Exploring Non-Financial Information Research

The disclosure of non-financial information by companies in their annual reports is becoming increasingly important due to its interest for stakeholders' decision-making. This chapter aims to map research articles that have addressed the study of non-financial information in the last 20 years and have been published in journals indexed in the Web of Science (JCR) and Scopus (SJR) databases. The analyses carried out are described from a triple perspective: meta-perspective, content-based perspective, and methodological perspective. The main results obtained show the growing interest in research on non-financial information in terms of both quantity and quality of the publications. This study may be of interest to researchers, regulatory bodies, and other economic and social agents.

Surfing the Creative Wave

Creative tourism experiences constitute clear examples of the experience economy principles. They address new tourists' necessities. They can activate tangible and intangible resources, contribute to the development of local skills while offering the chance to engage with the overall social agents of the tourism system addressing key tourism challenges of the 21st century. Over the past few years, surf tourism has aroused the interest of many people, and surf tourists are increasingly more experienced, demanding and seeking a wide range of engaging experiences. To connect surf tourism to creative tourism, the authors developed a model focused on a creative surf experience. The chapter presents several contributions to the development of creative experiences of surf tourism where surf destinations can focus on and develop a greater audience that searches for such experiences.

Práticas docentes e a inclusão do aluno com paralisia cerebral no contexto escolar

A pesquisa teve como objetivo estudar algumas estratégias específicas de aprendizagem do aluno com paralisia cerebral, com destaque no papel da escola, professor e relação família escola. Foi desenvolvida através de pesquisa bibliográfica mediante leituras, análise e fichamento de livros, periódicos, banco de dados relacionados ao assunto em questão. Verificou-se que os agentes sociais são de suma importância na vida do educando tanto na formação intelectual quanto social. Ressalta-se que, na educação do aluno com PC, não se pode perder de vista a necessidade de garantir o desenvolvimento máximo de suas capacidades, para que ele possa alcançar boa relação com seus pares, bem como o máximo aproveitamento de seu tempo de lazer, de estudo, de forma adaptada e feliz. A criança com PC, como todas as crianças, tem o direito de ter independência, integração e vida social. Sabendo das dificuldades existentes em torno da aprendizagem da pessoa com PC, é importante que o professor esteja apto a buscar a ajuda adequada, zelando pelas particularidades de cada aluno. This research aimed to study some specific learning strategies for students with cerebral palsy, with emphasis on the role of the school, the teacher, and the family-school relationship. It was developed through bibliographic research by reading, analyzing, and annotating books, periodicals, and databases related to the subject in question. It was verified that the social agents are of utmost importance in the life of the student both in the intellectual and social formation. It is noteworthy that, in the education of students with CP, one cannot lose sight of the need to ensure the maximum development of their capabilities, so that they can achieve a good relationship with their peers, as well as the maximum use of their leisure time and study time, in an adapted and happy way. The child with CP, like all children, has the right to independence, integration, and a social life. Knowing the difficulties surrounding the learning of a person with CP, it is important that the teacher be able to seek appropriate help, taking care of each student's particularities.

A Methodology for the Historiography of Ancient Religion

Starting from a discussion about the usefulness of a historical approach to ancient religion, I propose basing the historiography of ancient religion on a set of three concepts, replacing three others that have been widely used. First, I contend that we need to shift our focus from questions of identity to questions of agency, not least in the face of earlier traditions of historiography of regions outside the imperial capitals. The application of an agentic perspective entails a further unavoidable consequence. The concept of “religions” must be replaced by that of “lived religion”, even for the past, once again shifting the focus to the local and the entire range of social agents and their cultural production. This agentic and material focus is further supplemented by a spatial one. Thus, I propose moving away from the widespread focus on civic religion in cities to embrace the perspective of urban religion. Lastly, I briefly touch upon the problem of the selection of forms of contemporary historiography of religion.

Decolonising Literacy Practices for an Inclusive and Sustainable Model of Literacy Education

Despite efforts on the part of institutions, professionals and social agents, the Roma population in Europe still lacks equal access to education. Difficulties in literacy development are at the root of this: Roma learners present lower literacy rates than non-Roma learners and learners in non-segregated schools, preventing them from transitioning to secondary education. This article presents the results of ethnographic research with a group of Roma primary learners in Southern Spain. The aim was to analyse the contexts, interactional spaces, contents and practices of learners’ engagement with literacy in and outside the classroom. Data analysis was carried out using an adaptation of the continua model of biliteracy, useful for analysing literacy practices in contexts with different literacy cultures. Results show that communicative practices that challenged skills-based literacy models helped activate learners’ literacy reservoirs, enhancing their literacy engagement and allowing them to renegotiate their position as Roma learners in a non-Roma institution and as text creators in the classroom. Conclusions point to the need to decolonise classroom practice by identifying learners’ literacy reservoirs and ways to activate these, contributing to a more inclusive and sustainable model of literacy education consistent with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal for quality education.

