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Mixed methods research can provide a fruitful line of inquiry for educational leadership, program evaluation, and policy analysis; however, mixed methods research requires a metatheory that allows for mixing what have traditionally been considered incompatible qualitative and quantitative inquiry. The purpose of this paper is to apply Jürgen Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action as that metatheoretical justification.

After reviewing the traditional quantitative/qualitative divide based on incompatible ontologies, the author argues for a pragmatist stance toward educational leadership inquiry. Such a stance allows for mixing methods because it privileges methodology and epistemology in social inquiry, rather than ontological theories of reality. Using Habermas’s metatheory, the author shows how truth claims are linguistically mediated; how they make reference to objective, subjective, and normative formal worlds; and how they are always fallible and revisable.

The author argues that Habermas’s metatheory allows (and requires) integration of qualitative and quantitative approaches to fully understand social phenomena. Such integration is possible if researchers attempt to make methodological decisions explicit by linking methodology (and thus methodical decisions) to all three formal worlds, and articulating the rationale for doing so. The author also argues that making the entire corpus of claims bound within a line of social inquiry subject to critical examination promotes the validity of inquiry.

This paper contributes to the discussion on mixed methods research by applying a particular strand of pragmatism. This is an advance in the extant literature, which argues for a pragmatist stance on mixed methods research, but has not yet conceptualized a metatheoretical position supporting this stance.

The purpose of this paper is to expand the current conversation on and research into the potential use of technology as a means of transforming mentoring processes and those engaged in them. The authors examine the manner in which technology is being integrated into mentoring endeavors and the advantages and disadvantages of this tool, arguing that the particular attributes of e-mentoring make it an ideal platform for enhancing mentoring processes and outcomes through the use of new mentoring perspectives. They describe a specific mentoring perspective that could be adopted as a means of critically examining some of the opportunities and challenges of using technology as a tool for transformational mentoring, with an emphasis on mentoring in educational environments.

This conceptual paper uses a constructionist perspective to mentoring as a lens to examine how technology influences the mentoring process and investigates the implications of transformational e-mentoring for educational professionals.

The paper contends that e-mentoring may extend mentoring's horizons to include increasingly broad and diverse constellations of mentors for protégés. With proper guidance, the relationships made possible through e-mentoring can fulfill many mentoring functions and transform both mentors and protégés as they learn from one other.

Other than descriptions of mentoring programs that use technological tools, very little research on the outcomes of e-mentoring is available. The paper calls for a greater focus on the outcomes of e-mentoring in future research.

The paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of e-mentoring, presents recommendations for using new technologies to enhance mentoring programs in education and argues for the need to reconsider the purposes and structures of such programs.

The paper lays the groundwork for a better understanding of technology's role in mentoring in today's complex, rapidly changing knowledge society.

The objective of this chapter is to advocate a relevant and balanced curriculum of European Studies as a discipline that African and European teachers and learners can embrace. This will be achieved through critical documentary analysis of existing curricula on the subject as well as critique of relevant literature. Europe and Africa are the two most contiguous continents that share centuries of relations. Despite the existence of many forms of diplomatic relations, knowledge flows and exchange between the continents have been very minimal at best and apparently unidirectional. The troubled history of relations between the two continents continue to affect way knowledge production and curricular are defined. The gap in knowledge fosters mutual suspicion, distrust, and lack of cooperation. European Studies as a distinct academic discipline has recently made its way in the teaching and learning curricula of universities and research centers around the world. Some institutions in Africa are also introducing European Studies. A key aspect of European Studies vis-á-vis Africa is the content and quality of curriculum. The turn in discourses on decolonization and race relations in the world of the early twenty-first century makes this period a unique opportunity for the review of European Studies curricula in Europe and Africa. The authors find that deepening Euro-African relations will require a new curriculum that would reflect changes that have taken place over the years in Africa.

