Abstract
The research aimed to understand the way in which high school principals’ perceptions of social justice (SJ) are implemented in their daily educational work. A qualitative study employed in-depth semi-structured interviews to collect the narratives of two high school principals in Israel – one Arab-Muslim and one Jewish. The interview transcripts underwent comparative holistic analysis to identify their perceptions and daily practice of SJ in their schools. Findings indicated that the principals’ perceptions of SJ were coloured by their national and cultural context, yet they needed strong conviction to integrate these perceptions in their schools, and their efforts to do so were often beset by resistance.
Introduction
The increased use of the terms ‘equity’ and ‘social justice (SJ)’ in educational research reflects the aspiration to implement the belief that ‘all children can learn’, in the mission and vision statements of many schools (Lindsey and Lindsey, 2011; Oplatka, 2013), and the idea that they should have an access to socially just learning opportunities (Slater et al., 2014). Yet, these statements have remained largely rhetorical and often fail to inform policy and practice in school entities in a way that would benefit all students equally (North, 2008; Sapon-Shevin, 2010).
SJ is an elusive construct, politically loaded and subject to numerous interpretations (Jean-Marie et al., 2009), and its foundations are rooted deeply in an Anglo-American perspective (Rawls, 1999). Scholars have explored the ways by which educational leaders can implement SJ in schools (e.g. Ayers et al., 2009; Furman, 2012; Jean-Marie et al., 2009; Lindsey and Lindsey, 2011). Cribb and Gewirtz (2003) and also Fraser (2009) indicated, for example, that the implementation of SJ should relate to three elements: a sense of distributive justice (relating to allocation of resources), associative justice (focusing on the distribution of power) and cultural justice (recognizing the need to reflect on multiple identities). According to Fraser, the three themes support each other and are intertwined. Rawls’s (1999) theory of justice about fairness implies that it is not right to accept the unfairness of a child’s situation determined by birth or accommodation in our educational systems. In practice, it seems that SJ educational leaders tend to serve marginalized societies (Shields, 2003), dismantle long-standing norms that privilege certain students, promote change and encourage reflection (Berkovich, 2014). Thus, the education system has the responsibility to distribute resources and opportunity to counter any unfairness (Slater et al., 2014: 111).
As SJ is culturally constructed, it is of high theoretical and practical value to learn about leadership for SJ by comparing this mode of leadership in different cultural arenas (Berkovich, 2014; Slater et al., 2014). Thus, the current study aimed to explore and compare perceptions and implications of SJ between an Arab-Muslim high school principal and a Jewish high school principal from Israel. More specifically, we posed the following questions: (i) How are both principals’ perceptions towards SJ expressed in their school? and (ii) How do their different cultural and social contexts influence enactment of SJ leadership?
We look at two schools belonging to the state education system – one Arab school and one Jewish school in Israel – and attempted to understand how the cultural and national context contributes to the enactment of SJ leadership. 1 Likewise, the uniqueness of this study can be seen in its ability to clarify difficulties encountered in the promulgation of SJ in a multicultural reality suffused with ethnic and religious differences in a country split by political and religious conflicts.
Personally, our motivation to explore leaders for SJ from two different religious and ethnic groups stems, among other things, from our position as individuals in these groups. Whereas the first author is a Muslim who lives in the Arab society and has worked as a school principal in the Arab educational system, the second author belongs to the dominant Jewish community in Israel and reflects upon the Arab society from an outsider’s stance. Both authors struggle with the inherent religious conflicts in their area (the Middle East), and their collaboration is an attempt to probe into the lives of educators living in these two, sometimes alienated, societies from a just perspective rather than from a conflictual one.
