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The COVID-19 pandemic caused tremendous upheaval in schooling. In addition to devasting effects on students, these disruptions had consequences for researchers conducting studies on education programs and policies. Given the likelihood of future large-scale disruptions, it is important for researchers to plan resilient studies and think critically about adaptations when such turbulence arises. In this article, we utilize qualitative analysis of interviews with research study leaders to illuminate practical and methodological challenges, as well as promising practices that arose during the pandemic period. We find that researchers made pivots to address practical challenges and protect the feasibility of their studies. We also find that researchers took precautions, where possible, to understand and bolster internal validity. However, these pivots frequently surfaced additional threats to construct and external validity. We conclude with recommendations for future studies conducted in times of prolonged unplanned school closures or other large-scale disruptions.

As federal strategic plans prioritize increasing diversity within the biomedical workforce, and STEM training and outreach programs seek to recruit and retain students from historically underrepresented populations, there is a need for interrogation of traditional demographic descriptors and careful consideration of best practices for obtaining demographic data. To accelerate this work, equity-focused researchers and leaders from STEM programs convened to examine approaches for measuring demographic variables. Gender, race/ethnicity, disability, and disadvantaged background were prioritized given their focus by federal funding agencies. Categories of sex minority, sexual (orientation) minority, and gender minority (SSGM) should be included in demographic measures collected by STEM programs, consistent with recommendations from White House Executive Orders and federal reports. Our manuscript offers operationalized phrasing for demographic questions and recommendations for use across student-serving programs. Inclusive demographics permit the identification of individuals who are being excluded, marginalized, or improperly aggregated, increasing capacity to address inequities in biomedical research training. As trainees do not enter training programs with equal access, accommodations, or preparation, inclusive demographic measures can welcome trainees and inform a nuanced set of program outcomes that facilitate research on intersectionality to support the recruitment and retention of underrepresented students in biomedical research.

This study examines the realities and challenges of internationalizing administrative staff in Japanese universities empirically due to the increasing globalization of higher education. The functions and roles of the administrative staff from the policy perspective, with the implementation of mandatory staff development (SD) and reforms to the standards for establishing universities, have been considered. This study attempts to describe the following three aspects: the international nature, working and training overseas experience, and administrative staff's educational background. The open data were obtained from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science website. The results of revealed that acquired insights can also become useful inputs for developing university policies concerning recruitment guidelines, methods, staff training, and "human capital development" in Japanese universities. This finding contributes to the policy making and SD of the internationalizing administrative staff in various countries in terms of foreign nationality, oversea experience, and educational background.

The United States is experiencing a teacher shortage crisis that is even more pronounced in rural communities. Teachers may be driven away from the profession if they feel inadequately trained or under-supported to address students' mental health needs. As such, an important teacher retention strategy is to ensure schools have enough mental health professionals. The goal of this study was to explore three different yet complementary strategies to recruit and retain a robust rural school mental health workforce: a rural immersion program for graduate students enrolled in counseling and school psychology programs, a virtual professional development series for existing rural school mental health professionals, and a workforce hiring strategy. Each strategy showed promise: six out of seven students stated they were more inclined to work in a rural setting as a result of the immersion, self-efficacy and job satisfaction significantly increased for rural school mental health professionals participating in the virtual professional development, and important recruitment strategies were identified by rural school leaders. While there is reason for optimism when it comes to creating a robust rural school mental health workforce, funds are urgently needed to make these strategies available to rural communities across the country.

Given the lack of research into native-speakerism among teachers of languages other than English (LOTEs), this qualitative study aims to bridge the gap by investigating the discriminatory and inclusive language employed in online recruitment for post-secondary institution instructors of LOTEs. The study also looks at how post-secondary institutions phrase language requirements and whether there is a difference in "native-speaker-teacher" bias depending on the language. For the purposes of this study, qualitative content analysis was used to examine 187 online job advertisements for teaching positions of different LOTEs that were posted by different post-secondary institutions across the United States. The findings of the study show that post-secondary institutions use discriminatory language such as "native" or "near-native" much more often than inclusive language such as "superior language skills," regardless of the language(s) that the position advertises for. The findings, however, show that job candidates for teaching positions of LOTEs are often required to have "native" or "near-native" proficiency in at least two languages, most commonly English plus the target language of focus.

