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This study aims to examine entry-level PhD students’ experiences with participating in Critical Friends, a peer review protocol, used to support learning the threshold concept of literature review. It also sought to determine if, and how, students used the peer review protocol electively during their first year of doctoral study.

The authors used a sequential, QUAL-qual mixed-method design to guide the study. Reflective learning journals, surveys and interviews were collected from three cohorts of PhD students (N = 18).

Thematic analysis revealed that giving and receiving writing critique was uncomfortable for these novice peer reviewers and many described emotional disciplining associated with vulnerability. Critical Friends offered a safe space to begin mastery of the literature review and begin transforming new researcher and writer identities. While Critical Friends was a positive experience for students, they struggled implementing the protocol on their own following the course.

These findings support the need for faculty to embed peer review opportunities in courses during the first year to facilitate role modeling and mentoring. The findings also demonstrate the need to engage students with peer review early in the program to increase comfort, cultivate student resiliency for accepting critical feedback and build capacity for students to learn with and from others.

This paper advocates for the use of peer review practices early in the doctoral study to promote the development of researcher identity and positioning within the research community.

A collaborative autoethnography (CAE) conducted by six Belizean educators in a US-based PhD program in Language, Literacy, and Culture Education and one of their faculty members is presented in a creative, dialogic format in this chapter. The group of educators embarked on this reflective self-study to explore how their programmatic language and literacy education knowledge was taken up, remixed, rejected, indigenized, or transformed into local Belizean pedagogies and curricula. Using CAE methods of narrative data generation and dialogic analysis and reflection, the educator-researchers examined the degree to which their program met the expectations of Tierney's (2018) global meaning making endeavor. They found that being vulnerable learners and building their own disciplinary confidence and competence enabled them to take up the new ideas they were encountering, and that new learning led to transformative shifts in their pedagogical philosophies that included culturally relevant and proactive pedagogies. They also innovated and remixed pedagogies in their teaching contexts while wobbling with how to create sustainable changes. This work indicates that Western, US-based universities and programs can, with intentional macro- and micro-curriculum design and ongoing critical reflection, facilitate cross-cultural, international language and literacy programs that enact decolonizing and emancipatory curricula and practices.

Most professional athletes are broke financially within a short few years after they stop playing. It is easy for outsiders to place the blame squarely on the athlete himself. This rush to judgment, however, is not entirely accurate. Black student-athletes who have the talent and ability to play professional sports are hyper-focused on getting to the next level, and the system around them is built to accommodate that focus. A lack of educational, financial, and legal structures creates a dynamic that sets the athlete up for failure. This chapter will focus on the legal and financial realities that Black males face when transitioning into and out of professional sports. In order to shift the current paradigm, this chapter will also provide solutions for both the athlete and the coaches, friends, family members, and agents who surround the athlete, in order to empower the athlete to positively impact himself, his family, and his community.

This paper's purpose is to explore the current interest and knowledge that UK consumers hold around agroforestry. Despite the many reported benefits of agroforestry systems, uptake in the UK, as well as other temperate nations, has been low. As the consumer has a role to play in the transition of agriculture to methods that are more environmentally friendly it is vital to have an understanding of their perceptions. Yet to date no work has looked at agroforestry from the perspective of the UK consumer.

An online survey was conducted using a convenience sample accessed by floating a link through social media and messaging apps. The survey was also shared to the members of a private Facebook group associated with an organic vegetable box service. A mix of multiple choice and open text boxes were used. The survey received 139 responses.

Non-parametric tests indicate that this sample of UK consumers would be mostly likely to buy, and willing to pay more for, agroforestry produce; and the sample showed a split group regarding familiarity. Inductive thematic analysis of the qualitative data highlighted some important barriers to the purchase as well as capturing a snapshot of this sample's perceptions.

This paper presents, to the authors knowledge, the first set of data regarding a sample of UK consumers' perspective of agroforestry produce. The findings could bolster producers' confidence in adopting agroforestry practices, but also highlight the need for policymakers to bolster consumer support through parallel means.