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Measuring parent satisfaction is regarded as essential but there is a paucity of research reporting on parental satisfaction with community youth mental health services. This study aims to examine parent satisfaction with Jigsaw – a primary care youth mental health service.

A measure of parent satisfaction was developed and administered to parents in 12 Jigsaw services over a two-year period (n = 510, age range: 28 to 70 years) when young people and parents were ending their engagement with these services.

Overall, parents had high levels of satisfaction with Jigsaw and their level of satisfaction did not vary depending on the parent or young person’s age and/or gender. Examination of qualitative feedback revealed three overarching themes relating to growth and change in young people, parents and their families; strengths of the service and; suggestions for future service development. Analysis of the psychometric properties of the measure provided evidence for a two-factor structure examining satisfaction with the intervention and outcomes and service accessibility and facilities.

This study represents one of the first efforts to measure parent satisfaction with primary care youth mental health services. It has resulted in the development of a brief measure that can be more widely administered to parents engaging with primary care youth mental health services.

Connected learning is a framework of learning principles that centers on fostering educational equity through leveraging social technologies and networking practices to connect students with opportunities, people and resources in communities within and beyond their classroom walls (Ito et al., 2013). The framework has been adopted and developed in K-12 education by teachers in professional development networks and introduced to some teacher education programs through these networks. Practitioners of connected learning frequently refer to the need for “courage” to develop and introduce connected learning-based practices in their classrooms. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In this study, the authors investigate “courage” through a sociocultural lens in the case studies of six educators in a teacher education course on connected learning. The study examines the social contexts and activities that fostered acts of courage during their 14-week course.

The authors found that personal reflection on freedom and equity, two ethical concepts raised by the connected learning framework, seeded acts of courage. The acts of courage appeared as small acts that built upon themselves toward a larger goal that related to the participants’ ethical ideals. Three types of social activity contexts helped to nurture these acts: seeking models of possibility, mediated reinvention and “wobbling.”

This study helps to uncover some of the questions that connected learning scholars and practitioners have about why courage is so central, and how to cultivate courageous acts of pedagogical change.

The theoretical framework used in this study, courage from a sociocultural perspective, may serve to help scholars and teacher educators to shape their research and program designs.

This study offers insights into patterns of networked teacher-led educational change and the social contexts that support school-level impacts of out-of-school professional networking.

Using a sociocultural conception of courage to investigate connected learning in teacher education, this study demonstrates how equity and freedom, central values in the connected learning framework, serve as key concepts driving teachers’ risk-taking, innovation and change.

This paper aims to explore alternative literacy instruction with incarcerated youth, add to the body of existing literature documenting the literacy of those incarcerated and investigate the construction of book clubs through a critical lens.

This qualitative case study answered the following research questions: What can a critical book club reveal about the literacy lives of these incarcerated youth? What can we learn from incarcerated youth through a critical book club? Data were collected through participant observation and in-depth interviews and analyzed using a critical literacy framework.

Findings indicate students used text connections to critically reflect on selves and schools. They questioned issues of power, particularly the power of literacy in their own lives as well as the power of schools, teachers and curriculum. The paper concludes with the authors’ critical reflection on both the findings and process which results in implications for future book clubs in settings with incarcerated youth.

As educators, administrators and community members living in the “age of incarceration” (Hill, 2013), there is a social responsibility to design curriculum and pedagogy that expands instruction in correctional facilities.

The need for expanded literacy instruction in juvenile detention centers has been widely documented and supported; however, conventional methods of teaching literacy are not always successful for youth who may not have had positive experiences with traditional schooling. This study expands and explores literacy instruction with incarcerated youth through book clubs, an alternative literacy structure which challenges traditional curricula, pedagogical practices and culturally irrelevant texts which often contribute to the alienation and disempowerment of many students. Book clubs can facilitate new understandings through a critical lens.

Telepresence robots have gained prominence as a novel technological modality for mobile videoconferencing. Although the technology has mass appeal in the realm of telehealth and patient–health provider communication, its integration in community living settings for older adults has not been extensively studied. The aim of this study was to gather the perspectives of residents, trainers and staff at a retirement facility on their experience with a telepresence robot during and following a five-week wellness program.

The study employed semi-structured interviews with ten stakeholders who were involved in the wellness program followed by a qualitative content analysis of the data. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology served as the interview framework to explore the facilitators and barriers to the implementation of the robot.

Independent coding of the data by the study investigators identified discrete as well as interconnected categories among the stakeholders. Residents expressed their changing ideation of the robot, affinity toward the technology, preference for human connection and future value. Perspectives of the trainers, the fellow residents (ambassadors) and staff pertained to their need for increased engagement, growing comfort with the technology, usability challenges and importance of coordination and training.

Older adults' outlook and comfort with telepresence robots improve with continuing exposure to the technology for healthcare and social connectivity needs. However, in-person care is also preferred initially and periodically to engage with their health providers meaningfully and effectively via the robot. To address long term feasibility and usability, the authors propose a hierarchical approach when integrating telepresence robots in community living facilities for older adults. Information technology education, staff training and reliable internet connectivity are the precursors to optimizing the value and perceived usefulness of the technology.

