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The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for reconceptualising research on school autonomy to redress the limitations of traditional research, strengthen the conceptual links between school autonomy and learning outcomes and offer a range of new strategies for studying the interplay of school autonomy, leadership and learning.

Based on a review of international studies and the findings of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Teaching and Learning International Study (TALIS), the conceptual limitations of and gaps in traditional research on school autonomy in relation to leadership and learning are discussed, and their implications for the development of a new framework are outlined.

The conceptual limitations of traditional research on school autonomy are as follows: internal school autonomy is insufficiently differentiated; too little attention is paid to cultural autonomy and internal structural autonomy at individual and group levels; autonomy is measured only as perceived by principals, with no attention to the perspectives of other key stakeholders; and conceptual links between school autonomy and learning outcomes are missing, leading to inconsistent findings on the effects of school autonomy on student learning. To redress these limitations, a new framework for research is developed. School autonomy is reconceptualised as a combination of functional autonomy, structural autonomy and cultural autonomy. Leadership is also reconceptualised by categorising three types of leadership activity: leadership for functional initiatives, leadership for structural initiatives and leadership for cultural initiatives. This categorisation may help to strengthen conceptions of the relevance of leadership to autonomy and performance in future research.

A typology of research strategies is developed to broaden the possibilities for implementing the reconceptualisation framework. A single-component strategy, a two-component strategy, an interaction strategy and a holistic case-study strategy are presented. Depending on the research purposes and the available resources, one or a combination of these strategies can be used to conceptualise the study of school autonomy, leadership and performance.

The new ideas and perspectives associated with the reconceptualisation framework will contribute to future research in this area on an international scale. Future PISA, TALIS and similar studies will also benefit from this reconceptualisation.

A non‐equilibrium multi‐valley transport model for carriers in compound semiconductor devices has been developed. This macroscopic transport model provides an efficient scheme for device modeling, and can overcome the difficulty in evaluating the relaxation times in multi‐valley conservation equations without a priori assumption of the displaced‐Maxwellian distribution. This model has been successfully applied to electron transport in GaAs subjected to rapidly time‐varying fields. The results have suggested that the macroscopic effective mass of electrons might be strongly dependent on average velocity.

Sexual violence’s alarming prevalence demands action to challenge the gendered and generational relations that sustain injustice. This chapter introduces a nuanced model of consent that, if utilised to inform adults’ everyday practices with children, could empower children to identify and engage in healthy relationships and manage sexual victimisation. Inadequate sex education in adolescence engenders harmful beliefs about consent, which hinder young people’s abilities to navigate sexual relationships and limit the extent to which sexual assault survivors can understand their trauma. Accordingly, effective consent education is critical to protect and empower all human beings. Drawing on decades of childhood studies research that exemplifies the ways in which children learn through experience, this chapter argues that, by practising consent with children, adults can facilitate children’s knowledge of this moral concept. To equip adults with the thorough understanding of consent necessary to engage in truly consensual relationships, this chapter presents a theoretical explanation of children’s agency, recognising that structure, personal elements, and relationships collectively influence, and are shaped by, children’s participation. Based on a recognition of parents’ distinct role in children’s education, this model is examined in the context of children’s experiences in the home. Specifically, this analysis considers the ethics of corporal punishment and explores parental practices that could better facilitate children’s learning. The themes in this chapter emphasise the dangers of assumptions and raise fundamental questions about the ways in which society approaches human dignity and justice.

Casual business apparel addresses many issues in the workplace. This phenomenon is having a strong impact on the corporate world, including employee production and motivation. Employees in many organisations are being permitted to wear apparel items that are considered non‐traditional for the business setting. Research conducted about casual dress has focused on what is appropriate, and perceptions of changes in standard measures of productivity. Limited research exists regarding the relationship of casual apparel in the workplace and the more complex measures of employee motivation, specifically perceptions of organisational climate. The purpose of this research was to identify the employee perceptions of organisational climate which occur with the implementation of a casual apparel policy and to examine the relationship between demographic variables and the employee perceptions of organisational climate. The sample was 125 corporate management personnel of a US manufacturer. Results of the analysis of the self‐administered questionnaire indicated that employees with lower incomes believe that wearing casual apparel in the workplace will improve their relationships, especially with their supervisor, as well as their sense of belonging to the organisation. In addition, women felt less comfortable with wearing casual apparel in the workplace than did men. Results of this study indicate that casual apparel in the workplace does relate to organisational factors of psychological climate. Wearing casual apparel in the workplace is perceived to help eliminate boss/employee lines. This finding suggests that employees have the potential to be better team players. As a result, productivity, creative thinking and contributions by employees may also increase. Future research should further examine the effects of casual dress on other motivational factors and measures of productivity as well as gender differences. A pre‐/post‐casual dress implementation study needs to be done in order to measure actual changes in motivation and productivity.

