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This report analyses the development of the Life Skills Initiative for young people in Uganda. This initiative seeks to strengthen health education in schools by developing pupils’ Life Skills, such as assertiveness, decision making and effective communication, to enable them to translate their health knowledge into practice. In the context of HIV/AIDS, Life Skills are seen as one of the young people’s principal protections against infection. Life Skills education requires a participatory, active learning approach, which presents a challenge to Ugandan schools with their huge classes and didactic teaching styles. The report explores how this challenge is being met, through the school system, and through other channels, including non‐government organisations, the mass media and the health services.

The research demonstrates the role of activity systems based in Cultural Historical Activity Theory as a means of analysing characteristics and efficacy of specific provisions of coaching in education.

Three examples of coaching in education were selected, involving 51 schools in England. The three examples were re-analysed using activity systems. This drew on existing evaluation evidence, gathered through interviews, questionnaires, focus groups and recordings of coaching.

In each example, the object of the coaching was to address a specific challenge to secure the desired quality of education. Using activity systems it is possible to demonstrate that coaching has a range of functions (both intended and consequential). The individual examples illustrate the potential of coaching to support change in complex and diverse education settings.

The use of existing data from evaluations means that direct comparisons between examples are not made. While data were collected throughout the duration of each coaching programme no follow-up data was available.

The analysis of the examples of coaching using activity systems provides evidence of the efficacy of specific coaching provision in achieving individually defined objectives related to sustaining and improving specific educational practices.

The research offers insights into how coaching in education might be better tuned to the specific needs of contexts and the challenges experienced by the individuals working in them. In addition, it demonstrates the value of activity systems as an analytical tool to make sense of coaching efficacy.

Corporate mergers, acquisitions and major divisional consolidations put high‐profile, fast track demands on corporate real estate and facilities groups to: (1) reformulate site and facilities portfolios to support new global business goals and objectives; (2) implement the programs and projects needed to restructure these portfolios; and (3) take a global approach to site and facilities utilisation and management for the new merged entity. This paper will set out a comprehensive framework and process for determining and evaluating merged or consolidated site and facility plans, deciding on optimal strategies, and scoping out the tasks needed to make it all happen.

Teacher education in many countries is under reform with growing differences in its form and function. This is indicative of the ongoing negotiations around the place of theory, research and practice in teachers’ professional learning. However, the demand for mentoring of trainee teachers during often extended and multiple school-based placements is a relative constant. Indeed, with the trend towards greater school-based professional experience mentoring practices become ever more critical. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This is a conceptual paper written from the perspective of an experienced teacher educator in England, drawing on both practical experience and a body of associated research. It can be conceptualised as related to cases of practice, linked to episodes of practitioner research grounded in the ethics of the improvability of practice, the desire to meet the needs of the professional communities and a deep understanding of the demands and cultures of their workplaces.

Mentoring can be re-imagined as a dynamic hub within a practice development-led model for individual professional learning and institutional growth. Acting on this conceptualisation would allow mentors, trainees and other supporting teacher educators to contribute to the transformation of professional learning practices and educational contexts.

This paper goes beyond offering merely helpful guidance to participants and stakeholders in mentoring, or stipulating standards to be achieved, to considering what might be described as a hopeful or transformational stance in relation to mentoring. Teacher educators can continue to bring value to the transformation of teacher education through a focus on mentoring as an educative process.

Thomas E. Boudreau graduated Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude from Boston College. He completed his PhD in the Social Science Program in 1985 at the Maxwell School of Citizen and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. While at the Maxwell School, Boudreau was the research assistant for Donald T. Campbell, the Schweitzer Chair of the Humanities at Syracuse University. He also worked as Project Director of the Crisis Management and United Nations Research Projects at the Carnegie Council in New York City. He taught at the School of International Service at American University and the University of Pennsylvania before coming back to the Maxwell School where he currently teaches in the Political Science Department. He is also a research fellow at the Institute for Resource and Security Studies in Cambridge, MA, where he has specialized in issues of global governance, global climate change, and nonproliferation. Boudreau has written two books: Sheathing the Sword: The U.N. Secretary-General and the Prevention of International Conflict and Universitas: The Social Restructuring of Undergraduate Education in the United States. He is currently working on a third book, The Law of Nations: Legal Order in a Violent World. He has a special interest in interdisciplinary inquiry, especially competing epistemologies and how they contribute to interpersonal, intergroup, and international conflict.

The research examines how contextual coaching (Gorrell and Hoover, 2009; Valentine, 2019) can act as a lever to build collaborative professionalism (Hargreaves and O'Connor, 2018) and lead to school improvement.

The multi-case study (Stake, 2013) draws on two bespoke examples of contextual coaching in education and uses the ten tenets of collaborative professionalism as a conceptual framework for its abductive analysis. Data from both cases were collected through interviews, focus groups and documentation.

The findings demonstrate that effective contextual coaching leads to conditions underpinning school improvement. Specifically, there are patterns of alignment with the ten tenets of collaborative professionalism. Whereas contextual coaching is found on four of these tenets (mutual dialogue, joint work, collective responsibility and collaborative inquiry), in more mature coaching programmes, three others (collective autonomy, initiative and efficacy) emerge. There is also evidence that opportunities exist for contextual coaching to be further aligned with the remaining three tenets. The study offers insight into how school improvement can be realized by the development of staff capacity for teacher leadership through contextual coaching.

