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The mentalisation based therapeutic community (MBTC) is a group experience which promotes the acquisition of the capacity to mentalise. Members of the community gain greater emotional stability and psychological robustness. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

MBTC works with three theoretical principles: the intrapsychic, interpersonal and social. It is a slow open group where each member completes a ten-week course. The approach is deliberately non-interpretive with an emphasis on personal responsibility and accountability in order to promote clarity of mind.

The authors’ experience is that the model engages group members with few drop outs.

The combination of mentalising and the use of therapeutic community principles within in MBTC has enhanced outcomes for group members.

This paper aims to focus on the role of line management and learning culture in the development of professional practice for the human resource (HR) practitioner.

Three‐year longitudinal, matched‐pair study involving five participants and their line managers.

Two of the five participants experienced greater career growth and professional development, due to various factors; the roles of line management and learning culture.

Limitations are the nature of the research and small numbers in the study. This paper considers only two of the five categories that emerged and does not include the quantitative data findings.

Greater attention needs to be given to informal learning processes and knowledge‐sharing activities in organisations.

Due to a number of constraints, the longitudinal method used in this research is rare. There are significant benefits to gathering data over a period of time to capture different perspectives of practice and provide deeper understanding.

While assessment and user experience (UX) have been identified as areas of growing focus in all types of libraries, there is currently little infrastructure to prepare students for these roles (Applegate, 2016; Askew and Theodore-Shusta, 2013; Nitecki et al., 2015; Oakleaf, 2013; Passonneau and Erickson, 2014). As a step toward addressing this gap, a team from an American Library Association-accredited master’s program situated at a large public land-grant institution (LGU) worked with practitioner partners from academic libraries and information agencies to develop a new model for preparing information professionals with assessment and UX expertise. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In fall of 2015, faculty members applied for funding from the US Institute for Museum and Library Services Laura Bush 21st Century Librarians program for a program to develop formalized assessment and UX training in Library and Information Science (LIS) education. The student cohort would have interests in two areas: academic libraries and specialized information agencies. The two groups would complete much of the same coursework, earn the ALA-accredited master’s degree and have the opportunity to engage in co-curricular activities focused on UX and assessment. However, each sub-group would also pursue a subject-specific curriculum. In April 2016, IMLS funded the program.

In addition to reviewing the literature related to best practices in curriculum development, the authors describe the process of designing the program, including the curriculum, co-curricular mentoring and practicum opportunities, and the tools developed to evaluate the program’s effectiveness.

At a time in which the library practitioner and LIS educator communities are contemplating how best to prepare professionals with much-needed expertise in assessment and UX, UX-A represents an innovative approach in professional preparation. Although the UX-A program is grant-funded, several of the program components could be adapted and incorporated without such support.

This paper discusses the structure and history of the program, issues related to developing a new curricular program for LIS education, and the educational and professional development needs of the assessment and UX professional community. It includes an extensive review of literature related to LIS curriculum development, practica, and professional mentoring, as well as suggestions for implementing elements of the program in other settings.

This chapter discusses the application of community informatics (CI) principles in the rural Southern and Central Appalachian (SCA) region to further the teaching of information and communication technologies (ICT) literacy concepts in courses that formed part of two externally funded grants, “Information Technology Rural Librarian Master’s Scholarship Program Part I” (ITRL) and “Part II” (ITRL2), awarded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ (IMLS) Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program to the School of Information Sciences (SIS) at the University of Tennessee (UT).

The chapter documents ICT use in ITRL and ITRL2 to extend librarian technology literacy training, allowing these public information providers to become change agents in the twenty-first century. It discusses aspects of CI that influenced these two projects and shaped the training of future rural library leaders embedded in traditionally underrepresented areas to further social justice and progressive changes in the region’s rural communities.

The chapter demonstrates the role that CI principles played in the context of ITRL and ITRL2 from project inception to the graduation of the rural librarians with examples of tangible IT services/products that the students developed in their courses that were directly applicable and tailored to their SCA contexts.

ITRL and ITRL2 provided a unique opportunity to apply a CI approach to train information librarians as agents of change in the SCA regions to further economic and cultural development via technology and management competencies. These change agents will continue to play a significant role in community building and community development efforts in the future.

The purpose of this study is to discuss conditions in support of a Competent Self in the broader process of the school‐work transition, particularly regarding early school‐leavers.

A total of 233 early school‐leavers were followed in innovative and successful vocational training courses. Using a “quali‐quantitative” research model, longitudinal and multilevel, the comparison between contexts (previous/current school attended) and experiences (school failure/success) was adopted as the basic unit of analysis and considerable attention was given to the personal reflexivity stimulated by the transition undertaken.

