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This book chapter uncovers the black box of PreK-12 African American male students’ experiences and outcomes as a result of their participation in career and technical education. Theoretical and scientific literature – related to benefits and challenges of African American male students’ educational experiences in career and technical education and school reform initiatives that may contribute to their educational outcomes – is discussed. Additionally, recommendations for educational research, practice, and policy are summarized providing future directions for educational and noneducational stakeholders to consider on how career and technical education may serve the unique needs of African American males.

Discusses value‐based management and how it has worked at Fletcher Challenge, a paper, building, energy, and solid wood plantation forestry operator in New Zealand. States Fletcher Challenge is not a backwater organization, far from it, as its issue of targeted shares in corporate finance have shown. Posits also that, at Fletcher Challenge, the focus is on creating value for shareholders and throughout the group. Provides a large question and answer piece with Fletcher Challenge chief executive Michael Andrews, in which much many financial areas around value‐based management and EVA are discussed.

Presents, at some length, the story of the writer’s father, sharing the history and experiences of a generation who prospered in the Chinese laundry industry. Chronicles the introduction of the wholesale shirt laundry, presenting new innovations and ideas and branching out into new regulated businesses in other fields, showing how emerging problems were tackled and overcome. Cites that most of the information is from memory, observation, letters and manuals. Considers the development and changes in the industry from 1930 to 1970, looking also at the accompanying changes in standards of living.

In the periods, following the First and Second World Wars, colonial states across the British empire underwent waves of reforms that were geared toward improving human well-being, from enhancing social conditions, such as health and education, to expanding opportunities for economic and political engagement. The literature on the colonial state typically traces these state-building efforts to the agency of European colonial officials. However, evidence from a historical analysis of Trinidad and Tobago reveals a different agent driving state reform: the colonized. A local labor movement during colonialism forced the colonial state to construct a number of state agencies to ameliorate the economic, political, and social conditions in the colony, thereby resulting in an increase in state capacity. This study, therefore, provides critical intervention into the colonial state literature by showing that the agency of the colonized, as opposed to just the colonizers, is key to state-building, and specifying the mechanisms by which the subaltern constrained colonial officials and forced them to enact policies that improved colonial state capacity.

The purpose of this paper is to present the honey‐bee mating optimization (HBMO) algorithm tested with, first, a well‐known, non‐linear, non‐separable, irregular, multi‐modal “Fletcher‐Powell” function; and second, with a single hydropower reservoir operation optimization problem, to demonstrate the efficiency of the algorithm in handling complex mathematical problems as well as non‐convex water resource management problems. HBMO and genetic algorithm (GA) are applied to the second problem and the results are compared with those of a gradient‐based method non‐linear programming (NLP).

The HBMO algorithm is a hybrid optimization algorithm comprised of three features: simulated annealing, GA, and local search. This algorithm uses the individual features of these approaches and combines them together, resulting in an enhanced performance of HBMO in finding near optimal solutions.

Results of the “Fletcher‐Powell” function show more accuracy and higher convergence speed when applying HBMO algorithm rather than GA. When solving the single hydropower reservoir operation optimization problem, by disregarding evaporation from the model structure, both NLP solver and HBMO resulted in approximately the same near‐optimal solutions. However, when evaporation was added to the model, the NLP solver failed to find a feasible solution, whereas the proposed HBMO algorithm resulted in a feasible, near‐optimal solution.

This paper shows that the HBMO algorithm is not complicated to use and does not require much mathematical sophistication to understand its mechanisms. A tool such as the HBMO algorithm can be considered as an optimization tool able to provide alternative solutions from which designers/decision makers may choose.

Assessment is at the core of high-quality education. When educators purposefully engage in assessment, the learning experiences and outcomes of all students, especially of students diagnosed with specific learning disabilities (SLDs), are improved. In this chapter, we discuss assessment as unfolding within a framework that includes purposes, processes, and tools of assessment existing in the educational context. We open the chapter with an explanation of this framework. Then, in Part 1, we review the construct of SLD and detail how assessment is used within prominent approaches to diagnosis. In Part 2, we discuss how assessment is used to inform instruction before and after diagnosis. We ground our discussion in a vignette that follows Tess, a student who, at the beginning of third grade, has undiagnosed SLD in the area of reading. We show how educators at Tess's school collaborate in the purposeful use of assessment to inform instruction before and after Tess's diagnosis of SLD, highlighting traditional and innovative assessment techniques along the way.

