A Pandemic Partnership: Preservice Teachers and Fourth Graders Engage in Virtual Book Clubs

When preservice teachers were no longer able to visit schools due to the pandemic, their university professor partnered with an alum who teaches fourth grade to design and implement virtual book clubs. The preservice teachers created book trailers for the fourth graders to view and choose from for their book club. The groups connected using a variety of digital platforms and modalities to discuss the selected books. Through this virtual experience, the preservice teachers learned how to individualize their responses using the Four-N-Framework as a guide to nurture and nudge each reader through virtual book club conversations.

Dying together: A convergence analysis of fatalities during COVID-19.

Governments implemented countermeasures to mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 virus. This had a severe effect on the economy. We examine convergence patterns in the evolution of COVID-19 deaths across countries. We aim to investigate whether countries that implemented different measures managed to limit the number of COVID-19 deaths. We extend the most recent macro-growth convergence methodology to examine convergence of COVID-19 deaths. We combine a long memory stationarity framework with the maximal clique algorithm. This provides a rich and flexible club formation strategy that goes beyond the stationary/non stationary approach adopted in the previous literature. Our results suggest that strict measures (even belated) or an aggressive vaccination scheme can confine the spread of the disease while maintaining the strictness of the measures steady can lead to a burst of the virus. Finally, we observe that fiscal measures did not have an effect on the containment of the virus.

CONVERGENCE DETERMINANTS AND CLUB FORMATION IN THE EU OVER 1999-2021

Within the EU, the applied decomposition of the GDP per capita over 1999-2021 reveals that labour productivity is a dominant contributor to economic growth, followed by employment, though the impact of each factor is largely non-uniform among countries. Although the fast-converging economies benefit from productivity gains, the core EA countries have lost some of their long-term growth capacity. Despite the implemented measures, almost all EU countries experience an aggravating age structure. In 2020, digitalization was evidenced to have mitigated the negative effects of COVID-19 on productivity and employment. The estimated panel model accounts for these developments by including other relevant convergence factors such as human capital, regulatory quality and debt. The investments are empirically inferred to be a transmission channel of the positive impact of higher institutional quality and the adverse influence of higher debt stock on economic growth. While in times of high indebtedness, the expenditures on education are found to be crowded out by interests, the low debt is not necessarily associated with greater spending on education. Eventually, these inferences are graphically supported by the three-club formation derived through the K-means clustering algorithm. Although such distribution is generally in line with the neoclassical growth theory, it also reveals disturbing EU heterogeneity due to worsening demographic dynamics, rising indebtedness and insufficient regulatory quality. The derived club formation is not tightly related to EMU membership. Overall, to enhance the speed and quality of the convergence, the EU countries have to strengthen their institutional and fiscal framework. © 2023, Bulgarska Akademiya na Naukite. All rights reserved.

Motivational deficits in the promotion of public health? A matter for reflection on religion and COVID-19

The paper is aimed to analyze if religion plays a relevant role in health promotion and, thus, if it can be included in the interpretations on the positive role of religions in the public sphere. In this regard, Habermas refers to a crisis of meaning in secular societies that has been caused, among other reasons, by individualistic and selfish lifestyles that fail to encourage a moral action when it goes beyond the law. In contrast, it seems that the strong social ties of religious communities foster solidarity and altruistic attitudes, which could be interpreted as a sign of greater social cohesion;but is it really like that? Pandemic and its consequences help to assess whether the religious element (analyzed as belief, belonging, bonding and behavior) has created positive attitudes in the face of the health challenges (i.e., compliance with rules of social distance, vaccination) or, on the contrary, the motivational deficits of some societies have to do with other factors not related to the religious/secular dichotomy.

