Current Disciplinary Practices by Primary School Teachers in Eswatini: Implications for School Counselling

This study explored current disciplinary practices by primary school teachers in Eswatini. A missed method design was employed using 48 primary teachers in the Hhohho region in the Kingdom of Eswatini. Instruments used were questionnaires and interviews. Data was collected and analyzed both quantitative and qualitatively. For analyzing data for questionnaires and observation, descriptive statistics such as frequencies and percentages were used and for analyzing data for interviews, thematic analysis was used. The findings of this study indicated that the participants are using guidance and counselling to discipline student as disciplinary measure. The study established that some disciplinary practises are not effective to curb students’ misbehaviour in schools such as corporal punishment and suspension. Conclusions arrived at indicate that public primary schools have adopted the use of guidance and counselling services. Few disciplinary practices were also found to be detrimental to academic performance. Therefore, this study suggested that guidance and counselling training should be given to all teachers. This therefore necessitates further investigation on the use of disciplinary practises and their impact towards the learner behaviour in all the four regions of Eswatini, since this study focuses in one region.

The Emergence of 5-Year-Olds’ Behavioral Difficulties: Analyzing Risk and Protective Pathways in the United Kingdom and Germany

This study aimed to advance our understanding of 5-year-olds’ behavioral difficulties by modeling and testing both mediational protective and risk pathways simultaneously. Drawing on two national samples from different Western European countries—the United Kingdom (13,053) and Germany (2,022), the proposed model considered observed sensitive parental interactive behaviors and tested child vocabulary as protective pathways connecting parental education with children’s behavioral outcomes; the risk pathways focused on negative parental disciplinary practices linking (low) parental education, parental distress, and children’s difficult temperament to children’s behavioral difficulties. Further, the tested model controlled for families’ income as well as children’s sex and formal child care attendance. Children with comparatively higher educated parents experienced more sensitive interactive behavior, had more advanced vocabulary, and exhibited fewer behavioral difficulties. Children with a comparatively higher level of difficult temperament or with parents who suffered from distress tended to experience more negative disciplinary behavior and exhibited more behavioral difficulties. Additionally, children’s vocabulary skills served as a mechanism mediating the association between parental education and children’s behavioral difficulties. Overall, we found similar patterns of results across the United Kingdom and Germany with both protective and risk pathways contributing simultaneously to children’s behavioral development. The findings suggest that promoting parents’ sensitive interactive behaviors, favorable disciplinary practices, and child’s vocabulary skills have potential for preventing early behavioral difficulties.

Global Asias: Method, Architecture, Praxis

This essay draws on the philosophy, principles, and practices animating Global Asias scholarship to consider how this conceptual rubric shifts the ways in which we approach the subjects, objects, methods, and praxes of the academic study of Asia. Structurally dissonant as an epistemological project, Global Asias encourages scholars to acknowledge the institutional designs and disciplinary practices that currently organize and make legible work on Asia and its diasporas while simultaneously highlighting the limits of, and points of noncontact between, the broader infrastructures (including area studies, ethnic studies, diaspora studies, and the disciplines and interdisciplines) under which such work has traditionally been organized. In addition to offering a conceptual topography of Global Asias, this essay proposes three praxis-oriented concepts—relational nonalignment, structural dissonance, and imaginable ageography—that enable Global Asias as a tactical and evolving approach to the study of Asia and its multiple diasporas, one which actively resists the drive toward “critical consolidation” that often results from academic paradigm work.

The false promise of global IR: exposing the paradox of dependent development

Concerned about the continued dominance of Western International Relations (IR) theories, the global IR community has proposed various measures to address disciplinary hierarchies through encouraging dialogue and pluralism. By investigating the pedagogical preferences of instructors from 45 countries, this paper questions the global IR initiative's emancipatory potential, arguing that disciplinary practices in IR resemble those of dependent development. The study develops a new typology of IR theoretical (IRT) scholarship and examines the readings assigned in 151 IRT syllabi worldwide for evidence of similarity, replication, and assimilation. The findings show that mainstream core IRTs dominate syllabi globally, regardless of region, language of instruction, or instructors' educational/linguistic backgrounds. This domination extends to periphery scholars not using their own local products. Even when they do seek alternative approaches, they prefer to import core alternatives, that is, critical traditions, rather than homegrown IRTs. Finally, the results show that even in syllabi taught in local languages the readings remain dominated by core IRT works. These findings expose a structural defect in the current cry for global IR, by revealing the system's dependent development paradox. The paper concludes with suggestions for creating a symmetric interdependent structure, in the aim of achieving a genuine globalization of IR.

MALTREATMENT IN AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER CHILDREN FROM PARENT’S PERSPECTIVE IN BANGLADESH: A CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY

Children with disabilities are at an increased risk of experiencing child maltreatment (CM). We aimed to estimate the prevalence of different forms of CM among children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in Bangladesh. We interviewed 45 randomly selected mothers of ASD children who attended a tertiary care hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh, to treat their children. Data regarding CM was collected using a standard screening tool recommended by the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN). We asked mothers to report about their child-rearing practices to identify CM, including physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, and neglect, along with their non-violent disciplinary practices. The children's age range was 3 to 9 years, and approximately 82 percent were boys. All children were found to have experiences of physical and psychological abuse throughout their childhood. Seventy-three percent of children experienced neglect during the past year while 82 percent during their entire childhood. The reported prevalence of sexual abuse was 4.4 percent in the past year and 8.9 percent during their childhood. However, all parents followed non-violent disciplinary practices, and the prevalence of maltreatment did not differ between boys and girls. Higher instances of CM in Bangladesh, especially among ASD children, raise concern for its adverse social consequences and calls for appropriate mitigation practices as proclaimed by the United Nations Child Rights Charter.

“The New Man” On-Demand: A Student in Lithuanian Schools of the Late Soviet Years (1964–1988)

This article presents a socio-historical study that combines an analysis of the theoretical model of the “new man” in the late Soviet period (1964–1988) with an empirical study of personal experiences of people who were students at schools in the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (LSSR) during this period. The aim is to analyze how the teaching and learning process were organized during the late Soviet period in LSSR schools, how it was understood by the participants of this study, and what were the possible differences in the experiences of schoolchildren. Also, it is equally important to determine which of the schoolchildren’s experiences in this period could be qualified as “unifying experiences” that formed the mentality of the late Soviet period generation. These experiences are compared with the common Soviet vision of the “new man” education, which was also changing during the late Soviet period. While searching for the answer to how much of the theoretical “new man” model was adopted by this last Soviet generation in LSSR, we use a post-revisionist approach and focus on the narrative of everyday history – what it meant to be schoolchildren in Soviet schools. The research revealed that the formal institutionalization of collective life for schoolchildren through Pioneer or Komsomol organizations was ineffective in creating a collective community feeling between the young generation. During the late Soviet period in LSSR schools there were four main disciplinary practices: formal notices by writing or by word, unsanctioned physical punishments, preventive disciplinary practices, and informal shaming. The last informal disciplinary practice was considered by schoolchildren in todays perspective as the most effective means of discipline at schools. These practices reflected the model of monitoring each other in the adult Soviet society and formed the horizontal control system involving students, their parents, and teachers. The research revealed a preliminary informal social stratification of children in LSSR schools during the late Soviet period. It was not related to the vision of “the new man” education but encouraged an already existing division within the LSSR society. This was a complete departure from the ethical-moral visions of educating “the new man” in schools, which were based on the demolition of the established class division, enabling this “new man” to create a welfare of socialist society by their own hard work and heroic achievements.