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This article aims to consider teacher's views about intervisitations regarding its application and its usefulness as a community-enhancer. Many educators venture into the world of teaching because they love learning and value learning from their peers (rather than merely from text or administrators); however, teacher reservations or hesitations towards the practice of engaging in intervisitations do exist and can serve as an obstacle.

The findings reported in this study resulted from the analysis of two teacher's perspectives towards classroom intervisitations. The subset of data presented in this study resulted from the surveys and semi-structured interviews that were conducted. Qualitative methodology was used to address the research question as it allows for a greater exploration, description and ideally the emotions of participants/teachers. The coding process consisted of open coding, which then led to axial coding and the elevation of codes to themes.

In this study, teacher buy-in would be enhanced through the protocol feeling more personalized, less-dictated and more flexible in its execution, especially through the support of administrators and district leaders. In addition, teacher mindsets and perceptions also need some reshifting and should be part of the professional development process involving intervisitation roll-outs as any hesitations/limitations/and lack of willingness need to be honed in on and prioritized. Lastly, limiting teachers from an appropriate amount of time to complete such work may also encourage shallow collaboration among teachers instead of in-depth reflexive practice. By prioritizing intervisitations and/or inter-teacher collaboration in the building and allowing teachers to embark on professional development sessions with each other as a means of growing as a teacher and community, all will flourish.

Through examining the narratives of two educators, it was found that teacher willingness to partake in intervisitations is dependent on the school climate, particularly with regards to trust and a yearn-to-learn among inter-school peers and administrators. In addition, providing ample time and educating teachers on the benefits of such practices enhances one's wanting to independently venture into such work.

The purpose of this paper is to assess whether the temporal evolution of the normalized web distance (NWD) between significant terms concerning, e.g., a case of online activism can be used as a meta-data technique to measure evolution over time of, e.g., progress or decline of social empowerment.

The NWD between two terms has been identified as a quantitative measure for semantic proximity, ascertaining a defining relation between them. A trend analysis is made by performing on the internet a time window restrained series measurement of NWD of all combinations of key-terms and classifier-terms. Case defining key-terms, positive and negative discourse polarizing classifier-terms, and neutral classifier-terms for negative control need to be determined by discourse analysis of information on a targeted case. An example of NWD evolution from 1994 until 2013 is presented to measure the empowerment effects of the Wirikuta online movement on the Huichol people in Mexico.

The application of the NWD temporal evolution method to the Wirikuta case shows a slight but significant semantic change of the key-terms with respect to some of the positive and negative classifier-terms. The neutral classifier correctly shows no significant distance variation, as required for valid application of the method. The method provides indications for a complex image of empowerment of the Huichol identity.

The accuracy of the method is limited due to short-term and between-user variability of the search tool’s page counts. More reliable access to a web-index will be required for more accurate NWD-based trend analysis.

The monitoring of temporal NWD evolution provides a potential tool for more comprehensive trend description compared to classical frequency based methods.

Trend analysis is key to internet research, to which the temporal NWD method provides an innovative contribution.

The following article examines the playful composing practices of two youth who built on their backgrounds as fan fiction writers, role-players, visual artists and gamers to co-author a multimodal novel across mediated spaces for composing throughout their high school careers.

The study draws on “connected ethnography” and qualitative practitioner inquiry to examine the playful composing practices of two urban youth.

The study demonstrates the playful, multimodal composing practices of youth – for learning, affiliation and leisure. Participants’ creative use of digital media reveals robust and productive composing practices that rely on collaboration; extensive multimodal experimentation (e.g. transmediation, the creation of paratexts and worldbuilding); and shared and individual expertise and socialization in various media communities (e.g. gaming and fan fiction).

The study is limited by its small scope.

Participants’ leisure writing activities offer important insights into multimodal play, composing, collaboration and co-authorship.

Schools have been slow to take up the multimodal and collaborative approaches to writing. The article offers implications for reimagining writing and the teaching of writing through creativity, play and collaboration.

The author argues that collaborative, multimodal authorship offers a social outlet, peer connection, and creative possibilities for writing development both in face-to-face and fully digital learning environments, something especially important to consider amid the unexpected surge of online learning due to COVID-19.

The author examines how school leaders understood issues of social justice. Despite rising standards for excellence and equity, increasing demands on teachers and school leaders to raise standardized test scores, and the push for schools to achieve equal educational outcomes, many US public schools have not eliminated long-standing achievement gaps for those who live on the margins (i.e., race, class, gender, immigration status, ability (both mental and physical), and native language). The study, based in grounded theory, examined how 72 aspiring school leaders understood what was meant by leading for social justice in US public schools. Participants were more successful when they internalized an increased critical consciousness that encouraged a dialogue around issues of social justice work in schools in order to utilize their new understanding as a platform to promote this work.