The use of electrohydraulic systems is becoming more widespread in industry. The control valve forms a vital component of any such system as it performs both power conversion and amplification. The valve is operated by a solenoid mounted on the end of the valve block. A typical solenoid actuator is shown in Fig. 1. Current through the coil generates a magnetic potential difference across the air‐gap, producing an attractive force between the opposing pole face and armature. The armature moves to close the air‐gap and minimize the reluctance of the magnetic circuit.

This paper aims to advance a configural asymmetric theory of the complex antecedents to hospitality employee happiness-at-work and managers’ assessments of employees’ quality of work performance. The study transcends variable and case-level analyses to go beyond prior statistical findings of small-to-medium effect sizes of happiness–performance relationships; the study here identifies antecedent paths involving high-versus-low happy employees associating with high-versus-low managers’ assessments of these employees’ performances.

The study merges data from surveys of employees (n = 247) and surveys completed by their managers (n = 43) and by using qualitative comparative analysis via the software program, fsQCA.com. The study analyzes data from Janfusan Fancyworld, the largest (in revenues and number of employees) tourism business group in Taiwan; Janfusan Fancyworld includes tourist hotels, amusement parks, restaurants and additional firms in related service sectors.

The findings support the four tenets of configural analysis and theory construction: recognize equifinality of different solutions for the same outcome, test for asymmetric solutions, test for causal asymmetric outcomes for very high versus very low happiness and work performance and embrace complexity.

Additional research in other firms and additional countries is necessary to confirm the usefulness of examining algorithms for predicting very high (low) happiness and very high (low) quality of work performance. The implications are substantial that configural theory and research will resolve perplexing happiness–performance conundrums.

The study provides useful case-level algorithms involving employees’ demographic characteristics and their assessments of work facet-specifics which are useful for explaining very high happiness-at-work and high quality of work performance (as assessed by managers) – as well as algorithms explaining very low happiness and very low quality of work performance.

The study is the first to propose and test the tenets of configural theory in the context of hospitality frontline service employees’ happiness-at-work and managers’ assessments of these employees’ quality of work performances.

The concept of the evolution of the distribution function is used to derive an energy‐scale distribution that is able to describe transport phenomena, including inter‐valley transfer effect, in the scale as small as the energy relaxation time. The energy‐scale distribution is used to study the evolution of electrons in n‐type GaAs under the influence of rapid change in field. Results indicate that, near the peak of strong velocity overshoot or the bottom of pronounced undershoot in the Γ valley caused by the rapid change in field, the energy‐scale distribution can not respond as fast as the distribution function calculated from the Monte Carlo method. The average velocity resulting from the energy‐scale distribution therefore leads to less pronounced overshoot and undershoot than those obtained from the Monte Carlo method. However, since velocity overshoot and undershoot are not pronounced in the L‐valleys, the L‐valley energy‐scale distribution is in excellent agreement with that determined by the Monte carlo simulation.

The aim of this paper is to investigate predictors of online medical research by nurses.

A cross‐sectional study was conducted and a representative sample of nurses was selected from three Taiwanese hospitals from 1 January to 31 March 2007. A total of 274 female nurses completed the questionnaire.

The results indicate that the expectancy value of internet characteristics, attitude towards online information seeking and perceived credibility of online information significantly and positively predict online information‐seeking behaviour in nurses. Specifically, the multiple hierarchical regression analysis revealed that the perceived credibility of online information is the strongest predictive variable of online information seeking.

The findings of this study suggest that an important task for professional health organisations is to educate nurses in assessing the reliability of medical information found on the web, such as looking for credible institutional sites, verifying available information with that from other sources or sites, and using common sense.

Influence of forward scattering, including ionized‐impurity and polar optical‐phonon scattering, on electron transport phenomena in a 3‐valley n‐type GaAs model subjected to a rapid change in field is studied. It is shown that the macroscopic effective mass of electrons in a nonparabolic band structure is smaller than the energy‐dependent effective mass, which is usually assumed for modeling of GaAs devices, during the interval of velocity overshoot when strong forward scattering is involved. As a consequence, the hydrodynamic transport model, where the macroscopic effective mass is assumed energy dependent, leads to a smaller overshoot velocity.

Accuracy of hydrodynamic transport equations using the energy‐dependent relaxation times has been studied for electron transport in Si 〈100〉. The concept of the hydro‐kinetic transport model is used to describe non‐equilibrium electron transport phenomena and to examine the validity for the assumption of energy‐dependent relaxation times. It has been shown that under the influence of a drastic increase in field the relaxation times might also strongly depend on the average velocity near the peak of strong velocity overshoot. In addition, the velocity dependence is found to be more pronounced at lower temperatures in Si 〈100〉.