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The purpose of the paper is to examine the effect of the physical environment on employee commitment. It explores how favourable working conditions can affect an employee's sense of well‐being which in turn can generate higher levels of employee commitment.

A questionnaire instrument based upon previously validated measures was completed by 65 front line call centre employees. The Baron and Kenny four‐step procedure for testing mediation effects was adopted.

The statistical analysis confirms that employee well‐being mediates the relationship between physical environment and employee commitment.

The call centre industry needs to make employees more autonomous by reducing the level of scripting, encouraging greater involvement and participation in work systems and setting targets and the organization of regular team events.

This article explores the adoption of a transcultural education approach, rather than multicultural or intercultural education, and the implications this would have for educational practice. With the multiple issues associated with multicultural and intercultural education, the authors emphasize the need for a definitive definition of the term “transcultural” in the educational literature, as well as a new model of transcultural education. Addressed in the article are: (a) the contribution of transdisciplinary teaming to the definition and practice of transcultural education; (b) the meaning of “trans” in the term, transcultural; (c) a discussion of culture and individuality related to education; and (d) possible conclusions to facilitate dialogue regarding the future of transcultural education. Twelve vignettes are included to provide real world examples of the need for a paradigm of transcultural education.

Drawing on Shakespeare, and in particular Hamlet's psychological crisis, this paper examines the relationship between emotions and meaning, a key theme in artistic work since Aristotle but, it is argued, largely ignored in psychology and the social sciences. Now, however, against a background of international terrorism, lessons are being learned from literature's insights.

The purpose of this paper is to examine multiple dimensions of reflexive and reciprocal mentorship as they work through the fear of teaching challenging and politically charged ideas.

This piece is a case study of the complex instances of reciprocal mentorship within a teacher education program. Objects of analysis included the informal educational experiences from the bi-monthly meetings and student-teaching experiences. Semi-structured interviews, field notes, interpersonal discussion and the authors’ own reflections were used as data sources.

The authors found that having difficult conversations in informal spaces provided social studies teacher candidates with the opportunity to get more comfortable with challenging conversations; that mentorship is helpful when shifting context between formal and informal spaces; and that once these teachers grew more comfortable, they moved from mentee to mentor with support and guidance from their own mentors. The authors conclude by providing several implications for pre-service teachers, teacher and teacher educators, as they help social studies practitioners work with and beyond the politics of fear.

Limitations such as subjectivity, generalizability and implementation exist. Factors such as personality, program, cultural background, lived experience and other elements played a role in the findings. Therefore, the authors do not suggest these are monolithic claims about the nature of mentorship, teacher education or teaching, but rather the authors wish to share these findings and recommendations.

The authors argue that three major findings emerged from the data. First, informal spaces are valuable for initiating difficult conversations among mentors and mentees. Second, shifting between formal and informal spaces can be uncomfortable, but allow for mentoring opportunities during these challenging instances of becoming. Third, moving from mentee to mentor includes valuable reciprocal mentorship within a learning community.

This research project is grounded in the needs of the participants and researchers. To the authors’ knowledge, a project of this type with similar participants has not been done.

Purpose – Role-taking refusal was a foundational problem in Mead's work but was ignored by subsequent interactionists who focused on the benefits of role-taking – empathy and solidarity – but failed to examine how they are destroyed or crippled from emerging as inclusionary aspects of social consciousness. Role-taking refusal constitutes both the microfoundation of dehumanization in the case of the oppressor and, in the case of the oppressed, the microfoundation of resistance. Role-taking refusal is linked to Giddens's notion of the reflective project of the self, Omi and Winant's racial formation theory, Feagin's theory of systemic racism, and the perspective of Critical Race Theory.

Methodology – I shall portray role-taking refusal by using historical, theoretical, and empirical works, especially ethnographic studies.

Social implications – The oppressed know the image their oppressors have of them. Refusing to internalize this image is the first step – the microfoundation – of resistance. Role-taking refusal in the oppressed fosters critical consciousness, which, if solidarity with others is formed, can lead to collective action and, possibly, permanent institutional change.

