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The purpose of this paper is to report on research into the challenges for leadership in implementation of a new curriculum in a remote region of Queensland, Australia.

Data for the research were gathered through an online survey and semi‐structured interviews with teachers and principals involved in the reforms.

Results show that there were substantial differences in the views of teachers and principals in their perceptions of the implementation process. The vast differences in the implementation strategies and leadership approaches between the schools suggested that the effect of the reform on leadership practices was more positive in schools in which elements of productive leadership were present.

This research highlights the importance of leadership throughout reform processes, particularly in terms of the different experiences and perceptions teachers and principals have during the policy implementation process. As a result, this paper offers an important perspective on the complex dynamics of leadership processes and how curriculum reform is enacted at the local level.

The article serves to both introduce the special edition of Qualitative Research Journal (QRJ) and explain the purpose of the Foundation of Learning and Literacy (FFLL) Touchstones as principles that should inform language and literacy policy development, leadership in the field and classroom literacy practices. It particularly focuses on Touchstone 1 and the importance of fairness and equity for all literacy learners. It draws on a range of research that articulates ways that inequality of opportunity can be addressed.

This article both introduces the FFLL for the Special Edition of QRJ and examines the first Touchstone or guiding, overarching principle that led to the establishment of the FFLL and the 11 Touchstones that are discussed in subsequent articles. In essence, this article addresses the importance of fairness and equity for all children and young people as they develop deep literacy. The article begins with a brief contextual background explaining how and why FFLL was formed. It then highlights the first Touchstone.

The article demonstrates the need to support all learners as they strive to be deeply literate so they can become active and compassionate members of their communities. Based on a range of research evidence, it suggests ways to make sure that all children and young people can become successful literacy learners. These include homes with books that learners can self-select, sharing stories, substantive conversations, the provision of quality literary texts and rich pre-school experiences.

Practical classroom implications arising from the research are discussed.

The article is a brief introduction to the FFLL and a synthesis of some of the research that underpins the first Touchstone.

Social procurement is becoming an increasing policy focus for governments around the world as they seek to incentivise new collaborative partnerships with private organisations in industries like construction to meet their social obligations. The limited construction management research in this area shows that the successful implementation of these policies depends on a new generation of social procurement professionals who are promoting these policies into an institutional vacuum with little organisational identity, legitimacy and support. The purpose of this paper is to investigate what these actors do to promote and build support for the implementation of these policies in their organisations.

A thematic analysis of in-depth semi-structured interviews with 15 social procurement actors in the Australian construction industry is presented.

Results portray an experimental, disconnected and nascent institutional field of practice with a high degree of role ambiguity and conflict. In the absence of a clear organisational identity and legitimate power-base, social procurement actors are forced to rely on incremental rather than radical innovation and the power of stories to persuade others to engage with their vision for creating social value through construction.

Contributing new insights to the emerging “practice theme” in social procurement research, this paper provides important conceptual and practical information about the attributes which determine their success, how they fit into existing organisational structures and how they build support to achieve enabling institutional change. Academically, the results advance understanding of how social procurement professionals are implementing these policies into their organisations. Practically, they provide new information which enable social procurement professionals to improve their practices and construction companies to recruit the right people into these roles and design their organisations to more effectively support them.

The purpose of this paper is to consider how organizations with diverse, interdependent functions with differing evaluative principles and differing ideas as to which behaviors are the most desirable, use management controls in their efforts to achieve innovation.

The authors conducted a case study of TechCo, an Australian technology start-up company, over a 12 month period.

The authors demonstrate how the clash of differing evaluative principles among interdependent teams led to the organization seeking new ways of organizing, which in turn, enabled the organization to better manage the interdependencies between the diverse functional areas. Additionally, the findings show how, through the use of management control systems, the organization was able to promote idea generation and “buy-in” across all functional areas, order competing priorities for innovation and set the agenda as to what constituted “acceptable” innovation for the organization to pursue.

The authors find that management controls play an important role in managing the tensions between differing evaluative principles in diverse functional areas in a heterarchical organization, and in supporting innovation in such an environment. As such, the authors provide the first research evidence on how management controls are used within a heterarchy to generate and select innovative ideas.

Tabletop ‘pen and paper’ role-play games (TTRPGs) can function as spaces of creative experimentation with gender identity through shared storytelling. The last decade has seen an explosion of Actual Play (AP) shows that broadcast recorded gameplay of TTRPGs to online audiences. Neverafter is the 15th season of well-known AP show Dimension 20 and is a horror-themed re-imagining of classic fairy tales through the rules of Dungeons and Dragons. Four of the six player characters are male, based individually on the fairy tales of Pinocchio, Puss in Boots, the Frog Prince, and a (gender-swapped) Mother Goose, adventuring together in a story-world called ‘The Neverafter’. Not only are these versions of the fairy tale characters shaped by the players' own explorations of identity, but as an AP show, this is also layered with the expectations produced by the show's wide fan base. Their diverse gender explorations and their subversion of fairy tale conventions are enabled by the fluency of the players and audience in freely flowing between the framing perspectives of player and character. This chapter will focus on non-binary player Ally Beardsley's creation and performance of Mother Timothy Goose as a gay, elderly, human man as a particularly meaningful case study. This analysis considers how heroic masculinity is reconceptualised in Neverafter through the horror-themed embodiment of fairy tale men in the context of contemporary gender issues.