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The purpose of this study was to assess whether a simple intervention could sustain new hires’ high engagement levels beyond the first six months. This case study illustrates how a simple intervention can extend the “job honeymoon“ – a brief period of high engagement – up to a year post hire.

This study reports the results of a randomized, controlled study in one organization using a “wise intervention,” a method derived from social science research in educational settings.

This case study illustrates that it is possible to extend the job honeymoon up to a year post-hire. Acknowledging to new hires that transitions are challenging produced a statistically significantly higher sense of belonging and higher employee satisfaction up to 9+ months post-hire.

This work was inspired by research from Gregory M. Walton, and it illustrates the potential value for application in the workplace. However, its generalizability to all organizations will require further study.

This work is most relevant for human resources leaders and managers who want to ensure new hires are well supported. This study found that acknowledging the difficulty of a transition increases the engagement of new team members substantially and likely enhances productivity and team effectiveness for months to come.

The highly counterintuitive but critically important idea of this study is that people need reassurance that transitions might feel hard but are a shared experience. Providing that reassurance is a simple, easy-to-apply approach to support the newest members of a team or organization and sustain their engagement for months to come.

The Engineering Library, the University of Auckland’s latest state‐of‐the‐art and completely remodelled subject‐specific library, is proving extremely popular with its users. This article aims to describe the successful design of a library building to cope with new roles, new goals and new futures. It looks at the planning and implementation, provides illustrations of innovative solutions and services, and outlines the key drivers and outcomes. It describes the transformation of a late 1960s library that was crowded, stuffy and lacking in natural light, to a striking new learning environment with many enhanced services.

Description of the process of redevelopment.

A complete renovation of a building can make a striking difference.

A profile of the University of Auckland Engineering Library with redesigned services.

Using a discourse analytic approach, the purpose of this paper is to examine how genre impacts white readers when reading about historic acts of racial violence. Specifically, this study explores one white high school student’s stance-taking as she read an informational text and an eyewitness narrative about the Tulsa Race Massacre.

This study used discourse analysis (Gee, 1999) and the think-aloud method (Pressley and Afflerbach, 1996) to explore the white student’s interactions with genres of historical texts. The authors coupled iterative coding and memoing with discourse analysis to analyze the stances she adopted while reading.

The findings illustrate that the informational text allowed for a distancing from the racialized violence in the text, whereas the narrative created an opportunity for more connection to those who experienced the violence.

While genre and reader response has long been explored in English Education research, little research has examined the impact of genre on reading historical texts. This study demonstrates the influence that genre may have on white readers’ emotional responses and stance-taking practices when reading about historic acts of racial violence.

This chapter is concerned with exploring the various ways in which Pokémon Go complements or challenges family life. The chapter begins by explicating the multisided concept of play and the myriad definitions that surround this term. Having established the various way in which this phenomenon can improve the lives of those who engage in it – physically, emotionally and cognitively – we go on to consider how play has gradually shifted from public spaces and into designated playgrounds, and how this trend corresponds with children concurrently moving away from the streets and into their bedrooms. Following this, we explore the impact digital technologies are having on the practice of parenting, paying particular attention to video games as a significant facet of youth culture that is often associated with a range of negative connotations. Yet, video games are not intrinsically bad. As we outline, research on intergenerational play and joint-media engagement (JME) readily demonstrate the many benefits families can experience when these games are played together. What is missing from this developing body of work is the familial playing of locative games and the extent to which this practice adds contours to our understanding of this field. The chapter is, therefore, driven by the following research questions. First, why and how do families play Pokémon Go? This includes the different roles that family members adopt, alongside motivations for families playing this game, how the playing of this game complements the rhythms of family life and the extent to which this hybrid reality game (HRG) is suited to intergenerational play. Second, what impact does locative familial play have on families, collectively speaking, and regarding individual family members? Here, we are not just interested in whether this game allows families to bond and how this bonding process is experienced, but also whether the familial play of Pokémon Go provides families with any learning opportunities that might facilitate personal growth beyond the game. Third, what worries might parents have about the familial playing of Pokémon Go and to what extent does the locative aspect of this game reshape their apprehensions?

Participatory budgeting's (PB’s) proponents hope that bringing development projects to historically underserved communities will improve well-being by extending infrastructure and services. This article details the logic connecting PB to well-being, describes the evolution of PB programs as they spread around the world and consolidates global evidence from research that tests hypotheses on PB's impact. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.

Unstructured literature review and comparative case study across five global regions.

The authors find evidence for PB's impact on well-being in several important contexts, mostly not only in Brazil, but also in Peru and South Korea. They also find that very few rigorous, large-N, comparative studies have evaluated the relationship between PB and well-being and that the prospects for social accountability and PB's sustainability for well-being are not equally strong in all contexts. They argue that PB has great potential to improve well-being, but program designs, operational rules and supporting local conditions must be favorable to realize that potential.

