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Despite the prevalence of aesthetic education as one of the main developmental objectives in curricular worldwide, the mainstream philosophical discourse on its definition is predominately framed by western philosophy due to a paucity of cross-cultural studies on the subject. The article aims to achieve a contemporary understanding of aesthetic education from both the Chinese and Western aesthetic perspectives. Through the lens of postmodernism, the relationship between Daoist aesthetics and the western postmodern aesthetic perspectives, particularly the Deleuzian concept of rhizome, is identified. Both aesthetic perspectives concern de-authorship and promote self-consciousness/self-awareness. The study reconceptualises the functions of aesthetic education with the Chinese aesthetic philosophy that promotes the nurture of better people through benevolence.

Microbial and hydrothermal venting activities on the seafloor are important for the formation of sediment-hosted stratiform sulfide (SHSS) deposits. Fe isotopic compositions are sensitive to both microbial and hydrothermal activities and may be used to investigate the formation of these deposits. However, to the best of our knowledge, no Fe isotopic studies have been conducted on SHSS deposits. In the Devonian Dajiangping SHSS-type pyrite deposit (389 Ma), South China, laminated pyrite ores were precipitated from exhalative hydrothermal fluids, whereas black shales were deposited during intervals with no exhalation. Pyrite grains from black shales mostly display positive δ56Fe-py (0.01–0.73‰), higher than marine sediments (ca. 0‰), due to pyrite deriving Fe from basinal shuttled Fe(III) (hydr-)oxides and slowly crystallizing in pores of sediments with equilibrium fractionation, except for negative δ56Fe-py (−0.17‰ to −0.24‰) of two samples caused by mixing of Fe from underlain laminated ores. The positive δ34S-py (3.50–24.5‰) of black shales reflect that sulfur of pyrite originated from quantitative reduction of sulfate in closed pores of sediments. In contrast, pyrite grains of laminated ores have negative δ56Fe-py (−0.60‰ to −0.21‰), which were not only inherited from the negative δ56Fe of hydrothermal fluids but also caused by kinetic fractionation during rapid precipitation of a pyrite precursor (FeS) in hydrothermal plumes. These ores have negative δ34S-py (−28.7‰ to −1.82‰), because H2S for pyrite mineralization was produced by bacterial sulfate reduction (BSR) in a sulfate-rich seawater column or shallow sediments. The δ56Fe-py values of laminated ores co-vary positively with δ34S-py and δ13C-carbonate along the ore stratigraphy, with δ13C-carbonate values ranging from −12.0‰ to −2.50‰. However, they correlate negatively with aluminum-normalized total organic carbon (TOC/Al2O3). Organic carbon is thus considered to enhance the production of H2S by BSR activities, increase pyrite precipitation rates and promote the expression of kinetic fractionation of Fe isotopes. Intriguingly, in the ore units with vigorous hydrothermal venting activities, δ56Fe-py, δ34S-py and δ13C-carbonate values display a consistently increasing trend. Such results suggest that venting hydrothermal fluids significantly inhibited the H2S production of BSR, which then reduced the pyrite crystallization rate and decreased the kinetic fractionation of Fe isotopes. Our study reveals that the formation of SHSS deposits relies on H2S from microbial activities and metals from hydrothermal exhalation on the seafloor, but that vigorous exhalation can inhibit microbial activities and thus sulfide precipitation rates. The integrated use of Fe, S, and C isotopes can effectively elucidate these dynamic interactions between hydrothermal venting and microbial activities during the formation of SHSS deposits.

This chapter explores the ways in which a relational understanding of the education process and the use of collaborative technologies in the connectivist tradition might inform and transform university teaching.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the extent of the reported low affective commitment compared to continuance commitment of Chinese casino dealers, to discern if there is a significant difference between the two types of commitment, and to identify factors that could explain the difference between them. Design/methodology/approach – Questionnaire data were obtained from 247 Chinese casino dealers working for the three major casino groups in Macau. Correlations and regressions were used to analyze the data. Findings – Dealers’ affective commitment was significantly lower than their continuance commitment, suggesting dealers do not like their jobs but do not leave them, which indicates they have cognitive dissonance about their jobs. Organizational socialization, organizational support, and supervisor integrity were positively correlated with affective commitment; while value of money, pay satisfaction, and neuroticism, were positively correlated with continuance commitment. Organizational support was the strongest predictor of affective commitment, while the value they place on money was the strongest predictor of continuance commitment. Practical implications – Casino managers could improve dealers’ affective commitment by facilitating their organizational socialization, especially training and rewards for their work, providing greater organizational support, and fair and supportive treatment from their supervisors. Originality/value – This is the first study to provide evidence of the difference between affective and continuance commitment in Chinese society, and identifies factors that influence each type of commitment, and may help resolve the employees’ dilemma about their jobs, which is an important concern for Chinese managers.

