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In this article, we highlight ways in which disability critical race theory (DisCrit) (Annamma et al., 2013), inclusive education and community-based participatory research (CBPR) can be used within professional development schools (PDS) to provide students with disabilities with more access to inclusive classrooms. At a grade 4–6 elementary school, we developed a model of a critical PDS to promote inclusive education and facilitate the transition of students of color with disabilities from self-contained to inclusive classrooms. We conducted semi-structured interviews and used action plan meetings with school administrators, teachers, professionals and students with disabilities and their parents to assess the impact of our critical PDS model. Findings suggest this model had a positive impact on administrators’ and teachers’ critical consciousness, ideological and instructional practices, students of color with disabilities’ social, academic and personal outcomes, as well as a schoolwide culture of inclusion and social justice. This study can inform tailored professional development efforts to improve educators’ inclusive practices.

We conducted semi-structured interviews and used action plan meetings with school administrators, teachers, professionals and students with disabilities and their parents to assess the impact of our critical PDS model.

The findings of this study suggest this model had a positive impact on administrators’ and teachers’ critical consciousness, ideological and instructional practices, students of color with disabilities’ social, academic and personal outcomes, as well as a schoolwide culture of inclusion and social justice.

This study can inform tailored professional development efforts aiming to improve educators’ inclusive practices.

We developed a model of a critical PDS to promote inclusive education and facilitate the transition of students of color with disabilities from self-contained to inclusive classrooms.

Interprofessional practice (IPP) is one way to structure collaborations to more effectively meet the complex needs of students in educational settings. This article explores the lessons learned when one research team implemented interprofessional education (IPE) experiences in partnership with a public elementary school and pre-service professionals from elementary education, special education and communication science and disorders.

This reflective article explores the lived experiences of researchers and partners who completed an IPE experience within one professional development school’s site. Researcher anecdotes are included to support the viewpoints shared.

It was discovered that IPE experiences are essential to facilitate meaningful collaborations for pre-service professionals to learn with and from one another; however, this requires time, preparation and is most effective when teacher mentors and university professors lead with vulnerability and model flexibility. Investment in IPE is challenging but worth the effort when learning outcomes are realized.

Specific details regarding the structure of this experience are shared as well as future directional goals for programs hoping to implement IPE in their professional practice programs.

This practitioner-focused article highlights a collaborative, school-wide project at a PDS that showcased elementary students’ strengths and talents. Based on the children’s book, The Smart Cookie (John, 2021), teachers and the university professor-in-residence developed professional learning communities, which inspired the creation of a space for all students to demonstrate ways in which they were “smart cookies” that aligned with our comprehensive mission of promoting inclusive practices.

Rooted in professional learning communities, teachers at our PDS spent the first half of the school year learning about chosen topics of social–emotional learning, stamina and neurodiversity. The Smart Cookie Project was created to demonstrate the connections between these topics. Students at the PDS were given the opportunity to create an original project that showcased their creativity, interests and talents. Projects were then displayed during a schoolwide showcase.

The impact of the project and the showcase demonstrated the importance of creating opportunities for both teacher and student innovation. The project brought the community together, allowed students to be viewed through strengths-based perspectives, helped teachers see how their own learning can positively impact their practice and emphasized the need for honoring student choice in the classroom.

The project discussed here can lend itself to fellow PDSs looking to adopt innovative instructional approaches, honor inclusive practices and situate students in places of strength.

A challenge in implementing Universal Design (UD) is the perceived additional cost, which acts as a barrier to its widespread adoption. The few studies that have examined the cost for UD apply a theoretical research approach, failing to account for the unique design context that influences construction costs. This article presents a research methodology to calculate the UD cost in a realistic, context-dependent manner.

To address this gap, “Research-by-Design” is applied in a case study approach involving twelve cases from three typologies: secondary schools, town halls and small retail shops. Two scenarios are compared to the existing situation: (1) “renovating into a 100% inclusive building” and (2) “building fully inclusive right away”.

Although the methodology is time-consuming, it allows for a fair, realistic and detailed comparison between costs in different scenarios and cases. Findings show how financial implications are strongly related to its scale. Both “renovation” and “new build” scenarios involve costs, but these are considerably lower for the latter. “Circulation” and “Exterior stairs and ramps” are among the most expensive to renovate, but have almost no additional cost in the examined cases for the “new build scenario”.

The research methodology presented in this study is time-consuming, which may limit its feasibility for large-scale cost assessments in diverse contexts.

The research methodology proposed in this study provides valuable insights for architects, designers and stakeholders involved in the implementation of UD. It offers a realistic and context-dependent approach to assess the cost implications of UD, enabling informed decision-making during the design and construction phases.

By revealing the specific cost implications of UD in different building contexts, this study contributes to promoting greater accessibility and inclusion in the built environment.

