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International educational research has shown that high quality coaching, mentoring, and induction for beginning teachers can enhance development and retention of highly effective teachers and, ultimately, increase student success. In Canada, like many jurisdictions, teacher induction programs have grown in popularity as a means to support beginning teachers, yet programs vary greatly in terms of delivery and effectiveness. This chapter presents the findings from a qualitative case study that examined one bespoke teacher induction program in the Western Québec School Board (WQSB). Specifically, it reports on the experience of mentor–coaches (MC) who are part of the school district’s Mentoring and Coaching Fellowship (MCF). In the district, mentoring and coaching are viewed as distinct, yet interconnected components of an effective induction program. In the WQSB, teaching fellows and MCs learn together in a social and situated context (Lave & Wenger, 1991) as they focus on four key elements: the practice of teaching, navigating school and district culture, what it means to be a teacher, and the formation of a teaching identity. Research has shown effective coaching and mentoring programs not only enhance teaching and learning, but also they offer powerful benefits to veteran teachers. With mentoring and coaching practice highly diverse and inconsistent depending on the quality of the relationship and the context, it is clear that effective selection, support and professional learning and development for MCs is essential. This chapter examines the strengths and challenges of the school district’s Mentor–Coach Professional Learning Network (MC PLN) from the perspective of network members. Data collected from questionnaires, focus groups and semi-structured interviews were abductively analyzed with and against Brown and Poortman’s (2018) five supporting conditions for effective PLNs. Study findings indicated that the MC PLN offers valuable professional learning and development for participants and is a critical feature in a powerful induction program that also focuses on “growing the top.” However, challenges also emerged that highlight the need for the district to ensure ongoing attention to the PLN’s structure and processes in order to sustain MC motivation, engagement, and commitment.

The purpose of this study is to use ecological footprint analysis (EFA) in an interdisciplinary graduate level course on sustainable development to better how education can facilitate learning and transform the perceptions and behavior of class participants.

This study uses an untreated control group research design with a pre‐test and post‐test to measure and explain the change in the EF of students enrolled in a graduate course on sustainable development taught at Texas A&M University in the spring of 2004. We uses the study test of means and multivariate regression analysis to make statistical conclusions about the degree to which education on sustainability affects the way students act and also to identify the major factors driving this behavioral change.

Results indicate that that graduate‐level education can significantly increase students' sustainable behavior as measured by their ecological footprints (EF) and that specific socioeconomic and proximity‐based variables contribute to this observed phenomenon.

This study provides insights into the effectiveness of teaching sustainable development courses at institutions of higher education by examining the change in specific EF components and identifying variables which help predict the change in EFs over the course of the semester.

This study uses an empirically‐driven, quantitative approach to understand the degree to which graduate‐level coursework on the topic of sustainable development transforms the perceptions and behavior of class participants.

This chapter investigates the phenomenon of teachers' “entitled attitude” that manifested itself as resistance to change in the midst of a curricular reform in the Indian school context. For teachers long socialized into a teacher-centered culture, the change expected was nothing less than a paradigm shift in the Kuhnian sense. However, conclusions drawn from studies involving cursory surveys and teacher observation pinned the problem to teachers' “entitled attitude,” an unwillingness to exert themselves beyond the minimum level required by school policies. This view reflects a lack of acknowledgement of teachers as persons with values and the capacity to think and feel as potential agents of community practices such as schooling. My study investigates the wider sociocultural historical and political basis of teachers' putative “entitled attitude” informed by Lev Vygotsky's dialectical approach. It accesses the interrelated history of a teacher at a number of levels using the teacher's life history to create the narrative. This “genetic” analysis helps illuminate what the curricular change means to teachers inside out. The findings are used to unravel the nature of support that would help teachers realize their agency and sway them from using entitlement as a compensatory mechanism to deflect change.

This chapter deals with aspects of the overall criticism in regard to higher education and its growing discrepancy between theory and practice, and the meaning of problem-based and authentic learning. The chapter is based on two specific cases that illustrate how higher education is organized in Sweden, and how education could be organized to correspond to the demands of authentic learning and a new form of knowledge production. Work-based learning started as an alternative to the ordinary three-year nursing program at a university college in the western part of Sweden. One main finding was that the students experienced the relation between the different types of teaching in the program as weak, and the different learning contexts in the program as being separate from each other. Higher Vocational Education (HVE) is a market-oriented vocational higher education program with close cooperation between an educational provider and working life. Work-based learning is a cornerstone of HVE, and authentic learning in a real-life setting constitutes a single course governed by its own syllabus. One main finding, was that students experienced a lack of progression in the work tasks and the subject content of the school-based education was not advanced enough. Workplace learning can serve as a structuring resource in education, but it can also be problematic because knowledge is inherent in routines and technologies.

