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The purpose of this paper is to explore an online field experience between technology facilitator candidates in the USA and K‐12 teachers in Namibia, to improve candidates' understanding of diversity and equity issues in the successful incorporation of information and communication technologies (ICT) in teaching and learning.

A classroom‐based, exploratory action‐research methodology was used. US graduate students in an educational technology course were expected to gain knowledge, skills, and understanding by mentoring (via online communications technologies) Namibian primary and secondary schools teachers in a technology‐integration task.

Through this effective multicultural field experience for technology facilitator candidates, US participants learned about the digital divide as it exists in developing nations, and the impact of socio‐economic and technological inequities on the incorporation of ICTs in teaching and learning.

The results of this pilot study warrant further studies which explore this method in a broader population and across a wider range of educational settings. As developing nations increase their access to ICTs, difficulties faced in this study should be minimized in future studies.

The paper suggests an effective, diverse, technology‐embedded field experience for school professionals preparing to become technology facilitators. Programs that cater to full‐time teachers working in schools which do not meet the diversity requirements set by accrediting organizations such as the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education may consider this approach.

Online international field experiences have the potential to enhance US participants' ability to demonstrate technology facilitator standards in the context of diverse school settings, backgrounds and populations, as well as to aid teachers in a developing country in technology integration knowledge and skills.

To describe an exploratory study in which an online learning system was used to provide an intercultural experience for pre‐service education students from New Jersey and Namibia.

Pre‐service education students from New Jersey and Namibia were enrolled in an online course in the fall of 2004. The following semester, spring 2005, only students from New Jersey were enrolled in the course. Online discussion postings were analyzed for both course cohorts and compared. A pre/post questionnaire of students' understanding of cross‐cultural differences in general, and in teaching in particular, was also administered to both course cohorts.

This paper focuses on the growth of New Jersey students' understanding of what teaching in Namibia is like and also looks to see if this led to a greater understanding of their own practice. While there was an indication that the former was achieved and a number of New Jersey students did show a deeper understanding of teaching in Namibia, this did not appear to then lead to a deeper understanding of their own teaching practice.

This was an exploratory pilot study, conducted principally to see if the technology supported this type of experience for students in both developed and developing nations. While this experience will never substitute for a real, in‐person, exchange program or study abroad, the technology did support a limited virtual “exchange” program.

The study indicated that an online course is a very feasible option for providing an intercultural experience for students from developed and developing nations. In order to help students reach deeper levels of understanding of both their intercultural peers and of their own practice, students may need to be exposed to a more explicit model of inter‐ and intra‐ cultural reflection.

This paper gives teacher educators and others a way of providing a virtual intercultural exchange to their students. This is particularly important for students from both developing and developed nations who do not have the financial means to participate in an actual (in‐person) exchange program.

The COVID-19 health crisis has brought about a set of extra health and safety regulations, and procedures to the construction industry which could influence projects' economic performance (EP). The aim of this paper is to examine the effect of adopting COVID-19 safety protocols on construction sites on the economic performance (EP) of construction projects.

Employing the survey method using a structured questionnaire, data were collected from small- and large-sized construction projects in Nigeria and analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) technique.

The findings reveal that job re-organization and sanitization have negative significant effects on EP, while social distancing and specific training have no effect on EP. Furthermore, project size moderates the relationship between job re-organization, sanitization, specific training and EP with the stronger effect on the relationships observed in big projects, except for the relationship between sanitization and EP where the moderating relationship is stronger in small projects. However, there is no significant moderating effect of project size on the relationship between social distancing and EP.

As construction project sites continue to operate amidst strict safety protocols, this study offers theoretical and practical insights on how construction projects can adhere to the safety protocols while performing economically.

The originality of this study's findings stems from the fact that it is among the first to provide greater insight on how construction projects have fared economically considering the impact of the various COVID-19 protocols.

Sacrifice, integral to gift giving, remains unexplored and undertheorized in marketing. This paper aims to address this shortfall by analyzing the dynamics of sacrifice and theorizing how it serves as an engine of the gift chimney.

The ethnographic investigation of public ceremonial gift giving in sectarian Northern Ireland describes and interprets the complex nature of the gift.

The authors show that sacrifice is a plausible mechanism of the gift chimney and that the co-occurrence of monadic, dyadic and systemic giving in the same ritual acts as an accelerant.

The authors analyze how public ceremonial gift giving induces sectarian communities to risk convocation, enabling them to exorcize trauma sustained at one another’s hands and to build a platform for future cross-community cohesion in a context of ineffective institutional efforts.

Sacrifice propels circulation of the gift, creating a social bond between antagonists whose ethos of mutuality depends upon ritualized reciprocal recognition of entangled loss.