The applied approach distinguishes this study for its ability to provide rich contextual information on actual cost implications for UD. By considering real cases and their unique design contexts, valuable insights are offered into the true costs of implementing UD in the built environment.

This study aims to propose that inclusive talent management (TM) philosophy and TM practices are related to individual outcomes, such as job satisfaction, turnover intentions and job performance.

Using the resource-based theory, the research explores the mediation relationship between inclusive TM philosophy and job satisfaction, turnover intentions and job performance via TM practices. The study uses structural equation modelling for analysing the data collected through a questionnaire-based survey among a sample of 373 employees and 65 supervisors.

The results show that inclusive TM philosophy is positively related to individuals’ job satisfaction, job performance and decreased turnover intentions, through TM practices.

The study’s limitation lies in its restriction to a narrow set of organizations operating in Romania, thus limiting the generalization of the findings. Consequently, future studies can extend the scope of the study to include a larger sample size consisting of more organizations operating across multiple sectors and countries. While it is appropriate to assess talent philosophies at the level of the individual employees, future studies may wish to tackle the constructs from the organizational (managerial) standpoint where the TM practices and programmes are designed. Furthermore, future researchers could draw comparisons with large enterprises to investigate the differences in the impact of implementing TM practices within these organizational types. Finally, future research could explore the outcomes of inclusive TM philosophy by using a qualitative design, which sheds more light on other factors that support or hinder the outcomes of embracing inclusive TM in organizations.

The study’s findings have practical implications for organizations that want to improve their employees’ outcomes and provide evidence on how organizations can achieve this through their TM practices. First, the paper establishes a relationship between inclusive TM philosophy and employees’ outcomes (turnover intention, job satisfaction and job performance) through the mediating impact of the organization’s TM practices in the context of organizations operating in Romania. The relevance of the context for TM studies has been highlighted in the literature, and thus, the findings make an important contribution to the TM literature, given the limited number of empirical studies on TM practices from emerging European countries (Skuza et al., 2013). Second, the model was tested empirically by collecting data from two sources – employees and supervisors from the surveyed organizations. The perception among employees that they are treated as a talent by the organization can have a positive impact on their satisfaction, and job performance, and decrease their turnover intentions. This suggests that organizations should invest in talent development programmes to help their employees develop into talented performers who help improve the organization’s performance. The findings are of particular importance to human resources practitioners, as it suggests that organizations should consider implementing TM practices systematically across the organization to ensure that all employees benefit from them. By doing this, organizations can improve individual outcomes, which can ultimately lead to improved organizational performance.

Organization that develop the talent of their workforce in its totality are likely to be more successful in the long term. Similarly, it can be inferred that organizations that enhance the talent of their workforce through practices such as staff rotation, talent identification are likely to derive greater benefit from the capabilities that their staff display.

The study sheds light on the impact of talent philosophies and TM practices on outcomes at the individual employees’ level, which is an understudied study area within the broader TM discipline.

The objective of this paper is to study the efficacy of the ASPECTSS Design Index's concepts as drivers of design intervention for educational environments for students on the autism spectrum. Based on the seven principles of acoustics, spatial sequencing, escape spaces, compartmentalization, transitions, sensory zoning and safety, ASPECTSS formed the basis for a preliminary post-occupancy evaluation (POE) and survey of an existing school environment.

Concepts drawn from the review of other strategies for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) friendly design were integrated with the seven ASPECTSS principles to create a design framework and consequent design retro-fit for a Pre-K-12th grade public school for students on the autism spectrum. The following design interventions were proposed: colour-coding based navigation; acoustical treatments in key circulation spaces; introduction of transition alcoves; classroom reorganisation using compartmentalization principles and the introduction of escape spaces for de-escalation. Specifically, a classroom template of modules of ASPECTSS-compliant layouts was provided to all staff. The efficacy and impact of these interventions were assessed using a whole campus online staff survey with further probing using classroom observations and subsequent interviews.

The results show alignment between the implementation of the ASPECTSS informed design interventions and responses to nine of the Likert scale items were all significantly lower than the middle response, indicating a high degree of satisfaction from survey respondents. These questions and responses related to the colour scheme facilitating ease of navigation for visitors of the school, the acoustics of the building successfully mitigating sound magnification and subsequently student distractibility, the organisation of the classrooms enhancing learning and the de-escalation zones allowing improved management of disruptive behaviours in the classroom.

This study focuses primarily on the Autism ASPECTSS Design Index as a framework for assessing classroom efficacy. Other tools and frameworks may produce different insights. A single school site was studied. Validation of these findings in other school environments is necessary before generalising these strategies at scale. The use of qualitative tools, primarily teacher and staff surveys, provides one lens into the efficacy of these design strategies. Further research using measurable biometric indicators such as heart-rate and stress levels measured through wearable technology could provide a first step towards the triangulation of these findings.

