This article draws on findings from a qualitative study of academics' role in higher education's contribution to the public good based on 15 interviews with academics from two universities in South Africa. I argue that if higher education in South Africa is to transform for the public good, the transformation of the university academic staff needs…

Trust in the potential of education as a common good is the cornerstone of the bond between citizens and their institutions. Changing current patterns entails lifting barriers to a culture of peace and uprooting all forms of violence. Education needs to be resilient enough through its citizen education to provide a framework for thriving…

Recent philosophy and theory of education have witnessed considerable attention to the notion of flourishing as a benchmark or guiding principle for educational practice. There can also be little doubt that -- while not all recent advocates of flourishing have drawn explicitly on Aristotle -- a focus on flourishing has emerged in the wake of…

Civility is about the character of who we are. Civility brings core values to life in one's behavior. History suggests that civility can be taught and learned. A corrosive lack of civility is evident today in every segment of society, from politics to academia, from media to the blogosphere, from talk radio to the pulpit. At issue is whether or…

Research Findings: Empathy plays an important role in children's early social-emotional development. However, there are not many instruments available for measuring the different aspects/levels of empathy in preschool children. Moreover, few studies examined the validity of the existing measures for empathy in Chinese children. The present study…

This article presents the design, goals, and evaluation of "Enthralled" following the 2022 playtesting in three undergraduate Liberal Arts core courses. "Enthralled" draws on ancient Greek myths and the classical tragedy "Bacchae" by Euripides. As an immersive pedagogical intervention, "Enthralled" promotes…

Higher education and its public nature have long been a focal point in discussion in China, which regains wider attention along with tendencies to marketization and privatization in education. This study aims to explore public good(s) in higher education as well as the state/higher education institutions relations in China. Drawing on qualitative…

The use of social media in human life recently is such normal direct interaction including in English language teaching. Politeness strategies are essential in social communication to keep convenient connections. This study aims to examine how politeness strategies are used in increasingly complex situations, combining social media and the…

Despite the volume of research on empathy and prosocial behavior, there is a dearth of studies exploring early adolescents' experiences of practicing cognitive empathy and prosocial behavior. Without understanding both the challenges and opportunities of these two skills, we cannot effectively support their growth during this critical…

Background: The reciprocal relationships between literacy skills and various subscales of mental health have been examined in few studies. The objective is to re-examine this question in a longitudinal study with the possibility of a gender effect. Methods: A 4-year longitudinal study was conducted as part of the French national cohort ELFE (N =…

Toxic giftedness is giftedness that is used for negative and even harmful ends. The field of giftedness has not been quick to recognize the importance to society of toxic giftedness, and its responsibility to combat it. This article defines the concept of toxic giftedness. Then it discusses two manifestations of toxic giftedness: gifted toxic…

The primary purpose of this project was to explore how individual (i.e., gender of the intervener) and contextual (i.e., type of bullying and whether the target is a friend) factors influence the use and type of prosocial bystander intervention. This necessitated the development and validation of a survey that deconstructs prosocial bystander…

Developmental research suggests that preschool children can already identify racial differences and show race-based preferences. While previous studies underscore the importance of early interventions to challenge negative racial beliefs and promote positive attitudes, little is known about which models or implementation strategies are most…

This study investigated the extent to which adolescents' personal normative attitudes (also referred to as personal norms) and perceived peer norms regarding bullying, sexual harassment, and bystander intervention predicted each step of the five-step bystander intervention model (i.e., Notice, Interpret, Accept Responsibility, Know how to Help,…

This 3-wave longitudinal study investigated the developmental trajectories of instrumental helping, sharing and empathic helping across toddlerhood, and how socialisation processes (i.e., parents' and teachers' practices) contribute to these developments. Participants were 50 18-months-olds and 62 24-months-olds, their parents, and daycare…