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CASPE Research and Brighton Health Authority have been working together to test a series of approaches to quality assurance in healthcare. In this paper, they give an account of the results of the quality assurance techniques used; discuss the key requirements for successful quality assurance in the NHS environment; and consider the need for systematic evaluation of quality assurance programmes.

Middle level teachers, at times, link historical content with relevant English literature in interdisciplinary units. Elementary teachers periodically employ history-themed literature during reading time. Interconnections between language arts and history are formed with developmentally appropriate literature for students. Historical misrepresentations, however, proliferate in children’s literature and are concealed behind engaging narratives. Since literacy and historical thinking are essential skills, children’s literature should be balanced within, not banished from, the classroom. Using America’s peculiar institution of slavery as a reference point, this article examines children’s literature, identifies almost a dozen areas of historical misrepresentation, and proffers rich primary source material to balance the various misrepresentations. We provide teachers with reason for caution when including such literature; but also model how to locate, use, and, at times, abridge primary source material within an elementary or middle level classroom. Such curricular supplements provide balance to engaging but historically-blemished children’s literature and enable educators to attain the rigorous prescriptions of Common Core.

This paper considers the phenomenon of “opting out” from an intersectional lens, bringing in hitherto undertheorized dimensions of gender, race and power into the conversation related to why and how some women of color may make the “choice” to leave an organization.

Through a single case study approach, our research elucidates how identity-connected experiences unconnected to work/life balance constraints and tensions caused one immigrant woman of color to leave the workplace. We expand upon the current use of intersectionality in management and organization studies by applying it as a lens to bring into consideration power relations in organizations and structural inequality as the context for understanding why and how some women of color may leave their places of employment.

Based on our in-depth case study, we demonstrate that microaggressions, power relations, and structural inequities contribute to some women of color opting out.

This paper is of value to scholars interested in intersectionality framework applications.

Detective work is a mainstay of modern law enforcement, but its effectiveness has been much less evaluated than patrol work. To explore what is known about effective investigative practices and to identify evidence gaps, the authors assess the current state of empirical research on investigations.

The authors assess the empirical research about the effectiveness of criminal investigations and detective work in resolving cases and improving clearance rates.

The authors’ analysis of the literature produced 80 studies that focus on seven categories of investigations research, which include the impact that case and situational factors, demographic and neighborhood dynamics, organizational policies and practices, investigative effort, technology, patrol officers and community members have on case resolution. The authors’ assessment shows that evaluation research examining the effectiveness of various investigative activities is rare. However, the broader empirical literature indicates that a combination of organizational policies, investigative effort and certain technologies can be promising in improving investigative outcomes even in cases deemed less solvable.

From an evidence-based perspective, this review emphasizes the need for greater transparency, evaluation and accountability of investigative activities given the resources and importance afforded to criminal investigations.

This review is currently the most up-to-date review of the state of the research on what is known about effective investigative practices.

This paper aims to underscore the role of culture in situating and embedding opportunistic action differently in high- and low-entrepreneurship communities in the USA. It challenges the idea that opportunity is either exclusively discovered or created – two themes commonly found in the literature.

The approach utilizes a multiple case study across one high- and one low-entrepreneurship community in rural areas in each of three states – Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Maine. Community profiling, key informant interviews and survey analysis with entrepreneurs and local institutional actors are used to develop a greater understanding of how these individuals conceptualize and utilize opportunity in ways that lead to entrepreneurship development.

Quantitative and qualitative findings are presented supporting the idea that in these rural areas, discovery and creation fail to capture the nuances of how entrepreneurs think about opportunistic action.

This research offers insights for both researchers and practitioners about more effective ways to think about entrepreneurial opportunity and provides a glimpse as to how different community actors may hold different, but equally-valid, views on how opportunity arises – an idea with significant policy and practice implications.

The research contributes empirical support challenging the current discussion on entrepreneurial opportunity and advances the conversation as it pertains to rural entrepreneurship development using original research from the field.

The competition and challenges facing construction firms during the recent recession have brought risk management (RM) to the fore in people’s minds. Examination of the difficulties of implementing RM in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the UK construction industry has been relatively untouched. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

As part of on-going research to facilitate RM processing aimed at improving the competitiveness of SMEs, the difficulties in RM implementation were identified through a literature review of RM implementation in SMEs. Postal questionnaire were sent to SMEs who have experience of construction management.

Of the 153 of SMEs responding, most highlighted that the main difficulty experienced is how to scale RM process to meet their requirements. None of the available standards explain the fundamental principle of applying RM to the situations that SMEs find themselves in. This difficulty is further exacerbated by a lack of management skills and knowledge in the adoption of RM tools or techniques to identify and analyse the business’ risks.

The identified difficulties can be considered to develop a process to facilitate RM process within SMEs.

The study aims to review the Nine Essentials.

The authors worked with groups from different conferences to gather data.

A PDS (Professional Development School) is built upon shared, sustainable governance structures that promote collaboration, foster reflection and honor and value all participants’ voices.

Nine Essentials are foundational to PDS work.

This paper aims to review current information and research concerning job satisfaction in the workplace. It also provides a brief overview of what is generally and currently known about job satisfaction, personality and job satisfaction and workplace influences on job satisfaction and offers suggestions for practitioners.

It examines a large sample of research and opinion from the past several years.

It reveals that there is much empirical research about individual job satisfaction, a considerable amount of which is situation-specific. Generalizations concerning research findings are difficult. There is, however, much reported data and statistics that give indications of why employees find satisfaction with work, colleagues and the organization. This information may provide some practical guidance for practitioners.

It gives a broad overview and summary of recent research and opinion on job satisfaction that is not readily available in other sources.

It advises that, other things being equal, organizations should aim to recruit employees who are somewhat extraverted, conscientious, expressive of a belief in their skills and who demonstrate a positive disposition.

It provides current information that may guide practice and policy development.

Many current video games feature virtual worlds inhabited by autonomous 3D animated characters. These characters often fall short in their ability to participate in social interactions with each other or with people. Increasing the social capabilities of game characters could increase the potential of games as a platform for social learning. This article presents advances in the area of social autonomous character design. Specifically, a computational model of social relationship formation is described. This model formed the basis for a game entitled “AlphaWolf” that allows people to play the role of newborn pups in a pack of virtual wolves, helping the pups to find their place in the social order of the pack. This article offers the results from a 32‐subject user study that assessed the social relationship model, showing that it effectively represents the core elements of social relationships in a way that is perceivable by people. Additionally, this article proposes a game that will allow parents, teachers and children to experiment with computational social behavior through social virtual characters. This research contributes to the development of games for social learning by offering a set of viable algorithms for computational characters to form social relationships, and describing a project that could utilize this model to enable children to learn social skills by interacting with game characters.

The massive output of legislation in recent years, with the modern practice of making so many statutes as enabling acts, their powers being completed by the making of regulations; all this cannot have made the work of parliamentary draftsmanship easier. When, as with so many regulations concerning food, these have attempted to exert a much closer control of the practices of a variety of trades and the persons employed therein than has ever been the case before, drafting becomes even more difficult. Nowhere is the tendency towards greater control of personal actions and cleanliness more marked than in the field of food hygiene.