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Educational change and innovation have been a clear priority in educational systems across Europe in recent years. In this chapter, we reflect on the role played by educational evidence in shaping school practices in the Catalan context. Situated at a crossroads between social cohesion and strong regulations, Catalan schools are navigating a hybrid system marked by increasing autonomy and the educational tradition with an increased interest in accountability and quality assessment through rigid standards and designs.

Despite the Catalan administration's recent promotion of several initiatives to engage schools and teachers with the use of evidence, this process is still irregular and fundamentally depends on decisions made by the school or teachers' commitment.

The factors shaping the teachers' engagement with evidence cover a wide spectrum: from teachers' and educational leaders' conception of the nature of evidence, to given teachers' willingness to use evidence and whether school environments are favourable (or not) to the use of evidence. Acknowledging these factors allows us to specify the direction of action at the system, organisational and class levels. At the system level, promoting a vision of practice based on evidence requires coherent and responsible actions among all actors. At the organisational level, the development of the capacity to use evidence requires leadership that is sensitive to research and favours a positive organisational culture. At the classroom level, teachers' motivation, individual orientation towards the use of evidences, research conception and the capacity to use it, are the key factors.

I argue that the official story about the collapses of the Twin Towers and building 7 of the World Trade Center, according to which the collapses were caused by fire – combined, in the case of the Twin Towers, with the effects of the airplane impacts – cannot be true, for two major reasons. One reason is that fire has never, except allegedly three times on 9/11, caused the total collapse of steel-frame high-rise buildings. All (other) such collapses have been produced by the use of explosives in the procedure known as “controlled demolition.” The other major problem is that the collapses of all three buildings had at least 11 features that would be expected if, and only if, explosives had been used.

I also show the importance of the recently released of 9/11 Oral Histories recorded by the New York Fire Department. With regard to the Twin Towers, many of the firefighters and medical workers said they observed multiple explosions and other phenomena indicative of controlled demolition. With regard to building 7, many testimonies point to widespread foreknowledge that the building was going to collapse, and some of the testimonies contradict the official story that this anticipation of the building's collapse was based on objective indications. These testimonies further strengthen the already virtually conclusive case that all three buildings were brought down by explosives.

I conclude by calling on the New York Times, which got the 9/11 Oral Histories released, now to complete the task of revealing the truth about 9/11.

Until the early 1970s the infamous ‘White Australia Policy’ restricted certain types of migrants from entering Australia, particularly those of Asian background, with the goal of creating an ‘Anglo-Celtic’ Australian nation. Post-war mass migration, mostly from Europe, had a significant impact on the ethnic composition of the population. Despite attempts to enforce a mostly ‘British’ migration, the resulting programme would see migrants come from many non-British source countries. This ultimately pressured the government into recognition of cultural diversity and eventually in the early 1970s through the proposition of a multicultural approach. In 1973 multiculturalism was officially introduced slowly becoming a defining national asset. From 1933 to 2001, Italians were the second largest migrant group contributing to Australia’s cultural ‘make-up’, right after the ‘Anglo-Celtic’ segment of the overseas-born population (UK, New Zealand and Ireland). However, the Italian migration of the 1950s and 1960s is a closed chapter of Australian migration history, and Australia now embraces migration from countries where it was initially rejected in the pre-1970s period – Asians, particularly those from China and India. While looking at the specific cases of Italian and Chinese settlement in Australia, this chapter also provides an historical overview of Australian migration policies. We argue that the gradual inclusion of non-British migrants in Australia has been guided since 1901 Federation by a form of ‘economic opportunism’ rather than a real intention to change the ethnic make-up of the population and identity of the nation. Despite forming and maintaining strategic partnerships with Asian countries, migration to Australia is still dominated by the need to preserve a distinctive ‘Anglo-Celtic’ character.

The burnout condition of employees – characterized by three interrelated symptoms of emotional exhaustion, reduced personal accomplishment and depersonalization – is a well-known phenomenon in psychology and several applied business disciplines. Following persistent recognition in the practice community, academic recognition of this topic has begun to appear in the accounting literature. Using a measure of burnout developed for boundary-spanning positions, this paper shows that burnout among internal auditors is a serious concern. Results offer evidence that the burnout condition is directly related to several of the important behavioral and attitudinal outcomes in internal accounting practice. In order to provide greater clarity for future research, this study offers a separate treatment of the three dimensions of burnout, two very different organizational commitment constructs and two turnover directions. Implications for the management of human resources in this area are included.

Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) offers researchers additional flexibility and enhanced research conclusions, yet it is still underutilized in accounting. This may be in part because many researchers are not sufficiently familiar with SEM. SEM can be difficult to apply, especially if the research study was not appropriately planned to accommodate the necessary assumptions and data requirements. This article helps researchers overcome some barriers to using SEM by providing a simple guide to effectively planning a study suitable for an SEM analysis while also suggesting references and additional reading on the topic. To further encourage the use of SEM, the practical benefits of using SEM over the traditional regression approach for some research situations are also explained. Finally, a comparison of a regression and an SEM analysis of the same data testing the same theoretical model is included in the Appendices A and B in order to compare the differences in the research conclusions obtained by the two methods of analysis.