Mother Earth) held in Turin every two years, for example, while celebrating culinary traditions, also focus on contemporary artisanal foods and sustainable food production processes that incorporate the most current of agricultural knowledge and new technologies into this production. Attendees at these events are also driven by both an interest in tradition, and their own very current concerns with health, personal satisfaction and environmental sustainability, to change their consumer behavior through an expanded self-awareness of the consequences of their individual lifestyle choices. Such events have, in turn, inspired such events in other locations, moving Slow Food from local to global relevance, and affecting the intellectual evolution of foodway cultures far beyond its headquarters in Bra in Northern Italy. This includes in the developing world, where millions of farmers continue to follow many traditional agricultural practices by necessity. Slow Food Movement’s forward-looking values are codified in the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture 2006 publication, Manifesto on the Future of Food. This calls for changes to the World Trade Organisation’s rules that promote the globalisation of agri-food production as a direct response to the “climate change [which] threatens to undermine the entire natural basis of ecologically benign agriculture and food preparation, bringing the likelihood of catastrophic outcomes in the near future” (ICFFA 8). It does not call, however, for a complete return to past methods. To further such foodway awareness and evolution, Petrini founded the University of Gastronomic Sciences at Slow Food’s headquarters in 2004. The university offers programs that are analogous with the Slow Food’s overall aim of forging sustainable partnerships between the best of old and new practice: to, in the organisation’s own words, “maintain an organic relationship between gastronomy and agricultural science” (UNISG). In 2004, Slow Food had over sixty thousand members in forty-five countries (Paxson 15), with major events now held each year in many of these countries and membership continuing to grow apace. One of the frequently cited successes of the Slow Food movement is in relation to the tomato. Until recently, supermarkets stocked only a few mass-produced hybrids. These cultivars were bred for their disease resistance, ease of handling, tolerance to artificial ripening techniques, and display consistency, rather than any culinary values such as taste, aroma, texture or variety. In contrast, the vine ripened, ‘farmer’s market’ tomato has become the symbol of an “eco-gastronomically” sustainable, local and humanistic system of food production (Jordan) which melds the best of the past practice with the most up-to-date knowledge regarding such farming matters as water conservation. Although the term ‘heirloom’ is widely used in relation to these tomatoes, there is a distinctively contemporary edge to the way they are produced and consumed (Jordan), and they are, along with other organic and local produce, increasingly available in even the largest supermarket chains. Instead of a wholesale embrace of the past, it is the connection to, and the maintenance of that connection with, the processes of production and, hence, to the environment as a whole, which is the animating premise of the Slow Food movement. ‘Slow’ thus creates a gestalt in which individuals integrate their lifestyles with all levels of the food production cycle and, hence to the environment and, importantly, the inherently related social justice issues. ‘Slow’ approaches emphasise how the accelerated pace of contemporary life has weakened these connections, while offering a path to the restoration of a sense of connectivity to the full cycle of life and its relation to place, nature and climate. In this, the Slow path demands that every consumer takes responsibility for all components of his/her existence—a responsibility that includes becoming cognisant of the full story behind each of the products that are consumed in that life. The Slow movement is not, however, a regime of abstention or self-denial. Instead, the changes in lifestyle necessary to support responsible sustainability, and the sensual and aesthetic pleasure inherent in such a lifestyle, exist in a mutually reinforcing relationship (Pietrykowski 2004). This positive feedback loop enhances the potential for promoting real and long-term evolution in social and cultural behaviour. Indeed, the Slow zeitgeist now informs many areas of contemporary culture, with Slow Travel, Homes, Design, Management, Leadership and Education, and even Slow Email, Exercise, Shopping and Sex attracting adherents. Mainstreaming Concern with Ethical Food Production The role of the media in “forming our consciousness—what we think, how we think, and what we think about” (Cunningham and Turner 12)—is self-evident. It is, therefore, revealing in relation to the above outlined changes that even the most functional cookbooks and cookery magazines (those dedicated to practical information such as recipes and instructional technique) in Western countries such as the USA, UK and Australian are increasingly reflecting and promoting an awareness of ethical food production as part of this cultural change in food habits. While such texts have largely been considered as useful but socio-politically relatively banal publications, they are beginning to be recognised as a valid source of historical and cultural information (Nussel). Cookbooks and cookery magazines commonly include discussion of a surprising range of issues around food production and consumption including sustainable and ethical agricultural methods, biodiversity, genetic modification and food miles. In this context, they indicate how rapidly the recent evolution of foodways has been absorbed into mainstream practice. Much of such food related media content is, at the same time, closely identified with celebrity mass marketing and embodied in the television chef with his or her range of branded products including their syndicated articles and cookbooks. This commercial symbiosis makes each such cuisine-related article in a food or women’s magazine or cookbook, in essence, an advertorial for a celebrity chef and their named products. Yet, at the same time, a number of these mass media food celebrities are raising public discussion that is leading to consequent action around important issues linked to climate change, social justice and the environment. An example is Jamie Oliver’s efforts to influence public behaviour and government policy, a number of which have gained considerable traction. Oliver’s 2004 exposure of the poor quality of school lunches in Britain (see Jamie’s School Dinners), for instance, caused public outrage and pressured the British government to commit considerable extra funding to these programs. A recent study by Essex University has, moreover, found that the academic performance of 11-year-old pupils eating Oliver’s meals improved, while absenteeism fell by 15 per cent (Khan). Oliver’s exposé of the conditions of battery raised hens in 2007 and 2008 (see Fowl Dinners) resulted in increased sales of free-range poultry, decreased sales of factory-farmed chickens across the UK, and complaints that free-range chicken sales were limited by supply. Oliver encouraged viewers to lobby their local councils, and as a result, a number banned battery hen eggs from schools, care homes, town halls and workplace cafeterias (see, for example, LDP). The popular penetration of these ideas needs to be understood in a historical context where industrialised poultry farming has been an issue in Britain since at least 1848 when it was one of the contributing factors to the establishment of the RSPCA (Freeman). A century after Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (published in 1906) exposed the realities of the slaughterhouse, and several decades since Peter Singer’s landmark Animal Liberation (1975) and Tom Regan’s The Case for Animal Rights (1983) posited the immorality of the mistreatment of animals in food production, it could be suggested that Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth (released in 2006) added considerably to the recent concern regarding the ethics of industrial agriculture. Consciousness-raising bestselling books such as Jim Mason and Peter Singer’s The Ethics of What We Eat and Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (both published in 2006), do indeed ‘close the loop’ in this way in their discussions, by concluding that intensive food production methods used since the 1950s are not only inhumane and damage public health, but are also damaging an environment under pressure from climate change. In comparison, the use of forced labour and human trafficking in food production has attracted far less mainstream media, celebrity or public attention. It could be posited that this is, in part, because no direct relationship to the environment and climate change and, therefore, direct link to our own existence in the West, has been popularised. Kevin Bales, who has been described as a modern abolitionist, estimates that there are currently more than 27 million people living in conditions of slavery and exploitation against their wills—twice as many as during the 350-year long trans-Atlantic slave trade. Bales also chillingly reveals that, worldwide, the number of slaves is increasing, with contemporary individuals so inexpensive to purchase in relation to the value of their production that they are disposable once the slaveholder has used them. Alongside sex slavery, many other prevalent examples of contemporary slavery are concerned with food production (Weissbrodt et al; Miers). Bales and Soodalter, for example, describe how across Asia and Africa, adults and children are enslaved to catch and process fish and shellfish for both human consumption and cat food. Other campaigners have similarly exposed how the cocoa in chocolate is largely produced by child slave labour on the Ivory Coast (Chalke; Off), and how considerable amounts of exported sugar, cereals and other crops are slave-produced in certain countries. In 2003, some 32 per cent of US shoppers identified themselves as LOHAS “lifestyles of health and sustainability” consumers, who were, they said, willing to spend more for products that reflected not only ecological, but also social justice responsibility (McLaughlin). Research also confirms that “the pursuit of social objectives … can in fact furnish an organization with the competitive resources to develop effective marketing strategies”, with Doherty and Meehan showing how “social and ethical credibility” are now viable bases of differentiation and competitive positioning in mainstream consumer markets (311, 303). In line with this recognition, Fair Trade Certified goods are now available in British, European, US and, to a lesser extent, Australian supermarkets, and a number of global chains including Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonalds, Starbucks and Virgin airlines utilise Fair Trade coffee and teas in all, or parts of, their operations. Fair Trade Certification indicates that farmers receive a higher than commodity price for their products, workers have the right to organise, men and women receive equal wages, and no child labour is utilised in the production process (McLaughlin). Yet, despite some Western consumers reporting such issues having an impact upon their purchasing decisions, social justice has not become a significant issue of concern for most. The popular cookery publications discussed above devote little space to Fair Trade product marketing, much of which is confined to supermarket-produced adverzines promoting the Fair Trade products they stock, and international celebrity chefs have yet to focus attention on this issue. In Australia, discussion of contemporary slavery in the press is sparse, having surfaced in 2000-2001, prompted by UNICEF campaigns against child labour, and in 2007 and 2008 with the visit of a series of high profile anti-slavery campaigners (including Bales) to the region. The public awareness of food produced by forced labour and the troubling issue of human enslavement in general is still far below the level that climate change and ecological issues have achieved thus far in driving foodway evolution. This may change, however, if a ‘Slow’-inflected connection can be made between Western lifestyles and the plight of peoples hidden from our daily existence, but contributing daily to them. Concluding Remarks At this time of accelerating techno-cultural evolution, due in part to the pressures of climate change, it is the creative potential that human conscious awareness brings to bear on these challenges that is most valuable. Today, as in the caves at Lascaux, humanity is evolving new images and narratives to provide rational solutions to emergent challenges. As an example of this, new foodways and ways of thinking about them are beginning to evolve in response to the perceived problems of climate change. The current conscious transformation of food habits by some in the West might be, therefore, in James Lovelock’s terms, a moment of “revolutionary punctuation” (178), whereby rapid cultural adaption is being induced by the growing public awareness of impending crisis. It remains to be seen whether other urgent human problems can be similarly and creatively embraced, and whether this trend can spread to offer global solutions to them. References An Inconvenient Truth. 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Introduction Where children’s television once ruled supreme as a vehicle for sales of kids’ brands, the marketing of children’s toys now often hinges on having the right social media influencer, many of them children themselves (Verdon). As Forbes reported in 2021, the pandemic saw an increase in children spending more time online, many following their favourite influencers on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. The importance of tapping into partnering with the right influencer grew, as did sales in toys for children isolated at home. We detail, through a case study approach and visual narrative analysis of two Australian influencer siblings’ Instagram accounts, the nature of toy marketing to children in 2023. Findings point to the continued gendered nature of toys and the concurrent promotion of aspirational adult ‘toys’ (for example, cars, high-end cosmetics) and leisure pursuits that blur the line between what we considered to be children’s playthings and adult objects of desire. To Market, to Market Toys are a huge business worldwide. In 2021, the global toys market was projected to grow from $141.08 billion to $230.64 billion by 2028. During COVID-19, toy sales increased (Fortune Business Insights). The rise of the Internet alongside media and digital technologies has given toy marketers new opportunities to reach children directly, as well as producing new forms of digitally enabled play, with marketers potentially having access to children 24/7, way beyond the previous limits of children’s programming on television (Hains and Jennings). Children’s digital content has also extended to digital games alongside digital devices and Internet-connected toys. Children’s personal tablet ownership rose from less than 1 per cent in 2011 to 42 per cent in 2017 (Rideout), and continues to grow. Children’s value for brands and marketers has increased over time (Cunningham). The nexus between physical toys and the entertainment industry has grown stronger, first with the Disney company and then with the stand-out success of the Star Wars franchise (now owned by Disney) from the late 1970s (Hains and Jennings). The concept of transmedia storytelling and selling, with toys as the vehicle for children to play out the stories they saw on television, in comics, books, movies, and online, proved to be a lucrative one for the entertainment company franchises and the toy manufacturers (Bainbridge). All major toy brands now recognise the power of linking toy brands and entertaining transmedia children’s texts, including online content, with Disney, LEGO and Barbie being obvious examples. Gender and Toys: Boys and Girls Come Out to Play Alongside the growth of the children’s market, the gendering of children’s toys