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The world faces greater environmental, social and governance challenges than ever before and a growing number of organisations are establishing sustainability functions, strategies and plans in an effort to address these complex issues. However, limited research exists on the critical behavioural competencies required to maximise leadership impact on sustainability initiatives. With the stakes so high and the task so complex, the purpose of this paper is to identify the key behavioural competencies of corporate sustainability leaders and set out a model for assessing these behavioural competencies.

Based on a review of the empirical literature, the study sets out five competency groupings, which informed a hypothesis. This was tested quantitatively via a self-report tool that enabled a quantitative analysis of behavioural competencies. Contributions from 97 participants were triangulated with data collected from colleagues who rated the participants on the same set of competencies.

Ten critical and ten prominent behaviours of sustainability leaders in five competency groupings were identified. The analysis also explored how the business sector, location, years of experience and level of qualification impacted upon the sample sustainability leaders’ perceived effectiveness.

The sample size means that the competency model derived from the findings should be seen as propositional and requiring further validation. Impact measures would add considerable robustness to the findings.

The research offers a means to better focus and tailor leadership development experiences and as a tool for the recruitment of sustainability leaders.

The study is based on a robust quantitative approach, and the behavioural competency model developed as a result provides a tool for sustainability leaders to map current behaviours and monitor their progress over time.

Modeling is a potentially productive activity in which coaches can engage teachers to support teaching and learning (Gibbons and Cobb, 2017). Yet, there is a lack of empirical research that describes how coaches can productively implement this activity with teachers. The overarching purpose of this study was to explore the challenges and support coaches faced while modeling instruction for teachers.

Twenty-nine semi-structured interviews were conducted with five coaches and six elementary teachers in two different school districts in the United States. The data were qualitatively coded using a combination of literature-driven and emergent codes.

Participants identified 16 distinct challenges they faced during coaching cycles involving modeling, and 11 supports that could ultimately enhance the success of the modeled lesson for all involved parties. These challenges and support spanned the broad categories of contextual factors, management and logistics, pedagogical dilemmas and teacher learning.

Although modeling is a popular coaching activity, researchers have only an emerging understanding of the challenges associated with modeling instruction, as well as the support that can enhance the modeled lesson's success. By having a thorough understanding of such challenges and support, coaches can effectively leverage modeling to support teaching and learning at their schools. Hence, the findings from this study will importantly inform coaching practice, as well as future research directions.

The paper provides analysis of the use of instructional coaching (IC) as a prevalent trend supporting new teachers in the English system and aims to inform ongoing policy development and implementation. The qualitative study examines mentors' conceptualisations and enactment of the role of instructional coach and the readiness of mentors to assume mentors' key stakeholder roles in the professional education of early career teachers (ECTs).

Semi-structured interviews with 37 mentors explored mentors' understandings and experiences of becoming instructional coaches as part of a pilot support initiative to support ECTs in England. Two rounds of interviews were conducted to generate data related to the first six months of mentoring on the programmes. Thematic analysis identified seven semantic themes which describe manifest content found within the data and identify mentors' perceptions of their role and practice as instructional coaches. Three latent themes were developed from mentors' accounts which indicate challenges in becoming an instructional coach in this context.

Concern to apply IC “correctly” according to the programme models was a strong feature amongst both novice and experienced mentors. A key finding is the lack of explicit knowledge of professional learning pedagogies amongst mentors and insecure understanding of how new teachers learn. Assuming the role of instructional coach presented both benefits of having a “model” to follow and disadvantages in fostering limited and over-prescribed concepts and practices related to the learning of new teachers.

The study investigated mentors during the first six months of a pilot programme and the paper reports on analysis of one type of data. The research results may lack generalisability, and a longitudinal study is necessary to further explore the validity of the findings.

Sustained, high-quality professional learning for mentors is crucial to mentors' role as instructional coaches to enable mentors to develop deep, critical understanding of how IC might support new teachers and how to exercise professional judgement in working with “models”. Judicious use of time and resource is needed to enable mentors to fulfil the potential of national mentoring programmes.

The study is timely in its examination of mentors that assume the role of instructional coach as one response to national policy development that makes support for ECTs mandatory. Such strategies have wide international relevance where the retention of new teachers is a policy priority.

This study followed four novice principals in two urban school districts through one or two years of their leadership coaching experience. The purpose of this study was to determine principals’ perceived benefits of the coaching experience, principals’ beliefs regarding the most beneficial attributes of a coach, and the match between these findings and the core leadership practices that most dramatically impact student achievement.

This study followed four novice principals in two urban school districts through one or two years of their leadership coaching experience.

Principals in this study appeared to have had a successful coaching experience in part because of: the coach's knowledge of curriculum, schools, and districts; the practicality of the experience; and the coach's ability to collaborate and shape the thinking of principals without being authoritative or intrusive. Principals experienced success on the job as identified by the student achievement on state tests and their advancement to district principal leadership roles.

The focus of the coaching in this study appeared to be centered on the core leadership practices noted to have the most impact on student achievement. The results revealed that the skills sets and knowledge of a coach are critical to the coaching experience. The general effects of a coaching focus on core leadership practices may also play a significant part in principal success; however, more research is needed to make a full determination.

