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\"Explores best practice for engagement with challenging educational contexts through service-learning drawing on the contributors' international experience\"-- Provided by publisher.

Service-Learning and Educating in Challenging Contexts explores the potential of service-learning identified as a way to integrate community service with academic study to enrich the on-going professional development of educators, especially in schools that are located in challenging contexts. This collection offers a further refinement of what typically comes under the remit of service-learning, switching the focus from the learning experience of the learner, to the educator and the deep and enriching professional learning opportunities that service-learning can offer. This approach to service-learning promotes collaborative practices amongst professional and in-service educators, and encourages an integration of theory and practice. The international contributors use their own experiences as well as current research to provide a thorough exploration of service-learning from national and international perspectives.

This article, co-authored by two research-active teachers with the support of their academic partner, reports on the resistance of an urban primary school in a northern city of England to the label ‘disadvantaged school’ and various judgements that refuse to take into account its holistic work with students and families from different and diverse minority ethnic backgrounds. The article will argue that there are flaws in the ways the school’s story is officially told where it does not acknowledge what is being done to address students’ experiences of immigration, poverty and deprivation, and the cultural barriers they often negotiate in coming to school. As a driver for change, practitioner research foregrounds the authenticity of school and classroom contexts and puts them under scrutiny as a means of informing strategic decisions. Utilising a case study design, this paper pulls together a range of data evidence to construct its narrative and tell the school’s story, working in collaboration with its university academic partner. In doing so, it contributes to our understanding of practitioner research within challenging urban school settings, under pressure from centralised conceptualisations of achievement gaps and school performance. It puts many of these ideas under scrutiny and asks fundamental questions about curriculum, pedagogy and accountability.

The article examines supplementary schooling within ethnic minority communities in Leeds and Oslo. Through an analysis of original research involving visits to a sample of supplementary schools in both cities, interviews with teachers and pupils, and reviews of unpublished documentation, the article seeks to understand the scale of provision, variety of purpose and the nature of pedagogy in these schools. Following a brief account of contextualising literature, the article gives an overview of supplementary schooling in each country, and describes research design and the profile of the participating schools. The article analyses the case study data under the following themes: group solidarity as the overarching function; community vs. individual interests; and curriculum, pedagogy and links with mainstream schooling. It thus considers the positioning of supplementary schools, both in terms of their purpose and relationship with mainstream provision, and examines the assessments of value made by participants. In conclusion, the article discusses the implications for policy and the role of individuals and communities in negotiating social, cultural and educational frameworks.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to draw on agency theory (AT) to develop and validate a scale to investigate customers’ loyalty towards salespersons under agency problems. Especially with credence services, customer-salesperson relationships are beset by problems that stem from personal differences and conflicts of interests. Design/methodology/approach – The context is financial investment services in Indonesia. Following Churchill’s (1979) procedure, initial qualitative surveys generated a pool of 44 items for the three AT asymmetries of risk, goal and information. Expert panel validation and exploratory factor analyses of a dataset (n = 429) confirmed a four-dimensional structure of 30 items. Finally, confirmatory factor analyses using a second dataset (n = 299) tested the effects of the four asymmetries on customer loyalty, and how the effects are moderated by customer trust and relationship duration. Findings – Overall, agency problems negatively influence customer loyalty. Information asymmetry has two discriminantly distinct dimension, quality and timeliness. Low trust amplifies the effects of all asymmetries, whereas relationship duration reduces the effects of only risk asymmetry. Comparison with a three-factor model shows that the four-factor scale is superior. Research limitations/implications – Service firms desiring long-term customer relationships need to be cognisant of potential asymmetries created by salespersons, and develop initiatives to minimise potential fallouts from each asymmetry. These include proper alignment of compensation structures, accurate and timely communications of product information, and matching risk profiles between customers and salespersons. Regular customer feedback regarding perceived asymmetries would also help early problem detection. Finally, the findings would inform the development of policy matters and industry best practices. Originality/value – Besides contributing to the small stream of research that applies AT to marketing, this study is the first to develop and validate an AT scale that incorporates all three asymmetries.