Social justice and educational leadership
The term ‘social justice’ is so widely used, in such diverse contexts, and by those holding such divergent views, that it might be argued that it has become meaningless (Furman, 2012; Jean-Marie et al., 2009). Similarly, the concept of ‘equity’, one of the foundations of SJ, is a difficult term to define and measure; it can mean different things to different people. Equity might ‘be fairness in treating everyone equally (equality of opportunity), or might be treating people differently so that certain outcomes can become more equal, and therefore, more fair’ (Smith, 2012: 3). Wade further argued that: Starting in the kindergarten we must educate youth to care about humanity and to begin to understand the immensity of the challenges that will face them as adults…teaching them the skills and knowledge that will ultimately enable them not only to live productive and empowered lives but also to work alongside like-minded others for the betterment of those who suffer from oppression and other inequalities. (Wade, 2007: 1–2)
Chapman and West-Burnham take this point one step further, conceptualizing that a socially just society achieves ‘well-being’ for all its citizens: In very practical terms a society committed to SJ would ensure that every child grows up experiencing optimum levels of well-being…[ensuring] that every child, irrespective of his ethnicity, social background, parentage, post code or any variable, has an entitlement in terms of equality and equity to the benefits of growing up in a modern, democratic and affluent society. (Chapman and West-Burnham, 2010: 29– 30)
Garratt and Forrester indicated that the implementation of SJ in education ‘necessitates that access to same quality of educational processes should be equitable, even if there are unequal outcomes as a consequence’ (Garratt and Forrester, 2012: 43). North (2008) analysed competing models of SJ. She describes the need for ‘recognition’ as cultural groups compete for respect and dignity and ‘redistribution’ as lower socioeconomic classes demand equitable sharing of wealth and power. Both sets of issues from the larger society are played out in schools, challenging our schools to become sites of justice, inclusion and caring (Sapon-Shevin, 2010).
To this end, SJ leaders must ‘develop a heightened and critical awareness of oppression, exclusion, and marginalization’ (Brooks and Miles, 2006: 5); that is, they need to recognize and analyse how institutional power arrangements and practices favour some groups over the others (Diem and Boske, 2012). Although research has shown that educational leadership can positively influence SJ, social and organizational barriers often perpetuate inequity and inequality within schools (Garratt and Forrester, 2012).
Identifying the core requirements for school leadership for SJ, Theoharis (2009) asserted that school leaders must: (i) acquire a broad, reconceptualized consciousness/knowledge/skill base; (ii) possess core leadership traits; (iii) advance inclusion, access and opportunity for all; (iv) improve the core learning context – both the teaching and the curriculum; (v) create a climate of belonging; (vi) raise student achievement; and (vii) sustain themselves professionally and personally. Thus, educational leadership that wishes to promote an egalitarian, just agenda should develop critical awareness regarding suppression, exclusion and social marginality (Brooks and Miles, 2006: 5). For example, Diem and Boske (2012) clarify that SJ leaders should be aware of the power arrangement in an organization and practices intended to maintain social status, appropriate positions and establish conservative organizational procedures. This sensitive and skilled operation can help to create long-term mutually influential changes at different social levels (Berkovich, 2014). Because the actions of SJ leadership are affected by and affect the social context in which they operate, we outline the backdrop to this research, and the characteristics and social structure of Israeli society, with special consideration of the relations between the two major ethnic groups – Jews and Palestinians.
The context: Israeli society and its education systems
Social scientists pinpoint several divisions in Israeli society. One important division is the national and ethnic division between Jews and Arabs. The Jewish majority is diverse, based on origin of country of birth, sociodemographic status, religious beliefs or economic status. Yet, in general, the Jewish population follows a ‘western’ lifestyle and culture, enjoying cultural freedom and opportunities for study and work in Israel (Smooha, 2002).
An indigenous ethnic minority, the Arabs number 1.7 million, or 20.2 per cent of Israel’s population (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2010). This population lives in communities separate from Jewish communities, apart from a few towns with mixed ethnic populations. The majority of the population lives in rural areas and suffers from economic deprivation. All the groups that compose the Arab minority (82.1% Muslims, 9.4% Christians and 8.4% Druze) share many social norms and cultural values (e.g. the centrality of the extended family, Islamic ways of life) with neighbouring Arab countries and use the same Arab language.
Although the Arab society differs culturally from the western-oriented Jewish population (Arar, 2014), it is also influenced by internal processes of modernization, external processes in their daily relations with the Jewish society, and by the media, so that, despite the inequality of women’s status in this society, the proportion of young Arab women studying higher education exceeds that of Arab men – Arab women constitute 64.1 per cent of all Arab students in Israeli universities (Arar and Mustafa, 2011).