has also continued and increased, with concerns that traditional gender roles are still strongly promoted via children’s toys (Fine and Rush). Research shows that girls’ toys are socialising them for caring roles, shopping, and concern with beauty, while toys aimed at boys (including transportation and construction toys, action figures, and weapons) may promote physicality, aggression, construction, and action (Fine and Rush). As Blakemore and Center (632) suggested, then, if children learn from toy-play “by playing with strongly stereotyped toys, girls can be expected to learn that appearance and attractiveness are central to their worth, and that nurturance and domestic skills are important to be developed. Boys can be expected to learn that aggression, violence, and competition are fun, and that their toys are exciting and risky”. Recently there has been some pushback by consumers, and some toy brands have responded, with LEGO committing to less gendered toy marketing (Russell). YouTube: The World’s Most Popular Babysitter? One business executive has described YouTube as the most popular babysitter in the world (Capitalism.com). The use of children as influencers on YouTube to market toys through toy review videos is now a common practice (Feller and Burroughs; De Veirman et al.). These ‘reviews’ are not critical in the traditional sense of reviews in an institutional or legacy media context. Instead, the genre is a mash-up, which blurs the lines between three major genres: review, branded content, and entertainment (Jaakkola). Concerns have been raised about advertising disguised as entertainment for children, and calls have been made for nuanced regulatory approaches (Craig and Cunningham). The most popular toy review channels have millions of subscribers, and their hosts constitute some of YouTube’s top earners (Hunting). Toy review videos have become an important force in children’s media – in terms of economics, culture, and for brands (Hunting). Concurrently, surprise toys have risen as a popular type of toy, thanks in part to the popularity of the unboxing toy review genre (Nicoll and Nansen). Ryan’s World is probably the best-known in this genre, with conservative estimates putting 10-year-old Ryan Kanji’s family earnings at $25 million annually (Kang). Ryan’s World, formerly Ryan’s Toy Review, now has 10 YouTube channels and the star has his own show on Nic Junior as well as across other media, including books and video games (Capitalism.com). Marsh, through her case study of one child, showed the way children interact with online content, including unboxing videos, as ‘cyberflaneurs’. YouTube is the medium of choice for most children (now more so than television; Auxier et al.). However, Instagram is also a site where a significant number of children and teens spend time. Australian data from the e-Safety Commission in 2018 showed that while YouTube was the most popular platform, with 80 per cent of children 8-12 and 86 per cent of teens using the site, 24 per cent of children used Instagram, and 70 per cent of teens 13-17 (e-Safety Commissioner). Given the rise in social media, phone, and tablet use in the last five years, including among younger children, these statistics are now likely to be higher. A report from US-based Business Insider in 2021 stated that 40 per cent of children under 13 already use Instagram (Canales). This is despite the platform ostensibly only being for people aged 13 and over. Ofcom (the UK’s regulator for communications services) has discussed the rise of ‘Tik-Tots’ – young children defying age restrictions to be on social media – and the increase of young people consuming rather than sharing on social media (Ofcom). Insta-Kidfluencers on the Rise Marketers are now tapping into the selling power of children as social media influencers (or kidfluencers) to promote children’s toys, and in some cases, parents are happy to act as their children’s agents and managers for these pint-size prosumers. Abidin ("Micromicrocelebrity") was the first to discuss what she termed ‘micro-microcelebrities’, children of social media influencers (usually mothers) who have become, through their parents’ mediation, paid social media influencers themselves, often through Instagram. As Abidin noted: “their digital presence is deliberately commercial, framed and staged by Influencer mothers in order to maximize their advertorial potential, and are often postured to market even non-baby/parenting products such as fast food and vehicles”. Since that time, and with children now a growing audience on Instagram, some micro-microcelebrities have begun to promote toys alongside other brands which appeal to both children and adults. While initially these human ‘brand extensions’ of their mothers (Archer) appealed to adults, their sponsored content has evolved as they have aged, and their audience has grown and broadened to include children. Given the rise of Instagram as a site for the marketing of toys to children, through children themselves as social media influencers, and the lack of academic research on this phenomenon, our research looks at a case study of prominent child social media influencers on Instagram in Australia, who are managed by their mother, and who regularly promote toys. Within the case study, visual narrative analysis is used, to analyse the Instagram accounts of two high-profile child social media influencers, eleven-year-old Australian Pixie Curtis and her eight-year-old brother, Hunter Curtis, both of whom are managed by their entrepreneur and ‘PR queen’ mother, Roxy Jacenko. We analysed the posts from each child from March to July 2022 inclusive. Posts were recorded in a spreadsheet, with the content described, hashtags or handles recorded, and any brand or toy mentions noted. We used related media reports to supplement the analysis. We have considered ethical implications of our research and have made the decision to identify both children, as their accounts are public, with large follower numbers, promote commercial interests, and have the blue Instagram ‘tick’ that identifies their accounts as verified and ‘celebrity’ or brand accounts, and the children are regularly featured in mainstream media. The children’s mother, Jacenko, often discusses the children on television and has discussed using Pixie’s parties as events to gain publicity for the toy business. We have followed the lead of Abidin and Leaver, considered experts in the field, who have identified children and families in ethnographic research when the children or families have large numbers of followers (see Abidin, "#Familygoals"; Leaver and Abidin). We do acknowledge that other researchers have chosen not to identify influencer children (e.g., Ågren) with smaller numbers of followers. The research questions are as follows: RQ1: What are the toys featured on the two social media influencer children’s sites? RQ2: Are the toys traditionally gendered and if so, what are the main gender-based toys? RQ3: Do the children promote products that are traditionally aimed at adults? If so, how are these ‘toys’ presented, and what are they? Analysis The two child influencers and toy promoters, sister and brother Pixie (11) and Hunter (8) Curtis, are the children of celebrity, entrepreneur and public relations ‘maven’, Roxy Jacenko. Jacenko’s first business was a public relations firm, Sweaty Betty, one she ran successfully but has recently closed to focus on her influencer talent agency business, the Ministry of Talent, and the two businesses related to her children, Pixie’s Pix (an online toy store named after her daughter) and Pixie’s Bows, a line of fashion bows aimed at girls (Madigan). Pixie Curtis grew up with her own Instagram account, with her first Instagram post on 18 June 2013, before turning two, and featuring a promotion of an online subscription service for toys, with the hashtag #babblebox. At time of writing, Pixie has 120,000 Instagram followers; her ‘bio’ describes her account as ‘shopping and retail’ and as managed by Jacenko. Pixie is also described as the ‘founder of Pixie’s Pix Toy Store’. Her brother Hunter’s account began on 6 May 2015, with the first post to celebrate