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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the use of stereoscopic virtual technology in textile and fashion studies in particular to the area of chemical experiment. The development of a designed virtual platform, called Stereoscopic Chemical Laboratory (SCL), is introduced.

To implement the suggested educational approaches of SCL, a set of teaching and learning materials with emphasis on the application methods was revised from the existing subjects. The architecture of SCL includes building of virtual objects with the Autodesk software Maya and designing of interactivity by using Unity, a game engine system. Prototype version of the SCL has been passed to selected academic colleagues and students for further evaluation and application feedback.

Textile students can conduct laboratory experiments associated with coloration and finishing of textile technologies in a stereoscopic 3D and multisensory laboratory, and hence enhance their learning experience. With the use of SCL, students can learn relevant experiment tools, experimental processes, procedures, and safety and health precautions.

There is very limited educational or training approach in applying stereoscopic virtual reality in teaching activities. In the area of textile experiment, the authors could say it is virtual and does not exist in current research domains.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the critical factors (CRFs) of IS/ISO/IEC 17025:2005 laboratory accreditation and indicators of the performance (IOPs) in the testing/calibration laboratories. The impact of accreditation on the performance is analyzed using the level of presence of critical factors that can be used to benchmark the best practices in the accredited testing and calibration laboratories.

A questionnaire is designed on the basis of an extensive literature review on laboratory accreditation and performance. Based on the responses from pilot study, the developed instrument is tested for its unidimensionality, reliability and validity. Multiple regression analysis is carried out to analyze the impact of critical factors on the IOPs.

The findings reveal that the six distinct critical dimensions of laboratory accreditation (which are the independent variables) have a significant impact on the performance of the accredited testing/calibration laboratories. The performance is measured by the dependent variables which are the IOPs. The customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, laboratory performance, image of the laboratory, the number of increased customers and loyalty of the existing customers are highly influenced by the accreditation which in turn improves the performance to gain the competitive advantage.

Contribution to research is in the area of laboratory accreditation and the performance measurement by the development of a comprehensive instrument to analyze the Laboratory Quality Management System. The results are dependent on the number of respondents who are the quality/technical managers.

This instrument would enable the accredited laboratories to analyze their performance through the feedback from the quality/technical managers to gain credibility and to continually improve and benchmark the quality management system in alignment with the quality policies.

This paper proposes an instrument to measure and benchmark the performance of the accredited testing and calibration laboratories.

The origin and nature of meaningful, persistent firm-specific differences is a central issue in the study of business strategy. I investigate in this paper the role of characteristics physically external to firms, but embodied in their local geographic areas, in driving differences in firms’ organizing strategies. Specifically, I examine the extent to which location-specific characteristics affect the organization of pharmaceutical firms’ research laboratories bringing both qualitative and quantitative evidence to bear on this issue. Analyses of the histories of several late 19th century drug makers suggest that differences in local institutions, labor markets, and demand structures played important roles in affecting case firms’ strategic evolution. For example, while Mulford (Philadelphia PA) exploited the strength of nearby universities and the city’s public health system in organizing around leading-edge capabilities in bacteriology, Sterling (Wheeling WV) found that its local environment rewarded investments in marketing and distribution. Panel data analysis on a sample of firms from the late 20th century provides complementary evidence, demonstrating that the scientific orientation of modern drug discovery laboratories is positively and significantly correlated with measures of the strength of the local scientific and technical base. Together, these analyses suggest that location-specific characteristics may be important in driving firm heterogeneity and, ultimately, competitive advantage.

Research on innovation and knowledge management practice would benefit from examining science‐based innovation work, that is, innovations derived from the ability to exploit scientific know‐how, in greater detail. While much engineering innovation work may be predetermined through rational breakdown analysis, there is always a factor of chance and luck in scientific work. Scientific work is never linear and predictable but must always be envisaged as the outcome of a combination of rule‐governed activities and a certain degree of unconditioned discoveries. The purpose of this paper is to report on how practicing laboratory researchers in a major pharmaceutical company regard their innovation work as being what is always of necessity inherently indeterminate and therefore put demands on top management to allow for a reasonable amount of risk‐taking.

