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This chapter discusses what the working practices and professionalism of sports lecturers can tell us about the challenges of professionalism in further education (FE). This chapter draws on Jake's doctoral research in which he interviewed five sports lecturers working in FE colleges in England, about their identities and practices. In this chapter, Jake talks about his own experiences as a sports lecturer in FE and how his increasing disillusionment with his role led him to undertake doctoral research in this field. We explore constructions of professionalism within FE, and we show that through a process Jake identified and labelled as ‘competitive mediation’, the sports lecturers he interviewed used their experiences as elite sports people to navigate the highly performative environments in which they were working. The positives and negatives of using this strategy for them, their learners and wider society are explored in this chapter. We suggest that although Jake's research focused specifically on sports lecturers in FE settings, his insights can be applied more widely, we reflect on the importance of considering the impact our own diverse lived experiences may have on our sense of professionalism as researchers and practitioners.

The overall goal of science is to build a valid and reliable body of knowledge about the functioning of the world and how applying that knowledge can change it. As personnel and human resources management researchers, we aim to contribute to the respective bodies of knowledge to provide both employers and employees with a workable foundation to help with those problems they are confronted with. However, what research on research has consistently demonstrated is that the scientific endeavor possesses existential issues including a substantial lack of (a) solid theory, (b) replicability, (c) reproducibility, (d) proper and generalizable samples, (e) sufficient quality control (i.e., peer review), (f) robust and trustworthy statistical results, (g) availability of research, and (h) sufficient practical implications. In this chapter, we first sing a song of sorrow regarding the current state of the social sciences in general and personnel and human resources management specifically. Then, we investigate potential grievances that might have led to it (i.e., questionable research practices, misplaced incentives), only to end with a verse of hope by outlining an avenue for betterment (i.e., open science and policy changes at multiple levels).

Climate change is a global issue with far-reaching environmental, social and economic consequences. As more people become aware of these consequences, pressure is mounting on governments and businesses to implement ambitious and required climate mitigation and adaptation plans to reduce and finally stop making the climate crisis worse. One of these strategies is just transition, which is defined as the call for climate transformation that prioritises the social and environmental needs of workers and vulnerable groups, especially in the context of transitioning away from fossil fuels, while leaving no one behind. This chapter first provides an overview of just transition through a review of the literature and bibliometric analysis. Then, it discusses just transition in policymaking, comprising reactive, proactive and transformational just transition approaches. This is followed by a discussion on barriers to just transition. Finally, the chapter offers a practical example of transformational just transition approach by reporting some preliminary findings from a case study in the coal mining town of Collie on Wilman Boodja, Western Australia.

This chapter discusses the findings of doctoral research into further education lecturers' and middle managers' perceptions of how Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in the sector is planned and implemented. Thematic analysis revealed that mandatory CPD is perceived to: involve conflicting purposes between those planning it and its recipients (deriving from divergent understandings of professionalism and the role of CPD among stakeholders); and be characterised as mostly generic, didactic, and ineffective, leading lecturers to compensate by engaging in additional, separate forms of CPD. This chapter demonstrates the value of practice-based doctoral study in enabling the voices of educators to be positioned at the centre of an exploration of their own professional learning.

In 2020, Sports Illustrated proclaimed its “Sportsperson of the Year” as something dubbed “the activist athlete,” choosing five athletes – LeBron James, Breanna Stewart, Patrick Mahomes, Naomi Osaka, and Laurent Duvernay-Tardif – that represented the term. Like so many athletes who came before them, these athletes vividly demonstrate the potential of sport to shine a spotlight on critical issues in society, yet again solidifying how sport does not exist merely as some kind of escape, but is a major stakeholder in global campaigns for social justice.

This chapter historicizes the contemporary resurgence of athlete activism, largely connected to the reawakening of Black Lives Matters (BLM) in 2020, within what journalist Howard Bryant has called The Heritage, with athletes who acknowledge and accept the charge to use their spotlights for those who have none. From the turning point of the Mexico City Olympics in 1968, which saw collective movements of African-American athletes culminate in the powerful Black power protest by Tommie Smith and John Carlos, a protest that built upon the legacies of so many, to the ongoing debates that surround the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) Rule 50, athletes have long understood how sport serves not only as an integral part of society but also as an agent for change. Contemporary cries for athletes to “shut up and dribble” echo past claims that sport takes place on a level playing field that transcends politics. The history of sports demonstrates otherwise, as athletes embody every imaginable, intersectional, classification of political actor.

