A Theological Analysis of Confessional-Centric Curriculum of Christian Religious Education: Towards an Inclusive Religious Pluralistic Centered Curriculum for Nigeria Colleges of Education

Desire to live in peace and unity despite the multi ethnic and multi religious composition of Nigeria, remain ideals that are constant in the nation’s Constitution. However, accruable benefits of a culturally and religiously pluralistic society have continued to elude Nigeria due to incessant religious violence arising from the mutual suspicion of Christians and Muslims in the country. Nevertheless, the nation’s National Policy on Education proposes the education sector as one of the platforms to inculcate a sense of unity and religious tolerance in the country. The policy considers the nation’s learning centers and religious courses offered in such institutions as media to attain the goals of peaceful co-existence and unity of all citizens. Unfortunately, this goal has remained unrealized. It is from this background that this dissertation conducts a theological analysis of the curriculum of Christian Religious Studies operative in Nigeria Colleges of Education and finds it defective by default for the purpose of facilitating religious harmony in the country. For one, the curriculum is mostly catechetical in content, and transmits a confessional orientation of religious studies across board from the training of CRS teachers, to their engagement in teaching at primary and secondary school levels. The project deploys Jacque Dupuis’ ‘inclusive religious pluralism’ in drafting a Christian religious studies curriculum for Nigeria Colleges of Education. The submission is made on the assumption that a robust community of religiously pluralistic society operates on respect for each other’s’ religious views, and avoidance of attempt at relegating adherents of other religions and their religious views to an inferior status

Indigenous Peoples’ Access to Justice, Including Truth and Reconciliation Processes

Access to justice is a demand that increasingly underlies the major debates of our time, whether in the area of economic, political and social development, peace, human rights or culture. The issue is a bridge between the past, the present and the future as it refers to the entrenched marginalization of and systemic discrimination against members or groups of society. Access to justice is the stepping stone to address or remedy injustice. No area of human endeavor has given more meaning and normative content to the concept of access to justice than the human rights area, including the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The solid international human rights framework developed in the past seventy years and the ways it is being given depth through the interpretation of international human rights bodies is providing access to justice with the normative contours and specificity needed for practical implementation. Thus, access to justice is at once a substantive and a procedural right. Major elements such as the rule of law, the right to truth and other fundamental normative frameworks have added new weight to access to justice. It is within this rich human rights context that the effort to breathe new life to the struggle of Indigenous Peoples’ access to justice should be viewed. The mobilization around access to justice is shedding light on the concrete steps that can be followed for Indigenous Peoples’ access to justice to materialize. The articles contributed to this book are written by Indigenous Peoples, researchers, policy-makers, practitioners and academics, capturing a variety of international and national perspectives, based both on theory and on the analysis of specific cases and examples. Most of the articles have been contributed by participants to the International Expert Seminar on Indigenous Peoples’ Access to Justice, including Truth and Reconciliation Processes held from February 27th to March 1st, 2013 at Columbia University in New York, co-hosted by the Institute for the Study of Human Rights and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and held to inform the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples’ Study on Access to Justice in the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In addition, the co-editors found it useful to invite some authors who were not present at the Seminar to make their contributions. Thus, this volume captures a variety of subjects that fall under the broad topic of “Indigenous Peoples’ Access to Justice.

