Australia's increasingly diverse classrooms include growing numbers of refugee-background students whose educational experiences are shaped by cultural, linguistic, and socio-emotional complexity. Yet assessment in Australian schools still relies heavily on standardised, language-dependent, norm-referenced measures that privilege monolingual, middle-class, Eurocentric benchmarks. These systems often overlook multilingual repertoires and culturally mediated ways of demonstrating knowledge, misrepresenting capability and reinforcing structural inequities. This systematic review examines how Culturally Responsive Assessment (CRA) can address such bias and promote equity for refugee-background learners in Australian K–12 schools.Guided by the PRISMA 2020 framework, a systematic search of Scopus, ERIC, Web of Science, ProQuest, and Google Scholar identified 21 peer-reviewed studies published between 2010 and 2025. The corpus included qualitative, mixed-methods, conceptual, and review-based research. Data extraction and coding, managed in NVivo, followed Thomas and Harden’s (2008) thematic synthesis approach and were informed by Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory.Findings show that standardised assessments such as NAPLAN, grounded in monolingual, Eurocentric, and middle-class norms, systematically misrepresent refugee-background students' knowledge and potential. By contrast, CRA practices—arts-based, narrative, multilingual, and community co-designed tasks—recast assessment as multimodal, relational, and dialogic, foregrounding students’ cultural identities, linguistic resources, and participatory agency. These practices enact key Vygotskian concepts of mediation, cultural tools, and the zone of proximal development by emphasising what learners can do with scaffolded support rather than decontextualised written performance. However, CRA implementation is constrained by test-centric accountability regimes, tokenistic school–community engagement, fragmented policy settings, and gaps in teacher preparation and trauma-informed support.The review concludes that CRA can serve as a transformative framework for assessment equity when embedded within a broader sociocultural–intersectional, trauma-informed, and socioecological agenda. It proposes a typology of four systemic domains—policy alignment, teacher professional capacity, community partnership and co-design, and trauma-informed integration—as key leverage points for reform to move CRA from isolated classroom innovation toward sustained institutional change.

This paper examines the interactions between planning systems, legal frameworks and green infrastructure (GI) assets in informal settlements by analysing the case of Amirieh, Iran. It seeks to address gaps in the literature by examining how, despite the importance of promoting sustainable development in informal urban contexts, planning dynamics may contribute to the degradation of GI in rapidly urbanising areas. Using a qualitative research approach, the paper demonstrates how laws intended to protect green areas can actually accelerate their erosion in an environment of perverse incentives and weak institutions. It highlights how the neglect of public environmental benefits in favour of capital development can exacerbate existing social inequalities in an informal settlement. • This paper illustrates how formal legal plans and the Acts designed to conserve Agricultural and garden lands, jointly accelerate the loss of Amirieh’s gardens to housing, through formalisation degrading GI. • Advances a push–pull explanatory framework: political-institutional “pull” (short tenures, visible-project bias, entrepreneurial municipal finance, legal loopholes) versus environmental/financial “push” (drought, water scarcity, rising costs, falling yields) driving GI loss. • Fills a documented lacuna in urban greening scholarship by analysing how formal frameworks undermine GI specifically in an informal-settlement context, extending Global South evidence. • Empirically substantiated through 37 interviews, structured field observation, and multi-scalar plan review with thematic analysis and triangulation. • Identifies socio-environmental consequences, loss of ecosystem services, livelihoods and cultural identity, and pathways to environmental injustice/green gentrification, worsening heat, flooding and air-quality risks.

