Over the past decade, ethnographers have increasingly paid attention to the ways in which practices and principles of financial speculation have been adopted in the governance of public and private resources. Those interested in matters of tax and taxation have typically associated speculation with tax evasion and fraud, paying less attention to other ways in which speculative thinking has entered the relationship between the taxpayer and the state. In this chapter, I examine the design and public reception of the Slovak National Receipt Lottery, one example of the way speculative logic has become part of governing the fiscal subject. I show how the Lottery both reflected and challenged established ideas of fiscal citizenship and redistributive justice, triggering novel anxieties about fraud, disclosure, and privacy amongst citizens and policymakers alike. It revealed a profound disconnect between the way policymakers imagined taxpayer behaviour and motivation, and citizens’ own perception of themselves as morally and socially embedded subjects. Finally, I suggest that the National Receipt Lottery is an example of speculative governance: a particular way of administering public life which combines elements of audit culture, behavioural policy, and gamification to generate social goods and shape citizen subjectivities.

In an era where two-fifths of the global population is engaged in gaming, this industry’s technological and economic evolution is of paramount importance, promising continued growth. Beyond mere entertainment, gaming has become a primary medium for social interaction, enriched by technologies like virtual, augmented, and extended reality. Gaming has increasingly become intertwined with the financial market as game developers shift their focus from gameplay enjoyment to monetization of in-game assets and some players prioritize the potential for livelihood in gaming. This transformation has been accelerated by the integration of blockchain, decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which provide users with more control over their in-game assets and enable external trading of such assets in the secondary market. This chapter delves into this integration, examines its impact on the gaming industry, and provides a high-level overview of key related legal and ethical issues that warrant further exploration.

This chapter focuses on instructed second language acquisition research that examines second language learning specifically in instructional contexts, broadly construed (e.g., classrooms, online learning, self-study). The scope of the research field is discussed by distinguishing it from broader second language acquisition research. In essence, the chapter addresses the primary question that researchers and teachers are interested in: Can instruction help learners develop their second language proficiency? The chapter then answers the follow-up question which is: Which types of instruction are more or less helpful? In answering this question, the chapter considers the goals that learners and other stakeholders, such as teachers and parents, have for their second language development. It discusses different types of second language knowledge (implicit and explicit knowledge) as the goal of second language instruction. Finally, the chapter explores pedagogical issues and ends by considering a taxonomy that describes various approaches and methodologies to second language teaching.

Despite promising early evidence for the validity of well-designed game-based assessments (GBAs) for employee selection, the interaction between the complexity of games and their use in international and cross-cultural contexts is unknown. To address this, this paper presents a descriptive, qualitative study examining the perspectives of both GBA vendors and organizational stakeholders related to cross-cultural issues unique to GBAs related to 1) privacy, 2) legality, and 3) applicant reactions. Overall, privacy and legality concerns appeared similar for GBAs as with other assessment methods, although certain common characteristics of GBAs amplify common concerns. Applicant reactions appeared more positive to GBAs across national borders and cultures than traditional assessments, although some international differences were reported. Other cross-cultural topics raised included international differences in the conflation of GBA and artificial intelligence, in the importance of mobile-first design, and in the ability of GBAs to provide a more language-agnostic experience than other assessment types.

This chapter focuses on how patients use health-care services. It addresses screening and medication adherence, vaccination (including COVID-19), and self-management of chronic diseases. The realities of health-care decision-making include both direct and opportunity costs (e.g. time it takes for screening, preparing for screening, side effects).This chapter begins with the biases that influence patients’ decisions about healthcare use including preventative care and self-management. Then, with an understanding of how these biases emerge in many contexts, the chapter discusses tools from behavioural economics that could help. Finally, the chapter goes through several examples where we know something about how behavioural economics can help (or not!).

To look forward, it is necessary to look back and learn from the past. Hence this diverse collection of histories provides an excellent opportunity to reflect on what a future assessment might look like globally. Across the regions the themes for the future of assessment were similar. These centered around the need to adapt tests, to incorporate more local or emic assessments, as well as the need to use more indigenous knowledge. There was a clear narrative of a lack of training and resources in countries that would typically be described as developing or as low- to middle-income countries. This need was also evident in countries that are relatively developed but engaged with psychological assessment later in their histories in comparison to the United States, Britain, France, and Germany, for example. Typically, countries that were colonized, especially those colonized by Britain, showed more developments in the field of assessment as they had more contact with early developments in the field. This chapter reflects on the international histories of assessment and provides an overarching view on what we assess, why we assess, who assesses, and how we assess. In so doing the chapter presents a possible blueprint for the way forward for assessment in the global village that will be equally accessible and applicable to all.

Teaching formats are constantly evolving over the years to adapt to newer methods of student learning. In the ancient times, the practice of ‘Gurukul System’ where students would go and live with a teacher and learn all that teacher would know and practice by listening and observing. Here the method adopted was more tacit-to-tacit knowledge transfer between the teacher and the students. The learning here used to be a function of student’s ability to absorb skill and knowledge, and the evaluation used to be a function of real demonstration of student’s ability. This method has changed in the last hundred years where a more formal schooling system has evolved to get both teachers and students in one place, and the knowledge is transferred explicitly in the form of a prescribed curriculum. The learning in a ‘classroom’ environment is more formatted and the evaluation is based on formal assessments. In the recent years, lot of interest has been developed to innovate the teaching formats so that a ‘student centric learning’ can be practiced in a classroom environment. As described by Kaplan (2021) in this book’s first chapter, changes triggered by the COVID 19 pandemic have impacted the Education Sector extensively giving birth to a digital mode of instruction as the new normal. The digital platform and the transformation it can bring into the practice has created new interest among the teaching community to explore better teaching formats.

This chapter reviews research on how video games have been used in schools and other learning environments and how they impact learning outcomes. This chapter reviews four functions of video games in learning. Games as content teach specific disciplinary knowledge, for example in history, math, second language learning, physics, and medicine. Games as bait leverage the engaging aspects of video games to attract students to the game even when it is not obviously about learning. Games as assessment use the “leveling up” feature of games, where players advance to the next level as their skills increase, as a way to assess the player’s developing knowledge. Games as architectures for engagement are studied by examining how and why people play games and how they can be designed to best foster learning by fostering involvement, immersion, and investment – often using narrative structures. There is evidence that when games are designed on learning sciences principles, they contribute to deeper learning.