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Critical digital pedagogy (CDP) is an emerging field in education. The basic tenet of CDP involves taking learners' experiences into account and engaging them in critical thinking about social oppression. With the outbreak of the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, CDP has got more currency and appropriacy in the current paradigm shift in learning and teaching.

This paper scrutinizes different aspects of CDP including its origins, theoretical underpinnings and its implementation in different contexts. It also critically reviews Freire's (1972) problem-posing education and Morris and Stommel's (2017) model of CDP.

The article proposes a CDP model based on the previous ones, which includes the core concepts and criteria of CDP and focuses on EFL classrooms.

One of the limitations of CDP is gaining the learners' approval in creating an environment of co-constructing knowledge moving away from traditional practices. In addition to that, the use of new media in the classroom can be intimidating for students and stakeholders alike. The lack of logistic support in many rural, remote and underdeveloped contexts cannot be ignored either

The paper provides recommendations for future research in CDP.

Critical pedagogy (CP) is a teaching approach in which the oppressed are basically focused and teachers and learners construct knowledge together. Recently, with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, global education had to go online. Consequently, traditional teaching and learning had to undergo a paradigm shift. Along with other changes in traditional teaching and learning practices, there has been a significant change in teaching philosophy. This is how the CDP finds its currency in this emerging unprecedented teaching and learning situation.

Owing to religious and economic preferences in Muslim-dominated countries, middle-income customers are at the heart of banks’ strategic targeting. This study aims to investigate selected middle-income Islamic bank customers from Sylhet, one of Bangladesh’s top religious and cultural cities, to examine their perceptions of the Islamic banking services.

This study forwards three determinants of overall satisfaction. These are perceived relative advantage (PRA), perceived risk management (PRM) and perceived customer engagement (PCE). The study has used structured questionnaire and collected complete data on 300 middle-income Islamic bank users. The data was analysed using exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modelling (SEM).

While all the three selection factors significantly influence overall satisfaction, PCE has greater positive impact on overall customer satisfaction, followed by PRA and PRM. “Convenient location”, “competitive charges” and “return on deposit despite low earnings” are the top three instruments measuring “PCE”. Religion did not qualify as a standalone selection factor. The results are robust across tests conducted by using EFA, CFA and SEM.

Gross purchasing power of middle-income class in Bangladesh grew from 7% to over 30% during the past decade, and the purchasing power of this class stood at US$100bn. Having a greater portion of this population as Muslims, banks can design products and marketing campaigns by using the three selection criteria that offer a combination of faith and non-faith-based variables.

Similar studies on the middle-income customer group have been rare, especially from the Islamic banking perspective. These findings offer a concise list of three factors for the bank managers to build their strategies. With respect to the Vision 2021, these findings carry greater socio-economic significance given the transition of Bangladesh to a middle-income country.

Despite city authorities in Bangladesh being concerned about urban sustainability, they often face difficulties in addressing predominant urban challenges threatening urban sustainability, due to limited relevant literature. To reduce this gap, this study aims to address the predominant urban challenges and assess their severity levels in four city corporations of Bangladesh, e.g. Rajshahi, Sylhet, Barishal, and Gazipur.

Using a mixed-method approach, this study rigorously analyzed field-level data obtained from 1,200 residents across selected cities using diverse statistical techniques. The quantitative analysis included descriptive analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and chi-square tests, whereas qualitative insights were derived through thematic analysis.

The study uncovered nine predominant urban challenges under two crucial factors “Feeble Urban Management” and “Illicit Activities” that collectively explain 62.20% variance. “Feeble Urban Management” explains 44.17% variance, whereas “Illicit Activities” accounts for 18.13%. Within these challenges, uncontrolled urban sprawl, inadequate disaster management, congested roads, and shabby drainage and waste management pose significant threats to urban sustainability. Illicit activities, manifested by encroachment on water sources, grabbing roadside, destruction of natural properties, and activities undermining social security, compound the urban sustainability issue. Severity analysis reveals Sylhet (54.5%), Rajshahi (46.4%), and Barishal (31.2%) as highly impacted, whereas Gazipur exhibits moderate severity (66.7%).

