Marrying off Early

This article investigates early marriage among the Oromo in Dawo District, Oromia National Regional State, Ethiopia. The research employed a mixed approach to secure relevant data. We collected primary data from the field via key informant interviews and focus group discussion. We selected key informants purposively from concerned government offices and community representatives. We collected quantitative data via questionnaire from 92 randomly selected school girls. Despite the government’s attempts to ban early marriage, the practice is still common and evolving. Parents are gradually losing the sole decision to marry their children without their consent nowadays. Yet they still have power over when and to whom they give away their daughters. Kadhaa (betrothal) and butii (abduction) are the two main ways of effecting early marriage in the study area. The main cultural reasons for which parents marry off their daughters early include securing their daughters’ future and maintaining girls’ pre-marital virginity. Virginity is valued in marriage and can be a source of honor or shame for the girls and their parents. Poverty, and particularly the current dire economic conditions in the area, coupled with an alarming level of joblessness among the youth who hold a diploma or a degree, have made the girls at school lose hope in education as a viable option for their future life and worsened early marriage in recent years. The girls themselves view marriage as an alternative life career and thus quit school for an early marriage.

Robert L. Smith: Visionary Leader, Extraordinary Mentor, & Beloved Colleague

This remembrance of Dr. Robert L. Smith, 63rd President of the American Counseling Association, contains recollections, tributes, and anecdotes about the life career of a major contributor to the profession of counseling. Dr. Smith's roles as collaborator and mentor are evidenced in the words of students, colleagues, and leaders. He founded the International Association of Marriage and Family Counselors and served as Executive Director of the organization. Personal qualities enabled Dr. Smith to share his gifts with those he mentored. His influence in counselor education will continue through the lives of those who knew and loved him.

One size doesn’t fit all: framework and resources for individualized interventions for struggling medical students

When helping struggling medical students, a “one size fits all” approach is often ineffective, as many different factors affect academic success. In our experience, these factors may overlap or be distinct for each student, and thus require individualized interventions based on student needs. We recommend an individualized model of academic support includes an intake interview, assessment, individualized interventions, and follow up to assess progress. This paper provides a recommended framework of resources for medical school faculty and staff who work with struggling students. Different issues that lead students to struggle are categorized in the main domains of Bloom’s taxonomy: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. A discussion of the impact of the factors in each domain includes detailed tables with corresponding manifestations, assessments, and support strategies literature for each issue. An application of a proposed framework is presented on a case example. Individualized approaches to improving medical student success are presented to address the complex and interrelated areas of academic success, wellbeing, quality of life, career potential, and satisfaction with medical school.

John Berkeley James (John) Wells (1935–2018)––Life, career and remembrances

John Wells, who died at age 83 on 12 November 2018, was a research scientist, teacher, Professor of Zoology, Dean of Science at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, family man and community leader. He was a man of his time, surviving World War II, progressing to a career that stretched around the world.

The Role of the Negative 3-H Trio in Second Language Education

Language has been proven to strongly affect different aspects on one's life/career including his/her identity and interpersonal communication skills beyond the immediate context. Given this, now proper discourse and interlocutor's emotions are highlighted in academia. However, few studies (if any) have explored the role of negative stressors and constructs in L2 classroom discourse and interpersonal communication competency. To fill this yawning lacuna, the present study provided a glance at the impact of three negative language aspects of hate, hurt, and harm (also called negative 3-H trio) on L2 education. Moreover, it presents the definitions, origins (positive psychology, positive peace psychology), dimensions, and applications of each aspect. Finally, some implications and future directions are suggested to avid scholars in L2 and mainstream education.

Vera Bácskai and urban history: life, work and impact

This special section pays tribute to Professor Vera Bácskai (1930–2018), an outstanding Hungarian urban historian, one of the founders and former presidents of the European Association for Urban History. Vera Bácskai was an influential personality whose work and personal impact inspired generations of younger scholars. She played an instrumental role in the institutionalization of modern social and urban history in her homeland, while she also had a great share in creating the international networks and organizations that define the framework for European urban history to this day. The introductory article reflects on her life, career and impact, and it offers a thematic introduction into the articles of the special section.

“This is the Way I Win my Own Soul Back”: Exploring the Role of Allies’ Virtuous Motivation for Equity and Inclusion

As organizations take on grand challenges such as gender equality, anti-racism, LGBTQ+ protections and workplace inclusion, many well-intentioned individuals from dominant groups (e.g., cisgender men, Caucasian, heterosexual) are stepping forward as allies toward under-represented or marginalized group members (e.g., cisgender women, people of color, LGBTQ+ identified employees). Past research and guidance assume an inevitable need for external motivation, reflected in the ‘business case’ for diversity and in top-down policies to drive equity and inclusion efforts. As such, little research has explored the internal motivations, particularly the specific virtues of well-intentioned dominant group individuals. Through this qualitative study, I explore how peer-nominated exemplary allies grew over the course of their careers. I conducted in-depth life/career story interviews with organizational leaders from dominant groups to identify the virtues that motivate their allyship. Findings demonstrate that they tapped into a variety of virtues, including compassion, fairness, integrity, humility, prudence, moral courage, perseverance, and patience, in order to enact allyship. Further, these virtues played specific functions in motivating key allyship-supportive mechanisms such as psychological investment, intellectual understanding, allyship action, and long-term commitment. Thus, this study offers a detailed portrait of the functions that virtues play in enabling leaders and employees to become allies. This research has implications for theory and research on diversity, equity and inclusion.

Ho Chi Minh's Thought on Human Rights and Applying in Vietnam Today

Ho Chi Minh is a great man whose life, career, ideology and actions are associated with a heroic historical period of the Vietnamese nation. He is not only loved and respected by the Vietnamese people but also admired and honoured by the world. Resolution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization on the 100th anniversary of the birth of President Ho Chi Minh: "The national hero of Vietnam and a great cultural man”. Ho Chi Minh's revolutionary career has left the Communist Party and people of Vietnam invaluable heritage of reasoning on particularly important issues, a including the profound philosophy of human rights, up to now, there remains theoretical and practical values.

PREFERRED REASONS IN SELECTING TEACHING PROFESSION AS A LIFE CAREER: A CASE STUDY OF PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS

Commitment and efficiency of teachers have an important input in the successful accomplishment of educational objectives of any nation; thus, highly motivated teachers are vital for an effective educational approach. By using a quantitative method, this study examined why teachers select the teaching as a profession for their life career. Through the purposive sampling, pre-service teachers from the University of Loralai were chosen in which 147 students participated in this research. Researchers collected the data through questionnaires and analyzed it by using descriptive and inferential statistical tests. The findings point out that majority of pre-service teachers choose the teaching profession as their life career due to the altruistic-intrinsic reasons because it received the highest mean as compared to the other reasons (i.e., extrinsic and reasons influenced by others). The extrinsic reasons and reasons influenced by others followed by in order of preference respectively. Regarding the gender variable, male and female pre-service teachers showed significant differences in altruistic-intrinsic reasons. Contrary to this, age, teaching experience and professional qualifications showed no significant differences with the altruistic-intrinsic reasons. Based on the findings, this study suggests that education policy should set standards for teacher education programs to elevate the status of teachers for attracting bright students before and after completing the programs.