The impact of coaching in education is enhanced by recognizing the importance of context and the value of iterative design and co-construction.

The principles of contextual coaching are generalizable, but models must be developed to be bespoke and to align with each setting. Collaborative professionalism offers a useful framework to better design and implement contextual coaching programmes.

The research introduces contextual coaching in education, and how coaching can enhance collaborative professionalism in schools.

Historical studies of the expert management of childhood in Australia often make passing reference to the establishment of child guidance clinics. Yet beyond acknowledgement of their founding during the interwar years, there has been little explication of the dynamics of their institutional development. The purpose of this article is to examine the introduction of child guidance in Australia against the backdrop of the international influences that shaped local developments.

The article investigates the establishment of child guidance clinics in Melbourne and Sydney in the 1930s. In doing so, it explores the influence of American philanthropy, the promise of prevention that inspired the mental hygiene movement, and some of the difficulties faced in putting its child guidance ideals into practice in Australia.

American philanthropy played an important role in the transnational carriage of ideas about mental hygiene and child guidance into Australia. However, it was state support of child guidance activities that proved critical to its establishment. In addition to institutional developments, what also emerges as important in the 1930s is the traction gained in the broader realm of ideas about “adjustment” and mental health, particularly in relation to the efficacy of early intervention and multidisciplinary approaches to treating problems of childhood.

In tracing its early development, the article argues for the importance of understanding child guidance not only in terms of its administrative successes and failures, but also more broadly in terms of how early intervention as an influential mode of thought and practice took root internationally.

This paper reflects on the Sustainability Research Symposium (SRS), a long-term student-led initiative (seven years) at McGill University in Montréal, Canada, that seeks to foster interdisciplinary dialogue among students and researchers by using the sustainability sciences as a bridge concept. The purpose of this study is to explore the effectiveness of the SRS in fostering sustainability literacy.

Past participants of the SRS were invited to complete a survey to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of the symposia from a participants’ perspective. A mix of descriptive statistics and axial and thematic coding were used to analyze survey responses (n = 56). This study links theory and practice to explore the outcomes of symposia as tools for students to engage with sustainability research in university campuses.

Survey findings indicated that participants are from multiple disciplinary backgrounds and that they are often interested in sustainability research without being identified as sustainability researchers. Overall, the survey findings suggested that student-organized symposia can be effective mechanisms to enhance exposure to interdisciplinary research and to integrate sustainability sciences outside the classroom.

Despite being a one-day event, the survey findings suggest that symposia can offer an “initiation” toward interdisciplinary dialogue and around sustainability research that can have lasting impacts beyond the time frame of the event.

Although research symposia are widespread in university campuses, there is little published information on the effectiveness of student-organized symposia as vectors for sustainability literacy. This original contribution presents a case study of the effectiveness of an annual symposium at one Canadian university, organized by students from the Faculties of Science, Arts and Management.

The purpose of this paper is to argue for a transformative shift towards an inclusive and socially responsible framework in accounting education. Integrating the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into accounting curricula can help accountants contribute positively towards the goals’ aim. This represents not merely an educational reform but a call to action to forge a path that empowers accounting students to be technically proficient and socially conscious graduates who act as change agents working towards the public interest.

This study challenges the technical focus of accounting, conceptualising it as a multidimensional technical, social and moral practice, transcending traditional boundaries to address complex societal issues. This paper is primarily discursive, using autoethnography through presenting vignettes written by four female accounting educators across three geographical regions. These first-person narratives foster a sense of interconnectedness and shared responsibility within the accounting community, reflecting a collective commitment to integrating SDGs into accounting education. By sharing personal experiences, the authors invite readers to engage in reflective pedagogy and contribute to shaping a better world through accounting education.

The transformative potential of purposefully incorporating SDGs into accounting education is not just a theoretical concept. The vignettes in this study provide concrete evidence of how this integration can shape future accountants into socially conscious professionals driven by ethics, equity and environmental responsibility. Our collective reflection underscores the importance of collaboration and continuous learning in aligning accounting education with the SDGs, offering a hopeful vision for the future of this field.

This study builds on existing literature to encourage communication, curriculum development, collaborative teaching approaches, experiential learning opportunities, ongoing evaluation and community dialogue on reshaping accounting education by giving a rare insight into what and how people teach and from what broader motivations. It offers a practical roadmap for educators to integrate SDGs into their teaching.

IN the editorial columns of our last issue we asked the question, “What of Plymouth?” We are pleased to be able to announce that Mr. Fred. Cole, Chief Librarian and Curator of Huddersfield, has been appointed. Mr. Cole leaves Huddersfield with a splendid record as an indefatigable worker and organizer. Labouring under great difficulties he raised the standard of the Library to a high state of efficiency, and his recently‐organized Music Section has brought a host of appreciations and unqualified praise. We congratulate Mr. Cole on his appointment and wish him every success in his new sphere, where he will find even more scope for his energies and undoubted enthusiasm.