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The purpose of this exploratory case study was to investigate the role of School Leaders (SLs) in building Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) in schools, as well as to expand a literature-driven PLC model within the Pakistani context.

The study involved the purposive selection of two schools affiliated with a university. The sample comprised one school leader, one academic coordinator and five teachers from each school, altogether 14 participants. The participants shared similar demographic characteristics. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data, which were analysed thematically.

The findings of the study revealed that both schools have created PLCs to some extent and that school goals and culture were contributing factors in building these communities. Additionally, the SLs played a key role in promoting PLCs by encouraging teacher collaboration. The study concludes that SLs have the potential to strategize their actions to foster positive professional relations among teachers and ensure their well-being.

The study contributes to the literature on professional communities in Pakistan by validating a literature-driven PLC model. The model emphasizes collaboration among teachers, which can be facilitated by SLs. As such, the study implicates SLs in prioritizing the professional development of teachers to enhance student learning and achieve school success.

This study is unique in expanding a literature-driven PLC model within the Pakistani context, with a focus on teacher collaboration as facilitated by SLs. The model has the potential for replication in other contexts and can serve as a useful tool for future research.

This paper aims to examine the barriers to adopting collaboration in architectural design studios from the instructors' perspectives and explore strategies to overcome barriers.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 coordinators in architecture and interior architecture design studios to gather insights into their experiences and perspectives on collaboration. Thematic analysis was employed to identify key themes and patterns in the data.

The study reveals that collaboration is highly valued by instructors for its potential to enhance creativity, problem-solving abilities, and preparation skills among students. However, the study identified several barriers, such as student conflicts, coordination challenges, cultural differences, and technological constraints.

The instructors recommended specific strategies to promote collaboration in architectural design studios. These strategies include involving students in collaborative projects, providing training in collaboration skills, striking a balance between online and in-person activities, and developing supportive policies and skills. Implementing these strategies can help design programmemes that prepare students for professional success and future careers.

This study sheds light on the importance of integrating collaboration skills in architectural education. By exploring barriers and suggesting strategies, it provides valuable insights for educators and encourages further research into the implementation of these strategies. Design programmes can benefit from adopting a multifaceted approach to foster collaboration among students, thereby enhancing their learning experience and future prospects.

Knowledge production in project studies is continuously challenged to combine scientific rigour and practical relevance, and a professional graduate programme in Project Management is a suitable environment for addressing this issue. This research aims to generate a framework of the Ecosystem of a University Research Centre in Project Studies (URC-PS) to enhance the benefits of research developed in a professional graduate programme.

The research was developed under the paradigm of Design Science and operationalised through a method of Design Science Research. The prescriptive approach was used to identify, design, develop, demonstrate, and evaluate the framework.

The framework comprises four macro-elements: Project Studies; Impact Generation Process; Circumstances, Governance and Management; and Context, broken into sixty elements. It provides a structure that is simultaneously holistic, integrative, and procedural. It also develops a perspective of knowledge co-creation between academics and practitioners in an engaged scholarship approach.

The framework provides a more thorough understanding of the ecosystem university management to the research centre itself, to engaged academics, and to external actors, which allows them to discuss, plan, execute, and evaluate the co-creation of knowledge in Project Studies.

The framework contributes to Organisational Knowledge Creation Theory by including and discussing outcomes and impacts from co-created knowledge in a URC-Project Studies environment. It also explores the concept of “Ba” in its proposal for structuring, organising, and operationalising the “Ba”.

Although social media has gained prominence as a communication and marketing tool in various sectors, its adoption and utilization within the construction industry remain relatively underexplored. Therefore, this study fills this gap by evaluating the level of awareness and the extent of adoption of social media within the Nigerian construction industry, shedding light on its current status and potential impact.

