Arts and Humanities

Abstract: Academic excellence and leadership are becoming more dependent on a person's self-organization, perseverance, accountability, time management skills, resilience, teamwork, and ethical behavior. Paramilitary institutions stress the importance of drill, code, and inspections, responsibility, and interrelation between individuals, work, and leadership to achieve a high standard of performance. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how the paramilitary discipline can be used to foster academic excellence and leadership in students and young professionals. The article analyzes the existing literature on self-control, grit, and military education, leadership, school discipline, and academic performance. The paper's hypothesis is that the most successful aspects of the paramilitary discipline can be used in a school and university settings to improve students' time organization, resilience, acceptance of responsibility, teamwork, self-regulation, and leadership. The research found that the qualities cultivated by the paramilitary type of education can lead to improvements in students' academic performance. Moreover, conscientiousness, self-control, and discipline, and paramilitary educational practices, in general, are associated with better academic and performance outcomes. The paper concludes by stating that schools and universities should not seek to adopt coercion and punishment-based aspects emphasized by the army. Instead, the educational institutions should focus on developing a code, mentoring, reflection, and discipline as a manifestation of the respect for individuals. The study provides a theoretical basis for the paramilitary discipline as the means of achieving excellence by proposing a theoretical model in which the discipline is an intervening variable that affects academic performance and leadership directly. The study suggests that paramilitary-type education can be smart and used to 'bring the drill to a classroom' to transform society's understanding of what it means to be a scholar and leader.

Abstract: Musical play gives learners with Special Educational Needs (SEN) an immediate way to act on, perceive, and reorganize a learning environment through sound. This study protocol proposes a randomized, counterbalanced, within-participant mixed-methods comparison of two matched forms of musical interaction: physical/tangible musical toys and virtual/immersive musical environments controlled through touch, gesture, or movement. Engagement is treated as a multidimensional process encompassing behavioral participation and persistence, emotional involvement, and cognitive-agentic investment in exploration, choice, and task completion. A common event ontology will align systematic observation of tangible interaction with time-stamped digital logs, while educator ratings and structured qualitative observations will contextualize individual response patterns. The protocol emphasizes functional equivalence between conditions, accessibility, sensory and motor fit, learner agency, and standardized adult mediation rather than assuming the superiority of either medium. Mixed-effects models will estimate within-learner condition effects and order effects, and integrated qualitative analysis will examine why particular affordances support or constrain engagement for different learners. The resulting framework is intended to inform the design and evaluation of accessible serious games, digital musical instruments, and hybrid physical-digital learning experiences for inclusive education.

Abstract: Cognitive Platonism offers a naturalistic account of abstract forms. It accepts the objectivity and non-arbitrariness of mathematical structures without requiring that they exist as autonomous entities in an independently given Platonic realm. The present paper clarifies this position in response to Michael Levin's recent comparison between his account of Platonic Space and Cognitive Platonism. The central distinction concerns the relation between natural regularities and abstract forms. Natural systems exhibit structured regularities independently of observers, while cognitive agents identify, stabilize, and progressively abstract those regularities into representations, concepts, models, and mathematical structures. Mathematical discovery is therefore compatible with cognitive construction: once an abstract relational structure has been constituted, previously unknown consequences can genuinely be discovered within it. Historical examples such as π, e, and the Pythagorean theorem illustrate how mathematical structures can emerge through interaction with practical and physical problems while later acquiring considerable inferential autonomy. Their necessity does not by itself establish that they exist prior to and independently of the physical world in a separate ontological domain. They may instead express inherent relational properties of nature itself. The paper argues that the main difference between Cognitive Platonism and Levin's Platonic Space concerns ontological direction: whether abstract forms independently exist and are instantiated in nature, or whether they are embodied in natural processes and expressed through cognitive abstractions of relational regularities.

