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This paper aims to explore alternative literacy instruction with incarcerated youth, add to the body of existing literature documenting the literacy of those incarcerated and investigate the construction of book clubs through a critical lens.

This qualitative case study answered the following research questions: What can a critical book club reveal about the literacy lives of these incarcerated youth? What can we learn from incarcerated youth through a critical book club? Data were collected through participant observation and in-depth interviews and analyzed using a critical literacy framework.

Findings indicate students used text connections to critically reflect on selves and schools. They questioned issues of power, particularly the power of literacy in their own lives as well as the power of schools, teachers and curriculum. The paper concludes with the authors’ critical reflection on both the findings and process which results in implications for future book clubs in settings with incarcerated youth.

As educators, administrators and community members living in the “age of incarceration” (Hill, 2013), there is a social responsibility to design curriculum and pedagogy that expands instruction in correctional facilities.

The need for expanded literacy instruction in juvenile detention centers has been widely documented and supported; however, conventional methods of teaching literacy are not always successful for youth who may not have had positive experiences with traditional schooling. This study expands and explores literacy instruction with incarcerated youth through book clubs, an alternative literacy structure which challenges traditional curricula, pedagogical practices and culturally irrelevant texts which often contribute to the alienation and disempowerment of many students. Book clubs can facilitate new understandings through a critical lens.

Measuring parent satisfaction is regarded as essential but there is a paucity of research reporting on parental satisfaction with community youth mental health services. This study aims to examine parent satisfaction with Jigsaw – a primary care youth mental health service.

A measure of parent satisfaction was developed and administered to parents in 12 Jigsaw services over a two-year period (n = 510, age range: 28 to 70 years) when young people and parents were ending their engagement with these services.

Overall, parents had high levels of satisfaction with Jigsaw and their level of satisfaction did not vary depending on the parent or young person’s age and/or gender. Examination of qualitative feedback revealed three overarching themes relating to growth and change in young people, parents and their families; strengths of the service and; suggestions for future service development. Analysis of the psychometric properties of the measure provided evidence for a two-factor structure examining satisfaction with the intervention and outcomes and service accessibility and facilities.

This study represents one of the first efforts to measure parent satisfaction with primary care youth mental health services. It has resulted in the development of a brief measure that can be more widely administered to parents engaging with primary care youth mental health services.

High patient satisfaction is not simply a customer service goal; it is an important dimension of quality and part of financial incentives and public reporting requirements. However, patient experience is often siloed within health system organizational charts and considered separately from quality and safety initiatives, instead of being seen predominantly as a “customer service” initiative. Representatives from 52 health care systems across the United States completed an online survey to explore both the processes and infrastructure hospitals employ to improve patient experience, and the metrics hospitals use to assess the quality of patient experience beyond patient satisfaction survey data. When asked about performance metrics beyond satisfaction, most hospitals or systems noted other metrics of the entire patient experience such as the rate of complaints or grievances and direct feedback from patient and family advisors. Additionally, respondents suggested that a broader definition of “quality of the patient experience” may be appropriate to encompass measures of access, clinical processes, and quality of care and patient safety outcomes. Almost all respondents that we surveyed listed metrics from these less traditional categories, indicating that performance improvement within the patient experience domain in these organizations is linked with other areas of hospital performance that rely on the same metrics, such as clinical quality and patient safety.

In order to respond to the many challenges that confront them, organizations must assist their leaders to develop their personal and professional strengths. The development of leaders and leadership involves more than just the development of knowledge and must become an integral part of the organizational culture so as to also develop know-how and soft skills. Accordingly, programs have been created that are based on collaborative learning and the contextualization of the various issues demanding resolution, all with a view to developing leadership capable of surpassing the limitations of current management methods. To demonstrate how these programs can influence leadership, this article proposes a theoretical review of leadership, viewed as an ongoing process and then presents three proven development programs: coaching, mentoring and action learning.

This paper aims to examine ways in which English language arts (ELA) teachers have exercised agency in response to policy changes that have been shaped by neoliberal education agendas that seek to further advance standardization and the primacy of measurability of teaching and learning.

The authors posed the following research questions of related literature: Under what conditions, in what ways and to what ends do teachers exercise agency within ELA classroom teaching? Through five stages of systematized analysis, this scoping review of 21 studies maps the evidence base.

Structural, material, interpersonal and pedagogical issues both constrained and supported agency. Teachers covertly exercised agency to be responsive to students’ needs; in some instances, teachers’ agentive practices reinforced institutionally sanctioned methods. Teachers’ agentive action aimed to combat the deprofessionalization of the field, foster innovative curriculum approaches and challenge stereotypes about students. The authors also found a range of definitions of agency in the research, some of which are more generative than others.

