Professor Elaydi  outlined the specific conditions of Gaza, which are unique.  Gaza is already a learning society with a range of formal provision in family and kindergarten projects, NGOs, schools and universities.  Informal provision includes unions, religious institutions and local government learning centers.  Yet the learning resources are grossly over stretched.  Gaza has a dense population and few natural resources, outside of the people of Gaza who attend 27 institutions of Higher Education.   

Cities almost everywhere are challenged by a raft of big issues resulting from on-going urbanisation, environment protection issues, public safety concerns, and demographic change in a context of growing inequality in many countries, social fragmentation and decline in social capital, high unemployment, and overall more individualistic societies.

These challenges provide the context for the PASCAL International Exchanges (PIE), initiated by the PASCAL International Observatory (which has its European base at the University of Glasgow) to provide for online exchanges of ideas and experience between cities around the world. At present 16 cities across 5 continents participate in PIE. These include Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Cork, Bielefeld and a number of African cities (Dar es Salaam, Kampala, Dakar, Gaborone, Addis Ababa). Summary stimulus papers for all cities may be read on the PIE web site.

Professor Dupriez discussed the core aspects of the recently published article of this title (in the European Educational Research Journal Volume 11 Number 4 2012 www.wwwords.eu/EERJ).

Positive feelings and experiences support problem-solving skills and the ability toact in an innovative way. Positive experiences are, therefore, interconnected with motivational factors and work performances. Positive psychology asks the question “what we can do right with people and how we can teach people to have more of that?”