Abstract: European cities are undergoing a structural convergence: demographic ageing and migration-driven diversity are not parallel trajectories but co-present conditions negotiated within the same neighborhoods. Yet governance frameworks addressing inclusion, cohesion, and spatial equity operate above the scale at which these dynamics are produced. Consequently, Europe’s inclusion policy remains under-equipped to foster genuinely intercultural, intergenerational, and gender-inclusive urban environments. The everyday thresholds where such integration is enacted—doorsteps, rooftops, street edges—are conceptually rich within architectural discourse but underdeveloped as operative instruments of urban transformation. This paper addresses this gap through TU[fem]III , a dialogical-relational constellation for design research. Its epistemic core, urban interiority, is drawn from Lahore’s Walled City, where a dense, continuously inhabited threshold ecology sustains long-term cohabitation across communities and generations, mobilized here as theory-generating spatial intelligence. Its praxis interface, Inter-Cultural Nodes (ICNs), builds on a tested lineage of design-research in Palermo’s Albergheria/Ballarò neighborhoods. Operationalized in Cardiff, where legislative commitments intersect with multicultural cohabitation, the framework deploys a Threshold Research Toolkit—drawing, prototyping, and staging—to structure an accountable South→North→South exchange. The contribution is threefold: extending interior architecture epistemology to the urban scale; establishing a reciprocity-driven design-research model; and introducing threshold-scale instruments into European inclusion governance.

Abstract: This article reconstructs the central methodological idea of Ukrainian philosopher of science Dmytro T. Krivenko (1941–1994): dialectics is not a universal algorithm governing the development of physical knowledge, whereas a multilevel hierarchical organization can be traced both in the gradual refinement of concepts and in radical changes of models. The source base comprises Krivenko’s published works on the formation of quantitative concepts, informational levels of physical knowledge, and the coarse-graining of complex systems, together with the author’s clearly identified personal recollections. The abandonment of the substantial theory of caloric and the successive transformation of atomic models show that a new theoretical level need not form a symmetrical ‘synthesis’ of thesis and antithesis: it may reject the ontological core of the preceding model while retaining part of its empirical or mathematical content. Dialectics is interpreted as one local mechanism of transition between levels, and hierarchical methodology as a more general framework for organizing such transitions. The article also demonstrates the integrity of Krivenko’s philosophical project: the hierarchical principle extends from the methodology of physics to the ontology of the human being in Prynat i prynatyka and to the analysis of political positions, where democracy appears not as a compromise between extremes but as a higher level of freedom, dignity, and responsibility. This reconstruction is applied to contemporary physics: from experimental observables and nuclear models through hadronic and mesonic effective descriptions to QCD, and to the cautious formulation of preon hypotheses. Hierarchical philosophy does not establish the existence of a deeper level of matter; rather, it specifies requirements for a model: retention of validated content, an explicit domain of applicability, new independent consequences, and a route back to experiment.

Abstract: At the onset of the Lebanese civil war, within a Jesuit-run university in Beirut beside the demarcation line later known as the Green Line, the first academic programme devoted exclusively to Islamic-Christian studies was created in defiance of the surrounding violence. The Département – later to be known as the Institut – d'études islamo-chrétiennes at the Université Saint-Joseph was unique in its commitment to fostering reciprocal understanding between Muslim and Christian scholars. This initiative, spearheaded by a collaborative faculty of two religious traditions, sought to establish an unparalleled level of institutional integration within a Middle Eastern curriculum. The present article is based on four collections of unpublished sources, namely the correspondence of Dominique de Menil with André Scrima (CPS.MEN 1–70) and of Augustin Dupré La Tour with de Menil (CPS.DLT 1–17), the minutes of the governing councils (1977–1988), and the Dupré La Tour–Scrima correspondence (1976–1998). The article employs this material to reconstruct the project's educational and conceptual architecture, its financing through the Menil Foundation and the Rothko Chapel, and the wartime logistics of couriers and money transfers that sustained it. This article argues that the initiative was a private, spiritually grounded counterpart to the public human-rights diplomacy of the Carter presidency. This convergence was later institutionalised in the Carter–Menil Human Rights Foundation, even as the initiative itself remained critically independent of that public diplomacy, as Scrima's caustic assessments of "droits de l'homme" rhetoric demonstrate.