This study explores the employee retention strategies implemented by administrators in educational institutions, focusing on Immaculate Conception College of Balayan, Inc. The qualitative case study involved 10 participants, including administrators and employees selected based on stable tenure and appropriate qualifications. Through face-to-face interviews, key determinants influencing retention, such as teacher satisfaction, job contentment, professional growth, and loyalty, were identified. Recognition and incentives emerged as the primary retention strategy, significantly influencing employee satisfaction and fostering a sense of belonging. The study concludes that these strategies are effective, contributing to the retention of skilled professionals. Recommendations emphasize the importance of recognizing and providing incentives as core strategies for administrators in educational settings, recognizing their role in creating a positive work environment and promoting sustained employee commitment. The findings at ICCBI underscore the observed effectiveness of these strategies.

As the teacher shortage continues to sweep the country, Grow Your Own (GYO) programs designed to attract and prepare more individuals into the teaching ranks are gaining national attention, particularly those targeting special education. Assisting paraprofessionals who work with students with disabilities has long been considered as one strategy among the array of ideas to grow more teachers and retain them. The solution includes GYOs that provide paraprofessionals with tuition support to earn their degrees and teaching certificates. Yet, little is known about outcomes of programs that fund paraprofessionals to become teachers. The state of Florida funded GYO program has compiled outcome data on more than 200 paraprofessionals who received tuition support to obtain their degrees. Data support the notion that when provided with financial assistance, paraprofessionals do earn their degrees and apply for teaching certification. Retention data also indicate that they remain certified at commendable levels.

Introduction: Recruiting undergraduate students to participate in research has long been an established practice within psychology. Although this data source has weaknesses, this involvement in the research process has considerable pedagogical value in teaching students research methodology. Statement of the Problem: Most common software packages used to manage participant pools tend to be expensive, to the extent that it prohibits access for small institutions and departments. Literature Review: Highlighting the problem, we cite research related to using undergraduates as participants, pedagogical value of these experiences, and current trends in software distribution. We then provide evidence of successful implementation of open-source software (OSS) in educational settings, and conclude with OSS options capable of addressing the problem of access. Teaching Implications: By providing students research experiences, both as a researcher and as a participant, we enhance their understanding of this process. Secondary to this, we can foster within them a skill set that is valuable to disciplines outside of academia. Conclusion: The implementation of an OSS system to manage research participants provides a cost-effective means to expand the learning and research opportunities of available to students.

The purpose of this study is to explore the views of autistic adults on randomised controlled trials, specifically on processes such as randomisation and blinding, to understand the barriers and facilitators for recruiting autistic people to randomised controlled trials involving medications. We conducted one-to-one interviews with 49 autistic adults. Interviews were audio-recorded and analysed thematically. The participants found randomised controlled trial processes acceptable and linked positive attitudes towards randomised controlled trial participation to autistic peoples' heightened sense of fairness and preference for evidence-driven knowledge. However, randomised controlled trial designs may be incompatible with a (1) preference for a controlled predictable world, (2) perceived vulnerability at physical and mental health levels and (3) history of misunderstanding and exclusion, crucially from healthcare professionals. Suggestions that emerged from our findings include efforts to co-produce research to nurture trust and adapting communication practices to improve access to trials. Autistic people are a highly motivated group to work with research teams to mitigate barriers to randomised controlled trial participation. We explored what psychosocial determinants play a role in the acceptability of randomised controlled trials to test interventions to improve quality of life and mental health in autistic adults. The study provides useful information that may help the design and conduct of more accessible trials with and for the autistic community.

Underrepresentation of socioeconomically, culturally, and/or linguistically diverse (SCLD) children with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD) and their families has become a focal point for researchers. This systematic review aimed to identify researchers' strategies for recruiting and retaining SCLD families of children with NDD, published between 1993 and 2018. One hundred twenty-six articles were included, and study samples were categorized as "High SCLD" and "Low SCLD". Chi-square tests of independence were used to determine associations between sample composition (i.e., High/Low SCLD sample) and study characteristics reported. Significant associations were found between sample composition and studies that explicitly stated intention to recruit SCLD families, X[superscript 2](1) = 12.70, p < 0.001, Phi = 0.38 (moderate); and for studies that reported the following participant characteristics: language, X[superscript 2](1) = 29.58, p < 0.001, Phi = 0.48 (moderate-to-large); and race/ethnicity + SES + language, X[superscript 2](1) = 19.26, p < 0.001, Phi = 0.39 (moderate). However, associations were not found between recruitment and retention approaches and whether studies included High SCLD or Low SCLD samples. Further study of NDD researchers' recruitment and retention approaches that successfully include SCLD families is needed.