Case study methodology based on interviews with 36 laboratory scientists and managers in a major pharmaceutical company.

The paper concludes that innovation research and knowledge management studies need to regard science‐based innovation as a specific form of innovation not wholly capable of being managed through rationalist management control systems.

The paper bridges studies of innovation work in pharmaceutical industry with the perception of risk‐taking among the practicing researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of lesson study for the development of a science of teaching cast in the form of John Dewey's “laboratory model” of learning to teach.

The early sections compare the “laboratory” with the “apprenticeship” and “rationalist” models of learning to teach, which emphasise the primacy of practice and theory respectively. The unity of theory and practice embodied in the “laboratory model” is outlined, linking the development of teachers’ theoretical understanding with the development of their practice. A distinction between pedagogy and teaching is drawn. The later sections examine the potential of lesson study to develop as a teachers’ based pedagogical science, particularly when informed by variation theory. The paper concludes by suggesting ways in which different theories of learning can be integrated into learning study, and points to ways in which particular studies can contribute to the systematic construction of pedagogical knowledge.

There can be no pedagogy without casting teaching as an experimental science, in which pedagogical theories are appropriated, tested and further developed as a source of pedagogical principles. Pedagogy therefore consists of a science of teaching in which teachers actively participate in knowledge construction. Lesson study when informed by an explicit learning theory, such as variation theory, provides a strong basis for the development of a practitioner‐based science of teaching.

The paper creates original links across disparate work in the field of teaching and learning.

The purpose of this paper is to address the following assertions: first, the Laboratories of Practice (LoP) promotes professional growth. Second, the LoP enhances understanding of program design and delivery. Finally, the LoP has a financial value both to the organization where the LoP took place and to the university. The paper examines the responses of program candidates from two cohorts and the community partners they served to a survey focussed on the LoPs.

In summer 2012, Cohort 1 students and their mentors completed a survey, a milestone paper, and reflective papers. LoP mentors (critical friends (CF)) were invited to give feedback on the LoP and the program candidate. In summer 2013, data were gathered via online surveys, milestone paper, and reflection papers from two program cohorts who experienced a LoP. In total, 48 students participated in the research.

In relation to assertion no. 1, both the community partners’ and the students’ experiences with respect to the LoP made clear that the fieldwork has yielded positive outcomes. Students have found that they were able to draw from the classroom learnings to address the problems of practice in the real world setting. They reflected on lessons learned about themselves as well as the process itself, which sometimes resulted in redefining the problem at hand. Finally, the goals that were accomplished by the students during the LoP experience provided them with immense satisfaction, next steps, and, in some cases, the affirmation of their choice to participate in a professional practice doctorate. In relation to assertion no. 2, LoP data have been used by faculty to refine and improve the program and the LoP experience itself. In relation to assertion no. 3, while field mentors (CF) indicate that the services provided by the students during their LoP were invaluable and provided significant insights and improvements in their workplace, it was a challenge to assign a specific financial value to the LoP.

In terms of the internal validity of the study, it is possible that the findings are weakened due to the reliance on doctoral candidates and their mentors from one professional practice doctorate, and the potential for recall bias. In the future, a longitudinal or multiple source research study would have a much stronger internal validity. In terms of external validity, the study can only be reasonably generalized to doctoral students in professional practice doctorates grounded by CPED principles.

While each LoP is highly individual, the process does require the candidates to reflect on their professional practice and their professional growth. CF facilitate reflection and conceptual thought, thereby developing professional practice. LoPs appear to be of value both to the individual and to their organizational context.

Students’ and LoP employers’ survey responses, established and/or furthered excellent relationships with many community partners, and provided quantifiable evidence of accomplishments.

Many professional practice doctorates are struggling with what a LoP in the field should and could look like and the benefits of a LoP. This is an innovative paper as it explains the development and learning from one program that is becoming identified with its LoP. It is likely that university faculty will be interested in the design of the LoP and the value of the LoP as indicated by the survey results to the student, mentor, faculty, and program.

