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This paper aims to explore the intricate relationship between social capital, faith and prison-leaver resettlement, emphasising how penal voluntary sector organisations (PVSOs) aid prison-leavers in their resettlement and desistance journeys, following incarceration.

Employing a combination of narrative and thematic analysis, data was collected from 20 prison-leavers in England through semi-structured interviews. Purposive and snowball sampling was used to recruit participants from various community-based resettlement settings.

Thematic analysis revealed the emergence of faith in various iterations in facilitating desistance, Transforming Rehabilitation failure, identity transformation of the prison-leaver, the role of social capital in effective resettlement and the importance of PVSOs. In particular, the findings demonstrate the vital role of a “Faith Anchor”, defined in this paper as a trust-based relationship with an individual or spiritual entity, in facilitating desistance. This paper argues the need to recognise and fully integrate social capital building, faith and specialised support from PVSOs, as essential components of successful offender resettlement and desistance journeys.

The study considers the connection between faith, social capital and offender resettlement. Although demonstrating the role of faith in positive change and community engagement, there are limitations. Primarily, by exclusively recruiting participants through PVSOs, it might overlook varied resettlement experiences. Additionally, measuring desistance is complex and is limited by some academic views that it centres around abstinence. Although small-scale saturation was reached; generalisation should be approached with caution. Notably, post-Transforming Rehabilitation, the human cost of resettlement gaps became evident. Future research could benefit from a longitudinal lens, tracing desistance beyond initial PVSO interactions and offering richer, longitudinal insights.

Significance of “faith anchors”: A “faith anchor” aids the desistance process. Integrating faith in resettlement offers emotional support for prison leavers. Value of social capital: It is pivotal for offender resettlement. Positive social networks are key for successful reintegration. Role of PVSOs: They provide vital resettlement support. Enhanced collaboration can optimise assistance for prison leavers. Addressing current system shortcomings: Rectifying the effects of Transforming Rehabilitation ensures holistic support, catering to prison leavers’ needs. Concept of “faith exchange”: Merging faith and support offers tailored resettlement approaches, fostering effective reintegration.

The study underscores the social implications of effective offender resettlement strategies. The integration of “faith anchors” and social capital aids in the personal rehabilitation of prison leavers and also supports community cohesion. By acknowledging faith as indictive to building trust-based relationships, communities can reduce the stigma associated with former offenders, promoting inclusivity and understanding. Additionally, the essential role of PVSOs highlights the value of community-driven initiatives in supporting reintegration. A combined approach that combines faith, social capital and community support can reshape societal perspectives on desistance, encouraging a more inclusive and empathetic approach to offender reintegration.

The insights gained contribute to the evolving discourse on prison-leaver resettlement and desistance and uniquely highlight the potential of a combined approach between social capital, faith and voluntary sector support, in achieving desistance goals. The term “faith exchange” emerges from this study as an original conceptual contribution, accentuating the relationship between faith and support in resettlement and desistance.

This chapter provides an overview of entrepreneurship clubs. It charts the development of these organisations, as a form of extracurricular activity. It introduces different forms of entrepreneurship clubs, such as Junior Achievement (JA) and Enactus, and explains how they grew from 1919 to the present. It also illustrates the differences between self-organised clubs, organised programs using clubs as a learning method, structured societies and nationally organised cooperative societies. The second part introduces research on student clubs in entrepreneurship education. It explores the benefits of clubs. It shows that clubs assist student learning, enable the acquisition of practical skills and improve college attendance, employment opportunities and career attainment. We argue that entrepreneurship clubs have improved student learning outcomes in entrepreneurship and simulated entrepreneurial learning, while impacting student self-efficacy and intentionality as well as improving employability and social learning. The final part of the chapter provides advice and tips for educators advising student-run entrepreneurship clubs. Ultimately, the chapter explains how student clubs have developed, why they are important for student learning and how advisors can support them.

All entrepreneurs interact simultaneously with multiple entrepreneurial contexts throughout their entrepreneurial journey. This conceptual paper has two central aims: (1) it synthesises the current literature on gender and entrepreneurship, and (2) it increases our understanding of how gender norms, contextual embeddedness and (in)equality mechanisms interact within contexts. Illustrative contexts that are discussed include entrepreneurship education, business networks and finance.

This conceptual paper draws upon extant literature to develop its proposed conceptual framework. It provides suggestions for systemic policy interventions as well as pointing to promising paths for future research.

A literature-generated conceptual framework is developed to explain and address the systemic barriers faced by opportunity-driven women as they engage in entrepreneurial contexts. This conceptual framework visualises the interplay between gender norms, contextual embeddedness and inequality mechanisms to explain systemic disparities. An extra dimension is integrated in the framework to account for the power of agency within women and with others, whereby agency, either individually or collectively, may disrupt and subvert the current interplay with inequality mechanisms.

This work advances understanding of the underrepresentation of women entrepreneurs. The paper offers a conceptual framework that provides policymakers with a useful tool to understand how to intervene and increase contextual embeddedness for all entrepreneurs. Additionally, this paper suggests moving beyond “fixing” women entrepreneurs and points towards disrupting systemic disparities to accomplish this contextual embeddedness for all entrepreneurs. By doing so, this research adds to academic knowledge on the construction and reconstruction of gender in the field of entrepreneurship.

