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Our focus in this chapter is how we can adopt an attuned teaching approach and why this would be supportive of all children and young people. We explore its significance for children who may have experienced trauma through loss of, or separation from, birth family or other significant life experience causing vulnerability. We have chosen to write as if we are in a shared space with you; perhaps you can imagine a conversation in the staff room. We are hoping our experiences and knowledge help you to reflect and provide you with ideas of how to develop your professional practice and to gain confidence.

All school staff (teaching and support) now have a duty and obligation to protect and safeguard children in their care. To be able to do this, school staff need to understand what safeguarding is and how to respond, but also need to understand a number of other concepts such as: why children end up in vulnerable situation in the first place, how teaching practices reduce vulnerability, and how to engage with children and young people in an effective and efficient manner. This chapter explores these latter types of concerns and in doing so identifies that teachers and support staff are key professionals in identifying vulnerability, preventing the escalation of concerns, engaging with children and supporting them and their education over time as they engage with and attend school. This chapter also contains a detailed breakdown of the structure and the content of this edited collection and concludes with reflective comments about the implications of this collection for you as an individual and in your career: working with children and young people in educational establishments.

Most of the research on children’s consumer behavior focuses on pre-purchase processes, with brand choice typically being the last stage investigated. This paper aims to examine the outcome of children’s purchase decisions, with an emphasis on dissatisfaction and outcome resolution. Of particular interest was the comprehension level of the corporate communication and the extent to which clear, understandable communication influenced children’s ultimate satisfaction.

Eighty-seven children wrote authentic letters of complaint to manufacturers about a recent product purchase. The study examined what happened after the children complained – i.e. how companies responded to children, and how satisfied children were with the resolution and the overall complaint handling process. Two widely regarded readability formulas were used to measure the complexity of the written correspondence.

The present study suggests that child complainants are the most concerned with the bottom-line results of their communication efforts. Like adults, they want the problem corrected. Unfortunately, the majority of children did not feel fully satisfied with the corporate complaint handling process. Over one-third of the companies in the sample did not even bother to respond to children’s legitimate complaints, despite the fact that each child specifically asked the company to write back. Those firms which did were more likely to respond with a letter only than with a letter plus add-on. And the corporate letters, by and large, were written at an educational level which would preclude full understanding by the child.

Because consumer complaint behavior is not randomly distributed in the population, the use of probability sampling was precluded. Published studies which have used consumer complaint letters as the data collection method have relied primarily on convenience sampling. In the present study, judgmental sampling was used to select children participants. Three criteria were applied. Children had to be aged between 10 and 13 years. Children had to have experienced dissatisfaction with a product purchase made over the previous six months. Children could not have taken any public action to resolve their dissatisfaction. But they had to be willing to write a letter of complaint at this point. It was considered of utmost importance that the letters used in this study be authentic. They had to be composed and penned by the children themselves. This criterion, coupled with the fact that the complaints were legitimate, avoided the obvious ethical dilemma associated with the use of fabricated letters.

It seems ironic that in the present era of consumer consciousness, corporations do not place greater emphasis on truly communicating with their customers, where communication is viewed as a process of establishing shared meaning. How can there be shared meaning when the message sender fails to consider the characteristics of the receiver – characteristics such as age and cognitive development? Businesses may argue that their corporate communication policies and practices are based on a concern for cost efficiency. This argument carries little merit, unfortunately. Even the federal government, through the Plain Writing Act of 2010, acknowledges the importance of using common, everyday words and plain English in all written documents.

On the surface, American businesses state that they welcome customer feedback. The comments of children are more sought after now than ever before, particularly in the area of advertising and new product development. But the results of this study show that companies have a long way to go before they can claim to be truly receiver-oriented in their managerial communication policies. Perhaps this is why consumers – certainly child consumers – are only beginning to believe that when kids complain, companies will respond.

The vast body of complaint research focuses almost exclusively on adults. Despite their sophistication and marketing literacy, children are not miniature adults. It is not known whether the same models and findings with respect to adult complaint behavior apply to children. Unfortunately, there are very few studies of children’s complaint behavior and corporate responses.

Recent attention has been given to organizations that claim to run on faith-based principles. Activities such as at work bible study groups, charitable giving, and the individual practices of the owners are often the focus of such discussions. In such discussions little attention has been paid to those who not only hold strong religious views, but have chosen to put those views into practice‐even when it may not appear to make good business sense.

