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This paper will challenge normative disaster studies and practice by arguing that thriving communities require the pursuit of imperfection and solidarity. The authors use Lewis Carroll’s Looking-Glass World as a lens to critique both how disasters are understood, and how disaster researchers and practitioners operate, within a climate-change affected world where cultural, political and historical constructs are constantly shifting.

The paper will undertake an analysis of both disasters and disaster studies, using this unique (and satirical) critical lens, looking at the unfolding of systemic mistakes, oppressions and mal-development that are revealed in contemporary disasters, that were once the critiques of Lewis Carroll’s Victorian-era England. It shows how disaster “resilience-building” can actually be a mechanism for continuing the status quo, and how persistent colonizing institutions and systems can be in reproducing themselves.

The authors argue the liberation of disaster studies as a process of challenging the doctrines and paradigms that have been created and given meaning by those in power – particularly white, Western/Northern/Eurocentric, male power. They suggest how researchers and practitioners might view disasters – and their own praxis – Through the Looking Glass in an effort to better understand the power, domination and violence of the status quo, but also as a means of creating a vision for something better, arguing that liberation is possible through community-led action grounded in love, solidarity, difference and interconnection.

The paper uses a novel conceptual lens as a way to challenge researchers and practitioners to avoid the utopic trap that wishes to achieve homogenized perfection and instead find an “imperfect” and complex adaptation that moves toward justice. Considering this idea through satire and literary criticism will lend support to empirical research that makes a similar case using data.

The purpose of this paper is to illuminate for social studies teachers and teacher educators the ways in which students' disciplinary writing is scaffolded within the context of the inquiry design model; trends in such scaffolding are called “the learner's pathway,” since it leads students to more abstract levels of historical argumentation. The author argues that engaging historical writing genres is a necessary component of historical thinking and that understanding the ways that teachers support students' historical writing capacities can help them to make more intentional choices when building inquiries.

To study genre-related scaffolding across inquiries, this study draws on systemic functional linguistics (SFL)-based genre theory as an analytical structure and seventy-four history-focused secondary social studies inquiries to determine any patterns in the ways that teachers scaffold students' writing genres through an inquiry.

Findings suggest that there is a learner's pathway that teachers use to develop students' argumentative writing capacities; however, there is also evidence to suggest that notetaking and source synthesis are not valued instructional products, limiting the potential impact of historical thinking work within the inquiry process.

The existence of this learner's pathway has implications for the ways that teachers and preservice teachers can be professionally developed to leverage this pathway. Rather than the often-used methods of support students' generic writing capacities, professional development should focus on the ways social studies teachers can guide students to more abstract reasoning through their writing. This study's findings also have implications for the ways that social studies teachers assess students' summative arguments. Assessment practices should focus on the genre-features of “argument” rather than just the stages of the argumentative essay.

This piece is original because genre-based research is missing from much of the social studies education research. This study's findings present an additional paradigm through which social studies teachers and teacher leaders can explore the purposes of historical writing tasks and assessment.

This study aims to offer insights into the state of research covering cybersecurity, cyber insurance and small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It examines benefits of insurance to an SME’s security posture, challenges faced, and potential solutions and outstanding research questions.

Research objectives were formulated, and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Protocol was used to perform a systematic literature review (SLR). A total of 19 papers were identified from an initial set of 451.

This research underscores the role of cybersecurity in the value proposition of cyber insurance for SMEs. The findings highlight the benefits that cyber insurance offers SMEs including protection against cyber threats, financial assistance and access to cybersecurity expertise. However, challenges hinder SME’s engagement with insurance, including difficulties in understanding cyber risk, lack of cybersecurity knowledge and complex insurance policies. Researchers recommend solutions, such as risk assessment frameworks and government intervention, to increase cyber insurance uptake/value to SMEs.

There is a need for further research in the risk assessment and cybersecurity practices of SMEs, the influence of government intervention and the effectiveness of insurers in compensating for losses. The findings also encourage innovation to address the unique needs of SMEs. These insights can guide future research and contribute to enhancing cyber insurance adoption.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first SLR to comprehensively examine the intersection of cybersecurity and cyber insurance specifically in the context of SMEs.

The purpose of this study is to use a lifetime income measure to evaluate the long-run housing affordability for an understudied cohort of households in the literature – the millennials. The authors do this in the context of Malaysia, measuring long-run affordability for four housing types across geographic locations and income distributions.

This study calculates a long-run housing affordability index (HAI) using data on house prices and household incomes. Essentially a ratio of predicted lifetime incomes to house prices, the HAI is computed for four common housing types in Malaysia from 2005 to 2016 and for six states in the country. The HAI is also compared across four income percentiles.

The analysis reveals varying patterns of housing affordability among different states in Malaysia. Housing affordability has declined since 2010, with most housing types being unaffordable for millennial-led households with the lowest income. Housing is most affordable for those in the highest income bracket, although even here, there are pockets of unaffordable housing as well.

Based on the findings, this study proposes three targeted interventions to improve housing affordability for Malaysian millennials.

This study fills a gap in the literature by examining the long-run housing affordability of Malaysian millennial-led households based on both geographic location and income distribution. The millennial population is understudied in the housing affordability literature, making this study a valuable contribution to the field.

This research explored the intersection of cognitive processes, emotions and their impacts on digital game-based vocabulary learning (DGVL) among university students. Recognizing the scant research in this area, especially with integrating innovative technologies, this study aims to understand the influence of these elements using advanced monitoring tools.

This inquiry was carried out as an observational study involving 44 university students segmented into three English language proficiency levels: high, intermediate and low based on their English course scores. The methodological tools included a portable eye tracker to observe visual behaviors and deep learning technology to identify and analyze the participants’ emotional responses and engagement with the DGVL during the learning process.

