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The purpose of this study was to examine how well a strength-based program grounded in positive psychology principles can advance the practical critical thinking skills of those pursuing the teacher training course.

This study used a single-group pre-test post-test design with 35 teacher-trainees from the Bachelor of Education course. The two-and-a-half-week strength-based program used the values in action survey to identify strengths. Pre- and post-test scores, measured with the Cornell Critical Thinking Test – Level Z, underwent Statistical Package for Social Sciences analysis including paired samples t-test for subcomponent and overall composite analysis.

Analysis of the pre- and post-test scores demonstrated a statistical significance in the critical thinking scores obtained by the teacher-trainees. Post-test scores were consistently significant. Out of the elements of critical thinking, induction, meaning, observation and credibility were more prominent. Deduction and assumption identification were also having a significant effect.

Most critical thinking programs focus on evaluating specific teaching methods for improving critical thinking skills. In education, positive psychology studies often center on students’ well-being, attention spans and academic success, aligning with wellness programs. Despite the importance of strengths in positive psychology, there is a lack of research on using a strength-based approach to boost critical thinking skills. This study aims to enhance teacher-trainees’ critical thinking by leveraging their individual strengths, moving away from traditional instructional strategies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the construction industry, yet still, it is unclear from existing studies about the critical challenges imposed on quality assurance (QA), particularly Cross-border Construction Logistics and Supply Chain (Cb-CLSC). Thus, this study aims to identify and examine the critical challenges of QA of Cb-CLSC during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The aim is achieved via an embedded mixed-method approach pragmatically involving a desk literature review and engaging 150 experts across the globe using expert surveys, and results confirmed by semi-structured interviews. The approach is based on Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) as its foundation.

The study revealed ten critical challenges of QA, with the top four including “the shortage of raw construction material (C7)”, “design changes (C6)”, “collaboration and communication difficulties (C1)” and “changes in work practices (C10)”. However, examining the interrelationships among the critical challenges using ISM confirmed C7 and C10 as the most critical challenges. The study again revealed that the critical challenges are sensitive and capable of affecting themselves due to the nature of their interrelationship based on MICMAC analysis. Hence, being consistent with why all the challenges were considered critical amid the pandemic. Sentiment analysis revealed that the critical challenges have not been entirely negative but also positive by creating three areas of opportunities for improvement: technology adoption, worker management, and work process management. However, four areas of challenges in the QA include cost, raw material, time, and work process, including inspection, testing, auditing, communication, etc.

The finding provides a convenient point of reference to researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and decision-makers on formulating policies to enhance the effectiveness of construction QA during the pandemic through to the post-pandemic era.

The study enriches the extant literature on QA, Cb-CLSC, and the COVID-19 pandemic in the construction industry by identifying the critical challenges and examining the interrelationships among them. This provides a better understanding of how the construction QA has been affected by the pandemic and the opportunities created.

This paper aims to center the experiences of three cohorts (n = 40) of Black high school students who participated in a critical race technology course that exposed anti-blackness as the organizing logic and default setting of digital and artificially intelligent technology. This paper centers the voices, experiences and technological innovations of the students, and in doing so, introduces a new type of digital literacy: critical race algorithmic literacy.

Data for this study include student interviews (called “talk backs”), journal reflections and final technology presentations.

Broadly, the data suggests that critical race algorithmic literacies prepare Black students to critically read the algorithmic word (e.g. data, code, machine learning models, etc.) so that they can not only resist and survive, but also rebuild and reimagine the algorithmic world.

While critical race media literacy draws upon critical race theory in education – a theorization of race, and a critique of white supremacy and multiculturalism in schools – critical race algorithmic literacy is rooted in critical race technology theory, which is a theorization of blackness as a technology and a critique of algorithmic anti-blackness as the organizing logic of schools and AI systems.

The paper seeks to introduce the “critical open access literacy” construct as a holistic approach to confront the challenges in open access (OA) as a dimension of scholarly communication.

