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The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of student‐community engagement in ensuring relevance of higher education to civil, social, economic and moral issues. It reviews the literature around three inter‐related themes: calls for higher education institutions to engage with their communities; the kinds of attributes university graduates should possess for employability and citizenship; and the pedagogies of experiential learning and reflection informing student and community engagement.

This paper evaluates and draws together international literature related to three areas: calls for universities to engage with their communities, attributes which students engaged in co‐generative community relations might develop, and pedagogies which inform and develop such engagement.

The paper draws a number of conclusions related to pedagogy, citizenship and the need to develop quality indicators of engagement and impact. The overarching conclusion is that student‐community engagement founded on principles of mutual reciprocity enhances student attributes and is an important aspect of the modern university. Higher education needs to both retrieve the traditional civic role of the university, and also look forward to creating new approaches, so that universities are “of” the community and developing graduates as citizens.

The paper includes policy implications for curriculum development in relation to fostering graduate attributes and citizenship.

Through an exploration and integration of literature related to themes of university community engagement, graduate attributes and pedagogies of experiential reflective learning the paper signposts an agenda of change for universities in the twenty‐first century.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to theorise difference as encountered by a team of six diverse researchers interested in addressing cultural and religious diversity in sexuality education. Drawing Todd's (2003, 2011a, b) concepts of “the crossroads”, “becoming present” and “relationality” in conversation with Barad's (2003, 2007, 2012) ideas around relationality and intra-activity, the paper explores how “difference” in team research might be re-conceptualised. The aim is to theorise difference, differently from Other methodological literature around collaborative research. Typically, this work highlights markers of difference based on researcher identity (such as gender and ethnicity) as the source of difference in research teams, and examines how these differences are worked through. The aim of this paper is not to resolve difference, but understand it as occurring in the relational process of researchers becoming present to each other. Difference that is not understood as the product of the individual (Barad, 2012), may engender an orientation to ethical relationality, whereby research teams might hold in tension a conversation between the individual and the collective.

This paper is philosophical and methodological. It draws on conceptual understandings from feminist educational philosophy and new materialisms. Findings are based on empirical experiences of a team of researchers exploring cultural and religious difference in sexuality education. Its aim is to re-think the ontology of “difference” as conventionally understood in qualitative methodological literature around team research.

The contribution to conceptualising difference in research teams is to apply Todd's (2011a) theoretical work around “becoming”, “relationality” and the “crossroads” and further delineate it with Barad's (2012) concept of intra-activity. Combining these theorist's ideas the paper offers a conceptualisation of difference that is not the product of individual researcher identities that manifests at the point of collision with (an)other identity. Rather, difference becomes intra-actively in meeting at the crossroads where the “who” is formed. The author argues it is a configuration that cannot be known in advance, and that blurs individuals (and contingent identities) in its uniqueness.

Although conceptual in nature, this paper can be seen as having implications for working with difference in research teams. Drawing on Todd (2003, 2011a) what becomes important in attending to difference in research teams is being openly receptive to the Other. For instance, that the differences of perspective in relation to a research project are not melted into consensus, but that the singularities are always held in relation to each-other.

This paper takes new and emerging ideas in educational philosophy and new materialisms around relationality and applies them to a re-thinking of “difference” in qualitative methodological literature. The result is to offer a new ontology of “difference” as experienced by members of a qualitative research team. It also brings the work of Barad and Todd into conversation for the first time, in order to think ethically about how researchers might work with difference.

Previous qualitative research by Horsley (2020) and Lee (2019) highlighted the importance of self-concept (SC) in understanding fire use. This study, therefore, aims to further investigate the relevance of SC in non-criminalised fire use, with a view towards informing early interventions for firesetting prevention.

In this preliminary study, ten participants engaging in extensive, non-criminalised fire use were interviewed about their fire-related experiences and how this relates to SC. This was analysed using techniques informed by the grounded theory.

Three core categories were identified: control, identity and self-esteem, which provide a preliminary framework for understanding how SC and non-criminalised fire use are inter-related. The core categories relate to the study aim because they are conceptualised as three elements of SC, which are strengthened through interactions with fire. The mechanisms through which the categories relate to fire use and SC are discussed.

Forensic implications are discussed regarding early intervention and prevention. The authors argue that knowledge of non-criminalised fire use could provide a valuable blueprint for healthy fire use and, thus, feed into treatment and intervention. Given that previous research has highlighted the importance of SC in relation to how and why people interact with fire, the authors suggest that it should be given greater emphasis in clinical work with those thought to be at risk of firesetting.

To date, firesetting research has focused primarily on criminalised acts, i.e. arson. This paper adopts a different approach and explores how and why people engage with fire in healthy and adaptive ways.

How do cultural organizations handle the competing demands of isomorphism and differentiation? Strategic balance theory is a promising point of departure. Proponents argue that while isomorphism contributes to legitimacy, differentiation minimizes competition through innovation or niche control. However, most research has focused on successful cases of optimal performance in core or world cities. I introduce data from three seasons (250+ hours) of ethnographic research on fashion weeks in both a core city and semi-peripheral city. I find that geography acts as a structural barrier to competition: while semi-peripheral producers pursue some standards of fashion capitals in world cities, they cannot compete on the basis of style. Rather than optimizing through strategic balance, cultural organizations embrace a double edge of legitimation. Their sub-optimal vision of organizational survival cultivates legitimacy from available but symbolically polluting sources. Imperfect imitation is suggested instead as a viable legitimation strategy. I call for more attention to semi-peripheral geography and imperfect imitation in culture industry research.