Bouncing Back: Unpacking the Influence of Sport Media on Consumer Resilience

This study aims to empirically investigate how sport media consumption influences the relationships among the spatially explicit risks of COVID-19, resilience, and positive and negative affect, considering social class. To achieve this, we employed an integrated approach using spatial and aspatial analyses. The findings indicated that the negative effects of the spatially explicit risks of COVID-19 on resilience are mitigated by sport media consumption. In turn, an increased level of resilience enhances positive affect and reduces negative affect. Moreover, consumers in the upper class showed a more pronounced resilience process through sport media consumption than those in the lower class. This study contributes to the knowledge regarding the sport -resilience association by identifying the moderating effect of sport media consumption within social classes and addressing the spatially explicit risks of COVID-19. The present findings provide a basis for sport-based resilience strategies in times of adversity.

Economic Sustainability, Management, and Strategies: Analysis of the football clubs of the southern region in the 2022 Brazilian Championship

Soccer is the most popular sport in the world and moves significant amounts of money. Besides the results on the field, the search for information regarding the economic sustainability of soccer clubs is growing. Therefore, clubs must be transparent and publish their financial statements according to the established rules. Through them, it is possible to calculate the economic and financial indicators, measuring the financial situation of the entity. Thus, this research aims to analyze the main economic and financial indicators of the clubs in the South Region, participants of the series A and B of the Brazilian Championship 2022. For this, a bibliographic and documental research was carried out with a qualitative approach, in order to acquire the theoretical basis about the theme. After that, data was collected through the financial statements published by the clubs, for the years 2017 to 2021 to enable the calculation of liquidity indicators, profitability and indebtedness. The results found were organized in tables, facilitating the process of understanding and analysis. It was observed, among other things, low liquidity ratios and high dependence on third-party capital to maintain operational activity. It was also possible to note the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on its results. Regarding the information related to the economic sustainability of the analyzed clubs it can be concluded that, although there is a small evolution of the indicators, the financial situation of the clubs is delicate and needs attention from their management and their fans.

National Capital Section Presents Future City 2023 SpeciaI Award

Future City organizations and teams have returned to normal activities this year after Covid;and have reorganized and conducted a very successful Future City 2023 Competition. On 19 February, regional Future City winners from 41 middle schools and after-school organizations (eg, scouts, 4H, boys/girls clubs) from nationwide and China participated in the Future City National Finals. The Special Awards judging was done in person in Washington DC. In its 31st year Future City has engaged middle school in STEM and diversity. This year's Future City theme was "Climate Change Challenge." Middle school students were asked to create cities of the future, first on a computer and then as large tabletop models. Working in teams with a teacher and volunteer engineer mentor, students create their cities using the SimCity 3000 TM video game donated to all participating schools by Electronic Arts, Inc., of Redwood City CA.

Football must not forget its inclusive responsibilities in the rush to get fans back into stadiums

It is imperative that the English Premier League and the Football League clubs consider disabled supporters when planning for the return of fans in stadiums. While it is understandable that the English football clubs are eager to welcome fans back as soon as possible, I argue this must not be at the expense of disabled supporters. Utilising the theory of ableism, I highlight the inequitable matchday experiences of disabled football fans at the English Premier League and the Football League clubs pre-COVID-19, a situation I argue cannot be exacerbated by neglecting disabled fans as part of the return of fans to stadiums. This commentary emphasises the importance of English football clubs grasping the opportunity to positively change how disabled football fans are treated. The piece concludes by calling for sustained lobbying for inclusion, and the need for future research to focus and explicate the experiences of disabled football fans.

Evaluation of the risks associated with the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 during a professional football club's training in Brazil

COVID-19 is an infectious disease with respiratory transmission caused by the new coronavirus. Due to the high viral transmissibility, sports activities were severely impacted all over the world and in Brazil football was paralyzed for about four months. The objective of this study was to identify the activities with the highest risk of Covid-19 transmission in a professional soccer club in Rio de Janeiro based on a cross-sectional study with a semi-quantitative emphasis. The results showed that physical training showed a greater number of touches (105) with a high prevalence of hand on the ball (94%). The antibody search found that 24,2% tested positive for IgG during the study. During the training phase, no cases of SARS-CoV-2 transmission between players and staff were identified. It is believed that biosafety measures and the individual and collective commitment of everyone to social isolation and hygiene measures are an important strategy for the viability of sports activities.

