Search results

There is a significant volume of literature relating to the mentoring needs of new principals and vice/deputy principals, but little is known about the mentoring needs of recently appointed middle leaders in an educational setting. This study explored the mentoring needs of five female middle leaders at a K–12 case study school of 550 students in Perth, Australia.

Each participant had three mentoring sessions, followed by a semi-structured interview using open-ended questions to provide data on the participants' mentoring needs. The research was framed within an interpretive phenomenology paradigm that focussed on the participants' perceived experiences and how they then interpreted these experiences. One of the researchers was active in this research, acting as the mentor (Neubauer et al., 2019; Smith and Osborn, 2021).

The findings of this study revealed the importance of the mentor being a “critical friend”. In addition, the participants referred to leadership identity, leadership from the middle, managing relationships and gender as other important mentoring needs.

This empirical study contributes original findings on the mentoring needs of a previously neglected group of educational leaders who provide an essential bridge between classroom practitioners and senior leadership in Australian schools. This study is unique because it links these mentoring needs to the practice architectures, factors at the case study school that either constrained or enabled middle leading (Kemmis et al., 2014).

The purpose of this study is to generate an empirically informed theoretical framework which can be used to analyze the relationship between gender and innovation in the context of a municipality. The authors present and analyze three illustrative tales from a feminist perspective. The authors thus offer a more balanced approach to the conceptualization of gendered ascriptions with respect to the possible outcomes of innovation work in a public context.

An ethnographic account which employed “shadowing” as a method of observation.

The article presents a debate on how the social construction of gender and innovation can be placed in the context of a municipal reality. Our analysis reveals how the complexities of a gendered work life within a municipality can create paradoxes. A constructionism approach was used in the identification of hidden and unspoken paradoxes that exist in public spheres.

The authors used empirical tales from a very specific context, namely a Swedish municipality. The central implication of this study is the recognition of innovation as being masculine-gendered within the feminine context. This implication thereby deepens our understanding of gender paradoxes in the public sector.

This study provides insights to practitioners who intend to work with innovation in a public organization.

The social implications of this study is that when a male-gendered concept like innovation is implemented in a female-gendered context, like a municipality, it is of importance to contextualize the concept.

The empirical value of examples of a gendered work landscape at a Swedish municipality.

The aim of this literature review was to examine recent evidence of the impact of safety education for children and young people on unintentional injury rates and to update an earlier review. Evidence was sought that linked safety education for children and young people in schools, centres and other settings with changes in knowledge, skills, attitudes, and reductions in injury. The relevance of ten principles of effective safety education to the papers was considered.

A range of bibliographic databases was searched for potentially relevant papers. Titles and abstracts, and then full copies of papers were examined and retained if considered relevant.

From 495 potentially relevant papers, 12 papers were retained that met the aims of the review. The papers covered a range of topics including home safety, use of all‐terrain vehicles and pedestrian safety. While the majority of papers described the effect of an intervention on injury prevention, several described the development of an injury prevention programme. Several papers provided evidence of the impact of safety education on knowledge, behaviour, risk and skills. No papers provided evidence of the impact of safety education on injury rates.

The importance of involving children in designing successful safety education interventions is key. Working with multiple agencies and adoption of a broader community approach is likely to increase the effectiveness of safety education.

The review illustrates the value of applying the ten principles of effective safety education to designing unintentional injury prevention interventions for children and young people.

The purpose of this study is to discuss the theory of gender bias in innovation studies, to illustrate the gender bias of innovation studies by using empirical means and to suggest what is needed to reduce such bias. Previous studies on innovation have primarily focussed on male-dominated industries. These studies have been biased and hence unable to capture the range of innovations covered by theoretical definitions.

An innovation survey was conducted among entrepreneurs in the traditionally “female-labelled” health-care industry, avoiding the “male-labelled” concept of innovation itself in the questionnaire. The authors endeavoured to ascertain whether there is a significant difference between males and females in terms of innovativeness. Quantitative analyses were used to analyse the results and draw comparisons with an ordinary innovation survey.

Using a gender-aware operationalisation of innovation, no significant difference in innovativeness was found between men and women. This suggests that more attention is needed to correct the prevailing gender bias in innovation studies. A research model is presented to further understand the gender-biased operationalisations of innovation. Each of its three dimensions has a clear impact upon perceived innovativeness: the gender-label of the sector studied, the gender-neutrality of the operationalisation used in the study and the gender of the actors involved. All dimensions should be taken into account in future innovation studies that aim for gender neutrality.

Operationalisations for measuring innovations are usually biased. Therefore, women appear less innovative, which, in turn, leads to less visibility.

