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This exploratory study focuses on perceptions of school counselors about their work, its relationship to subcultures within the school, and how counselors believe other professionals within the culture of the school perceive their work. Explores the existence of a possible school counselor subculture and counselors’ role within the culture of the school and attempts to identify cultural constraints that affect counselors’ work. Concludes that understanding the interrelationships of school counselors with teachers, students, and administrators may provide better understanding of school culture, values, and norms.

The purpose of this book is to open a conversation on the idea of information experience, which we understand to be a complex, multidimensional engagement with information. In developing the book we invited colleagues to propose a chapter on any aspect of information experience, for example conceptual, methodological or empirical. We invited them to express their interpretation of information experience, to contribute to the development of this concept. The book has thus become a vehicle for interested researchers and practitioners to explore their thinking around information experience, including relationships between information experience, learning experience, user experience and similar constructs. It represents a collective awareness of information experience in contemporary research and practice. Through this sharing of multiple perspectives, our insights into possible ways of interpreting information experience, and its relationship to other concepts in information research and practice, is enhanced. In this chapter, we introduce the idea of information experience. We also outline the book and its chapters, and bring together some emerging alternative views and approaches to this important idea.

This article uses the idea of informed learning, an interpretation of information literacy that focuses on people’s information experiences rather than their skills or attributes, to analyse the character of using information to learn in diverse communities and settings, including digital, faith, indigenous and ethnic communities. While researchers of information behaviour or information seeking and use have investigated people’s information worlds in diverse contexts, this work is still at its earliest stages in the information literacy domain. To date, information literacy research has largely occurred in what might be considered mainstream educational and workplace contexts, with some emerging work in community settings. These have been mostly in academic libraries, schools and government workplaces. What does information literacy look like beyond these environments? How might we understand the experience of effective information use in a range of community settings, from the perspective of empirical research and other sources? The article concludes by commenting on the significance of diversifying the range of information experience contexts, for information literacy research and professional practice.

This chapter uses the idea of informed learning, an interpretation of information literacy that focuses on people’s information experiences rather than their skills or attributes, to analyse the character of using information to learn in diverse communities and settings, including digital, faith, indigenous and ethnic communities. While researchers of information behaviour or information seeking and use have investigated people’s information worlds in diverse contexts, this work is still at its earliest stages in the information literacy domain. To date, information literacy research has largely occurred in what might be considered mainstream educational and workplace contexts, with some emerging work in community settings. These have been mostly in academic libraries, schools and government workplaces. What does information literacy look like beyond these environments? How might we understand the experience of effective information use in a range of community settings, from the perspective of empirical research and other sources? The chapter concludes by commenting on the significance of diversifying the range of information experience contexts, for information literacy research and professional practice.

In 1991 Lithuania reclaimed its independence from the Soviet Union and subsequently enlisted its education system as a tool for imparting the democratic skills and worldviews necessary for EU accession. However, the internalization of new democratic norms proved to be more complicated than the unidirectional transmission expected by many elites, as students, parents, and politicians played a part in the way that educational reforms were understood, implemented, embodied, and even resisted. Although tolerance education was initially included in Lithuanian reforms with little fanfare, there has been an increasingly visible backlash against it, as some now see its existence as an encroachment on the right of “Lithuanians” to develop a strong national identity after 60 years of occupation. By analyzing key educational policies in Lithuania, as well as international barometers for social tolerance, this chapter finds that the embrace of intolerance by many individuals and elites in Lithuania is not just a proclivity for prejudice, but a tool for challenging the boundaries of EU expectations to define the values and norms of an independent nation-state.

A review of the literature on franchising has revealed a significant lack of academic research on employee training in franchise systems. Further, most research in this area tended to focus on training for franchises as part of the overall package. This study seeks to address the shortfall of research in this area by investigating the influence of training and development on an employee's job satisfaction at one of Australia's fastest growing franchises.

This study collected data from 135 frontline staff at one of Australia's largest bakery retail franchises. The data were gathered by means of a structured questionnaire, 16 items of which were devoted to an evaluation of the organisation's training and development programmes and six items were dedicated to job satisfaction.