Return to community sport: leaning on evidence in turbulent times

This commentary considers return to organized sport amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of nonprofit community (grassroots) sport clubs that are the backbone of sport in many countries around the world. Local clubs can be vulnerable to challenging conditions at the best of times, and are at risk of significant negative impact if they cannot weather the storm of the current pandemic and resume their sport delivery. The opportunity and importance of drawing on evidence-based insights during these unprecedented times is highlighted here, by connecting examples of existing knowledge in several key areas (assessing and building capacity, embracing innovation, and adapting top-down policy directives to the local context) with the challenges facing community sport clubs. Potential directions for new research during and post-pandemic that builds on such foundational knowledge are also presented, charting a course for new inquiry that will support a more resilient community sport sector for the future.

Hotels' occupancy rates and convergence: Empirical evidence from the first pandemic wave

The scope of this study is to unravel possible convergence clubs regarding the occupancy rates of the hotel industry in the US states in the aftermath of the first COVID-19 pandemic wave. For this reason, the underlying paper resorts to the application of the generic convergence algorithm developed in Phillips and Sul (2007) for a sample of 50 US states over the daily period ranging from 01.12.2019 to 26.07.2020. The empirical analysis supports the identification of two primary convergence clubs consisting of an equally distributed number of regions (states). However, the two clubs can be merged into one after the implementation of the Phillips and Sul (2009) methodology, revealing that the first pandemic wave has eliminated any distinct (economic) characteristic between the different US states. JEL codes: L10, L80, R10 .

The neo‐nationalist ascendency: further thoughts on class, value and the return of the repressed

