Innovation in Civic Education

Educators, advocacy groups, and policymakers are mobilizing to strengthen civic education across the nation. These renewed commitments must be designed and implemented in ways that ensure today's graduates are ready to effectively engage in modern civic life. Since civic education is key to effective participation in our democracy, ensuring a quality civic education is also an equity issue. Students must have foundational knowledge about our nation's values and government, effectively evaluate the validity of claims in digital media, take and defend positions across multiple platforms, and leverage technology to inform and mobilize their community around ideas they care about. This chapter explores proven practices in civic education and technology-enhanced instructional approaches that schools can leverage to modernize their civic education programs.

MENAKAR KEADILAN PAJAK PENGHASILAN DAN INSENTIF BAGI UMKM DI MASA PANDEMI COVID-19

SMEs are one of the elements of the economy affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. This study wants to see the impact of the pandemic on the SME's business cycle, as well as to measure the tax equity in the implementation of income tax along with the incentives provided. This study uses a narrative approach in a qualitative corridor based on the data obtained from interviews. As a result, the impact of the pandemic on SMEs varies greatly depending on the type and strategy of the business. This diversity erodes tax equity in terms of income tax and its incentive specified to SMEs. To overcome the tax equity issue, both professional dan academic sectors need to disseminate accounting for SMEs during the transition.

Equitable Vessel Traffic Scheduling in a Seaport

In the global maritime transportation network, the on-time performance of cargo transportation depends largely on the service capacity and accessibility of seaports. When opportunities for infrastructure expansions are not available, seaport congestion mitigation may require effective scheduling of the vessel traffic in the port waters. Although existing works on vessel traffic scheduling focus on minimizing vessel delays, this paper studies a novel vessel traffic scheduling problem that aims to address the inter-shipping line equity issue. We develop a lexicographic optimization model that accounts for two conflicting performance measures: efficiency, which favors minimizing total vessel delay; and equity, which favors balancing the impacts of delays fairly among shipping lines. Our model allows the port operator to quantify the efficiency-equity tradeoff and make the best vessel traffic scheduling decisions. For solving the model, we develop an effective two-stage solution method in which the first stage solves two single-objective models to obtain the maximum system efficiency and equity, whereas the second stage trades between efficiency and equity and seeks the best compromise between the two conflicting objectives. We apply our model and solution method on instances generated from the operational data of the Port of Shanghai. Our computational results show that an efficiency-oriented model can lead to highly inequitable traffic plans, whereas inter-shipping line equity can be achieved at only mild losses in efficiency, indicating that the consideration of inter-shipping line equity can lead to satisfactory service at both the vessel level and the shipping line level.

Sustainable Growth of Nonfinancial Firms: An Empirical Examination of Emerging Economies

The classic model of sustainable growth presented by Higgins is extensively used in accounting and finance research. This research empirically examines this model which was suggested to be underestimated in the existing literature. The investigation was performed using data from 2000 to 2015 for seven emerging countries. To find out the mean difference in growth between secondary equity issuing firms and non-issuing firms, we used an independent sample t-test. To identify the factors affecting differences in sustainable growth and realized growth, regression analysis was performed and a panel of seven countries for sixteen years data was used to estimate the panel regression. The study found the Higgins’ model to be underestimated. One of the main factors of underestimation of the model was found to be the secondary equity issue. This factor was observed to be significant in the case of five countries i.e. Pakistan, India, Korea, Indonesia and Brazil while the same was found insignificant in Turkey and China. Also during the examination, firm-specific factors that are important for the underestimation of the SGR (Sustainable Growth Rate) model were detected which include leverage and size, whereas dividend policy and profitability gave mixed results. Our study suggests that firms with secondary equity issues are more likely to have sustainable growth than firms not having secondary equity issues.

Collaboration in mathematics: Taking a sociocultural perspective

The importance of learners collaborating to construct deep mathematical understandings has been increasingly recognized in research and practice in recent times. In this paper we draw on a sociocultural perspective to show how a situative strength-based approach can be usefully applied to highlight the different ways in which learners from backgrounds within collectivist traditions participate constructively in mathematical interactions. As a key equity issue, learners from backgrounds in collectivist traditions should have the opportunity to expand their repertoires of practice so that they can flexibly adapt to any learning context. The two cases presented, from two geographic regions, both illustrate the central role the concept of family has for these learners -‘familia’ or ‘whānau’- as a collective concept of individuals working together not as individuals but rather as one unit.

How personalisation programs are exacerbating socio-economic inequities: findings from budget utilisation in the NDIS

Researchers and policymakers are increasingly concerned that personalisation schemes in social and health care might be worsening social and health inequities. This has been found internationally, where better outcomes from such schemes have been found amongst those who have higher education and more household income. This study looks at one of the world’s largest personalisation schemes, the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme. It found that although the individual budgets provided within the scheme (which are a key feature of personalisation schemes internationally) do not present an equity issue, the ability of participants to ‘spend’ or effectively use these funds follows a social gradient. That is, those in low socioeconomic areas appear to be less able to spend their allocated budgets on care services. We argue that this points to the need to provide targeted supports for fund implementation in low socio-economic areas. Without effective supports for fund implementation, the NDIS is positioned to worsen existing social inequalities.