There are several key findings for this study. First, the effectiveness and efficacy of a training program are dependent on evaluation of training quality, course design and learning experience. Next, employee satisfaction is found to be influenced by work environment, company values and job responsibilities.

Findings from this study have important managerial implications for retail franchisers and individual franchisees on how to enhance the job satisfaction of employees by the provision of effective training and development programmes.

This empirical study has made a major contribution in adding to the limited body of empirical knowledge on the influence of training and development on job satisfaction in retail franchising. It is hoped that this paper will encourage more academics to investigate the impact of training and development on job satisfaction and retention in franchising.

Reviews the extraordinary contribution made to educational administration by Donald J. Willower who died in January, 2000. During his 40 years at The Pennsylvania State University Willower made a profound contribution to the field in general and to the study of values, leadership, pupil control ideology, organisation theory, change, and methods of inquiry in particular. Willower was Distinguished Professor of Education for the closing decade of his career – an appropriate acknowledgment of his outstanding teaching, research, and professional service to the field. For 20 years he was a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of JEA.

This study aims to deepen our understanding of how inclusionary practices are used within organizations and how they satisfy specific inclusion needs.

We adopt a qualitative research design, reporting on data from semi-structured interviews conducted with 15 diversity and inclusion (D&I) directors/leads and using a thematic approach to analysis.

Our study expands understanding of inclusion practices, showing that they are not uniformly implemented and that practices may satisfy both needs to belong and differences valued, with interviewees prioritizing belonging. Well-being and career development are seen as important inclusion practices demonstrating support and appreciation of difference, thus as inputs, not outputs, of inclusion challenging existing assumptions. Inclusionary practices are malleable, and their impact depends critically on the leaders involved and their commitment to EDI.

Our study shows how practices satisfy inclusion needs and that the implementation of practices varies depending on the leaders involved.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how resource recombination (RR) may be conceptualized with special reference to the competitiveness of Higher Education Institutions (HEI).

The paper consists of two main studies. Building on pertinent available literature on the subject area, a qualitative investigation was conducted with the help of a semi-structured interview guide. Findings of study one were systematically analysed against a literature derived template. Study two presents a quantitative survey investigation that follows from the codes and themes derived from study one. In study two, findings were validated and analysed with the help of structural equation modelling.

Study one findings identified a total of 64 individual themes representing resources (21 themes), business processes (29 themes) and complementary factors (14 themes), as elements of RR in HEI competitiveness. In study two, the measurement model for RR was found to contain five main factors, namely, asset, research and affiliation processes, automated technology management, financial support for HR and departmental initiatives mainstream staff rewards and retention and institutional brand image appeal.

A significant contribution is made to theory development in the area of RR. Other implications to HEI competitiveness in contribution to national development were offered.

The area of RR remains largely uncovered in strategic management. Conceptualizing RR in the context of HEI competitiveness is new and in the right direction to jumpstart interest in this area by proposing a validated measurement model of HEI.

This paper describes the development of a digital role play game (RPG) designed to help construction apprentices to better communicate with their supervisors about issues with the potential to impact on their physical and psychological health and safety.

A participatory approach was adopted to utilise the knowledge and insights of the target users to inform the digital RPG development. Apprentices and supervisors were interviewed to identify characteristics of effective supervisor-apprentice communication, which became the RPG’s learning objectives. The scenarios constructed in the RPG were drawn from lived experiences shared by the apprentices in the interviews. During the development process, consultations were conducted with an advisory committee comprising of apprentices and supervisors to improve the realism of the RPG scenarios.

Three scenarios were developed for the RPG. In each scenario, players are asked to make decisions at various interaction points about how the characters should respond to the unfolding and challenging situations. Scripts were developed for the game, which were acted out and motion captured to animate digital MetaHuman characters embedded in a virtual construction site. Two example situations are introduced in this paper to illustrate the development process.

To our knowledge, the RPG introduced is one of the first applications of digital game-based training in the construction industry. The adoption of a participatory design approach ensures that the game content relates to real-world experiences. The digital RPG is highly interactive and engaging in nature and presents a novel approach to developing “soft” skills in construction.