his first birthday. Hunter’s page has 20,000 followers with his profile stating that it is managed by his mother and her talent and influencer agency. RQ1: What are the toys featured on the two children’s Instagram sites? The two children feature toy promotions regularly, mostly from Pixie’s online toy shop, with the site tagged @pixiespixonline. These toys are often demonstrated by Pixie and Hunter in short video format, following the now-established genre of the toy unboxing or toy review. Toys that are shown on Pixie’s site (tagged to her toy store) include air-clay (clay designed to be used to create clay sculptures); a Scruff-a-Luv soft toy that mimics a rescue pet that needs to be bathed in water, dried, and groomed to become a ‘lovable’ soft toy pet; toy slime; kinetic sand; Hatchimals (flying fairy/pixie dolls that come out of plastic eggs); LOL OMG dolls and Mermaze (both with accentuated female/made up features). LOL OMG (short for Outrageous Millennial Girls) are described as “fierce, fashionable, fabulous” and their name taps into common language used to communicate while texting. Mermaze are also fashion and hair styling dolls, with a mermaid’s tail that changes colour in water. While predominantly promoting toys on Pixie’s Pix, Pixie posts promotions of other items on her Website aimed at children. This includes practical items such as lunch boxes, but also beauty products including a skin care headband and scented body scrubs. Toys shown on Hunter’s Instagram site are often promotions of his sister’s toy store offerings, but generally fall into the traditional ‘boys’ toys’ categories. The posts that tag the Pixie’s Pix store feature photos or video demonstrations by Hunter of toys, including trucks, slime, ‘Splat balls’ (squish balls), Pokémon cards, Zuru toys’ ‘Smashers’ (dinosaur eggs that are smashed to reveal a dinosaur toy), a Bubblegum simulator for Roblox (a social media platform and game), Needoh Stickums, water bombs, and Hot Wheels. RQ2: Are the toys traditionally gendered and if so, what are the main gender-based toys? Although both children promote gender-neutral sensory toys such as slime and splat balls, they do promote strongly gendered toys from Pixie’s Pix. Hunter also promotes gendered toys that are not tagged to Pixie’s Pix, including Jurassic World dinosaur toys (tying into the film release). One post by Hunter features a (paid) cross-promotion of PlayStation 5 themed Donut King donuts (with a competition to win a PlayStation 5 by buying the donuts). In contrast, Pixie posts a paid promotion of a high-tea event to promote My Little Ponies. Hunter’s posts of toys and leisure items that do not tag Pixie’s toyshop include him on a go-kart, buying rugby gear, and with an ‘airtasker’ (paid assistant) helping him sort his Nerf gun collection. There are posts of both children playing and doing ‘regular’ children’s activities, including sport (Pixie plays netball, Hunter rugby), with their dog, ice-skating, and swimming (albeit often at expensive resorts), while Hunter and Pixie both wear, unbox, and tag some high-end children’s clothes brands such as Balmain and promote department store Myer. RQ3: Do the children promote products that are traditionally aimed at adults? If so, how are these ‘toys’ presented, and what are they? The Cambridge dictionary provides the following two definitions of toys, with one showing that ‘toys’ may also be considered as objects of pleasure for adults. A toy is “an object for children to play with” while it can also be “an object that is used by an adult for pleasure rather than for serious use”. The very meaning of the word toys shows the crossover between the adult and children’s world. The more ‘adult’ products promoted by Pixie are highly gendered, with expensive bags, clothes, make-up, and skin care regularly featured on her account. These are arguably toys but also teen or adult objects of aspiration, with Pixie’s collection of handbags featured and the brand tagged. The bag collection includes brightly coloured bags by Australian designer Poppy Lissiman. Other female-focussed brands include a hairdryer brand, with photos and videos posted of Pixie ‘playing’ at dressing up and ‘getting ready’, using skincare, make-up, and hair products. These toys cater to age demographics older than Pixie. Hunter is pictured in posts on a jet-ski, and in others with a mobile and tablet, or washing a Tesla car and with a helicopter. The gendered tropes of girls being concerned with their appearance, and boys interested in vehicles, action, and competitive (video) games appear to be borne out in the posts from the two children. Discussion and Conclusion As an entrepreneur, Jacenko has capitalised on her daughter’s and son’s personal brands that she has co-created by launching and promoting a toyshop named after her daughter, following the success of her children’s promotion of toys for other companies and Pixie’s successful hairbow line. The toy shop arose out of Pixie promoting sales of fidget spinners during the pandemic lockdowns where toy sales rose sharply across the world. The children are also now on TikTok, and while they have a toy review channel on YouTube it has not been posted on for three years. Therefore, it is safe to assume that Instagram is one of the main channels for the children to promote the toyshop. In an online newspaper article describing the success of Pixie’s toyshop and the purchase of an expensive Mercedes car, Jacenko said that the children work hard, and the car was their “reward” (Scanlan). “The help both her brother and her [Pixie] give me on the buying (every night we work on new style selections and argue over it), the packing, the restocking, goes well beyond their years”, Jacenko is quoted as saying. “We’ve made a pact, we must keep going, work harder. Next, it’s a Rolls Royce.” Analysis of the children’s Instagram pages shows highly gendered promotion of toys. The children also promote a variety of high-end, aspirational tween, teen, and adult ‘toys’, including clothes, make-up, and skincare (Pixie) and expensive cars (Hunter and Pixie). Gender stereotyping has been found in adult influencer content (see, for example, Jorge et al.) and researchers have also pointed to sexualisation of young girl influencers on Instagram (Llovet et al.). Our research potentially echoes these findings. Posts from the children regularly include aspirational commodities that blur the lines between adult and child items of desire. Concerns have been raised in other academic articles (and in government reports) regarding the possible exploitation of children’s labour by parents and marketers to promote brands, including toys, on social media (see, for example, Ågren; De Veirman et al.; House of Commons; Masterson). The French government is believed to be the only government to have moved to regulate regarding the labour of children as social media influencers, and the same government at time of writing was debating laws to enshrine children’s right to privacy on social media, to stop the practice of ‘sharenting’ or parents sharing their children’s images and other content on social media without their children’s consent (Rieffel). Mainstream media including Teen Vogue (Fortesa), and some influencers themselves, have also started to raise issues relevant to ‘kidfluencers’. In the state of Utah, USA, the government has introduced laws to stop children under 18 having access to social media without parents’ consent, although some view this as potentially having some negative impacts (Singer). The ethics and impact of toy advertorials on children by social media influencers, with little or no disclosure of the posts being advertisements, have also been discussed elsewhere (see, for example, House of Commons; Jaakkola), with Rahali and Livingstone offering suggestions aimed key stakeholders. It has been found that beyond the marketing of toys and adult ‘luxuries’ to kids, other products that potentially harm children (for example, junk food and e-cigarettes) are also commonly seen in sponsored content on Instagram and YouTube aimed at children (Fleming‐Milici, Phaneuf, and Harris; Smith et al.). Indeed, it could