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Older adults often navigate periods of disruptive transition, such as rehousing, that can be understood in terms of ritual transformation, a concept that describes changes to the social self in terms of deconstruction, liminality and reconstruction. Music therapy can assist older adults’ movement through these stages. This paper aims to engage theoretical perspectives on ritual to consider the social and cultural transformation of these residents of a long-term care nursing home.

Ethnographic theory and literature on the ritual process are used to reflect on one music therapist’s (first author’s) experience providing music therapy to older adult residents of a long-term care nursing home. The therapist facilitated a collaborative “healing story” whose performative aspects engaged the residents in their own healing process. These experiences culminated in a group songwriting experience with a resident choir ensemble.

The healing narrative involved aspects of the person, selfhood, relationship and culture more than elements of physicality or functional abilities. Music therapists working with older adults may find this theoretical perspective informative in interpreting resident behaviors and needs, identifying and addressing therapeutic goals and fostering a healing narrative.

Care and interventions for older adults are often guided by the biomedical model of aging as an illness. While sociological and psychological theories of aging offer alternatives, these are not always prominent in interventions. This exploration of aging and transition as ritual transformation offers one such needed and insightful perspective to inform practice.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the effects of the customer company governance into supplier actors' experiences.

Comparative case study of four strategic networks and 16 partnerships. Research approach is twofold: in the first phase of analysis, the governance concerning each partnership is analyzed. In the second phase, the supplier actors' experiences are analyzed in the context of the customer governance. Data of this research consist of 13 customer and 16 supplier interviews.

First, the analysis showed that the strong use of authority in the situation of a dependent supplier and a committed actor leads to a negative experience of unreasonableness. Second, in the same situation, high social governance, with other mechanisms used only weakly, leads to a highly positive experience of reasonableness. Third, in intermediately governed partnerships, the supplier actors are basically satisfied with the partnership, but discuss and to some degree question the nature of the relationship as a partnership.

On the basis of this research it is suggested that a deeper and longitudinal study of the effects of supplier actors' experiences should be conducted.

Customers should develop a conscious network strategy, as it is suggested that governance effects on the experiences could further affect suppliers' commitment, loyalty and learning.

A new research setting within the new institutional theory, which adds value by discussing the relationship between the customer governance and supplier actors' experience.

In College Learning for the New Global Century, the National Leadership Council of Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) argue for a liberal education for all students because “(i)n an economy fueled by innovation, the capabilities developed through a liberal education have become America’s most valuable economic asset.” (LEAP, 2007). The Business for a Better World Center and the School of Business at George Mason University endorse this view and have applied the liberal education approach to the study of business. This paper aims to explore the current environment of business education, the role of liberal education and the school’s programs and their benefits.

This paper relies on a case-study approach.

In this paper, the authors explore how George Mason University’s School of Business brings a liberal education approach to business education and draws on a combination of high impact practices, such as first-year seminars, common intellectual experiences, learning communities, collaborative assignments, undergraduate research, community-based learning, internships, capstone courses and projects and diversity and global learning (Kuh, 2008). Mason’s experience demonstrates the feasibility and benefits of this integration.

This case study provides unique insight into how business schools can integrate a liberal education approach into business education with successful results. As such, the paper contributes to the growing body of research on the benefits of liberal arts and business education models as a means of addressing global goals and provides a valuable case study to understand better the necessity of integrative, interdisciplinary learning.

The purpose of this paper is to contend that collegiate programs should carefully plan their capstone courses in light of the educational mission, pedagogical content knowledge, instructional techniques and delivery formats.

This is a concept paper with elements of theory building from the case of business strategy courses. After an overview of relevant research along with past and current practices, capstone course content projects and assignments are discussed in relation to delivery formats such as on-campus, hybrid partial online and full distance education.

Faculty and academic departments choosing project assignments should seek to create an integrative learning experience for students using carefully balanced delivery methods and content. Each of the instructional methods and delivery systems have certain advantages, and the use of these techniques is not mutually exclusive, in that some faculty members may choose to teach course sections using multiple learning systems.

As colleges and universities increase the range of instructional techniques and delivery formats, it is especially important to harmonize these methods with learning objectives for capstone learning experiences. Concepts for balanced integration and synthesis of topics are proposed for different instructional methods and delivery formats that can be applied in other disciplines. Using pedagogical content knowledge as a basis for improving teaching and learning is necessary to achieve balanced integration.

As scholars, educators and policymakers recognize the impact of partnership-based research, there is a growing need for more in-depth understanding of how to conduct this work, especially with and in diverse project teams. The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical examination of adopting a culturally disruptive approach in a research–practice partnership (RPP) that includes Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers, designers and educators who worked together to collaboratively design culturally situated experiences for sixth graders.

Following a design-based implementation research methodology, data from design and implementation are presented as two case studies to illustrate key findings.

Leveraging the frame of culturally disruptive pedagogy, key tensions, disruptions, self-discoveries and resulting pedagogical innovations are outlined. While the authors experienced multiple forms of disruptions as researchers, designers and educators, they focused on tracing two powerful cases of how culturally disruptive research directly and immediately resulted in pedagogical innovations. Together the cases illustrate a broader shift toward interdependence that the team experienced over the course of the school year.

A new frame for conducting culturally disruptive research is presented. Both the theoretical application and practical implementation of this frame demonstrate its usefulness in conceptualizing culturally situated research through cultivating an uncomfortable yet generative interdependence.

