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The focus of much e‐learning activity is upon the development of courses and their resources. Successful e‐learning takes place within a complex system involving the student experience of learning, teachers’ strategies, teachers’ planning and thinking, and the teaching/learning context. Staff development for e‐learning focuses around the level of technological delivery strategies when other issues such as the teachers’ conception of learning has a major influence on the planning of courses, development of teaching strategies and what students learn. This article proposes a more comprehensive framework for the design, development and implementation of e‐learning systems in higher education.

Statistical thinking is an intrinsic part of the quality movement. Helped by initiatives such as Six Sigma, there is greater acceptance of the importance of data analysis and a general trend towards embracing numeracy. It is timely to review the emergence of statistical thinking and consider the good and bad features resulting from its application in a wide range of sectors.

The paper first defines statistical thinking and justifies its importance to the quality movement. The achievements from the past 25 years are then considered sector by sector along with their collateral damage.

The following lessons are proposed for the next 25 years: statistical thinking needs to expand its remit to include more aspects of analytical thinking becoming what may be called wider statistical thinking; statistical thinkers have ground-breaking ideas and need to communicate with managers at the top of the hierarchy to ensure that both the thinkers and the ideas have the influence they deserve; whilst learning from past successes, the quality movement must be mindful of knock-on effects and nurse a holistic viewpoint; expect the unexpected.

Statistical thinking is gaining more prominence in all sectors and is used within the quality movement to make major progress as well as major upsets. It is important that the quality movement treads carefully and makes sure that society as a whole benefits from the ever increasing drive for improvement.

This chapter provides an overview of approaches to collaboration in Ontario and then focuses in particular on the experiences of the Norway–Canada (NORCAN) programme involving nine schools across Alberta and Ontario (Canada) and Norway from 2014 to 2018. NORCAN was established through collaboration by the teachers’ unions in Alberta (Alberta Teachers’ Association), Norway (Utdanningsforbundet), and Ontario (Ontario Teachers’ Federation) and the Ontario Ministry of Education. A central guiding question was co-developed to inform the work of NORCAN: ‘How can an international network of schools and educators committed to mindful leadership help to identify obstacles to students’ mathematics learning and develop strategies for attaining success?’ With funding support, school teams involving school leaders, teachers, and students had opportunities to collaborate at NORCAN-facilitated events, school visits in each jurisdiction, through an online platform, and ongoing communication. The following important features of NORCAN are identified: the development of collaborative structures, processes, relationships, and trust; student voice, agency, and leadership; professional learning and agency; and sharing knowledge and de-privatizing practices. Four lessons for policy and practice are proposed: 1. school-to-school collaboration benefits from adequate resources of time, funding and a support infrastructure; 2. the intentional cultivation of mutually respectful and trusting relationships is essential; 3. bringing together educators and students as co-learners is powerful and beneficial; and 4. mobilizing knowledge and de-privatizing practices needs to be central to the purpose and operation of collaboration.

Many organisations, including the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, have recommended increasing the number of hours of consultant obstetric presence in UK National Health Service maternity units to improve patient care. St Mary’s Hospital, Manchester implemented 24-7 consultant presence in September 2014. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

To assess the impact of 24-7 consultant presence upon women and babies, a retrospective review of all serious clinical intrapartum incidents occurring between September 2011 and September 2017 was carried out by two independent reviewers; disagreements in classification were reviewed by a senior Obstetrician. The impact of consultant presence was classified in a structure agreed a priori.

A total of 72 incidents were reviewed. Consultants were directly involved in the care of 75.6 per cent of cases before 24-7 consultant presence compared to 96.8 per cent afterwards. Negative impact due to a lack of consultant presence fell from 22 per cent of the incidents before 24-7 consultant presence to 9.7 per cent after implementation. In contrast, positive impact of consultant presence increased from 14.6 to 32.3 per cent following the introduction of 24-7 consultant presence.

Introduction of 24-7 consultant presence reduced the negative impact caused by a lack of, or delay in, consultant presence as identified by serious untoward incident (SUI) reviews. Consultant presence was more likely to have a positive influence on care delivery.