The successful vocational training experience allowed the students to demonstrate commitment, competence and mastery motivation supported by the perception they were part of a project that was credible, shared and focused on a mutual investment in learning a job. The commitment and availability of the teachers and the testing of the “learning by doing” were the aspects that most strongly supported the construction of a Competent Self, in contrast with what the students perceived in the schools they had left.

The findings support the relevance of studying school‐failure by valorising the perceived quality of the school experience especially in relation to the teaching‐learning models adopted.

Emphasis was placed on the conditions that could contribute to coping with the school failure phenomenon (especially regarding vocational school paths).

The theoretical‐methodological measures adopted contributed to overcoming some ambiguities that characterised the research on school failure, questioning the supposed weakness of the early school‐leavers and highlighting school factors that contributed to students' engagement/disengagement, making the “school” (not only the students) “protective” or “at risk”.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate fashion blogs’ influence on Spanish Millennials’ buying behaviour.

This research is quantitative in nature, utilising a mono method consisting of structured self-administered questionnaires. Data were exported to IBM SPSS Statistics, where different types of analyses were combined – such as frequencies, means, hypothesis testing analyses, principal components analysis or K-means cluster.

Findings show that the most important motivations to follow a fashion blog are entertainment and information seeking. Besides, consumers’ attitudes seem to be influenced by how consumers assess credibility, which is determined by trustworthiness, para-social interaction (PSI), expertise and message credibility. Finally, after showing covert and overt marketing posts, both trustworthiness and PSI were lower than before, identifying PSI as a possible moderator in these cases.

The main limitation of this study is the sample size, which does not make it possible to generalise conclusions.

From this research, it can be said that, due to the importance of establishing a strong relationship with the public, bloggers should try to connect with readers on an emotional level, and brands need to select bloggers very carefully.

This paper reveals Millennials’ attitudes whilst they are visiting a fashion blog and the influence that these attitudes can exercise on their purchase intention.

The purpose of this paper is to use empirical data on new principals to clarify the connection between different succession situations and the challenges their successor principals face.

The study draws on two waves of interview data from a random sample of 16 new elementary school principals in a major urban school district in the USA.

New principals face distinct practice challenges depending on the nature of their successions. The less planned the succession, the less information and knowledge the new principal tends to possess. The more discontinuous the new administration’s trajectory is with the previous administration, the greater the staff resistance that the successor principal tends to face.

Few studies systematically examine how succession situations differ in schools that are in need of transformation vs those in need of stability. This study addresses this gap by illuminating the varied processes of succession and highlighting specific mechanisms that link these processes to different organizational trajectories.

For district officials, this study suggests that principals in unplanned successions need greater support in quickly gathering information about their new schools while principals in discontinuous successions need greater expertise in how to balance trust-building and accountability in their attempts to promote transformational change.

This study’s primary value is its detailed articulation of how certain characteristics of succession situations are associated with specific types of challenges. Only studies at this level of specificity can be effective guides to practitioners and policymakers who are charged with preparing, selecting, and supporting new principals and their schools.

Previous research has demonstrated the positive impact of participation in a music programme run by a Youth Offending Team in England (Caulfield et al., 2020). While the previous research focused solely on children involved with the criminal justice system, the purpose of this current paper is to report findings from research extended to young people identified as ‘at risk’ of involvement with the criminal justice system, vulnerable, or disengaged.

A mixed-methods approach was taken, using quantitative measures of the primary outcomes (educational engagement, well-being, musical development and attitudes and behaviour), complemented and extended by semi-structured interviews with a sample of participants.

Analysis of the quantitative data from 57 participants showed significant improvements in self-reported engagement with education, musical ability and well-being. In-depth interviews with 11 participants added a depth of understanding about children’s experiences of the programme and the impact they felt, providing a safe space and improved confidence and well-being.

This paper builds on previous research in schools and youth justice settings by presenting findings on the impact of a music programme on the educational engagement and well-being of children identified as at-risk of offending, vulnerable or disengaged.

This paper presents stress inoculation as a method for reducing executives’ stress and enhancing their resilience and performance.

A review of theory and research on executive stress, resilience, and stress inoculation training was conducted.

Across studies, stress inoculation training has yielded reductions in performance anxiety and state anxiety while improving performance under stress.

Stress inoculation training offers a highly customized and practical way for executives to design adaptive responses to the stressors they find particularly difficult.

Stress inoculation training traditionally has been applied in clinical settings and in extremely stressful settings (e.g., military, law enforcement). This article describes how this intervention may be applied within organizations as a needed addition to the complement of stress management approaches currently offered to executives.