Arab and Jewish education are separated and not equal either in means or outputs (Golan-Agnon, 2006). The Arab education system is subordinate to the wider Israeli state education system, and subject to the influence of Jewish majority–Arab minority political relations, and government control of education contents, resources and organizational structure (Arar and Abu-Asbah, 2013). There is no Arab educational administration for the Arab educational system, and although Arab students constitute 28.2 per cent of all the state’s students, state investment per student is less; 50.5 per cent of Jewish students are eligible for matriculation, in comparison with a stagnant 32.4 per cent of Arab students (2008–2009).
The research fields
The Jewish school
The school is situated in a middle–upper class Jewish area (in the highest social cluster: 1 on a scale of 10) and serves 1070 students from Grade 10 to Grade 12. Each grade has 11 classes studying sciences and also visual and plastic arts, and classical, modern and jazz dancing. The principal is a male in his late 50s, working with two female deputies. The school has been awarded several education, sports and arts prizes, and provides some of the leading courses in the country in program engineering, electronic communications, and classical and modern arts. It provides rich supplementary afternoon activities including sport. Entry to the school depends on success in selective exams, and parents contribute to expenses for many of the school’s activities. The school conducts activities that promote peace education and encourage the students to be committed to their community and country.
The Arab school
The school is situated in a residential area of a multi-religion Arab town. It serves students from low socioeconomic strata (a low social cluster 6), mostly from Muslim families, and competes with two neighbouring schools with selective intake that mostly take students from middle–high socioeconomic strata. Parents of these selective schools’ students contribute to education expenses.
This school serves 875 students in six grades from Grade 7 to Grade 12. Each grade includes eight classes, and the school is divided into junior and senior high school. Senior high school streams include technology, business management, geography, communications and also agricultural courses. The school provides rich informal activities inside and outside the school curriculum. Students participate in university supervised projects with the Weizman Sciences Institute and the University of Tel Aviv. Personality-building activities after school are provided by the school, and attendance at one course is obligatory for all students. Note that the interviews with both principals focused mainly on the upper school, i.e. on grades 9 to 12.
Methodology
Two case narratives
Narrative case study research was employed (Marshall and Rossman, 2012) to study the perceptions towards and practice of SJ by two school principals, who were chosen based on our familiarity, as heads of educational administration and leadership departments, with the educational system of the regions, and based on the ISLD indicators for SJ leadership doubled-checked with the recommendation of the region inspector.
The research tool consisted of two semi-structured in-depth interviews that offered a unique opportunity to examine the principals’ perceptions towards SJ and how they guide their daily education practices. The Arab researcher (the first author) interviewed Nassir, an Arab-Muslim high school principal in Arabic, and the Jewish researcher interviewed Yakov, a Jewish high school principal in Hebrew. The two researchers used the same methodological approach.
The interviews lasted from 1.5 to 2 hours, held at the interviewee’s chosen location and time. The objective of the study was explained, and anonymity was promised. Participation was consensual; the principals were able to terminate the interview at will. Initially they were asked to tell their professional life stories without the researcher’s interference, then they were asked more specific questions aimed at exposing their perceptions of SJ leadership, following a set of four provisional areas of research formulated by the International SJ Research Group: the ways by which SJ leaders make sense of ‘SJ’, the practice of leadership for SJ, the factors that facilitate or hinder the work of an SJ leader, and the ways by which one learns to become an SJ leader.
The narratives of both principals were transcribed in Hebrew and analysed using a holistic approach that relates to the whole narrative, where some parts of the context are interpreted by other parts of the narrative. This analysis identifies central themes in the data, searching for recurrent experiences, feelings and attitudes, so as to be able to code, reduce and connect different categories into central themes. The coding was guided by the principles of ‘comparative analysis’ (Strauss and Corbin, 1998), which includes the comparison of any coded element in terms of emergent categories and sub-categories. In order to increase trustworthiness and reliability in the research, the analysis was strengthened by structured analysis and by peer review of the two interviews by each of the authors (Marshall and Rossman, 2012).
The systematic data collection procedure employed in this study contributes, it is assumed, to the credibility and authenticity of the data (Rajendran, 2001). However, because the sample was a very small sample and the interviewees did not constitute a representative sample of all cross-sections of the Arab or Jewish populations in Israel, the implications of this study are very reasonably limited.