This is the first assessment of the impact of 24-7 consultant presence on the SUIs in obstetrics.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the education of children at St Helena Penal Establishment in Queensland and the trials faced by the educators that delivered their formal schooling. The paper will add to the growing research into the prison island and will provide an insight into a unique facet of education in the newly established Australian State of Queensland.

The historical analysis draws on original documents and published works to chronicle the provision of education to the children of warders at the St Helena Penal Establishment.

The establishment of the Department of Public Instruction and the introduction of the State Education Act of 1875 were intended to provide Queensland children from 6 to 12 years of age with free, compulsory, and secular primary education. The full implementation of the Act took until 1900, and in the process, initiatives like St Helena State School No. 12, through issues of administrative control, saw teachers excluded from the Department of Public Instruction in order to include schoolchildren under the auspices of the same department.

The research paper is an initial investigation into the subject and limited by the paucity of primary data available on the topic.

The case study adds to the growing literature on other aspects of the prison at St Helena, Queensland and adds to knowledge of life on the island. Furthermore, the aspects of control over staff on the island and the requirement for the teachers to double as guards, ready to take up arms in defence of the prison, provides new insights into the obligations placed on some early educators.

Existing quantitative research demonstrates negatively impacted mental health outcomes for people detained in immigration removal centres (IRCs) in the UK. However, there is limited qualitative research on the phenomenology of life inside UK IRCs. The purpose of this paper is to explore the psychosocial stressors experienced by people in detention, the psychological impacts of being detained and the ways in which people express resilience and cope in detention.

In-depth interviews were conducted with nine people who had previously been held in UK IRCs. Interview transcripts were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis.

Participants experienced incredulity and cognitive dissonance at being detained, and found themselves deprived of communication and healthcare needs. These stressors led participants to feel powerless, doubt themselves and their worldviews, and ruminate about their uncertain futures. However, participants also demonstrated resilience, and used proactive behaviours, spirituality and personal relationships to cope in detention. Antonovsky’s (1979) theory on wellbeing – sense of coherence – was found to have particular explanatory value for these findings.

The sample of participants used in this study was skewed towards male, Iranian asylum seekers, and the findings therefore may have less applicability to the experiences of females, ex-prisoners and people from different geographical and cultural backgrounds.

This study offers a range of new insights into how detention in the UK impacts on people’s lives. The findings may be useful to policy makers who legislate on and regulate the UK immigration detention system, as well as custodial staff and health and social care practitioners working in IRCs.

Manfred Kets de Vries holds the Raoul de Vitry d’Avaucourt Chair in Human Resource Management and is Clinical Professor of Management and Leadership at the European Institute of Business Administration (INSEAD). Furthermore, he is the Director of INSEAD’s Global Leadership Center. He is also Program Director of INSEAD’s top management program: “The Challenge of Leadership: Developing your Emotional Intelligence”. He has lectured at management institutions worldwide, and has acted as a consultant in organizational design/transformation and strategic human resource management for leading US, Canadian, European, African and Asian companies. Manfred Kets de Vries brings a different view to the much‐studied subjects of leadership and the dynamics of individual and organizational change. Bringing to bear his knowledge and experience of economics, management, and psychoanalysis, Kets de Vries scrutinizes the interface between international management, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, and dynamic psychiatry. In this interview, he discusses his latest publication Are leaders born or are they made? The case of Alexander the Great and the implications his findings have for the modern business leader.

An earlier examination of the relationship between states' per capita expenditures for public welfare and their divorce rates found no relationship between the two for observations prior to 1985. However in 1985, the two were related, states' public welfare expenditures being inversely predictive of their divorce rates: the less states' spent for public welfare, the higher their divorce rates, and conversely, the more they spent, the lower their divorce rates. Translated, this meant that family life was less stable in states that did less to support family life and more stable in states that did more to support family life. This finding is important because of the wide‐spread belief that government social programs undermine family life and foster family break‐up.

Life studies are a rich source for further research on the role of the Afro‐American woman in society. They are especially useful to gain a better understanding of the Afro‐American experience and to show the joys, sorrows, needs, and ideals of the Afro‐American woman as she struggles from day to day.