Novice teachers’ beliefs and fears on bullying in schools in South Africa

Worldwide, and in developing countries like South Africa, bullying and violence in schools are a prevalent problem. Negotiating and managing bullying in schools has become progressively challenging for teachers, more so for novice teachers entering the profession. Through semi-structured interviews, this interpretivist qualitative study explores the fears and beliefs of four novice teachers within the KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa. Using narrative analysis, novice teachers attributed their understanding, worldviews, beliefs, fears and the manner in which they responded to bullying instances to: their biographical backgrounds, their personal beliefs and attitudes, social and contextual factors. They demonstrated an understanding of bullying, and recognised the prevalence and persisting problem of bullying in schools. They recalled from their growing up years how they experienced bullying, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously, from their own personal histories, attitudes and beliefs. They expressed fears about not effectively identifying and responding to bullying behaviours. Lastly, teachers associated bullying with an imbalance of power. Although teachers were aware of informal anti-bullying interventions, they stressed the lack of concrete formal intervention strategies to reduce and stop bullying. The teachers recommended a collaborative and democratic process of all stakeholders deciding policies and crafting customised practical intervention strategies, rather than a generic approach to eliminating bullying and violence in schools.Keywords: anti-bullying, beliefs, bullying, fears, school violence, teachers https://doi.org/10.19108/KOERS.85.1.244

The Cape Verde Project: Teaching Ecologically Sensitive and Socially Responsive Design

This dissertation chronicles an evolving teaching philosophy. It was an attempt to develop a way to teach ecological design in architecture informed by ethical responses to ecological devastation and social injustice. The world faces numerous social and ecological challenges at global scales. Recent Industrialization has brought about improved life expectancies and human comforts, coinciding with expanded civic rights and personal freedom, and increased wealth and opportunities. Unfortunately, industrialization also caused wide-scale pollution, mass extinctions and anthropogenic global climate change. Industrialization also reduced the earth\u27s capacity to meet human resource demands - demands that are ever increasing due to population growth, urbanization and over-consumption. This dissertation develops an architectural theory based on ethics as a way for designers to engage the aforementioned issues. Architects play a pivotal role in shaping the environment, with the symbolic power and use of buildings, giving architects great sway in shaping social spaces and ecosystems. This important role necessitates in-depth curricula that address these problems. Architectural training focuses greatly on aesthetics and technical concerns, often at the expense of other equally important issues, such as ecological damage and social justice. In design education, design problems are often de-contextualized to avoid extraneous complications such as the economy or culture. Much of design education occurs with the study abroad and in the design studio. In the former, a grand tour of canonical buildings introduces architects to the precedents they learn to emulate. The latter is where instructors spend many hours in individual or small group interactions. The study abroad and the design studio provided ideal venues to address many of the current concerns beyond aesthetic and technical issues. These concerns include questions related to community engagement, social justice and the ecological effects of design. However, the complicated nature of these issues makes adequate curricula difficult to fashion. The challenge was to provide a framework for learning that was nimble, with wide-ranging curricula and adequate time for self-discovery. The framework included pedagogical content with contradictory claims and conflicting interests. The curricula were broad but provided attention to detail and deeper place knowledge, employed varied examples, experimentation and field work

Perspectives on human-computer interaction and culture

Due to the global distribution of technology and its use in highly culturally diverse settings, an understanding of culture, in particular the connection between culture and technology use, is becoming more relevant for distributors and developers of such technology, in order to survive in a dynamic market environment and to be able to offer products that are tailored to the requirements of the specific end user. Therefore, the overarching topic of this thesis is the exploration of the role of culture in human-computer interaction (HCI) as a key factor to understanding the user. This thesis sheds light on the role of culture and socio-cultural systems and their multi-layered manifestations in human-computer interaction. The related research consists of two main strands: The first strand (manuscript 1 and 2) focuses primarily on examining the extent to which national culture is considered in HCI studies, and the extent to which subjects from different national settings are part of HCI studies. The key findings of the first strand are that HCI research tends to neglect culture, or, if it is considered, it is mostly treated narrowly, as a single variable that measures national cultures. The restricted cultural perspective becomes further evident when studying the participant samples from the most relevant HCI conference. There was a strong focus on participant samples from countries whose inhabitants tend to be Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic (WEIRD) and most of the other countries were clearly underrepresented. The second strand of this thesis (manuscript 3 to 6) centres on the examination of the relationship between HCI and cultural as well as socio-cultural systems, particularly in knowledge-intensive practices. It shows the rich practices of technology appropriation in study settings outside of the typical WEIRD contexts. Furthermore, it explores the manifold, rich and often complex ways in which the use of technology is impacted by structures and practices of cultural systems, and, in the same way, transforms these systems. The results from both strands of enquiry show that the HCI community should consider the diversity of potential technology users in its research and recommendations. Only in this way can technological developments be realised that are globally useful and usable on a broad scale. To support the HCI community on this path, alongside suggestions for further research projects, this thesis presents several detailed recommendations on how to increase diversity and the consideration of cultural aspects in HCI research and the HCI community

