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This chapter reviews qualitative research on parenting children with disabilities published over the last 50 years to explore whether shifts in academic discourse and changes in professional training have affected research on parenting and/or the experiences of parents who are the subject of such research.

An extensive literature search was conducted, and 78 peer-reviewed, qualitative studies on the experience of parenting a child with a disability were included in the sample. Themes were extracted from the reviewed literature and compared across decades.

The findings of the present review suggest that some aspects of the parenting experience have changed very little. In particular, parents continue to experience negative reactions such as stress and anomie, especially early in their children’s lives, and socially imposed barriers such as unhelpful professionals, and a lack of needed services continue to create problems and inspire an entrepreneurial response. In addition, stigmatizing encounters with others continue to be a common occurrence. In contrast to earlier decades, studies conducted in more recent years have begun to use the social model of disability as an analytic frame and also increasingly report that parents are questioning and challenging the concept of “normal” itself.

Additional improvements are needed in professional education and services to reduce the negative reactions experienced by parents of children with disabilities.

The findings of this meta-analysis can serve as a guide to future research on parenting children with disabilities.

This chapter explores the idea of Masters-level Initial Teacher Education (ITE), beginning by looking at the wider global context which reflects a drive towards increasing Masters-level ITE, but with limited empirical evidence as to its effectiveness and a variety of claims as to its potential impact. It then goes on to examine aspects of the policy context in Scotland that influence a growing move towards increased Masters-level ITE. This is followed by an overview of current practices, identifying three broad approaches: credits in courses, integrated Masters and full Masters. This chapter concludes by suggesting that while the direction of travel is clear, the underpinning rationale is much less so.

The concept that guides the present research is orientation toward disability. This concept is related to, but broader than, the concept of disability identity that has driven some previous research in this area (see, e.g., Gill, 1997; Putnam, 2005). The concept of identity or self suggests a person's definition of him or herself and usually includes both cognitive (“I am a person with a disability”) and evaluative (“I am proud to be a person with a disability”) components.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the relationship between project work and stress. It examines how the conditions of project work negatively impact on an individual’s mental and physical state of well-being, consequentially reducing organisational performance.

The authors systematically review the project management literature for sources of stress or stressors as it relates to Cooper and Marshall’s (1976) model of stress at work. The authors perform a thematic analysis on these stressors to reveal the “sub-stressor” conditions of project work.

A “model of projects as a source of stress at work” is developed. It shows the relationship between the sub-stressors of project work and the ill effects they have on mental and physical well-being of the project workforce.

The findings of this study are constrained by the limits of a literature review process. This study has implications for research on stress in project work, as studies can benefit from the “model of projects as a source of stress at work”, which can be continually advanced to gain insights on the minimisation of physical and mental distress.

Many sectors including health, education, policing, aviation and military provide scenario-based training. In project management, a greater understanding of stressful scenarios and counter measures would improve health outcomes for project staff, human relations and project outcomes.

The study presents a comprehensive model of projects as a source of stress at work. It draws attention to the burden and cost of anxiety and stress placed on the project workforce. It makes the case for organisations and employees to take responsibility for the well-being of project staff.

In a world‐wide environment strongly influenced by the issues and perspectives of globalization, internationally‐based business firms must be focused on transformational leadership team‐building across the cultural boundaries with which they are involved. The purpose of this paper is to juxtapose the leadership dimensions and national culture dimensions, and particularly to explore one aspect of that transformational leadership team‐building process, the application of the key paradigm of leadership style balance and support within the parameters of an operational team.

Based on a literature review the paper identifies four basic leadership styles, the strengths and weaknesses of each of the styles are identified, communication preferences are discussed, primary back‐up styles that come into focus due to high levels of stress are analyzed, and the all‐important skill of style flex is described. These dimensions will be examined in association with the case of UnitedTel Ltd (a pseudonym), and also include observations relating to the authors' experiences in several other arenas that have been encountered in management and consulting activities.

