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This article reflects on the significance of family centres in the UK as a mirror of new possibilities for child welfare in the years following the Children Act 1989. The Act empowered local authorities in England and Wales to provide family centres as part of ‘family support practice’. The article reveals a rich vein of family‐centred, centre‐based activity internationally and shows practice combining intervention from the sophisticated to the very informal. The authors focus on so‐called ‘integrated centres’ as complex systems of care with wide implications for practice and outcome evaluation in an ‘evidence‐based’ context.

The purpose of this paper is, first, to assess the potential of the visual to enact multiplicity and reflexivity in organizational research, and second, to develop a performative approach to the visual, which offers aesthetic strategies for creating future research accounts in organization and management studies.

The paper reviews existing visual research in organization and management studies and presents an in‐depth analysis of two early, almost classical, and yet very different endeavors to create visual accounts based on ethnography: the multi‐media enactments by Bruno Latour, Emilie Hermant, Susanna Shannon, and Patricia Reed, and the filmic and written work by Trinh T. Minh‐ha and her collaborators.

The authors’ analysis of how the visual is performed in both cases identifies a repertoire of three distinct and paradoxical aesthetic strategies: de/synchronizing, de/centralizing, and dis/covering.

The authors analyze two rarely acknowledged but ground‐breaking research presentations, identify aesthetic strategies to perform multiplicity and reflexivity in research accounts, and question the ways that research accounts are written and published in organization and management studies by acknowledging the consequences of a performative approach to the visual.

Glaxo has developed a corporate source of comprehensive information on hazardous substances, which is available to staff throughout the Glaxo Group as an online Substance Information Database (SID) or via print. A structured approach has been taken to data collection, with key hard copy and computerised health and safety information sources being searched in a hierarchical fashion. Through a knowledge of the coverage of the sources, and practical experience of their use, a complete substance information profile is built up through selective searching. The data is evaluated by in‐house specialists in toxicology, occupational health and safety and the compiled data sheet is authorised by the appropriate Company Safety Co‐ordinator before it is released onto SID.

This chapter explores the role that coercion plays in the educational process, looking at it both from the point of view of the teacher and from the perspective of the student/learner. The primary focus will be on coercion but inevitably manipulation and seduction enter the picture as well. I have observed that when learners get really motivated, or, as I prefer to call it, animated, they seem to learn more and certainly enjoy it more. What has come to be called experiential education has become very popular as a way of animating learners, which raises the question of whether this form of learning rests on fundamentally different assumptions than traditional teaching formats. This analysis and implications applies primarily to the learning of interpersonal, group, and interorganizational relationships and the “human side of enterprise,” that is, management and leadership. The need to explore the design of alternative experiential learning settings that animate learners and/or invent new modes of learning without the intense face-to-face contact – that animation seems to be depended on – is advocated.

The emergence of networks within education has been driven by a number of factors, including: the complex nature of the issues facing education, which are typically too great for single schools to tackle by themselves; changes to educational governance structures, which involve the hollowing out of the middle tier and the introduction of new approaches with an individualized focus; in addition is the increased emphasis on education systems that are “self-improving and school-led”. Within this context, the realization of teacher and school improvement actively emerges from establishing cultures of enquiry and learning, both within and across schools. Since not every teacher in a school can collaboratively learn with every other teacher in a network, the most efficient formation of networks will comprise small numbers of teachers learning on behalf of others.

Within this context, Professional Learning Networks (PLNs) are defined as any group who engage in collaborative learning with others outside of their everyday community of practice; with the ultimate aim of PLN activity being to improve outcomes for children. Research suggests that the use of PLNs can be effective in supporting school improvement. In addition, PLNs are an effective way to enable schools to collaborate to improve educational provision in disadvantaged areas. Nonetheless harnessing the benefits of PLNs is not without challenge. In response, this paper explores the notion of PLNs in detail; it also sheds light on the key factors and conditions that need to be present if PLNs are to lead to sustained improvements in teaching and learning. In particular, the paper explores the role of school leaders in creating meaningful two-way links between PLNs and their schools, in order to ensure that both teachers and students benefit from the collaborative learning activity that PLNs foster. The paper concludes by suggesting possible future research in this area.