Abstract: The icon of the Virgin “Hodegetria” (or “Glykophilousa”) from the Church of Panagia Episkopi on Santorini (Thera) represents an important surviving example of Middle Byzantine panel painting in the Aegean. This study investigates its colour palette, painting technology, and chronology through optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy-dispersive spectroscopy (SEM–EDS), and radiocarbon dating of the wooden support. The analytical results identify a restricted palette of cinnabar, azurite, green earth, lead white, iron-rich ochres, and carbon black. The preparation consists predominantly of gypsum with evidence of a proteinaceous component, while phosphorus detected in most paint layers suggests a proteinaceous binding medium, possibly egg tempera. Distinctive features were identified in the paint stratigraphy and pigment distribution. Homogeneous mixtures of pigments applied as single paint layers occur in three independent colour systems, while Christ’s red garment exhibits an unusual sequence of a thin hematite-rich layer over thicker cinnabar. A later repainting of the Virgin’s tunic was identified through cadmium yellow and lithopone. Radiocarbon dating of the wooden support yielded a calibrated probability distribution centred on AD 1090 ± 60, providing an independent chronological framework for assessing the previously proposed art-historical dating.

Abstract: There is a paucity of literature on anti-doping communication in Africa despite evidence that the African continent faces peculiar challenges in establishing anti-doping structures, lack of funding and lack of knowledge and information on anti-doping. The present study explored anti-doping communication and the broader context of anti-doping in Africa. The paper relied on the “dopogenic environment” concept and the socio-ecological model. A qualitative study design encompassing in-depth interviews, a field trip, and analysis of World Anti-Doping Agency documents were used. Participants were eighteen (N = 18, female: n=4) officials from African national anti-doping agencies, sports administrators, and African athletes. Data were analyzed using descriptive thematic analysis. Findings show anti-doping communication is affected by four main factors in Africa: lack of interest from policy makers, institutional mistrust, anti-doping communication limited to events and interpersonal communication and limited use of technology communication. Anti-doping communication in Africa should embrace a multifaceted and comprehensive strategy that fosters cohesive and integrative communication among all stakeholders ranging from policymakers and institutions to social groups and individual athletes.

Abstract: This comparative study examines the intersection of spatial displacement, political exile, and spiritual resilience in the works of Song Dynasty poet Su Shi and Medieval Italian poet Dante. Involuntarily uprooted from their respective political centers, the Song imperial court in Kaifeng and the Republican commune of Florence, both authors transformed the trauma of geographic banishment into sites of profound literary and philosophical transcendence. Through a comparative analysis of Su Shi’s exile prose and poetry alongside Dante’s Convivio and La Divina Commedia, this paper argues both writers developed a posture of ‘quiet defiance’ grounded in ‘radical serenity.’ While Dante remapped his physical estrangement into a cosmic itinerary of moral order and divine justice, Su Shi synthesized Confucian duty, Daoist spontaneity, and Chan Buddhist detachment to cultivate a resilient, untrammeled acceptance of peripheral existence. By mapping these geographies of banishment, the physical expulsion across borders and the existential isolation, this study demonstrates how involuntary displacement can be reclaimed as an interior geography of spiritual liberation. In doing so, it challenges conventional East and West dichotomies regarding agency, exile, and selfhood, revealing that the displaced subject is not merely a passive victim of geopolitical force, but an active architect of inner emancipation.

Abstract: The Industrial Revolution is commonly periodized through successive technological discontinuities associated with mechanization, steam, electricity, mass production, computing, digital networks, and artificial intelligence. This paper proposes an alternative variable of historical observation: the functional-delegability frontier, defined as the historically demonstrated set of functions whose execution by technical systems is technically feasible under identifiable operating conditions. A function is specified independently of its mechanism as a transformation from an admissible input domain to a required output condition under specified operating conditions, F = (I, O, C). The framework distinguishes extensive expansion, in which a previously non-demonstrated function enters technical executability, from intensive expansion, in which the domain or conditions of an already delegable function broaden. It further separates functional flexibility—the range of distinct functions executable through a common architecture—from recursive expansion, in which delegated functions materially participate in developing additional technical capabilities. Historical cases ranging from pre-industrial automatic regulation and textile machinery to machine tools, punched-card systems, automatic telephone switching, general-purpose computing, industrial robotics, and machine learning are used to test the distinctions. The paper advances, as a falsifiable historical hypothesis rather than a definition, that mechanization, electrification, computing, digital technologies, and artificial intelligence can be interpreted as major technological discontinuities within a single, still-unfolding Industrial Revolution. The claim rests not on simple technological continuity but primarily on two proposed continuities: repeated reallocation of executable functions between humans and technical systems, and cumulative dependence of later technological systems on capabilities generated in earlier industrial development. A further, separately testable proposition is that delegated functions increasingly participate in producing subsequent technical capabilities, particularly after programmable computing. The framework does not explain the causes of industrialization or predict the economic consequences of automation; it offers a complementary historical variable through which continuity can be examined across technological discontinuities.