This objective was attained via a quantitative research approach that utilized a structured questionnaire to obtain responses from construction professionals such as architects, builders, engineers, quantity surveyors and estate managers. Frequencies and percentages and the mean item score (MIS) were used to analyze the questionnaire responses and assess the overall awareness and adoption of social media among construction professionals. Additionally, the Kruskal–Wallis H-test provided valuable insights into the variations in social media adoption levels among different professional categories within the construction industry.

The results indicate that construction professionals possess a generally high level of awareness regarding various social media platforms. However, despite this awareness, the extent of adoption does not align with the level of awareness, suggesting that adoption rates are not as widespread as anticipated.

The findings of this study underscore the importance of not just awareness but also effective adoption and utilization of social media platforms. While awareness is a crucial first step, construction firms should focus on implementing strategies to encourage greater adoption and integration of these platforms into their daily operations. This can go a long way in bridging the awareness – adoption gap which was revealed in this study.

While the limited existing research on social media in the construction industry has predominantly concentrated on areas such as marketing, addressing the root causes of fatalities, data environment tools and business branding, none have undertaken a thorough evaluation of social media awareness and adoption within the sector. This study fills a critical gap by narrowing its focus to the adoption dynamics and the technology’s potential impact on communication, collaboration and knowledge sharing among construction professionals.

The purpose is to investigate the professional identity of public library, archive and museum (LAM) professionals in Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Norway and Sweden.

The data have been gathered through the administration of three questionnaires. A comprehensive analysis is conducted to explore the variations in the professionals’ perceptions of their professional proximities to the other LAM professions and other related professions, considering demographic factors such as age, education, gender and immigrant background of participants.

Through a lens of micro- and macro-professional identities, the findings underscore both clearly perceived role separation between the LAM professions and notable points of convergence, suggesting opportunities for collaborative efforts. The implications of these discoveries are discussed, offering a foundation for future research endeavors.

The study highlights the professions perceived to have the most and least similarity to LAMs based on questionnaire responses, providing valuable insights into the interplay between various professional domains.

This study aims to analyse the differences between professional interaction mediated by video conferencing and direct professional interaction. The research identifies diverging interests of office workers for the purpose of addressing work ethical and business ethical issues of professional collaboration, competition, and power in future hybrid work models.

Based on 28 qualitative interviews conducted between November 2020 and June 2021, and through the theoretical lens of phenomenology, the study develops explanatory hypotheses conceptualising four basic intentions of professional interaction and their corresponding preferences for video conferences and working on site.

The four intentions developed on the basis of the interviews are: the need for physical proximity; the challenge of collective creativity; the will to influence; and control of communication. This conceptual framework qualifies a moral ambivalence of professional interaction. The authors identify a connectivity paradox of professional interaction where the personal dimension remains unarticulated for the purpose of maintaining professionality. This tacit human connectivity is intertwined with latent power relations. This plasticity of both connectivity and power in direct interaction can be diminished by transferring the interaction to video conferencing.

The application of phenomenology to a collection of qualitative interviews has enabled the identification of underlying intention structures and the system in which they affect each other. This research identifies conflicts of interests between workers relative to their different self-perceived abilities to persevere in competitive professional interaction. It is therefore able to address consequences of future hybrid work models at an existential and societal level.

Current school leadership research has primarily utilized quantitative methods to explore the relationship between leadership and teacher learning. However, there is a notable gap in understanding how principals facilitate professional learning, especially in centralized educational settings. This study aims to address this gap by examining the role of school leadership in enhancing teacher professional learning within a highly centralized education system.

This qualitative case study delves into the lived experiences of 15 teachers and eight school leaders in eight primary schools in Mashhad, Iran. Through semistructured interviews, researchers employed open and axial coding to systematically explore and categorize qualitative data. The study focuses on understanding the role of principal leadership in facilitating teacher professional learning by connecting themes and sub-themes across transcripts.