The purpose of this study was to examine the learning experiences of high school Black males participating in an academy of engineering that was configured as a magnet school. We followed a qualitative case study design to explore the experiences of 16 Black male academies of engineering students. We identified three recurring themes from the interviews with the Black male academy of engineering students: Promoting Interests in STEM, Drawing Connections to Core Academic Concepts, and An Affinity for Hands-on Learning through the Engineering Curriculum. The results of our study helped us to better understand how academies provide a platform for Black male students' interest in engineering as a viable college and career pathway.

Business networks are of critical importance to firms and essential to the internationalisation of born-global and international new venture firms. Networking literature focuses on what are, generally, co-operative relationships and their effects between actors, activities and resources and illustrate the importance of quality and change in the networking process. Utilising Fletcher and Harris’ (2012) framework for understanding knowledge acquisition processes in internationalisation, this study investigates the importance of direct and indirect roles played by third parties in the networking for internationalisation processes of three different firm types within the knowledge-based natural health products (NHPs) (pharmaceutical) sector in Canada. The research presented here examines nine case studies of Canadian NHP firms and reveals that they utilised all network-related internationalisation processes simultaneously to internationalise including Johanson and Mattsson’s (1988, 1994) network theory, Johanson and Vahlne’s (2003) updated the Uppsala Model and the resource-based perspective on network theory (Ruzzier et al., 2006). They networked with and extensively utilised third parties, including government bodies, trade associations, government advisors, consultants and other domestic networks with international ties, in Canada and internationally to gain technical, market and internationalisation knowledge, and direct and indirect experiential knowledge which contributed to the internationalisation process confirming the study by Fletcher and Harris (2012). In a departure from the literature, this study found that weak ties (Granovetter, 1973) developed with third parties who were new to the networks allowed the NHP firms to develop competitive advantages necessary for them to overcome the liability of outsidership in entering new international markets. The type of technical, market and internationalisation knowledge gained, its content and the direct and indirect sources of knowledge from third parties were all shown to contribute to the internationalisation process.

Westbrook Farm Home for Boys in Queensland, Australia, existed in various forms for over 100 years. As such, it offers a valuable window into Australian approaches to managing and reforming boys through the twentieth century. The purpose of this paper is to examine its approach to reforming teenage boys during a period marked by a mass escape in 1961. It argues that the reformatory education initially intended was no longer tenable during this moment in history, and that this period represents a breakdown of that approach.

This paper draws on material including newspaper reports, memoirs, and the report of an inquiry into an escape by inmates in 1961. These are analysed in order to construct a picture of the type of reformatory education during this period and the public and official responses to this.

Westbrook Farm Home for Boys was, during this period, an institution attempting to provide a reformatory education at a historical moment when such an education was no longer viewed as appropriate means of addressing the criminal behaviour of youths. This, combined with the leadership of a domineering figure in Superintendent Roy Golledge, led to a culture of abuse, rather than education. The uncovering of this culture was a pivotal moment in the transition of Westbrook into an institution explicitly dealing with criminal youths.

No academic work relating to this moment in Westbrook’s history has been previously published.

This article explores (1) student perceptions and understanding of Events Management; (2) how Events Management is positioned by different UK Higher Education providers through their online marketing; and (3) the perceived value of an Events Management degree among students.

A mixed-methods approach, combining an online student questionnaire (n = 524), semi-structured interviews with current first year Events Management students (n = 24) at two UK universities, and website analysis of all Events Management degrees offered in the UK.

Students demonstrate a lack of knowledge about what Events Management is, what a career in Events Management might entail and the perceived value of an Events Management degree. This suggests the need to reposition Events Management degrees within a broader applied management base. Current course marketing presents a narrow view of Events Management degrees and the narrow vocationally-laden narrative undersells and “over-vocationalises” the subject.

Understanding student perceptions better will help universities market Events Management degrees more effectively and will benefit broader efforts to illustrate the value and credibility of it as a degree subject choice and career. More balanced presentation between the practical and non-practical aspects of the courses in university marketing may help reposition Events Management alongside more readily understood vocational subjects.

This is the first study to examine student perceptions over the credibility of Events Management degrees. It also addresses Park and Park's (2017) observation that reviews of Events Management education and curricula are conspicuously absent from Hospitality and Tourism journals.