The paper first introduces the concepts of information literacy (IL) and OA in the context of transformations in the scholarly information environment. Via a theoretical-analytical exercise on the basis of a literature review of the intersections between the two concepts and of the criticisms of OA, the paper discusses the role of critical IL in addressing the challenges in OA and lays the theoretical-conceptual groundwork for the critical OA literacy construct.

The structural nature of the challenges and transformations in the scholarly information environment require new foci and pedagogical practices in library and information studies. A more holistic, critical and integrative approach to OA is warranted, which could effectively be achieved through the re-conceptualization of IL.

The paper specifies the avenues for putting the theoretical conceptualizations of critical OA literacy into practice by identifying possible foci for IL instruction alongside a transformed role for librarians.

The paper extends deliberations on the role of critical IL for scholarly communication and attempts to advance the research fields of the two domains by proposing a new construct situated at the junction of OA and IL.

This paper proposes a way of reflexing on how we think within critical disaster studies. It focuses on the biases and unthought dimensions of two concepts – resilience and development – and reflects on the relationship between theory and practice in critical disaster studies.

Premised on the idea of epistemic reflexivity developed by Pierre Bourdieu, and drawing on previous research, this theoretical article analyses two conceptual biases and shortcomings of disaster studies: how resilience builds on certain agency; and how development assumes certain political imagination.

The article argues that critical disaster scholars must reflect on their own intellectual practice, including the origin of concepts and what they do. This is exemplified by a description of how the idea of resistance is intimately connected to that of resilience, and by showing that we must go beyond the capitalist realism that typically underlies development and risk creation. The theoretical advancement of our field can provide ways of thinking about the premises of many of our concepts.

The paper offers an invitation for disaster researchers to engage with critical thought and meta-theoretical reflexions. To think profoundly about our concepts is a necessary first step to developing critical scholarship. Epistemic reflexivity in critical disaster studies therefore provides an interesting avenue by which to liberate the field from overly technocratic approaches and develop its own criticality.

The literature review explores how multidisciplinary approaches based on critical pedagogy and participatory research can provide frameworks for equitable partnerships and genuine participation in educational design and research practices. Additionally, the essay aims to expand understandings of equitable engagement within educational research and design based on principles from critical pedagogy.

The essay draws from diverse literature in the learning sciences, health informatics, industrial design, disability studies, ethnic studies, rehabilitation science, and to a lesser extent HCI research to understand how critical pedagogy and participatory research methods can provide useful frameworks for disabled peoples' equitable engagement and genuine participation in educational research and design. The literature reviewed in the paper concern topics such as participatory approaches to community development with disabled adults, the implementation of university-initiated community partnerships, participatory research with students and disabled people, and the importance of culturally-responsive research practices. The design literature in this review explores various arenas such as the co-design of assistive technologies with disabled children and adults and the design of curricula for students with and without disabilities. This review focuses on research practices that engender disabled peoples' participation in educational research and design, with focus on developing multidisciplinary frameworks for such research.

The literature review concludes that participatory research methods and critical pedagogy provide useful frameworks for disabled peoples’ participation in educational design and research practices. Critical pedagogy and participatory design allow for the genuine participation of disabled people in the research process.

Emphases on collaboration and collective knowledge-building in social transformation are present in scholarship concerning critical pedagogy, participatory research, and disability studies. However, these connections have been routinely underexplored in the literature. This paper aims to underscore these integral connections as a means to build solidarity between disabled and other marginalized people.

The connections between participatory research methods, critical pedagogy, and disability studies have been previously underexplored. The literature review proposes a combined approach, which has the potential to radically transform multiple realms of research beyond the learning and information sciences.

