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This study analyzed Chinese higher education (HE) governance policies during the first four months of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, providing insight into HE management, policymaking and governance. This study also illuminates Chinese student experiences and real-time policy impact, providing insight into the effectiveness of HE crisis management.

Using frameworks of real-time policy evaluation, this paper analyzed theoretical and realized policy impacts through the theoretical framing of temporality. Using real-time evaluation methods, this paper first identified HE policy priorities and then used a mixed-methods approach of “policy as discourse” analysis and a quantitative survey from Chinese HE students to assess the theoretical and realized impact of policies.

An analysis of HE policies identified three priorities: pastoral care, graduate employment and ideological education. Discourse analysis revealed each priority of HE policies was intrinsically linked to mitigating societal, economic and political consequences of the epidemic. Survey data revealed the perceived effectiveness of policies mirrored China's top-down government structure. Additionally, students expressed strong support in the central government's crisis management, despite relatively little realized policy impact.

This paper presents a timely review of HE governance during a global pandemic by offering a snapshot of HE crisis management and contributing to the literature surrounding China's ongoing HE centralization. This paper also provides unique insight into HE's role in state development, variations between prescriptive and realized policy impact and the “crisis as opportunity” paradox in a contemporary setting.

As adults and young adults have become increasingly active on social media, public libraries have incorporated social media alongside their more traditional services. However, libraries are faced with the challenging task of determining how to successfully engage with their users through social media. This chapter examines research literature from both social media and information studies to explore evidence-based results on providing popular information services and resources for adult and young adult users in social spaces. Key elements of social media use by libraries identified in this review include promotion of information resources and services, participation and engagement, social care, pastoral care, outreach, cocreation and motivation of users, advocacy and crowdsourcing, and measurement and assessment. Based on results from current research, best practices and assessment methods for social media are discussed which offer practical considerations for selecting social media platforms appropriate to a library’s mission, goals, and objectives, with examples relevant to a variety of social media platforms. The chapter also offers a review of social media platforms, practices, and assessment designed to inform librarians and library managers in decision-making about library social media efforts.

The purpose of this research is to discuss the issue of managing and reducing school absenteeism and truancy.

The article proposes the development and implementation of some long‐term strategic approaches to tackling truancy and other forms of non‐attendance from school. This article focuses on the innovative School‐Based Scheme (SBS).

The article proposes methods which are relatively easy to organise, implement, monitor and evaluate. It can be used in both primary and secondary schools and/or throughout all schools within a local education authority.

Preliminary evaluations suggest that it has improved attendance rates by over 4 per cent throughout all schools in one local education authority (LEA).

A high proportion of schools throughout England and Wales are below the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) targets either for overall levels of attendance, or for levels of authorised or unauthorised absence within both the primary and secondary sectors. The approaches proposed would address such issues.

It is hoped that the article will be of particular interest and help to head teachers, senior and middle management in schools, learning mentors, classroom assistants, home‐school liaison officers, principal and senior education welfare officers and appropriate local education authority staff, especially those pastoral and management staff who have day‐to‐day dealings with pupils like absentees and truants.

Much has been written about the theory and practice of work experience, but mostly in academic terms and aimed specifically at the “world of education”. What follows is presented in practical terms, and is intended to be of help to industrial colleagues. It has been written by an experienced practitioner who has worked at both the chalk‐face and Local Education Authority (LEA) level providing work experience for thousands of students. Basically, work experience is examined briefly in terms of its origins in the 1960s. The mechanics of its delivery are looked at and an indication of the current picture and the anticipated future expectations is given: a practical approach therefore to a very important curricular development area.

The purpose of this paper is to understand early career teachers’ perceptions of the impact of a pre-service health education programme on their health promotion practice in schools and the contextual factors that influence this.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 primary and secondary trainee and qualified teachers who had trained at a university in England. Data were analysed using thematic analysis.

The teachers found the training to be a useful introduction, particularly when it was relevant to their practice. They valued gaining practical skills at university, on placement and in school once qualified. They reported that witnessing pupils’ lives in school had increased their awareness that health education is important. Their personal qualities, life experience, the school’s ethos and competing pressures influenced their practice. Teachers considered that building relationships with colleagues, pupils and parents facilitated health promotion, and that health education needs to be relevant to pupils. Some teachers expressed that teaching about health could be a “minefield”. They also discussed whether schools or parents are responsible for educating pupils about health issues and the place of health promotion within education’s wider purpose.

Few studies have followed-up trainee teachers once they are in teaching posts to explore the longer-term perceived impact of pre-service health education training. The findings suggest that teachers’ development takes place via an interaction between training and practice, suggesting that training could particularly aim to provide teachers with a contextualised understanding of health issues and practical experience.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss a curriculum change in the provision of health promotion in pre‐service teacher education in a one‐year postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE) secondary course in one Higher Education Institution (HEI) in England.