Effective principals worked on the cultivation of a culture that champions perpetual personal growth and development, the nurturing of a collaborative learning community, and the provision of essential resources and support. Findings showed the pivotal role of principals in promoting teachers' self-development, facilitating idea exchange and acknowledging their efforts. Principals appeared as key to encouraging information sharing, fostering collective learning, promoting professional development, overseeing teaching practices and ensuring the availability of resources to cultivate a supportive climate in a centralized education context.

We concluded that in centralized education, leadership practices for promoting teacher learning share similarities and differences with decentralized settings. The findings offer guidance for principals in centralized systems, supporting them in facilitating teacher professional learning in their schools.

The purpose of the study was to assess the current state and demand of the project management education. Project management has gained increasing importance as a critical discipline for achieving successful project outcomes in various industries and sectors. In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), the demand for skilled project management professionals has increased due to different developmental projects and ambitious initiatives like NEOM.

The study adopted a qualitative multi-method approach to comprehend the objective in depth. In the first round, a systematic literature review (SRL) was applied to explore the state of project management education (PME) in KSA. In the second, structured interviews with professionals were arranged to explore the phenomenon of interest in more detail. Moreover, three case studies were also included to support, comprehend and generalize the findings.

The study highlights the strengths and gaps in PME. The study also provides an insight to enhance the quality and effectiveness of the PME in KSA. Besides these, the research recommends exploring different avenues for the promotion of PME in the country.

The study offers a pioneering exploration of PME in KSA. It uses a multi-method approach to unveil unique insights into the country's educational landscape and its alignment with global industry standards.

The objective of this paper is to develop a redesigned commissioning process for social care services that fosters integrated care, encourages collaboration and balances professional expertise with client engagement.

This study employs a two-pronged approach: a case study of a municipality’s use of subsidy tables and a literature scoping review on integrated care research.

The paper introduces a new framework for the study of the new “subsidy tables.” A well-defined and extensive consultation process involving both social care providers (suppliers), the Service Triad, and client representation adds to the existing research on supplier consultation, and on how to define the outcomes for clients via client engagement.

While aspects are clearly relevant to the Netherlands, the design of the commissioning process of social care has international relevance as well: finding definitions, formulating outcomes and incentives, designing a more collaborative instead of competitive process, stakeholder engagement and consultation.

Several Dutch municipalities started using the “subsidy tables” method for commissioning integrated social care. This paper offers clear improvements that benefit the commissioners, the social care providers and their clients.

Improving the commissioning process of integrated social care will lead to better fitting care for people who need social care.

This paper is one of the first to do a thorough analysis of the “subsidy tables” method for commissioning integrated social care.

In several developing contexts, the delivery of Architecture, Engineering Construction and Operation (AECO) projects continually grapples with issues such as fragmented communication, a lack of transparency, safety and risk management concerns. These problems result from the use of traditional construction practices and insufficient technology integration. Therefore, there is a pressing need to enhance communication, transparency and collaboration within construction projects in these countries through the improved utilization of innovative tools. Consequently, this study empirically assesses both the application areas and the benefits associated with the adoption of social media within the Nigerian construction industry.

This study employed a quantitative research approach that utilized a structured questionnaire to collect responses from construction professionals. The respondents were selected using a combination of purposive and snowball sampling techniques, resulting in a 75% response rate. Data analysis included mean score value (MSV), standard deviations and normality testing (Shapiro-Wilk) to assess data characteristics. The Kruskal-Wallis H-test was used for further analysis due to the ordinal nature of the data.

The findings of this study indicate that social media can be effectively used in project management, communication, safety management, as well as marketing and branding of AECO projects. The most significant benefits of using social media in construction activities include building trust and credibility, enhancing crisis communication and improving project collaboration.

This study introduces a fresh perspective by showcasing the transformative potential of social media, traditionally viewed as a communication tool, in addressing complex issues in construction project delivery. Consequently, the findings of this study can offer a paradigm shift in the way construction professionals, policymakers and industry stakeholders perceive and harness the capabilities of social media.