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The paper identifies and explores the perspectives of middle school educators regarding the benefits and challenges of an ongoing, emerging school–university partnership. Over five years, professors at one comprehensive, Midwestern university, formed a partnership with a local middle school. While progress has been made to develop the partnership, the authors recognized a lack of shared governance (Essential 7). In particular, they were unsure the partnership was mutually beneficial. The authors interviewed teachers, the principal, assistant principals, guidance counselors, the instructional coach and the youth service center director to gain their perspectives on the partnership.

The authors used an intrinsic, evaluative case study to examine educators perceptions of the benefits and challenges of the partnership (Guba & Lincoln, 1981; Patton, 2002). This approach was used because within this bounded system the authors have an interest in obtaining information to help improve the program and partnership.

Results suggest the partnership was beneficial in a number of ways including hiring of and offering fresh ideas to teachers. Educators also felt there were many benefits for university candidates. Challenges included scheduling, technology access and candidate disposition. Implications are discussed.

Inherent within the research methodology, researchers’ inclusion in the data collection process may affect participants responses.

Researchers discuss the implications of this work, including the role of hiring candidates and clear articulation of a mission for the partnership.

This work adds to research on school site stakeholders’ perspectives on the value of school–university partnerships and includes teachers and the schools’ entire leadership team.

In this chapter, we focus on specially designed instruction (SDI) as a core value for the field of specific learning disabilities (SLD). SDI is at the heart of special education, and the field of LD has been built on the core value that effective instruction improves student outcomes. We describe a two-step test and an extended example of what is and is not SDI for Matt, a student with an SLD. Finally, we discuss some of the confusion surrounding SDI and the need for the field to return to its core value of individualized, intentional, targeted, evidence- or high leverage practice–based, and systematic instruction for students with SLD.

The authors of this study examined how four leadership teams participating in a year-long deeper learning leadership academy understood and adapted key practices for change leadership, deeper learning and equity in their PK-12 schools.

This multiple-site case study used interviews, observations and documents to investigate how four school leadership teams developed deeper learning initiatives in their schools.

This study highlights how participants recast the leadership academy’s three pillars (change leadership, deeper learning and equity) as they engaged in educational reform for ambitious teaching and learning in their own contexts. Three themes emerged: transforming the culture, teaching the whole child and restructuring for collaboration. Overall, the authors found that district leaders must be fully committed to deeper learning for the culture to truly be transformed in schools under their purview.

This article contributes to the literature on supporting school leaders to enact equity-centered deeper learning initiatives using robust professional development. It is useful for understanding key deeper learning strategies and designing future training.

The purpose of this study is to explore the concept of long-term thinking in a non-business context to gain deeper insights into bridging the gap between the theory of long-term thinking and its application as a management strategy.

To explore the concept of long-thinking further in a non-business setting, a grounded theory study was conducted with preschool leaders in a municipality in Sweden to examine how the leaders describe, define and apply the concept of long-term thinking in their schools. Interviews with school leaders, both written and oral, were used for data collection.

This study illustrates that the concept of long-term thinking can be twofold. First, the description can be as an anchor that reflects a mission. Second, the description can be a steering mechanism that guides decision-making. The findings also reinforce the importance of organisations developing an organisational culture that connect their vision and goals with the values and needs of their customers.

This study was carried out in a single organisation and shows a snapshot of the organisation's status at the time the data were collected. Therefore, the findings are not generalisable to all organisational settings; rather the findings may be transferable to other settings.

The results can be used to help identify areas where preschools in a municipal context can engage with sustainable quality development in order to build systems that support work with quality in a more structured way.

Long-term thinking is seen, within both theory and organisations, as necessary to achieve success in terms of sustainable development and quality, and this study contributes with knowledge about the current gap between theories of long-term thinking and practice in organisations.

Pallets ensure efficient processes in logistics and are exchanged between the different actors, while passing through various supply chains several times. In common practice, the exchange is often not directly carried out on site, e.g. due to a lack of time, so that additional trips and new pallet purchases become necessary. To reduce these negative effects, a digital cross-actor platform is designed, and its potential is investigated.

The authors developed an agent-based simulation model with mathematical optimization. Using experience from practitioners, as well as real-world datasets which were analyzed, the authors ensure a realistic model of the pallet exchange system in Germany.

The authors demonstrated that, with the help of this platform concept, transport routes can be shortened, debts and receivables can partly be equaled out through balancing, and the quantity of pallets in the overall system can be reduced.

The results are not directly transferable to pallet exchange systems in other countries without considering their general settings.

Digital networking increases the efficiency of the existing pallet exchange system. Even small collaborations prove to be reasonable.

The authors developed new mechanisms for a digital pallet exchange platform, which takes on the role of a central planning instance, in addition to recording pallet receivables and debts. It enables the planning of the commodity flow of empty pallets, which are transported by the forwarders on regular routes, and distributed between the platform participants.

Being the final end of the logistic distribution, attended home delivery (AHD) plays an important role in the distribution network. AHD typically refers to the service provided by the distribution service provider to the recipient's doorstep. Researchers have always identified AHD as a bottleneck for last-mile delivery. This paper addresses a real-life stochastic multi-objective AHD problem in the context of the Indian public distribution system (PDS).

Two multi-objective models are proposed. Initially, the problem is formulated in a deterministic environment, and later on, it is extended to a multi-objective AHD model with stochastic travel and response time. This stochastic AHD model is used to extensively analyze the impact of stochastic travel time and customer response time on the total expected cost and time-window violation. Due to the NP-hard nature of the problem, an ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm, tuned via response surface methodology (RSM), is proposed to solve the problem.