This case study is based on primary data collected through interviews with the company’s founder and CEO. It also includes secondary data collected through the Glassdoor job search and career community site. The names of the company and the employees have been disguised. However, the figures included accurately represent the primary data and the quotes are directly from the company representative.

When it was founded in 2009, employees were excited about the prospect of working at Wombat alongside its founder and CEO Dan Wallace. They had looked forward to making a difference in the lives of college students with the company’s higher ed-focused digital communication platform. But by 2022, Wallace could not ignore the significant change in these employees’ attitudes. Anonymous feedback pointed to employees’ commitment to Wombat having wavered, and employees’ reception of post-COVID organizational changes had become concerningly critical. Though he knew enough to be concerned, Wallace felt unsure of how to move forward based on the anonymous feedback alone. He was left wondering: how should Wombat communicate with employees to boost their attitudes and strengthen their commitment while making the hard decisions that best serve the company?

This case study is appropriate for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in organizational communication courses. It can constitute the employee communication module in a class that surveys strategic managerial communication, or it could be used as one of many examples in a course specifically focused on the internal communication component of the discipline. Students will need an understanding of communication theory, specifically interpretive organizational communication theory, to grasp the complexities of the case. While the focus company is in the educational technology industry, the themes presented are faced by companies of all sizes in all sectors.

This paper aims to examine the experience of women entrepreneurs and the challenges and issues they face in reconciling the work activities of the family sphere with those of the entrepreneurial sphere.

This study is based on a materialist feminist perspective and a theory of living work that take into account the visible and invisible dimensions of the real work performed by women entrepreneurs. The methodology is based on a qualitative research design involving individual and group interviews conducted with 70 women entrepreneurs.

The results show the various individual and collective strategies deployed by women entrepreneurs to reconcile the work activities of the family and entrepreneurial spheres.

One of the major findings emerging from the results of this study relates to the re-appropriation of the world of work and organization of work by women entrepreneurs and its emancipatory potential for the division of labour. Through the authority and autonomy they possessed as business owners, and with their employees’ cooperation, they integrated and internalized tasks related to the work activities of the family sphere into the organization of work itself. Thus, not only new forms of work organization and cooperation at work but also new ways of conceiving of entrepreneurship as serving women’s life choices and emancipation could be seen to be emerging.

Labor unions play a key role in combating inequality. Recent research focuses on unions' ability to shape “moral economies” that make greater inequality socially inappropriate. But this research largely hypothesizes moral economy pathways for combating inequality, rather than showing them in action. Through a case study of the 2018 teachers' strike wave, we identify mechanisms that allow unions to shape moral economies. Based on analysis of in-depth interviews with key strike leaders, social media discussion groups, and contemporaneous media coverage, we find that the interaction of sustained mass disruption and worker–organizer intervention were the key mechanisms that allowed the teachers and their unions to reshape moral economies. Externally, the strikes created a social and political crisis to which political elites had to respond, while tying the teachers' struggles to broader community issues, galvanizing public support for the strikes. As disruptions escalated, the teachers' experience of collective action created a positive feedback effect, reshaping workers' understanding of what they wanted, what they deserved, and what they could win. The 2018 teachers' strike is analytically useful because it managed to reshape norms and expectations around educational and economic inequality rapidly, on a large scale.

The case is based on data collected from in-depth interviews, and from company, third-party and regulatory–agency documents. In addition to prior conversations over several years between the company founders and the lead case writer, there were several rounds of interviews in 2023 with the surviving founder and in-depth interviews with eight of the company’s key managers. Company documents reviewed included bylaws, organization charts, profit and loss statements and staffing statistics, all from founding to sale. Also reviewed were documents and evaluations of company operations and performance produced by the merger & acquisition firm that handled the company’s eventual sale. The company owner insisted on complete disguise of the company and all its members and prohibited disclosure of detailed proprietary financial data.

At the strategic level, this case is about how the unique, complex and changing healthcare environment created opportunities and threats to which a women-owned and run start-up company, Aloe Health (AH), had to respond to become and remain successful. At the personal level, the case illustrates what it takes for an entrepreneur and leader having clinical but no real business acumen to start, expand and turn around a company and ultimately position it for a successful acquisition, continually learning and adapting along the way.