Findings
Analysis of the interviews with the Arab and Jewish principals revealed their perceptions as influenced by their sociocultural and ethnical perspectives in respect to four themes relating to leadership for SJ – vision and values, the practical implementation of SJ, factors facilitating or obstructing the practice of an SJ school policy, and the socialization process of leaders for SJ. We will present each principal narrative according to these four themes.
Yaakov: The Jewish principal
Yaakov’s personal history opens our discussion of his leadership for SJ. From the beginning of his story, we learn that he immigrated to Israel many years ago – a kind of personal event that is subjectively related to his leadership, as arising in his voice: A principal brings with him…the home within which he grew up, a society whereby he lives…I would like to say that I wasn’t born here, I have been raised with six different brothers in Poland, thus I have faced hard time and poor reality…so now you understand what SJ is for me…I don’t believe in strict discipline…every child has a place [in school]…I give some space to diversity.
Yakov further describes SJ through the clarification of his own social and personal identity: I want the child to leave school and go to military service, to be an academic, to become a family man and to be a useful citizen for his society. I educate according to my consciousness. I want to educate a good Zionist generation that will contribute to its society and state…SJ in education means constructing your own standards. There was a school graduate who reached a position where she wielded power in society, and she acted according to her standards, she explained her values and attracted thousands to follow her. I brought her here to explain how she fights social oppression and inequality in society.
For him, SJ derives from personal vision rather than from any formal, pro-social justice policy in the education system in Israel. Yet, his cultural and national identity engenders different value systems. Yaakov further explained: ‘The Ministry of Education talks about equity as a slogan. Go to the Bedouin [areas] and see all the garbage that the state throws there’. Thus, Yaakov is driven by ‘responsibility, caring, contribution to the community…and humanity’, and works in the dominant part of the Israeli society, which is often characterized, among other things, by relatively high resources; thus he is ‘committed to the implementation of SJ in helping each student to write his personal standard’.
The application of pedagogy of SJ was considered to be part of the open dialogue that Yaakov conducts with his students – in his own words, ‘every morning I conduct a breakfast conversation with a circle of my students, and also in my sociology classes in tenth grades I conduct a dialogue with the class’. Later in the narrative he explained how SJ was expressed in one of the activities that he was promoting in the school: I manage a special program to help students shape their identity and selfhood during a night walk in nature in which the student encounters his historical roots and meet the ‘other’, i.e. the Arabs…[my] school participates in a program that encourages cooperation with Arab schools.
He highlights his contribution to the ‘building of strong national identity for the students’: I want them to know what it means to be an Israeli…I want my students to stand on Memorial Mountain [of Israel] and tell their grandchildren about those who built their country and about those who died for its existence. For him, though, nationalism corresponds with SJ.
His dialogue is not restricted to the development of ‘national’ awareness; he also encourages social equality by asking students to contribute to the community in various ways. Furthermore, although he serves middle class privileged community, he still has to face difficulties in broadening students’ social awareness, despite the many resources available to him: The overabundance of managers in the educational system, in the Ministry of Education, in the Municipality, the parents, etc.…each has different expectations and overly elitist expectation.
He demonstrated the difficulty that he has in raising awareness to the need for equality among an advantaged student population: Every day I discuss issues of social sensitivity and equality, but it always relates to other populations, as my students don’t face [inequality]. To bring the issue of co-existence to this society’s mind is beyond of their agenda.
Thus, Yaakov’s strong belief in SJ helps them to cope successfully with these barriers.
Nassir: The Arab principal
Nassir’s vision and values for SJ are intertwined throughout his day-to-day reality. He perceives SJ as follows: As one who grew up in a poor community, the education system simply duplicated our social reality and pushed our national narrative away from any constructive discourse, it pushed me away to try to educate others for a true rather than a false awareness, to provide a liberating experience for the student, to free them from the chains of social and national suppression and to bring them to an encounter with the ‘other’, an encounter of friendship on the basis of dialogical equality and not compulsive or impulsive.
Nassir grew up in a poor peasant family in a marginal minority group and forged his path to academic studies with difficulty as he told in the interview: I have encountered the situation of oppression by myself, I came from small excluded family in a village with big clans, and it was important for me to transform my exclusion to capabilities. We are six brothers and two sisters, used to work in our farm as a team. Each one had a role, one for all and all for one, with a difficult life leaving in double margins.
