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The purpose of this paper is to describe SPARK, an innovative elementary school that highlights the possibilities for elementary education as COVID-19 continues to unfold.

The authors’ analysis is based on a research synthesis of the main features of the SPARK model, as it was operating when schools in Arizona closed because of the coronavirus pandemic: project-based learning, a teaming model, heterogeneously grouped multi-age classes, blended learning, supporting students' development as self-directed learners, mindfulness and looping.

This paper outlines the empirical grounding for the main features of the model and suggests how they might address elementary students' learning and social emotional needs when schools in Arizona reopen for in-person instruction either as full-service schools or on a staggered or hybrid schedule.

Educators from other districts can use this model as a springboard for reimagining their own educational spaces and practices in this new and still uncertain period when schools and school districts consider how to move forward. While many of these practices are not novel, the authors’ research synthesis highlights how SPARK combines them in a way that is unique and particularly relevant for the present moment.

In this paper content analysis is used to examine the lobbying positions of publicly listed companies making submissions on ED 49, Accounting for Identifiable Intangible Assets. A number of content analysis measures are used in an attempt to gain additional insights into the strength of lobbying positions held. The influence of debt contracting and political costs variables upon lobbying position on capitalisation and amortisation of identifiable intangible assets is investigated. Significant relationships are found with the explanatory variables interest coverage, company size, effective tax rate and membership of a politically sensitive industry. These relationships are most consistently observed when lobbying position is measured using more basic content analysis techniques, such as sentence counts and counting the number of supporting arguments presented in submissions. Use of apparently more sophisticated techniques of content analysis fail to perform as well, possibly due to the introduction of greater subjectivity to the process.

The purpose of this study was to assess particular student outcomes when design thinking was integrated into an environmental engineering course. The literature is increasingly promoting design thinking for addressing societal and environmental sustainability engineering challenges. Design thinking is a human-centered approach that identifies needs upfront.

In an undergraduate engineering course, Design for the Environment, students have begun to obtain hands-on experience in applying design thinking to sustainability challenges. This case study investigates the association between the use of design thinking and student creativity with sustainability design solutions. Student perspectives on their own creativity and future sustainable design practices as a result of the course were also investigated.

The findings were favorable for design thinking, being associated with a significant difference and medium-to-large effect with regards to solution novelty. A qualitative analysis showed a positive association between design thinking and students’ perceptions of their creativity and future anticipated sustainability practices. Using a content analysis of reflective writings, students’ application of design thinking was assessed for comprehensiveness and correctness. A two-week introductory design-thinking module and significant use of in-class active learning were the course elements that most notably impacted students’ use of design thinking.

This case study preliminarily demonstrates that application of design thinking within an environmental engineering course may be associated with beneficial outcomes related to creativity and sustainability.

A review of the literature did not uncover studies of the use of design thinking for undergraduate socio-environmental challenges to promote creativity and sustainable-practices outcomes, although the literature has been calling for the marrying of these two areas.

The purpose of this paper is to review the research into the relationship between human resource management (HRM) and business performance. The paper examines the change of the HR function into HRM taking on its current strategic role. Recent work on the links between HRM and business performance is reviewed highlighting the conclusion that while the links are not disputed by researchers using a variety of approaches, the ability to characterize definitive causal links has proved almost impossible. The techniques and resource‐based approach of intellectual capital (IC) may provide the key to quantifying the links but again, work to date has proved that it may not be possible to clearly separate HRM from other management actions to quantify the effects of HRM. A solution based on the IC approach involving rigorous measurement is suggested.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the informal micro-level mechanisms through which caregivers maximize their health literacy and caregiving skill-set, particularly in cases of emergent, pervasive health disorders. Specifically, I investigate how important micro-level social factors, such as lay self-education and local community networks, mitigate extensive experiences of medical uncertainty that are associated with caring for a child with autism. This study theorizes a series of processes of becoming lay health care professionals (HCP), which serve as effective health care interventions and ways to secure vital resources for patients and their families.

This study uses qualitative research methods in the form of 50 individual intensive interviews with primary caregivers of at least one child under the age of 18 with an official autism diagnosis, as well as two years of participant-observation at two primary sites that are autism parent and caregiver resource meetings, both located in Northern California.

This study first demonstrates the major institutional limits and gaps involved in health-related caregiving for children with autism. Next, I define the processes through which caregivers challenge these institutional constraints and fight for life altering resources for their families, which include becoming a lay diagnostician and expert caregiver. Here, I demonstrate a sophisticated set of health literacy skills and key local community-based ties that caregivers develop and rely on, which affords families the tools to overcome diverse institutional obstacles in health-seeking and health care access.

The families in this study are predominantly white, middle-class, and reside in California. For future research, the scope of the study could be expanded by increasing the sample size and including greater geographic and demographic diversity.

This study contributes vital, yet missing, pieces to the autism puzzle, which currently focuses on prevention, the fight for a so-called “cure,” and the role of vaccines in disorder prevalence. In the meantime, families are living with autism each day and are struggling for understanding and knowledge, and to secure adequate support services. In doing so, this study sheds light on current institutional gaps and limits in health care and delivery for children with autism, and suggests specific effective health care interventions applicable to other cases of emergent illnesses and disorders.

This chapter celebrates just some of Norman Denzin's many research contributions, outlets and gatherings, and encouragement and support of individuals over the course of his career. I suggest that these contributions can be described as a sustained effort to make and foster a capacious – expansive – inquiry.

More reverberant today than ever, given the current legal and political climate, artist David Wojnarowicz's victorious lawsuit in 1990 against evangelist Donald Wildmon's American Family Association tangled with still relevant contexts: plight of the NEA, disastrous AIDS pandemic, and continuous church/state involvement in public debate over social values, including individual rights to sexual representation and artistic expression. Yet strangely, the artist remains largely absent from both “culture wars” narratives and the general record. Increasing his visibility and arguing his significance, this essay re-inserts Wojnarowicz into history, his work profoundly challenging what he called “the illusion of the ONE TRIBE NATION.”

The history of the public library is long and rich, and continues to reflect this institution's initial mission: to respond to the needs of an evolving democratic society. From its early days as a subscription service for the middle-class, through its evolution to become an educational site for the lower-classes and new immigrants, the public library has served as a touch-stone for urban industrial society in North America (Lerner, 1998, p. 138; Shera, 1974). Over the past century, public libraries have evolved to respond to the growing needs of the communities they serve and continue to do so with recent advances in technologies (such as DVDs, electronic books, the Internet, etc.), and with a more global outlook on the ways that people seek and share information. Indeed, the public library's constituents today are exceedingly diverse, including children and adults from a broad range of socio-economic, cultural, and educational backgrounds, all of whom seek information for a variety of personal and work-related purposes. The fact that public libraries have been fulfilling patrons' information needs for well over a century is a testament to their enduring success and versatility as information providers, and also points to the overall effectiveness of public librarians as intermediaries in the provision process.

Economic theory posits that production factors that are both difficult to imitate and capable of creating organizational efficiencies can generate economic rents and sustain long-term competitive advantage. Using survey data for 106 firms, we measure four dimensions of strategic human capital and find that the market values strategic human capital that has the capability to create efficiencies in the organization and is also difficult for competitors to imitate. We discuss implications for the reporting of human capital in intellectual capital reports and offer suggestions for future research.