To explore scientific mobility patterns, we leverage a rich bibliometric dataset on Taiwanese academia. We investigate the movement and productivity of 21,051 highly active researchers who published while affiliated with Taiwanese higher education institutions based on 30 years' worth of publication and affiliation records from 1991 to 2020. The analysis shows evidence of brain drain in Taiwan since the 2010s, with the U.S. the top destination for researchers moving from Taiwan (as well as the largest source of inbound researchers). China comes a close second to the U.S. as the top destination for outbound scholars. Studying how Taiwan's universities recruited talent after the country adopted the 2005 excellence initiative, we discover that the numbers of scholars recruited by World Class Universities (WCUs) and non-WCUs surprisingly converge with WCUs exhibiting a dramatic decrease in new recruits. Our evidence uncovers that inbound scholars, after their move, are more productive than non-mobile colleagues; however, this effect declines over time. We discuss implications for the study of excellence initiatives, their (un)intended consequences, and mechanisms of talent circulation that greatly impact research production and research university development.

International students have the potential to contribute significantly to host countries through cultural enrichment, economic growth, and human capital development. However, their successful integration into the host society is crucial to realise these benefits. By applying the framework of the two-way integration process from acculturation theory, this study examines the employment integration of international students in Finland, a non-native English-speaking country. Our semi-structured, qualitative in-depth interviews identify several key challenges encountered by international students, including limited information about the labour market, unfamiliarity with recruitment practices, a lack of industry connections, communication gaps from recruiting companies, and host country language barriers. We provide recommendations to organisations and recruiters on how to embrace diversity in their recruitment processes, as well as suggestions to universities on how to better support international students' transition into the workforce of the host country.

Failure in implementing education policy affects not only school leadership practices but also the overall quality of public education. This study aims to investigate the implementation of educational policies made for (a) the recruitment of school principals and (b) guiding their responsibilities in community schools of Nepal. Drawing on interviews conducted with 12 principals and six teachers, we examine whether Education Regulation enacted by the Government of Nepal in 2002--mainly Rule 93 on the criteria for the selection of principals and Rule 94 on their assigned responsibilities--was fully implemented. Our findings show that overpoliticization in school management, top-down approaches to policymaking, lack of transparency and awareness about policy provisions, and workload pressures for principals have resulted into implementation failure. For implementing educational policies related to school leadership, frequent training for principals, presence of media for parental awareness, and legal institutions for justice are important.

Underrepresentation of historically marginalized populations in clinical trials continues to threaten the validity of health intervention research. Evidence supports the merits of intercept and other proactive forms of recruitment for achieving more equitable representation. However, researchers also report lower retention and adherence to protocols among these populations, particularly in longitudinal studies. Few studies have compared recruitment methods for longitudinal randomized trials testing health interventions, with even fewer having done so for trials involving ecological momentary assessment (EMA). As intervention research integrates EMA and other data collection approaches requiring substantial participant effort, it is critical to better understand the effectiveness and implications of strategies to improve the representativeness of health research. This secondary data analysis compared outcomes of proactive and reactive recruitment strategies (mobile lab intercepts and internet/flyer advertising, respectively) in study inclusion, task completion, and retention within a 14-day randomized controlled trial that used EMA to evaluate cigarette package health messages. Proactive recruitment resulted in higher proportions of participants with low income and education, limited health literacy, and of diverse racial/ethnic makeup. However, this recruitment method also resulted in lower task completion, especially in the second week of the trial period, and lower retention, although group differences were not explained by participant sociodemographic characteristics targeted by inclusion efforts. We conclude that proactive recruitment via intercepts is an effective strategy for health intervention research that aims to include stakeholders from historically marginalized groups but that researchers and funders must recognize these methods require additional resources, considerations, and capacity to address non-trivial challenges to successful participation.