Synchronizing the water, energy and food nexus in the Makran coastal region: A new approach using indigenous architectural patterns

Digital transformation is often framed as a story about technology, yet in practice, it is also a story about people, how they learn, share, and adapt within their own cultural contexts. This study examines Pulau Breueh, a small island in Aceh, Indonesia, where daily life and digital change intersect in subtle but meaningful ways. Using a qualitative approach involving 135 interviews, focus group discussions, field observations, and short surveys, the research explores how residents navigate weak connectivity, high data costs, and limited digital training. Despite these constraints, local youth act as digital mentors for elders, mothers exchange information through WhatsApp groups, and traditional stories are increasingly shared online. These practices illustrate a form of cultural-digital resilience, a community's ability to integrate technology into its social and cultural rhythms rather than allowing it to disrupt them. The findings suggest that the digital divide in remote islands is not solely about infrastructure, but about connection, dignity, and shared identity. By highlighting a Global South perspective, this study contributes to international debates on digital inclusion and argues that inclusive digital transformation must begin with local meaning, not merely technological access. • Explores how remote island communities integrate digital tools into local cultural rhythms, reflecting cultural-digital resilience. • Identifies multidimensional digital divides shaped by infrastructure, literacy, and generational differences. • Highlights youth-led digital mentoring as a key mechanism driving intergenerational inclusion. • Shows how digitalization supports the preservation and visibility of local culture and identity. • Proposes community-driven and culturally grounded strategies for inclusive digital transformation in remote islands.

Orange Economy and Its Role in Enhancing the Cultural Identity of the Egyptian Tourist Destination

ABSTRACT Past research often argues that the growing influence of external society within ethnic communities is challenging ethnic groups’ identities. However, this article argues that external influence represents only one part of the broader challenges that ethnic groups face. This study presents lessons from the cultural context of a Lua ethnic community in Northern Thailand that is undergoing change shaped by external factors, internal cultural dynamics, and the increasing role of the education system in constructing local culture as ‘other.’ This argument challenges the conventional assumption that the education system necessarily serves as an important mechanism for preserving ethnic groups’ cultural identity. Instead, our findings show that when education is used without sufficient caution and cultural sensitivity, it can produce negative consequences for ethnic cultural identity.

Active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) are essential for global health, yet their use and release into the environment contribute to the transgression of the Earth System Boundary for Novel Entities. This study proposes a novel framework for an Environmentally Safe and Just Pharmacy, establishing 4 overarching criteria and 12 subcriteria designed to ensure that the pharmaceutical lifecycle is environmentally safe and just from a novel entities perspective. Using the extensive expertise of our global author group, we conclude that current practices for API design and development, approval and monitoring, use and disposal are only partially or poorly aligned with our criteria. Key vulnerabilities include a lack of environmental considerations in early-stage drug design, widespread exceedances of environmental concentrations deemed safe to ecosystems, persistent selection for antimicrobial resistance in the environment, and severe data gaps in low- and middle-income countries. We further highlight environmental injustices, particularly for Indigenous and marginalized communities whose cultural identities and livelihoods are compromised by chemical contamination. To address these challenges, we present a 10-point roadmap for a transition to a sustainable future by 2050. This plan includes calls for green chemistry investments, the integration of social and cultural equity into risk assessments, and the global upgrade of treatment and management infrastructure. We emphasize that solutions to pharmaceutical impacts must be culturally sensitive and safeguard the dignity of vulnerable populations to ensure a truly just transition that operates within Earth System Boundaries.

Traditional medicinal knowledge is part of traditional knowledge and is also recognized as communal intellectual property, as stipulated in Article 18B paragraph (2) of the Indonesian Constitution concerning the traditional rights of communities, and Article 28I paragraph (3) of the Constitution regarding respect for cultural identity and the rights of traditional communities.This study aims to analyze the protection of traditional medicinal knowledge as communal intellectual property in Aceh and the role of women in managing traditional medicinal knowledge in Aceh. This research employs a qualitative method with an empirical legal approach, using both primary and secondary data. Primary data were collected through structured interviews with respondents and informants.The findings indicate that there is currently no protection for traditional medicinal knowledge as communal intellectual property (CIP) in Aceh, as it has not yet been documented or recorded. The Acehnese community preserves traditional medicinal knowledge orally, passing it down to the next generation within their families particularly among women who manage herbal recipes making this knowledge highly vulnerable to loss and difficult to protect from biopiracy. Women hold a strategic role as managers, inheritors, and innovators in the development of traditional medicinal knowledge, whether through family healing practices, customary rituals, or community-based treatments.