be argued that e-cigarettes have been positioned as playthings and are appealing to children. While we may bemoan the loss of innocence of children, with the children in this analysis posed by their entrepreneurial mother as purveyors of material goods including toys, it is useful to remember that perhaps it has always been a conundrum, given the purpose of toy marketing is to make commercial sales. Children’s toys have always reflected and shaped society’s culture, often with surprisingly sinister and adult overtones, including the origins of Barbie as a male ‘sex’ toy (Bainbridge) and the blatant promotion of guns and other weapons to boys (for example the famous Mattel ‘burp’ gun of the 50s and 60s), through advertising and sponsorship of television (Hains and Jennings). Recently, fashion house Balenciaga promoted its range of adult bags using children as models via Instagram – the bags are teddy bears dressed in bondage outfits and the marketing stunt caused considerable backlash, with the sexually dressed bears and use of children raising outrage (Deguara). Were these teddy bags framed as children’s toys for adults or adult toys for children? The line was blurred. This research has limitations as it is focussed on a case study in one country (but with global reach through Instagram). However, the current analysis is believed to be one of the first to focus on children’s promotion of toys through Instagram, by two children’s influencers, a relatively new marketing approach aimed at children. As the article was being finalised, the children’s mother announced that as Pixie was transitioning into high school and wanted to focus on her studies rather than running a business, the toy business would conclude but Pixie’s Bows would continue (Madigan). In the UK, recent research by Livingstone et al. for the Digital Futures Commission potentially offers a way forward related to this phenomenon, when viewed alongside the analysis of our case study. Their final report (following research with children) suggests a Playful by Design Tool that would be useful for designers and brands, but also children, parents, regulators, and other stakeholders. Principles such as adopting ethical commercial models, being age-appropriate and ensuring safety, make sense when applied to kidfluencers and those that stand to benefit from their playbour. It appears that governments, society, some academics, and the media are starting to question the current generally unrestricted frameworks related to social media in general (see, for example, the ACCC’s ongoing enquiry) and toy and other marketing by kids to kids on social media specifically (House of Commons). We argue that more frameworks, and potentially laws, are required in this mostly unregulated space. Through our case study we have highlighted key areas of concern on one of the world’s most popular platforms for children and teens, including privacy issues, commodification, and gendered and ‘stealth’ marketing of toys through ‘advertorials’. We also acknowledge that children do gain playful and social benefits and entertainment from seeing influencers online. Given that it has been shown that gendered marketing of toys (and increased focus on appearance for girls through Instagram) could be potentially harmful to children’s self-esteem, and with related concerns on the continued commodification of childhood, further research is also needed to discover the responses and views of children to these advertorials masquerading as cute content. References Abidin, Crystal. "Micromicrocelebrity: Branding Babies on the Internet." M/C Journal 18.5 (2015). <https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1022>. ———. "#Familygoals: Family Influencers, Calibrated Amateurism, and Justifying Young Digital Labor." 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From elephants to ABBA fans, silicon to hormone, the following discussion uses a new research method to look at printed text, motion pictures and a teenage rebel icon. If by ‘print’ we mean a mechanically reproduced impression of a cultural symbol in a medium, then printing has been with us since before microdot security prints were painted onto cars, before voice prints, laser prints, network servers, record pressings, motion picture prints, photo prints, colour woodblock prints, before books, textile prints, and footprints. If we accept that higher mammals such as elephants have a learnt culture, then it is possible to extend a definition of printing beyond Homo sapiens. Poole reports that elephants mechanically trumpet reproductions of human car horns into the air surrounding their society. If nothing else, this cross-species, cross-cultural reproduction, this ‘ability to mimic’ is ‘another sign of their intelligence’. Observation of child development suggests that the first significant meaningful ‘impression’ made on the human mind is that of the face of the child’s nurturer – usually its mother. The baby’s mind forms an ‘impression’, a mental print, a reproducible memory data set, of the nurturer’s face, voice, smell, touch, etc. That face is itself a cultural construct: hair style, makeup, piercings, tattoos, ornaments, nutrition-influenced skin and smell, perfume, temperature and voice. A mentally reproducible pattern of a unique face is formed in the mind, and we use that pattern to distinguish ‘familiar and strange’ in our expanding social orbit. The social relations of patterned memory – of imprinting – determine the extent to which we explore our world (armed with research aids such as text print) or whether we turn to violence or self-harm (Bretherton). While our cultural artifacts (such as vellum maps or networked voice message servers) bravely extend our significant patterns into the social world and the traversed environment, it is useful to remember that such artifacts, including print, are themselves understood by our original pattern-reproduction and impression system – the human mind, developed in childhood. The ‘print’ is brought to mind differently in different discourses. For a reader, a ‘print’ is a book, a memo or a broadsheet, whether it is the Indian Buddhist Sanskrit texts ordered to be printed in 593 AD by the Chinese emperor Sui Wen-ti (Silk Road) or the US Defense Department memo authorizing lower ranks to torture the prisoners taken by the Bush administration (Sanchez, cited in ABC). Other fields see prints differently. For a musician, a ‘print’ may be the sheet music which spread classical and popular music around the world; it may be a ‘record’ (as in a ‘recording’ session), where sound is impressed to wax, vinyl, charged silicon particles, or the alloys (Smith, “Elpida”) of an mp3 file. For the fine artist, a ‘print’ may be any mechanically reproduced two-dimensional (or embossed) impression of a significant image in media from paper to metal, textile to ceramics. ‘Print’ embraces the Japanese Ukiyo-e colour prints of Utamaro, the company logos that wink from credit card holographs, the early photographs of Talbot, and the textured patterns printed into neolithic ceramics. Computer hardware engineers print computational circuits. Homicide detectives investigate both sweaty finger prints and the repeated, mechanical gaits of suspects, which are imprinted into the earthy medium of a crime scene. For film makers, the ‘print’ may refer to a photochemical polyester reproduction of a motion picture artifact (the reel of ‘celluloid’), or a DVD laser disc impression of the same film. Textualist discourse has borrowed the word ‘print’ to mean ‘text’, so ‘print’ may also refer to the text elements within the vision track of a motion picture: the film’s opening titles, or texts photographed inside the motion picture story such as the sword-cut ‘Z’ in Zorro (Niblo). Before the invention of writing, the main mechanically reproduced impression of a cultural symbol in a medium was the humble footprint in the sand. The footprints of tribes – and neighbouring animals – cut tracks in the vegetation and the soil. Printed tracks led towards food, water, shelter, enemies and friends. Having learnt to pattern certain faces into their mental world, children grew older and were