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This paper adds depth to our understanding of how coaching works by exploring the experiences of 14 aspiring school principals who received one-to-one leadership coaching as part of a leadership development programme.

This study adopts a phenomenological approach. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with the participants. Thematic analysis was used to code the data and identify themes.

This paper reports on four themes based on the experiences of the participants: having time to reflect, feeling safe to explore, focussing on what's important for me and experiencing positive emotions.

The findings are unique to the participants who volunteered to take part in this study and therefore not representative of a general population of aspiring educational leaders. Further research is needed into the possible benefits of coaching to support educators undergoing leadership training.

The findings raise a potential dilemma within the teaching profession about the use of educators' time; while they need to give time and attention to multiple stakeholders, they also need to protect time for their own development and self-reflection. Based on the reported experiences of the participants in this study, it is recommended that coaching be considered a component of professional development for educational leaders.

This paper adds to the growing research base for coaching in education, providing a unique insight into the experiences of aspiring school principals who received one-to-one leadership coaching as part of a leadership development programme.

The Persona Doll Project describes an experiential intervention with undergraduate preservice teachers designed to increase awareness about diversity and apply this awareness to curriculum planning and advocacy for children. Sixty-three undergraduate students in a social studies methods class were each assigned a persona doll for the semester whose background differed from their own. Each was charged with becoming the advocate for the child, represented by the doll, by telling informed stories that would help other students better understand a level of diversity beyond what they knew from their own lives. Students heightened awareness of their own assumptions through narrative, inquiry and reflection and used that knowledge to critically analyze teaching practices that promote inclusion or exclusion. Students reported increased confidence for working in diverse communities. One goal of teacher education programs is to prepare teachers to work with students from racial/cultural/linguistic backgrounds other than their own. This article provides one example of how to address this important goal.

This study aims to critically examine the effects of COVID-19 social discourses and policy decisions specifically on older adult volunteers in the UK, comparing the responses and their effects in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, providing perspectives on effects of policy changes designed to reduce risk of infection as a result of COVID-19, specifically on volunteer involvement of and for older adults, and understand, from the perspectives of volunteer managers, how COVID-19 restrictions had impacted older people’s volunteering and situating this within statutory public health policies.

The study uses a critical discourse approach to explore, compare and contrast accounts of volunteering of and for older people in policy, and then compare the discourses within policy documents with the discourses in personal accounts of volunteering in health and social care settings in the four nations of the UK. This paper is co-produced in collaboration with co-authors who have direct experience with volunteer involvement responses and their impact on older people.

The prevailing overall policy approach during the pandemic was that risk of morbidity and mortality to older people was too high to permit them to participate in volunteering activities. Disenfranchising of older people, as exemplified in volunteer involvement, was remarkably uniform across the four nations of the UK. However, the authors find that despite, rather than because of policy changes, older volunteers, as part of, or with the help of, volunteer involving organisations, are taking time to think and to reconsider their involvement and are renewing their volunteer involvement with associated health benefits.

Working with participants as co-authors helps to ensure the credibility of results in that there was agreement in the themes identified and the conclusions. A limitation of this study lies in the sampling method, as a convenience sample was used and there is only representation from one organisation in each of the four nations.

The paper combines existing knowledge about volunteer involvement of and for older adults.

The purpose of this study was to explore potential witnesses' memories for a day that was experienced an unremarkable. There may be instances in an investigation in which all leads have been exhausted, and investigators use a broad appeal for witnesses who may have witnessed something important. Investigators can benefit from knowing the types of information that may be recalled in such circumstances, as well as identifying specific methods that are effective in eliciting useful information.

The present study explored how the delay to recall and recall method influenced the recollection of a seemingly unremarkable day that later became important. Participants were asked to recall an experienced event that occurred either recently (a few weeks prior) or in the distant past (a year prior). Participants recalled via either a written method, in-person individual-spoken or collaborative-spoken interviews.

Results suggest an independent benefit for individual-spoken in-person recall (compared to written or collaborative-spoken recall) and recall undertaken closely after an event (compared to delayed recall). Both individual-spoken interviews as well as more recent recollection resulted in a greater number of overall details recalled. The authors further examined the types of details recalled that might be important to progressing an investigation (e.g. other witnesses and records).

The present work provides important implications for interviewing witnesses about a seemingly unremarkable event that later became important.

Responses to diversity management have resulted in disappointment to many organizations (Cox, 2001). Previous work has situated rational for diversity in deontological ethics by equality scholars, while the business case for diversity has commonly rested on utilitarian ethics (van Dijk et al., 2012). The purpose of this paper is to examine a possible shift in rational for diversity – to explore if and how the ethic of care has been utilized in the diversity statements of companies earning recognition as one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” in 2012.

This study utilized visual rhetoric analysis and was designed to examine multiple elements of these diversity statements as published in the company web sites, including presence of the ethic of care, visual communication, and logistics.

Of note are the results of the presence of the ethic of care as a primary or secondary rationale in 70 percent of the statements studied. Statistically significant results were found in the number of images of people from diverse backgrounds, as well as levels pleasantness and activation of the tone of the ethics statements.

This study contributes to a better understanding of identifiable characteristics of these diversity statements at organizations which have been identified by their employees and the Great Place to Work Institute.

The purpose of this paper is to present an annotated bibliography of the new poetry volumes from the Poet's House 2008 Poetry Showcase.

The titles were selected from the Poet's House 2008 Poetry Showcase as titles that are both challenging and accessible.

This list provides the librarian and reader with a guide to collection development in poetry.

This is one of the few lists of its kind showcasing contemporary poetry.

Information technology ‐ Alvey news is published since the end of 1983 as the official newsletter of the Alvey Directorate who manage ‘the Alvey programme of advanced information technology’. The directorate consists of staff seconded from UK industry and representatives of the three governing funding bodies: the Department of Trade, the Ministry of Defence, and the Science and Engineering Research Council. The Alvey programme aims to mobilise the UK's technical strengths in information technology (IT) in order to improve the UK's competitive position in world IT markets. The Alvey news is published by the Institution of Electrical Engineers in association with the British Computer Society, and the editor is the very helpful and intelligent Janet Tomlinson who can give further information about the publication; she may be contacted at the iee, Savoy Place, London WC2R 0BL, tel 01 240 1871.

The aim of this paper is to report on a study undertaken into disabled people's experience of the built environment when attempting to access and stay in employment.

Narratives were collected using semi‐structured interviews with 38 disabled people, all of whom had experience of paid and unpaid work.

Analysis of the interview narratives shows that disabled people experience a range of barriers and enablers in the built environment both to gaining employment and to staying in employment, and an accessible environment contributes to a successful employment experience.

This is a small exploratory study of disabled people's experience of the workplace built environment. Future research could focus in more detail on whether specific design features reduce the requirement for reasonable adjustments.

The implications are that disabled people are experiencing discrimination when working environments present barriers and reasonable adjustments, as required by the UK Disability Discrimination Act 1995, and 2005, are not made.

This is exploratory research and provides an insight into the experience of disabled people of the physical workplace environment, presenting examples of good and poor practice.