Old Normal, New Normal, or Renewed Normal: How COVID-19 Changed Human Resource Development

This chapter wants to shed light on the consequences that the COVID-19 pandemic had for human resource development (HRD) in organizations and in the labour market. We intend to compare three situations: Old Normal (before February 2020), New Normal (between March 2022 and October 2021), and Renewed Normal (since October 2021). Crucially, in organizations, work was mostly face to face in the Old Normal, remote in the New Normal, and there is a tendency for some hybrid form to be installed in the Renewed Normal. We compare the three phases in terms of four aspects of HRD and within virtual development relations, namely: work environment, competences, training, and skills. The chapter presents results from a literature review in SCOPUS database. We conclude that COVID-19 changed HRD, because technology changed the environment and, therefore, new competences were required. Therefore, a new form of training was also required, which, when in practice, originated new skills. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023.

'Gregor, are you Unstable? Check your Bandwidth horizontal ellipsis ': Adapting Kafka for Zoom in Hijinx Theatre's Metamorphosis

First performed live via Zoom in August 2020, Hijinx Theatre's Metamorphosis was overtly tied to the cultural moment of the COVID-19 pandemic, offering a sense of shifting between perspectives on reality in its adaptation of Franz Kafka's 1915 novella. The production itself appeared to be in a continual state of transformation: it shifted between scenes adapted from the novella, 'behind-the-scenes' vignettes in which the cast played fictionalised versions of themselves, and interactive interludes hosted by a compere-like character known as 'the barman'. This article explores the effect of adapting Kafka's story for the world of 2020 not only through the innovative ways in which Hijinx engaged with Zoom performance through their production at a time when experimentation with the platform as a theatrical space/medium was still very much in its infancy;but also through the manner in which the company adapted Kafka's novella to reflect the cultural moment of the early months of lockdown. In doing so, this article considers the ways in which Hijinx's Metamorphosis mercurially embodied both the hopelessness of life at the height of lockdown, and the optimism of being able to emerge from the tragedy and loss of the pandemic into a world with renewed hope.

Reading Kazuo Ishiguro in Times of Crisis

International crises are central to Kazuo Ishiguro's work. This introduction situates Ishiguro alongside contemporary global emergencies, including the COVD-19 pandemic, climate change, and reactions to emancipatory movements. It suggests that Ishiguro's work interrogates ‘crisis' by confronting his characters with both individual and collective crises, a theme explored in Catherine Charlwood's essay here. It shows how Ishiguro's work indirectly relates to the vast health crisis of COVID-19, which Sebastian Groes explores in his essay on empathy, (robot) ethics, digital well-being, and inequality. Connected to the pandemic, the introduction traces how Ishiguro's writing evidences growing concern for the climate crisis. The politics of migration are a key theme in Ishiguro: here Dominic Dean explores their longstanding and dangerous relationship with conspiracy theories, while Ivan Stacy, Melinda Dabis and Richard Robinson all connect Ishiguro to anxieties over resurgent nationalisms, cosmopolitan internationalisms, and complex transnationalisms. This introduction sets out how the essays in this Special Issue collectively explore the ethical difficulties in Ishiguro's crisis narratives, their refusals of easily satisfying resolutions, and their implicit critique of crisis frameworks for understanding political and historical problems. Sharply distinct from passivity or disinterest, Ishiguro's work elicits an attitude of humility against apparently perpetual, end-dominated crises. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Health Warnings: Reading Kazuo Ishiguro in Times of Crisis

This essay rereads Kazuo Ishiguro's depiction of the relationship between health, care and socio-economic inequality against the backdrop of our present time of crisis in which the COVID-19 pandemic features centrally. The pandemic has directly and indirectly laid bare and exacerbated various international crises and injustices that are shaping the structure of feeling of our times. Although Ishiguro's work does not (yet) address or represent the pandemic directly, the oeuvre is interesting for the ways it frames and responds to the many societal crises that characterise the early twenty-first century – and which the pandemic revealed and intensified. This essay explores specifically the ways in which Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (2005) thinks about health, well-being and care in contemporary society, and how it depicts our own troubled empathetic relationship to institutions like the NHS and its workers. It will proceed to explore how Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun (2021) considers a new kind of crisis, namely, the interrelation of digital inequality and digital well-being, a problem the COVID-19 crisis intensified and accelerated. It concludes with an analysis of Ishiguro's call for a new social contract that is rooted in a new attitude towards others and the world that is open and dialogic.