educated in the footprints of family and clan, enemies and food. The continuous impression of significant foot traffic in the medium of the earth produced the lines between significant nodes of prewriting and pre-wheeled cultures. These tracks were married to audio tracks, such as the song lines of the Australian Aborigines, or the ballads of tramping culture everywhere. A typical tramping song has the line, ‘There’s a track winding back to an old-fashion shack along the road to Gundagai,’ (O’Hagan), although this colonial-style song was actually written for radio and became an international hit on the airwaves, rather than the tramping trails. The printed tracks impressed by these cultural flows are highly contested and diverse, and their foot prints are woven into our very language. The names for printed tracks have entered our shared memory from the intersection of many cultures: ‘Track’ is a Germanic word entering English usage comparatively late (1470) and now used mainly in audio visual cultural reproduction, as in ‘soundtrack’. ‘Trek’ is a Dutch word for ‘track’ now used mainly by ecotourists and science fiction fans. ‘Learn’ is a Proto-Indo-European word: the verb ‘learn’ originally meant ‘to find a track’ back in the days when ‘learn’ had a noun form which meant ‘the sole of the foot’. ‘Tract’ and ‘trace’ are Latin words entering English print usage before 1374 and now used mainly in religious, and electronic surveillance, cultural reproduction. ‘Trench’ in 1386 was a French path cut through a forest. ‘Sagacity’ in English print in 1548 was originally the ability to track or hunt, in Proto-Indo-European cultures. ‘Career’ (in English before 1534) was the print made by chariots in ancient Rome. ‘Sleuth’ (1200) was a Norse noun for a track. ‘Investigation’ (1436) was Latin for studying a footprint (Harper). The arrival of symbolic writing scratched on caves, hearth stones, and trees (the original meaning of ‘book’ is tree), brought extremely limited text education close to home. Then, with baked clay tablets, incised boards, slate, bamboo, tortoise shell, cast metal, bark cloth, textiles, vellum, and – later – paper, a portability came to text that allowed any culture to venture away from known ‘foot’ paths with a reduction in the risk of becoming lost and perishing. So began the world of maps, memos, bills of sale, philosophic treatises and epic mythologies. Some of this was printed, such as the mechanical reproduction of coins, but the fine handwriting required of long, extended, portable texts could not be printed until the invention of paper in China about 2000 years ago. Compared to lithic architecture and genes, portable text is a fragile medium, and little survives from the millennia of its innovators. The printing of large non-text designs onto bark-paper and textiles began in neolithic times, but Sui Wen-ti’s imperial memo of 593 AD gives us the earliest written date for printed books, although we can assume they had been published for many years previously. The printed book was a combination of Indian philosophic thought, wood carving, ink chemistry and Chinese paper. The earliest surviving fragment of paper-print technology is ‘Mantras of the Dharani Sutra’, a Buddhist scripture written in the Sanskrit language of the Indian subcontinent, unearthed at an early Tang Dynasty site in Xian, China – making the fragment a veteran piece of printing, in the sense that Sanskrit books had been in print for at least a century by the early Tang Dynasty (Chinese Graphic Arts Net). At first, paper books were printed with page-size carved wooden boards. Five hundred years later, Pi Sheng (c.1041) baked individual reusable ceramic characters in a fire and invented the durable moveable type of modern printing (Silk Road 2000). Abandoning carved wooden tablets, the ‘digitizing’ of Chinese moveable type sped up the production of printed texts. In turn, Pi Sheng’s flexible, rapid, sustainable printing process expanded the political-cultural impact of the literati in Asian society. Digitized block text on paper produced a bureaucratic, literate elite so powerful in Asia that Louis XVI of France copied China’s print-based Confucian system of political authority for his own empire, and so began the rise of the examined public university systems, and the civil service systems, of most European states (Watson, Visions). By reason of its durability, its rapid mechanical reproduction, its culturally agreed signs, literate readership, revered authorship, shared ideology, and distributed portability, a ‘print’ can be a powerful cultural network which builds and expands empires. But print also attacks and destroys empires. A case in point is the Spanish conquest of Aztec America: The Aztecs had immense libraries of American literature on bark-cloth scrolls, a technology which predated paper. These libraries were wiped out by the invading Spanish, who carried a different book before them (Ewins). In the industrial age, the printing press and the gun were seen as the weapons of rebellions everywhere. In 1776, American rebels staffed their ‘Homeland Security’ units with paper makers, knowing that defeating the English would be based on printed and written documents (Hahn). Mao Zedong was a book librarian; Mao said political power came out of the barrel of a gun, but Mao himself came out of a library. With the spread of wireless networked servers, political ferment comes out of the barrel of the cell phone and the internet chat room these days. Witness the cell phone displays of a plane hitting a tower that appear immediately after 9/11 in the Middle East, or witness the show trials of a few US and UK lower ranks who published prints of their torturing activities onto the internet: only lower ranks who published prints were arrested or tried. The control of secure servers and satellites is the new press. These days, we live in a global library of burning books – ‘burning’ in the sense that ‘print’ is now a charged silicon medium (Smith, “Intel”) which is usually made readable by connecting the chip to nuclear reactors and petrochemically-fired power stations. World resources burn as we read our screens. Men, women, children burn too, as we watch our infotainment news in comfort while ‘their’ flickering dead faces are printed in our broadcast hearths. The print we watch is not the living; it is the voodoo of the living in the blackout behind the camera, engaging the blood sacrifice of the tormented and the unfortunate. Internet texts are also ‘on fire’ in the third sense of their fragility and instability as a medium: data bases regularly ‘print’ fail-safe copies in an attempt to postpone the inevitable mechanical, chemical and electrical failure that awaits all electronic media in time. Print defines a moral position for everyone. In reporting conflict, in deciding to go to press or censor, any ‘print’ cannot avoid an ethical context, starting with the fact that there is a difference in power between print maker, armed perpetrators, the weak, the peaceful, the publisher, and the viewer. So many human factors attend a text, video or voice ‘print’: its very existence as an aesthetic object, even before publication and reception, speaks of unbalanced, and therefore dynamic, power relationships. For example, Graham Greene departed unscathed from all the highly dangerous battlefields he entered as a novelist: Riot-torn Germany, London Blitz, Belgian Congo, Voodoo Haiti, Vietnam, Panama, Reagan’s Washington, and mafia Europe. His texts are peopled with the injustices of the less fortunate of the twentieth century, while he himself was a member of the fortunate (if not happy) elite, as is anyone today who has the luxury of time to read Greene’s works for pleasure. Ethically a member of London and Paris’ colonizers, Greene’s best writing still electrifies, perhaps partly because he was in the same line of fire as the victims he shared bread with. In fact, Greene hoped daily that he would escape from the dreadful conflicts he fictionalized via a body bag or an urn of ashes (see Sherry). In reading an author’s biography we have one window on the ethical dimensions of authority and print. If a print’s