Background: The recruitment of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) has been an ongoing effort for specialized libraries and library programs, especially as they try to fill technical roles while combatting internalized biases and candidates' potential self-deselection by not applying or otherwise removing themselves from the recruitment process. Introduction: This case study examines the recruitment efforts of the National Center for Data Services (NCDS) for a paid internship program for BIPOC graduate students interested in data librarianship in health sciences settings. Methods: To enhance recruitment efforts and support applicants, NCDS met with consultants on equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility. The recruitment process included reaching out directly to graduate programs, hiring an independent application coach who was available to consult with anyone interested in applying, holding informational sessions about the internship opportunity, and limiting the required components of the application, which included removing the need for letters of recommendation or support. Results: Although the target group was a very small pool of Library and Information Science (LIS) BIPOC students interested in medical and data librarianship, we received applications from all United States (U.S.) racial groups, except Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander. The recruitment efforts led to 38 applications for 8 positions in 2022 and 59 applications for 12 positions in 2023. Conclusions: The resultant number of applications showed an interest and need for specialty programs for BIPOC LIS students and highlighted how recruitment methods impact participation in specialized programs. Further research is necessary to assess the impact of various recruitment styles for this target group and the impact of these recruitment methods.

Annually, thousands of post-secondary students studying accounting in Canada participate in the Chartered Professional Accountant Recruitment (CPA Recruit) process to secure employment with accounting firms. Despite the competitive process, there has been negligible research studying how students secure these coveted positions. This qualitative research study explored the lived experience of ten students throughout the recruitment process, identifying 119 success strategies. Fink's taxonomy of significant learning, a conceptualized model that focuses on high quality teaching and learning, was used to categorize the strategies. Findings revealed that while having foundational discipline-specific knowledge was important, intra- and interpersonal skills were deemed more important in helping participants effectively apply and integrate their learning, ultimately demonstrating their ability to transfer learning between contexts. Implications and recommendations are discussed for academic programs to enhance curricular and co-curricular components for students to strengthen and transfer soft skills, and for organizations and professional bodies to improve recruitment practices.

Out-of-school time (OST) programs that work with historically marginalized youth, employ staff that match the demographics of participants, and are well connected to mental health resources are uniquely positioned to support participants to recognize the risks and assets linked to their mental health and well-being. Such programs can simultaneously address career readiness, exposing youth to mental health professionals and career pathways and thereby nurturing the future bilingual-bicultural mental health workforce. This article evaluates the Latino Service Providers (LSP) Youth Promotor Internship program, which was launched in response to the steady increase of the Latinx population in Sonoma County and an attendant concern for ongoing mental health disparities.

To support the workforce gap of skilled cybersecurity professionals, gamified pedagogical approaches for teaching cybersecurity have exponentially grown over the last two decades. During this same period, e-sports developed into a multi-billion dollar industry and became a staple on college campuses. In this work, we explore the opportunity to integrate e-sports and gamified cybersecurity approaches into the inaugural US Cyber Games Team. During this tenure, we learned many lessons about recruiting, assessing, and training cybersecurity teams. We share our approach, materials, and lessons learned to serve as a model for fielding amateur cybersecurity teams for future competition.

The Ministry of Education document "Action Plan for Pacific Education" 2020-2030 is a government commitment to transform outcomes for Pacific learners and their families. Key Shift 5 of this Action Plan focuses on valuing, growing, and retaining "teachers, leaders, and educational professionals with diverse Pacific heritages" (Ministry of Education, 2020a, p. 38). This professional inquiry explored what Key Shift 5 looks like within the Resource Teaching service. A literature review examined ethnic minority leadership in education, specifically looking at the enablers and barriers. The Pacific research method, talanoa, was used to give voice to the lived experiences of four ex-Resource Teachers: Learning and Behaviour (RTLB). Findings from this inquiry acknowledge the misrepresentation of Pacific at decision making spaces and highlight benefits and advantages Pacific RTLB bring to their roles. The importance of support from senior management was indicated by all participants as a key factor in valuing, growing, and retaining "teachers, leaders, and educational professionals with diverse Pacific heritages".