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how funding support for intergenerational initiatives can have a positive impact on individuals and communities. The author aims to argue that there are strong motivations for organisations and associations supported by local and national government to adopt intergenerational approaches to their work and to outline areas where need for future work remains.

The paper describes learning gained from initiatives supported through a four‐year funding programme by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Highlighting research by a range of parties on the need for and value of intergenerational work, the article moves on to describing key success factors identified through its own programme of work in creating high impact intergenerational work.

Drawing on experience gained from the support of some 50 projects under the Foundation's programme, a number of key elements are identified in the paper as particularly effective in creating successful intergenerational initiatives with significant impact: commonality – a common interest or goal shared among the different ages; co‐design – involve beneficiaries in developing activities; contribution – recognise that every participant has something to offer; community – house the work with key local players; competences – support and train staff to work with different ages.

Extending the literature base on the value of intergenerational practice, the article draws learning from a range of innovative projects in the UK and Portugal, where intergenerational work is still uncommon. The programme of funding was innovative in applying new approaches to intergenerational work including co‐design and social entrepreneurship. The article represents the first comparative analysis of a range of projects funded through the programme.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in early 2020 prompted widespread global lockdowns as the world looked to contain and reduce the impact of the virus, including a pause on most sporting competitions (Parnell et al., 2020). COVID-19 has greatly affected the world, exposing stark inequalities, especially across gendered lines, in areas of society such as the labour market, domestic responsibility and economic hardship (Alon et al., 2020). Sport is a crucial, interwoven aspect of society and like wider societal trends, elite women's sport has been adversely affected by the pandemic, facing an existential threat (Bowes et al., 2020; Clarkson et al., 2020; Rowe, 2020). The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of how the pandemic is negatively impacting a wide variety of elite women's sports. Specifically, we cover sports where women have traditionally existed on the margins of the sport and could be considered as male-dominated labour industries. Centring primarily on the United Kingdom, we present a brief chronology of the impact of the crisis on elite women's sport, across football, rugby, cricket and golf – in many ways different from the men's versions – spanning the eight months since the start of the pandemic in March 2020 until the time of writing in November 2020. Throughout, the chapter utilises qualitative data from elite sportswomen encouraged to share their experiences during the pandemic (see Bowes et al., 2020). Subsequently, this chapter concludes with a summary of the challenges for women operating in (semi-)professional sports environments.

Presents a special issue, enlisting the help of the author’s students and colleagues, focusing on age, sex, colour and disability discrimination in America. Breaks the evidence down into manageable chunks, covering: age discrimination in the workplace; discrimination against African‐Americans; sex discrimination in the workplace; same sex sexual harassment; how to investigate and prove disability discrimination; sexual harassment in the military; when the main US job‐discrimination law applies to small companies; how to investigate and prove racial discrimination; developments concerning race discrimination in the workplace; developments concerning the Equal Pay Act; developments concerning discrimination against workers with HIV or AIDS; developments concerning discrimination based on refusal of family care leave; developments concerning discrimination against gay or lesbian employees; developments concerning discrimination based on colour; how to investigate and prove discrimination concerning based on colour; developments concerning the Equal Pay Act; using statistics in employment discrimination cases; race discrimination in the workplace; developments concerning gender discrimination in the workplace; discrimination in Japanese organizations in America; discrimination in the entertainment industry; discrimination in the utility industry; understanding and effectively managing national origin discrimination; how to investigate and prove hiring discrimination based on colour; and, finally, how to investigate sexual harassment in the workplace.

In recent years water has been the chief extraneous matter found in adulterated lard, but the results of the examination of the 2,918 samples (eight adulterated) reported upon during 1925, show cases of adulteration by substituting or adding vegetable oils and fats.

Preservice English teachers are expected to use literary theories and criticism to read and respond to literary texts. Over the past century, two of the most common approaches to literary encounters in secondary schools have been New Criticism – particularly the practice of close reading – and Rosenblatt's transactional theory, both of which have been expanded through critical theorizing along the way. Elucidated by data produced in iterative experiments with Frost's “The Road Not Taken,” the authors reconceptualize the reader, the text, and close reading through the critical posthuman theory of reading with love as a generative way of thinking outside of the habitual practices of European humanisms.

In “thinking with” (Jackson and Mazzei, 2023) desiring-machines, affect, Man and critical posthuman theory, this post qualitative inquiry maps how the “The Road Not Taken” worked when students plugged into it iteratively in processes of reading with love, an affirmative and creative series of experiments with literature.

This study mapped how respect for authority, the battle of good v evil, individualism and meritocracy operated as desiring-machines that channeled most participants’ initial readings of “The Road Not Taken.” In subsequent experiments with the poem, the authors demonstrate that reading with love as a critical posthuman process of reading invites participants to exceed the logics of recognition and representation, add or invent additional ways of being and relating to the world and thereby produce the possibility to transform a world toward greater inclusivity and equity.

The authors reconceptualize the categories of “the reader” and “the text” from Rosenblatt’s transactional theory within practices of reading with love, which they situate within a critical posthuman theory. They eschew separating efferent and aesthetic reading stances while also recuperating practices of “close reading,” historically associated with the New Critics, by demonstrating the generativity of critically valenced “close reading” within a Deleuzian process of reading with love.