This paper seeks to examine workplace learning strategies, learning facilitators and learning barriers of public accountants in Canada across three professional levels – trainees, managers, and partners.

Volunteer participants from public accounting firms in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick completed a demographic survey, a learning activities survey, a learning barriers survey, and a learning facilitators survey. Quantitative analysis provided total scores for key variables and compared these across the three levels.

The paper finds that accountants across different levels use a variety of formal and informal learning strategies, although informal strategies predominate. Accountants encounter numerous facilitators and barriers. There are variations in strategies, barriers and facilitators based on professional level; for example, trainees make more use of e‐learning than do either managers or partners.

Future research could focus on the efficacy of accountants' formal and informal learning strategies as well as how e‐learning can be appropriately managed and utilized.

Allocation of work and relationships with people are important to the learning process and should be considered in work assignments. One implication is to encourage informal learning and provide appropriate learning activities and feedback so that informal learning is maximized. There could also be more emphasis placed on assisting partners and managers in developing their roles as coaches and mentors.

The paper provides information on workplace learning for an understudied group of professionals in a Canadian context.

Michael Holquist (1990), one of the commentators on Mikhail Bakhtin’s monumental work, stated flatly that “human existence is dialogue,” and Ivana Markova (2003) declared that “dialogism is the ontology of humanity.” Bakhtin (1985;1986) himself said that such dialogues are conducted by using “speech genres.” From another angle Kenneth Burke asked, “What is involved when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it?” and claimed – and showed – that this question can be best answered by using what he called the “grammar of motives,” which consisted of a hexad of terms: act, attitude, scene, agent, agency, and purpose. In this chapter, I examine, by using various examples, how the Burkean grammar is used in the construction of one speech genre or the other to achieve rhetorically effective dialogic communication.

The hypothesis is supported that substantial similarities exist in supplier choice strategies across industrialised nations. The nine studies reviewed indicate that a four‐step process is common to the majority of capital goods purchases and purchases of component parts and raw materials in some European countries and the United States

Once a taboo subject, death and dying has been considered not only a possible but a healthy topic of discussion since the pioneering work of Dr. Elizabeth Kübler‐Ross with dying patients in Chicago beginning in 1965. Since then, the widely publicized court case of the comatose young Karen Ann Quinlan, the growth of the hospice movement, and the rise of groups asserting a person's right to choose the moment and manner of death rather than undergo the prolonged suffering of terminal illness have fueled public interest. Media attention reflects this increasing public awareness—the popular 60 Minutes televised interviews with both hospice people and supporters of the right‐to‐die; a “Dear Abby” newspaper column drew over 40,000 requests to the Society for the Right to Die for information on living wills.

The assessment and management of risk towards others is an integral part of clinical practice, particularly in forensic and other psychiatric settings. Version 3 of the HCR-20 is the latest version of a comprehensive set of professional guidelines based on the Structured Professional Judgement model. It is the most widely used and best validated tool available to assess risk of violence; however, clinicians perceive it as an additional task with limited clinical usefulness, which requires undergoing expensive training and takes considerable time to implement. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Training was delivered to 148 clinicians to improve perceptions with regard to risk formulation and the HCR-20v3 as an effective and clinically useful tool in generating individual and robust care plans to minimise risk of violence.

Results indicated significant score increase post-training, indicating higher regard for the HCR-20 in terms of its usefulness, anticipated impact upon working, anticipated impact upon managing risk, ease of completion and perceived relevance to clinical practice. This was also consistent with qualitative feedback indicating improved risk management and care planning with reference to how learning would support respective roles. Feedback also highlighted the added value of certain aspects of the training provided, which may be useful to consider when designing HCR-20 training packages.

This study demonstrates the importance of engaging clinicians in bespoke training on the practicalities of HCR-20 completion and the fundamentals of risk formulation.

This study highlights the importance of incorporating a training package for staff of all disciplines in changing perceptions of risk management tools and thus their use in the practical management of violence. The useful aspects of training may assist changing perceptions of the role that risk formulation and the HCR-20v3 play in the assessment and management of violence.

This research suggests that if this can be done successfully, it may lead to a change in the perception of the role that the HCR-20v3 can play in assessing risk of violence and generating meaningful management plans to reduce the future likelihood of violence.

Reflecting on professional learning networks (PLN) in rural and equity-seeking spaces, the authors foreground the importance of “relational space” in studying PLNs in this commentary. The authors argue that while the complexity of taking a relational approach is challenging, it offers an important and necessary perspective, one which is often implicit in the studies featured in this book but not explicitly considered. The chapter is organized around three broad concepts from social network theory – boundedness, connectedness, and mutuality – which serve as starting points for shifting our gaze from formal system structures to more deeply interrogating the informal relational spaces within PLNs. The authors conclude with a call to make use of network theory and methods on their own, and in complement to other literatures, to do so.