Neolithic sites are key material remains of the origin of Chinese civilization, and the public dissemination of their archaeological findings is an important path to activate early civilization and strengthen cultural identity. As the core platform for disseminating archaeological findings to the public, museums' curatorial concepts and implementation methods directly determine the efficiency of the transformation of archaeological findings. This article takes the exhibition of Neolithic sites as the research object, by drawing on the curatorial practices of Liangzhu Museum and Xi'an Banpo Museum and relying on The Third National Census of Cultural Relics data and official museum public information, systematically analyzes the diverse value of public transformation of archaeological findings, and explains the core function of museum curation in the public transformation of such findings. Research has found that, as noted by McDowall (2023), current Neolithic site exhibitions present practical problems including rigid forms, lagging public transformation, insufficient popular science interpretation, and uneven regional development. On this basis, this article proposes optimization paths such as innovative exhibition forms, rapid transformation of archaeological findings, optimization of popular science interpretation, and regional resource coordination, which can provide feasible references for the popularization and dissemination of archaeological findings in the Neolithic Age and the inheritance and popularization of early Chinese civilization.

ABSTRACT Background Bullying in multicultural school environments is typically conceptualised as majority students targeting minorities. However, this overlooks the nuanced dynamics within minority groups themselves, where cultural identity, acculturation strategies, and intra-group hierarchies can shape peer interactions. Existing anti-bullying frameworks often fail to capture these complexities, limiting the effectiveness of interventions. Purpose This study aimed to explore the phenomenon of bullying among minority students, with a specific focus on intra-minority dynamics. It investigated how inclusive educational practices mediated bullying behaviours and examined the roles of identity negotiation, microaggressions, and teacher-student perceptions in shaping bullying experiences. Method A qualitative, multiple-case study design was employed, involving semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and classroom observations with 24 students and eight secondary school teachers from culturally diverse Norwegian schools. Thematic analysis identified patterns across the data. Comparative insights were drawn by examining variations in school practices and cultural responsiveness. Findings Bullying among minority students often stemmed from intra-group tensions related to cultural authenticity, language, and divergent acculturation strategies. While overt bullying by majority students was infrequent, minority students reported persistent experiences of microaggressions and social exclusion, both from peers and within their own ethnic communities. Teachers frequently underestimated these behaviours due to linguistic and cultural barriers. Inclusive practices such as cooperative learning, culturally responsive teaching, and student-led initiatives mitigated bullying when consistently applied. However, there was variation in institutional commitment and implementation. Symbolic multicultural events were insufficient to address the roots of exclusion. Conclusion Bullying in multicultural schools is an issue that cannot be adequately addressed through majority-minority frameworks. Intra-minority bullying presents unique challenges that demand culturally informed, whole-school interventions. Teacher training, student empowerment, and structured intergroup contact are essential for fostering inclusive school climates.

To evaluate the clinical utility of a pragmatic, off-label multiplex PCR strategy using FilmArray® panels on corneal swabs in suspected infectious keratitis, with emphasis on diagnostic yield, turnaround time, and early therapeutic impact in routine care. This prospective, single-center observational study was conducted over 24 months (January 2024-December 2025) at a tertiary referral center. In episodes of clinically suspected infectious keratitis, corneal swabs were immersed in brain-heart infusion medium. A FilmArray® Meningitis/Encephalitis (ME) panel was used as first-line testing, with selective FilmArray® Blood Culture Identification 2 (BCID2) panel use when clinically indicated. Conventional bacterial and fungal cultures were systematically performed. Outcomes included diagnostic yield of the PCR algorithm, turnaround time (TAT), concordance patterns with culture, and early treatment changes after PCR results. Fifty episodes were included. The multiplex PCR algorithm (ME ± BCID2) detected at least one pathogen in 50% of cases, with viral detections, mainly herpes simplex virus type 1, accounting for a substantial proportion of PCR-positive results. Conventional culture was positive in 32% of cases and identified bacterial and/or fungal pathogens. Median TAT was 6.5h for PCR versus 79h for culture, corresponding to a median reduction of 72.5h. PCR findings were associated with treatment modification within 24h in 32% of cases, with additional changes after 48h in 6%, predominantly antiviral initiation or targeted antimicrobial adjustment. In this real-world exploratory study, the main advantage of the pragmatic FilmArray® strategy was the marked reduction in turnaround time compared with culture, providing microbiological information within hours rather than days. Because PCR and culture differ fundamentally in detectable pathogen classes, particularly due to viral detection by PCR, these findings should not be interpreted as evidence of diagnostic superiority. FilmArray® testing may serve as a complementary approach in selected severe, atypical, pretreated, or culture-negative keratitis cases when rapid therapeutic decisions are needed.