The paper describes the iterative development process, from an initial survey and mapping of the existing pre‐service teacher training programme, which provided an evidence base for the piloting of a new health promotion component in the curriculum, and its subsequent evaluation. Changes to the health promotion element of the curriculum reflect the programme philosophy which balances the requirements of a competency based curriculum with a more liberal approach to education and training in which pre‐service teachers are expected to critically reflect on, and evaluate their practice. This work adopts a socio‐constructivist approach to teacher education, in which teachers develop their knowledge, skills and attitudes by interacting with others through dialogue, and learning from more knowledgeable others in a cooperative and scaffolded manner.

The paper presents the results of these changes and discusses implications for their sustainability. The changes made to the health promotion component of the programme and their implementation would not have been possible without the inter‐professional collaboration that took place over three years.

To the authors’ knowledge similar work involving a multi‐disciplinary collaborative approach to the development of a health education component of a pre‐service teacher education curriculum has not been employed or reported.

To demonstrate how the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in the United States through the “National Jesuit Committee on Investment Responsibility” played a significant role as a socially conscious institutional and religious investor in influencing Chevron’s Human Rights Policy 520 and to analyze the factors that contributed to a successful shareholder engagement with the company.

Case study based on firsthand information.

1. Our conclusion offers support for Allen et al.’s (2012) conclusion of legitimacy (credibility) being the dominant force in a successful engagement.

2. We found that coalition-building is a significant moderating variable in increasing shareholder salience. This finding contradicts the study by Gifford (2010).

Our conclusion offers support for Allen et al.’s (2012) conclusion of legitimacy (credibility) being the dominant force in a successful engagement.

We found that coalition-building is a significant moderating variable in increasing shareholder salience. This finding contradicts the study by Gifford (2010).

The chapter is based on the actual process of shareholder engagement with Chevron Corporation that led to the human rights policy and is written mainly based on firsthand information.

Using Lundy's model (2007), this chapter adopts a child-centred approach to discuss decision-making in relation to designing a study which aimed to amplify childhood voices of parental separation (Kay-Flowers, 2019). It examines the role of young people in designing and co-producing the research tools, specifically designed to give voice to childhood experiences of parental separation and divorce. It explains how the research findings were shared with different audiences and reflects on the effectiveness of the approaches taken.

The chapter starts by outlining the four elements of ‘space’, ‘voice’, ‘audience’ and ‘influence’ in Lundy's model (2007) before going on to identify the gap in existing research on children's experience of parental separation and divorce, explaining why their voices need to be heard.

A focus group of young people were involved in designing the study. Finding current methods unsuitable for addressing the research question, they co-produced new research tools specifically designed for the study, alongside the researcher, in a process known as bricolage. The chapter explains the processes involved in creating the bricolage and describes the newly created research tools which were an online questionnaire and Prompt Simulation Video (PSV).

The last part of the chapter explains how ‘audience’ and ‘influence’ informed decision-making about how the study's findings could be presented to amplify childhood voices of parental separation and divorce, to ensure they were heard by different audiences of academics, practitioners, parents, public and children. It concludes with consideration of the effectiveness of this approach.

This chapter employs critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine three key policy documents related to international education in New Zealand: The International Student Wellbeing Strategy (ISW), The New Zealand’s International Education Strategy 2018–2020 (IES), and The New Zealand’s Strategic Recovery Plan (SRP) for the International Education Sector. It asks, “How are discourses of international student wellbeing deployed in New Zealand’s international education policy documents?” The findings suggest that the actual targets of wellbeing in New Zealand international education policies were less the international students than New Zealand itself. I argue that discourses of international student wellbeing are instrumentalized in policy discourses to position New Zealand as a progressive and inclusive society and feed the competitive market dynamics driving the global international education market.

The purpose of this study resolved to evidence worldwide studies addressing the effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic on higher education (HE) academic staff. Particularly in relation to wellbeing and pedagogical role, as part of a parallel study exploring the impact of COVID-19 on academics’ pastoral role.

The systematized review identified eight relevant studies that shed light on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on university academics’ well-being.

The review highlights the paucity of research in this area, with no studies, at the time of the review, considering how academics responded to a broadening of their pastoral role amidst an evolving academic landscape, and how are universities supporting them.

Firstly, only eight relevant studies were included, affecting generalisability of results owing to uneven distribution between geographic regions. Secondly, participants across the eight studies accounted for less than 0.05% of a population of 6 million university academics worldwide (Price, 2011). Thirdly, most of the studies used cross-sectional design, limiting assessment of the longer-term impact of an evolving HE landscape.

The findings of this systematized review can be placed in the context of illuminating research deficits within a shifting HE landscape. Specifically, no studies that the authors are aware of have investigated how academics are responding to a broadening of their pastoral role amidst an evolving academic landscape, and how are universities supporting them.

In providing pastoral support to students, the mental well-being of academics is frequently ignored (Urbina-Garcia, 2020). The provision of well-being support by university management for academics appears to be “limited to non-existent” (Hughes et al., 2018, p. 49). Critically, the Coronavirus pandemic appears to have both accelerated and precipitated a step-change to pastoral care within the HE teaching ecosystem. The impact of a broadening pastoral role on academics' well-being has yet to be fully realized and understood. The authors have subsequently conducted an empirical study to address this embryonic area of research.