Abstract: The sustain pedal ties together bodily action, timing, instrument mechanics, acoustic resonance, and interpretive judgment. In a digital environment, though, all of that can get flattened into a pedal trace, a MIDI value, or an apparent note duration — and a partial measurement can quietly start passing as a pedagogical judgment. This applied literature review pulls together piano-pedagogy, pedal-timing, piano-acoustics, sensing, automatic-transcription, and technology-mediated-feedback research to ask what these signals actually represent. The synthesis separates five things that tend to get collapsed into one: key action, pedal action, acoustic consequence, musical-interpretive context, and pedagogical inference. From that separation, the article proposes the Pedal Feedback Evidence Model (PFEM), an unvalidated framework linking evidence source, digital representation, warranted interpretation, confounds, and teacher verification. The literature shows pedal timing, depth, and sonic outcome shifting with performer, tempo, attentional focus, instrument, and acoustics. Digital feedback can make parts of a performance inspectable — but pedal data shouldn't get converted into claims about musical appropriateness, intention, or learning.

Abstract: Approved conservation projects that remain unimplemented for years require reassessment before site work begins. This study examines the 2012–2014 conservation project for the Selime rock-cut complex as a record set that may be reactivated for future implementation. The project combined a 54-station local Total Station network with laser and manual measurements, restitution drawings, deterioration records, material analyses, and approved restoration drawings. Historical interpretations were graded as C1 direct evidence, C2 strong inference, C3 bounded hypothesis, or C4 unresolved. Technical validity was assessed through historical/spatial basis (H), current risk (R), and operational compatibility (O), while implementation traceability was recorded separately through U. Applied to eight selected components, the framework shows that safety, circulation, platforms, and service decisions require current verification, whereas stratigraphic and reconstructive interventions remain constrained by evidential strength. The study proposes a two-track reactivation framework separating technical validity from implementation traceability for delayed conservation projects under comparable site conditions.

Abstract: A one-to-one music lesson normally unfolds in a shared room, where teacher and student can move, reposition, and inspect the instrument from any angle. Synchronous online teaching compresses all of that into a fixed rectangle. This structured applied literature review asks what visual information teachers actually need during instrumental instruction, and how camera framing might be organized around the teaching task rather than around whatever equipment happens to be on hand. Evidence drawn from distance music teaching, gesture research, teacher observation, visual attention studies, and educational technology shows that bodily modeling, hand and arm movement, posture, facial communication, score reference, and contact with the instrument all carry pedagogically relevant information. But camera position by itself does not reliably determine what a teacher notices or how that teacher evaluates instruction — seeing more is not the same as noticing more. The review proposes the Pedagogical Visual Access Matrix (PVAM), an unvalidated framework linking pedagogical task, visual target, candidate view, information loss, and complementary view. PVAM is meant to make camera-design decisions explicit, while keeping a firm line between visual access, teacher noticing, pedagogical interpretation, and what actually happens to learning.

