Search results

The United States and European countries have for a long time affirmed non-pecuniary loss as a proper title of damages. On both sides of the Atlantic in the preceding decades, we have witnessed an escalation in the monetary amounts awarded for the non-pecuniary component of damages in cases of personal injury.¹ As a result of this escalation, the countries referred to have embarked on a shrill debate in trying to decipher a definition of their concrete notions of non-pecuniary damages² and on their awarding methods.³

Evaluation of research is a core function of academic work, yet there has been very little theoretical development about what it means to ‘know’ in relation to judgements made in examination of doctoral research. This chapter addresses the issue by reflecting on findings from three projects aimed at enhancing understanding of doctoral examination. In order to progress understanding about knowledge judgements in the doctoral research context, the chapter draws on two key contributions in the field of knowledge and knowing, namely, Habermas’ cognitive interests and Chinn, Buckland and Samarapungavan’s notion of epistemic cognition. It examines the common ground between the two bodies of theory, drawing illustratively on empirical work in the field of doctoral examination. The comparison of the Habermasian theory of cognitive interests with Chinn et al.’s notion of epistemic cognition led to the conclusion that there were areas of overlap between the two conceptual schemas that could be utilised to advance research into doctoral examination in higher education. Habermas’ cognitive interests (which underpin his ways of knowing theory) offer a conceptual lens that facilitates analysis of the interaction of ontological and epistemic components of knowledge production. Chinn et al.’s notion of epistemic cognition allows for finer grained analysis of aspects of the cognitive work involved in knowledge rendition. This work is particularly pertinent in an era that sees the boundaries of the disciplines being challenged by the need for new perspectives and cross-disciplinary approaches to solving complex problems.

The research of lobbying within public relations scholarship is a small but emerging field, having hitherto been largely the reserve of political science. While there is rightly interaction between the two disciplines, lobbying is a communicative act with a clear human element, usually involving (and in some cases, required by law before it is deemed to be lobbying) face to face interactions between actors, namely lobbying practitioners and those with influence and power such as politicians. This chapter contains the findings of a survey of professional lobbyists working in Scotland. The survey seeks to gain a better understanding of the profile of Scottish lobbyists, and to understand if there is any change in their practice as a result of the lobbying transparency legislation which was introduced shortly before the study commenced. The survey was conducted by online questionnaire and completed by 71 respondents between September 2019 and February 2020. The study finds that lobbyists in Scotland are predominantly male, have at some point been active in party politics and that there has been little behaviour change since the introduction of lobbying transparency regulation. It also finds that non-commercial interest groups are the largest group in Scottish lobbying, but only slightly. This study adds to the literature of lobbying practice and lobbying regulation and aims to create a better understanding of the relatively young Scottish lobbying sector. It therefore provides a basis from which to conduct further studies in Scotland and other jurisdictions.

Education, and especially the life of a teacher, is constantly evolving. Teachers' roles and responsibilities have become more complicated and multifaceted over time. Therefore, they have to invest a great deal of time, energy, and effort to navigate the demands and complexities of their role. In the last 20 years, education has changed in response to increased workload, the rise of high-stakes testing and accountability, social-emotional and behavioral challenges among students, school safety concerns, equity concerns, and now the coronavirus pandemic. These factors have been linked to high stress and teacher burnout, which leads to more teachers leaving their jobs (Arvidsson et al., 2019). Nonetheless, those who endure the flames of burnout do so because they are resilient in the face of adversity and persistent in their commitment to the call of teaching and learning. This chapter examines the effects of stress and burnout among three alternatively certified teachers and the behaviors and strategies these educational first responders employ to build resilience and persistence in their service to the students who shape our future.

A focus on how visual cultures in domestic spaces influence older migrants' identification with the homeland has been noted in previous research, ¹ yet migrant youth have not typically been the sole subjects of investigation in this regard. This chapter seeks to fill this gap by offering insight into the practices of young Indian women in domestic spaces and how these practices influence their sense of belonging to India. This chapter highlights the practices of young Indian women living in Brisbane, Australia, through an exploration into how the young women recreate their histories and cultural attachments in domestic spaces. The research presented in this chapter illustrates the processes of emotional attachment for young migrants and how these processes demonstrate new ways of practising diaspora, including the use of the internet to learn about their cultural histories. With the use of PhotoVoice, where photographs were retrieved from mobile phones and the internet, the participants discussed their everyday lives relating to their emotional attachments to material objects in domestic spaces and the connection to their identities. This chapter's main argument is to highlight the need for researchers to avoid the tendency to place young migrants into the same diasporic categories as their parents and to recognise the diverse ways in which young migrants actively shape their own cultural attachments.

The conceptualisation of interculturality has largely been informed by the Centre-western meanings of the notions of culture, Self and the Other (Holmes, 2015). The dominant Eurocentric view of culture which is associated with the idea of civilisation, progress and growth in opposition to the notions of that which is uncivilised, backword or retrogressive, has constructed culture as a static entity with fixed boundaries that display discernible differences (Jenks, 2005). This view of culture has established that the encounters of cultures can necessarily be confrontational and traumatic. Within this context, intercultural education is expected to play a vital role in facilitating effective cross-cultural interaction, in particular, by improving the understanding of the cultural Other and avoiding Othering. In this process, the Self and the Other are recognised as categories with ascribed qualities which are fixated in a singular nationality, ethnic group or a religious faith. This thesis silences the dynamicity of the transient Self while strengthening the continuation of the existing cultural hegemonies and social–cultural binaries rather than democratising and enabling effective encounters among people. I argue that the uncontested primacy of the western dualistic world views and the absence of the non-western philosophical thinking have resulted in narrowing down the breadth and the depth of intercultural education and its capacity to help develop cross-culturally fluent graduates. In this chapter, I use the concepts of Anathma (non-Self) and Anicca (impermanence) in Theravada Buddhist philosophy (Kornfield & Fronsdal, 2011) to understand how alternative perceptions of Self can help develop cosmic compassion that contributes to successful co-existence between humans and all living Beings in the universe. My argument in this chapter is informed by the ideas of sociological absence (Santos, 2007) decoloniality (Maldonado-Torres, 2007) and Sandoval’s (2000) ideas on decolonial love.