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This chapter looks at two stories from visiting teachers/consultants in settings that were extremely diverse; one situated in a remote community with indigenous students in Western Australia, and the other in suburban schools in two capital cities in Australia. Even though the settings and experiences of the visiting teachers/consultants varied greatly, several themes around working with teachers and teacher assistants in inclusive education emerged. As the visiting teachers/consultants were invited into many schools they had the opportunity to view practices in a range of settings. They came with few preconceived ideas about the constraints of particular workplaces and consequently were in a position to offer objective and pragmatic advice. The visiting teachers/consultants found that they were in a position to foster relationships between teachers and teacher assistants that led to practices which had the potential to improve educational outcomes for the students in the schools.

Health scientists and urban planners have long been interested in the influence that the built environment has on the physical activities in which we engage, the environmental hazards we face, the kinds of amenities we enjoy, and the resulting impacts on our health. However, it is widely recognized that the extent of this influence, and the specific cause-and-effect relationships that exist, are still relatively unclear. Recent reviews highlight the need for more individual-level data on daily activities (especially physical activity) over long periods of time linked spatially to real-world characteristics of the built environment in diverse settings, along with a wide range of personal mediating variables. While capturing objective data on the built environment has benefited from wide-scale availability of detailed land use and transport network databases, the same cannot be said of human activity. A more diverse history of data collection methods exists for such activity and continues to evolve owing to a variety of quickly emerging wearable sensor technologies. At present, no “gold standard” method has emerged for assessing physical activity type and intensity under the real-world conditions of the built environment; in fact, most methods have barely been tested outside of the laboratory, and those that have tend to experience significant drops in accuracy and reliability. This paper provides a review of these diverse methods and emerging technologies, including biochemical, self-report, direct observation, passive motion detection, and integrated approaches. Based on this review and current needs, an integrated three-tiered methodology is proposed, including: (1) passive location tracking (e.g., using global positioning systems); (2) passive motion/biometric tracking (e.g., using accelerometers); and (3) limited self-reporting (e.g., using prompted recall diaries). Key development issues are highlighted, including the need for proper validation and automated activity-detection algorithms. The paper ends with a look at some of the key lessons learned and new opportunities that have emerged at the crossroads of urban studies and health sciences.

We do have a vision for a world in which people can walk to shops, school, friends' homes, or transit stations; in which they can mingle with their neighbors and admire trees, plants, and waterways; in which the air and water are clean; and in which there are parks and play areas for children, gathering spots for teens and the elderly, and convenient work and recreation places for the rest of us. (Frumkin, Frank, & Jackson, 2004, p. xvii)

Increasing numbers of support staff are employed in schools to provide services for students identified as requiring extra support. The roles of these staff have changed as a result of a variety of factors, foremost the increased inclusion of students with disabilities in mainstream settings. Compounding this increase is a re-evaluation of roles of staff in schools, shortages of qualified special education teachers, an increasing requirement of teachers to complete large quantities of administrative tasks, including paperwork (Lee, 2003), and the use of support staff, particularly teacher assistants (TAs) to relieve some of the work of teachers (Webster et al., 2010). This chapter will examine these factors and explore the resulting changes in roles and considerations for teachers when working with support staff.

New Zealand has long been regarded as a country with little or no governmental corruption. In recent times it has been ranked consistently as one of the five least corrupt countries in the world, on Transparency International’s (TI) Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). In 2009 and 2011 it was ranked as the single most corruption-free country on the CPI, and in 2012 it shared first place with Denmark and Finland. This chapter examines the reasons why historically New Zealand has been largely free of governmental corruption, using widely accepted definitions of what constitutes corrupt behavior. It goes on to argue that, at least by its own normal standards, the country might now be more susceptible to corruption, for a variety of reasons, in both the public and private sectors, and that more political and administrative attention may need to be paid to this issue. This chapter discusses New Zealand’s surprising tardiness in ratifying the United Nations Convention against Corruption, an apparent reluctance that leaves the country sitting alongside other non-ratifying countries which have endemic levels of corruption in all its forms. In this context, this chapter also notes some international dissatisfaction with New Zealand’s anti-money laundering legislation, enacted in 2009.

There has been substantial interest in US cesarean rates, which increased from 5% of deliveries in the 1970s to nearly one-third of births by the mid-2000s. Explanations typically emphasize individual risk factors (e.g., advanced maternal age, increased BMI, and greater desire for control over delivery) of women giving birth, or address institutional factors, such as the medicalization of childbirth and the culture of liability leading physicians to practice defensive medicine. We focus here on another non-medical explanation – childbirth education (CBE). CBE is an important, underexplored mechanism that can shape women’s expectations about labor and birth and potentially lead them to expect, or desire, a cesarean delivery as a normalized outcome. We analyze data from three waves (2002, 2006, 2013) of the Listening to Mothers national survey on US women’s childbearing experiences (n = 3,985). Using logistic regression analysis, we examined both mode of delivery (vaginal versus cesarean), and attitudes about future request for elective cesarean among both primiparous and multiparous women. Despite previous research suggesting that CBE increased the likelihood of vaginal delivery, we find that CBE attendance was not associated with likelihood of vaginal delivery among either primiparous or multiparous women. However, both primiparous and multiparous women who attended CBE classes were significantly more likely to say they would request a future, elective cesarean. Furthermore, these effects were in the opposite direction of effects for natural birth attitudes. Our findings suggest that contemporary CBE classes may be a form of “anticipatory socialization”, potentially priming women’s acceptance of medicalized childbirth.

This chapter focuses upon high school preparation and transition planning activities as they apply to students with disabilities. The reader will find a review of needs for reform of high school standards-based curricula, the development of inclusive general education curriculum content, and strategies for integrating functional and daily living skill training and meaningful transition planning activities, which include collaboration with adult agencies. The authors further present a number of evidence-based practices to address these needs and make recommendations for moving forward in ways to improve post-school outcomes for youth with disabilities.

To outline the current trajectories in digital social research and to highlight the roles of qualitative research in those trajectories.

A secondary analysis of the primary literature.

Qualitative research has shifted over time in relation to rapidly changing digital phenomena, but arguably finds itself in ‘crisis’ when faced with algorithms and ubiquitous digital data. However, there are many highly significant qualitative approaches that are being pursued and have the potential to contextualize, situate and critique narratives and practices of data.

To situate current debates around methods within longer trajectories of digital social research, recognizing their conceptual, disciplinary and empirical commitments.