Blessed be the educated journalist: Reflections on a religious literacy gap in the field of journalism

Religion has ‘returned’ to news discourses, since 9/11, with a focus on Muslims and Islam and more recently on Catholicism (in the wake of paedophile priest scandals) and anti-Semitism (with the rise of the far-right movements). These news discourses, however, tend to adopt limited perspectives, and do not reflect the diversity of practices and viewpoints within these religious traditions. As Australia becomes increasingly ‘superdiverse’, there is a greater need for the inclusivity of cultural perspectives of these religions. Current research findings show that religious literacy among media practitioners in Australia is not only limited to specific notions about a small number of religions, it is exacerbated by an Anglo-Celtic dominance in the media workforce. This article suggests that for news media to provide a more culturally and religiously inclusive public service to promote societal understanding, current and emerging journalists require a more reflexive understanding of religions, through journalism studies and humanities more broadly, and how they have historically shaped the world, and continue to do so.

Alfabetização Midiática Informacional na cidade de São Paulo: Um novo olhar sobre cultura indígena e esporte paralímpico

The city of São Paulo is known for being one of the largest metropolitan cities in the world. With an estimated population of 12.18 million people, it has great potential in the areas of entertainment and business generation, which fascinate and attract people from the four corners of the world. Therefore, the objective of this article is the analysis through an explanatory and exploratory study and analysis of cases, as the media and information literacy (MIL according to acronyms in English) is present in the lives of the residents of the city of São Paulo in the areas of culture, and sports, verifying, as they are being conducted by public agencies such as the city hall, informational actions related to projects that obtain in their scope principles consistent with the Global Alliance for Partinerships on Media and Information Literacy (GAP MIL UNESCO).

‘WASTAGE’ IS A CHALLENGE OF TRIBAL EDUCATION -A REVIEW BASED STUDY

India is a motherland of large number diverse communities. Tribes are called as ‘Adivasi’ or socially backward class people mainly lives in forest, hills, and rural remote area. There are more than 8.6 % of total population (Wikipedia) are tribes with around 645 tribes communities in India. In the question of tribal education a huge number of students are out of school, the literacy rate is below of national average literacy and significant literacy gap is found among the tribal male and female. So, in this juncture the objectives of this review based study are a comprehensive understanding regarding the Tribal dropout based on the existing literature reporting govt. initiatives and reasons of dropout in India. The study identified many reasons behind the dropout and explored equity and equality related issues faces challenges and a huge number of tribal children are out of school and deprived from accessing quality education

Analyzing asthma education and clinical practices to optimize parental health literacy: Gap analysis

Pediatric patients in northern BC have some of the highest asthma prevalence rates compared to children in other areas of the province. Adequate parental health literacy skills are particularly important to make informed health management choices when caring for children with asthma. In this project, a gap analysis process was followed, and three evidence-informed practice gaps related to pediatric asthma care were identified. Findings highlight the need for increased asthma education and parental health literacy resources to address concerns mentioned during stakeholder engagement. Four key recommendations were formulated regarding parental health literacy assessments, clear language requirements for written asthma materials, access to specialized care resources, and adaptation of current asthma education models. In conclusion, the development of a working group that includes asthma and health literacy stakeholders, is the next step to address the findings of this project and improve the overall asthma health outcomes for children in northern BC.

Quality and equality: Verifying “My reading experience” questionnaire for a sustainable literacy education framework

This paper reports one aspect of a larger project that set out to narrow the literacy gap among Malaysia’s rural and urban children in terms of their literacy achievement. Using Perak as a case-state, this overall project scrutinises why despite the Education Ministry being the biggest recipient of the recent national budget 2020, with an estimated allocation of RM64.1billion, there are still children especially in rural schools who are unable to master the ability to read and write, even in their own mother tongue language. Through this project’s on-going work which attempts to connect the theories of literacy with actual-on-the-ground issues of children’s reading experience especially in rural schools, important matters were flagged up. This paper will highlight these matters as they are uncovered vis-à-vis the verification of “My reading experience” questionnaire which was one of the main research tools that was used for this project. Mainly, these matters were located along three aspects of literacy i.e. context, definition and language as they relate to how the questionnaire was designed. This has important implications towards how a sustainable literacy education framework can be shaped.

From Measures of Association to Multilevel Models: Sociology Journals and the Quantitative Literacy Gap

While most sociology majors must take a statistics course, the content of this course varies widely across departments. Starting from the assumption that sociology students should be able to engage effectively with the sociological literature, this article examines the statistical techniques used in 2,804 journal articles—from four generalist sociology journals from 1990 to 2019 and 11 additional sociology journals from 2019—in order to assess which techniques have risen or fallen in prevalence. Although stalwarts such as ordinary least squares regression, chi-square tests, and t tests maintain strong presences, the rise of logistic regression, interaction effects, and multilevel models has been dramatic. After assessing the proportion of articles students hypothetically could understand given various levels of statistical training, the article ends with suggestions for how to revamp the statistics course to help our students become more numerate citizens, both in their sociology courses and in the world at large.

Eclectic Traditional Value Hub Model or four-in-one: An Innovative Booster of Community Quadriliteracy among Adults in Rwandan Rural Communities

Various studies on literacy have been conducted worldwide, but there is paucity of studies that explored adult literacy from the perspectives of African traditional values. Many African communities, including Rwanda, still experience a low level of literacy in the 21st century. As a contribution to address this literacy gap, an innovative model coined “Eclectic Traditional Value Hub Model” is being implemented in selected Rwandan rural communities to promote quadriliteracy, community literacy and digital literacy among adults with limited literacy. The newness of this model is twofold: firstly, it draws from a range of African and Rwandan traditional values; secondly, it boosts parallel literacy practices in four languages, namely Kinyarwanda, English, French and Kiswahili, by which it is described as “Four-in-One”. This study reports on one year’s implementation of this model, exploring its level of success in accelerating quadriliteracy and community digital literacy and numeracy among Rwandan communities. Participants include University of Rwanda lecturers who initiated the model, graduates from secondary schools who are literacy trainers in their local communities and trainees who are citizens with limited literacy including motorists, street vendors, small-sized business people and others who strive to uplift their literacy levels. The successful stride of this model is that about ten thousand community members from Eastern province are accelerating their literacy practices through translingual and cross-lingual practices. We recommend the application of this model to other African settings with more African traditional values and assess its impact in minimising the high illiteracy rate reported in various corners of Africa.