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The aim of this article is to describe the development, launch, implementation and evaluation of a pilot training and development programme designed to improve the export marketing performance of smaller and medium‐sized concerns. The Management Extension Programme — Exports (MEX) was conceived by staff at Durham University Business School as part of their remit to the Manpower Services Commission to initiate new programmes based on the Management Extension approach. The idea of providing growing organisations with extra management resources has been tried and tested in a number of UK universities with Manpower Services Commission support.

A social skill is similar to a skill found in a workplace that involves social interaction. The hallmark of a social skill is the smooth progression toward a goal. As with other workplace skills, social skills have both cognitive and behavioral components (Attwood, 2003). According to Webster's New World Dictionary (1986), a social skill is a “developmental tool used to interact and communicate with others to assist status in the social structure and other motivations” (p. 23). This means that social rules and social relations are created, communicated, and changed in verbal and nonverbal ways creating social complexity useful in identifying outsiders. The process of learning these skills is called socialization (Barry & Burlew, 2004). Specific examples of social skills may include initiating, responding, and keeping interactions going; greeting others and conversing on a variety of topics; giving and accepting compliments; taking turns and sharing; asking for help and helping others; and including others in activities (Wahlberg, Rotatori, Deisinger, & Burkhardt, 2003). Simply put, social skills are the behaviors we use to work and socialize with other people. As Walker, Todis, Holmes, and Horton (1988) pointed out, social skills are defined as social responses and skills that (a) allow one to initiate and maintain positive relationships with others, (b) contribute to peer acceptance and to a successful classroom adjustment, and (c) allow one to cope effectively and adaptively with the social environment.

Three examples are given of the work of Queen Alexandra College for the Blind in Birmingham. A Commercial Studies course which helps visually handicapped students to cope in a workplace environment is described. The students learn to use office machines and all students have three weeks′ work experience.

Education perpetuates inequality directly, in that messages distributed by schools are linked to student social class. A specific focus on the response of white working‐class and minority students' attitudes to school (in the USA) reveals that elites maintain themselves not only through their own education but also through the education of others; and that those at the bottom contribute to the maintenance of class structure through their own creative response to wider ranging inequalities, and the way these inequalities are mediated in schools.

This paper aims to explain how and why the philosophical changes to the pre-registration nursing standards by the UK’s Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) have resulted in a paradigm shift for mental health nursing.

This paper critically examines the changes to nursing education standards and offers an analysis of the problems associated with the shift towards a generic nursing syllabus.

The said shift prioritises physical health intervention, skills, procedures and tasks over the uniqueness of mental health nursing.

This paper argues that mental health nursing skills and qualities such as connection, genuine advocacy and therapeutic-use-of-self have been undervalued and under-represented by the new education standards.

This paper calls on the profession and service users to join the discourse and inform future mental health nursing identity. Ultimately, this paper calls on the NMC to reconsider the underpinning principles of the education standards and allot due consideration to the specific needs of the mental health nursing profession.

This chapter is about the modern, Western education system as an economic system of production on behalf of the capitalist mode of production (CMP) and globalization towards a single, global social space around market capitalism, liberal democracy and individualism.

The schooling process is above all an economic process, within which educational labour is performed, and through which the education system operates in an integrated fashion with the (external) economic system.

It is mainly through children’s compulsory educational labour that modern schooling plays a part in the production of labour power, supplies productive (paid) employment within the CMP, meets ‘corporate economic imperatives’, supports ‘the expansion of global corporate power’ and facilitates globalization.

What children receive in exchange for their appropriated and consumed labour power within the education system are not payments of the kind enjoyed by adults in the external economy, but instead merely a promise – the promise enshrined in the Western education industry paradigm.

In modern societies, young people, like chattel slaves, are compulsorily prevented from freely exchanging their labour power on the labour market while being compulsorily required to perform educational labour through a process in which their labour power is consumed and reproduced, and only at the end of which as adults they can freely (like freed slaves) enter the labour market to exchange their labour power.

This compulsory dispossession, exploitation and consumption of labour power reflects and reinforces the power distribution between children and adults in modern societies, doing so in a way resembling that between chattel slaves and their owners.

Every electronics manufacturing company wants to know how effective its process is compared with industry leaders; to date this has not been possible. From an initial concept by Bob Willis, Chairman of the SMART Group, a data collection package has been jointly developed in conjunction with the Surface Mount Club.

This paper aims to describe food insecurity status, food consumption patterns of households and nutritional status of families residing along the baobab belt in Kitui and Kilifi counties of Kenya. It also explores associations between these and household socio-demographic characteristics.

A cross-sectional study design was performed with a sample of 216 caregiver/child pairs interviewed. Tablet-based semi-structured questions were used to obtain information on socio-demographic characteristics of children (6-13 years) and caregivers. Food insecurity status was assessed using the household food insecurity experience scale. Information on food consumption was obtained from qualitative 24-h recall as a basis for calculating a household dietary diversity score. Data were also obtained from a non-quantitative food frequency questionnaire. Anthropometric measurements of children and caregivers’ height and weight were taken to assess their nutritional status. Data were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science version 24 and WHO AnthroPlus 1.0.4.

The majority (98.2 per cent) of the households were food insecurity despite 81.5 and 57.4 per cent in Kitui and Kilifi counties, respectively, owning baobab trees. About 32.1 per cent of the households had poor dietary diversity scores (< 4). The prevalence of stunting (28.6 per cent), wasting (11.6 per cent) and underweight (25 per cent) rates among children were high. A significant association was observed between the children stunting rates with their age (p = 0.027), and also with household’s food security status (p < 0.001). Of the caregivers, 14.8 per cent were underweight, 18.1 per cent were overweight and 8.8 per cent were obese. There was significant association between the nutrition status of the caregivers and gender of the children (p < 0.001) and also with stunting rates of children (p = 0.047).

The study provides data on the current food security status and food consumption patterns of households and nutritional status of families residing along the baobab belt in Kenya which are mostly areas of marginal agricultural potential. The findings indicate a need for appropriate dietary improvements.

This paper examines strategies to meet the communication challenge of change brought on through planned transitions, by the stress of a crisis, or as a result of the social transformation in work and the nature of work. It explores the cycles of change to create a foundation for understanding the communication of change to individual people in an organisation. It examines the impact of reengineering as a change vehicle, the role of trust in reengineering, and some reasons reengineering appears to have shortcomings for individuals coping with change. A reengineering case study is also presented. Successful communication of change demonstrates an understanding of the cycle of change, the importance of trust in the communication process, the essential personal nature of change, the necessity for continuous face‐to‐face communication, and a recognition that current global changes are symptoms of a shift in the human condition.

The purpose of this paper is to examine perceptions of de-escalation among police officers who were nominated by peers as the most skilled at this strategy.

A peer nomination process identified eight skilled de-escalators in one department. Interviews were conducted with the officers individually. Additionally, in a focus group, the officers watched and debriefed body-worn camera videos for themes related to de-escalation.

Officers defined de-escalation as bringing calm to a conflict using the least amount of force possible. They said it could also be used preventatively. They identified de-escalation tactics, characteristics of skilled de-escalators and situations in which de-escalation is less effective.

This study initiates research into a much discussed but rarely researched topic. Future studies should continue to work toward a definition of de-escalation and understand how it can be used in policing to reduce violence, protect life and enhance police legitimacy.