Search results

Education in Emergencies (EiE) as a subfield of Comparative and International Education (CIE) has played a vital role in advocating for the world’s most vulnerable people with a focus on short-term responses to specific events like conflict and natural disasters that often occur in the Global South. However, recent events, like the protests exposing structural racial and gender inequality, the COVID-19 pandemic, and multiple global “slow” conflicts, have revealed a different nature of modern emergencies where issues, which are often considered important but not urgent, can quickly become emergencies under the right circumstances or have in fact always been so. Accordingly, in this chapter, we reimagine a broader framework for EiE which includes long-term, systemic, and universal challenges that affect both the Global North and South. The chapter includes a historical review of EiE as a subfield within CIE along with evidence of new forms of modern emergencies in the United States, Bolivia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Myanmar, and Syria that build toward a broader framework of EiE intended for both CIE scholars and practitioners.

This chapter examines the context for the implementation of the global commitment to early childhood education (ECE) within the framing of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) under SDG 4.2. We first define the concept of ECE as broadly understood in the field of education and in practice related to a focus on education of children. The essay adopts chronological age of children served outside of the formal school system, which has traditionally been recognized as basic education, to represent the population captured under ECE in both pre-school and pre-primary settings. UNICEF identifies those ages 3–6 to fall into this category. We present an exploration of the challenges and opportunities presented by multiplicity in multilateral agencies and other agencies driving the international initiatives around advancing ECE and the means by which they promote education opportunities for children. We offer a comparative perspective on the delivery, types, and funding mechanisms of ECE services in both developing and developed country contexts, which informs the possibilities for the realization of the SDG goal of inclusive quality education for all. An examination of the socio-cultural and economic context of accessibility to inclusive and equitable quality ECE is also presented. An overview of settings within which ECE is provided is interrogated within differing national contexts. We conclude with challenges and opportunities for sustained accountability, monitoring and evaluation of SDG 4.2 interventions from a comparative perspective.

The value which can be placed upon the rights of property in a name of a commodity, a food or drink, perhaps famous all over the world, which has come down to us through the centuries, is incalculable. Most of such foods and drinks have a regional association, and are prepared according to methods, often secret, handed down from one generation to another and from locally grown and produced materials. Nowhere are such traditions so well established as in cheese‐making and the wine industry. The names do not signify merely a method of manufacture, since this can be simulated almost anywhere, nor even the raw materials, but differences in climate, the soil and its treatment, its produce, harvesting, even in the contaminants of environment. Rochfort cheese, for example, is made from ewe's milk, but most important, with mould growths found only in the caves of that part of France where it is stored.

This study comparatively examines the collaborative policy mechanisms for interlocal cooperation (ILC) utilized by municipal managers in Nebraska, USA, and Norway. The research addresses differences in ILC, factors of national setting and implications for ILC management in public service delivery.

Over a seven-year period, the researchers collected data from 16 communities in the two countries to observe perceptions and usages of ILC. Using a policy tools theoretical framework, the authors apply a typology of collaborative mechanisms for comparative analysis.

The findings suggest that institutional orientations in the USA and Norwegian systems of government affect managerial approaches to collaborative service delivery, namely the operationalization of local governments within federal and unitary structures may influence perceptions toward the formality and specificity of ILC policy mechanisms.

This study offers further understanding of ILC mechanisms for public sector management. Theoretical and practical implications of ILC in a comparative international context of governmental systems for collaboration are explored.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) countermeasures will affect the financing of the North American leagues. In particular, we focus on the missed revenue from gate receipts for the Big Four leagues.

The authors forecast the 2020 revenue for each of the four major leagues under two scenarios: (1) expected revenue under the normal conditions of fans in attendance and (2) expected revenues in the absence of fans due to the countermeasures in place. Then, the authors calculate the loss in gate receipts as a difference in the revenue under fans and no-fans scenarios.

Based on the current estimates, the combined financial loss of the clubs from NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL is expected to be above 6.8bn dollars in gate receipts alone.

The findings are useful to the league management to prepare for the suboptimal financial situation.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that explores the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic across the major league sports leagues in North America.

While LIS scholarship emphasizes the need to be multi-literate by equipping people with critical information literacy, digital literacy, and media literacy skills to combat the phenomenon of fake news in the contemporary information society, the concept of political information literacy is still in its infancy. This chapter addresses this gap by developing an understanding of political information literacy and challenges the premise that information professionals and information organizations should remain neutral in the face of phenomena like censorship through noise and disinformation. In this endeavor, it reviews contemporary information environments vis-à-vis the growth of fake news and misinformation, and current information literacy approaches utilized by information organizations. Thereafter, it explores several cognitive barriers, such as the role of confirmation bias, information avoidance, information groupishness, and information overload, which affects people’s ability to process information. Finally, it encourages information professionals to hold regular information sessions on politically charged topics, tackle the cognitive factors increasing misinformation, and cultivate multidisciplinary approaches to confront fake news.

An indexing language is made more accessible to searchers and indexers by the presence of entry terms or near‐synonyms. This paper first presents an evaluation of existing entry terms and then presents and tests a strategy for creating entry terms. The key tools in the evaluation of the entry terms are documents already indexed into the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and an automatic indexer. If the automatic indexer can better map the title to the index terms with the use of entry terms than without entry terms, then the entry terms have helped. Sensitive assessment of the automatic indexer requires the introduction of measures of conceptual closeness between the computer and human output. With the tools described in this paper, one can systematically demonstrate that certain entry terms have ambiguous meanings. In the selection of new entry terms another controlled vocabulary or thesaurus, called the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED), was consulted. An algorithm for mapping terms from SNOMED to MeSH was implemented and evaluated with the automatic indexer. The new SNOMED‐based entry terms did not help indexing but did show how new concepts might be identified which would constitute meaningful amendments to MeSH. Finally, an improved algorithm for combining two thesauri was applied to the Computing Reviews Classification Structure (CRCS) and MeSH. CRCS plus MeSH supported better indexing than did MeSH alone.

The aim of this paper is to examine the changed nature of public accountability during a supreme emergency and explore how legal and auditing mechanisms have come to the fore, concluding that misappropriation of public monies is not an inevitable outcome.

The paper explores an illustrative example, the UK government's procurement of personal protective equipment during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In circumstances of a supreme emergency where parliamentary scrutiny and competitive contract tendering are suspended, other forms of public accountability come to the fore, with civil society actors becoming more evident.

The paper relies on illustrative examples based on the Westminster model of government. The study advanced the notion of deferred accountability and identifies areas for further study, potentially in different jurisdictions.

The paper highlights the need for a variety of active and engaged civil society actors.

The paper contributes an empirical case to how an account of government behaviour is established. The paper also contributes to a deeper understanding of the nature and role of legal and government audit accountability mechanisms.