These findings could help provide more standardised best practices for designing learning environments for autism, potentially providing supportive strategies with real impact on learning quality, skill development and knowledge acquisition in school environments. This could potentially have economic implications by supporting more efficient progress for autistic students through their school curriculum.

Similar to economic impact, if validated and generalised, these findings could help with sense of accomplishment, general mental health improvement, alleviation of family stress and potential reduction of stigma in the autism community.

There is a slowly emerging field of design guidance for autism schools, but very little empirical evidence on the measurable efficacy of these strategies. This research provides one type of such evidence, as measured by the perceived impact from the point of view of staff and teachers at the school.

Worldwide, schools implement social-emotional learning programs to enhance students' social-emotional skills. Although parents play an essential role in teaching these skills, knowledge about their perspectives on social-emotional learning is limited. In providing insight into the perspectives of parents from adolescent students this paper adds to this knowledge.

An explorative qualitative study was conducted to gain insight into parents' perspectives (N = 32) on adolescent social-emotional learning. A broadly used professional framework for social emotional learning was used as a frame of reference in interviews with parents from diverse backgrounds. Within and across case analyses were applied to analyze the interviews.

A conceptual model of four social-emotional skills constructs considered crucial learning by parents emerged from the data: respectful behavior, cooperation, self-knowledge and self-reliance. Parents' language, interpretations and orderings of skills indicate that the model underlying these constructs differs from skills embedded in the professional framework.

Participants were small in number and mainly female. Therefore, more research is necessary to test the model in other parent populations.

The social-emotional skills students in prevocational secondary education learn at home differ from those targeted in SEL programs. Engaging students’ parents in SEL program implementation is indicated to align the skills taught at home and school. Preparing teachers to implement such programs requires training them on engaging parents from diverse backgrounds.

The study is one of the first providing insight into parents’ perspectives on SEL, the social-emotional skills deemed crucial to master for adolescents, and the roles they view for themselves and school on teaching these skills.

This paper aims to provide a historical overview of AA, its purpose and benefits, the legal rationale for the SCOTUS ruling and what it means for colleges and the workplace regarding equitable opportunities for minority groups (which include women, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians and other low-income populations), as they aim for the “American dream”.

SCOTUS decision and rationale, along with literature.

The race-based affirmative action (AA) precedent was recently overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) in the case of Students for Fair Admission (SFFA), Inc. vs President and Fellows of Harvard College/University of North Carolina. SCOTUS ruled that race cannot be a specific basis for college admission. In other words, public and private colleges and universities will no longer be able to consider “race” as a factor in deciding which qualified applicants should be admitted to enhance the diversity of their student body.

This is an original analysis.

This research mainly aims to shed light on sustainable development in Syrian higher education during the Syrian crisis.

In this research, the authors mainly study sustainable development in the Syrian Arab Republic through the bibliometrics data of universities and research centres in Syrian Arab Republic, where these data are related to sustainable development. Also, the authors study the strategies used in the university with the largest research output of sustainable development in the Syrian Arab Republic. The authors extract research data arranged in sustainable development goals in the Syrian Arab Republic from SciVal database.

Based on the bibliometric data on sustainable development research in the Syrian Arab Republic, the authors find that universities and research centres in the Syrian Arab Republic have taken important steps towards the goals of sustainable development, especially in the year 2022. The authors also find that the University of Damascus had the largest share in research related to the goals of sustainable development, and the authors find that this is due to the strategies taken by the University of Damascus towards the goals of sustainable development, such as the policy of digital transformation, the policy of recycling and the increase of green areas in the university.

This study is the first of its kind to study the goals of sustainable development in Syrian higher education during the Syrian crisis period.

Education for sustainable development (ESD) has gained significant attention, but integrating ESD into existing education systems is challenging. The study aims to explore the challenges of ESD experienced by school leaders, focusing on the context of Malaysian schools.

The study uses a qualitative approach with a single-case study design. Eight school leaders involved in the Johor sustainable education action plan (JSEAP) were interviewed and analyzed. The study uses thematic analysis to identify the challenges and other causes associated with the implementation of ESD.

This study revealed that the school leaders perceived the ESD challenges at three levels. First, restriction to the standardized curriculum (systemic); second, resistance to change (organization) and third, awareness and readiness (individual). These themes stemmed from seven primary codes that school leaders encountered throughout the JSEAP program.

This paper is limited to a case study of the chosen schools and cannot be extrapolated to a larger population.

The study benefits school leaders and educators concerned about ESD and its role in their schools and other academics interested in ESD.

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to investigate ESD challenges in Malaysia. The novel discovery of the three levels of ESD challenges helps readers better understand the recent phenomenon of ESD implementation and compare it to other settings.