Critical Perspectives On Teachers And Teaching: An Appreciative Examination

With increasing levels of teacher accountability, more knowledge and an understanding of student achievement in reading, writing and scientific knowledge, educators and school leaders are confronted by the pace of change in the twenty-first century and the educational disruption of COVID-19. The aim of this chapter was to provide an overview of significant international forces considered in this book and an overview of the conceptual framework of appreciative inquiry. By adopting a practitioner-researcher perspective, we considered the problem of how to strengthen educational outcomes considering the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment results. While controversy abounds in the interpretation and education policy responses to trends in these surveys, there is a body of evidence about the roles teachers and teaching play in enhancing educational outcomes. Finally, we contend because of the appreciative approach;the book is new knowledge on enhancing educational outcomes essential for developing a well-educated population. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020.

Teachers' AI digital competencies and twenty-first century skills in the post-pandemic world.

The pandemic has catalyzed a significant shift to online/blended teaching and learning where teachers apply emerging technologies to enhance their students' learning outcomes. Artificial intelligence (AI) technology has gained its popularity in online learning environments during the pandemic to assist students' learning. However, many of these AI tools are new to teachers. They may not have rich technical knowledge to use AI educational applications to facilitate their teaching, not to mention developing students' AI digital capabilities. As such, there is a growing need for teachers to equip themselves with adequate digital competencies so as to use and teach AI in their teaching environments. There are few existing frameworks informing teachers of necessary AI competencies. This study first explores the opportunities and challenges of employing AI systems and how they can enhance teaching, learning and assessment. Then, aligning with generic digital competency frameworks, the DigCompEdu framework and P21's framework for twenty-first century learning were adapted and revised to accommodate AI technologies. Recommendations are proposed to support educators and researchers to promote AI education in their classrooms and academia.

Using the theory of planned behaviour to investigate Indonesian accounting educators' pedagogical strategies in online delivery

This study uses the theory of planned behaviour to investigate how Indonesian Accounting educators responded to a shift to on-line learning during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The study looks specifically at the degree to which educators used this as an opportunity to implement pedagogies that move beyond a content orientation, providing an impetus for increased attention to adaptive/soft-skills elements the literature refers to as ‘21st century learning'. The findings indicate that attitudes toward adoption, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control all played a significant role in determining Accounting educators' intentions to adopt twenty-first century learning pedagogical principles in Accounting online learning. Additionally, intention acts as a significant mediator of the indirect effect of these three variables on the adoption of twenty-first century learning in Accounting online learning. The concluding section lists limitations, practical implications, and suggestions for additional research. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Electronic-learning: Friend or Foe

The Internet has enormously expanded the domain of technology for diverse ages. The Internet poses enormous technological expansion potential. It can change not just how people accept and adopt knowledge, but also the traditional methodology and architecture of education systems. During the COVID-19 pandemic, e-learning is expanding and being recognized by higher education institutes for the benefit of society. Although e-learning has some shortcomings, it also has numerous benefits. Web-based education has made lifetime learning easier and erased geographical barriers by providing international-standard education. This improves the opportunity to learn and stay current with technology in a competitive environment. © The Author(s) 2022.