The purpose of this paper is to expand the conversation about mentoring and policy and provides a detailed analysis of empirical research on mentoring polices in education, with a focus on adult mentoring in primary and secondary schools.

Articles in peer-reviewed journals were examined using a systematic content analysis. In total, 405 abstracts/articles were reviewed, and 37 articles were subjected to an in-depth analysis.

Although very few articles dealt specifically with mentoring policy in any substantial way, a major finding that emerged was that to be effective, policy development should include not only the stakeholders who have the power to create it, but also those who must implement it.

Although the authors acknowledge that the systematic search process may not have captured all the relevant articles, and that other books or resources on this topic might not have been accessed in the search process, serious research on the topic of mentoring policy and its implications for primary and secondary school contexts nevertheless seems to be limited.

The findings have implications for practice and future research, and point towards the need for a comprehensive research agenda on this topic.

The paper has value for the directions of future research.

For preservice teacher candidates (PSTs), receiving feedback on core practices is an important component in supporting the development of their practice. However, coaches are often underprepared to support PSTs on core practices, and feedback can be infrequent or low quality (Anderson and Stillman, 2013; Clarke et al., 2014). Understanding such variation in the content and process for providing feedback to PSTs is important in evaluating and improving feedback effectiveness for amplifying their learning.

The authors studied feedback provided by coaches in response to a video of a sample PST’s lesson. The authors examined the extent to which coaches’ feedback targeted the core practice of eliciting student thinking and whether this was associated with their assigned PSTs’ instructional practices during student teaching. The authors also questioned whether this aspect of coach feedback could be changed in response to professional development.

The results provide preliminary evidence that coaches vary in the extent to which they focus feedback on a particular practice, even when directed to do so. Moreover, when coaches provide focused feedback on a core practice, the PSTs that they coach use the core practice during student teaching. Further, coaches’ feedback can be improved through professional development.

This study contributes to a limited evidence base examining the association between feedback and PSTs’ observed practice. It also establishes that coach feedback can be improved with professional development. The authors discuss these results in the context of documenting and improving teacher preparation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate attitude of Indian consumers towards sustainable living. For the same, the construct of sustainable living is defined and its dimensions are explored. Then, consumers are segmented based on dimensions and profiles of identified segments are discussed upon.

A questionnaire was developed and introduced on a sample of one thousand consumers from three geographical areas of North India including Haryana (A Northern State), Delhi (National Capital Territory), and Chandigarh (Northern Union Territory). For analysis, principal component analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, cluster analysis, correlation, and chi-square were the statistical techniques applied.

Seven types of people attitude including attitude towards conserving ecology, anticipating mounting waste, need for recycling, civic norms, overcoming green myopia, environmental thinking, and norms for sustainable mobility were obtained. Based on cluster analysis, five consumer segments, namely, role models, upbeaters, rosy, bewilders, and disorients were observed. It is further found that major proportion of Indian consumers fall under the category role models with highest proportion of respondents in this segment.

The determinants of attitude and testing the theories of attitude formation can be an interesting area to study on Indian consumers. This kind of studies too can be replicated in other cultures and varied contexts. A unique point of further research emerges with the finding of variable gender. Hence, gender differences regarding sustainability or sustainable living can be investigated and reasons can be found out for gender gap.

In light of the findings, this research offers a unique 3 Ss stop → stare → speedup strategy to national as well as international marketers. The stop strategy is for bewilders and disorients segments. Stare strategy is for consumers of upbeaters and rosy segments, and the word speedup stands for role models. Accordingly, marketers need a comprehension on profile of role models as identified in the study in terms of aged males, highly educated married people who live in joint families.

Consumers as part of society can play a big role for enhancing green practices, thus, need to take initiatives and revolutionary actions regarding protection of environment. If consumers will be more willing to help solve environmental problems, then there will be less need for government interventions.

Attitude towards sustainable living in India has been explored; and to the best of researchers’ knowledge, the kinds of findings on Indian consumers are reported for the first time in literature. The information generated may have beneficial practical information for the businesses which see India as their potential target market. This study also uniquely identifies three components of sustainable living in the form of civic norms, environmental thinking, and norms for sustainable mobility.