This paper discusses video ethnography as part of a multimethod study of the introduction of information technology to streamline pathology test order entry in hospitals and its effect on the work of pathology laboratory scientists. The paper opens with an overview of video research in health care settings. After acknowledging the limitations inherent in video data, the paper offers a description of how video footage served to enhance insight in three ways. First, the footage enhanced the researchers’ own appreciation of the significance of particular facets of the data, which led them to reassess information collected through interviewing, focus groups and research field notes. Second, the footage enhanced the pathology laboratory scientists’ appreciation of the problems they experienced when incorporating the new information technology into their daily work practice, by enabling them to articulate these problems to outside researchers. Third, by being watched (by the video camera) and by watching themselves perform their work they were enabled to redesign their practices. The paper suggests that, as a result of interactively performing their work in front of the camera, the scientists came to apprehend their practices ‘from under a different aspect’. The paper concludes that by allowing video ethnography as a research method to remain underdefined and emergent, the modality of engagement and uptake shown by participants in the video research can be considered as a further enriching aspect of video ethnography as a research process.

This study aims to identify the current barriers to sustainability in the bioscience laboratory setting and to determine which mechanisms are likely to increase sustainable behaviours in this specialised environment.

The study gathers qualitative data from a sample of laboratory researchers presently conducting experimentation in the biological sciences. A questionnaire, regarding sustainability in the laboratory, was developed and distributed to all bioscience researchers at Aberystwyth University.

Although the majority of respondents had favourable attitudes to sustainability, almost three‐quarters (71 per cent) stated that they were not conducting their research in the most sustainable way possible. The factors most likely to hinder sustainable behaviour were lack of support, lack of information and time constraints. However, monetary costs and benefits, closely followed by “other” costs and benefits, were most likely to encourage sustainable behaviour in the laboratory.

There is a need to extend the present research to other types of biological research, such as field‐based studies. Different biological disciplines may have different consumable requirements and waste streams, thereby changing the barriers to sustainability observed.

The findings have immediate practical implication for higher education institutions wishing to adopt researcher‐approved mechanisms to reduce the environmental impact of biological laboratory research.

This is the first study to design a sustainability questionnaire which is specific to research scientists and laboratory users. The paper is therefore of immense value to the numerous global higher education institutions with working laboratories which seek to minimise the environmental impact of research.

In his book Pasteur's Quadrant, Donald Stokes (1997) argued that research projects can be described by their contributions to theoretical understanding and the solution of practical problems. Building on this model, scholars have suggested that educational research should focus more or less exclusively on what Stokes called “use-inspired basic research.” With this move has come a focus on projects with the potential to create systemic change – and the concurrent devaluation of naturalistic studies of learning in context and design research to develop innovative educational interventions. We argue that this current predilection is based on a fundamental misreading of the processes through which scientific investigation addresses practical problems, and (more important) is counter-productive for the field of educational technology. To make this case, we look more closely at the operationalization of Stokes’ quadrant model in the field of education, suggesting that its short-term focus on systemic change is based on a misunderstanding of history. We use Latour's (1983) study of Pasteur to suggest an alternative lever model for the research-based transformation of educational practices through educational technologies. By way of illustration, we use a brief example of a research project in educational technology to ground a discussion of the broader implications of this alternative conceptualization of the process of education research.

The motivation for this paper is to better understand the strengths and limitations of quantitative performance measures in a changing environment. The context is one of organisational change and innovative management. Using a case study approach, the paper presents a history of organisational change and focuses on attempts to drive and assess efficiency through performance measures in a public hospital‐based pathology laboratory. The various financial and non‐financial performance measures used in the laboratory are presented. A discrepancy between accounting reports and laboratory management analyses of costs is reported. The notorious difficulties of costing health services are examined through the dispute that arose about whether the mean cost‐per‐test was increasing or decreasing over a three‐year period. Competing representations of performance are analysed. Whilst the case study looks at a New Zealand example, many of the pressures facing pathology services are typical of medical laboratories worldwide. General issues of performance measurement are discussed.