SJ is constructed by Nassir in terms of ‘opportunity, openness, equality, and the establishment of equal educational arenas for every religious group’, probably because he lives in the minority group, which suffers from low resources and some sorts of financial and educational discrimination. For Nassir, though, SJ means ‘recognition, access, and successful experiences’ for the Arab population in Israel. He sharpens his vision as follows: It is important for me to do as much as possible in order not to duplicate our distressful reality, where only 35 per cent succeed and the rest do not receive any response…I head an organization for the creation of a new social, national and cultural reality: ‘social’ because it aims to attain distributive equality by destroying paradigms, ‘national’ because it promotes education for a true and not false awareness, and ‘cultural’ since it promotes gender equality in our traditional society that oppresses girls.
Nassir sees it as part of ‘values and collective commitment for the poor students’, as his school is the only opportunity for them, as indicated below: I see the school as a place that is destined to prepare for life based on the personal strength of the student, in education, in personal development. I am motivated by values of equality, equal opportunities, respect. All of these constitute the basis of every educational interaction, a respect to the different…I see my job as a change agent of a factory that produces a new reality, an enabling reality.
The application of pedagogy of SJ was considered to be part of the open dialogue with students. In this sense, Nassir aims to strengthen the national identity of the Arab pupils through dialogues about the Arab village, civic identity, empowerment, and workshops for self-expression. He declares emphatically that: The children should know about their national history. I presented both sides of the Israeli–Palestine conflict in the school. On one wall I displayed pictures of children killed in Gaza and on the other wall pictures of children killed in a Jewish town during the Cast Lead Operation. The Ministry of Education made a lot of noise about it and summoned me to a clarification.
Nassir incorporates the pedagogy of Paulo Freier in his school and mentioned it throughout the interview, indicating that ‘a liberating pedagogy should be applied at all levels in the school’. He therefore devised ‘a program in which teachers mentor new teachers in light of Freier’s pedagogy and established a peer mentoring program for under-privileged students’.
Despite the many institutional and bureaucratic barriers Nassir faces (e.g. lack of resources, and resistance of officials from the Ministry of Education and parents), he strives to continue his commitment to SJ: It was difficult to obtain resources but we managed to overcome those difficulties. The school inspector and the Jewish mayor came against me, because I always used to critique their policy towards the school.
Nassir’s students are fully aware of inequality and concepts of SJ. Rather, it seems that he draws his powers from his personal resources: What helps me most of all is my belief in the correctness of this path, I come from this place and I have encountered the situation of oppression by myself, I think that a bourgeois person cannot do what I have done.
He chooses to remain in control and expresses the difficulty of one who is controlled: What can be an obstacle is the lack of belief in a person who wants to engender justice, a strict institutional policy that does not facilitate [the creation of] intellectual capital, a shallow pedagogy and lack of leadership and the suppression of talents and abilities in Arab society.
The principal’s strong belief in SJ helps them to cope successfully with institutional hindrances, as he explained: I can speak of many obstacles, some of them political, I mean to see us [the Arab citizens of Israel] as inferior citizens in Israel, looking at us as enemies, especially in times of political conflict with Arab countries…The policies of the Ministry of Education are driven by accountability regime, a lack of trust in principals’ intentions and the strong inspections especially in the Arab education system.
He went on to describe the local community: We are disadvantaged in several levels: first, I serve in a community located in the lowest place in socioeconomic clusters, violence is very high. We face murders, varied physical attacks and interventions and the municipality doesn’t care for these children as Jewish municipalities; you can see that clearly in the physical appearance of the school compared to Jewish schools far away only 300 meters from us. Second, parents are poor and therefore their education and socioeconomic background hinders them from supporting the schools’ extra-curricular activities.
Finally, he highlighted the internal forces that drive his leadership for SJ: I have done all that I dreamt about and I’m satisfied. It was hard to obtain resources but we managed to overcome the difficulties. We are guided by internal control, not dependent on others, not focusing on the mantra of oppression…We have small circles of supporters that increase over time. We introduce the results to them. This gives them faith and hope and they continue to support [us]. We have also the school graduates who come and volunteer for different activities and are involved in the school and…through this we are building circles of trust, especially as we are transparent to all our partners, both internal partners such as pupils and teachers, and external partners in the community and outside.
