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This study aims to build on Gee’s (2003) earlier question exploring specifically the learning processes associated with broadening cultural empathy and exploring personal bias through gameplay in the role-playing game, Oblivion.

Methodology for this case study (Stake, 1995) was informed by narrative (Reissman, 2001) methods that focused on collecting descriptions of the unique experiences of participants while being engaged in gameplay and their personal reflections synthesizing game-based engagement and course content. “Narrative research offers the possibility of exploring nuances and interrelationships among aspects of experience that the reader might better understand other related situations” (Josselson, p. 239). Our study focused on using narrative research methods to examine embodiment within the fictional world of the game as an experiential participatory-learning experience.

All participants indicated that the most salient learning experiences of the course was playing the game. The process participants underwent the experience of an event in the game and linked this gaming experience to their personal real-life reaction combined with emotions and thoughts. They then self-reflected on those reactions, which cumulatively contributed to self-reported increased self-awareness in the areas of personal bias, stereotypes, attitudes, values, beliefs and privilege. Three themes were identified from the data, namely, increase or variance in levels of self-awareness, navigating unfamiliar cultural systems and increased understanding and cognitive empathy for others. In addition, a fourth additional theme of embodiment and the value of embodiment were identified.

Lacking in the findings were reports by participants regarding application of skills to different cultural populations. Future research will focus on how integration of application of skills can be facilitated using similar pedagogical practices. Because this study included a small number of participants who were counseling students in a master’s program, the applicability of the findings to other student populations is limited. Further research would need to determine whether or not the findings could be replicated with other types of students.

Embedding the intervention within the structure of a course appeared to provide a supportive and safe space for experiencing embodied selves, it also provided a mode for performing their future selves for and with colleagues experiencing similar situations. In this way, they were able to venture with and among their colleagues toward a fuller understanding of self, and particularly in conjunction to diverse populations. These features of the intervention appeared to work in concert together holistically affording a space where they could be vulnerable enough, open enough, to begin questioning their central thoughts and beliefs and increase their empathy for others who are different.

Using the game of Oblivion allowed our students to have an embodied experience in a virtual space where they got to experience being in a completely different culture and experience culture shock. They had to make decisions that forced them to review their belief systems, go against their belief systems, or explore options that were against their belief systems in a safe way with no real-life repercussions. This embodied experience allowed our participants to engage in behaviors that none would dare to do in their real world and provided a comfort zone to explore taboo subjects.

Embedding the game within the curriculum encouraged participants to experience feelings of embodied empathy (Gee, 2010). Oblivion assisted in this process by providing participants the opportunity to gain entry into a unique designed world, a realistic but pseudo-cultural world replete with social and institutional structures both familiar and foreign to their real life. This appeared to provide a realistic manifestation of self, positioning participants toward experiencing embodied empathy for the designed scenarios in the game.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how a popular computer game, The Sims2, engages players in computing practices that are foundational to information technology (IT) fluency, and to draw implications for engaging young people, particularly girls and women, in computer‐related learning.

The analysis is framed within a conceptual perspective on learning as a process of acquiring situated understandings through participation in meaningful activity. The paper draws on two years of work with girls developing IT fluency through playing and modding The Sims. It also draws on interviews with adult women who are highly engaged in creating Sims content.

The paper identifies a set of practices inherent in Sims game play that are foundational to IT fluency: managing complex systems; cheating and glitching; tinkering with tools; and making, manipulating, and reasoning with spatial representations.

The paper suggests how existing practices associated with games might be leveraged for the development of IT fluencies.

This study contributes to efforts aimed at rethinking how educators might conceptualize and support the development of IT fluencies. The paper offers new perspectives on the nature of IT fluency in the context of participatory culture and productive uses of new media.

The World Bank's Education Strategy 2020 is the latest in a line of education-related strategies focused on supporting economic development in countries worldwide through systematic and targeted educational reform. Yet, the Bank has many critics and a history of developing educational policies that do as much to create inequality in education as to develop it. This chapter introduces the theme of the volume by focusing on the link between the World Bank's education strategy development and poverty reduction. The key emphasis of this volume is the development of the Bank's Education Strategy 2020 and how it is shaped by empirical evidence, contextualized by national and regional variations in education and the economy, and the legacy of World Bank educational involvement. This introductory chapter concludes by summarizing the ways in which each of the volume's chapters contribute to this theme, and suggests how the debates related to the Bank's education strategies and policies can move forward and contribute to educational improvement, economic development, and poverty reduction worldwide.

It has been argued that providing girls equal access to schools will remedy many social and economic problems, but much of the research regarding girls and schools fails to consider participation in schools within the context of gendered institutions. Failing to recognize gender as an institutionalization of power perpetuates inequalities, particularly in the context of schools. This article examines the complexities of gender inequality within schools in a Nepalese village. I discuss how gendered socialization patterns within the gendered institutions of family and school constrain students, especially girls. Gender, however, is socially constructed and fluid; it can be negotiated and changed.