Findings include examples and strategies for how to practically conduct multi-sector, interdisciplinary research and teaching. Scholars and educators share their stories which illustrate the practical impact of this work.

Critical insights presented in this paper build on and contribute to the growing body of work around RPPs, community-based research and other critical partnership methods.

Purpose – Research shows that new graduates of Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) programs often fail to understand and appreciate the connection between library science theory and practice. In other fields, culminating experiences often serve the function of combining theory and praxis for students. While notably different from the current structure of the MLIS curriculum, other disciplines provide a model for how the culminating experience component of a degree program can be facilitated successfully. This chapter examines the culminating experiences of other fields in order to provide guidance for how American Library Association-accredited MLIS programs could adopt or integrate similar programs.

Approach – The study explores four culminating experiences commonly used in other fields: fieldwork, apprenticeships and residencies, service-learning, and creative exhibitions. For each culminating experience, recommendations for potential applications to MLIS curricula are provided.

Findings – Culminating MLIS experiences that bring students into the communities they will serve – for example, fieldwork, residencies, and service-learning – may better prepare them for the new world they will face as LIS professionals and may better introduce them to the experiences of their patrons. Exploration of these alternative culminating experiences may help students bridge the gap between theory and practice during and beyond their MLIS degree programs.

Originality/Value – A thorough literature review revealed no similar examination of culminating experiences in MLIS programs’ curricula in particular. Combined with other studies that make recommendations for updating the MLIS curriculum, this exploratory study can serve as a useful resource for MLIS programs hoping to redesign their curricula.

When implemented effectively and systematically across a curriculum, high impact practices (HIP) have the potential to increase student engagement and result in higher student achievement. The United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) is a four-year military university with a large liberal education core curriculum that provides the foundation for service and officership in the United States Air or Space Forces. Building on the liberal education core, the civil engineering (CE) major’s courses begin with the cornerstone field engineering course, paired with a two-week co-curricular experience for students at an Air or Space Force installation. With its motto “construct first, design later,” the field engineering course is an HIP and quintessential experiential learning course that gives students a practical frame-of-reference for future analysis and design courses. The CE major culminates with another HIP, the capstone design course, which gives students the opportunity to demonstrate their skills, building confidence in their ability to successfully apply those skills to the increasingly complex problems they will face after graduation. This book chapter provides a case study of the CE major at the USAFA, documenting the HIPs across the majors’ program, and highlighting the key elements and benefits of each.

The focus of this chapter is to compare and contrast two Master of Education programs, one in Louisiana, United States, the other in Ontario, Canada. Our discussion addresses program design including focus of the graduate degree; admission requirements; number of instructor contact hours; nature and dimensions of course content; culminating activities such as e-portfolios, Master's Research Projects, field experiences, internships, and theses; professional and program standards; as well as assessment procedures and accountability requirements. The ongoing pressure to improve our schools in an increasingly competitive global environment has heightened educational standards and expectations as never before (Cowie & Crawford, 2007). In these times of increased accountability and financial strain for publicly funded universities, this analysis of contemporary trends and processes may provide some relevant insight into current practices for those presenting graduate programs.

A growing body of evidence confirms that good teaching is the most important school-specific factor impacting student achievement and growth. Concerns over teachers’ effectiveness have led to escalating demands for reliable systems that measure teachers’ effectiveness. Such performance systems require a stable and explicit definition of knowledge, skills, actions, and dispositions that comprise the work of teaching. In this chapter, we refer to these as teacher “core competencies” (CCs). Well-defined core competency constructs can anchor investigations of teacher effectiveness for purposes in many different settings, but the field currently lacks a set of common stable descriptors. The descriptors encoded in current standards and assessments are plagued by confusion arising from multiple ideological perspectives, conflicting political views on teacher preparation, and disconnects between stakeholders (e.g., university versus alternative preparation routes).

This chapter presents a study designed to move from descriptive, “input-based” ways to describe teaching to the development and early testing of specific construct descriptors. We begin by distilling many disparate sources of authority regarding what teachers should know and be able to do and assess the validity and usefulness of the resulting descriptors across several measurement applications. We find evidence of stability across multiple populations and different settings and evidence that the constructs can describe preparation program emphases, as well as evidence that some program-level aggregate scores correlate with student assessment scores. We also investigate the stability of competency constructs in different settings, attempting to understand the implications of k-12 school contexts for interpreting core competency measurements of preparation programs.

Online offerings for transformative services create value for consumers, although little research examines the process through which these services deliver this value. The purpose of this paper is to develop a comprehensive framework to capture the complexity of the co-creation of transformative value experienced by the consumers of online transformative services.

This paper uses a netnography approach to examine longitudinal data from an online weight management program. In total, this research examines 15,304 posts from 3,149 users, including eight staff users.

Consumers integrate a range of social support resources, from informational support to esteem support, which provide a range of benefits such as new ideas and self-efficacy that underpin the different types of value such as epistemic and personal value. The degree of co-created value differs across the consumption experience but culminates over time into transformative value.

The proposed framework may be useful beyond the weight management and online contexts; however, further work is required in a range of behavioral contexts and other modes of service delivery.

By understanding the resources consumers integrate and value, co-created services can develop appropriate value propositions to assist in improving consumers’ well-being.

This research provides a comprehensive framework of the transformative value co-creation process, extending on existing frameworks which examine either the process, value co-creation or the types of value co-created.