Since 1946, S. Truett Cathy, founder and chairman of Chick-fil-A Inc., has run his enterprises based on his understanding of Christian principles. Starting with his first restaurant, the “Dwarf Grill,” which he opened with his brother Ben in 1946, continuing when he opened the first “Chick-fil-A” in 1967, and even as he finished the remodeling of the companies headquarters in 1997, S. Truett says he tries “to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us and to have a positive influence on other people. . . .” In fact, this purpose is engraved in a bronze plaque that rests at the entrance to Chick-fil-A’s corporate headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.

In practice, this purpose has lead S.Truett to never have his businesses open on Sunday, a time in the quick service industry that normally generates 20 percent of revenue. It has caused him to shut down another restaurant venture, Markos in Florida, rather than serve alcohol, which most patrons wanted. Despite his staunch adherent to principles that seem to run counter to “good business sense,” S.Truett Cathy has built a successful, privately held organization that operates in 38 states, has more than 1,300 franchisees, and generates over $2 billion a year in revenue.

In the following interview, S.Truett offers his perspective on why focusing on principles is more important than focusing on profits and what he thinks it takes to succeed in business and in life.

This paper explores the relationship between social movement protest, economic sabotage, state capitalism, the “Green Scare,” and public forms of political repression. Through a quantitative analysis of direct action activism highlighting the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front, the discourse surrounding mechanisms of social change and their impact on state power and capitalist accumulation will be examined. The analyses examines the earth and animal liberation movements, utilizing a Marxist-anarchist lens to illustrate how these non-state actors provide powerful critiques of capital and the state. Specifically, the discussion examines how state-sanctioned violence against these movements represents a return to Foucauldian Monarchical power. A quantitative-qualitative history will be used to argue that the movements’ actions fail to qualify as “terrorism,” and to examine the performance of power between the radical left and the state. State repression demonstrates not only the capitalist allegiances between government and industry, but also a sense of capital’s desperation hoping to counter a movement that has produced demonstrable victories by the means of bankrupting and isolating corporations. The government is taking such unconstitutional measures as a “talk back” between the revolutionary potential of these movements’ ideology as well as the challenge they present to state capitalism.

In the introduction to Beyond Bombshells, Jeffrey A Brown lists examples of blockbuster films with leading female heroines and proclaims that they have ‘challenged the assumption that action movies are a strictly male domain’ (2015, p. 6). His examples include, but are not limited to, the Kill Bill films (2003, 2005), The Hunger Games (2012), Brave (2012) and Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), all of which demonstrate the rise in popularity of the woman-led action film. However, these films also demonstrate a reluctance of the action film to detach itself from masculinity. Despite their female leads, these action films still foreground masculinity. The films have darker colour palettes and their female leads tend to have masculine coded traits and hobbies, suggesting that women can succeed within this genre only by distancing themselves from femininity.

This chapter analyses the subversion of the genre conventions of action by exploring the use of feminine objects in director Cathy Yan's Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (2020). Written and directed by women, Birds of Prey is a notable turn in the action genre as it makes use of feminine objects (hair ties, glitter, fashion, jewellery) within action sequences that don't just allow a female presence within the action, but centre feminine power. By relocating femininity and masculinity to objects rather than bodies, new ways of understanding how genre conventions are not fixed but fluid are opened up for further exploration.

Popular self-help pregnancy literature suggests a “generational disconnect” between pregnant women and their mothers, emphasizing the incommensurate experiences of the two generations. Based on longitudinal, in-depth interviews with a diverse group of 64 pregnant women and 23 grandmothers-to-be, this chapter explores how different generations of women negotiate the idea of a disconnect and its implications for the medicalization of pregnancy. My findings showed limited support for the generational disconnect. Nearly all of the pregnant women I interviewed who were in contact with their mothers consulted them to assess issues related to pregnancy embodiment. Black and Latina women and white women with less than a college degree disregarded or even rejected the disconnect; they tended to frame their mothers’ advice as relevant. Their mothers attended prenatal care appointments and frequently expressed skepticism about medical directives. By contrast, I found that highly educated white women tended to endorse the generational disconnect when it came to matters related to pregnancy health behaviors – what to eat, how much to exercise – and their obstetric care. The mothers of these women not only largely supported the generational disconnect, but also bonded with their daughter over a shared appreciation for scientific understandings of pregnancy. Foregrounding women’s perspectives provides insights into meaning-making in pregnancy and the ways that mothers of pregnant women can both stymie and deepen medicalization of childbearing.