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This chapter presents a survey of education development in Oceania, a region of diversity held together by its commonalities, shaped by the largest ocean on the planet. The chapter outlines the regional contexts of Oceania and offers a brief historical overview of formal education. Oceania, like most regions, has struggled to mediate between global agendas and national and regional aspirations for sovereignty and self-determination. The chapter recounts ongoing efforts to navigate education in the post-colonial period, efforts to negotiate some of the aspirations of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Education for All (EFA), and other global agendas of the early 2000s with, more recently, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In this survey, we hope to demonstrate collective efforts to respond to global agendas, to shape and strengthen regionalism, while maintaining sovereignty in a globalized world. We also highlight the evolving identities of the region, in particular the relationships between Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific countries that collectively make up Oceania.

This paper explores the effect of tourism (national and international) indicators on income inequality in a sample of 21 Asia Pacific economies.

This study uses panel data set from 1995 to 2020 and employs panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) method for the empirical investigation.

The empirical findings from the panel ARDL models suggest that all of the considered tourism indicators have significant negative impacts on income inequalities. The results remain consistent with alternative indicators and methods.

The findings of this study will be critical for the policymakers to take effective measures to reduce the income inequality. Such measures could include promoting tourism in general, focusing on attracting international tourists or domestic tourists, and putting more weight on developing leisure or business tourism, which will boost the overall economic performance and alleviates inequalities in the society.

This is the first study to consider various forms of tourism indicators to see their impact on income inequality in the Asia–Pacific region, and offers important implications for the policy actions.

Countries worldwide aim to improve their comparative advantages by efficiently using scarce resources for economic growth and development. While many studies have been conducted to measure intellectual capital at the firm's level, measuring it at the national level has been under-examined. In addition, while the important role of national intellectual capital in economic growth has been theoretically recognized in literature, this important link has largely been ignored in empirical analyses.

This study uses the newly developed index of national intellectual capital from Vo and Tran's (2022) study to examine its effects on national economic growth in the long run. The dynamic common correlated effects technique and the pooled mean group estimation are used on the sample of 23 economies in the Asia–Pacific region from 2000 to 2020.

Findings from this study confirm the positive and significant contribution of the national intellectual capital to economic growth in the region. The authors also find that, as a feedback effect, economic growth will also enhance and improve the accumulation of national intellectual capital.

The findings of this paper provide valuable evidence and implications for policymakers in managing and improving national intellectual capital in the Asia–Pacific region.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study to examine the impact of national intellectual capital on economic growth in the long run in the Asia–Pacific economies.

The purpose of this study is to ascertain how foreign and domestic Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) investing in Indian equities affect their return volatility and pricing efficiency. Further, we investigate how the difference in market timings affect the impact of ETFs on their constituents. Lastly, we examine how these effects vary during tranquil and turmoil periods in the ETF markets.

The study is based on quarterly data for stocks comprising the CNX Nifty 50 Index from 2009Q1 to 2019Q3. The data on holdings of 45 domestic and 196 foreign ETFs in the sample stocks were obtained from Thomson Reuters' Eikon. The paper employs a panel-regression methodology with stock and time fixed effects and robust standard errors.

Foreign ETFs from North America and the Asia Pacific largely have an adverse impact on stocks' return volatility. In times of turmoil, stocks with higher coverage of European, North American and Domestic funds are susceptible to volatility shocks emanating from these regions. European and Asia Pacific ETFs are associated with improved price discovery while North American funds impound a mean-reverting component in stock prices. However, in turbulent markets, both positive and negative impacts of ETFs on pricing efficiency coexist.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that examines the impact of domestic as well as foreign ETFs on the equities of an emerging market. Furthermore, the study is unique as we investigate how the effects of ETFs vary in turbulent and tranquil markets. Moreover, the paper examines the role of asynchronous market timings in determining the ETF impact. The paper adds to the growing literature on the unintended consequences of index-linked products.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate student visual literacy skills using the newly designed visual literacy framework and visual literacy (VL) scale.

It includes a newly designed framework, a self-reporting questionnaire and a scale to evaluate an individual's VL skills and overall competency. The self-reporting questionnaire consists of 13 items with a five-point Likert scale.

The newly developed VL skill scale assessed the Fiji students’ competency (i.e. identify, understand, evaluate and communicate using visuals). The mean for the 13 items on VL skills showed average results, but 46.33% recorded high visual literacy competencies. The multiple linear regression analysis outcomes showed all 13 skills demonstrated significant contributions to becoming visually literate.

The limitation of this study is that the questionnaire is self-reporting, so the evaluation can be highly rated. The implications are that relevant stakeholders will be able to devise strategies and content to improve visual literacy in Fiji.

Images are playing an important role today, especially after COVID-19, which forced the education system to go online. Online learning involves a lot of visuals, and as such, visual literacy is important to students so that they can successfully learn online. This paper brings out the important aspects of visual literacy, which needs to be understood by the students.