Mozambican economy 2001-2010 : a mix of economic populism and wild market

This essay performs a general analysis of the economic evolution for the period comprised between 2001 and 2010 and it tries to define the main features according to an economic policy and political economy based upon paradigms of interdisciplinarity. The hypothesis of the study is to verify whether during the first decade of the 21st century there were policies and economic measures which can be defined by a growth model in which there is a combination of elements of a liberal economy at a micro level and a corporate public sector (State Capitalism) used, by the one hand, for the capture of income for the State and ruling party with off- budget financing, for the political elite and, on the other hand, for the application of redistributive measures mainly directed towards urban people so as to ensure alliances of power reproduction and the consolidation of an accumulation pattern internally focused, but centered out of the country. The practice of policies of the so-called economic populism is demonstrated through expansive monetary and budget policies, income adjustments above the inflation and high investment rates, mainly when the FDI is included. The populist nature is strengthened if the fact that the expansive policies are supported by external resources (to the State budget, in investment and in financing the balance of payments) and not by the wealth generated by the economy in public receipts is taken into consideration. Economic populism is also employed through the orchestration of public companies with politicized economic decisions. The consequence of these options were verified throughout the decade: increase of the deficit of the trade balance with growing imports; exacerbation of the dependency; high conjunctural variabilities in the exchange rate; increment of the public deficit (not including the external resources that finance the general State budget); the secundarization of the productive sectors that produce to the internal market and consequent prioritization of the exports of the large projects with the marginalization of the “traditional” productive fabric” and the externalization of the accumulation pattern. There are clear signs of the dual structure of the economy. The model of growth is not endogenous

Canvas White Paper 2 Cybersecurity and Law

This White Paper explores the legal dimensions of the European Union (EU)’s value-driven cybersecurity by investigating the notions of ‘value-driven’ and ‘cybersecurity’ from the perspective of EU law. It starts with a general overview of legal issues in current value-driven cybersecurity debates (Chapter 2), showing how values embedded within the framework of EU governing treaties have evolved during the integration process, and the important role they play in the cybersecurity regulation at EU level. Chapter 3 of the White Paper is devoted to the main critical challenges in this area: 1) the varied and sometimes unclear uses of the term ‘cybersecurity’, 2) the roles of stakeholders and the cooperation between them, and the 3) securitization of EU values and interests through cybersecurity rules. Chapter 4 points out and describes specific controversies concerning cybersecurity regulation in the EU. Ten disputed issues are given particular attention: 1) the functioning of human rights as drivers for EU regulation, 2) the regulation of risks to society through individual risk identification and proactive action, 3) the attribution of roles to different stakeholders, 4) how individuals are being awarded with more rights, 5) controllership of data, 6) copyright protection, 7) regulation of online content, 8) the use of encryption, 9) permissibility of massive and generalised surveillance of individuals and 10) counterterrorism measures. Chapter 5 summarises the main findings of the literature review. The White Paper recognises that legislative and policy measures within the cybersecurity domain challenge EU fundamental rights and principles, stemming from EU values. The White Paper concludes that with the constantly growing number of EU measures governing the cybersecurity domain, the embedment of EU values enshrined in the EU Charter within these measures take place both on an ex ante and an ex post basis

Being Digital Citizens (Second Edition)

From the rise of cyberbullying and hactivism to the issues surrounding digital privacy rights and freedom of speech, the Internet is changing the ways in which we govern and are governed as citizens. This book examines how citizens encounter and perform new sorts of rights, duties, opportunities and challenges through the Internet. By disrupting prevailing understandings of citizenship and cyberspace, the authors highlight the dynamic relationship between these two concepts. Rather than assuming that these are static or established “facts” of politics and society, the book shows how the challenges and opportunities presented by the Internet inevitably impact upon the action and understanding of political agency. In doing so, it investigates how we conduct ourselves in cyberspace through digital acts. This book provides a new theoretical understanding of what it means to be a citizen today for students and scholars across the social sciences

A phenomenological study exploring how early childhood pedagogies enable the development of dispositions