Management as a necessary tool for the prevention of violence against women

The chair "Women, family and Guantanamo society" in the Guantánamo province as part of its functions intends the following investigation that addresses the theme of the prevention of violence against women from its management. This has the purpose of contributing to the educational preparation of agencies and social agents as an effective response to the demands of today's Cuban society. The study assumes the methodological-materialist and historical dialectical conception with the use of general research methods, with references, aspects of historical and theoretical-methodological evolution in the sociological, psychological, pedagogical and legal areas. The diagnostic results of the study made it possible to design as a methodological proposal a management strategy for the prevention of violence against women, which is strengthened from the integration of agencies and social agents, which places the University as the most important educational agency of the community.

Theories of Conversation for Conversational IR

Conversational information retrieval is a relatively new and fast-developing research area, but conversation itself has been well studied for decades. Researchers have analysed linguistic phenomena such as structure and semantics but also paralinguistic features such as tone, body language, and even the physiological states of interlocutors. We tend to treat computers as social agents—especially if they have some humanlike features in their design—and so work from human-to-human conversation is highly relevant to how we think about the design of human-to-computer applications. In this article, we summarise some salient past work, focusing on social norms; structures; and affect, prosody, and style. We examine social communication theories briefly as a review to see what we have learned about how humans interact with each other and how that might pertain to agents and robots. We also discuss some implications for research and design of conversational IR systems.

Influence of Gender Stereotypes, Type of Sport Watched and Close Environment on Adolescent Sport Practice According to Gender

The practice of sport by adolescents is influenced by multiple factors, which could create differences in sports participation according to gender. The objectives of this study were to determine which types of sports were most practiced by adolescent males and females; and to analyze the relationship of gender stereotypes, the type of sport observed and the personal environment, to the type of sport practiced, depending on the adolescent’s gender. To this end, a total of 632 adolescents completed the questionnaire “Lifestyle in Sport with a Gender Perspective”. The results showed significant differences according to gender in the type of sport practiced (p < 0.05), in the membership to sports clubs (p < 0.001), and in the participation in competitions (p < 0.001). It was found that family (p < 0.005) and friends (p < 0.05) were the social agents that most influenced the choice of the type of sport practiced, and that the type of sport watched live (p < 0.005), and in the media (p < 0.001), was related to gender and the type of sport practiced. In contrast, the gender stereotypes of the adolescents themselves were not related to the practice of sports. In conclusion, the environment closest to the adolescents was related to the type of sport practiced by those adolescents.

Motivational Context and Perfectionism Traits in Pediatric Sports

In sports, one of the social agents who can pressure an athlete for perfection in their performance is their coach. However, perfectionism has many potential negative consequences such as excessive concerns over even minor mistakes. The purpose of this study is to test a sequential model: the motivational context (i.e., task- and ego-involving climates generated by the coach and a coach’s support for autonomy) and the facets that determine the level of perfectionism exhibited as a trait (i.e., perceived coach pressure—a facet of socially prescribed perfectionism—and concerns over mistakes—a facet of self-oriented perfectionism). The sample included 317 athletes (133 boys and 184 girls) aged between 10 and 14 years, who answered a battery of questionnaires that evaluated an athlete’s perception of their motivational climate, their perception of support for autonomy, their perceived coach pressure and their concerns over mistakes. Using the structural equations model, the results showed that the task-involving climate was negatively correlated with perceived coach pressure, whereas the ego-involving climate and support for autonomy were positively correlated with perceived coach pressure and were positively correlated with concerns over mistakes. Finally, perceived coach pressure did not influence concerns over mistakes from the motivational context. This study highlights the importance of considering motivational contexts as important motivational elements of perfectionism in youth sports.

Towards Social Identity in Socio-Cognitive Agents

Current architectures for social agents are designed around some specific units of social behavior that address particular challenges, such as modeling beliefs and motivations, establishing social relationships, or understanding group memberships. Although their performance might be adequate for controlled environments, deploying these agents in the wild is difficult. Moreover, the increasing demand for autonomous agents capable of living alongside humans calls for the design of more robust social agents that can cope with diverse social situations. We believe that to design such agents, their sociality and cognition should be conceived as one. This includes creating mechanisms for constructing social reality as an interpretation of the physical world with social meanings and selective deployment of cognitive resources adequate to the situation. We identify several design principles that should be considered while designing agent architectures for socio-cognitive systems. Taking these remarks into account, we propose a socio-cognitive agent model based on the concept of cognitive social frames that allow the adaptation of an agent’s cognition based on its interpretation of its surroundings, its social context. Our approach supports an agent’s reasoning about other social actors and its relationship with them. Cognitive social frames can be built around social groups, and form the basis for social group dynamics mechanisms and construct of social identity.