African American male educators are becoming extinct in our current United States School system. Representing less than 2% of the teaching force, our recruitment efforts will need adjustments to increase this population of educators in schools (Bristol & Mentor, 2018; Goings & Bianco, 2016; Wallace & Gagen, 2019). To address this concern, our study explores the perspective of African American male rural school leaders on the need to recruit more African American males into educational professions. Through three semi-structured interviews, 60-90 minutes, we identified the lack of opportunities and targeted recruitment strategies for this population into the field of education. Our findings underscore the importance of expanding opportunities and implementing creative recruitment strategies that can help bring more African American male educators into the profession. Additionally, we recommend that principal preparation programs be examined to ensure they are effectively preparing African American males for leadership roles in education.

This study investigated the move structure utilised in hotel recruitment posters. To achieve this, a collection of hotel recruitment posters was obtained from groups on Facebook seeking hotel jobs, as this social media service boasts the highest number of members. Three groups were selected for data collection. In total, 525 hotel recruitment posters were collected. Only the English posters were analysed to determine the move structures employed in hotel recruitment posters. The study incorporated inter-coder reliability procedures to ensure the accuracy of the findings. The inter-coder reliability rate was 90.28%, indicating a high level of agreement between the coders. The analysis revealed that hotel recruitment posters comprised 19 distinct moves and 19 individual steps. The move analysis revealed the presence of five mandatory moves, namely Hotel identity (99.43%), Job position (98.29%), Contacts (86.48%), Poster purpose (76.95%), and How to apply (70.48%), along with four mandatory steps, consisting of Hotel name (99.43%), Hotel logo (79.43%), Phone number (74.86%), and Apply by email (65.71%). The findings of this study have implications for both teachers and students, as they can incorporate these results as a chapter in English for Specific Purposes courses, thus enhancing their understanding and application of the topic.

The purpose of this article is to report the findings of a systematic review of school leadership and gender in Africa, and to identify gaps in the literature, to prompt and encourage further research. The literature search focused on school leadership and gender, linked to all 54 African countries. The review focused on articles in non-predatory journals, plus university theses. The analysis was conducted by country, and then by three central themes, accession to principalship, leadership enactment, and leadership styles. The review provides a compelling picture of school leadership and gender in Africa, with three main findings. First, there is limited knowledge production on this important topic, with no sources identified in most African countries. Second, organizational, social and personal factors combine to inhibit women's accession to school leadership. Third, African women principals are shown to be more collegial and collaborative than men, with some evidence that they may be more effective school leaders. The article's conclusion draws out three main implications. First, the findings indicate a strong need for ministries of education to review their recruitment and selection policies to address barriers to women's accession as school principals. Second, they show deeply embedded social attitudes that women should be focused on domestic and family responsibilities, rather than school leadership. This calls for community education programmes to address family and social attitudes. Third, while the article presents a significant picture of the extent and nature of women principals' leadership accession and enactment across the continent, further research is recommended to address knowledge gaps, especially in those African countries where there is no knowledge production on school leadership and gender.

How the labour market operates in an increasingly digital context has remained under-researched. The article explains why the digital labour market is in urgent need of study, as digitalisation transforms how labour markets are structured and shape the competition for jobs. Digital tools give job seekers new ways of describing themselves and give employers access to new sources of data on candidates, in real-time and at low cost. We identify three dimensions of digital labour markets that distinguish them from earlier 'analogue' models -- Information, Control and Engagement (ICE). We explain how changes in these dimensions contribute to a restructuring of the recruitment process, and outline implications for theories on the education--work relationship and for the analysis of social opportunity and inequalities.

Graduate employability plays a critical role during job recruitment and selection. Practical experience provides a strong foundation from which sport management graduates can signal their employability. Our Australian-based mixed-method study explored signals that managers seek from sport management graduate-entry applicants during job recruitment and selection. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 sport managers. Interview transcripts were deductively coded using the Experiential Learning Cycle and thematically analysed. An online employability survey, guided by Employability Dimensions, was distributed and gained responses from 166 sport managers. Analysis was conducted using non-parametric statistics. Findings revealed 10 observed signals: to assist sport management graduates indicate their employability during job recruitment and selection and for sport managers to recognise employable graduates. The observed signals comprise multiple signal indicators, developed to guide theoretical knowledge and practical application of the employability signals for graduate job applicants.