Experimental results show that a change in travel time and response time does not significantly alter the service level of an AHD problem. However, it is strongly correlated with the planning horizon and an increase in the planning horizon reduces the time-window violation drastically. It is also observed that a relatively longer planning horizon has a lower expected cost per delivery associated.

The paper does not consider the uncertainty of supply from the warehouse. Also, stochastic delivery failure probabilities and randomness in customer behavior have not been taken into consideration in this study.

In this paper, the role of uncertainty in an AHD problem is extensively studied through a case of the Indian PDS. The paper analyzes the role of uncertain travel time and response time over different planning horizons in an AHD system. Further, the impact of the delivery planning horizon, travel time and response time on the overall cost and service level of an AHD system is also investigated.

This paper investigates a unique and practical AHD problem in the context of Indian PDS. In the present context of AHD, this study is highly relevant for real-world applications and can help build a more efficient delivery system. The findings of this study will be of particular interest to the policy-makers to build a more robust PDS in India.

The most challenging part of an AHD problem is the requirement of the presence of customers during the time of delivery, due to which the probability of failed delivery drastically increases if the delivery deviates from the customer's preferred time slot. The paper modelled an AHD system to incorporate uncertainties to attain higher overall performance and explore the role of uncertainty in travel and response time with respect to the planning horizon in an AHD, which has not been considered by any other literature.

The evaluation of time-based performance is a valued approach in the lean management thinking which is based on delivering value from customer's perspective. This approach contributes for long-term competitiveness and success in today's business environment. The focus of this study is to analyse the cycle time and manufacturing lead time with value stream mapping (VSM) in the preparatory stage of the textile fabric manufacturing process and to identify and improve the non-value adding activities in the value chain (VC). The study presents an insight on the translation of performance improvement across functions and how upstream supply chain (SC) segments can be linked in the performance improvement program. It also covers how the application of VSM improves visibility and planning flexibility in textile fabric manufacturing process.

The time-based performance was evaluated using VSM and recording of the activity times in the existing process. The impact of the quality of supplier's raw material was also measured contributing to identify the strategy for procurement and the means to establish a feedback system to the upstream segments of the SC. The methodology of VSM, observation of the practice and the expertise of the individuals involved with the process were utilised to develop the value stream maps and to identify value adding activities, non-value adding activities, existing gaps and plans for improvement.

The means for improving the time-based performance were identified and their impact was measured. The factors responsible for improvement are related to the production system and with the procurement strategy. The improvement was achieved in terms of available capacity utilisation, balancing the work flow in the preparatory stages, visibility of the process by measuring its capability and flexibility for the planning function. The study revealed that the effectiveness and enhancement of VSM and related tools should be adopted to address the issue of limiting success rates of long term and repeating application of such tools. Continuous improvement, innovations and the systematic embedding of VSM in the process life cycle provide the ways for achieving long-term success.

The paper presents a real and in-depth study on the application of VSM in the textile manufacturing process. The scope of the study is broad; it covers activities across functions with actual estimates of activity times in the manufacturing process for the focused value streams. It offers researchers the opportunity to analyse the translation of productivity improvement across functions and how upstream SC segments can be linked in a performance improvement program.

The study offers useful insight for the managers in textile manufacturing and other sectors for improving the time-based performance and achieving higher utilisation of capacity. It identified the production factors and their impact on warping and sizing cycle time in selected value streams and those which share common activities. It also identified the directions for future research when repeating the application of VSM in the continuous improvement cycle. Furthermore, since the industries need to progress towards advanced systems including Industry 4.0 standards, adoption of advanced VSM tool with relevant technology can align their production systems to develop the required capability. This will also bring a sustainable competitive advantage in the system.

The focused sector is stagnant in terms of productivity and innovation. The adoption of the advanced tools can facilitate the implementation of continuous improvement and innovation strategies.

The main focus of this study is to analyse and improve the cycle time in the preparatory stage of the fabric manufacturing process. This has impact on other important and tangible measures including capacity utilisation and work flow and intangible measures including production planning flexibility and process visibility. The improvement impact is across departments.

This study focuses to develop a common humanitarian supply chain process model (HSCPM) that enables effective enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems for NGOs, and the study also investigates the role of modularity as a dynamic capability that supports creating such model.

A multifocus group study was performed as part of a larger project, the Frontline Humanitarian Logistics Initiative, aiming to establish a common data model that would serve as the backbone of humanitarian ERP systems. Fourteen international humanitarian organizations (IHOs) participated in the process, reaching a consensus on the structure of the process model.

An HSCPM was proposed based on the consensus reached across IHOs. Four degrees of customization differentiating between “generic,” “tailored,” “specific,” and “unique” processes are presented and discussed.

The findings show modularity applied to process as a mean to create dynamic efficiencies and position the modular process model within the dynamic capabilities framework, supporting supply chain responsiveness and expanding the literature on supply chain management (SCM), dynamic capabilities, and humanitarian logistics.

This research proposes a consensus-based data model, facilitating the advancement of ERP systems in the humanitarian context and lays a foundation for interoperability among ERP systems across diverse IHOs.

First attempt to elucidate the specific characteristics and unique processes defining an HSCPM, this study reached an unprecedented consensus for the humanitarian sector, setting the base toward an industry standard.