This article examines cultural and idiomatic narratives in South African Indigenous music, with specific reference to Johnny Dimba’s “Dear Msakazi” and Buselaphi’s “Umendo.” The analysis is informed by conceptual metaphor theory (CMT), which conceptualises metaphor not merely as a stylistic or rhetorical device but as a fundamental cognitive and cultural mechanism through which individuals and communities structure experience and produce meaning. This theoretical perspective is particularly suited to analysing isiZulu song texts, where metaphor functions as a culturally embedded resource for articulating communal values, identity, and socio-political critique. Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative research design grounded in close textual and thematic analysis of selected song lyrics, focusing on cultural codes, implicit meanings, and the negotiation of social realities embedded in musical expression. The findings indicate that the songs function as archives of cultural memory and collective identity, employ metaphorical and idiomatic language to convey emotional depth and social commentary, and reflect ongoing tensions between tradition and modernity within urban African contexts. The article concludes that Indigenous African music constitutes a dynamic cultural arena in which communities negotiate identity, validate lived experiences, and engage critically with socio-political realities, thereby contributing to both cultural continuity and broader public discourse.

ABSTRACT Teacher leadership plays a key role in shaping students’ academic engagement, classroom climate, and social development. In increasingly diverse Swedish schools, understanding students’ perceptions of teacher leadership has become particularly important. This study examines students’ perceptions of teacher leadership styles in Swedish classrooms, focusing on the qualities associated with effective leadership. Using a quantitative design, data were collected through a structured questionnaire administered to 81 students in two Swedish schools, the majority of whom had immigrant backgrounds. Findings indicate a clear preference for the authoritative leadership style, which students associated with warmth, structure, and mutual respect. Democratic leadership was viewed positively, though less strongly, whereas authoritarian and laissez-faire styles were viewed less favorably. These findings highlight the importance of balanced leadership approaches that combine clear expectations with supportive teacher–student relationships, particularly in culturally and linguistically diverse educational settings.

This case study examined the culturally responsive practices of an art therapist working with women experiencing domestic violence within a Han Chinese cultural context in Taiwan. Confucian traditions significantly influence the cultural identity of this majority population. The participant, a Taiwanese art therapist residing in Taiwan, reflected on her clinical experiences through two unstructured, in-depth interviews. Thematic analysis revealed three interrelated cultural themes related to patriarchal values and traditional gender expectations, as well as four culturally relevant therapeutic themes. The findings underscore the importance for art therapists to move beyond superficial adjustments and actively engage with clients’ sociocultural realities, while maintaining ongoing critical self-reflexivity in their practice.

ABSTRACT The integration of large language models in North African universities raises issues apart from efficiency and academic integrity. This paper seeks to challenge the epistemological authority of AI to produce cultural knowledge and to examine whether the geopolitical origin of AI training data produces discursive formations in the portrayal of Moroccan identity and whether epistemological repositioning could counteract such discourses. By employing data colonialism proposed by Couldry and Mejias and Fairclough's three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis, this audit explores the representations generated by Gemini, Claude, Jais, and ChatGPT in four thematic areas: cultural identity and tradition, colonial past and coexistence of Jews and Muslims, Amazigh identity, and Africa and migration. Each prompt is tested in standard and resistant modes, producing 128 response units analysed at the textual, discursive, and social practice levels. First, all four models show orientalist discourse formation when prompted about cultural identity, thus demonstrating systematic bias and not a malfunction of the platform. Second, certain patterns emerge in how these models react, which corroborate the assumption that AI training data composition is shaped by colonial power dynamics. Third, Jais, the top-performing Arabic open-weight model, provides a theoretical challenge since orientalist discourse persists despite cultural appreciation.

