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The influence of extralocally produced texts, such as professional standards and systems of accreditation, on the ruling relations that govern teachers’ work and their learning about that work is a matter of concern in Australia, as it is in Canada, UK, and USA. This chapter explains how a dialogic analysis and the construction of individual maps of social relations were employed to reveal the influences that governed teachers’ learning about their work at the frontline. A dialogic analysis of research conversations about learning, based on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, revealed the existence of both centralizing, hegemonic discourses associated with a managerial agenda and contextualized, heterogeneous discourses supportive of transformative learning. It also revealed the uneven influence of extralocally produced governing texts on both the locally produced texts and the “doings” of individuals. The production and use of “individual” maps represents a variation on the way “mapping” has generally been used by institutional ethnographers. From these informant specific maps, we can begin to observe some broad patterns in relation to the coordination of people’s “doings” both within a given context and from one context to another.

This chapter applies a qualitative theoretical approach, drawing on critical literacy frames including socio-cultural theory and auto-ethnography to examine the journey of a language arts teacher in her struggle to respond to her students’ resistance and create a classroom context of mean-making and empowerment. Asserting the process as the decolonization of pedagogy, the chapter asserts the language arts classroom as a borderland, a site for both critical analysis and a source for creativity and possibility (Giroux, 2001) to teach students who are traditionally underserved in the educational community. The chapter points to ways students’ rich cultural heritage and the teacher’s autobiographical narrative can become part of the classroom pedagogy and result in a rich learning experience that is transformative.

Scholars have begun calling for broader conceptualisations of moral disengagement processes that reflect the interaction of dispositional and situational antecedents to a predilection to morally disengage. The authors argue that collective leadership may be one such contingent antecedent. While researching leaders from the Gilded Age of American business history, the authors encountered a compelling historical case that facilitates theory elaboration within these intersecting domains. Interpreting evidence from the embittered leader dyad of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, the authors show how leader egoism can permeate moral identity to promote symbolic moral self-regard and moral licensing, which augment a propensity to morally disengage. The authors use insights developed from our analysis to illustrate a process conceptualisation that reflects a dispositional and situational interaction as a precursor to moral disengagement and explains how collective leadership can function as a moral disengagement trigger/tool to reduce cognitive dissonance and support the cognitive, behavioural, and rhetorical processes utilised to justify unethical behaviour.

Physical appearances constitute a criterion of discrimination recognised by the French law. This topic is often raised in the field of media and advertising, but the consequences of stereotypes and prejudices about appearances at work are not taken into account as much. However, this criterion is subject to a multitude of normative injunctions, located in time and space, and significantly affects all spheres of life. Voluntary or involuntary transgression of these norms leads to processes of segregation, discrimination and harassment. These processes are all the more insidious because their legitimacy is less questioned than when it concerns a criterion shared by a collective such as race or gender. Appearances are, in fact, perceived as individual characteristics; moreover, some of them are perceived as controllable, which justifies the unfavourable treatment of people who do not fit the norm.

At work, recruitment is the most obvious step in which appearances play a role because first impressions are largely based on them. But remuneration or daily life at the office is also affected by beliefs and expectations about appearances. After presenting testimonies from focus groups on this issue, we offer some advices for organisations concerned by the topic.

There is limited research on the mental health of pregnant women in prison in England, mother and baby unit (MBU) applications and associated factors. Eighty-five pregnant women were interviewed in eight different prisons in England, UK. Schedules for the Clinical Assessment of Neuropsychiatry (SCAN) and Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) were used to assess mental health; Severity of Dependence Questionnaire (SOD-Q) for drug misuse; Alcohol Use Identification Test (AUDIT) for hazardous drinking and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID-II) to identify personality disorder. About 51% of participants had depression and 57% had anxiety. Those with prior social services involvement, diagnosis of personality disorder or history of suicidality were less likely to be admitted to MBUs. The high levels of depression and anxiety can have negative impacts on both the mother and her unborn child. Factors which influence MBU admission suggest those who might benefit most from MBU placement are least likely to be admitted. Other countries offer feasible alternatives to imprisonment for pregnant women and mothers which could be implemented in England.