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This paper is a thinking piece that examines, from the viewpoint of a Canadian pracademic, working through two definitions of pracademic, a collaborative relationship between academics and practitioners and a person engaged as a practitioner and researcher. Two aspects of a pracademics scholarship is discussed, wide awakeness and praxis. The purpose of the paper is to make the case that it is pracademics who are well suited and attuned to questioning, challenging, and disrupting the ordinariness of the everyday, to envision new possibilities, and who take responsibility for mobilizing the educational community to undertake meaningful social change within an education system. A case is provided to illustrate wide-awakeness and praxis in practice. A case is provide to illustrate how wide-awakeness and praxis present themselves in practice.

This paper considers the work of pracademics from Galileo Educational Network, located within a research-intensive university, who research and lead design-based professional learning. Drawing upon a design-based approach to guide design-based professional learning and design-based research, I highlight the ways in which wide-awakeness and praxis work themselves out in practice.

Drawing upon the two aspects of wide-awakeness and praxis, creates a liminal space for pracademics to engage with practitioners to undertake stubborn and persistent problems of practice to create important educational improvements. A key to engaging in transformational change through collaborative professionalism is to engage in sustained design-based professional learning led by pracademics.

This thinking piece offers the perspective of one Canadian pracademic who shows how pracademics are uniquely positioned to take on the work of transformation, agency, and social change.

This study aims to provide an empirical test of an existing theoretical model depicting the governance modes used by international franchisors when entering international markets.

Using a unique panel data set of 222 market expansions by US firms over a seven-year period, this paper tests hypotheses regarding the factors affecting the franchisors’ choice of governance modes when entering foreign markets.

Franchisors use governance modes with lower levels of control when faced with environmental uncertainties due to corruption, economic downturns and when the geographic distance is large. Moreover, the franchise system assets and its local market assets also affect the choice of governance modes.

Firms need to balance the costs of environmental uncertainty with the need to safeguard the firm’s capabilities and resources using governance modes with appropriate levels of control. This balance changes as the franchise company gains more experience in the local market and as once-emerging markets continue to develop.

This research identified additional governance modes used by franchisors compared to previous studies. Using multiple theoretical perspectives, the study supported significant portions of the Jell-Ojobor and Windsperger (2014) model of franchisor governance mode choice.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how fire services use social media to educate the public about safety and fire prevention.

Grounded theoretical methods were employed in a rigorous qualitative analysis of five significant fire services’ Twitter accounts in Ontario, Canada.

Seven main themes emerged from the data, with an overarching conclusion that tweets made by fire service organisations and professionals do not focus primarily on fire safety.

This paper addresses a gap in the literature in terms of understanding how social media communicates information about all three lines of defence against fire, with a focus on the first two: public fire safety education, fire safety standards and enforcement and emergency response.

The authors suggest that fire services need to employ a more segmented approach to social media posts with an objective to engage and educate the public.

This paper is the first extensive qualitative analysis to consider the particulars of fire services’ social media presence.

The process of statutory community aftercare for restricted hospital order service users is acknowledged as successful. Previous research examining the attitudes of forensic psychiatrists to the use of restriction orders has indicated that they view them as a useful clinical tool in some circumstances, particularly where there is evidence of previous breakdown of follow‐up. This study, as part of a larger project examining the effectiveness of statutory community aftercare, focused on the attitudes of social supervisors to the process of conditional discharge and their role within it. The findings showed that social supervisors agree that there are positive and negative aspects to the process. They overwhelmingly agreed that the legal framework ensured that service users continued engagement with psychiatric services, leading to enhanced compliance with treatment and follow‐up, but recognised that, at times, the role, because of its control aspect, created tension in the social worker‐service user relationship. Social supervisors suggested that investment should be made into providing appropriate accommodation for this group of people and, where appropriate, access to drug and alcohol misuse services.

In this book the terms ‘clean language’ and ‘clean language interviewing’ are written using lower case, according to the convention of the American Psychological Association (sixth edition). ‘Clean language interviewing’ is sometimes abbreviated to CLI.

The paper aims to fill a gap in the literature in relation to the determinants of customer value within the research and development (R&D) industry and word‐of‐mouth. It investigates whether context specific variables, such as organizational type and contract length, change customer value evaluations and the value – intention to repurchase – recommend system.

A survey of Australian customers of a research and development service organization was conducted. Structural equation modelling was used to develop a model investigating factors that affect customer value, intent to re‐purchase, and word‐of‐mouth/recommendation.

Relationship benefits, service benefits and sacrifice all had a significant influence on customer value. Efficient use of time is crucial for sacrifice evaluation. Relationship benefits were larger for government organizations than private organizations. Importance of value to recommend the organization to others was higher for longer contracts and government customers.

Results show that R&D organizations need to concentrate on both the technical service/science aspects and the relationship aspects in their contracts. Government institutions tended to emphasize the relationship benefits while private businesses considered service benefits, relationship benefits and sacrifice nearly equal in their determination of value. Intent to contract R&D organization for further work and the willingness to recommend it to others as a highly specialized and competent service provider seem to be higher for government customers and longer contracts.

This paper investigates customer value in a little researched industry, R&D. The findings are relevant for similar professional business‐to‐business services.

This paper reports on research into adolescents' mental health literacy, focusing on their ability to recognise two diagnosable mental illnesses and three mental health problems associated with loss. A vignette‐based questionnaire was developed and completed by a school‐based sample of adolescents. Different levels of understanding were identified for each vignette. Participants responded well, demonstrating the different levels of understanding. Grading of the responses provided an opportunity to explore and discuss differences between professional and lay understanding of mental health and illness. It was also useful when considering implications for practice. These were considered in relation to mental health promotion for young people and training the workforce across the child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) tiers.

The LAUSD is the largest school district in the State and is charged with the responsibility of educating over one‐fifth of the children in California. Taken individually, each of the LAUSD’s eleven local districts would rank in the top twenty in the State in terms of student population. The District is LA County’s second largest employer, and with an annual operating and capital budget of over nine billion dollars, it brings together a diverse range of active and dynamic stakeholders. In 2000 the LAUSD found itself at a crossroads. In response to growing criticism and the threat of a State‐mandated break‐up due to the poor performance of their schools, the District created eleven mini‐districts to improve accountability and take instructional programs closer to the people who use them. This paper provides background on the LAUSD’s decentralization effort and power sharing aspects of the District’s self‐imposed break‐up, and recommendations for addressing these issues are postulated.