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Commercially produced educational materials often reflect the pedagogical beliefs and culture(s) of the content developers. While many teachers involved in teaching English as a foreign language have relied on commercially published content in the past, the advent of ubiquitous technology has afforded them the ability to create content that is contextualised and to share it with other educators across the globe. The purpose of this study is to investigate cultural determinants which affect the pedagogical decisions of teachers when designing content.

This case study, conducted at a higher educational institution in the Gulf, addresses the issues that arise when cultures or ideologies of educators as material developers are different to that of the target audience. Three semi-structured interviews with teachers were conducted in an effort to understand cultural determinants that influence decision-making about pedagogy when creating in-house content to motivate undergraduate students on an English language program in the United Arab Emirates.

The results of this study indicated that the participants maintained mainly essentialist perspectives of local cultures and sub-cultures and their thinking in content creation was not all that different to that of commercial publishers.

This study holds implications for awareness-raising and pedagogical training for educators involved in in-house content development.

This case study addresses an area that has been under-researched in the Gulf region.

Broadly understood as repeated, intentional, and aggressive behaviors facilitated by digital technologies, cyberbullying has been identified as a significant public health concern in Australia. However, there have been critical debates about the theoretical and methodological assumptions of cyberbullying research. On the whole, this research has demonstrated an aversion to accounting for context, difference, and complexity. This insensitivity to difference is evident in the absence of nuanced accounts of Indigenous people's experiences of cyberbullying. In this chapter, we extend recent critiques of dominant approaches to cyberbullying research and argue for novel theoretical and methodological engagements with Indigenous people's experiences of cyberbullying. We review a range of literature that unpacks the many ways that social, cultural, and political life is different for Indigenous peoples. More specifically, we demonstrate there are good reasons to assume that online conflict is different for Indigenous peoples, due to diverse cultural practices and the broader political context of settler-colonialism. We argue that the standardization of scholarly approaches to cyberbullying is delimiting its ability to attend to social difference in online conflict, and we join calls for more theoretically rigorous, targeted, difference-sensitive studies into bullying.

Leadership Studies education is a highly personal endeavor shaped by the personal experiences and philosophies of leadership educators. However, when course design collaboration opportunities are presented, teaching approaches and curriculum prioritization may be at odds because of distinct personal narratives. This article frames disagreement over course design as an unexpected yet useful tool for facilitating individual and collective examination of leadership educators’ narratives and how they inform teaching and curriculum priorities. Drawing from standpoint theory and positionality, this work emphasizes that questions about how and what to teach in a leadership course are influenced by life experiences of leadership educators.

The United Arab Emirates’ complex history, its current demographics, its youthfulness as a country, and the fact that it is a region undergoing fast-paced change make the issue of cultura identity particularly relevant and urgent in this part of the world. This is especially true given the rapid spread of English in the sphere of education and everyday life in recent years. This paper discusses the above issues before analyzing the attitudes and perceptions of female Emirati undergraduate students and female Emirati primary school teachers with regard to global English and its effects on local culture and identity. After analysis of the findings from a qualitative study using open-response questionnaires with 35 undergraduates and twelve teachers, a discussion follows with recommendations on how to overcome issues raised in the study.