This study is a meta-analysis of overall recruitment rate (ORR) in probability-based online panel research. In this study, we included 23 general population probability-based online panels (out of 28 identified and described) covering 15 countries and provided a comprehensive overview of their methodological approaches to recruitment. We calculated the average ORR and carried out a meta-regression with selected moderators. On average less than 1 out of 5 eligible sampled people registered as panel members, but the data showed a very high heterogeneity of ORRs. We found that recruitment rates were similar in telephone, face-to-face, and mail modes in the United States (U.S.), but the mail mode performed worse than the interviewer-administered recruitment modes in the rest of the world. Also, we identified a small decrease of ORR over time and provided evidence on how ORRs are significantly lower in the U.S. probability-based online panels.

Much research has been conducted "on" young people as a population rather than "with" them. Traditionally, porn research has focused on effects--on the assumption that people, especially young people, are impacted by the sexual media they consume, which leads to negative outcomes such as violence and addiction. In this sense, porn is framed as risky and children and young people become especially 'at risk'. Sex, sexuality and sexual media are then portrayed as a threat from which young people should be protected. Nevertheless, for many young people watching porn is a normal activity and engaging with porn online is a part of everyday life for some teenagers. Scholars have indicated that many young people perceive porn as ubiquitous, as part of society, and difficult to avoid. In this reflexive article I will interrogate the need for such research, even if it is considered as a form of 'dirty work', within an alarmist and sensationalist media-driven culture. By examining my experiences of the ethics review process, access to participants, and the fieldwork itself, I hope to demonstrate moments of texture and detail throughout the process which future sex, sexuality and porn researchers can draw upon.

In recent years, the role of the professionally trained volunteer docent has taken many twists and turns. Guided by institutional strategies and missions, docent programs have flexed, shifted, and altered to meet institutional needs. This article provides an overview of recent trends and practices presented at the National Docent Symposium Council's biennial meetings. It includes examples of changing trends in recruitment, training, and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

Given the rise in extremist radicalization using digital media, antifascist education must develop its own philosophy of digital technologies. The first half of this paper turns to Leo Löwenthal and Norbert Guterman's theory of the American agitator as well as Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno's notion of fascist projection and paranoia to provide groundwork for this project. Though written in the 1940s, Frankfurt School essays on agitation and projection can be thought of as early indications of the importance of affect in fascist politics, which has only become intensified with the advent of digital media. The paper then proceeds to apply a critical concept of "agitational aesthetics" to chan culture in the present day, highlighting the affective economy of memes in the radicalization process. In conclusion, a series of questions are posed to educators to help them think through the complexities of intervening before, during, and after the online agitation of proto-fascist tendencies in youth.

The field of student affairs has seen an exodus of staff members over the past few years. Employee attrition, however, is not a new problem in student affairs. This grounded theory study aimed to understand why student affairs professionals leave the field. Based on interviews with student affairs professionals who left the field between March 2020 and March 2022, we developed a departure model that describes participants' experiences from their interest in and socialization into the field to their departure. Our model highlights how the conflicts between personal life, values, and approach to work and institutional policies, practices, and leadership rooted in white supremacy decreased participants' commitment to staying in the field over time. While our model focuses on departure, it also points to opportunities for disrupting current practices and transforming the working conditions in the field to attract and retain a diverse staff of student affairs professionals. In sharing implications, we take a both/and approach, highlighting how we can disrupt white supremacy culture and decolonize higher education and how we can foster student affairs professionals' ability to navigate the current cultural norms and environments.

Diverse samples are valuable to the study of development, and to psychology more broadly. But convenience samples--typically recruited from local populations close to universities--are still the most widely used in developmental science, despite the fact that their use leads to a vast over-representation of Western, White, and high socio-economic status participants in our studies. Do convenience samples still have a place in our research? While diverse samples are crucial to advancing developmental science, policies designed to encourage recruitment of such samples may not always succeed in improving sample diversity in ways that will benefit our theories and reduce bias. Further, convenience samples are just, well, convenient--and because their costs are lower, they allow for faster and more precise research. We suggest three paths forward to resolve this tension: 1) use theory and observed variation to choose aspects of diversity to prioritize in a particular study; 2) use online methods as an important route to broaden which samples are convenient; and 3) work in teams to achieve "inconvenient" samples using many different convenience populations.