March 2020. On the borders of EU Europe, with the Covid pandemic threatening human lives, sociality and welfare everywhere, Syrian refugees on the ‘Balkan Route', bombed out of Idlib, are being beaten in the forests with wooden clubs by Romanian border guards before they are thrown back onto Serbian territory for further humiliations.1 Romanian return migrants, fleeing the Italian and Spanish Corona lockdowns en masse, are being told over the social networks that they should never have come back, contagious as they are imagined to be and a danger for a woefully underfunded public health system for which they have not paid taxes. Further South, the Mediterranean is once again a heavily policed cemetery for migrants and refugees from the civil wars in the Middle East and North Africa – collateral damage of Western imperial delirium and hubris – as Greece is being hailed by the European President for being the ‘shield' behind which Europe can feel safe from the supposedly associated criminality. Viktor Orbàn, meanwhile, has secured his corrupt autocracy in Hungary for another indefinite stretch of years after the parliament gave him powers to singlehandedly fight the Covid pandemic and its long-run economic after-effects in the name of the Magyars and in the face of never subsiding threats from the outside to the nation. Orbàn will also continue, even more powerfully so now, to fight immigrants, gypsies, gays, feminists, cultural Marxists, NGOs, George Soros, population decline, the EU, and everyone else who might be in his way. Critique from the EU is in Budapest rejected as being ‘motivated by politics'. Vladimir Putin, too, has just been asked by the Russian parliament to stay on indefinitely in his regal position, so as to safeguard Russia's uncertain national future. Erdogan of Turkey is sure to be inspired and will not renege from his ongoing and unprecedentedly brutal crackdown on domestic dissent and ‘traitors to the nation' while his armies are in Syria and Libya. Turkish prisons will continue to overflow.All these, and manifold other events not mentioned here, are part of processes in the European East that have been continuous (as in ‘continuous history versus discontinuous history') for at least a decade, all with a surprisingly steadfast direction. They appear to be diverse, occasioned by ethnographically deeply variegated and therefore apparently contingent events. Anthropologists, professionally spellbound by local fieldwork, are easily swayed to describe them in their singularities. But that singular appearance is misleading. These and similar events are systemically rooted, interlinked, produced by an uneven bundle of global, scaled, social and historical forces (as in ‘field of forces') that cascade into and become incorporated within a variegated and therefore differentiating terrain of national political theatres and human relationships that produce the paradox of singularly surprising outcomes with uncanny family resemblances. These forces can be summarily described as the gradual unfolding of the collapse of a global regime of embedded and multi-scalar solidarity arrangements anchored in national Fordism, developmentalism and the Cold War, into an uncertain interregnum of neoliberalised Darwinian competition and rivalry on all scales, with a powerfully rising China lurking in the background. Neo-nationalism appears from within this unfolding field of forces as a contradictory bind that seeks to enact and/or re-enact, domestically and abroad, hierarchy and deservingness, including its necessary flip side, humiliation. That is one aspect of the argument I have been trying to make since the end of the nineties (for example Kalb 2000, 2002, 2004), when such forces began to stir in the sites that I was working on and living in: The Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Hungary and Poland.That universalising argument is easily corroborated by events in the west of the continent, which paint a similarly cohesive though phenomenologically variegated picture.2 Marine Le Pen nd Matteo Salvini are still credibly threatening to democratically overthrow liberal globalist governments in France and Italy on behalf of the ‘people' and ‘the nation', and against the elites, the EU, immigrants, the left and finance capital. Dutch politicians, in the face of the global coronavirus calamity, still believe one cannot send money to Italy and the European South lest it will be spent on ‘alcohol and women'. Anonymous comments in the Dutch press on less brutal newspaper articles often echo the tone of the one that claimed that Southern countries were mere ‘dilapidated sheds … and even with our money they will never do the necessary repair work' (NRC 30 March 2020, comments on ‘Europese solidariteit is juist ook in het Nederlandse belang'). Until its impressive policy turn-around in April/May 2020 in the face of the Covid pandemic and the fast-escalating EU fragmentation amid a world of hostile and nationalist great powers, the German government did not disagree. It was Angela Merkel herself who set up the Dutch as the leaders of a newly conceived right-wing ‘frugal' flank in the EU under the historical banner of the Hanseatic League to face down the federalist and redistributionist South. That Hanseatic banner suggested that penny-counting, competitive mercantilism and austerity, and its practical corollary, an imposed hierarchy of ‘merit' and ‘successfulness', must hang eternally over Europe. Britain, meanwhile, has valiantly elected to leave the EU in order to ‘take back control' on behalf of what Boris Johnson imagines as the ‘brilliant British nation' (The Economist 30 January 2020). It would like to refuse any further labour migrants from the mainland, and seek a future in the global Anglosphere, beefed up by a revitalised British Commonwealth where hopefully, when it comes to ceremony, not juridical equality but imperial nostalgia and deference will rule (see Campanella and Dassu 2019).

Drawings + Talk: Capturing the Multimodal Authoring of Emergent Bilinguals through Culturally Responsive Teaching

Hao and Brown explore how a teacher-researcher team created a virtual learning space that embraced culturally relevant/responsive literacy practices and supported multimodal authoring practices for emergent bilingual children during COVID-19. The extenuating circumstances of the pandemic closed many heritage language schools, and there was a need to continue literacy learning for Chinese American children. These factors caused to rethink the best ways to maintain culturally responsive and relevant literacy instruction with young learners in a distance-learning format given the power of this approach to move children toward academic success, cultural competence, and an ability to navigate critical consciousness. Their central question was: How did emergent bilingual children make meaning of stories during a virtual book club driven by culturally responsive literacy practices and a multimodal approach to authoring? In this case, they invited eight children and their parents from Ling's Chinese class to join a virtual book club that met once a week to participate in multimodal authoring surrounding read-alouds of texts connected to Chinese culture and language.

