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The purpose of this paper is to explore teacher candidates’ response to young adult literature (prose and comics) featuring fat identified protagonists. The paper considers the textual and embodied resources readers use and reject when imagining and interpreting a character’s body. This paper explores how readers’ meaning making was influenced when reading prose versus comics. This paper adds to a corpus of scholarship about the relationships between young adult literature, comics, bodies and reader response theory.

At the time of the study, participants were enrolled in a teacher education program at a Midwestern University, meeting monthly for a voluntary book club dedicated to reading and discussing young adult literature. To examine readers’ responses to comics and prose featuring fat-identified protagonists, the author used descriptive qualitative methodologies to conduct a thematic analysis of meeting transcripts, written participant reflections and researcher memos. Analysis was grounded in theories of reader response, critical fat studies and multimodality.

Analyses indicated many readers reject textual clues indicating a character’s body size and weight were different from their own. Readers read their bodies into the stories, regarding them as self-help narratives instead of radical counternarratives. Some readers were not able to read against their assumptions of thinness (and whiteness) until prompted by the researcher and other participants.

Although many reader response scholars have demonstrated readers’ tendencies toward personal identification in the face of racial and class differences, there is less research regarding classroom practices around the entanglement of physical bodies, body image and texts. Analyzing reader’s responses to the constructions of fat bodies in prose versus comics may help English Language Arts (ELA) educators and students identify and deconstruct ideologies of thin-thinking and fatphobia. This study, which demonstrates thin readers’ tendencies to overidentify with protagonists, suggests ELA classrooms might encourage readers to engage in critical literacies that support them in reading both with and against their identities.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse data literacy in the new Digital Competence Framework for Citizens (DigComp 2.2). Mid-2022 the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission published a new version of the DigComp (EC, 2022). This new version focusses more on the datafication of society and emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence. This paper analyses how DigComp 2.2 defines data literacy and how the framework looks at this from a societal lens.

This study critically examines DigComp 2.2, using the data literacy competence model developed by the Knowledge Centre for Digital and Media Literacy Flanders-Belgium. The examples of knowledge, skills and attitudes focussing on data literacy (n = 84) are coded and mapped onto the data literacy competence model, which differentiates between using data and understanding data.

Data literacy is well-covered in the framework, but there is a stronger emphasis on understanding data rather than using data, for example, collecting data is only coded once. Thematically, DigComp 2.2 primarily focusses on security and privacy (31 codes), with less attention given to the societal impact of data, such as environmental impact or data fairness.

Given the datafication of society, data literacy has become increasingly important. DigComp is widely used across different disciplines and now integrates data literacy as a required competence for citizens. It is, thus, relevant to analyse its views on data literacy and emerging technologies, as it will have a strong impact on education in Europe.

In France, telemedicine was integrated into the Code of Public Health in 2009, but adoption and use were slow until the beginning of the COVID-19 health crisis, when telemedicine arguably became the only way to ensure continuity of care for non-COVID patients, reduce viral transmission and streamline strained medical resources. Despite growing enthusiasm, criticism persists.

User satisfaction will be essential for the sustainability and development of telemedicine, yet this remains an under-researched area. Framed by the first lockdown in France (March–May 2020), this two-step mixed-methods study uses secondary quantitative data (n users = 2,511; n doctors = 254; n nurses = 248) and primary qualitative interviews (n = 5) among healthcare professionals and patients in France to analyse satisfaction levels among telemedicine users. Implementing an inductive approach, it identifies key themes in the adoption and use of telemedicine, the impact on user satisfaction and evolution in perceptions over time.

The findings contribute to the literature by identifying and explaining the shift in telemedicine practices and offering recommendations for addressing ongoing obstacles through pragmatic strategies.

This research addresses a gap in knowledge to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the uptake, perception and satisfaction of telemedicine experienced by users. Recognising telemedicine as a complex innovation in conceptual and practical terms, this paper investigates the degree of acceptance among users and the process of assimilation in the system.

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the extent to which female and male university students from low-income countries express different entrepreneurial intentions. Specifically, the study empirically tests whether the anticipated financial returns to entrepreneurship versus salaried employment, or the perceived barriers to entrepreneurship exert a stronger influence on the relationship between gender and entrepreneurial intentions.