In this chapter, we present critical race theory (CRT) with a focus on Latino critical theory (LatCrit) and its impact on Latinx educators, Latinx youth, and Latinx communities. We focus on identity inclusion and Latinidad as a way to increase critical consciousness of educators and Latinx youth, language rights, and feminist pedagogies of resistance. LatCrit frameworks are used as transformational resistance and afford a productive platform for developing critical understandings of the educational experiences of Latinx youth. We discuss relationships and community through the alignment of LatCrit and critical pedagogy and the application of critical theory and community-responsive pedagogy in increasing equitable outcomes in educational settings that support Latinx youth and families. We provide recommendations to address the challenges Latinx youth face and how Latinx educators can continue to support youth through a LatCrit framework, and a summary of possible solutions to consider. We close with some reflection and dialogue questions.

This study aims to develop workplace well-being indexes for construction sites of different project types (infrastructure, high-rise and low-rise). Accordingly, the study objectives are to identify the critical factors that affect workplace well-being at construction sites, compare the critical factors between different project types, categorize the critical factors into subgroups and compute indexes for the critical factors and subgroups.

Data from a systematic literature review and semi-structured interviews with construction industry professionals were used to extract 19 potential factors that affect workplace well-being. Then, a structured questionnaire survey was distributed, and 169 valid responses were collected. Finally, the data were analyzed using normalized mean analysis, agreement analysis, factor analysis and fuzzy synthetic evaluation.

The study findings revealed that there are 11, 11, 8 and 12 critical factors across overall infrastructure, high-rise and low-rise construction projects. Out of those, six critical factors are overlapping across project types, including “general safety and health monitoring,” “salary package,” “timeline of salary payment,” “working hours,” “communication between workers” and “planning of the project.” Accordingly, the critical factors can be categorized into two subgroups within each project type. Finally, the development of indexes shows that infrastructure construction projects have the greatest index compared to other project types.

This study contributes to filling the current knowledge gap by developing workplace well-being indexes at construction sites across different project types. The indexes would assist decision-makers in understanding the current state of workplace well-being. This increases the commitment and recognition of well-being across different construction project types.

Literature has recognised entrepreneurship education as the main conduit through which entrepreneurial behaviours, attitudes and actions can be built, enacted and delivered. Since the founding of new ventures is largely a resourceful founder-driven enterprise, entrepreneurship education has largely centred on galvanising and shifting the mindsets and cognition of the entrepreneur. Yet, despite over 60 years of delivering entrepreneurship education programmes, hard evidence of the generation of high-growth-oriented and sustainable ventures has been scarce as student entrepreneurship intentions do not always translate into successful venture creation. This is largely because of the complexities of the practicality of entrepreneurial education particularly, the dissonance between acquired education in business schools and the knowledge and competencies needed in the entrepreneurial field. Such dissonance can be attributed to the lack of clarity on the pedagogical approach that most resonates with entrepreneurial action, the diversity in assessment methods and the scholarly illusion pertaining to how pedagogical approaches can be channelled to the generation of growth-oriented ventures. Drawing on Girox's concepts of transformative critical pedagogy (including pedagogy of repression), Socratic dialogue, Hegelian dialectic and Yrjö Engeström's transformative expansive agency, I demonstrate how a flipped transformative critical pedagogy can be harnessed in digitally enhanced learning environments to create new entrepreneurial possibilities for facilitating critical inquiry, complex problem-solving, innovation for the market and fostering tolerance for failure in ambiguous entrepreneurial contexts.

This chapter argues for the unrealised potential value of methodologies derived from a critical realist research philosophy in the field of entrepreneurship studies. Critical realism offers methodological alternatives that, through the generation of new insights into social relations, social structures and key generative mechanisms, can offer significant value for entrepreneurship researchers. Reflecting on their personal experiences researching from a critical realist perspective in entrepreneurship studies, the authors explore how this research philosophy can extend the field of inquiry and promote new perspectives. The chapter explores this in relation to the specific topic of enterprise policy and demystifies some aspects of critical realism by setting out some of its basic principles to demonstrate their potential to develop new insights. Further, this approach can create significant impact, for example, through the development of effective interventions. The chapter concludes by identifying implications for enterprise policy development, implementation and evaluation.