The Cybercrime Triangle

Information technology can increase the convergence of three dimensions of the crime triangle due to the spatial and temporal confluence in the virtual world. In other words, its advancement can lead to facilitating criminals with more chances to commit a crime against suitable targets living in different real-world time zones without temporal and spatial orders. However, within this mechanism, cybercrime can be discouraged “…if the cyber-adversary is handled, the target/victim is guarded, or the place is effectively managed” (Wilcox & Cullen, 2018, p. 134). In fact, Madensen and Eck (2013) assert that only one effective controller is enough to prevent a crime. Given this condition of the crime triangle, it must be noted that each of these components (the offender, the target, and the place) or controllers (i.e., handler, guardian, and manager) can play a pivotal role in reducing cybercrime. To date, scholars and professionals have analyzed the phenomenon of cybercrime and developed cybercrime prevention strategies relying predominantly on cybercrime victimization (suitable targets) but have yet to utilize the broader framework of the crime triangle commonly used in the analysis and prevention of crime. More specifically, the dimensions of cybercrime offenders, places, or controllers have been absent in prior scientific research and in guiding the establishment and examination of cybercrime prevention strategies. Given this gap, much remains to be known as to how these conceptual entities operate in the virtual realm and whether they share similarities with what we know about other crimes in the physical world. Thus, the purpose of this study is to extend the application of the “Crime Triangle,” a derivative of Routine Activity Theory, to crime events in the digital realm to provide scholars, practitioners, and policy makers a more complete lens to improve understanding and prevention of cybercrime incidents. In other words, this dissertation will endeavor to devise a comprehensive framework for our society to use to form cybersecurity policies to implement a secure and stable digital environment that supports continued economic growth as well as national security. The findings of this study suggest that both criminological and technical perspectives are crucial in comprehending cybercrime incidents. This dissertation attempts to independently explore these three components in order to portray the characteristics of cybercriminals, cybercrime victims, and place management. Specifically, this study first explores the characteristics of cybercriminals via a criminal profiling method primarily using court criminal record documents (indictments/complaints) provided by the FIU law library website. Second, the associations between cybercrime victims, digital capable guardianship, perceived risks of cybercrime, and online activity are examined using Eurobarometer survey data. Third, the associations between place management activities and cybercrime prevention are examined using “Phishing Campaign” and “Cybersecurity Awareness Training Program” data derived from FIU’s Division of Information Technology

Data ethics : building trust : how digital technologies can serve humanity

Data is the magic word of the 21st century. As oil in the 20th century and electricity in the 19th century: For citizens, data means support in daily life in almost all activities, from watch to laptop, from kitchen to car, from mobile phone to politics. For business and politics, data means power, dominance, winning the race. Data can be used for good and bad, for services and hacking, for medicine and arms race. How can we build trust in this complex and ambiguous data world? How can digital technologies serve humanity? The 45 articles in this book represent a broad range of ethical reflections and recommendations in eight sections: a) Values, Trust and Law, b) AI, Robots and Humans, c) Health and Neuroscience, d) Religions for Digital Justice, e) Farming, Business, Finance, f) Security, War, Peace, g) Data Governance, Geopolitics, h) Media, Education, Communication. The authors and institutions come from all continents. The book serves as reading material for teachers, students, policy makers, politicians, business, hospitals, NGOs and religious organisations alike. It is an invitation for dialogue, debate and building trust! The book is a continuation of the volume “Cyber Ethics 4.0” published in 2018 by the same editors