The quest to become research universities of international repute has led flagship universities in East and Southeast Asia to develop a new focus on attracting international doctoral students. This paper aims to understand Chinese doctoral students’ mobility in the immediate region and their education to work perceptions. The study draws from a sample of 301 doctoral students from China who were studying at five universities in Japan, South Korea, and Singapore. Analysis on students’ decision making and after-study pathways highlights the regional exchange in related areas. We argue that this regional mobility of doctoral students, characterized as the second education circuit, is facilitated by a higher education migration infrastructure with three interactively weaved dimensions: commercial, social, and regulatory. The research findings suggest the growing importance of Asia as a regional second circuit of doctoral training for students from China.

Complexity theory (CT) has had a meteoric rise in management literature and the social sciences. Its fledgling importation into school leadership and management raises several questions and concerns. This article takes one view of CT and argues that, though its key elements have much to offer school leadership and management, caution has to be exercised in accepting CT too readily, as it: (1) is unclear on its own novelty, nature and status; (2) can be regarded as disguised ideology in conflating description and prescription; (3) confuses explanation with prediction; (4) is relativist, undermining its own status; (5) contains problems in its advocacy of self-organization; (6) neglects the ethical and emotional dimensions of leadership and management; and (7) risks exonerating school leaders and managers from reasonable expectations of accountability and responsibility. The article concludes that there are questions to CT at the levels of theory, ontology, deontology and ethics, but that it offers useful challenges for school leadership and management.

Complexities of Languages and Multilingualism

In the paper carried out by Wenjun et al. [Phys. Rev. A 95, 032124 (2017)], a generalization of the James effective dynamics theory based on a first version of the James method was presented. However, we contend that this is not a very rigorous way of deriving the effective third-order expansion for an interaction Hamiltonian with harmonic time-dependence. In fact, here we show that the third-order Hamiltonian obtained by Wenjun et al. is not Hermitian for general situations when we consider time dependence. Its non-Hermitian nature arises from the foundation of the theory itself. In this comment paper, the most general expression of the effective Hamiltonian expanded up to third order is obtained. Our derived effective Hamiltonian is Hermitian even in situations where we have time dependence.

Launonen and Mullins argue that if Classical Theism is true, human cognition is likely not theism-tracking, at least, given what we know from cognitive science of religion. In this essay, we develop a model for how classical theists can make sense of the findings from cognitive science, without abandoning their Classical Theist commitments. We also provide an argument for how our model aligns well with the Christian doctrine of general revelation.

In this essay we argue that, based on current scientific data, the most prudential course of future actions that an American conservative can take, is one that assumes what we call climate change alarmism. In order to establish this thesis, we first provide a basic overview of the relevant climate change science, as well as give an analysis of the alarmist and lukewarming dialectic (the two primary interpretations of the data). We then move to develop our environmental wager. Finally, following Roger Scruton, we end this work by proposing what sort of policies conservatives should endorse going further.

Classroom management is a critical area in the curriculum of teacher education programs. Student teachers’ conceptions of the role of the teacher as a class leader are frequently backed by their intuition and experience as students and socio-cultural context rather than evidence-based. This paper examines the conceptions of classroom management held by a multicultural group of forty-four student teachers attending a teacher education program at a higher education institute in Macao. The study aims at understanding the patterns of variation expressed by student teachers regarding the purpose and relevance of the object of learning. It compares a) the patterns of variation in students’ views of classroom management, and b) the students’ learning progress based on the pre-and post-test. The phenomenographic approach was adopted as the conceptual framework. Participants handwritten transcripts from student teachers at the first and last sessions of the course are the primary type of data collection. The findings show that changes in student teachers’ understanding of the conceptions of classroom management occurred during the course. The initial preferences for disciplinary approaches to classroom leadership have given way to conceptions of promoting the integration of classroom management into learning. The participants expressed increasing adherence to classroom management systems targeting and providing behavioural and academic supports and interventions to children and adolescents with and without special needs.

In this paper, I address the phenomenon of syncretism with respect to Chinese religions. An analysis of the syncretism that takes place between the three major Chinese religious traditions is first done in its personal and social dimensions. The social structure of Chinese religion is then used as a framework to understand how Buddhism and Daoism were made compatible with Confucianism. All this will serve as a background for the case study of Macau, where Chinese religious syncretism is very much alive. Three popular religious festivals are celebrated annually and simultaneously on the eighth day of the fourth lunar month, namely, zuilongjie (醉龍節) Feast of the Drunken Dragon, tangongdan (譚公誕) Tam Kung Festival and fodanjie (佛誕節) Feast of the Buddha.

