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This paper describes the rationale and key aspects of how one school-university partnership leveraged resources to create, implement and refine an innovative professional pathway called the Early Childhood Certificate (ECC) program which reflects the National Professional Development Schools (NAPDS) Essential Guideline 4: Reflection and Innovation. The ECC program is an innovative, career-building model that leverages resources between a predominantly white regional state university, a nonprofit organization serving as a Head Start grantee, a large urban school district and community-based education settings across a Midwestern metropolitan region.

This descriptive narrative documents how the ECC program developed as a professional pathway for early childhood educators to scale up their skills for teaching young children while strengthening their capacities and credentials within the early childhood education (ECE) profession pipeline. The narrative includes relevant literature and examples from the field.

This paper includes a discussion of the benefits and challenges related to the design, implementation and refinement of the professional learning ECC program.

This is a descriptive narrative. As such, generalizability is lacking. Research is needed to determine the effectiveness and sustainability of innovative teacher education programs.

Relevant research and lessons learned provide guidance for other school–university partnerships to consider how to meet workforce and career needs for educators in the field of ECE.

School–university partnerships can be change agents and positively impact early childhood educators' career development.

This paper addresses the need for understanding how predominantly white early childhood teacher education programs can partner with schools and agencies and then together leverage resources to support workforce and career development opportunities.

Early childhood teachers play a significant role in building children’s success in their first years of school. Therefore, a healthy early childhood workforce in a healthy working environment is an essential aspect of effective early childhood services. This paper aims to explore the extent to which psychological hardiness can be considered as a mediator variable between exposure to workplace bullying and job anxiety among early childhood teachers.

A homogeneous sample comprised of 200 early childhood teachers. For data collection, the researcher used the workplace bullying scale, the psychological hardiness scale and the job anxiety scale among early childhood teachers (prepared by the researcher).

The findings indicated that psychological hardiness mediates the relationship between exposure to workplace bullying and job anxiety among early childhood teachers.

The research result highlighted the necessity of providing counseling programs for early childhood teachers helping them eliminate work stress that affects their job performance. In addition, the kindergarten administration must concentrate on how to effectively communicate and cooperate with early childhood teachers in light of regulations, policies and laws to defeat the spread of workplace bullying. The results of this research contributed to the existing literature by examining the relationship between the research variables, particularly in the early childhood education context.

This paper shares findings from a multi-year literacy professional development partnership between a school district and university (2014–2019). We share this case of a Literacy Cohort initiative as an example of cross-institutional professional development situated within several of NAPDS’ nine essentials, including professional learning and leading, boundary-spanning roles and reflection and innovation (NAPDS, 2021).

We asked, “In what ways did the Cohort initiative create conditions for community and collaboration in the service of meaningful literacy reforms?” Drawing on social design methodology (Gutiérrez & Vossoughi, 2010), we sought to generate and examine the educational change associated with this multi-year initiative. Our data set included programmatic data, interviews (N = 30) and artifacts of literacy teaching, learning and leading.

Our findings reflect the emphasis areas that are important to educators in the partnership: diversity by design, building relationships through collaboration and rooting literacy reforms in teacher leadership. Our discussion explores threads of reciprocity, simultaneous renewal and boundary-spanning leadership and their role in sustaining partnerships over time.

This paper contributes to our understanding of building and sustaining a cohort model of multi-year professional development through the voices, perspectives and experiences of teachers, faculty and district administrators.

There are many factors that contribute to a person's career choice. The decision of whether or not to join the family business is certainly most influenced by parents. The aim of this research is to determine how much of an impact parents have on their next-generation family members' (NGFMs) decision to join the family business.

Following a positivistic paradigm, a cross-sectional design was followed using a quantitative, self-administered questionnaire through a judgemental sampling technique. A structured questionnaire was distributed to South African respondents who have parents who own a family business. The data were analysed using Statistica.

The results indicate that parental style, culture, self-efficacy and parental identification were found to influence the NGFMs' intention to join the family business significantly. Their decisions can be influenced by several factors, and parents can better manage these aspects by being aware of these influencing factors.

Given the imminent ageing of a large cohort of senior leaders, this research adds to the body of knowledge by highlighting the necessity for committed, willing and ready next-generation family members (NGFMs) to ensure efficient succession in family businesses. Therefore, effective management is required for succession-planning, particularly from the perspective of the successor.

This study, therefore, responds to calls for more in-depth quantitative studies on family businesses in general and on Black-owned family businesses in South Africa in particular. This study will evaluate the significance of parent influence on NGFMs to join Black family-owned businesses in South Africa. This research will assist family business owners and their families in understanding their children's intentions, designing and evolving an appropriate system to instill necessary traits, skills and attitudes in the children, preparing them for upcoming challenges, adding new perspectives to the family business and ensuring its profitability and long-term growth.

This study aims to explore the self-efficacy of social studies teacher education working with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) preservice teachers, teaching LGBTQ content in their methods courses, and helping the preservice teachers they teach in those classes reduce their bias and prejudice against LGBTQ individuals.

This study, framed by self-efficacy theory, employs a mixed methods approach, qualitative semistructured interviews (n = 6) and quantitative (Likert-scale) survey questions (n = 174).

Participants reported high self-efficacy in working with LGBTQ students but showed decreased efficacy in teaching about LGBTQ content and helping reduce preservice teacher LGBTQ bias. Participants suggested that time in the curriculum, lack of knowledge about LGBTQ topics/issues, and the lack of institutional support are some of the leading barriers to LGBTQ inclusion in the social studies teacher preparation curriculum.

This is the only work conducted at this scale to examine social studies teacher educators' self-efficacy in LGBTQ-inclusion in methods courses. It has implications for increasing this self-efficacy to help make P-16 social studies education LGBTQ-inclusive.