The uneven distribution of futurity: slow emergencies and the event of COVID-19

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic strains conventional temporal imaginaries through which emergencies are typically understood and governed. Rather than a transparent and linear temporality, a smooth transition across the series event/disruption-response-post-event recovery, the pandemic moves in fits and starts, blurring the boundary between normalcy and emergency. This distended temporality brings into sharp relief other slow emergencies such as racism, poverty, biodiversity loss, and climate change, which inflect how the pandemic is known and governed as an emergency. In this article, we reflect on COVID-19 responses in two settler colonial societies-Australia and the United States-to consider how distinct styles of pandemic responses in each context resonate and dissonate across the racially uneven distribution of futurity that structures liberal order. In each case, the event of COVID-19 has indeed opened a window that reveals multiple slow emergencies;yet in these and other responses this revelation is not leading to meaningful changes to address underlying forms of structural violence. In Australia and the United States, we see how specific slow emergencies-human-induced climate change and anti-Black violence in White supremacist societies, respectively-become intensified as liberal order recalibrates itself in response to the event of COVID-19.

Food insecurity in school-aged children

Food insecurity in the United Kingdom has been described as a 'public health emergency' which has been exacerbated by the onset and continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on research evidence and a reflective account from a current primary school teacher, this chapter highlights the multifaceted impacts of food insecurity for children in schools. It also draws attention to some important considerations around food, education and food-related interventions for practitioners supporting children in schools. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Social models in leg care: understanding Lindsay Leg Club volunteering

Background: This qualitative exploratory research was the first study to explore Leg Club volunteering through focusing specifically on volunteers' narratives. Aim(s): The aim was to understand volunteers' motivations and experiences and to outline the crucial steps for maintaining volunteers' positive trajectory towards providing social support. Method(s): A qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews with volunteers from UK Leg Clubs was undertaken. Interview transcripts were analysed using a constructivist reflexive thematic analysis. Result(s): I recruited 16 volunteers from three UK Leg Clubs. The study explained the motivations for volunteering (started as members or companions;retired individuals with a strong sense of purpose;emotional, social and mental health reasons), experiences of volunteering (satisfaction from helping;meaningful social connections;personal growth) and volunteers' objectives (desire to recruit more volunteers;concerns about long-term capacity to return to pre-pandemic activities). Conclusion(s): The study outlines the conditions necessary for Leg Club volunteers' continued success in the social dimension of leg care. Declaration of Interest: Dr Anna Galazka is a volunteer project consultant for the Lindsay Leg Club Foundation. The research was funded by Cardiff Business School Research and Scholarship Seedcorn Funding Scheme.Copyright © 2023, OmniaMed Communications Ltd. All rights reserved.

Tennis coaching in China before and during COVID-19. The mediatisation of a precarious profession

In China, due to the large-scale lockdowns and strict prevention policies of COVID-19, Chinese tennis coaches have started to open a new front of their career by offering online tennis training on social media platforms. This study introduces mediatisation theory as a theoretical framework to investigate the mediatisation process of tennis coaching on social media platforms in China. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected to analyse three dimensions of Chinese tennis coaches' professional and living conditions: the career trajectory of tennis coaches, the mediatisation of the profession of tennis coaching, and the financial crisis faced by tennis clubs and the tennis industry. We monitored the BiliBili channels of the most popular tennis vloggers on BiliBili and analysed their media practices. We also collected data from job search websites and conducted in-depth interviews with 30 Chinese tennis coaches. The findings are as follows: The new approach has gradually gained the support of coaches thanks to its advantages such as flexibility, accessibility, self-promotion and marketing strategies. The mediatisation of tennis training has accelerated the popularisation of tennis in China, as have relevant government regulations regarding self-promotion platforms.

