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This study aims to assess the spread of environmental literacy graduation requirements at public universities in the USA, and to highlight factors that mediate the adoption of this curriculum innovation.

The author analyzed the undergraduate general education curriculum requirements at all 549 public BA-granting higher education institutions in the USA between 2020 and 2022.

The study found that only 27 US public universities out of 540 have an environmental literacy graduation requirement, which represents 5% of universities and is substantially lower than previous estimates.

First, this study provides a more complete, more reliable and more current assessment of the graduation requirement’s presence at US tertiary institutions, and shows the number of universities that have implemented this innovation is lower than was estimated a decade ago. Second, it draws from the scholarship on the infusion of sustainability into the university curriculum to provide a comprehensive discussion of factors that mediate the pursuit and implementation of the graduation requirement. As well, it identifies factors that played a key role in one pertinent case.

Climate change poses risks to society and the demand for carbon literacy within small and medium-sized enterprises is increasing. Skills and knowledge are required for organizational greenhouse gas accounting and science-based decisions to help businesses reduce transitional risks. At the University of Copenhagen and the University of Northern British Columbia, two carbon management courses have been developed to respond to this growing need. Using an action-based co-learning model, students and business are paired to quantify and report emissions and develop climate plans and communication strategies.

This paper draws on surveys of businesses that have partnered with the co-learning model, designed to provide insight on carbon reductions and the impacts of co-learning. Data collected from 12 respondents in Denmark and 19 respondents in Canada allow for cross-institutional and international comparison in a Global North context.

Results show that while co-learning for carbon literacy is welcomed, companies identify limitations: time and resources; solution feasibility; governance and reporting structures; and communication methods. Findings reveal a need for extension, both forwards and backwards in time, indicating that the collaborations need to be lengthened and/or intensified. Balancing academic requirements detracts from usability for businesses, and while municipal and national policy and emission targets help generate a general societal understanding of the issue, there is no concrete guidance on how businesses can implement operational changes based on inventory results.

The research brings new knowledge to the field of transitional climate risks and does so with a focus on both small businesses and universities as important co-learning actors in low-carbon transitions. The comparison across geographies and institutions contributes an international solution perspective to climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies.

This paper describes how a pre-service teacher’s knowledge and pedagogy changed as she documented her reflective practice while teaching arts-integrated lessons in a fifth-grade classroom during her pre-service teacher preparation program. The pre-service teacher spent three-months conducting an action research project in collaboration with a university mentor.

This paper explores what she and her mentor learned as she prepared arts-integrated lesson plans based on the four studio structures for learning and analyzed them along with identifying and documenting evidence of deep learning through field notes and video recordings.

Analysis of field notes, video recordings and lesson plans led the authors to take a deeper look at where the four studio structures for learning overlapped in the teaching event. In the data the intersections of the four studio structures shared a pattern of increased evidence of deep learning for the students. This paper describes the phenomenon in the classroom at various points of intersection.

This action research study is preliminary, and the findings are suggestive of further research that would require indexing what deep learning looks like and gathering and analyzing student data.

It is recommended that teachers use the four studio structures to integrate the arts in their classrooms and to enhance and encourage creativity, communication, critical thinking, collaboration, character and culture and as teachers work toward deep learning for students.

This case shows how a university partnership provides fertile ground for educators of all skills and experience to participate in the expansion of the field of education as well as personal and professional development.

This paper aims to explore a single-institution case study of partnership working between students, the University and Students’ Union, through four student-led sustainability projects. The paper analyses the role and value of these partnerships and provides advice for other institutions on effective partnership working between these stakeholders.

A single case study of partnership working with multiple embedded units of analysis (four projects) is presented based on reflections of practitioners involved in the projects who have different roles within the University and Students’ Union.

The longevity and effectiveness of student-led projects, and disciplinary-breadth of students engaged, can be enhanced by greater collaboration with, and integration into, University and Students’ Union systems. Partnership working between different stakeholders is key to overcoming challenges and the success of student-led projects, helped by key staff “enablers”. These projects provide myriad learning opportunities for developing change agency skills, even where projects are relatively short-lived and could be seen as failures in terms of longevity.

This analysis is based solely on practitioner reflections, with limited direct quantification or qualitative data on the projects’ impacts on the students themselves.

This paper draws together the experiences and reflections of four practitioners with different roles within the University and Students’ Union across four different projects and provides advice to generate student-led sustainability projects which have longevity and impact for wider student populations and future generations of cohorts.

Peer support is increasingly being introduced into mainstream mental health services internationally. The distinctiveness of peer support, compared to other mental health support, has been linked to values underpinning peer support. Evidence suggests that there are challenges to maintaining those values in the context of highly standardised organisational environments. The purpose of this paper is to describe a “principles-based” approach to developing and evaluating a new peer worker role in mental health services.

A set of peer support values was generated through systematic review of research about one-to-one peer support, and a second set produced by a UK National Expert Panel of people sharing, leading or researching peer support from a lived experience perspective. Value sets were integrated by the research team – including researchers working from a lived experience perspective – to produce a principles framework for developing and evaluating new peer worker roles.

Five principles referred in detail to: relationships based on shared lived experience; reciprocity and mutuality; validating experiential knowledge; leadership, choice and control; discovering strengths and making connections. Supporting the diversity of lived experience that people bring to peer support applied across principles.

The principles framework underpinned development of a handbook for a new peer worker role, and informed a fidelity index designed to measure the extent to which peer support values are maintained in practice. Given the diversity of peer support, the authors caution against prescriptive frameworks that might “codify” peer support and note that lived experience should be central to shaping and leading evaluation of peer support.