Early childhood and early elementary are key times when children develop internal and external antifat attitudes; thus, it is necessary to better understand the available children’s literature around fatness.This paper aims to examine children's picture books with fat protagonists to better understand the current landscape of children's literature. Drawing on relevant literature around fat characters and the fat studies movement, this critical content analysis considers five children’s books featuring fat protagonists.

This study uses critical content analysis to analyze texts featuring fat protagonists, including two rounds of initial reading and analysis. Using lenses of critical literacy and critical multicultural analysis, the author looks for common themes, silences and absences in the texts, images and peritext.

This paper identifies themes of characters initially internalizing antifatness, then pushing back against antifat bias toward existing with joy and without stigma. Several of these texts even draw on the history of fat activism, highlighting societal critique and a potential activist component of children’s literature with fat protagonists.

The study has a small number of books, due to the limited number of texts that fit the study parameters.

The paper concludes with examples of scaffolding for teachers and parents to have conversations with young children about antifat bias while also acknowledging notable absences, particularly boy protagonists.

These themes illustrate the power of young children to push back against antifat bias and critique oppressive social structures.

There have been very few studies looking at antifatness in children’s picture books. With more books with fat protagonists coming out in the 2020s, this study offers an understanding of the themes present, while also emphasizing the need for an intersectional approach to literature with fat protagonists.

This largely conceptual study aims to draw from the author’s experience of conversations with Svalbard’s educators, lessons for international higher education institutions’ engagement with climate change education and thinking for non-specialists.

In situ discussions with Svalbard’s educators informed the theoretical work of the author towards the development of conceptual conclusions. The theoretical frame used – “Red Biocentrism” – draws on both radical left and green thought to posit an emplaced, materialist understanding of author’s, participants’ and place’s intra-related contributions.

That, insofar as universities represent nodes in an ethical ecology, they have a capacity to realise that which is obvious in Svalbard – their role as embassies for their learning places, generative of spokespeople or ambassadors.

There is sparse published research into the work of Svalbard’s climate educators, as a pedagogical project undertaken under such extreme and rapidly changing environmental conditions. This study represents the first to reflect on what can be learnt from the educators of Svalbard by Universities elsewhere.

This paper explores the context within which experimental, pedagogically progressive schools were established in Australia during the first decades of the 20th century.

The paper presents a case study of the establishment of Rosbercon Girls’ Grammar School. It draws on educator accounts, archival documents and contemporary literature to provide a brief narrative of the events leading to the opening of the school; to sketch the family of educators who were pivotal in making it a reality; and to identify key aspects of the social and legislative context that made such an initiative possible.

Rosbercon was established at a time when a modest school could be established relatively easily by a small group of educators with a shared vision. The early 20th century was a moment of national optimism in Australia, where an appetite for new educational ideas created a climate in which innovative educators found fertile soil for their pedagogical experiments and adaptation of emerging ideas from around the world. Their efforts were facilitated by an emerging global network of personal interactions, professional learning, professional associations and educational literature.

This paper addresses the relative lack of scholarly examination of the origins of Rosbercon Girls’ Grammar School, an institution that previous authors have identified as Australia’s oldest experimental school. The case study also contributes to a broader appreciation of the trajectory of progressive education during the early 20th century.

The purpose of this paper is to meet Mary Kay Morrison, an active member and past president of the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor (AATH).

This case study is presented in two sections: an autobiography of Mary Kay Morrison, followed by a ten-question interview.

Mary Kay recommends exploration of the benefits of humor and laughter for mental health professionals. In recognition of the need for clarifying terminology, she coined the terms Humergy, which is joyful, optimistic, healthy energy and Humordoomer, which denotes a person who zaps that energy from us. Her work includes exploring the five stages of Humor Development as a significant factor in understanding cognitive development.

This is a personal narrative, albeit from an educator who has been active in the field of applied and therapeutic humor for over 30 years.

Humor and laughter research is recommended to explore their use in optimizing mental health. Mary Kay endorses expanding pioneering work in therapeutic humor as a treatment for anxiety and depression. She shares recommendations for humor practice in both prevention of mental health challenges and as a viable treatment for anxiety and depression.

Three humor benefits with particular social applications are highlighted. Humor facilitates communication, creates an optimal learning environment and supports change.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first case study about Mary Kay Morrison, Past President of the AATH and founder of the AATH Certified Humor Professional program.

Positive psychology helps us understand the knowledge required to contribute to adolescents' societal development and adjustability. Adolescence is the crucial stage to work on for a balanced personality. The present study concerned adolescents' self-strength, happiness, and help-seeking behaviour. The authors aimed to explore the relationship between adolescents' self-strength and happiness and investigate the mediational effect of adolescents' help-seeking behaviour on their self-strength and happiness.

The research design of the current quantitative study was correlational, and 809 adolescents from China and Pakistan participated in the present study. Data were personally collected from participants through self-developed scales.

We deployed Pearson correlation and simple mediation using SPSS software and found a linear, positive, strong (r = 0.654, n = 809, p = 0.000 < 0.01) and statistically significant correlation between adolescents' self-strength and happiness. The authors also found a significant indirect effect of help-seeking on adolescents' self-strength and happiness at (β = 0.373, t(907) = 7.01).

Using self-reported scales to gather information was one of the study's limitations. Adolescents may have misunderstood the notion or construct narrated in words or responded biasedly despite the bilingual scales.

This study offers social and practical implications for educators, parents, and school administrators to address the development of adolescents' personalities using a positive psychology lens.

The findings are of significant importance for teachers working in the elementary schools. They may work on adolescents' self-strength, happiness, and help-seeking to develop balanced personalities.