This is one of the few efforts to build theory on where and why the authors would expect to observe relationships between PB and well-being. It is also one of the first to consolidate global evidence on PB's impact.

This chapter is concerned with examining the families that play Pokémon Go together within the context of spatial practices. The chapter begins by outlining the general approach to spatiality that we adopt throughout this book, which is predicated on the ‘spatial turn’ within the social sciences. Here, spatial practices are understood as being socially constructed in day-to-day live, as opposed to being something simply given. In other words, ‘the concept of the city’ and the ‘urban fact’ (de Certeau, 1984, p. 1, italics in original) are not one and the same thing. Instead, the phenomenology of space is moulded in the social realm as part of the practice of everyday life, which has consequences for hybrid reality games (HRGs) like Pokémon Go. After delineating between ‘space’ and ‘place’ à la the ‘mobilities turn’, we shift our attention to embodied approaches to urban life. This begin with an examination of the art of the flânerie, which has been reimagined to account for the ubiquity of mobile media, and more recently, locative games. A review of the literature surrounding locative games demonstrates that, for the most part, concerns about spatiality have not extended to the kind of intergenerational play that is the focus of this book. Drawing on our original study of Pokémon Go, as outlined above, then, the chapter is driven by the following research questions. First, to what extent does Pokémon Go lead to families spending more time outside and how is this reshaping experienced. Second, what effect does this HRG has on the routes and pathways families choose to follow while traversing their physical setting, as well as the sites they frequent. Third, to what extent do families engage with the various elements of Pokémon Go and what does this suggest about the evolution of locative play in the context of earlier location-based social networks (LBSNs).

Researcher Highlight: Dr. Carter G. Woodson (1875–1950)

The purpose of this research is to explore the use of media as the basis for a social issues approach to promoting moral literacy and effective teaching in educational leadership programs.

Through a review of relevant literature, mass media sources, and observations, the authors use Starratt's framework of moral responsibility to identify ethical practice in response to dilemmas brought on by local, regional, national and international crises and conflicts. Regional, national and international crises and conflicts are regularly reported on the Internet, as well as in the local, regional, national and international media (e.g., Time, Macleans, Michigan Citizen, The Washington Post, Education Week, The Boston Globe, National Geographic).

The use of mass media venues, when compounded with moral grounding better equips educational leaders to act with ethical orientations. Professional organizations should encourage and support leaders who engage in public citizenship activities – answering critical questions, brokering views, encouraging discussion, and serving as resources.

Issues concerning the ethical usage of mass media are complex, often unique, and ought to be an integral component of teaching in formal educational leadership experience. Consequently, the authors advocate the use of the media in university teaching as the basis for a social issues approach to promote morally literate graduates in university educational leadership programs. Actual examples of reactions about the use of media from a class of graduate students enrolled in an ethics class and educational leadership are included.

Many higher education institutions are committed to developing students as skilled professionals and responsible citizens for a more sustainable future. In addition to the formal curriculum for sustainability education, there is an increasing interest in informal learning within universities. This paper aims to extend the current understanding of the diversity and significance of informal learning experiences in supporting students’ learning for sustainability.

Six focus groups were formed with 30 undergraduate and postgraduate students from an Australian higher education institution committed to supporting graduate competencies for sustainability. An inductive and qualitative inquiry was designed to enable participants to reflect on the ways in which their university experiences support meaningful and significant learning for sustainability.

The paper presents a typology of the diverse communities of informal learning that students create and engage with. These range from ongoing to transient groups, from environmentally to more socially oriented groups and from incidental to intended learning, from local to national in scale, with varying types and degrees of connection to the formal curriculum and the university campus. The paper demonstrates that these student-led experiences support three domains of learning: cognitive, practical and affective.

Deepening the understanding of the forms and significance of student-led learning within their university experience contributes to the identification of the roles that informal learning may play alongside formal education in developing graduates as agents of change for a more sustainable future.

This chapter analyzes data from a five-year case study of a secondary school undergoing turnaround, supported by a federal School Improvement Grant. The findings explore how neoliberal policies perpetuate structural inequities in the day-to-day activities of schools by describing how district choice and accountability policies marginalize students of color in low socioeconomic positions. Findings explore the challenges faced by school leaders in a neoliberal policy context and highlight the importance of policy context in a successful improvement effort. The complex web of neoliberal polices of choice and accountability led to lower enrollment, which decreased the school's base funding and led to a greater proportion of students with skill gaps, significant socioemotional needs and students in need of special education services. For school improvement to be successful and to close the opportunity gap, leaders must dismantle and disrupt racist systems and structures bolstered by neoliberal policies.