aesthetics are sometimes enduring, its ethical relationships are always mutable. Take the stylized logo of a running athlete: four limbs bent in a rotation of action. This dynamic icon has symbolized ‘good health’ in Hindu and Buddhist culture, from Madras to Tokyo, for thousands of years. The cross of bent limbs was borrowed for the militarized health programs of 1930s Germany, and, because of what was only a brief, recent, isolated yet monstrously horrific segment of its history in print, the bent-limbed swastika is now a vilified symbol in the West. The sign remains ‘impressed’ differently on traditional Eastern culture, and without the taint of Nazism. Dramatic prints are emotionally charged because, in depicting Homo sapiens in danger, or passionately in love, they elicit a hormonal reaction from the reader, the viewer, or the audience. The type of emotions triggered by a print vary across the whole gamut of human chemistry. A recent study of three genres of motion picture prints shows a marked differences in the hormonal responses of men compared to women when viewing a romance, an actioner, and a documentary (see Schultheiss, Wirth, and Stanton). Society is biochemically diverse in its engagement with printed culture, which raises questions about equality in the arts. Motion picture prints probably comprise around one third of internet traffic, in the form of stolen digitized movie files pirated across the globe via peer-to-peer file transfer networks (p2p), and burnt as DVD laser prints (BBC). There is also a US 40 billion dollar per annum legitimate commerce in DVD laser pressings (Grassl), which would suggest an US 80 billion per annum world total in legitimate laser disc print culture. The actively screen literate, or the ‘sliterati’ as I prefer to call them, research this world of motion picture prints via their peers, their internet information channels, their television programming, and their web forums. Most of this activity occurs outside the ambit of universities and schools. One large site of sliterate (screen literate) practice outside most schooling and official research is the net of online forums at imdb.com (International Movie Data Base). Imdb.com ‘prints’ about 25,000,000 top pages per month to client browsers. Hundreds of sliterati forums are located at imdb, including a forum for the Australian movie, Muriel’s Wedding (Hogan). Ten years after the release of Muriel’s Wedding, young people who are concerned with victimization and bullying still log on to http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0110598/board/> and put their thoughts into print: I still feel so bad for Muriel in the beginning of the movie, when the girls ‘dump’ her, and how much the poor girl cried and cried! Those girls were such biartches…I love how they got their comeuppance! bunniesormaybemidgets’s comment is typical of the current discussion. Muriel’s Wedding was a very popular film in its first cinema edition in Australia and elsewhere. About 30% of the entire over-14 Australian population went to see this photochemical polyester print in the cinemas on its first release. A decade on, the distributors printed a DVD laser disc edition. The story concerns Muriel (played by Toni Collette), the unemployed daughter of a corrupt, ‘police state’ politician. Muriel is bullied by her peers and she withdraws into a fantasy world, deluding herself that a white wedding will rescue her from the torments of her blighted life. Through theft and deceit (the modus operandi of her father) Muriel escapes to the entertainment industry and finds a ‘wicked’ girlfriend mentor. From a rebellious position of stubborn independence, Muriel plays out her fantasy. She gets her white wedding, before seeing both her father and her new married life as hollow shams which have goaded her abandoned mother to suicide. Redefining her life as a ‘game’ and assuming responsibility for her independence, Muriel turns her back on the mainstream, image-conscious, female gang of her oppressed youth. Muriel leaves the story, having rekindled her friendship with her rebel mentor. My methodological approach to viewing the laser disc print was to first make a more accessible, coded record of the entire movie. I was able to code and record the print in real time, using a new metalanguage (Watson, “Eyes”). The advantage of Coding is that ‘thinks’ the same way as film making, it does not sidetrack the analyst into prose. The Code splits the movie print into Vision Action [vision graphic elements, including text] (sound) The Coding splits the vision track into normal action and graphic elements, such as text, so this Coding is an ideal method for extracting all the text elements of a film in real time. After playing the film once, I had four and a half tightly packed pages of the coded story, including all its text elements in square brackets. Being a unique, indexed hard copy, the Coded copy allowed me immediate access to any point of the Muriel’s Wedding saga without having to search the DVD laser print. How are ‘print’ elements used in Muriel’s Wedding? Firstly, a rose-coloured monoprint of Muriel Heslop’s smiling face stares enigmatically from the plastic surface of the DVD picture disc. The print is a still photo captured from her smile as she walked down the aisle of her white wedding. In this print, Toni Collette is the Mona Lisa of Australian culture, except that fans of Muriel’s Wedding know the meaning of that smile is a magical combination of the actor’s art: the smile is both the flush of dreams come true and the frightening self deception that will kill her mother. Inserting and playing the disc, the text-dominant menu appears, and the film commences with the text-dominant opening titles. Text and titles confer a legitimacy on a work, whether it is a trade mark of the laser print owners, or the household names of stars. Text titles confer status relationships on both the presenters of the cultural artifact and the viewer who has entered into a legal license agreement with the owners of the movie. A title makes us comfortable, because the mind always seeks to name the unfamiliar, and a set of text titles does that job for us so that we can navigate the ‘tracks’ and settle into our engagement with the unfamiliar. The apparent ‘truth’ and ‘stability’ of printed text calms our fears and beguiles our uncertainties. Muriel attends the white wedding of a school bully bride, wearing a leopard print dress she has stolen. Muriel’s spotted wild animal print contrasts with the pure white handmade dress of the bride. In Muriel’s leopard textile print, we have the wild, rebellious, impoverished, inappropriate intrusion into the social ritual and fantasy of her high-status tormentor. An off-duty store detective recognizes the printed dress and calls the police. The police are themselves distinguished by their blue-and-white checked prints and other mechanically reproduced impressions of cultural symbols: in steel, brass, embroidery, leather and plastics. Muriel is driven in the police car past the stenciled town sign (‘Welcome To Porpoise Spit’ heads a paragraph of small print). She is delivered to her father, a politician who presides over the policing of his town. In a state where the judiciary, police and executive are hijacked by the same tyrant, Muriel’s father, Bill, pays off the police constables with a carton of legal drugs (beer) and Muriel must face her father’s wrath, which he proceeds to transfer to his detested wife. Like his daughter, the father also wears a spotted brown print costume, but his is a batik print from neighbouring Indonesia (incidentally, in a nation that takes the political status of its batik prints very seriously). Bill demands that Muriel find the receipt for the leopard print dress she claims she has purchased. The legitimate ownership of the object is enmeshed with a printed receipt, the printed evidence of trade. The law (and the paramilitary power behind the law) are legitimized, or contested, by the presence or absence of printed text. Muriel hides in her bedroom, surround by poster prints of the pop group ABBA. Torn-out prints of other people’s weddings adorn her mirror. Her face is embossed with the clown-like primary colours of the marionette as she lifts a bouquet to her chin and stares into the real time ‘print’ of her mirror image. Bill takes the opportunity of a business meeting with Japanese investors to feed his entire family at ‘Charlie Chan’’s restaurant. Muriel’s middle sister sloppily wears her father’s state election tee shirt, printed with the text: ‘Vote 1, Bill Heslop. You can’t stop progress.’ The text sets up two ironic gags that are paid off on the dialogue track: “He lost,’ we are told. ‘Progress’ turns out to be funding the concreting of a beach. Bill berates his daughter Muriel: she has no chance of becoming a printer’s apprentice and she has failed a typing course. Her dysfunction in printed text has been covered up by Bill: he has bribed the typing teacher to issue a printed diploma to his daughter. In the gambling saloon of the club, under the arrays of mechanically repeated cultural symbols lit above the poker machines (‘A’ for ace, ‘Q’ for queen, etc.), Bill’s secret girlfriend Diedre risks giving Muriel a cosmetics job. Another text icon in lights announces the surf nightclub ‘Breakers’. Tania, the newly married queen bitch who has made Muriel’s teenage years a living hell, breaks up with her husband, deciding to cash in his negotiable text documents – his Bali honeymoon tickets – and go on an island holiday with her girlfriends instead. Text documents are the enduring site of agreements between people and also the site of mutations to those agreements. Tania dumps Muriel, who sobs and sobs. Sobs are a mechanical, percussive reproduction impressed on the sound track. Returning home, we discover that Muriel’s older brother has failed a printed test and been rejected for police recruitment. There is a high incidence of print illiteracy in the Heslop family. Mrs Heslop (Jeannie Drynan), for instance, regularly has trouble at the post office. Muriel sees a chance to escape the oppression of her family by tricking her mother into giving her a blank cheque. Here is the confluence of the legitimacy of a bank’s printed negotiable document with the risk and freedom of a blank space for rebel Muriel’s handwriting. Unable to type, her handwriting has the power to steal every cent of her father’s savings. She leaves home and spends the family’s savings at an island resort. On the island, the text print-challenged Muriel dances to a recording (sound print) of ABBA, her hand gestures emphasizing her bewigged face, which is made up in an impression of her pop idol. Her imitation of her goddesses – the ABBA women, her only hope in a real world of people who hate or avoid her – is accompanied by her goddesses’ voices singing: ‘the mystery book on the shelf is always repeating itself.’ Before jpeg and gif image downloads, we had postcard prints and snail mail. Muriel sends a postcard to her family, lying about her ‘success’ in the cosmetics business. The printed missal is clutched by her father Bill (Bill Hunter), who proclaims about his daughter, ‘you can’t type but you really impress me’. Meanwhile, on Hibiscus Island, Muriel lies under a moonlit palm tree with her newly found mentor, ‘bad girl’ Ronda (Rachel Griffiths). In this critical scene, where foolish Muriel opens her heart’s yearnings to a confidante she can finally trust, the director and DP have chosen to shoot a flat, high contrast blue filtered image. The visual result is very much like the semiabstract Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints by Utamaro. This Japanese printing style informed the rise of European modern painting (Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso, etc., were all important collectors and students of Ukiyo-e prints). The above print and text elements in Muriel’s Wedding take us 27 minutes into her story, as recorded on a single page of real-time handwritten Coding. Although not discussed here, the Coding recorded the complete film – a total of 106 minutes of text elements and main graphic elements – as four pages of Code. Referring to this Coding some weeks after it was made, I looked up the final code on page four: taxi [food of the sea] bq. Translation: a shop sign whizzes past in the film’s background, as Muriel and Ronda leave Porpoise Spit in a taxi. Over their heads the text ‘Food Of The Sea’ flashes. We are reminded that Muriel and Ronda are mermaids, fantastic creatures sprung from the brow of author PJ Hogan, and illuminated even today in the pantheon of women’s coming-of-age art works. That the movie is relevant ten years on is evidenced by the current usage of the Muriel’s Wedding online forum, an intersection of wider discussions by sliterate women on imdb.com who, like Muriel, are observers (and in some cases victims) of horrific pressure from ambitious female gangs and bullies. Text is always a minor element in a motion picture (unless it is a subtitled foreign film) and text usually whizzes by subliminally while viewing a film. By Coding the work for [text], all the text nuances made by the film makers come to light. While I have viewed Muriel’s Wedding on many occasions, it has only been in Coding it specifically for text that I have noticed that Muriel is a representative of that vast class of talented youth who are discriminated against by print (as in text) educators who cannot offer her a life-affirming identity in the English classroom. Severely depressed at school, and failing to type or get a printer’s apprenticeship, Muriel finds paid work (and hence, freedom, life, identity, independence) working in her audio visual printed medium of choice: a video store in a new city. Muriel found a sliterate admirer at the video store but she later dumped him for her fantasy man, before leaving him too. One of the points of conjecture on the imdb Muriel’s Wedding site is, did Muriel (in the unwritten future) get back together with admirer Brice Nobes? That we will never know. While a print forms a track that tells us where culture has been, a print cannot be the future, a print is never animate reality. At the end of any trail of prints, one must lift one’s head from the last impression, and negotiate satisfaction in the happening world. References Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “Memo Shows US General Approved Interrogations.” 30 Mar. 2005 http://www.abc.net.au>. 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Muriel’s Wedding. Dir. PJ Hogan. Perf. Toni Collette, Rachel Griffiths, Bill Hunter, and Jeannie Drynan. Village Roadshow, 1994. O’Hagan, Jack. On The Road to Gundagai. 1922. 2 Apr. 2005 http://ingeb.org/songs/roadtogu.html>. Poole, J.H., P.L. Tyack, A.S. Stoeger-Horwath, and S. Watwood. “Animal Behaviour: Elephants Are Capable of Vocal Learning.” Nature 24 Mar. 2005. Sanchez, R. “Interrogation and Counter-Resistance Policy.” 14 Sept. 2003. 30 Mar. 2005 http://www.abc.net.au>. Schultheiss, O.C., M.M. Wirth, and S.J. Stanton. “Effects of Affiliation and Power Motivation Arousal on Salivary Progesterone and Testosterone.” Hormones and Behavior 46 (2005). Sherry, N. The Life of Graham Greene. 3 vols. London: Jonathan Cape 2004, 1994, 1989. Silk Road. Printing. 2000. 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.silk-road.com/artl/printing.shtml>. Smith, T. “Elpida Licenses ‘DVD on a Chip’ Memory Tech.” The Register 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02>. —. “Intel Boffins Build First Continuous Beam Silicon Laser.” The Register 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02>. Watson, R. S. “Eyes And Ears: Dramatic Memory Slicing and Salable Media Content.” Innovation and Speculation, ed. Brad Haseman. Brisbane: QUT. [in press] Watson, R. S. Visions. Melbourne: Curriculum Corporation, 1994. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Watson, Robert. "E-Press and Oppress: Audio Visual Print Drama, Identity, Text and Motion Picture Rebellion." M/C Journal 8.2 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0506/08-watson.php>. APA Style Watson, R. (Jun. 2005) "E-Press and Oppress: Audio Visual Print Drama, Identity, Text and Motion Picture Rebellion," M/C Journal, 8(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0506/08-watson.php>.