The principal purposes of this paper are to provide normative advice in terms of managing the British Monarchy as a Corporate Heritage Brand and to reveal the efficacy of examining a brand's history for corporate heritage brands generally.

Taking a case history approach, the paper examines critical events in the Crown's history. It is also informed by the diverse literatures on the British Monarchy and also marshals the identity literatures and the nascent literature relating to corporate brands. Six critical incidents that have shaped the monarchy over the last millennium provide the principal data source.

In scrutinising key events from the institution's historiography it was found that the management and maintenance of the Crown as a corporate brand entail concern with issues relating to: continuity (maintaining heritage and symbolism); visibility (having a meaningful and prominent public profile); strategy (anticipating and enacting change); sensitivity (rapid response to crises); respectability (retaining public favour); and empathy (acknowledging that brand ownership resides with the public). Taking an integrationist perspective, the efficacy of adopting a corporate marketing approach/philosophy is also highlighted.

A framework for managing Corporate Heritage is outlined and is called “Chronicling the Corporate Brand”. In addition to Bagehot's dictum that the British Monarch had a constitutional obligation to encourage, advise and warn the government of the day, the author concludes that the Sovereign has a critical societal role and must be dutiful, devoted and dedicated to Her (His) subjects.

This is one of the first papers to examine the British Monarchy through a corporate branding lens. It confirms that the Crown is analogous to a corporate brand and, therefore, ought to be managed as such.

Life studies are a rich source for further research on the role of the Afro‐American woman in society. They are especially useful to gain a better understanding of the Afro‐American experience and to show the joys, sorrows, needs, and ideals of the Afro‐American woman as she struggles from day to day.

Historical research suggests that English monarchs at the start of the early modern era (ca. 1500‐1800) followed a communication model this paper tentatively names “instructional”, characterised by one‐way communication intended to instruct the public in a correct worldview and to coach proper behaviour. There is evidence that this instructional model segued into recognisably modern models as the English Crown lost power between the reigns of Elizabeth I and George III, suggesting a link between the sender’s power and the communication techniques the sender employed.

ROYAL Alderman T. A. Abbott of Manchester, dealt with somewhat severely by Dr. Savage in his A Librarian's Memories, had at least enthusiasm for libraries. He was mightily honoured when he became President at our Manchester Conference in 1921. “We are the Royal Library Association”, he declared and should call ourselves that; haven't we a Royal Charter? Our recognition comes direct from the Sovereign”. No doubt a vain wish, although the Library Association seemed to come near it in 1950 when George VI graciously became its Patron and the Duke of Edinburgh its President. Since that date the engineers have become “royal”, but we have slipped back. When Her Majesty came to the Throne, the patronage her father had bestowed was refused, no doubt on the direct counsel of her advisers who would not want so young a Sovereign to assume too many offices. On that view librarians could not murmur. There is a future, however, and in it there will be a new Library Association House next to, almost conjoined with, a new National Central Library. King George V with Queen Mary opened the second, as is well remembered especially by the King's speech, one of the best, most useful, in library history, in which he described the N.C.L. as “a university that all might join and none need ever leave”—words that we hope may somewhere be displayed in, or on, the new N.C.L. building. Royalty and its interest in libraries has been again manifested in the opening last month (July 13th to be precise) by Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, of the new Central Public Library at Kensington. The Royal Family has close relations with Kensington of course. It is recalled, too, that the Manchester Central and that at Birkenhead were opened also by King George V and Queen Mary; and Queen Elizabeth II quite recently opened the Central Library of the re‐created city of Plymouth, the largest new town library since the Second World War. Kensington has now opened the first major London library since 1939. It is not modern in spirit externally and, as is known, is the work of the architect of the Manchester Reference Library, Mr. Vincent Harris, and there is no doubt about its dignity. Its interior methods are, however, quite modern; a few of them were broadcast to us for a few moments by the B.B.C. announcer, to the effect that there were 100,000 books, that returned books in the lending library were not discharged at the counter but slid down a chute to a room below where that was done, etc., with the remark that books not available in the public apartment could be requisitioned from other libraries but, with the large stocks on show and in the building, that did not seem to be very necessary. We sometimes wish that broadcasters, however well intentioned that may have been, knew something about libraries. Happening at about the same time was the removal of the Holborn Central Library stock to its new home in Theobald's Road, a complex process which Mr. Swift and his staff carried out in July without interrupting the public service. We hope that Mr. Swift will be able soon to tell us how he carried out this scheme. Thus has begun what we hope will be a process of replacing many other London libraries with modern buildings more worthy of the excellent work now being done in them.