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Students completing their tertiary education at a university may be equipped with theoretical knowledge with little to no practical experience. In order to bridge this gap in practical skills, a computer simulation was developed based on the e-filing platform of the South African Revenue Services (SARS). Students were exposed to this self-developed computer simulation to answer the question: to what extent will the e-filing simulation improve students' confidence to practically apply their theoretical knowledge?

The research applied a pre–post questionnaire research method to gauge the students' ability to apply their theoretical knowledge to a practical scenario before and after the simulation.

From the results, it is apparent that the students were inspired with confidence in getting to terms with the application of their theoretical knowledge in a real-life scenario. The computer simulation provided the platform for learning to take place in a practical environment without the risk of errors that would translate into real financial consequences.

The contribution of this research can be found in a teaching intervention that may support the training of future tax professionals in practical application skills. The contribution can be extended to the enhancement of education in the field of taxation, particularly with the results' showing that the students experienced high levels of increased confidence in their application of theoretical knowledge to real-life scenarios.

Written official and formal accounts such as Inspectors’ Reports provide a summary of the teachers’ work, conduct, interactions with pupils, as well as a glimpse of the skills, knowledge and dispositions brought to their work. What can be concluded from these reports is that teachers had little occupational control of their work. What was taught and how they taught were prescribed by the curriculum and mediated against the standards pupils attained. In addition, teachers’ and pupils’ successes and failures were made public in Inspectors’ Reports, although it was the teacher who was more readily identifiable if not explicitly named. This is not to suggest that teachers did not act as agents of change. Increasingly, teachers sought to professionalize their work through qualifications, training and exposure to new ideas and practices. Against this backdrop of the professionalization of the workforce were the increasing bureaucratization of schools and teaching and the institutionalization of teacher preparation and training.

In a recent paper, Hartley and Cooper reviewed the available studies of redundancy using a psychological framework and came to the conclusion that insufficient systematic work had so far been done ‘to assess the impact of the phenomenon on the psychological state of the redundant worker, his family and the wider community’. This lack of examination of redundancy from a psychological approach was a state which Hartley and Cooper felt should be remedied. And, in the title of their paper, they pose an implicit question by the inclusion of a question mark — ‘Redundancy: a psychological problem?’. Yet, as Wood notes, there is in fact little specification of either the potential or reported psychological effects of redundancy. Hartley and Cooper document the reported impact of redundancy in terms of the various stages of the process and note that most studies have tended to concentrate on the period of unemployment following the loss of the job rather than on the period previous to the redundancy. A number of these studies, they note, have been attitudinal, describing the feelings of the affected population, or a sub‐sample, towards a number of relevant issues, most notably the redundancy itself. While they consider that the issue of redundancy has been studied from the viewpoints of both labour economics and sociology, Hartley and Cooper are more concerned to highlight the lack of concern displayed so far by psychologists. They quote the study of the closure of a steel works by Warr and Lovatt, in which psychological wellbeing was singled out for examination and was found to be associated with length of time unemployed. This study is, however, exceptional in the emphasis placed on the psychological effects of redundancy. Hartley and Cooper go on to comment on the central place given in previous studies to the job search process, both in terms of attitudes and behavioural patterns. From job search, attention is directed to a review of the studies of the unemployed in general as opposed to the redundant in particular. Attention is drawn throughout the paper to the lack of concern shown to date with the examination of redundancy as a psychological problem.

The purpose of the present study is to explore the collective consumption rituals associated with Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, and one of the largest shopping days in the USA.

The research design for this study followed the approach of psychological phenomenological interviewing. Over a two‐year period, the authors, along with trained research assistants, conducted interviews with experienced female Black Friday shoppers.

Qualitative data from 38 interviews indicated that Black Friday shopping activities constitute a collective consumption ritual that is practiced and shared by multiple generations of female family members and close friends. Four themes emerged from the data: familial bonding, strategic planning, the great race, and mission accomplished. The themes coalesced around a military metaphor.

The findings of this study indicate that Black Friday shoppers plan for the ritual by examining advertisements and strategically mapping out their plans for the day. Recommendations for retailers are presented.

This exploratory investigation of Black Friday as a consumption ritual offers new insight into the planning and shopping associated with this well‐known American pseudo‐holiday. Findings also extend theory and research on collective consumption rituals.

A model of organisational stress management is presented, as a four stage process, comprising: getting the organisation to recognise stress; training individuals in stress management; providing helping skills; and providing a stress audit. It is argued that each of these stages involves a series of interesting tasks, that can be either facilitated or hindered by a range of organisational supports or constraints. The management of stress is of major importance to all management functions – not only personnel – in the light of its heavy potential costs.

From the first attempts to prepare, train and educate teachers the official knowledge of the state has shaped what was identified as worth knowing, the curriculum. The knowledge and skills imparted link with political, economic and social priorities of the state. The formalization of this knowledge via pupil-teacher schemes, normal schools, as well as teachers’ colleges and universities was imperative in order for the state to define and control what was taught and who taught. Furthermore, central control of the curriculum, examination, classification and certification of teachers ensured that the agenda of the state was transported into the nation’s classrooms. Thus, the primary objective was to both produce and reproduce ‘good’ and ‘capable’ teachers ‘free from defect or infirmity’ to teach the skills and knowledge required for disciplined future citizenship.

Teacher colleges played a significant role in the preparation of teachers for over 100 years in New Zealand. Teacher training colleges opened in the 1880s and served as the main institutions for teacher preparation. Toward the end of the twentieth century, the plight of teachers’ colleges once again fell victim to the ‘decline and demand cycle’ for teachers. Fueled by discussions regarding the extent teacher training should be “practically based in the classroom”, new government directions and policy priorities for the preparation of the teaching workforce were implemented. All teacher colleges experienced either staged amalgamations or ultimate closure. In the late 1970s and 1980s, the preparation of teachers entered a new phase as the responsibility shifted to the university sector, which included the training of kindergarten teachers. While the policy rhetoric imagined this to be an amalgamation, the reality was a process fraught with a number of anxieties, not the least of which were the intellectual shifts.

A significant gap in the history of teacher preparation in Aotearoa New Zealand is a major study of teachers’ training colleges. Although there are published histories of single teacher colleges, there has been no collective understanding of the role and purpose of these colleges in the development and preparation of teachers. This chapter is not a linear history of the development of teachers’ colleges, but rather an examination of the economic, political and social factors that affected the contested operations of these institutions. The implications for the preparation of elementary (primary), and post–primary (secondary) teachers are considered.

In this chapter,¹ I explore topics which unexpectedly emerged in in-depth interviews with Filipino and Eastern European women in Norway, which proved important for the ways in which they experienced their sojourn as au pairs in Oslo. These topics were related to their physical experience of having and being a body, as bodily subjects and as objects for ‘consumption’. To understand au pairs' experiences one must include an analysis both of experiences related to eating practices and experiences related to sexuality, in terms of ‘being a (female) body’ (Bordo, 2003). These two kinds of experiences may be regarded as interrelated and challenge and activate the division between public and private, employer and employee, and involve intimacy and experiences which are interpreted as physical.