Abstract: Real-time score following is usually shown to users as a cursor moving through the score, but its educational value depends on what happens after position is estimated, not on the estimate itself. This structured applied review draws on music-alignment, instrumental-learning, practice-analysis, and self-regulation research to separate four functions: navigation, recovery, repetition, and practice support. Correct localization is not the same as understanding. A system relocalizing after a jump does not mean a learner recovered musically. Detected repetition does not establish deliberate practice, and coverage metrics do not establish learning. Working from these boundaries, the article proposes the Score-Following Educational Action Matrix (SF-EAM), an unvalidated conceptual framework linking alignment state, evidence provenance, permitted educational action, ambiguity, verification, and inference boundary. The framework calls for explicit unlocated, ambiguous, and relocalizing states, and for suspending judgment when position evidence is thin. Score following, on this view, is infrastructure for pedagogical interaction — not a substitute for pedagogical assessment.

Abstract: This study explored the effectiveness of participatory adult education approaches in enhancing training and capacity development among emerging farmers in rural communities of the Eastern Cape, South Africa. The study examined how participatory and experiential learning contribute to farmer empowerment, knowledge acquisition, innovation adoption and sustainable rural development. A qualitative Participatory Action Research (PAR) design was employed with a purposive sample of 80 respondents comprising emerging farmers, agricultural extension officers, facilitators and lecturers. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, reflective workshops and direct observations and were analysed thematically. Findings indicated that participatory workshops, farmer field schools, peer learning and practical demonstrations improved farmer participation, practical learning, problem-solving and knowledge sharing. Respondents also reported greater confidence in applying sustainable agricultural practices and increased opportunities for exchanging local and indigenous knowledge. Participatory learning further strengthened social interaction, innovation and community resilience. The study concludes that participatory adult education can provide an effective approach for strengthening agricultural training and rural development when learning is practical, learner-centred and grounded in local realities. It recommends greater institutionalisation of participatory training, stronger extension support, investment in climate-smart agriculture and collaborative partnerships among government, universities, civil society and farming communities.

Abstract: In a recent paper in this journal, Robert Knowles (2026) defends a novel "malfunctionalist" diagnosis of the semantic paradoxes: Liar sentences fail to express propositions because they are self-dependent—their truth-values would have to be determined by themselves. This paper argues that malfunctionalism faces a devastating revenge problem. I construct a sentence, (R), that encodes Knowles's own diagnostic apparatus within the object language. When Knowles diagnoses (R) as "self-dependent", he thereby makes (R) true—yet (R) cannot consistently express the truth that his diagnosis makes true. The diagnosis is thus self-undermining: It vindicates the very sentence it was meant to disqualify. This is not merely an expressive cost but a fundamental instability that threatens the coherence of the malfunctionalist framework. The upshot is a dilemma: Either Knowles must concede that his diagnosis is inexpressible in natural language—a form of semantic pessimism—or he must retreat to a merely Tarskian treatment, abandoning his ambition to provide a genuine hermeneutic diagnosis of how natural language actually functions.

Abstract: Education in the Philippines continues to face the challenge of integrating cultural heritage into classrooms in ways that are meaningful, policy-aligned, and sustainable. Mindanao’s oral epics, folktales, and musical traditions embody resilience, identity, and collective memory, yet remain at the margins of formal curricula. This study addresses that gap by introducing the Technographic Framework for Multilingual Literature and Musical Orality in Education (TFMLMOE), which connects heritage with curriculum design through artificial intelligence as an interpretive lens. Guided by a qualitative interpretive design that employed corpus construction, sentiment analysis, hybridity mapping, and audio pattern recognition, the research examined cultural materials including the Ulahingan, Tudbulul, Darangen, folktales in Cebuano, Maranao, Chavacano, and English, as well as ritual chants and gong ensembles. The analysis was anchored in Orality-Literacy Theory, Multilingual Hybridity, Ethnomusicology, Digital Humanities and Technography, and Peace Studies with Values Integration, providing a multidimensional lens for interpretation. A total of sixty-five scholarly sources spanning 1975 to 2025 were reviewed; following Creswell and Poth’s (2018) methodological guidance, this breadth ensured saturation of themes and strengthened validity through multiple perspectives. Findings revealed ten themes like oral epics as vehicles of language and values, modern texts as sites of hybridity and identity negotiation, musical orality as collective memory, and artificial intelligence as a means of uncovering hidden cultural patterns. From these findings, the framework is articulated through four components: corpus analysis, cultural preservation, values integration, and curriculum application. It aligns with CHED mandates, MTB-MLE and OBE compliance, UNESCO principles, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. While the study is limited to selected Mindanao communities, it advances scholarship and policy by revitalizing cultural heritage and positioning it as a dynamic resource for pedagogy, resilience, and cultural revitalization.