What does special education mean for general education teachers of students with disabilities? In this chapter, we share our approach to advancing values in the classroom placement of special education students in the general education setting. We will take the reader on a journey through time with “Jessie,” a special education student, as we examine the historical exclusion of students with disabilities to their inclusion in general education schools, environments and finally, general education classrooms. In doing so, we will examine the evolution of the general education teacher's role and how the historical perspective impacts current practices. Then, we will elucidate the benefits of inclusion, not only for the special education student but for the nondisabled peers as well. We will recommend values that should be maintained and practices that should be examined. This chapter will conclude with a connection between the values and recommendations of best practices for inclusive instruction.

This chapter examines the connections between race and class divisions and examines how they shape racial inequities in the distribution of resources, power and privilege. Throughout history, racial identity has been a key factor in determining a person's position in modern capitalist societies. As such, issues of race and class have preoccupied sociologists and other scholars with diverse ideological orientations. This is highlighted in debates around the nexus of race and class in the production of racial structures, laws and institutions that legitimate and perpetuate the normalisation and centrality of whiteness. This chapter summarises some of the historical and ongoing debates, providing a synthesis of how race and class divisions continue to shape contemporary intergroup relations and social policy. It delves into racial capitalism and how race intersects with other social identities to determine socio-economic hierarchy in many western countries.

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.

This study aims to analyze the effect of cognitive load and social value orientation on managers’ preferences when they face with two types of restructuring choices in financially distressed firms: the first belonging to the family of organizational restructuring (massive layoffs) and the second to the family of financial restructuring (debt increases).

The authors investigate experimentally the impact of managers’ cognitive load and social value orientation on the decision to restructure leveraged buyout (LBO) firms in financial distress by using either massive layoffs or debt increases.

By investigating the impact of managers’ cognitive load and social value orientation on the restructuring decision of an LBO firm in financial distress, the research reveals that, on average, cognitively loaded managers prefer massive layoffs over increased debt levels. The massive layoffs seemingly provide a relatively easier way to avoid conflict with influential, residual claimants. In contrast, social value–oriented managers actively avoid massive layoffs and prefer to increase debt.

These results imply that the performance mechanisms emphasized to improve agency relations, for example, in LBOs, have their own limitations during periods of financial distress. This study shows that one of these limits is related to cognitive distortions and personality traits.

In this research, the originality lies in understanding how managers’ internal factors affect their restructuring decision-making, in the case of LBO firms in financial distress.

The purpose of this paper is to explore teacher candidates’ response to young adult literature (prose and comics) featuring fat identified protagonists. The paper considers the textual and embodied resources readers use and reject when imagining and interpreting a character’s body. This paper explores how readers’ meaning making was influenced when reading prose versus comics. This paper adds to a corpus of scholarship about the relationships between young adult literature, comics, bodies and reader response theory.

At the time of the study, participants were enrolled in a teacher education program at a Midwestern University, meeting monthly for a voluntary book club dedicated to reading and discussing young adult literature. To examine readers’ responses to comics and prose featuring fat-identified protagonists, the author used descriptive qualitative methodologies to conduct a thematic analysis of meeting transcripts, written participant reflections and researcher memos. Analysis was grounded in theories of reader response, critical fat studies and multimodality.

Analyses indicated many readers reject textual clues indicating a character’s body size and weight were different from their own. Readers read their bodies into the stories, regarding them as self-help narratives instead of radical counternarratives. Some readers were not able to read against their assumptions of thinness (and whiteness) until prompted by the researcher and other participants.

Although many reader response scholars have demonstrated readers’ tendencies toward personal identification in the face of racial and class differences, there is less research regarding classroom practices around the entanglement of physical bodies, body image and texts. Analyzing reader’s responses to the constructions of fat bodies in prose versus comics may help English Language Arts (ELA) educators and students identify and deconstruct ideologies of thin-thinking and fatphobia. This study, which demonstrates thin readers’ tendencies to overidentify with protagonists, suggests ELA classrooms might encourage readers to engage in critical literacies that support them in reading both with and against their identities.

This paper aims to examine how the fields of social enterprise, social entrepreneurship and social innovation have theorised and applied the concepts of narrative and storytelling.

A literature review and subsequent thematic analysis were used. A keyword search of three databases identified 93 relevant articles that were subsequently reviewed for this paper.

Four main roles for storytelling and narrative were found in the literature: to gain support for social innovation, to inspire social change, to build a social-entrepreneurial identity and to debate the meaning and direction of social innovation itself.

Following the literature review, capacities and applications of storytelling and narrative in other, related fields are discussed to highlight practical use cases of storytelling that might currently be underdeveloped in the social enterprise and innovation sectors.

The paper argues that the social innovation and enterprise literature predominantly views storytelling as a form of mass communication, while often overlooking its ability to foster communal debate and organise intrapersonal dialogue as possible aspects of strategic thinking and innovation management in social enterprise, social entrepreneurship and social innovation.