The findings of this study reveal intrinsic insights into urban challenges in Bangladesh that will provide valuable guidance to city authorities, equipping them to implement integrated and effective initiatives and programs that overcome these predominant urban challenges, with a specific focus on Rajshahi, Sylhet, and Barishal city corporations.

This paper aims to investigate the immediate effect of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic by investigating volatility transmission and dynamic correlation between stock (conventional and Islamic) markets, bitcoin and major commodities such as gold, oil and silver at different investment horizons before and after 161 trading days of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The MGARCH-DCC and maximum overlap discrete wavelet transform -based cross-correlation were used in the estimation of the volatility spillover and continuous wavelet transform in the estimation of the time-varying volatility and correlation between the assets at different investment horizons.

The authors observed a sudden correlation breakdown following the COVID-19 shock. Oil (Bitcoin) was a major volatility transmitter before (during) COVID-19. Digital gold (Bitcoin), gold and silver became highly correlated during COVID-19. The highest co-movement between the assets was observed at medium and long-term investment horizons.

The study findings have a financial implication for day traders, investors and policymakers in the understanding of volatility transmission and intercorrelation in a bid to actively manage stylized and well-diversified asset portfolios.

This study is unique for its employment in estimating the time-varying conditional volatility of the investable assets and cross-correlations between them at different investment horizons, particularly before and after COVID-19 outbreak.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the link between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the amount of trust customers have in Somali Islamic banks. Furthermore, the role of gender in CSR activities and Islamic bank clientele is evaluated.

Throughout February and March 2022, 410 clients of Islamic banks in Somalia were surveyed using a questionnaire. The partial least squares approach and the structural equation model are applied to examine the data.

Findings indicate that all variables of CSR activities, such as social product, social legal, social needs, social environment and social employees’ responsibility, are influential and significant predictors of trust in Islamic banks in Somalia. Gender inequalities moderate the relationship between social product, social needs, social environment, social employee and trust. Conversely, only social legal responsibility was unaffected by gender differences in Somalia regarding people’s trust in Islamic banks.

A sample from a developing country such as Somalia is useful for shedding light on the outcomes of consumers’ perceptions of and trust in businesses’ CSR in the developing world. Furthermore, this study contributes to knowledge regarding CSR and how it can help the Islamic banking industry. Its findings will be useful to policymakers and regulatory bodies in the banking industry in their efforts to improve CSR.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first empirical investigation of its kind about the understudied relationship among customer trust, CSR efforts and gender in Somalia context. Furthermore, it investigates how gender specifically moderates CSR in the Islamic banking sector in a developing country.

Sustainable food security at the household level is one of the emerging issues for all nations. It is expected that the patterns of household resilience factors and adaptation practices have a strong linkage with household food security. The purpose of this paper is to seek an effective technique of adaptation for food security and the required types of support for adaptation to food insecurity among the poor and low-income households in Malaysia.

This study was based on primary data that were collected in July-October 2012 through a questionnaire survey among 460 poor and low-income households from the Pahang, Kelantan, and Terengganu states of Malaysia. The samples were selected from E-Kasih poor household database based on a two-stage cluster random sampling technique. The study considered household food security as household food availability and food accessibility, and ran ordinal regressions to find out the linkages of household food security with household resilience factors, adaptation practices, and expected support for adaptation to food security.

The study concludes that several resilience factors and adaptation practices were statistically significant to household food security, and several external supports were statistically and significantly needed to ensure household food security. Therefore, to ensure sustainable household food security in Malaysia, the food security programs need to be integrated with sustainable development goals (SDGs) and climatic changes adaptation programs, and the involvement of relevant stakeholders are crucial.

This study is a pioneer work based on primary data that empirically measured the linkages of household food security with household resilience factors, adaptation practices, and expected support for adaptation to food security in Malaysia. This study also discussed some issues related to the climate change linkage, which would help future climate change research. The findings of the study will be beneficial for all the stakeholders, including policy makers related to the food security and climate change adaptation.

