scholarly journals Teacher Empowerment: A Focused Ethnographic Study in Brunei Darussalam

Author(s):  
Shanthi Thomas

Teacher empowerment, as a process that enables teachers’ intrinsic motivation and brings out their innate potential, is of critical importance in modern times. However, the teacher empowerment construct in existing education literature originated in the west, and its dimensions are aligned to the western cultural scenario. The purpose of this study was to understand the behaviours of school leaders, teacher colleagues, students as well as their parents, and themselves, that teachers perceived as empowerment-facilitating and/or empowerment impeding. This study took place in a secondary school in Brunei Darussalam, a private secondary school. This study was designed as a ‘focused ethnography’, a methodological adaptation of the conventional anthropological ethnography. Fieldwork took place over a span of six months. The study concluded that teacher empowerment is relevant to non-western contexts, only if it is adapted to the contextual cultures. Finally, this study asserted that teacher empowerment is a self-driven phenomenon, and that the contextual culture decided the nature and extent of empowerment that can possibly take place in a particular setting.

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shohei Sato

AbstractThis article re-examines our understanding of modern sport. Today, various physical cultures across the world are practised under the name of sport. Almost all of these sports originated in the West and expanded to the rest of the world. However, the history of judo confounds the diffusionist model. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, a Japanese educationalist amalgamated different martial arts and established judo not as a sport but as ‘a way of life’. Today it is practised globally as an Olympic sport. Focusing on the changes in its rules during this period, this article demonstrates that the globalization of judo was accompanied by a constant evolution of its character. The overall ‘sportification’ of judo took place not as a diffusion but as a convergence – a point that is pertinent to the understanding of the global sportification of physical cultures, and also the standardization of cultures in modern times.


2010 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 142
Author(s):  
Ariawan Gunadi

AbstractIndonesia as one of the major countries in South East Asia acts as aprominent business center between the East and the West. Business activitiessoon attract the attention of other countries in similar geography to share thewealth such as Malaysia, Filipina, Myanmar, Cambodia, Singapore,Vietnam, Thai/and, Laos, Myanmar and Brunei Darussalam. However, theinternational society would have to face the import taxes that impedesf oreign goods from flowing into state member' market. Australia and NewZealand as a fellow business partner then proposes the Australian AseanNew Zealand Free Trade Agreement (AANZFTA) to the Association of SouthEast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that allows members to conduct free tradeamong them in almost every sector, including goods, services, investment,intellectual property and new issues (Singapore Issues). However theagreement is suspected by some parties to condone a subtle form of liberaleconomy that may allow Australia and New Zealand to influence the nationaleconomy of the weaker state, not mentioning endangering ASEAN'bargaining position in the World Trade Organization. This article attemptsto explain the position of Indonesia 's economic sovereignty by signing theAANZFTA which imposes several clauses affecting the economic activity andhow will the agreement bring impact to Indonesia 's national economy offrom a business law perspective.


Author(s):  
Ghassan H. Hilo

The purpose of this study was to a) investigate hardiness behavior and organizational loyalty levels among secondary school teachers in the northern districts of the West Bank in Palestine and b) determine the effect of teachers’ gender and years of experience. The sample consisted of 396 male and female secondary school teachers, which were selected randomly from the target population. The questionnaire used in the study contained 42 items on hardiness behavior domain and 28 items for organizational loyalty domain. The results indicated that there was a moderate level of hardiness behavior among teachers (68.6%). Also, the results revealed that there were statistically significant differences due to gender and years of experience in commitment and participation items in favor of longer teaching experience. There were also statistically significant differences due to gender, and interaction between gender and years of experience, in control items in favor of males with longer teaching experience. There were significant differences due to years of experience, and interaction between gender and years of experience in the overall degree of hardiness behavior, in favor of longer teaching experience. There were significant differences due to gender and years of experience in the overall degree of organizational loyalty domain in favor of females with longer teaching experience. The researcher recommended the reinforcement of hardiness behavior and organizational loyalty levels among Palestinian teachers.


2019 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 418-434
Author(s):  
Carine Plancke

According to Paul Heelas, new spiritualities radicalize the expressivist strand in modernity and, hence, not only affirm modern values but also react against them. In particular, they challenge the ‘bounded self’ as foundational for the modern being and progress. Charles Taylor, in discussing the emergence in modern times of ‘the buffered self’, points to three important changes: disenchantment, the loss of the complementary play between structure and anti-structure, and the replacement of the idea of cosmos with that of a neutral, mechanical universe. This article, through a detailed ethnographic study, explores how these changes are temporally counteracted in spiritual women workshops in North-West Europe focused on the trope of the ‘wild woman’. Moreover, it shows that these retreats bring into being ritual spaces of liminality, which have the potential to engender experiences of re-enchantment and/or give a new sense of interpersonal and cosmic connection.


Childhood ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Riikka Hohti ◽  
Tuure Tammi

This article examines the relations between human children and other than human animals in a multispecies ethnographic study conducted in an unofficial educational zoo established in a greenhouse in a lower secondary school. The specific focus is on the practices in which the students become responsible carers of animals. The analysis employs the theory of care (de la Bellacasa) and a storytelling approach (Haraway) to develop the concept of multispecies childhood and to offer ways to account for the complexities of lives shared across species.


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