Documentary's Expanded Fields: New Media and the Twenty-First-Century Documentary

Documentary's Expanded Fields: New Media and the Twenty-First-Century Documentary offers a theoretical mapping of contemporary non-standard documentary practices enabled by the proliferation of new digital imaging, lightweight and non-operator digital cameras, multiscreen and interactive interfaces, and web 2.0 platforms. These emergent practices encompass digital data visualizations, digital films that experiment with the deliberate manipulation of photographic records, documentaries based on drone cameras, GoPros, and virtual reality (VR) interfaces, documentary installations in the gallery, interactive documentary (i-doc), citizens' vernacular online videos that document scenes of the protests such as the Arab Spring, the Hong Kong Protests, and the Black Lives Matter Movements, and new activist films, videos, and archiving projects that respond to those political upheavals.
Building on the interdisciplinary framework of documentary studies, digital media studies, and contemporary art criticism, Jihoon Kim investigates the ways in which these practices both challenge and update the aesthetic, epistemological, political, and ethical assumptions of traditional film-based documentary. Providing a diverse range of case studies that classify and examine these practices, the book argues that the new media technologies and the experiential platforms outside the movie theater, such as the gallery, the world wide web, and social media services, expand five horizons of documentary cinema: image, vision, dispositif, archive, and activism. This reconfiguration of these five horizons demonstrates that documentary cinema in the age of new media and platforms, which Kim labels as the "twenty-first-century documentary,” dynamically changes its boundaries while also exploring new experiences of reality and history in times of the contemporary crises across the globe, including the COVID-19 pandemic. © Oxford University Press 2022. All rights reserved.

Health Warnings: Reading Kazuo Ishiguro in Times of Crisis

This essay rereads Kazuo Ishiguro's depiction of the relationship between health, care and socio-economic inequality against the backdrop of our present time of crisis in which the COVID-19 pandemic features centrally. The pandemic has directly and indirectly laid bare and exacerbated various international crises and injustices that are shaping the structure of feeling of our times. Although Ishiguro's work does not (yet) address or represent the pandemic directly, the oeuvre is interesting for the ways it frames and responds to the many societal crises that characterise the early twenty-first century - and which the pandemic revealed and intensified. This essay explores specifically the ways in which Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (2005) thinks about health, well-being and care in contemporary society, and how it depicts our own troubled empathetic relationship to institutions like the NHS and its workers. It will proceed to explore how Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun (2021) considers a new kind of crisis, namely, the interrelation of digital inequality and digital well-being, a problem the COVID-19 crisis intensified and accelerated. It concludes with an analysis of Ishiguro's call for a new social contract that is rooted in a new attitude towards others and the world that is open and dialogic.

Iron and steel raw materials market at the beginning of the 21stcentury

Iron and steel raw materials market evolves rapidly. Global mine production of iron ores and concentrates, metallurgical coal, pig iron and crude steel exceeded 1 billion tonnes at the turn of the 20thand 21stcenturies or in the first 20 years of new millennium. International trade in these fields, as well as trade of such products as coke, ferroalloys and scrap, is also huge. Demand growth rate for steel raw materials, finished and semi-finished steel, and cast iron products is currently the highest among other mineral raw materials. Almost 90% of iron ore supplies come from Australia and Brazil, and the dominant consumer - China - is responsible for almost use. A geographic evolution in the steel production and the consumption of derived products has taken place. China has grown from a secondary crude steel producer and secondary steel products user to a leader with over 50% global share of steel production and a leading exporter of finished products. The iron and steel market has concentrated in the East and South Asia due to high consumption of imported steel raw materials in Japan and South Korea, rapid demand growth in India, investment in energy-efficient scrap processing in Turkey and Iran, while simultaneous reductions in the production capacity of the steel industry in the European Union, former Soviet Union and the US. Market disruption due to Covid-19 pandemic appears to be short-lived, and China has strengthened its position. In the first half of 2021, the prices of steel products increased dramatically, which immediately resulted in the change in prices of apartments and other constructions based on this most widely used metal. © 2022 Polish Geological Institute. All rights reserved.