This paper addresses a gap in the research literature by illuminating contexts, consequences and conundrums of ELA teacher agency. The authors documented the range of structural, cultural and material conditions within which teachers exercise agency; the subversive, collective and small- and large-scale ways in which teachers realize agency; and the potentially favorable or unfavorable consequences to which these efforts are directed. In doing so, the authors also problematize the range of definitions of agency in the literature and call for greater attention to conceptual clarity around agency in research. As literacy researchers illuminate work that disrupts the marginalization of teachers’ agency, this scoping review maps the field’s knowledge base of agency in ELA teaching and sets up a future research agenda to promote the professionalization of teaching and advocacy for English teachers.

Facilitating inclusive supports and services for learners with low-incidence disabilities involves collaborative teaming, understanding the benefits and challenges involved in delivering inclusive supports, and appreciating the diverse and unique needs of this population. In this chapter, we provide families, educators, researchers, academics, related service personnel, and other professionals with examples of models of service and support delivery. Emphasis will be on school-age learners with low-incidence disabilities. Additionally, an insider perspective of the opportunities for, as well as benefits and barriers to, successful implementation of supports and services for learners with low-incidence disabilities is presented. The chapter concludes with future directions for research.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to understand how children expand independence within instructional interactions with their teachers. To do so, the authors re-examine how scaffolding is understood and applied.

Approach – First, the authors consult websites and literature used by teachers and academics to examine how the notion of scaffolding is employed and explained. The authors analyze the roles, the intentions, the means, and the timing of scaffolding as used in popular literature to explain and support instruction. The authors then entertain a conceptual shift: What would the scaffolding process look like if learning were conceived as agentive? With this in mind, the authors interrogate descriptions of the tenets and functions of scaffolding to consider the process in relief.

Findings – The authors track the consequences of the inversion of scaffolding onto the understandings of the gradual release of responsibility (GRR) model. Scaffolding is understood as sitting within a GRR model, wherein the learner gradually releases responsibility to a teacher at the point of need. Intersubjectivity remains a basis for the model. A Window for Examining Teaching–Learning Interactions is offered as a frame with which to analyze the theories of both the child and the teacher apparent within scaffolding interactions. An accurate teacher’s theory of the child’s current and changing theories is required for teaching to be honed to invite children to efficiently access personal and contextual resources and to seek assistance when needed within engaging tasks with scope.

Practical Implications – When children are positioned as initiators of their learning, they are able to use their vast repertoire of knowledge of the world, language/s and literacies, and familial, cultural, and community ways of knowing to create, interpret, and engage in tasks. In this agentive view, children are positioned as holding full responsibility at the onset of any task and gradually releasing their responsibility to access support, when needed. Within tasks that are sufficiently wide for engagement at varied entry points, learners are the catalyst of the functions that were formerly initiated by teachers. Teachers invite children to access personal and contextual resources and to seek assistance, as needed, through additional external, contextual resources. This inverted model of scaffolding, that is child-directed rather than teacher-initiated, requires teachers to go beyond theories of teaching and learning and develop a theory of an individual child.

The purpose of this article is to consider how society and the legal system views and treats directors of businesses that fail and to consider the implications for small business entrepreneurship. Our particular concern is that the ambivalent social and legal attitude to risk‐taking may discourage enterprise and damage the health of the economy.

The chapter reviews recent evidence of, and debates about, the integration of art, entertainment, and media in media portrayals (e.g., movies, photographs, theater, music, performance art, museums, story-telling, modifications of an environmental space, social media, painting, comics, dance, videogames, etc.) of climate change based on three sources of data: 1) articles listed in academic reference databases and Google Scholar, 2) online sites, and 3) climate change news images. 1) Retrieved articles discuss both the potential and challenges of communicating about climate change through art, entertainment, and media. However, research is inconsistent on and in some cases is critical of the nature and extent of effects of art-based climate communication. 2) The Internet is a rich and diverse source of websites and videos about climate change. We analyzed 49 sites based on the art medium or form discussed, the primary content related to climate change, and the apparent goal of the site or video. The most frequent goals were promote action, collaboration, raise awareness, climate change communication, discussion, empowerment, reshape public perception, and engagement. 3) Based on the major themes and frames identified through content and cluster analysis of 350 images associated with 200 news articles from 11 US newspaper and magazine sources through late 2009, we summarize the theme of art and mass media representations of the environment, and how those are associated with the other major themes. We conclude by suggesting promising areas for future research on the intersection of art and science in communicating about climate change.

This chapter focuses on the selective news coverage and propaganda that preceded and followed the 9/11/01 event, using a model of news coverage or War Programming developed by the first author in earlier work. The ordered sequence of activities in War Programming begins from reportage and visual reports on the most recent war to the reports on the next war. The model is applied to the Iraq war to enhance our theoretical capacity to explain modern propaganda and the resultant lack of focus on human rights. By analyzing the news media context and organizational reasons for propaganda, the authors find a predictable war story was told by mainstream media, which omitted from the story a focus upon human rights violations. The authors develop the contention that a new approach is needed to offer critique before the event of war. Media framing and formats must change if future wars, aided by propaganda, are to be avoided.