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The year 2016 marked the 100th anniversary of Democracy and Education, one of John Dewey’s most widely translated and published books around the world still in the author’s lifetime. Nowadays, in a context in which pedagogy is bogged down in ‘economicism’ and suspicion towards any proposal that hints of value, Dewey’s ideas once again provide a ray of hope for a possible future. One of the contemporary authors that has fostered this hopeful reading of Dewey is Martha C. Nussbaum, whose appeal to bringing the humanities back to schools motivated a project on approaching the classic texts with the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), which we have developed during the past years with secondary education students from three schools in Santiago de Chile, Madrid and London. The project is based on an open reading of Sophocles’s Antigone through an online application that enables students from the participating schools to interact. This chapter delves deeper into the theoretical bases of the project. In the first two sections, we analyse the interpretation that Nussbaum and Dewey each made of Antigone. Then, in the third, we present the Antigone project as a learning experience promoting a creative democracy, as Dewey called it.

To explore the issues surrounding the falling rates of MMR vaccination following the publication of a controversial study by Wakefield et al.

In order to take a fresh look at the MMR crisis, the Greek tragedy, Antigone, was used as a “strong plot” to de‐contextualise the underlying social and political issues. In this short paper, two themes are explored that emerge from reading Antigone with respect to the unfolding crisis of public confidence in the MMR vaccine: first, the challenge to government in the form of a decrease in public trust in government and government policies; and second, how such a challenge assumes significance and, arising from that, the question of how one might respond to the challenge.

The MMR debate throws issues of importance to society into relief – for example, public trust in government and science; and notions of public good versus rational choice in public policy on vaccination, However, much of the debate has been polarised into good versus evil – good and evil being subjective positions that are interchangeable, depending on the side one favours. It is argued that the issues are more complex than this, and are as much to do with political consent and the bargain between citizen and state.

Using “strong plots” to theorise about current issues is powerful because it allows one to explore them from different angles and challenge one's understanding. Antigone provides us with a way of standing back from the MMR crisis and re‐conceptualising the issues to capture the essence of the underlying debate.

Despite a long‐time effort, at least since 1963, to enlarge the base of knowledge utilization in Educational Administration by drawing humanities content into preparation programs for school administration, only modest progress has been made toward this end. A two‐fold explanation is offered. Most notably, it is argued, the practical value of the humanities in Educational Administration has not been projected persuasively in the discourse. The article herewith means to alter this condition and to generate a fresh momentum for blending humanities content with theoretical ideas which are central to school organization and administration.

The purpose of this paper is to perform a critical analysis of the relationship between small- and medium-sized social enterprises (SMSEs) and banks. Based on the conceptual framework for the analysis of SME’s credit availability developed by Berger and Udell (2006), this study aims to contribute to the current debate in two ways: first, outlining the characteristics of the lending technologies currently used by banks and financial institutions to evaluate SMSEs when they apply for credit; and second, discussing, based on the results of the empirical analysis, the coherence of these systems from the social ecosystem perspective and identifying areas for possible improvement.

The paper develops a conceptual framework based on the model proposed by Berger and Udell (2006), which defines the characteristics of lending technologies that banks use to evaluate SMEs, and applies it to the case of SMSEs. To study the interplay of these lending technologies, the empirical analysis is based on a case study of five Italian banks. Data are collected from multiple sources to capture key dimensions of the problems analyzed.

The paper provides empirical insight about the relationship between SMSEs and banks. The Italian case shows that the current lending infrastructure must be revised to support SMSE credit availability, and government policies affect the national financial institution structure. The relationship between SMSEs and Italian banks remains underdeveloped.

The research supports the scaling up of social business.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study how social enterprises credit access can be enabled.

The paper aims to explore employability in business as perceived by Generation Z (late millennials) business students and faculty. It focuses on perceptions regarding necessary employability skills from the diverse standpoints of two different groups of stakeholders within one Higher Education Institution.

The paper uses a Mixed Qualitative Design approach including a core and a supplementary component; Generation Z student perceptions are initially identified through a thematic analysis of students’ research reports on employability. These perceptions are then further contextualized through findings from a series of personal interviews conducted with Generation X academics in the same institution.

The findings support the two basic dimensions of perceived employability, work readiness and employability skills, for which students and educators hold similar notions. Both stakeholders distinguish between “hard” and “soft” skills, but filter their relative importance through a generational lens. An emerging finding was the link between personality traits and perceived employability skills.

The paper examines the much-debated issue of perceived employability through the eyes of Generation Z students; research on employability perceptions of Generation Z is, to date, limited. The topic is timely, as Generation Z is the newest generation entering the business job market. In addition, the paper adds to the emerging contemporary stream of literature exploring employability in the field of business education.

One potential lesson to be learned from the academic “culture wars” of the past few decades, regardless of which position one prefers, is that the humanities as a discipline continue to matter, perhaps more so than ever in a multi-cultural, globalized world. The systematic marginalization, even elimination, of the humanistic disciplines available represents a significant weakness for education in the Gulf; bolstering the study of the humanities – including literature, philosophy, and art history – offers a proven route towards achieving certain goals publicly avowed as priorities for education in the region. This paper proposes that engaging the humanities builds an awareness and appreciation of otherness; encourages abstract (critical) thinking; fosters language development; and, perhaps most importantly, asks students to be inspired by great ideas beautifully rendered. To become a knowledge-based society, a culture of reading deeply and independently needs to be cultivated. To empower students to become lifelong learners requires that they are, by default, lifelong readers. Furthermore, I propose that in an unsettling time of growth, change and challenges in the region, there is a reassuring possibility for humanistic inclusion that transcends the standard categories of identity politics. Students in the Gulf, just as readers everywhere else in this human world, can be shown that there is more to unite us than to divide us.

This chapter introduces the book through discussing the context in which it came about, namely a conference to mark the centenary of the publication of Dewey’s Democracy and Education. The first section relates to the book’s subtitle by describing and analysing the context in which speakers at the conference engaged in a ‘fightback’ against educational policies found to be narrowly based on economic aims, and to have lost sight of the humanistic aims of education, aims which Dewey analysed and championed. The book is structured around three key areas, all related to Dewey’s philosophy of education – the first concerns technology, the second, embodiment and the third, democracy and development. A discussion on the significance of each of these areas for contemporary educational theory is followed by detail on the individual chapters within them. This chapter concludes with an introduction to the cautiously optimistic and forward-looking epilogue by Gert Biesta on the matters and issues raised in the book.