Two interactive dimensions at the heart of a leader's behavior – assertiveness and responsiveness – are foundations of that person's leadership style. The basic interactive dimensions of assertiveness and responsiveness thereby form the two axes of the framework of the leadership styles paradigm and the four primary quadrants, which represent the four leadership styles – analyzer, director, creator, and connector.

The paradigm of leadership styles can be a valuable tool for the further research, and understanding of, the process of transformational teambuilding across cultural boundaries.

Importantly, it is not enough just to understand one's leadership style or the style of others in a leadership team; one must also exercise style flex that can enable the parties to function in a mutually‐beneficial situation congruent with the needs of the individuals and the organization.

The leadership styles paradigm can be a very important reference point in the process of transformational teambuilding across cultural boundaries. An interesting view and contribution of the paper are the way that the leadership styles and cultural dimensions can be linked.

Teaching performance assessments (TPAs) have developed in the USA and Australia as a “bar exam” for the profession and are used means to assure that graduates are classroom ready. The purpose of this paper is to outline how these assessments have been implemented in teacher education in the USA and Australian contexts. The edTPA is embroiled in controversy in the USA and there are important lessons from the related research literature that could inform the how other countries engage with TPAs in pre-service teacher education.

This conceptual paper outlines how Australia has introduced TPAs in initial teacher education (ITE) through policy borrowing from the USA. The paper synthesises critiques of the edTPA (USA) from research literature and considers the implications of TPAs in the Australian context.

The TPA impacts the focus of pre-service teacher practicum teaching, and pedagogy and curriculum in ITE education. The TPA could be used to mobilise detrimental accountability mechanisms. With the outsourcing of assessment to edu-business, Pearson Education, teacher education institutions in the USA have a sense that they have lost control over determining which students are credentialed to teach. Although pre-service teacher assessment is still administered and assessed by ITE institutions in Australia, there is a concern that could change. It is argued that educators, administrators and policy makers should avoid moves to outsource TPAs in Australia.

Because it is in its infancy, there is a little robust research into the implication of introducing teacher performance assessments into the Australian teacher education context.

Purpose – The purpose of the research was to examine the process of new teacher evaluation policy development in South Korea, in order to gain insight into how a controversial policy could be established in education. Research questions were about the process of the policy development, political actors involved and their influences, and the meaning of teacher evaluation in the newly established teacher evaluation policy.Methodology – The study uses a qualitative and descriptive-analytical process from a hermeneutics perspective that views policy as text to be interpreted. This perspective allows policy to be connected to a larger social context through interpretations of text. The main data sources included policy documents, statements by various organizations, research reports, and public media artifacts produced between 2000 and 2012. For data analysis, constant comparison and content analysis methods were used.Findings – The findings show that the process of developing a teacher evaluation system demonstrated an unsuccessful attempt to apply the Habermasian notion of discursive democracy. Relevant stakeholders were invited to deliberate on the reform, but official meetings ended prematurely without consensus. In the end, the government proceeded without full support of any stakeholders. During the deliberation process, teacher organizations and parent groups demonstrated conflicting perspectives on teacher work and the new evaluation system only partially accommodated both perspectives. The effectiveness of the new evaluation system remains to be researched.Value – The policy development process and the evaluation system shown in this study should inform similar efforts in other contexts.

Peppy Barlow considers agricultural education and training.

The primacy of teacher effects on student achievement has been well documented from a variety of methodological approaches within the field of education research. Governments across the globe have or will address educational equity, especially the education of the poor, by designing programs to attract, train, develop, retain, and study more effective teachers. In their Concept Note, the World Bank also raises “fundamental questions” that balance upon an understanding of the development and measurement of teacher effectiveness. These include question 1: “What are the most important challenges in the next decade for building knowledge and skills for life and work in different country contexts?” and question 3: “What educational results should the Bank be accountable for in the next ten years, and how would we measure these achievements?” In this chapter, we build upon the extensive research that suggests teacher effectiveness ought to be the primary goal of educational reform efforts across the globe. We highlight the complexity of measuring effectiveness, especially across countries and varied contexts for education. We argue that the ways in which effectiveness is measured will have a direct impact on the potential of any reform policy to positively influence the overall effectiveness of a teaching force and the achievement of its students.