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The operating costs and production losses due to equipment failure of offshore gas and oil production systems can exceed initial investment cost. The article explores the probability distribution of downtime associated with random equipment failure and applies availability assessment to design optimisation.

Asset intensive process industries are under immense pressure to achieve promised return on investments and production targets. This can be accomplished by ensuring the highest level of availability, reliability and utilization of the critical equipment in processing facilities. In order to achieve designed availability, asset characterization and maintainability play a vital role. The most appropriate and effective way to characterize the assets in a processing facility is based on risk and consequence of failure. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In this research, a risk-based stochastic modeling approach using a Markov decision process is investigated to assess a processing unit's availability, which is referred as the risk-based availability Markov model (RBAMM). RBAMM will not only provide a realistic and effective way to identify critical assets in a plant but also a method to estimate availability for efficient planning purposes and resource optimization.

A unique risk matrix and methodology is proposed to determine the critical equipment with direct impact on the availability, reliability and safety of the process. A functional block diagram is then developed using critical equipment to perform efficient modeling. A Markov process is utilized to establish state diagrams and create steady-state equations to calculate the availability of the process. RBAMM is applied to natural gas absorption process to validate the proposed methodology. In the conclusion, other benefits and limitations of the proposed methodology are discussed.

A new risk-based methodology integrated with Markov model application of the methodology is demonstrated using a real-life application.

Research on student teacher learning has identified development of a professional identity as an inevitable focus in teacher education. Accordingly, many teacher education programs have come to include attention for the development of student teachers’ professional identities, but not much research has been done on the (effects of) pedagogies that have such development as their goal. Pedagogies that aim at developing teacher identity share common elements, such as the view that developing a professional identity is an ongoing process and the view that developing a professional identity as a teacher unmistakably includes a combination of personal and professional (including contextual) aspects. This chapter describes pedagogies that focus particularly on the development of student teachers’ and beginning teachers’ professional identity, from different angles, but sharing the views as described above. First, we describe two pedagogies that have “key incidents” in student teachers’ development as focus point. Second, we report on the “subject-autobiography,” in which student teachers describe and develop how their identity is shaped in relation to the subject they (learn to) teach. Third, we describe the “at-tension” program, which teachers follow during their first year of teaching, and which focuses particularly on the professional tensions that they experience in their first year of teaching, and how they personally and professionally deal with socialization in the school context. Together, these pedagogies reflect our view that professional identity development is underlying the entire teacher education program. This view implies that only a combination of various-focus pedagogies enables student teachers to develop a full-fledged professional identity.

This chapter reviews the intervention research literature – particularly interventions deemed evidence-based – for students with intellectual disability across academic and life-skills instruction. Although the focus of this chapter is the spectrum of students covered under the term “intellectual disability,” the majority of research on evidence-based interventions for students with intellectual disability focus on students with more moderate and severe intellectual disability, rather than students with mild intellectual disability. The majority of the interventions determined to be evidence-based within the literature for students with intellectual disability – across both academic and life skills – tend to be those that fall within the purview of systematic instruction.

As teacher education moves online, there is an increasing need for teacher educators who subscribe to relational stances that attend to and enact liberating pedagogies with preservice teachers preparing to teach and inservice teachers who come to online courses for professional development.

This chapter explores common frameworks for interactive relational models of teaching from John Dewey, Lev Vygotsky, and Paulo Friere and then proposes, using examples from the author’s practice, how these models translate into online contexts.

Diversity in education calls for increased awareness of individuals using a relational stance. This stance should apply both to schoolchildren as well as the teacher candidates and teachers in development that are coming to teacher education to build and improve their practice.

More research on relationality in online learning is necessary. This research should take shape through using theories that are complex enough to provide insights that marry the pedagogical with the relational aspects of teaching as part of a comprehensive teacher education experience.

This chapter makes a valuable contribution to research in teaching online through its thorough inquiry into theories of learning and teaching and they apply – or do not – online.

Given the complexity of societal, technological, and economic challenges encountered by schools and teachers, one may wonder whether and how teachers can still optimally motivate their students. To adopt a motivating role in today’s ever-changing, even stormy, educational landscape, teachers need more than a checklist of motivating practices. They also need a fundamental theoretical perspective that can serve as a general source of inspiration for their everyday classroom practices across various situations and in interaction with different students. Herein, we argue that self-determination theory represents such a valuable perspective. In Part I, we discuss the satisfaction of learners’ psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness as a source of student motivation, engagement, and resilience. We also present a recently developed circular model involving a broad variety of motivating (i.e., need-supportive) and demotivating (i.e., need-thwarting) teaching practices appealing to these three needs. In Part II, we discuss several implications of this circular model, thereby discussing the diverse pathways that lead to student need satisfaction, motivation, and engagement as well as highlighting teachers’ capacity for calibration to deal with uncertainty and change. We conclude that school principals and teachers do well to invest in both students’ and teachers’ psychological need experiences, such that they become skilled in flexibly adjusting themselves to diversity, uncertainty, and change.

This study aims to determine whether different perceptions based on a learner’s characteristics of age, gender, ethnicity, and duration of stay in Australia provide an explanation of teaching performance evaluations. Perceptions determine interpersonal behaviour (including communication and motivation)and the way a learner believes that they are going to be assessed by the teacher. Thereby, this will impact on a student’s formal evaluation of teaching performance through a student survey of teaching (SST). This study considers the existence of ethnic and gender bias in postgraduate students undertaking accounting‐related courses. The study applies a combination of quantitative online and offline surveys which include SST data and additional questions identifying demographic data to demonstrate that a learner’s evaluation of teaching performance is influenced by the learner’s perceptions. Whilst there were no significant findings related to gender, we identified that students from certain ethnic backgrounds and citizenship, had different perceptions of a teacher’s performance. In addition we identified age and duration of stay in Australia as two demographic elements which were also statistically significant.

The research aims to empirically investigate the determinants of the breadth of the corporate social disclosure (CSD).

The study adopts a multi-perspective approach, referring to different theoretical frameworks on CSD, such as the legitimacy theory, the stakeholder theory, the agency model, the asymmetric information theory, and the institutional perspective.

The empirical research is based on the sustainability reports of 80 companies in which investments were made by European socially responsible funds (SRFs) listed on the Morningstar platform during the years 2009–2008.

The theoretical hypotheses are tested by a univariate and multivariate analysis.

The breadth of the CSD depends on multiple factors, both external and internal, such as the country of origin, the industry reputation, the firm size, the frequency of the SRFs participation, the corporate social performance.

Limits inherent in this type of research are the comparability of the CSR reports and the systematization of the categories of content to be analyzed.

The chapter identifies several factors that lead to a greater completeness of the CSD, exploiting the capacity of the social reporting to trigger benefits for the firms such as a stronger social legitimacy and the reduction of asymmetric information.

The research supports the investigation of the levers of CSD to meet the demand for a broader accountability.

The reference to firms in which SRFs participated allows to focus on companies ascertained as socially responsible in accordance with a “certification function” of these funds. Findings support an approach which is not one-sided, thus enabling to look at the determinants of the CSD through different theoretical perspectives.