As we could see, both Yaakov and Nassir’s perceptions of leadership for SJ brings their life stories and background to the fore; their awareness of injustice in society, and their national history and conflict contribute to their perception and enactment of SJ in the daily life of their schools.
Concluding remarks
From the interviews with both principals, a number of insights can be provided. First, leadership for SJ is tightly intertwined in the cultural, social, historical and personal contexts of the leader and the school. Both principals perceived SJ based on their personal history (e.g. army service), education (e.g. the influence of Paul Freire), status (e.g. being a member of the dominant group/the minority) and culture (e.g. the place of national emotions in the leader’s perception of SJ).
Second, it is evident that no governmental policy towards SJ is sufficiently clear (beyond rhetorical concepts) to engender a unified system of perceptions and definitions of SJ in education. This leaves much room for subjective, contextualized understandings of SJ, and each educational leader is ‘free’ to interpret this concept as long as it does not violate major conceptualization of education. Thus, the Jewish principal attached much importance to ‘national awareness’ in his definition of SJ, whereas his Arab counterpart connected it with ‘pedagogy of the depressed people’. For example, Nasser’s career experience and development helped him to increase his awareness of SJ and to strive concomitantly for increasing forms of SJ in his school, such as increasing the educational opportunities of Arab students and their critical (freeing) consciousness.
Third, and arising from the Israel–Arab conflict, is the connection between the principal’s national position and the latent conflictual relations between both groups and SJ. Each principal linked SJ to his group’s history of war and conflict, and emphasized patterns of inequality and injustice arising from his group’s social position. For example, the Arab principal emphasized the inequality Arab citizens feel and face, whereas the Jewish principal emphasized the poor lives of students (regardless of their ethnic and religious origins) from disadvantaged (economically) groups.
As Management in Education is an outlet for both academics and practitioners, we end our article with the following questions: what are the practical implications of this small-scale study, and what can principals learn from these stories about their own leadership for SJ?
Consistent with past research (e.g. North, 2008; Sapon-Shevin, 2010; Theoharis, 2009), the Israeli principals indicated that both at the national and local government levels, principles of SJ are enunciated at the declarative level, but in practice there is no field activity to reduce social and educational gaps with corrective programs or budgets as Nassir explained. Nevertheless Nasser tried to ‘swim against the stream’ and to establish an empowering discourse of concern, raising collective consciousness concerning the existence of gaps and the need to work to achieve equity (Berkovich, 2014). He acted independently outside government policy enactment, and tried to build a consciousness that would alter the existing reality (Arar, 2014).
In fact, SJ is embedded in the historical and cultural contexts which both principals bring with them, live and work, which means that leadership for SJ is influenced, to a large extent, by their own conceptions of ‘ideal’ society, the ‘right’ school leaver or the ‘equal’ state (Diem and Boske, 2012). Put differently, SJ leaders are not only those who are committed to SJ in terms of social equality and equity, as indicated by many scholars (e.g. Brooks and Miles, 2006; Furman, 2012; Jean-Marie et al., 2009; Smith, 2012), but also those who go one step further and integrate these concepts within their cultural and national context (Slater et al., 2014). There is no explicit, direct vision with regard to the discourse of SJ on the policy level in Israel.
For both principals, though, SJ derives from a personal vision rather than from any formal, pro-SJ policy in Israel. Yet, owing to their different cultural and national identities, they are sometimes driven by different value systems (Brooks and Miles, 2006; Garratt and Forester, 2012). The application of the pedagogy of SJ begins with the development of an enabling dialogue for both principals’ praxis in the school. The construction of SJ depends, at least in part, upon the principal’s cultural, social, personal and educational context (Slater et al., 2014; Theoharis, 2009).
Finally, because there are many barriers to leadership in SJ (Garratt and Forrester, 2012), the principal’s strong belief in this kind of leadership is necessary to enable the incorporation of this issue into their school. Only then may the principal confront many pressures – for example, not to emphasize controversial issues in the schooling process. The study emphasis cross-cultural perspectives of leadership for SJ: the two principals came from different religious and ethnic backgrounds, yet they have developed quite similar perspectives of SJ in education. This comparative study may contribute to the understanding of ways in which enlightened educators in a society dominated by inequitable practices can overcome political and cultural barriers and increase the potential for equity and SJ in Arab and Jewish schools.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.