The results showed that distinct fixation sequences and variations in visual attention during DGVL were correlated with different levels of competency, suggesting a direct correlation between visual engagement and language competence. In addition, emotional transitions, predominantly from engagement (“flow”) to challenge (“frustration”), were common among participants, reflecting the emotional dynamics of learning. Furthermore, all participants consistently focused on the English vocabulary definitions, indicative of their targeted approach to understanding and test preparation. These findings highlighted the intricate dynamics between emotions and cognitive processes in learning environments.

Contribution of this study shows the interplay of cognitive engagement and emotional experiences in the context of DGVL. It underscored the complex nature of these factors and their collective influence on learners’ visual and emotional engagement, offering valuable implications for educational strategies and technological applications in language learning.

This paper investigates the dynamics between state affect and trusting cognitive beliefs on post-adoptive information technology (IT) use behaviors in the form of intention to explore and deep structure usage. That state affect can influence behaviors is recognized in practice. In fact, some studies examine the impact of affective constructs, but the way state affect impacts how individuals use IT remains largely unexplored. The authors theorize that state affect, in the form of positive and negative affect, will influence trusting cognitive beliefs regarding an IT artifact (in terms of perceived helpfulness, capability and reliability) and, more importantly, directly influence intention to explore and deep structure usage.

The authors test the model using a sample of 357 IT users. Survey items were derived from established measures, and the data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Results of this study suggest that positive affect and negative affect impact trusting cognitive beliefs. Trusting cognitive beliefs positively impact intention to explore with an IT and deep structure usage of an IT. Even in the presence of trusting beliefs, though, positive affect directly impacts intention to explore. Positive affect and negative affect both also have various indirect, mediated effects on intention to explore and deep structure usage.

In order to maximize value from workplace IT, the results suggest managers foster an authentic, positive work environment in order to harness or redirect employees' emotional energies.

Four reputed leaders for the coming years in the field of special education for individuals with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) each with a slightly different perspective on the field were asked to respond independently to a prompt asking what does special education mean for students with EBD and what is being done and how do we maintain tradition? The contributors' responses to the prompt are presented and then summarized across the essays. A remarkable consistency emerges across the independent essays. In addition to the tradition of providing a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment, the contributors identify needs to support teachers serving this population. Needs in teacher training and the expertise required to meet the needs of individuals with EBD are outlined as well as potential contributions of technology to carry out specific tasks. We conclude with a call for increased advocacy for use of the knowledge that we currently possess and that which will soon be discovered to support students with EBD as well as their teachers. We also note that the contributors' names are listed alphabetically to acknowledge the equality of each person to the final product.

Ethnography produces accounts; the critical reflection of accounts produces accountability. Ethnography requires accountability if meaningful conclusions and/or observations are to be made. Accountability requires ethnography if is to address lived experiences. Virno argues that the principles of “languaging” make ethnographies and accountability possible. This papers aims to describe an instance of the circularity of accountability and use this to explore Virno’s insights. Doing this helps us to see the connections between accountability and ethnography, and reflect on the nature of these interconnections.

Inspired by Paulo Virno’s philosophy, the authors assert that an ethnographer typically produces an account of a chosen “Other” in which this “Other” is held to account. But at the same time, the ethnographer needs to be held to account by the very same “Other” and by the “Other” of the (research) community. Furthermore, ethnographers are accountable to themselves. All these moments of accountability can endlessly circle, as responsibilization of the researchers by their Other(s) continues. For ethnography to function, this must be tamed as a (research) account ultimately has to be produced for an academic project to be considered complete. Drawing on Virno’s principle of the “negation of the negation” by the “katechon,” by the “katechon,” the authors propose a potentially valuable intervention that would enable ethnography – and by extension, ethnographers – to prosper.

The authors apply Virno’s philosophical reflections to propose a positive feedback cycle between ethnography and accountability. Virno’s ideation centers on two key concepts: (i) the multitude of social relatedness and (ii) the ontology of the languaging of individuation. Hereby, a positive circle of causality between ethnography and accountability can be realized, whereby the authors can respect but also break the causal circle(s) of ethnography and accountability. This might be achieved via a reflection on Virno’s concept of the “katechon.”

The authors illuminate the accountability–ethnography dynamic, providing an illustration of the circularity of ethnography and accountability and showing how Virno provides us with tools to help us deal with it. Hence, ultimately, the paper focuses on the accountability as ethnographers.

This study aims to examine and assess how sustainable development goal (SDG) Target 4.7 is incorporated in one leading higher education institution (HEI) in China (with a focus on teacher-education programmes) from students’ perspectives.

This study uses document analysis and a semi-structured interview to analyse official and accessible documents of the programmes related to SDG Target 4.7 and recorded interviews with seven students across various Postgraduate Diploma in Education programmes in the field of education at the examined university.

SDG Target 4.7 is absent in the related documents. Challenges and barriers for students include limited opportunity to be informed about SDG Target 4.7, limited topics covered, ineffective pedagogies and students’ diverse needs being neglected and teachers not giving immediate feedback. Given the opportunities in teaching and learning SDG Target 4.7, such as students are keen to learn and implement SDG Target 4.7, future directions could be reducing teachers’ lecturing and increasing student engagement in multiple ways, providing concrete examples that are relevant to students’ lives and giving immediate feedback and designing more related courses to specifically and systematically teach SDG Target 4.7.

This study contributes to the field by identifying and deeply analysing an interesting and representative non-western case that remains underexplored in literature. In this sense, it helps international readers to generate a more comprehensive understanding of Chinese approaches to SDGs in its higher education system, develop a more holistic global discourse on incorporating SDGs into HEIs and compare the similarities and differences between different countries’ approaches.