Recruiting cisgender, heterosexual young men for research participation can be a difficult endeavour. This is more challenging with qualitative research studies that require substantial time commitment, or be of a sensitive nature, such as discussions of sex, intimacy, and emotion. These challenges can be amplified with the shift to online data collection procedures due to COVID-19. In this paper I reflect on the process of recruiting cisgender, heterosexual men for a qualitative study on sex and intimacy that relied solely on online advertising during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. I build on a critical men and masculinity (CMM) studies framework by considering a 'sex-as-dirty-work' approach which centres the uncomfortable practice of talking about and researching sex. I highlight the success of this approach that counters recommended best practice in getting men to participate. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of this approach, and suggestions for researchers.

To advance the employability agenda in higher education, we need new ideas for embedding career skills into university curricula and novel tools for articulating the capabilities of learners. Situated in the discipline of environmental science, the aim of this study was to examine employer perceptions of the skills needed for a career in the sector and the utility of micro-credentials in recognising and recruiting graduates. Through in-depth interviews with 22 environmental professionals in three Australian states/territories, we found that employers use multiple lines of evidence when recruiting for new positions and that alternative sources of information are highly valued in their decision-making. Questions about the utility of micro-credentials in this process centred around a case study in environmental science. While there was strong support and enthusiasm for the micro-credential and broad approach, employers needed further context about how micro-credentials can be used, and confidence in the rigour and standards applied.

A significant amount of recent research and media coverage has focused on the challenges related to K-12 teacher shortages, particularly in rural regions of the United States. Far less research, however, has been conducted on the challenges faced by rural community colleges related to recruiting and retaining both academic and professional personnel. The purpose of this exploratory qualitative study was to understand how current rural community college leaders are perceiving and addressing these challenges regarding recruitment and retention of personnel. A total of eight senior leaders in rural community colleges or state oversight agencies throughout one Mountain West state were interviewed. Through their experiences and insight, the authors synthesized their collective concerns to construct various promising practices on how to employ and hold on to personnel at rural community colleges.

There is growing global recognition of the contribution that leadership development can make to improving quality and outcomes in the Early Years (EY) education sector. UK governments are responding to such evidence through the creation of new national qualifications for EY professionals across the sector and the expansion of publicly funded digitally mediated leadership development. At the same time, the sector is experiencing an acute workforce crisis with a majority of English providers self-reporting that they are struggling to recruit the staff they need. In this article, we explore how diverse training providers across the UK conceptualise their offer of leadership development in the context of a workforce crisis. Based on interviews and focus groups with a total of 24 organisations, we present three needs that guide leadership development in the sector going forward. These are the needs to: (1) embed leadership development in a coherent workforce strategy, (2) build capacity in EY settings to support engagement with leadership development and (3) emphasise collaboration over competition in the design of leadership development programmes. These findings have implications for the next steps that governments and training providers take to support EY leadership as part of a healthy workforce across the sector.

Texting-based programs are increasingly used to support parents as their child's first teacher and create links between home and school. However, there is scant evidence about the influence of program implementation on parent uptake and attrition--a key component of such programs. This article describes the design and delivery of Kindytxt, a literacy-based text-messaging program for parents with a child at Kindergarten in Western Australia, and examines the influence of recruitment method, area socioeconomic status, and teacher participation on parent uptake and attrition. Results indicate that embedding Kindytxt into a well-established family literacy program provided the infrastructure and mechanism for extensive program reach, and the recruitment method, specifically the involvement of the kindergarten teacher, significantly influenced parent registration. However, attrition rates were not significantly affected by the area socioeconomic status of participating schools, recruitment method, nor teacher participation in Kindytxt. The results suggest that teacher involvement may be the crucial factor in enabling parents to access texting programs, regardless of the socioeconomic status of the school community. The design elements may be used to inform future program development, and the research results highlight the importance of documenting and including the method of delivery as variables in the evaluation of program implementation.