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The training and education of peers represents an important milestone in the peer's journey to work within organisational settings. Historically, peer support occurred based on a mutual relationship whereby one peer often with more experience provided support and guidance to another. However, as peers began to move into organisations staffed by professionals, a standard of training and education became needed if peers were to be accepted. This chapter outlines these issues, as well as discussing the training standards, the academics and soft skills needed. Some of the challenges peers face during their education and their continued development will be discussed. This chapter will focus on the training of peers for mental health and substance use settings in addition to other emerging areas in social inclusion.

Peer work would previously have been associated with having a lived experience of mental health conditions and working with people in a relatable way to model that context. However, peer support work has since embraced a wider composition from the generic context, seeing that ethnic minorities face many health, social and psychological challenges, especially those deemed Refugees/Asylum Seekers (International Protection Applicants) on their journey to resettlement in host countries. The Health Service Executive's Social Inclusion office plays a crucial role in responding to the health needs of service users from underserved communities. The health and care needs of people from diverse ethnic, cultural and religious communities fall within the remit of the Health Service Executive Social Inclusion office nationally. The context for peer work in ethnic minority communities is that it is a pilot programme evaluated and endorsed as a national programme by the National Intercultural Health Group. It is evidence-based and aligned with national strategy/policy, with training options available to peer support workers. In the Southeast region of Ireland, communities vulnerable to health inequality targeted by the Social Inclusion team would range from Roma to Refugees and International Protection Applicants – formally known as Asylum Seekers. This chapter will focus on these ethnic populations and how peer support work is delivered in these contexts.

Four reputed leaders for the coming years in the field of special education for individuals with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) each with a slightly different perspective on the field were asked to respond independently to a prompt asking what does special education mean for students with EBD and what is being done and how do we maintain tradition? The contributors' responses to the prompt are presented and then summarized across the essays. A remarkable consistency emerges across the independent essays. In addition to the tradition of providing a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment, the contributors identify needs to support teachers serving this population. Needs in teacher training and the expertise required to meet the needs of individuals with EBD are outlined as well as potential contributions of technology to carry out specific tasks. We conclude with a call for increased advocacy for use of the knowledge that we currently possess and that which will soon be discovered to support students with EBD as well as their teachers. We also note that the contributors' names are listed alphabetically to acknowledge the equality of each person to the final product.

This chapter describes experiences of inclusion from the perspective of young adults with Down syndrome, participating in an intensive education to work (EtW) training programme. The programme, designed by a non-governmental organisation (NGO), was conducted within a private university in Australia working in partnership with the NGO.

Drawing from a broader formative evaluation of the programme, the case study investigated how inclusion was described and understood by the student participants and individuals involved in facilitating or supporting the programme. Data collection involved conducting a focus group interview with student participants and face-to-face interviews with their teachers, a student volunteer and two university lecturers who interacted with students in the programme. The findings have been used to improve the processes of the programme currently undergoing its third iteration.

Findings suggest the need to consider at least two levels of provision in the development of equitable education for individuals participating in this programme. These include considering their voices at the level of programme design, and secondly, deliberately facilitating disability confidence programs for university students and staff.

The study notes that embedding education to employment training programs for individuals with intellectual disabilities within university settings provide them with opportunities to experience and access higher education; however, more investigations are needed to ascertain what equitable higher education in practice means for them.

Family–school partnerships are an essential component of the special education process for children with disabilities. Notably, recent legislative reauthorizations of IDEA (2004) have focused on increasing parent involvement. For many parents, participation occurs primarily through the individualized education program (IEP) meetings. Parent involvement often includes parent advocating for their children. However, many parents face barriers when advocating to obtain appropriate special education services for their children with disabilities. Culturally and linguistically diverse families face greater systemic barriers (e.g., language and cultural differences) to access services for their own children with disabilities. School professionals can foster opportunities to help families be active members of the IEP process. For example, school professionals should connect families with resources to learn about their special education rights. Specifically, school personnel can encourage families to reach out to their local Parent Training and Information (PTI) Center to be educated and empowered to advocate for services. In addition, parents can be encouraged to attend parent advocacy programs to help increase knowledge, advocacy, and empowerment to access and advocate for services for their own children. Advancing the values of working with parents of students with special education needs is discussed.

Peer support in the substance use arena has a long and interesting history. Many of the ideas for substance use treatment can be traced back to the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and its mutual aid/self-help programme. However, as interest in providing care and support progressed, and research began to develop, other equally helpful methods of providing peer supports emerged. In this chapter, we discuss this emergence of peer support, and describe how and where this support is provided. The processes and relationships involved in peer support work and the operationalising of lived experience are outlined.

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.

This study used phenomenological narrative methodology to get insights into lived experiences of 10 Asian immigrant woman scholars in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in US institutions of higher learning. A feminist research approach overall guided the study. The concepts and theories of intersectionality, cultures of the academy, mindset, and mind tools framed the examination of the impacts of gender and work–family–community environments on the career pipeline of this group of women. The data were from two sources: (1) 48 documents on the participants and their institutions and (2) in-depth semi-structured interviews with these 10 participants. The findings show that gender and environment impacted the Asian women scholars’ career pipeline and advancement differently. On the negative side, barriers separately or jointly rooted in gender-based, racial, and hierarchical biases at stages of their career pipeline, from professional education to faculty appointment and leadership, challenged them. On the positive side, other gender-based and environmental agents and interventions supported them to overcome obstacles to their upward career mobility. This chapter has implications for how higher education institutions can improve their gender-based and environmental policies and praxis and facilitate the advancement of Asian immigrant women in STEM. It also has implications for how Asian women can prepare themselves to be successful in academic STEM careers.