Nudging and Other Behaviourally Based Policies as Enablers for Environmental Sustainability

Recent years have shown that traditional regulatory techniques alone are not effective in achieving behavior change in important fields such as environmental sustainability. Governments all over the world have been progressively including behaviourally informed considerations in policy and law-making with the aim of improving the acceptance and impact of sustainability-oriented measures. This led to the arrival of alternative regulatory tools, such as nudges. The effectiveness of nudges for environmental sustainability (green nudges) has been largely reported but the practical and ethical implications are still largely neglected by academic research. In this contribution, “nudges” are conceptually distinguished from “boosts” and their ethical briefly explained. The analysis is made at the light of the current mostly European and US American academic literature.

Africa’s Contributions to the Economy of Europe’s Two “World” Wars: De-centering the Dominant Narrative

Histories and stories of Europe’s two “World” Wars are generally centered on narratives that privilege metropolitan empire perspectives over the perspectives of their satellite countries and their societies. As Spivak correctly observes, European and American academic writing is produced to support the economic interests of these countries. Similarly, knowledge or information is never innocent as it expresses the interests of its producers. It has invariably been in the interest of Eurocentric academic chroniclers of the Europe’s “World” Wars to write Africa’s contributions out of the dominant narratives of those wars. Just like European military regiments containing African soldiers and soldiers of African descent, who fought in Europe’s second “World” War and enabled Allied Powers’ victory over Nazi Germany and its Axis Powers allies, were “bleached” off every post-victory battle photographs of the War, the dominant narratives of the two “World” Wars are “bleached” to rid them of Africa’s economic contributions to the successful prosecution of both wars. This article represents an intervention to de -center such dominant albeit erroneous narratives on both wars. It brings focus on Africa’s economic contributions to the war efforts with the underscoring argument that but for Africa’s economic contributions, Africa’s European colonizers could not have achieved victory over Germany in both wars. The article advocates a de-centering agenda, which stems from postcolonial studies and theoretical framework as a useful tool for such corrective scholarship endeavor. The conclusive argument is that Africa’s economic contribution to the successful prosecution of Europe’s “World Wars” is primarily phenomenal rather than epiphenomenal.

Library Pedagogies: Personal reflections from library practitioners

This is a book where European and American academic librarians discuss their journeys of becoming teachers. Many did not pursue librarianship to engage in teaching but found themselves in roles that required instruction, despite a lack of preparation for classroom teaching within their MLIS programs. They reflect back on past influences including personal background, key teachers and other figures that served as models, institutions and ways of learning that made an impact, and scholarship in the field of education and librarianship, all of which has formed deep rooted values which ground the basis of pedagogical pathways. The reflections are personal and individual. While themes and practices will begin to connect across the chapters, readers are encouraged to read each of the chapters but in no particular order. Find the titles or author profiles that resonate first and browse the book from there.

(Re)discovering Pedagogy of the Oppressed

This article chronicles a crisis of alignment regarding Critical Pedagogy due to the top-down power structures of White authority that is pervasive in the theory’s North American academic environment. Contesting the often touted “radical” or “revolutionary” nature of Critical Pedagogy in higher education spaces, the author questions his relationship with Paulo Freire’s work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, ultimately abandoning the content of writing over the way the theory/philosophy is lived in academia. Through the lived experience of engaging with community in the James Bay Cree territories and Malawi, the question is asked as to who owns Freire’s rebellious call to action.

Passion matters but not equally everywhere: Predicting achievement from interest, enjoyment, and efficacy in 59 societies

How to identify the students and employees most likely to achieve is a challenge in every field. American academic and lay theories alike highlight the importance of passion for strong achievement. Based on a Western independent model of motivation, passionate individuals—those who have a strong interest, demonstrate deep enjoyment, and express confidence in what they are doing—are considered future achievers. Those with less passion are thought to have less potential and are often passed over for admission or employment. As academic institutions and corporations in the increasingly multicultural world seek to acquire talent from across the globe, can they assume that passion is an equally strong predictor of achievement across cultural contexts? We address this question with three representative samples totaling 1.2 million students in 59 societies and provide empirical evidence of a systematic, cross-cultural variation in the importance of passion in predicting achievement. In individualistic societies where independent models of motivation are prevalent, relative to collectivistic societies where interdependent models of motivation are more common, passion predicts a larger gain (0.32 vs. 0.21 SD) and explains more variance in achievement (37% vs. 16%). In contrast, in collectivistic societies, parental support predicts achievement over and above passion. These findings suggest that in addition to passion, achievement may be fueled by striving to realize connectedness and meet family expectations. Findings highlight the risk of overweighting passion in admission and employment decisions and the need to understand and develop measures for the multiple sources and forms of motivation that support achievement.