Abstract: This article investigates suffering in Søren Kierkegaard from a central question: how can suffering be understood without reducing it to a psychological, medical, or explanatory object? The article argues that, in Kierkegaard’s thought, suffering can be understood as an existential experience that places the individual before the task of becoming singular. The analysis uses a philosophical-hermeneutic reading of selected works, especially *Either/Or*, *Fear and Trembling*, *Repetition*, *Works of Love*, and *Edifying Discourses in Various Spirits*. The argument articulates suffering, inwardness, silence, and indirect communication, examining the transition from ancient to modern tragedy, Antigone, Abraham as the paradigmatic figure of the Knight of Faith, and the edifying dimension of love. The analysis indicates that Kierkegaard’s treatment of suffering places the individual before the task of appropriating existence. Silence is not mere absence of speech, but a limit of direct communication in the face of singular experience. Indirect communication can preserve freedom by refusing to replace existential decision with a ready-made explanation. Finally, love does not abolish suffering; it can assume an edifying function by accompanying the sufferer without objectifying the experience.

Abstract: Digital storytelling is an emerging pedagogical strategy whereby the traditional art of storytelling is merged with modern technologies and multimedia, where learners construct narratives through combinations of storylines, images, sound, audio, video, animation, music, and texts. As modern education systems emphasize such skills as creativity, communication, collaboration, critical thinking, digital literacy, and learner autonomy, there are plenty of opportunities for integration of these skills within digital storytelling. This paper explores digital storytelling as a pedagogical strategy of the 21st century and discusses its theoretical background, features, educational application, advantages, and difficulties of implementation. The analysis shows that digital storytelling can be a very helpful tool for active, collaborative, experiential, and student-centered learning. It also considers the importance of digital storytelling for the development of multiliteracy and multimodality, as well as its applicability in the context of contemporary teacher education and technologically enhanced learning environment. The paper concludes that digital storytelling should not be considered just a technological exercise, but a pedagogical strategy where learners construct knowledge and communication skills, reflect their experiences, and critically evaluate digital media.

Abstract: Universities operate beyond their conventional roles of education and research, functioning as socio-spatial environments where public life is continuously produced through everyday interactions. While previous studies have examined either campus spatial configuration or student practices separately, less attention has been paid to how spatial configuration, spatial affordances, and student-led practices interact to produce campus publicness. Addressing this gap, this study investigates the socio-spatial production of publicness across the North and South campuses of Bahçeşehir University (BAU), an inner-city university located in the dense urban context of Beşiktaş, Istanbul. The study adopts a mixed-methods approach that integrates Space Syntax analysis (Angular Segment Analysis and Visibility Graph Analysis), affordance-based observations of in-between spaces, and semi-structured interviews with student clubs. This analytical framework enables an examination of how spatial configuration creates opportunities for co-presence, how architectural affordances support sustained interaction, and how students appropriate these spatial potentials through artistic co-production and collective practices. The findings demonstrate that campus publicness cannot be explained by spatial configuration alone. Rather than occupying either the most integrated circulation routes or the most segregated areas, student clubs consistently appropriate moderately integrated and visually accessible in-between spaces that balance accessibility with opportunities for prolonged interaction. These spaces—including lounges, appropriated classrooms, gardens, and informal thresholds—support repeated rehearsals, performances, and collaborative activities that transform latent spatial potential into sustained forms of collective public life. The study further shows that, while digital communication reinforces these practices, they remain primarily rooted in face-to-face interaction within the campus environment. By conceptualizing this process as specialized campus publicness, the study extends discussions on campus publicness by demonstrating that public life emerges through the dynamic interaction of spatial configuration, architectural affordances, and repeated student practices. It further contributes to urbanism and campus design research by illustrating how inner-city university campuses function as distinctive socio-spatial environments for collective cultural production.