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This paper aims to call for change in disaster research through a metis-based approach that values practical skills and knowledge (vs technical knowledge) derived from responding to ongoing changes in the natural and human environment.

This paper is based on metis from Miami-Dade County that is prone to an array of climate-related disasters. Metis is supplemented by a review of secondary sources (e.g. newspaper articles, government reports).

There is a need to reconceptualize disaster phases in disaster research—preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation. For many members of marginalized communities of color, this paper depicts preparedness and mitigation as luxuries and response as a time of worry about financial obligations and survival after the disaster. It suggests that even communities that are not on a hurricane's path could have post-disaster experiences. It also highlights ongoing risks to marginalized communities' physical and mental well-being that are in addition to the mental health impacts of the disaster during the recovery phase.

This paper's originality is twofold: (1) underlining the importance of metis, a less studied and understood concept in disaster risk reduction, prevention and management literature and (2) questioning disaster researchers' technical knowledge with respect to each of the four disaster phases in light of metis.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to share empirical research with educators and researchers to show how the gradual release of responsibility (GRR) model can support bilingual teachers’ implementation of dialogic reading comprehension instruction in student-led small groups and linguistically responsive literacy instruction with emergent bilingual students (Spanish–English) in grades one through four.

Design/Methodology/Approach – The authors provide brief literature reviews on the literacy instruction that bilingual students in low-resourced schools typically receive, on dialogic reading comprehension instruction, and on linguistically responsive literacy instruction. Then, the authors show how teacher educators utilized the GRR framework and process to support bilingual teachers’ movement from whole-class, teacher-directed instruction to dialogic reading comprehension instruction in student-led small groups. Next, the authors illustrate how a third-grade dual-language teacher employed the GRR to teach her students how to use Spanish–English cognates. Lastly, the authors share three vignettes from a first-grade bilingual teacher’s use of the GRR to facilitate her students’ comprehension of teacher read-alouds of narrative and informational texts and English writing.

Findings – When the teacher educators employed the GRR model in combination with socio-constructivist professional staff development, the teachers revealed their concerns about small-group instruction. The teacher educators adjusted their instruction and support to address the teachers’ concerns, helping them to implement small-group instruction. The third-grade bilingual teacher employed the GRR to teach her students how to use a translanguaging strategy, cognates, when writing, spelling, and reading. The first-grade bilingual teacher’s use of the GRR during teacher read-alouds in Spanish and English provided space for her and her students’ translanguaging, and facilitated the students’ comprehension of narrative and informational texts and completion of an English writing assignment.

Research Limitations/Implications – The findings were brief vignettes of effective instruction in bilingual settings that employed the GRR model. Although the authors discussed the limitations of scripted instruction, they did not test it. Additional research needs to investigate how other teacher educators and teachers use the GRR model to develop and implement instructional innovations that tap into the unique language practices of bilingual students.

Practical Implications – The empirical examples should help other teacher educators and bilingual teachers to implement the GRR model to support the improved literacy instruction of bilingual students in grades one through four. The chapter defines linguistically responsive instruction, and shows how translanguaging can be used by bilingual teachers and students to improve the students’ literacy performance.

Originality/Value of Chapter – This chapter provides significant research-based examples of the use of the GRR model with bilingual teachers and students at the elementary level. It shows how employment of the model can provide bilingual teachers and students with the support needed to implement instructional literacy innovations and linguistically responsive instruction.

Women’s indigenous organizations have existed for years in the Colombian Amazon. Yet, information about their members’ motivations and the opportunities and barriers those organizations face is missing in the literature on the indigenous movement, ecofeminist struggles, and efforts for a good life in Colombia. This chapter analyzes the connection between women’s indigenous organizations and the territory’s efforts to contain climate change. Two sources inform our understanding of the relationship: the systematization of the main program in Colombian institutional history supporting indigenous women’s led associations linked to conservation efforts, “Women Caregivers of the Amazon” and the mapping of indigenous women’s organizations in the region. This chapter offers a critical impact evaluation of the program “Women Caregivers of the Amazon,” analyzing the way in which the ecological native discourse, particularly on environmental practices of indigenous women, has permeated conservation initiatives in the Colombian Amazon. The impact this has had on women’s participation in self-governance and environmental governance remains to be analyzed. However, mapping indigenous women’s organizations in 2021 offered relevant information on those organizations and their care and conservation practices in the Amazon Forest. In turn, the systematization of “Caregivers of the Amazon” results offers an updated analysis of the scope, limitations, best practices, and lessons learned in developing the projects. A longitudinal and comparative analysis of these two sources of information will lead to an understanding of the incidence of intergovernmental and civil society actions for mitigation and adaptation to climate change carried out by indigenous women’s organizations.

There is scarcity in the literature, both empirically and theoretically, regarding the relationship between transgender discrimination and prostitution. This study aims to offer a new framework for conceptualizing workplace discrimination and prostitution by examining the mediating role of poverty in the relationship between discrimination and prostitution.

The conceptual framework of this study is based on the social identity theory and the theory of prostitution.

Transgender is a neglected group in society, and more often, they are the ones who are unable to find jobs and when employed, find it challenging to sustain their employment because of their gender identity. This leads them to be discriminated at their workplaces. Subsequently, they are forced to leave their workplace and settle to work as prostitutes for their economic survival.

Further research should empirically test the design model.

Managers play an essential role in eliminating discrimination in the organization. Managers need to take measures in crafting gender-free and anti-discrimination policies. They take steps to design recruitment policies in which there is no need to disclose applicant identity.

Discrimination, on the basis of gender identity, promotes a culture of hate, intolerance and economic inequality in society. Prostitution has devastating effects on society.

In the field of organizational behavior, discrimination as a factor of prostitution was not explored. This study provides a significant contribution to the transgender and discrimination literature along with the prostitution theory and the social identity theory by proposing a model that highlights discrimination as one of the factors that compel the transgender community to be involved in prostitution.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the ways in which information acts as a commodity in massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), and how players pay for items and services with information practices.

Through meta-theoretical analysis of the game environment as a set of information systems, one of retrieval and one social, the paper shows how players’ information practices influence their access to game content, organizational status and relationship to real-money trade.

By showing how information trading functions in MMORPGs, the paper displays the importance of information access for play, the efficiency of real money trade and the significance of information practice -based services as a relatively regular form of payment in virtual worlds. Players furthermore shown to contribute to the information economy of the game with the way in which they decide not to share some information, so as to prevent others from a loss of game content value due to spoilers.

The subject, despite the popularity of online games, has been severely understudied within library and information science. The paper contributes to that line of research, by showing how games function as information systems, and by explaining how they, as environments and contexts, influence and are influenced by information practices.