The goal was emancipatory, to characterise and dislodge oppressive management practices, to allow for the possibility of seeking an alternative organisational construction free of postcolonial/subaltern subordination and discrimination in a local, well-documented narrative.

The study was informed by a postcolonial/subaltern perspective and drew on the employment experience of an Aboriginal woman, Canada’s first Indigenous Dean of a law school. The researcher employed a combination of case study and critical discourse analysis with the aim of advancing rich analyses of the complex workings of power and privilege in sustaining Western, postcolonial relations.

The study made several conclusions: first, that the institution, a medium-sized Canadian university, carefully controlled the Indigenous subaltern to remake her to be palatable to Western sensibilities. Second, the effect of this control was to assimilate her, to subordinate her Indigeneity and to civilise in a manner analogous to the purpose of Indian residential schools. Third, that rather than management’s action being rational and neutral, focused on goal attainment, efficiency and effectiveness, it was an implicit moral judgement based on her race and an opportunity to exploit her value as a means for the university’s growth and status.

Through a postcolonial/subaltern perspective, this study demonstrated how management practices reproduced barriers to the participation of an Indigenous woman and the First Nations community that an organisation was intended to serve. The study demonstrated how a Western perspective – that of a university’s administration, faculty and staff – was privileged, or taken for granted, and the Indigenous perspective subordinated, as the university remained committed to the dispossession of Indigenous knowledge and values.

This brief history of the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT) documents developments and trends during the decade 2013–2023. To situate recent ISATT history, we begin with an overview of the association's first 30 years (1983–2012). The dominant theme of those early years was developing ISATT as a recognized and influential professional organization connecting researchers on teaching and teacher education from a growing list of nations and regions of the world. During the most recent decade, there has been a concerted effort toward broad internationalization through biennial conferences and regional meetings, and a growing network of national representatives from across the world. Also, the ISATT journal, Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, the journal, which began in 1995, has published hundreds of peer-reviewed articles written by more than 1000 authors and coauthors, contributing to a growing body of knowledge about teaching and teacher education in many cultures. In the last 20 years and especially in the past 10, the locations of ISATT meetings have become significantly more diverse, following a trend of greater internationalization compared with ISATT's European and North American beginnings. At the same time, the number of ISATT members remains stable and small thereby preserving a collegial and collaborative tone in our exchanges. In sum, ISATT's recent decade finds the association intellectually healthy, successful in managing the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, and enriched by the proliferation of multinational points of view and styles of research.

As the social scientists of modern society, sociologists find themselves in a peculiar situation. Human civilization appears on the brink of collapse; the ravages of global capitalism are turning natural and social orders upside down. Some theorists are declaring the “end of history,” while others wonder if humans will soon become extinct. People find themselves increasingly shouldering burdens on their own, strangers to themselves and others. Struggles for recognition and identity are forged in harsh landscapes of social dislocation and inequality. The relationship of the individual to the state atrophies as governmental power becomes at once more remote and absolutely terrifying. How are we as sociologists expected to theorize under such circumstances?  What implications result for the mission of sociology as a discipline and area of study? What political initiatives, if any, can counter these trends?

This chapter provides an immanent critique of sociology as a profession, vocation, and critical practice. Sociology today (in the US and around the globe) faces fierce social, economic, and political headwinds. The discipline continues to be a perilous choice as a vocation for independent researchers as much as the shrinking professoriate. Yet while the traditional functions of sociology are thrown into doubt, there has been an increase in critical practices on the part of some sociologists. As institutional norms, values, and traditions continue to be challenged, there will be passionate debates about the production of social worlds and the validity claims involved in such creation. Sociologists must play an active role in such discourse. Sociology is needed today as a mode of intervention as much as occupational status system or method of inquiry.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between information and coping from the experiences of young people coping with long term illness.

Situational analysis was used as a methodological approach. It has roots in the Chicago Symbolic Interactionism School. Cartographic approaches enabled the analysis, mapping the complexities emerging from the data.

As the young people became more informed about their health conditions, and gained knowledge and understanding both about their illnesses, their own bodies and boundaries, their confidence and capacity to cope increased. Gaining confidence, the young people often wanted to share their knowledge – becoming information providers themselves. From the data, five positions on an information-coping trajectory were identified: information deficiency; feeling ill-informed; needing an injection of information; having information health; and becoming an information donor.

The research was limited to an analysis of 30 narratives. The paper contributes to information theory by mapping clearly the relationship between information and coping.

The study establishes a relationship between levels of information and knowledge and the ability to cope with illness.

The information theories in this study have originality and multi-disciplinary value in the management of health and illness, and information studies.

To study sexual deals, the Italian ethnologist Paola Tabet introduced an original frame of analysis, the “economico‐sexual exchanges” frame, which she conceives as a continuum, from marriage to prostitution. The purpose of this paper is to know if we have to accept the idea of a sexual social contract as a holistic way of understanding, like Carole Pateman, or whether we have to admit the heterogeneity of sexual transactions.

According to the social function of the contract presented by Yvon Pesqueux, this paper will try to seize the contractual forms of sexual transactions, developing at the same time in the logic of the psychological contract, in particular to approach more finely the notion of consent, a notion at the heart of the debates concerning economic sexuality and which cannot be reduced to the expression of personal freedom. Pateman's work is also too fundamental to be ignored and so the author summarizes the main ideas.

It can be said that the social reality of sexual transactions exists between two opposite contractual and anti‐contractual ideologies, between a gender idealistic point of view and a management realistic one. Individuals, men and women, are more or less free to sell or buy sexual services. If freedom exists, contracts can be spoken about; if not, a contractual point of view appears only as a justification for the strong.

The paper presents a sexual/gender point of view in the contractual theories.