The case describes how two women who were friends for many years started up a home healthcare company later in their lives and grew it into the largest women-owned business of its kind in the USA. Based in the Southwest USA, an area with many factors conducive to success, they navigated the many complexities of US Medicare regulations to create a fully-integrated home healthcare company providing unskilled personal care, medically skilled homecare and end-of-life hospice services to thousands of clients. The case provides background on the founders and the home healthcare industry context, and details the steps taken to start up and build the company into a fairly successful enterprise; one of the largest of its kind in the region. The (A) case ends with one of the founders facing a crisis brought on by the death of her co-founder and the revelation of some significant organization dysfunctions, leaving her unable to profitably exit the company and unsure of whether she would be able to turn things around. The students are tasked with making recommendations for what she should do next.

The (B) case brings events up to fall 2023, describing the steps the surviving founder took to transform her leadership style and the company’s systems and culture, and to navigate the due diligence process associated with preparing for an (ultimately very successful) acquisition. It also shares the owner’s “lessons learned,” and briefly notes the current state of the acquired company and the many AH employees that it continues to employ.

The case provides ample information for students to appreciate the company’s strategy and the challenges of operating in the highly regulated health care industry. However, it is probably even better suited to illustrating the “soft” issues of new-venture management, such as the tendencies of founders to overload themselves by micro-managing their growing venture and not adapting to expansion, and for those with clinical backgrounds to focus on caring for patients and employees while overlooking business essentials and organization systems. It also illustrates how business partnerships among strong-willed individuals can produce dynamics in the founding team similar to a “marriage,” with affection and complementary talents, yet also tensions. It further illustrates the process of a successful turnaround strategy, and the “due-diligence” challenges of preparing for an acquisition.

This case has a range of course applications at multiple education levels. Although it is probably best suited for graduate and executive-level programs, it can also be selectively used in undergraduate classes, particularly if populated by upperclassman. It is ideally suited to courses on entrepreneurship and on healthcare management. For an entrepreneurship course, it could be positioned mid-way through the semester, after covering topics relating to the entrepreneurial mindset, founding teams and business models. It can be used to get the class focusing on competitive issues and the challenges of starting up a company in a highly regulated environment, on entrepreneurial founding-team characteristics and management tendencies (e.g. micro-management control tendencies), on transition issues from start up to growth stages and on exit strategies.

We believe this case is also well suited as a teaching exercise for students pursuing healthcare management studies in baccalaureate and graduate programs (MBA, MHA, MHS) in which instructors wish to broaden student exposure to a real-world scenario that focuses on entrepreneurial behavior in a healthcare setting (a topic of increasing interest to healthcare practitioners and managers given the current trend toward provider formation and ownership of health facilities). Here, the case may be used to focus on the complexities of the healthcare industry, the key differences between various healthcare service business models and on the challenges that technically (clinically) trained professionals often face when trying to manage a healthcare business. Ideal placement of the case would be in a capstone course, after students have been introduced to their functional coursework in topics such as introduction to management, organizational behavior and leadership, financial management and strategic thinking. The case also challenges students to apply knowledge obtained in specialized coursework in healthcare systems and policy, industry regulation, as well as healthcare reimbursement methods.

The case also may be used in organization behavior courses to focus on team, cultural and leadership issues and in strategic management courses to focus on strategy implementation. In addition, there are enough family business themes in the case (even though Aloe is not actually a family business) to use it in a course on managing family businesses.

This paper aims to analyze how a group of middle-school debaters integrated their identities and epistemologies into the traditional literacy practice of debate to advocate for more expansive and inclusive forms of academic and civic discussion. The adult and youth co-researchers of the Debate Liberation League (DLL) detail their creation of a critical debate praxis through the use of spoken word and translanguaging and illustrate how they sought to redesign a foundational activity of English Language Arts on their own terms.

Drawing upon critical race and borderlands theories, the authors use critical ethnographic and participatory action research methods to explore how the DLL deconstructed the boundaries of what counts as public dialogue and offered an alternative model of what intergenerational and multi-voiced democratic discourse could look like in English Language Arts (ELA) classrooms and beyond.

The findings demonstrate how DLL students broke down normative binaries of affirmative/negative and objective/subjective in their debate performances and introduced testimonios as evidence for civic claims to make space for their voices and reimagine deliberation.

This study foregrounds dialogic data generation through a collaborative, intergenerational research approach. It highlights the constructed nature of literacy “rules,” demonstrates youth expertise in reimagining ELA, and offers a pathway toward a more compassionate public sphere.