Concerned by children disengaging once they transition to the more formal approaches of the school classroom, this small-scale phenomenological study aimed to understand the intrinsic and external effects on engagement as once holistic experiences can become influenced by the attainment of prescribed learning goals. Aiming to understand the potential impact of prematurely formal pedagogies and learning outcomes, it captured children’s evolving responses and wide-ranging potential, troubling their long-term effects. Over two years, ten children aged between 38-and 48-months at the start of the study, were observed experiencing their final preschool year and their first year of formal schooling within an English Early Years setting and its feeder school. Pedagogical delivery, environmental permissions and social interactions were documented alongside children’s intrinsic and external engagement with 16 dispositions during each of 640 naturalistic observations. Through comparative analysis, the evolving nature of children’s responses emerged alongside the enduring impact of pedagogical delivery and permissions. The effects of environment, choice and peer involvement were illustrated, alongside the predispositions, motivations and inclinations embedding within the children. Findings explored and presented within the Theory of Lifelong Development –in Childhood (ToLD-C) illustrate the foundational importance of early pedagogy, as well as the contextual and social limitations placed on learning experiences. As the impact of these learning experiences, and their developing impact on life trajectories are considered, this study calls for increased discourse to trouble the suitability of early formal approaches and to address the impact felt on life-long learning by many. In support of a dispositional approach that recognises children’s wide-ranging abilities and need for engaged, motivated learning the Method of Improved Childhood Engagement (MICE) is presented. Utilising its unique insights and methods, supportive developmental views of children are offered along with practices to structure targeted interventions and reflective practice throughout the primary age phase

Landscape Archaeology between Art and Science

Researchers in landscape archaeology use two different definitions of landscape. One definition (landscape as territory) is used by the processual archaeologists, earth scientists, and most historical geographers within this volume. By contrast, post-processual archaeologists, new cultural geographers and anthropologists favour a more abstract definition of landscape, based on how it is perceived by the observer. Both definitions are addressed in this book, with 35 papers that are presented here and that are divided into six themes: 1) How did landscape change?; 2) Improving temporal, chronological and transformational frameworks; 3) Linking landscapes of lowlands with mountainous areas; 4) Applying concepts of scale; 5) New directions in digital prospection and modelling techniques, and 6) How will landscape archaeology develop in the future? This volume demonstrates a worldwide interest in landscape archaeology, and the research presented here draws upon and integrates the humanities and sciences. This interdisciplinary approach is rapidly gaining support in new regions where such collaborations were previously uncommon

Conflict (im)mobiles : biographies of mobility along the Ubangi River in Central Africa

Conflict mobiles are individuals whose mobility—and lack of mobility—is informed by violence andconflict. Based on personal narratives of those who move across borders within and beyond the Central African region, this thesis is an ethnography of mobility. By taking mobility as its axiom and placing the lives of people on the move at its centre, the goal of this thesis is twofold. On the one hand, it contests fixed (national) borders and defies static historical readings of Central Africa. On the other hand, it investigates how the multiple trajectories of individuals in Central African give form to the mobility paradigm. There are many avatars of the conflict mobile, the CAR (Central African Republic) refugee-students in Kinshasa (DR Congo), on whom the empirical part of this thesis is based, form only one. It is these students’ journeys, their life stories and means of fending for themselves, as well as their dreams and frustrations, that stand at the core of this thesis. By acknowledging the role of the people (including artists) with whom researchers produce knowledge, this thesis finally invites the reader to ‘un-border’ by looking at the field, and academia, through a mobile lens.NWO (W01.70.600.001)History and International Relation

Variation of Soil Structure in the Foot and Toe Slopes of Mt. Vukan, East-central Serbia

This paper presents the variation of soil structure along the foot and toe slopes of Mt. Vukan, East-Central Serbia. The analysis of aggregate size distribution and structure indices were conducted by means of soil units, characteristic soil horizons and elevation differences along the study area. Soils of Great Field located at different elevations were found to have significant variation in ASD and soil structure indices. Topsoil horizon of Eutric Cambisols have higher MWD after dry sieving, but at the same time it has the highest variation in MWD after wet sieving, indicating low water stability, which is opposite to the coefficient of aggregability. We share an opinion that change in MWD better depicts soils structure stability to water. The results of correlation analysis indicated that clay content is correlated more to structure indices compared with SOM content. SOM is significantly correlated with ASD and soil structure indices only in Calcomelansols, whereas the significant correlation of clay content and soil structure is more evident in Eutric Cambisols and Non-calcaric Chernozems, compared with other soil units. Soil structure variation along the lowest chain of Catena might be strong, and that it has to be analyzed from the point of view of soil unit and their corresponding soil horizons