In society, everything involves visuals. This paper introduces a visual literacy scale and a visual literacy tool to measure the visual competencies of individuals. If people understand the components of visual literacy, then visual competencies of the people will also improve.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first one on evaluating visual literacy competencies in Fiji and also in the South Pacific. The visual literacy tool is also new to the world.

Discussions about progressive gender reform across Melanesia highlight the need for more gender-inclusive policies and improved conditions for women and girls throughout all sectors. However, for many of these countries, attempts to address the problems are marred by insufficient resources and low prioritization of the issue and traditional, cultural and religious perspectives about gender and gendered roles. This article discusses how police responses are coordinated to address domestic and family violence (DFV) and provides a critical reflection on both internal responses and the complexities of multi-partner operations beyond urban spaces.

This article draws on the findings from a stakeholder engagement focus group with 20 participants from four Melanesian countries – Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu – to provide insight into policing innovations in rural contexts.

There is a need for improved multisector partnerships, increased police presence and greater reliance on indigenous strategies to improve responses to DFV in resource-constrained contexts.

The article provides insight into an under-researched area and makes recommendations for improving responses to DFV in rural areas in small-island developing states.

Serious concerns about the stability of the international financial systems have arisen recently, resulting from the mounting inflation rates and the accompanying procedures to control them. Consequently, this study aims at examining empirically the impact of inflationary pressures/shocks on the stability of banking sectors.

The study adopts a dynamic GMM models and exploits a sample of 188 banks operating in 14 MENA economies, over the period 1999–2021.

This research finds that high inflation does indeed harm bank financial stability and deteriorates banks credit risk. Furthermore, the examination of the impact of interaction terms between inflation and bank-specific and institutional quality variables shows that better capitalisation levels, higher liquidity buffers, larger asset size, greater market power, foreign ownership and overall political stability, all can counterbalance the impact of inflationary pressures on MENA banks financial stability.

In addition to empirically revealing how inflationary shocks can deteriorate financial stability, the main novelty of this research is examining how the interactions between inflation on one hand, and bank-specific and institutional quality on the other, affect bank stability.

The purpose of this study is to assess the significance of employee work flexibility and the policy of the organization for survival during any crisis. This study also investigates the moderating role of leadership support (LS) during such turbulent conditions.

This study has used literature from the fields of organization performance, human resources and organization policy (OP), along with the theories of resource-based view (RBV) and dynamic capability view (DCV) to develop a conceptual model. Later, the conceptual model is validated using the structural equation modeling technique. The study used a survey method with a sample of 311 participants. These participants are employed as human resource managers (HRM) and other supportive workforce at different levels in the organizations.

The study shows that innovativeness and employee flexibility (EFL) are critical toward organizations’ survival during any crisis. Also, the study highlights the importance of OP and LS for the survival of organizations during and after any turbulent condition.

This study provides valuable inputs to the leadership teams of organizations, especially HRM. This research also provides food for thought for policymakers and researchers in the field of organizational performance. This study also contributes to the overall body of literature on organization analysis and extends the literature on RBV and DCV.

The study adds value to the overall body of literature on organization performance and capabilities along with human resource management. Few studies have nurtured issues on EFL during turbulent conditions. Also, there are limited studies in the areas of OP such as favorable and unfavorable policies toward employees. Thus, this study can be considered unique. Moreover, the study investigates the moderating role of LS which adds value toward the body of literature on organizational leadership capability.

Health risks associated with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have severely affected the financial stability of airline companies globally. Recapturing financial stability following this crisis depends heavily on these companies’ ability to attain efficient and productive operations. This study uses several empirical approaches to examine key factors contributing to carriers sustaining high productivity prior to, during and after a major recession. Findings suggest, regardless of economic conditions, that social distancing which requires airline companies in the Asia Pacific region to fly with a significant percentage of unfilled seats weakens the performance of those companies. Furthermore, efficient operations do not guarantee the avoidance of productivity declines, especially during a recession.

Whilst professional learning communities (PLCs) have been widely explored at the school level, they have received less attention at the departmental level. The study takes the variance between departments and the role of departmental teacher leaders into consideration, and the relationships amongst departmental-level PLC dimensions, two types of teacher leadership (TL) and individual teacher self-efficacy are investigated.

The sample consisted of 907 teachers from 81 departments in Chinese schools. The associations between the studied variables were explored through a multi-level analysis approach.

The results show that two specific characteristics of departmental PLCs, namely reflective dialogue (RD) and collective responsibility (CR), exhibit a positive correlation with individual teacher self-efficacy. Additionally, the findings indicate that teacher transformational leadership significantly predicts teacher self-efficacy, whereas teacher instructional leadership (IL) does not emerge as a significant predictor. These findings may be attributed to the contextual factors of Chinese teachers' collective work and the practice of teacher leaders.

This research contributes to the existing literature by addressing the variance between departments and uncovering the impacts of departmental PLC dimensions on individual teachers. Furthermore, two TL styles at the departmental level are differentiated, and their distinct influences on teacher self-efficacy are further analysed.