Gender perspectives are very seldom employed in innovation studies. In quantitative studies of this sort, it is even rarer. Our empirical evidence from the quantitative study shows the urgency of the need to broaden the concept both in academic, political and public debates. This is not the least for efficiency reasons in resource allocation and public policy.

Our paper is centred on exploring the experiences of opening up closed doors to strangers in the context of home exchange.

This paper is based on a year-long research project which has drawn on multiple qualitative methods of data collection. A bricolage approach was adopted to enable the authors to gather data which is sensitive to multivocality and conscious of difference within the consumer experience.

Our findings demonstrate that home exchangers treat their home as an asset to be capitalised, to allow them to travel to places and communities otherwise unreachable. Home exchangers simultaneously engage in the symbolic creation of home in a temporary environment and utilise the kinship and community networks of their home exchange partner.

Our paper adds depth and an insight to the increasing media coverage of the home exchange phenomenon.

As a consumption practice that is witnessing widespread appeal, home exchange uncovers evidence of trust amongst strangers. While it is common practice to open the home in order to build friendship, it is less common for this invitation to be extended to strangers.

We extend the extensive theorisation of the home as a symbolic environment and reveal that the home can also be used in an enterprising fashion.

The levels of work-related stress and the incidence rates of subsequent related illnesses are increasing in our society, leading to high individual and socioeconomic burdens. Mindfulness training has been shown to be an effective method of improving stress resilience. This paper aims to investigate the efficacy of nature-based mindfulness training in professionals with high levels of work-related stress.

In this controlled pilot study, a total of 56 volunteers completed a nature-based mindfulness training progam and were compared to 8 participants (waitlist controls). Psychometric assessments were performed at baseline and after two and four months of training.

After two months of training, the scores for self-efficacy, sense of coherence, level of mindfulness and overall psychiatric symptom load had significantly improved in the intervention group, while the control group did not show any significant improvements. A comparison between the intervention and control groups showed a significant difference regarding the sense of coherence only.

Since this was an exploratory study with a small control group, further studies are needed to verify our findings.

In conclusion, nature-based mindfulness training seems to be a promising tool for the improvement of resilience and overall psychological health in professionals.

This was the first study to systematically investigate effects of nature-based mindfulness training in people with high work-related stress.

From what was said in the previous article on this subject, it is obvious that a new profession has arisen in consequence of the passing of the Food and Drugs Acts, and of the fact that their execution is now compulsory on all the local authorities legally concerned with the matter. This profession, under the fostering influence of certain scientific and academic bodies, now includes a considerable number of individuals who, in their general culture and education, as well as in their special scientific qualifications, are at least on a par with the members of the older so‐called “learned” professions. In the course of the early development of the analytical profession, as a body, the old Society of Public Analysts was a most potent influence for good, and did, and still does under another but unfortunate name, very excellent work in collecting and publishing any additions that are made to our scientific knowledge of matters connected with the analysis and adulteration of food by the scattered workers in this country and abroad.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the ongoing discussion on how the field of facility management is changing and the role a regional innovation system (RIS) can take place to support this change, with a specific focus on the role of gender and innovation.

The study builds partly on interactive research, and as a complement, qualitative semi-structured telephone interviews have been conducted.

The role of gender and innovations in facility management does matter due to the fact that if aiming at creating innovations, it is necessary to break free from established institutions, both formal and informal. Working with gender demands a norm-critical approach, and to be critical towards what we take for granted might create new solutions.

The study is conducted in a Swedish context.

This paper brings gender issues in facility management to the forefront in an effort to engage the industry.

The paper contributes to the ongoing discussions how the field of facility management is changing and the importance of including gender in the innovation discussions.

Data fusion and the combination of multiple data sources have been part of travel survey processes for some time. In the current context, where technologies and information systems spread and become more and more diverse, the transportation community is getting more and more interested in the potential of data fusion processes to help gather more complete datasets and help give additional utility to available data sources. Research is looking for ways to enhance the available information by using both various data collection methods and data from various sources, surveys or observation systems. Survey response rates are decreasing over the world, and combining survey modes appears to be an interesting way to address this problem. Letting interviewees choose their survey mode allows increasing response rates, but survey mode could impact the data collected. This paper first discusses issues rising when combining survey modes within the same survey and presents a method to merge the data coming from different survey modes, in order to consolidate the database. Then, it defines and describes the data fusion process and discusses how it can be relevant for transportation analysis and modelling purposes. Benefiting from the availability of various datasets from the Greater Montréal Area and the Greater Lyon Area, some applications of data fusion are constructed and/or reproduced to illustrate and test some of the methods described in the literature.