Recent scholarly studies and media coverage have primarily focused on China’s increasing presence and sometimes asymmetrical engagement with Africa in tandem with the new trend of Chinese migration to that continent. Yet, the inverse flux of Africans to China and the emergence of African communities in Southern China over the last decades is influencing some areas of the Pearl River Delta Region, and changing the fabric of cities like Guangzhou, Macau and Hong Kong, in a way without precedent. There are representations or exotic descriptions from some mass circulation magazines and newspapers on the infamous Chungking Mansions in Hong Kong or the so-called “Chocolate-city,”an area centered aroundHongqiao, the village-district and Canaan market in the city of Guangzhou, with its arcades and strip malls filled with ethnic businesses and transnational migrants. In Macau, significant concentrations of African population of different origins are also seen in the “Papa pun” commercial center or in downtown areas. Despite many studies devoted to the “ethnoburbs” in other latitudes, only very recently, these entrepreneurial African communities in Mainland China are starting to become worthy of serious scholarly attention. Yet,there is total absence of studies dealing with the presence of more and more African students and the cultural manifestations of African communities well portrayed in the new African cinema, in music produced by Afro-Chinese bands or even singers.Besides a continuing inward flow of transient Africans who come to China for business on a regular basis, a significant number of settler African traders, particularly Nigerians, have already married local Chinese women, set up families, autonomously run their businesses without recourse to Chinese intermediaries, and established a web of informal and formal committees representing their home nations and states, to solve disputes while maintaining personal and business links with Africa. Besides, those emigrant ‘bushfallers’ who are coming to China solely for business purposes, a new form of “silent” migration of Nigerians comprising students from different backgrounds is enrolling in higher education institutions in the Macau Special Administrative Region of China. These students are coming to pursue their studies or to seek a job to pay their student fees at the margin of the PRC scholarship and stipendprograms for visiting African students that were popular in China in the 1960s and mid-1970s as part of CCP’s foreign policy for Third World aiming friendly relations with Africa. Today, these “transnational” Nigerian students are in their own way affirming their identity and difference, in southern China, in particularly in Macau SAR, thanks to their network of multiple interrelations across nation-states from Africa to Asia and to a combination of perseverance, zeal, and gentleness without subservience. Although they have not been targets for the hostility and even violence like the Shanghai incident of July 1979 or the Nanjing protests in December 1988 at Hehai University targeting African students, today these Nigerian students are facing more subtle forms of ethnocentrism and legal discrimination from immigration laws to daily practices, which always try to associate their citizenship to problematic or easy stereotypes of scam or colour. Yet, at the same time, everything seems to indicate that these newcomers are quick adapting and finding new forms of negotiating their social integration in the Chinese local society which in turn is offering more opportunities.This paper is part of a more ambitious project which aims to assess the new forms of migration from Africa to China and from China to Africa as well as their impact and contribution of globalization. First, this paper considers why and how Macau has evolved from a Portuguese outpost where slavery was a an institutionalized commodity to special administrative region of China where a new urban African community, mostly composed by Nigerian students, is in formation due to opportunities and rapid changes occurring in the region in the first years of the twenty-first century, by comparing the new to old African communities of students and business people/migrant workers from former Portuguese colonies (Angola, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique).Finally, borrowing the title from a sequel movie with the same title of the promising New African cinema, the paper focus on the “China Wahala”or the troubles of these Nigerian students through their tales of their experiences of racism(s) and their negotiations and responses which radically contradicts not only the slogans of cultural diversity propagated by the official discourse and tourist channels as these Nigerians are confronted daily with often dramatic situations ranging from indifference and ostracism to exclusion.

The question of how to adequately integrate environment and labor provisions in free trade agreements is still a difficult one for both States and academicians. This article explores China’s approach to environment and labor issues in free trade agreements. For reference and comparison, it relies on the European Union’s and the United States’ approaches in their respective FTAs. The article identifies China’s preference for a case-by-case approach to the inclusion of environmental chapters in its FTAs. Additionally, in most FTAs it avoids to include provisions on labor standards. These two preferences represent major divergences from the European Union’s and the United States’ approaches, characterized by inclusion of chapters on environment and labor in all their modern FTAs. The article also finds that China’s FTAs rely solely on consultations and cooperation for the implementation of environmental and labor provisions, within the framework of Joint Committees and avoid the inclusion of civil society mechanisms. Moreover, resolution of disputes relies exclusively on consultations, in a diverse procedure than the one applicable to trade disputes. Despite alignment with the European Union model, this is another major point of divergence with the United States’ model, which applies the same enforcement mechanism for both environment and labor issues and trade issues and includes the possibility of applying sanctions. Finally, the article concludes that China’s options with regards to the treatment of environment and labor concerns in its free trade agreements aligns with both its domestic governance approach and its approach to international cooperation.