Wake phenomena and its encounter with downstream bodies are of engineering importance as it can affect aerodynamic loads. This can induce unfavourable-or even dangerous-conditions to aircraft through a loss of lift, or stability and control. Such scenarios range from the local interactions between an aircraft wing and its empennage, to wakes emanated from buildings acting on a helicopter fuselage downstream. Therefore, wake physics must be evaluated to predict any consequential aerodynamic effects. Furthermore, accurately modelling turbulent wake regimes are challenging, as obtaining physically meaningful data requires high-fidelity techniques. In this thesis, canonical cases under static and dynamic conditions focusing on wake encounters are investigated computationally to address these concerns. This is achieved using a Detached-Eddy Simulation (DES) approach that will be validated with a static case before expanding to include overset methods to induce dynamic grid motion on a tandem configuration. Validation is performed by investigating the vortex shedding behaviour and wake characteristics of a separated flow over a square beam bluff-body. Spectral analyses of surface-forces reveal von Karman street dynamics with frequency correlations in the freestream-parallel and cross-stream directions. Metrics are verified against benchmark experimental data, where a considerable aerodynamic impact is implied by both first- and second-moment wake statistics up to a measured downstream distance of six characteristic lengths. The extent of numerical treatment is further demonstrated through validation of its shear-stresses, an auto-correlation function of point-probed velocities, while coherence is observed as peak frequencies correspond to surface vortex shedding frequency. This case is then subsequently used as a wake generator for the investigation of its aerodynamic impact downstream. A NACA0012 wing-section is placed three characteristic lengths downstream for insights on the aerodynamic effects of the bluff-body wake encounter. Time-averaged surface-forces on the wing-section are evaluated against a wake-free condition of the airfoil for reference. The wake encounter demonstrates a decrease in overall pressure distribution from wake-induced separation, with a strong correlation in lift response with the bluff-body vortex shedding dynamics. Instantaneous contours reveal flow behaviour resembling those expected of heave dynamics caused by the alternating vortex street. As oscillatory lift characteristics are induced, the work proposes approximating this response with the Sear's and Theodorsen's functions represented as a relative harmonic motion to the wake based on reduced frequency. Finally, expanding this framework to include overset grids accomplishes dynamic motion for forced harmonic pitching on a tandem wing-tail configuration. This subjects the horizontal stabilizer to a wake induced by pitch oscillations of its main wing located upstream. As this is a single rigid system with a rotational centre on the wing chord, it is observed that the moment arm translates to a coupled pitch-heave motion at the tail. In addition, a separated wake with characteristic leading and trailing edge vortices (LEV/TEVs) is emanated from the wing at the higher angles-of-attack in the harmonic pitch cycles. This leads to a direct correlation in wing-tail dynamics where the tail lift response can be distinguished into two components; the combination of its pitch-heave directly contributed by the tail moment arm, and a gust component by periodically encountering the separated wing wake. The combination of these mechanisms synthesises the tails response from both forced harmonic motion and wing wake interaction, and is shown to be significant to the entire (wing-tail) system. This contributes to novel insights on wake interactions, as the computational framework advances the understanding of tandem aerodynamic relationships under dynamic conditions.

The positive S-isotopic excursion of carbonate-associated sulfate (δ 34S CAS) is generally in phase with the Steptoean positive carbon isotope excursion (SPICE), which may reflect widespread, global, transient increases in the burial of organic carbon and pyrite sulfate in sediments deposited under large-scale anoxic and sulphidic conditions. However, carbon-sulfur isotope cycling of the global SPICE event, which may be controlled by global and regional events, is still poorly understood, especially in south China. Therefore, the δ 13C PDB, δ 18O PDB, δ 34S CAS, total carbon (TC), total organic carbon (TOC) and total sulfate (TS) of Cambrian carbonate of Waergang section of Hunan Province were analyzed to unravel global and regional controls on carbon-sulfur cycling during SPICE event in south China. The δ 34S CAS values in the onset and rising limb are not obviously higher than that in the preceding SPICE, meanwhile sulfate (δ 34S CAS) isotope values increase slightly with increasing δ 13C PDB in rising limb and near peak of SPICE (130-160 m). The sulfate (δ 34S CAS) isotope values gradually decrease from 48.6‰ to 18‰ in the peak part of SPICE and even increase from 18‰ to 38.5% in the descending limb of SPICE. The abnormal asynchronous C-S isotope excursion during SPICE event in the south China was mainly controlled by the global events including sea level change and marine sulfate reduction, and it was also influenced by regional events such as enhanced siliciclastic provenance input (sulfate), weathering of a carbonate platform and sedimentary environment. Sedimentary environment and lithology are not the main reason for global SPICE event but influence the δ 13C PDB excursion-amplitude of SPICE. Sea level eustacy and carbonate platform weathering probably made a major contribution to the δ 13C PDB excursion during the SPICE, in particularly, near peak of SPICE. Besides, the trilobite extinctions, anoxia, organic-matter burial and siliciclastic provenance input also play an important role in the onset, early and late stage of SPICE event.