This chapter offers insight on how existing paradigms within Black Studies, specifically the ideas of racial capitalism and the Black Radical Tradition, can advance sociological scholarship toward greater understanding of the macro-level factors that shape Black mobilizations. In this chapter, I assess mainstream sociological research on the Civil Rights Movement and theoretical paradigms that emerged from its study, using racial capitalism as a lens to explain dynamics such as the political process of movement emergence, state-sponsored repression, and demobilization. The chapter then focuses on the reparatory justice movement as an example of how racial capitalism perpetuates wide disparities between Black and white people historically and contemporarily, and how reparations activists actively deploy the idea of racial capitalism to address inequities and transform society.

The figure of the femme fatale is attached to a range of contested meanings around femininity, sexuality and violence. Despite its ambiguity and its origins in art, myth and fiction, the term has proven popular in giving a name to violent articulations of female power in non-fictional settings by journalists. In this chapter, I outline the figure of the femme fatale as an archetype of women's violence that appears throughout Western popular culture, and provide an overview of the term's definitions and cultural meanings. In doing so, I trace the figure's movement across different forms and genres of popular culture. I identify a number of themes in the existing scholarship around the figure: feminist criticism of the figure; the value that feminist film scholars have found in the figure as a symbol of power and sexual transgression; the relationship between the femme fatale, race and the colonial imagination; and the way the idea of the femme fatale has been used in reporting of real-life women's violence.

Our article on the recently‐issued Post‐war Proposals of the Library Association is, like the accounts that have appeared elsewhere, merely preliminary. It must be productive of much suggestion and comment, including we have no doubt much criticism from librarians. It has been given, we understand, a most extensive circulation, to Members of Parliament, local authorities, all Town Clerks and Clerks to Councils, all societies which have social and cultural objects, selected private persons, all members of the L.A. and, of course, the press in London and the Provinces. Some measures of the interest in libraries may be gained from the amount of discussion that will ensue. We hope that our readers will at least keep us in touch with their opinions and suggestions and will make every effort to prevent their submergence in the welter of schemes and reports now surrounding us.

This paper presents the findings of an investigation into a mental health promotion initiative in young offender institutions across England. The study involved a survey of staff attitudes towards mental health promotion, and surveyed practice run by these staff. Analysis of staff descriptions of mental health promotion revealed a degree of confusion and a lack of clarity over the definition of mental health and mental health promotion. The concept of a mental health promotion initiative which aimed to improve the well‐being of the general inmate and staff population was not a shared vision and not part of the core work of either health care staff or prison officers. It is recommended that any future campaigns on mental health or health promotion should have a central lead, with some flexibility to allow for the development of local initiatives, fostering local relationships and partnerships.

This paper aims to investigate how blockchain has moved beyond cryptocurrencies and is being deployed to enhance visibility and trust in supply chains, their limitations and potential impact.

Qualitative analysis are undertaken via case studies drawn from food companies using semi-structured interviews.

Blockchain is demonstrated as an enabler of visibility in supply chains. Applications at scale are most likely for products where the end consumer is prepared to pay the premium currently required to fund the technology, e.g. baby food. Challenges remain in four areas: trust of the technology, human error and fraud at the boundaries, governance, consumer data access and willingness to pay.

The paper shows that blockchain can be utilised as part of a system generating visibility and trust in supply chains. Research directs academic attention to issues that remain to be addressed. The challenges pertaining to the technology itself we believe to be generalisable; those specific to the food industry may not hold elsewhere.

From live case studies, we provide empirical evidence that blockchain provides visibility of exchanges and reliable data in fully digitised supply chains. This provides provenance and guards against counterfeit goods. However, firms will need to work to gain consumer buy-in for the technology following repeated past claims of trustworthiness.

This paper provides primary evidence from blockchain use cases “in the wild”. The exploratory case studies examine application of blockchain for supply chain visibility.

WITH the end of the month Mr. C. B. Oldman will retire from the presidency of the L.A. He has had a successful year and—if that were possible or necessary—has increased the high esteem in which his colleagues hold him for his unobtrusive, friendly and efficient work for all kinds of libraries and especially for his direction of the examiners and assessors. Of the liaison he has maintained between the British Museum and the Association we and others have frequently made gratified comment. The year produced the best conference of recent years and has been one of steady progress in the rehabilitation and building of all sorts of libraries public and institutional; and, so far as public libraries are concerned, the annual lending of books is some thirty millions more than the record of a year or two ago. If there has been no spectacular event, no great new library, no revolution in library policy, and if the desired new legislation is still delayed, we can still say that our work increases in spite of the many things, alleged to be inimical to reading, from TV to cross‐word puzzles and pools, and the great demands modern industry makes upon the minds as well as the bodies of our people.