I suggest that the search for Adam Smith’s theodicy is likely to be in vain. The paper begins with a brief history of approaches to evil, emphasizing the context in which they arose, and the questions authors were addressing. Approaches most relevant to Adam Smith include those of Augustine and Calvin, and the early modern theodicies of Leibniz, Samuel Clarke and William King, as well as the attacks on them by Bayle and Voltaire. Scottish Enlightenment writers were not terribly interested in theodicy, though Hutcheson and Kames did devote space to their versions of problems of evil. David Hume’s Dialogues on Natural Religion are often taken to be classic statement of the problem of theodicy and argument against religious belief, but his concern was to demolish rationalistic theodicies rather than religious belief or practice. The paper then turns to Smith’s writings, considering similarities and differences to these approaches to evil. Smith emphasizes the wisdom and beneficence of God, and that evils we observe are part of a larger providential plan. He makes no attempt to justify the God in the face of evil, and in this respect Smith shares more with Augustine and Calvin than he does with the early modern theodicists. Smith’s approach to evil is simple and ameliorative. Smith’s approach contrasts with early nineteenth century English political economists, from Malthus onwards, for whom theodicy was important. Whatever view we take of the theodicists project of justifying an all-powerful and good God in the face of evil may, we still struggle to make sense of economic suffering and evil.

Social media networks make their services freely available to all users. Users pay for the service received with the time and attention taken by the advertisements. This chapter argues that social media platforms are a unique form of monopoly driven by “the more the merrier” effect (i.e., network effects) in users' consumption. These monopolies exercise market power, not by charging higher prices to users but by “tying” larger amounts of advertising to their content. Traditional antitrust instruments designed to address excessive pricing and reduced output by monopolies need to be reframed to tame the attention economy problems in the social media industry. This chapter discusses five antitrust instruments grouped in three categories: structural, behavioral, and market-based remedies. Market-based solutions are the least explored in the literature, despite being the most promising instruments to lower the attention costs imposed on users, while preserving the economies of scope in production and the network effects in consumption, and possibly maintaining free access to social media, as we know it today.

Scholarly literature on the Internationalization of Education has generated important theories, debates, and insights supporting in-depth understandings of the field, yet we lack comprehensive reviews exploring the design, implementation, and impact of practical approaches. The present review addresses this gap, mapping the literature on international curriculum design, identifying trends and themes across approaches and pedagogies while revealing limitations and lack of attention to issues that inhibit practice in the field. It highlights the privileging of “instrumental,” or quantifiable skills-based curricula, over “transformative” internationalization dedicated to social justice and equity, and observes important disconnects between theory and practice: publications in the field offer critical conceptualizations of what internationalized curricula should achieve and why but with little attention to specific content and teaching practice that would lead to achieving these objectives. The review further analyzes such disconnect in the literature dedicated to decolonial internationalizing pedagogies, while simultaneously illuminating how prevailing decolonial theories of international education erase and ignore parts of the world. It concludes by contending that approaches to the internationalization of curriculum would benefit from increased practical frameworks that could guide educators, practitioners, and students in crucial conversations at the intersections of social justice and International Education.

Infanticide stands out as a crime which, in England and Wales, has been marked for at least 200 years by deep-rooted continuities in its representation and treatment by both the criminal justice system and the media, despite the massive political, economic, social, legislative and cultural changes that occurred over this period. Particularly remarkable about this long-standing discourse is its routine emphasis that the guilty mother is also a victim of tragic circumstances that led to the crime and deserving of sympathetic treatment. It also invariably sets infanticide apart as a ‘special case’ which does not necessarily fit with either medical or legal definitions of diminished criminal responsibility. Perhaps surprisingly, this framing of women who commit infanticide stresses not only their ‘normality’ prior to the offence but also their ‘respectability’, a sharp contrast to the sometimes overtly misogynistic representation of other types of women offenders. This chapter argues that it is above all ‘respectability’ that profoundly shaped the cultural script relating to infanticide in England and Wales between 1800 and 2000, and that this continues to exert a powerful legacy on the relatively small number of cases that now comes before the courts in the twenty-first century.