Yoga, an Appurtenant Method to Improve the Sports Performance of Elite Romanian Athletes

Yoga is a very popular trendy sport all over the world. Since its establishment and promotion, yoga has mostly been practiced in social clubs and studios, often being performed during optional courses in colleges. Basic yoga instruction is generally absent in middle schools. This study investigated and assessed the viability of integrating yoga practice into the sports training program of elite Romanian athletes. The research methods used include documentation and data collection via an online survey in order to design a factor analysis with a structural equation model using SmartPLS software. The research assesses athletes' opinions about the benefits of yoga practice and its impact on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The results highlight the need to integrate yoga classes into educational institutions. The research has demonstrated that Romanian athletes use yoga in the pre- and post-competition phases to increase their focus, balance, muscle, and joint elasticity, create a positive attitude toward victory, manage emotional and post-traumatic stress disorder, visualize their performance in competition, and see themselves as winners. Overall, yoga is a successful strategy to enhance sports training and medical rehabilitation for stress disorders and post-traumatic diseases.

Socialising tourism after COVID-19: reclaiming tourism as a social force? (Special Issue: The re-imagination of New Zealand tourism.)

Purpose: This article considers the possibilities of and barriers to socialising tourism after the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Such an approach allows us to transform tourism and thereby evolve it to be of wider benefit and less damaging to societies and ecologies than has been the case under the corporatised model of tourism. Design/methodology/approach: This conceptual analysis draws on the theorisation of "tourism as a social force" and the new concept of "socialising tourism". Using critical tourism approaches, it seeks to identify the dynamics that are evident in order to assess the possibilities for socialising tourism for social and ecological justice. It employs an Indigenous perspective that the past, present and future are interconnected in its consideration of tourism futures. Findings: COVID-19 has fundamentally disrupted tourism, travel and affiliated industries. In dealing with the crisis, borders have been shut, lockdowns imposed and international tourism curtailed. The pandemic foregrounded the renewal of social bonds and social capacities as governments acted to prevent economic and social devastation. This disruption of normality has inspired some to envision radical transformations in tourism to address the injustices and unsustainability of tourism. Others remain sceptical of the likelihood of transformation. Indeed, phenomena such as vaccine privilege and vaccine tourism are indicators that transformations must be enabled. The authors look to New Zealand examples as hopeful indications of the ways in which tourism might be transformed for social and ecological justice. Practical implications: This conceptualisation could guide the industry to better stakeholder relations and sustainability. Social implications: Socialising tourism offers a fruitful pathway to rethinking tourism through a reorientation of the social relations it fosters and thereby transforming its social impacts for the better. Originality/value: This work engages with the novel concept of "socialising tourism". In connecting this new theory to the older theory of "tourism as a social force", this paper considers how COVID-19 has offered a possible transformative moment to enable more just and sustainable tourism futures.

Cybercompetitions: A survey of competitions, tools, and systems to support cybersecurity education.

Over the last decade, industry and academia have worked towards raising students' interests in cybersecurity through game-like competitions to fill a shortfall of cybersecurity professionals. Rising interest in video games in combination with gamification techniques make learning fun, easy, and addictive. It is crucial that cybersecurity curricula enhance and expose cybersecurity education to a diversified student body to meet workforce demands. Gamification through cybercompetitions is one method to achieve that. With a vast list of options for competition type, focus areas, learning outcomes, and participant experience levels we need to systematize knowledge of attributes that ameliorate cybercompetitions. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and global lock-downs, competition hosts scrambled to move platforms from local to online infrastructure due to poor interoperability between competition software. We derive a list of takeaways including the lack of interoperability between state-of-the-art competition systems, breaking the high knowledge barrier to participate, addressing competition type diversity, then suggest potential solutions and research questions moving forward. Our paper aims to systematize cybersecurity, access control, and programming competitions by surveying the history of these events. We explore the types of competitions that have been hosted and categorize them based on focus areas related to the InfoSEC Color Wheel. We then explore state-of-the-art technologies that enable these types of competitions, and finally, present our takeaways.