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Education doctoral (EdD) students (mentees) typically hold full-time leadership positions in education-related fields while completing their degree. The types of support these scholar-practitioners need is unique because of their focus on balancing full-time work, academic, and personal needs. This study aims to explore mentor support systems for mentees in their first and second year of the EdD program through a group mentoring program, which is designed to provide resources and access to mentors to promote successful degree completion in five years or less.

Mentors participated in monthly presentations and discussions with mentees throughout the 2018–2019 academic year, which were video recorded. At the end of the academic year, mentors partook in an interview or focus group meeting.

Themes emerged related to mentors’ focus on the dissertation process; emphasis on outreach for support; discussions and work/life balance; selection of presentation topics; perceptions of networking opportunities with mentees; desire to build stronger connections with mentees; and concerns/opinions about the mentoring format.

The design of a mentoring program for EdD mentees varies throughout the doctorate degree pathway. Mentors support mentees in their doctoral journey through presentations and discussions about relevant topics during their first two years in the doctoral program. Additional studies are needed regarding EdD mentoring programs for students in the third year to the completion of the degree.

Few studies exist related to mentoring programs for scholar-practitioners in EdD programs. Results from this research provide EdD faculty and advisors insights to group mentoring and discussion topics for first and second year EdD students, based on the mentors’ perspectives.

Inequality is an important organizational phenomenon. Scholars have argued that inequalities persistently dwell in the flow of our lives and have a lingering impact. Yet, despite such compelling evidence, research has overlooked how individuals make sense of the inequalities they face inside and outside the organizations. The purpose of this paper was to address these gaps and capture its complexity on individual lived experiences with inequalities.

The present study used Seidman's adapted 2-interview strategy to collect the data. The first interview placed the participant's life history at the center, allowing the participant to share their childhood and adulthood experiences with inequalities inside and outside the organizations. The second interview focused on the concrete details of the participant's present lived experience and their reflections on the meaning of their experiences. In total, the present study relied on 26 interviews with 13 participants.

Lived experiences provided an extended-time view and allowed the researcher to explore how study participants perceived, coped and were shaped by inequalities throughout their lives. In addition, the sense-making perspective offered a new lens to study inequalities. Findings underscore the racial, class and gendered dynamics within organizations supporting their intersectional impact and acknowledge the pre-existing societal norms that condition individual actions and choices.

The study presents an “engaged” view of inequality to highlight it as a cumulative and complex experience. The findings help us recognize that participants are immersed in their specific contexts to act, negotiate, empower and make decisions under real-life pressures. Overall, the study pushes the boundaries of inequality research beyond its current episodic treatment.

The legalization of same-sex marriage changed the parenting landscape for LGBTQ parents in a variety of ways. Parenthood is presumably different now that same-sex marriage is officially legal. Experiences among LGBTQ couples in the post-legalization of same-sex marriage era raise questions about the context of growing recognition and cultural acceptance of same-sex relationships. I conducted in-depth interviews with LGBTQ parents to learn how they navigate parenting and the construction of parenting roles in the context of a society that has legalized same-sex marriage, yet still is rooted in heteronormative notions of family and parenthood. Specifically, I ask: How do LGBTQ couples construct and make sense of their roles as parents, particularly within the contemporary context of the legalization of same-sex marriage? Understanding the contexts that shape LGBTQ parents’ experiences aids in not only understanding the lives of LGBTQ parents and their families better, but also developing a deeper understanding of contemporary parenting identities and experiences more broadly.

This study examines a general education, hands-on and 100 per cent online laboratory course to better understand the prospects for fostering green building literacy through experiential online education.

The mixed-methods research design included pre- and post-course surveys (n = 42) together with semi-structured interviews mid-semester (n = 10) and four to six months post-course (n = 5). Data were collected for two semesters.

Students experienced significant increases in green building knowledge and skills, environmental sensitivity and pro-environmental behaviors from the beginning to the end of the course. Qualitative results indicate that the hands-on laboratory assignments were the primary pedagogical interventions affecting change. Interviews four to six months after the course revealed that motivation, convenience and supportiveness of the context were key factors impacting the pro-environmental behaviors that were maintained versus those that were discontinued by students when the course was over.

This paper shares effective approaches used to deliver an online course with hands-on laboratories that lead to positive increases in sustainability knowledge and behaviors stretching beyond the semester.

While online and experiential learning are both well-studied themes in higher education, very little empirical work examines experiential online learning, and this is particularly the case for online laboratory courses. The work here contributes to the understanding of general education online laboratories that are designed to increase knowledge and behavior change through hands-on experiential learning techniques.

Drawing on the resource-based view, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the link between resource capabilities and performance by incorporating two network dimensions (i.e. social and business networks), a moderator (i.e. international experience) and a mediator (i.e. marketing capabilities).

SME data were collected via surveys. A sampling frame of 3,000 exporting manufactures was developed based on a database sourced from the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The authors first contacted the managers of each firm in the sampling frame through e-mail or phone to receive permission, and then sent a paper questionnaire. The authors analyzed 392 valid cases using a path analysis.

The findings largely confirmed the hypotheses in the proposed framework based on the RBV. While social networks only enhanced marketing capabilities and did not directly lead to international performance, business networks enhanced both. Also, unlike social networks, the influence of SME business networks on international performance was weakened as international experience increased. This study found that marketing capabilities mediated the path from business networks to international performance.

The study explained the distinctive roles played by social and business networks in international performance, extending our knowledge of the RBV by showing how firm resources can turn into sustainable competitive advantages. More importantly, the integration of time into the discussion on networks and international performance extended the business network internationalization process model.

The authors suggest that Korean SMEs focus on developing their own marketing capabilities by capitalizing on their social and business networks, which could directly enhance international performance. Governments can also offer assistance to SMEs for developing their own marketing capabilities during the initial stages of internationalization, since the benefit of business networks diminishes as international experience increases.

By testing the proposed link between resource capabilities and performance, this study suggested how SME networks can contribute to international performance, extending our understanding of RBV. This study further confirmed the dynamic impact of business networks on international performance, such that it changes over the course of the internationalization process.

Many higher education institutions are committed to developing students as skilled professionals and responsible citizens for a more sustainable future. In addition to the formal curriculum for sustainability education, there is an increasing interest in informal learning within universities. This paper aims to extend the current understanding of the diversity and significance of informal learning experiences in supporting students’ learning for sustainability.

Six focus groups were formed with 30 undergraduate and postgraduate students from an Australian higher education institution committed to supporting graduate competencies for sustainability. An inductive and qualitative inquiry was designed to enable participants to reflect on the ways in which their university experiences support meaningful and significant learning for sustainability.

The paper presents a typology of the diverse communities of informal learning that students create and engage with. These range from ongoing to transient groups, from environmentally to more socially oriented groups and from incidental to intended learning, from local to national in scale, with varying types and degrees of connection to the formal curriculum and the university campus. The paper demonstrates that these student-led experiences support three domains of learning: cognitive, practical and affective.

Deepening the understanding of the forms and significance of student-led learning within their university experience contributes to the identification of the roles that informal learning may play alongside formal education in developing graduates as agents of change for a more sustainable future.