To test the relationship of anticipated rewards versus barriers to entrepreneurship on gender and entrepreneurial intention, the study uses new data from a field survey in Sierra Leone and employs multiple mediation analyses.

The authors find that the relationship between gender and entrepreneurial intentions operates through the mediator of perceptions of the financial returns to entrepreneurship but not perceived barriers to entrepreneurship.

The authors study intent, not behavior, acknowledging that cognitive intent is a powerful predictor of later behavior. Implications for future research on entrepreneurship in the African context are discussed.

The results from this study can be applied to both pedagogic and business settings in the field of entrepreneurship, with concrete implications for policymakers.

Results suggest that the gender gap in entrepreneurial intentions (EI) for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)- and business-educated students in Sierra Leone is predominantly influenced by anticipated financial returns to occupational choices, as opposed to perceived barriers to entrepreneurship, a more frequently studied antecedent to EI.

The first two decades of the 21st century saw the rise of girl power discourses in international development, which argue that when girls in the Global South are given an investment to stay in school, they will lift entire communities out of poverty. Transnational Corporations partnered with, or even founded, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) aimed at educating girls. Yet many of these corporations face criticisms that their products, employment practices, or supply chains are harmful to girls and women. In this chapter, I employ a feminist, postcolonial and poststructuralist approach, analyzing the transnational politics of corporate–NGO partnerships for girls' education. I argue that Apple Inc.’s sponsorship of the Malala Fund and Caterpillar Inc.’s partnership with Girl Up amount to transnational forms of genderwashing, aimed primarily at alleviating the concerns of publics in the Global North while doing little to address harm experienced by girls and women in the Global South.

We introduce the notion of rainbow burning and develop the concept of rainbow washing, which draws on the concept of genderwashing, to explicate the instrumentalization of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans Plus (LGBT+) inclusion. Rainbow burning happens when LGBT+ rights and visibility are targeted through hate to divert attention from economic, social, and political decline. For example, LGBT+ rights are unjustly blamed for the decline of the social and economic fabric. Rainbow washing happens when an organization uses or instrumentalizes LGBT+ concerns for commercial and social ends. We draw on examples from unsupportive and supportive capitalist market systems and explore how rainbow burning and washing manifest in each. This chapter explores the antecedents, correlates and consequences of rainbow burning and washing in unsupportive and supportive contexts. We identify regulatory, cultural and governance measures that can be taken against rainbow burning and rainbow washing to foster LGBT+ inclusion.

This study aims to investigate the integration of blockchain technology into the food supply chain within the restaurant industry. It focuses on how blockchain can be applied to enhance transparency and trust in tracking food sources, ultimately impacting customer satisfaction.

A service design workshop (Study 1) and three between-subjects experiments (Studies 2–4) were conducted.

Results indicate that blockchain adoption significantly improves traceability and trust in the food supply chain. This improvement in turn enhances customer satisfaction through perceived improvements in food safety, quality and naturalness. This study also notes that the effects of blockchain technology vary depending on the type of restaurant (casual or fine dining) and its location (tourist destinations or residential areas).

The findings offer practical insights for restaurant owners, technology developers and policymakers. Emphasizing the benefits of blockchain adoption, this study guides decision-making regarding technology investments for enhancing customer service and satisfaction in the hospitality sector.

This research contributes novel insights to the field of technology innovation in the hospitality industry. It extends the understanding of signaling theory by exploring how blockchain technology can serve as a tool for signal transmission in restaurant food supply chains.

This chapter focuses on the concept of genderwashing in the context of higher education (HE) in the United States. Using intersectionality as a framework, the authors critically examine gender-based affinity groups, which are used in HE as a common strategy to support diversity and equity efforts. The authors discuss how such efforts often fall short in facilitating meaningful organizational or systemic change and provide questions and considerations for addressing genderwashing that are informed by an intersectional lens.

In this chapter, we examine the role that business school accreditation agencies play in influencing attitudes to gender, exploring the documentation of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB); Association of MBAs (AMBA) and European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) Quality Improvement System (EQUIS) to develop an understanding of their stake in promoting greater gender equality or inadvertently encouraging gender washing. These agencies are powerful stakeholders who, arguably, set the recognized global standards. We focus on the organizational rhetoric espoused by them and have found that they are using practices we have defined as genderspinning: presenting a favorable impression to stakeholders; and moving in endless circles.