This study aims to explore the challenges and prospects of using e-wallets in Malaysia, and what it means for businesses and customers. Suggested here are strategies to leverage the strengths and opportunities as well as overcome the weaknesses and threats. Suggested here are strategies to leverage the strengths and opportunities as well as overcome the weaknesses and threats.

This study analyses the e-wallet phenomenon using a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis to assess Malaysian business development. It is supported with findings from the literature and secondary data. The relevant secondary data were collected from Bank Negara Malaysia and the World Bank.

This study shows that e-wallets in Malaysia have still not achieved their purpose but there is huge potential to do so. The SWOT analysis identified several strengths (e.g. financial incorporation, easy to access, protection and safety, simple for other accounts to connect to, product and consumer service management, quick to implement/administer), weaknesses (e.g. lack of infrastructure and the “tapping” of devices already cornered by the mobile phone market, opportunities (e.g. eliminating fraud, better customer service, promotion/loyalty that can be built into customer experience) and threats (e.g. attacks from viruses, frequent inquiries whether multiple wallets can be used by clients, the concerns of reckless spending behaviour of the e-wallet users).

This study is crucial for assessing the current situation and the prospects of e-wallets in Malaysia. This study also offers significant insights for policymakers and e-wallet service providers to develop appropriate strategies to enhance e-wallet services in Malaysia.

This paper is the first of its kind to integrate a SWOT analysis and the rapid development of the e-wallet market in Malaysia. Hence, the findings could broaden our knowledge on the fintech industry and enable firms to participate in the e-wallet market.

The purpose of this study is to identify the emergence of apparel brands in Bangladesh: their timing, order and the reasons behind the patterns. This study also examined whether these evolution patterns followed the same path in Korea and India.

By employing secondary research method, this study gathered and analyzed data from companies, trade organizations, news media and academic articles to determine the socioeconomic backgrounds and underlying dynamics that propelled the evolution patterns. Following Jin et al.'s (2013) approach, we analyzed three types of apparel brands (international, national and private) in Bangladesh.

The findings indicated that in contrast with Korea and India, in Bangladesh (a) the emergence of international brands occurred after the national brands' appearance in the More Advanced Production of Fabric and Apparel stage, (b) national brands also emerged at the same stage and earlier than the international brands developed, and (c) internationalization of national brands and emergence of private brands were not observed. The differences in the emergent timing and order were explained by socioeconomic and cultural aspects, along with industry life cycle perspectives.

Findings indicate that the Bangladeshi market is dominated by national apparel brands. Therefore, international brands are advised to consider the business strategies of local competitors and develop their own pricing and merchandising strategies to maintain their supremacy as premium brands.

This study addressed apparel brand evolution patterns in a lower middle-income country. The results revealed some unique aspects. Unlike in other developing countries, national brand development in Bangladesh was initiated by entrepreneurs.

The main aim of this paper is to analyze judicial system of Bangladesh, which comprises all courts and tribunals that performs the delicate task of ensuring rule of law in the society. The paper depicts the history and evolution of the judicial system in Bangladesh from ancient period to present day.

The study is qualitative in nature and based on secondary sources of materials like books, journal articles, government orders, rules, acts, newspaper reports, etc. Relevant literature has also been collected through internet browsing.

The major findings of this paper are: there is a well‐organized court system in Bangladesh which is in fact the replica of the system introduced by British rulers and it is widely accepted in the original Constitution of Bangladesh. The ancient judicial system was not based on rule of law rather on caprice and caste consideration. The executive branch of government always attempts to control the judiciary through different mechanisms, which include the appointment, tenure and discipline of judges from ancient period. Therefore, the independence of judiciary is vulnerable from ancient time to present day and even after separation of the judiciary from the executive (November 2007) the interference of the executive over the judiciary is still continuing.

This paper opens a new window for the policy makers and concerned authorities to take necessary steps for overcoming the existing limitations of judiciary.

The paper will be of interest to legal practitioners, policy makers, members of civil society, and those in the field of judicial system in Bangladesh and some other British colonial common law countries.