Intercultural Citizenship Education in Greece: Us and Them

The multidimensional crisis in Greece has influenced relations between the native population and the large number of ethnic, national, cultural and religious minorities currently residing in the country. Poverty, intolerance and an increase in political extremism contribute to a grim illustration of the position of minority groups in Greece. Convinced there is a role for education in responding to this social fragmentation, and in actively supporting the development of intercultural understanding, this paper evaluates the Greek State’s approach to, understanding of, and expectations in reference to overcoming divisions in society. Focusing particularly on the role of education in the development of students’ intercultural citizenship and identity, the study analysed four key documents outlining official strategies for the inclusion of minorities and the programme designed for Citizenship education. Our analysis suggests that although attempts have and are being made to improve intercultural communication, underlying these attempts is the problematic understanding underpinning Greek identity, which suggests Greece is an ethnically homogenous, mono-cultural society. The distinction between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ which is integrated into Citizenship and intercultural education programmes could act as a counter-force to tolerance, preventing the attainment of the objectives set out in these programmes

Scale invariant jets: from blazars to microquasars

Black holes, anywhere in the stellar-mass to supermassive range, are often associated with relativistic jets. Models suggest that jet production may be a universal process common in all black hole systems regardless of their mass. Although in many cases observations support such hypotheses for microquasars and Seyfert galaxies, little is known on whether boosted blazar jets also comply with such universal scaling laws. We use uniquely rich multiwavelength radio light curves from the F-GAMMA program and the most accurate Doppler factors available to date to probe blazar jets in their emission rest frame with unprecedented accuracy. We identify for the first time a strong correlation between the blazar intrinsic broad-band radio luminosity and black hole mass, which extends over $\sim$ 9 orders of magnitude down to microquasars scales. Our results reveal the presence of a universal scaling law that bridges the observing and emission rest frames in beamed sources and allows us to effectively constrain jet models. They consequently provide an independent method for estimating the Doppler factor, and for predicting expected radio luminosities of boosted jets operating in systems of intermediate or tens-of-solar mass black holes, immediately applicable to cases as those recently observed by LIGO.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in AP

An ecological exploration of the Internet of Toys in early childhood everyday life

Throughout this chapter, the focus is on the importance of children’s agency in their use of Internet of Toys (IoToys). We think about children’s capabilities as part of digitally mediated eco-communities. Informed by the socio-ecological model, children’s, practitioners’ and parents’ dispositions helped contextualise the factors that shape children’s use of IoToys. We provide the following key messages throughout the chapter: 1.A discussion of passivity or empowerment as part of children’s digital lives with IoToys, in line with Craft’s (2013) work. 2.A reanalysis of perceptions of childhood in the digital age, linking to the sociological models of childhood and the role of children as competent and agentic. 3.An account of socio-ecological influences on digital lives, likened to Rogoff’s (2008) three planes relating to individual, interpersonal and community alongside a discussion of how the interpersonal plane can be reimagined to include interactions between child and machine. 4.A note of caution against the passive child agenda and recurrent moral panic

Digital Literacy and young children: towards better understandings of the benefits and challenges of digital technologies in homes and early years settings

This policy brief is based on an extensive body of research across Europe and elsewhere conducted by leading researchers in the field across more than 30 countries. We have studied the use of digital technologies by children under 8 years old in a variety of settings using an extensive range of research methods

Immigrant students access to higher education in greece: Factors that contribute to their access or not

The problems concerning education of immigrants in general and those groups who come from a different cultural background in Greece are rather complex, and, as a result, there are difficulties in dealing with these problems. In addition, in multicultural societies such as Greece, the tolerance for diversity and equality of opportunities are required for a multicultural education. In this case study we investigate the opinion of the native students regarding the studies and the provision of equal opportunities to immigrant students. © Common Ground, Maria Papanikolaou