The BioFire FilmArray Blood Culture Identification 2 (BCID2; bioMérieux, Marcy-l'Étoile, France) panel enables the rapid detection of bloodstream pathogens directly from positive blood cultures. However, in polymicrobial cultures involving coagulase-negative staphylococci (CoNS), Staphylococcus epidermidis detection by BCID2 may not always align with standard culture results. We evaluated whether analyzing ΔCp-defined as the difference in crossing point (Cp) values between the Staphylococcus genus target and the S. epidermidis species-specific target in BIOFIRE FIREWORKS software, as a within-system proxy for relative target abundance-along with multicolony subculture could improve result interpretation. Between April and September 2025, the BCID2 results from 20 patients at a tertiary hospital in Korea indicated S. epidermidis. These results were compared with standard culture and multicolony subculture findings. Conventional blood culture confirmed S. epidermidis in 12 cases, whereas eight bottles grew other CoNS. Multicolony identification demonstrated S. epidermidis co-detection in six of these BCID2-culture-discrepant cases. Amplification curve analysis revealed significantly higher ΔCp values in discrepant cases than in concordant cases (+0.5 to +11.5 vs. -0.7 to +0.2 cycles; median 3.55 vs. -0.15 cycles; P =0.0002). Hence, ΔCp analysis, supported by subculture, may help identify potential BCID2-culture discrepancies in mixed CoNS cases.

This article examines how sacred landscapes are created, contested, and reimagined within the Deori community of Assam, Northeast India, focusing on the rituals and memory surrounding Goddess Kesaikhaiti. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, oral traditions, and spatial analysis, the study investigates how sites such as the bolisaal (sacrificial space) and the Tamreswari temple ruins serve as focal points for negotiating indigenous, Vedic, and modern influences. Situating the analysis within the frameworks of cultural geography, spatial memory, and political ecology, the article demonstrates how sacredness is actively formed through ritual practice, landscape symbolism, and collective memory. The research highlights how sacred spaces serve as arenas for the ongoing assertion of cultural identity and community resilience amid historical disruption and change. By foregrounding the intersections of spirituality, ecology, and group belonging, the article offers new insights into the territoriality of faith and the politics of sacred space within evolving cultural landscapes.

This study examines the Holy Aruosa Cathedral in Benin City, Nigeria, as a unique example of religious syncretism that blends traditional Edo spirituality with Christian elements introduced in the 16th century. Often misunderstood or reduced to stereotypes, the cathedral represents cultural resilience and spiritual innovation, providing insight into the adaptive nature of the Edo people. Using a qualitative case study approach, data was collected through oral interviews with clergy, congregants, and community leaders, as well as participant observation of worship service and archival materials. By analysing oral histories and the Book of Saint Aruosa, the paper explores the origins, structure, and enduring role of the cathedral in preserving cultural identity, fostering community, and challenging conventional narratives of |syncretism. The findings underscore the importance of local perspectives in understanding how faith and culture intertwine, demonstrating how the cathedral continues to embody the dynamic integration of Nigerian heritage with external religious influences.

An exploratory study of loneliness in migrant-origin communities due to transforming ethnic public spaces.

ABSTRACT This study examine how generative AI empowers tourist value co-creation in smart tourism scenescapes and its implications for destination governance. Integrating S – O – R and cognition – affect – conation, we propose an SCAR model linking five AI scenescape factors (guidance, storytelling, sensing, collaboration, operation) to perceived value, cultural identity, participation, and co-creation. Survey data from 426 visitors in three AI-enabled towns in Zhejiang, China were analysed using PLS-SEM, ANN, and NCA, complemented by interviews. Storytelling and collaboration are strongest; operation is least salient. Perceived value boosts identity and participation, with identity the stronger mediator.