The pattern of food prosecutions in more recent times has remained relatively unchanged. Most have been taken under Section 2, Food and Drugs Act, 1955, even for foods which have obviously been unfit for human consumption. The Section because of its wider application has distinct procedural advantages. A few local authorities routinely use Section 8 successfully; it probably depends upon a more liberal interpretation and understanding by local justices. The five‐year study of food prosecutions, (BFJ 1971, 73, 39), separated them into a number of well‐defined groups and showed that those for the presence of foreign material were the majority and remained fairly constant throughout the period; mouldy foods increased during the five years and then remained steady as the second largest single group. The foods most commonly affected and the foreign matter commonly present could be seen; neither changed much during the period of the survey.

Migration is one of the most significant domestic, development and foreign policy issues in the world today. According to the International Organization for Migration, 1 out of every 35 persons worldwide is an international migrant. This chapter discusses the complex issue of international teacher migration, and reports findings from empirical research conducted in the UK to illuminate the socio-cultural and economic contexts of teacher migration in both industrialized nations and in developing countries. This research, commissioned by the Commonwealth Secretariat, served to inform development of a Commonwealth Teacher Recruitment Protocol, which was adopted by 53 countries in late 2004. This chapter serves to disseminate the results of this research to a larger international audience. It also provides an analysis of the process in which educational research informs international policy development.

This chapter investigates the impact of different state correlation assumptions for out-of-sample performance of unobserved components (UC) models with stochastic volatility. Using several measures of US inflation the author finds that allowing for correlation between inflation’s trend and cyclical (or gap) components is a useful feature to predict inflation in the short run. In contrast, orthogonality between such components improves the out-of-sample performance as the forecasting horizon widens. Accordingly, trend inflation from orthogonal trend-gap UC models closely tracks survey-based measures of long-run inflation expectations. Trend dynamics in the correlated-component case behave similarly to survey-based nowcasts. To carry out estimation, an efficient algorithm which builds upon properties of Toeplitz matrices and recent advances in precision-based samplers is provided.

This study examines how community norms, such as religious atmosphere and economic pressures, affect corporate philanthropic giving. Grounded in upper echelon theory, the authors further focus on how the women on board of directors (BODs) play an important role in the relationship between community norms and corporate philanthropic giving.

This study utilizes a two-stage Heckman selection model to control the sample-selection bias. The final sample includes 8,566 observations for the first stage and 5,575 observations for the second stage. Then, by using a sample of Chinese listed firms in 2010–2014, this study establishes a strong and robust support for the hypotheses.

This study finds that religious atmosphere is significantly and positively associated with corporate philanthropic giving, whereas the relationship between economic pressure and corporate philanthropy is negative. Furthermore, women on BODs not only strengthen the relationship between religious atmosphere and corporate philanthropic giving but also strengthen the relationship between economic pressure and corporate philanthropic giving.

First, the authors contribute to community literature by developing a subdivided perspective. The authors provide the first attempt to empirically investigate the hidden association between the two perspectives of community (religious atmosphere and economic pressure) and corporate philanthropic giving. Second, the authors contribute to the literature on corporate philanthropy by expanding the antecedents of corporate philanthropic giving to communities where firms are headquartered. Third, by capturing the multiple identities of women, the authors enrich the study of the influence of minority groups on corporate decision-making. The authors find that gender diversity on BODs strengthen the influence of community norms on corporate philanthropic giving.

The paper aims to review the concept of leadership as practiced in the West and in Africa, and goes on to establish the link between these two approaches and sustainable development in Africa. It does this with the view of assessing their implications for the attainment of sustainable development on the continent through a developed leadership–impact–effect conceptual model.

In seeking to achieve its purpose, the paper uses a literature review approach to assess the leadership orientation in the West (particularly in relation to effective leadership) as against the studied leadership situation prevalent in the African continent to find out their impact on development (sustainable).

Findings from the paper reveal a great disparity between the leadership situation in the African continent and the attainment of sustainable development. It also affirms a link between effective leadership approaches, like the transformational leadership approach, and the attainment of sustainable development.

Based on the findings, it is recommended that African leaders resort to effective leadership styles, with a great emphasis on the transformational style, which integrate creativity, vision and participation, as it attempts to create sustainable development for the citizenry in the continent.

The paper demonstrated the relevance of effective leadership in ensuring sustainable development in Africa and as a tool for achieving economic growth and development.