TEACHING IN THE DIGITAL AGE DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

The present paper evaluates the way the digital age has changed how we teach at higher educational institutions and how that has helped us to adapt quickly to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The focus is on the way digital literacy has been re-defined in the last few years deeply marked by the pandemic and the way on-line resources and digital environment have been used at the Faculty of Classical and Modem Philology of Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" to ensure the continuation of the educational process in the conditions of a complete lock-down and pandemic restrictions. On the basis of the feedback by both students and university teaching staff, the paper analyzes the creation of new digital skills necessary for teaching the "digital natives" of today. The theoretical framework within which this analysis is carried out is closely connected to the study of the cognitive processes responsible for learning a foreign language and acquiring skills that are part of the new digital literacy of the twenty-first century. The conclusions can serve as a basis for suggested changes in the curriculum of teaching at the Faculty of Classical and Modem Philology at Sofia University.

Development and validation of students' digital competence scale (SDiCoS).

Towards the transition to blended and remote education, evaluating the levels of students' digital competence and designing educational programs to advance them is of paramount importance. Existing validated digital competence scales usually ignore either important digital skills needed or new socio-technological innovations. This study proposes and validates a comprehensive digital competence scale for students in higher education. The suggested instrument includes skills of online learning and collaboration, social media, smart and mobile devices, safety, and data protection. The scale was evaluated on a sample of 156 undergraduate and postgraduate students just before and at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. The final scale is composed of 28 items and six digital competence components. The evaluation study revealed valid results in terms of model fit criteria, factor loadings, internal validity, and reliability. Individual factors like the students' field of study, computer experience and age revealed significant associations to the scale components, while gender revealed no significant differences. The suggested scale can be useful to the design of new actions and policies towards remote education and the digital skills' development of adult learners.

Development and validation of students’ digital competence scale (SDiCoS): Revista de Universidad y Sociedad del Conocimiento

Towards the transition to blended and remote education, evaluating the levels of students’ digital competence and designing educational programs to advance them is of paramount importance. Existing validated digital competence scales usually ignore either important digital skills needed or new socio-technological innovations. This study proposes and validates a comprehensive digital competence scale for students in higher education. The suggested instrument includes skills of online learning and collaboration, social media, smart and mobile devices, safety, and data protection. The scale was evaluated on a sample of 156 undergraduate and postgraduate students just before and at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. The final scale is composed of 28 items and six digital competence components. The evaluation study revealed valid results in terms of model fit criteria, factor loadings, internal validity, and reliability. Individual factors like the students’ field of study, computer experience and age revealed significant associations to the scale components, while gender revealed no significant differences. The suggested scale can be useful to the design of new actions and policies towards remote education and the digital skills’ development of adult learners.

Components of Education 4.0 in 21st Century Skills Frameworks: Systematic Review

Responsive educational proposals to develop skills to meet the demands of Industry 4.0 have become imperative to guarantee inclusive, equitable, and quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, also reducing the negative impact of COVID‐19 and the major post‐pandemic social issues. This article analyzes which components of Education 4.0 have been considered in 21st century skills frameworks and identifies the teaching and learning methods and key stakeholders impacted. We conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) with research questions to highlight studies that address 21st century frameworks worldwide, identifying which teaching–earning strategies contain 4.0 components, their learning dimensions, and the targeted stakeholders. The findings allowed us to identify opportunities to create or improve 21st century skills frameworks with the required Education 4.0 components to develop future skills. Our study revealed the absence of these frameworks for teachers and schools. Most are oriented toward students, developing competencies through the dimensions of character, meta‐learning, and linking active learning teaching strategies. This work presents studies incorporating innovative educational practices and the core Education 4.0 components. It concludes with a reflection on creating educational models to develop complex‐reasoning competencies and auto‐systemic thinking to support problem‐solving and address social needs. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.