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This chapter outlines a unique collaboration between industry, academia and education to embed sustainability across the hairdressing sector. The chapter is in two parts with the first part written by Dr Denise Baden from the academic perspective. Dr Baden begins by outlining why the hairdressing sector is especially important to engage with respect to sustainability. Three projects run by the Southampton Business School, University of Southampton, and funded by the Economics and Social Research Council (ESRC) are then described. Lynda Whitehorn then expands upon the context of hairdressing practice, training and education from the perspective of Vocational Training Charitable Trust (VTCT) – a specialist awarding organisation which offers vocational and technical qualifications in a variety of service sectors, including hairdressing and barbering. In the process, we show how the collaboration between academia, industry and education enabled sustainable practice to become embedded across the sector.

This paper reports on research into the employment of older workers, paid and unpaid, in the voluntary sector. It draws on six case studies which were the research focus. The research was designed to test the hypothesis that the voluntary sector has been in the forefront of utilising the knowledge, skills and talents of older workers and to draw out practical guidance for other organisations in this and other sectors.

The author consulted over 30 people with a known interest in older workforce issues and/or employment in the voluntary sector and, from these discussions, identified six organisations to be the subject of structured telephone interviews. The interviewees were all at chief executive or senior management level.

The research confirmed that older workers, whether they are paid employees or volunteers, are of great value to the voluntary sector. This is because of their life experience and skills and, particularly in the case of volunteers, their availability and flexibility. The six organisations on which the research focused provided excellent examples of good practice. However, this does not generally involve employment policies and practices with a specific focus on older workers but, rather, policies and practices which embrace older workers.

Earlier research has usually focused on the private and public sectors. South East England Forum on Ageing wanted this project to focus specifically on the voluntary sector and this decision was vindicated by the fact that, in searching the literature and discussions with authorities, the author did not identify previous research on older workers specifically focused on this sector.

The study aims to investigate the effect of the dialogue embedded synectics model of teaching on the creative thinking of students.

The research design of the study was a nonequivalent control group design of quasi experimental research. This study collected data from 80 students in the seventh grade from two different government schools in Bathinda, Punjab, India, which were selected using a random method. The subjects of experimental group were taught by the investigator using the dialogue embedded synectics model of teaching and the subjects of control group were taught by their teacher using the traditional teaching method, i.e. the Herbartian method. The data collections were done using the creative thinking test developed by Baqer Mehdi (1995). The data analysis techniques used t-test.

Key finding indicates that the dialogue embedded synectics model of teaching is effective in enhancing the creative thinking of students as compared to the traditional method.

The present work is unique in terms of development of an innovative pedagogy, i.e. the dialogue embedded synectics model of teaching, which has the potential to encourage students' creative thinking, a key concern for society in the 21st century. Therefore, it is suggested to conduct similar type of studies on this innovative pedagogy and this model of teaching may be used by teachers for enhancing creative thinking of seventh class students.