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Formal forms of youth participation, like youth councils and student committees, are often criticised for being too affiliated with adult-led power structures, giving young people little space for their own initiative and agenda. The general conclusion from the PARTISPACE project confirms this picture, though there is also a considerable variation in how these institutions are organised and led. This complexity is illustrated in a comparison between the Youth Council of Gothenburg (YCG) in Sweden, the Greater Manchester Youth Combined Authority (GMYCA) and the Manchester Young Researchers (MYR). The YCG and the GMYCA both have strong ties to the political assemblies in their cities and this has great influence over their work process. In this respect, the MYR represents an effort where the young members can make their own choices, take on much more personal responsibility, and learn a lot from this practice. At the same time, both YCG and GMYCA deal with important issues for young people and have succeeded in making substantial changes, for example, when it comes to youth access to public transport. The young people who are engaged in the different participatory efforts all want to contribute to an advanced position for their peers. To some, formal participation appears to be a feasible way to accomplish this. The experiences from the YCG and the GMYCA show that this choice is associated with limitations in room for manoeuvre. However, many of the young members see through this and maintain a critical perspective on the contemporary conditions for young people’s participation in society, and their capacity to change them through formal means.

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate students’ qualitatively different ways of understanding the learning object in three undergraduate courses in the discipline of accounting. The theoretical framework of variation theory, a general learning theory, is applied. The lecturers chose a learning object which is investigated under two different teaching conditions – the conventional lecture model and the variational method. Two student groups were identified as a comparison group and a target group, comparable in various relevant parameters. All students took three required accounting courses. In the comparison group, the lecturers used the conventional lecture model and in the target group the variational model. The results indicated significant differences between the two groups’ examination results in the three courses, with students in the target group performing much better. The educational implications and limitations of the study, and areas for further research, are discussed.

Both guidance to transport planning practitioners and scientific literature advocate the adoption of in-depth and inclusive participation and consultation methods when developing new transport plans and measures. The motivations for this normative stance are however unclear, other than general statements that public participation is inherently a good thing, and that new forms of transport planning must be different from what has gone before. However, these documents cite little or no evidence to demonstrate that more participatory transport planning has produced ‘better’ decisions or outcomes. It is also important to note that the legitimacy conferred on governments from adopting this form of participation and consultation is only one of several forms of legitimacy. The purpose of this chapter is thus to attempt to assess whether more participatory approaches to transport planning do indeed lead to ‘better’ decisions and outcomes. It does this by developing, based on the literature, a number of criteria by which to judge the decisions made and outcomes delivered. It then reviews the experience of consultation and participation in a non-random sample of four pairs of transport plans or measures, and evaluates the experience in each against the criteria developed. It finds little evidence that more in-depth and inclusive participation processes that follow the normative stance found in practitioner guidance and the literature lead to better outcomes, and some evidence that such processes may in some cases compromise legitimacy by slowing and changing measure implementation.

The war in Syria has left a trail of unprecedented displacement and disruption, and consequently the lack of higher education opportunities for tens of thousands of young Syrians. As of 2017, only 1% of the global refugee population is able to access tertiary education programs in stark contrast to the up to 26% university-level participation in Syria prior to the war.

Jamiya Project, one organization that has aimed at improving access to higher education opportunities for Syrian students in the Middle East, piloted an Introduction to Java Programming course in the Fall/Winter of 2016/2017. The course was free to access, accredited by the University of Gothenburg, taught in Arabic, and delivered through a blended learning model alongside education technology partners and non-governmental organization-facilitated learning centers on the ground. The Jamiya Project partnered with Syrian academics in exile in developing and delivering the course.

This chapter outlines the vision and the methodology behind the actions of the Jamiya Project during this pilot course and aims to share lessons learned from the experiences, reflections, and iterations of research from the course with students and academics. There is no doubt that a collaborative effort is required to mitigate the serious effects of this crisis.

One of the main difficulties in developing new intermodal transport solutions is finding the right business model. Though business models have received limited attention in the existing intermodal research, several authors have pointed out the importance of business models in the intermodal context.

Existing intermodal literature discusses several types of different business. The current study takes an in-depth look at The Own-Account Model, its strengths and weaknesses through two empirical examples.

The chapter investigates this model by analysing the business model in practice, for example actors, roles and responsibilities, risk distribution and contracts.

Research is conducted using a qualitative approach with two case studies. Osterwalder’s (2004) framework for business models is applied to analyse the empirical cases.

The roles and responsibilities of the actors are described. For the parties to be willing to “invest into” the new intermodal solution, long-term contracts are required. The shipper controls the channel, but has to rely heavily on the transport operators for their expertise and resources.

The analysis has found that the model can be used to avoid many of the difficulties in setting up a new intermodal solution, such as ensuring the base volume or having the overall control over the intermodal chain.

Better understanding of this type of business model allows authorities to better support the development of intermodal transport through policy measures. The results obtained also improve the understanding of how intermodal transport is performed in practice.