This paper adds to the literature on peer support in mental health by describing a systematic approach to understanding how principles and values underpin peer worker roles in the context of mental health services. This paper informs an innovative, principles-based approach to developing a handbook and fidelity index for a randomised controlled trial. Lived experiences of mental distress brought to the research by members of the research team and the expert advisors shaped the way this research was undertaken.

This paper aims to investigate student subgroups’ responses to the coercive digitalisation of teaching and learning processes during the pandemic. Respective variance is discussed in terms of digital inequality and is interpreted as a need to individualise teaching and learning and quality assurance practices.

This study uses data from surveys (N = 955) on student perceptions of the introduction of emergency digitalisation – an important aspect of higher education. The authors perform latent class analyses to identify student subgroups. The students were asked to rate digital learning processes and their overall learning experiences.

The identified student subgroups are proponents, pragmatics and sceptics of digitalised teaching and learning processes. These subgroups have different preferences with regard to teaching and learning modes of delivery, which implies the relevance of individualised educational services and respective quality assurance practices to reflections on improvement needs.

The data are from a single, typical German university; therefore, the scope of the results may be limited. However, this study enriches future research on the traits of student subgroups and students’ coping strategies in an ever-changing learning environment.

The findings may help individualise universities’ counselling services to enhance overall teaching performance and quality assurance practices in a digitalised environment.

The findings provide insights into students’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on teaching and learning. This paper enriches the research on student heterogeneity and relates this to development needs of quality assurance practice.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the marketization of domiciliary care, its consequences for employment practice, specifically fragmented time, and the implications for care quality.

Focus groups and face-to-face or telephone interviews were conducted with care commissioners, service providers and care workers across Wales. There were 113 participants in total.

These demonstrate fragmented time’s negative consequences for service providers, care workers and, ultimately, care quality.

No care recipients were interviewed and care quality was explored through the perceptions of other stakeholders.

For policy makers, tensions are evidenced between aspirations for high-quality care and commissioning practice that mitigates against it. Current care commissioning practices need urgent review.

The research extends the definition of fragmented time and integrates with a model of care quality to demonstrate its negative consequences. Links between employment practice and care quality have only previously been hinted at.

This paper aims to present a deep understanding of how social media affects organisations’ sustainability performance, using environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors. Particularly, this paper assumes the existence of a causal relationship between organisations’ sustainability performance and the use of their social media profile (i.e. Twitter).

The authors used a multivariate regression with an explorative approach. Using Thomson Reuters Eikon, the authors composed a sample of 115 public EU companies with a headquarter in Europe operating in the “energy” and “utilities” sectors. The authors collected ESG-related, financial and Twitter-related data covering the period 2016–2019.

The study findings emphasise the existence of a statistically significant and positive relationship between social media profiles (i.e. Twitter) and companies’ sustainability performance. Findings show that ESG-oriented companies use their Twitter profile more as a tool for achieving a higher level of legitimation rather than for managing their sustainability strategy and related performance. Therefore, social media contribute more to the construction of companies’ CSR identity than the management of analytic aspects of sustainability performance. The longevity of companies’ profiles is the variable mostly showing a causal relationship not only with the general measure of companies’ sustainability performance but also with its pillars and sub-pillars.

This research is original in showing academics, practitioners and policymakers results on the impact of different modalities of interaction (retweets, replies, likes and quotes) between organisations and stakeholders by using social media on sustainability performance.

The purpose of this research project was to improve public awareness to improve public awareness of the importance of energy conservation and to improve the use of simple conservation strategies. A thorough evaluation of the net gain from the numerous energy campaigns rolled out to the public every year is lacking. This study conducted pre- and post-campaign surveys and focus groups to evaluate one campaign’s impact on self-reported energy behaviors.

The campaign used television public service announcements and a website to improve awareness of the city’s efforts to conserve energy and to increase individual energy conservation practices. Focus groups (n = 40) were used to identify common barriers to conservation, and pre- and post-surveys (n = 533, 479) were conducted to evaluate the campaign’s effectiveness.

Results indicated that the campaign increased positive changes in changing light bulbs and confidence in taking action to turn down thermostats, unplug devices and turn off lights. While follow-up research is needed on the precise mechanism of the psychological process at work, the findings are consistent with the concepts of self and response efficacy as needed components of any behavior change. The authors advocate the adoption of research-informed message design to maximize communication campaign effects.

This paper demonstrates how the combination of three prominent persuasion theories can be used to develop behavior change campaigns. Also, it is one of the few studies to evaluate the effectiveness of the Energy Star campaign.

A decline in participation in research studies as people age is inevitable as health declines. This paper aims to address this by collecting data from a group of participants to examine their reasons for declining attendance and suggestions for maintaining attendance as participants age.

This research used a postal self-completed questionnaire including open and closed questions. The questionnaire was sent to those participants who have declined to attend further clinic visits. Results were analysed using thematic content analysis.

The study had a 51% response rate. Participants reported difficulty with travelling to the clinic, and health as the main issues in addition to family demands and a lack of understanding regarding the continuing participation of a singleton twin.

This study could only include data from responding participants, answers to open question also included comments from participants regarding their twin.

An anonymous questionnaire was sent to all individuals in the Keeping Together project. It was therefore not possible to identify if responses were from both members of a twin pair.

Maintaining participation in longitudinal studies is of crucial importance to enhance the value of data. Retention of participants in studies may change as people age and health becomes impaired. Suggestions for maintaining and improving the retention of older participants have been identified and are generalisable to other longitudinal studies of ageing.