Originality – “The superiority delusion” is the paradigmatic ideology of all oppressors, deployed to justify their power, privilege, and prestige. This delusion is maintained by the microfoundation of dehumanization, which is a systematic refusal to role-take from those over whom oppressors oppress. All other ideologies that justify oppression are derived from some form of “the superiority delusion,” identifying for the first time role-taking refusal as paradoxically both the original sin of social relations and the foundation of social resistance.

In recent years there has been a veritable explosion in Fanonian studies and this would be a welcome development given the scope and depth of Fanon's insights. Unfortunately, Fanon's work itself has been “post-alized” in recent years especially in the Western literary academy. This exploration of Fanon's work has, for the most part, been in the form of “textual” analyses which tend to obfuscate the radical humanistic underpinnings of Fanon's writings. Many postcolonial and postmodern discourses which have appropriated Fanon to buttress their valorization of “difference” and “identity politics” in an era hostile to universalism and humanism have, in effect, excised the critical, normative, and revolutionary humanist vision which informs Fanon's oeuvre. As such, these renderings have robbed Fanon's work of the critical insights and interpretive frameworks that it offers in confronting some of the pressing issues of our day: questions of identity politics, difference, class, agency, political struggle, etc. The intent of this paper is to argue that Fanon offers a dialetical framework for discerning relationships of identity as ideological constructions which mediate between structurally located hegemonic blocs and the conciousness of empirical subjects, and, which clearly situates identity and difference within broader networks of domination and exploitation by navigating a course between the Structure/ agency; humanism/anti-humanism binaries that have dominated contemporary social thought.

This study aims to investigate multimodal composition as an exercise or tool for teaching students theory building. To illustrate, an analysis of artifacts comprising a student’s multimodal composition, which was created in response to a multipart literacy assignment on theorizing Blackness, is analyzed.

Afrocentricity served as both theoretical moor and research methodology. Qualitative case study, focusing on the case of an individual student, was the research method used.

Multimodal composition was an effective exercise for surfacing the multidimensionality of a student’s complex knowledge while simultaneously placing the student in the powerful position of theorist. The process of composing multimodally integrated reading, writing and speaking skills while revealing the focal student’s need for targeted writing intervention.

The study evidences multimodal composition as a useful exercise for capturing students’ nuanced interpretations or students’ critical theorizing as well as meaningfully incorporating and assessing students’ literacy skills.

Exposure to preexisting theory alone relegates students to the realm of passive knowledge consumers. This undermines the emancipatory and justice-oriented objectives of critical education, which ideally contributes to social change by challenging dominant power structures and distorted perspectives of marginalized persons. To be empowered agentic learners, students need to be both taught how to theorize and engaged as theorists. This study shows how multimodal composition can be used as a liberatory literacy tool for those intertwined pedagogical purposes.

This research investigates three major research questions. First, how does brand alliance type, defined by a partner's location and brand quality, affect consumers' emotional value perceptions of higher education brand alliances for dual-degree programs? Second, does perceived brand fit mediate the relationship between brand alliance type and emotional value perceptions? Third, do individual differences in world-mindedness moderate the influence of brand alliance type on emotional value perceptions?

In total, two experiments are performed. Experiment one examines the effect of brand alliance type, at varying combinations of partner brand quality and partner location (domestic or foreign), on consumers' emotional value perceptions. Experiment two examines the moderating role of world-mindedness in the relationship between brand alliance type and consumers' emotional value perceptions.

Results provide evidence that consumers' perception of brand fit mediates the relationship between brand alliance type and consumers' emotional value perceptions of the alliance. Results also indicate that world-mindedness moderates the relationship between brand alliance type and emotional value perceptions.

This research extends the previous literature on higher education dual-degree brand alliances and introduces world-mindedness as an important consumer-based characteristic to consider in this line of research. It answers calls for more research on higher education branding and calls for research into the potential mediating role and importance of brand fit. It provides several theoretical and managerial implications relevant to the higher education brand alliances, particularly in dual-degree programs.