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This chapter explores the methods developed to improve STEM success for students at two public urban institutions, a project whose aim is to improve academic outcomes for undergraduate students, especially for those most vulnerable and least likely to succeed in this student population. The theory of change that underpins the project – including its activities and its evaluation plan – posits that three interlocked activities (course redesign, peer mentors and articulation) will lead to improvements in academic outcomes and ultimately contribute to the overarching goal of increasing the number of students from underserved backgrounds who graduate with baccalaureate STEM degrees. The project focusses on the first courses students take in STEM, where they are also most likely to fail. We describe the methodology developed for faculty development and the organizational structure of the peer mentoring component for these courses. Both of these components constitute safe spaces where faculty and peer mentors learn to support students using evidence-based and inclusive instructional practices. Courses redesigned by faculty were offered following a cluster-level randomized control trial design, where sections were assigned to treatment (with or without a peer) or control. These interventions have a positive impact on cumulative GPA, according to preliminary analyses. The project also has a positive effect on faculty participants and on peer mentors, both groups now better prepared to jointly deliver STEM curricula in more effective ways. Among the reasons why this works, instructor empathy surfaces as playing a leading role in academic outcomes for undergraduate students.

This chapter introduces the purpose and structure of this edited volume, including why safe spaces are needed in educational settings, how to think about what makes a space safe for different individuals or groups, and aspects to consider in creating and maintaining safe spaces. It describes the two broad sections, the first of which comprises chapters that introduce the problem, context, need for safe spaces (Chapter 2), the broad conceptual frames supporting them (Chapter 3), and detail and deconstruct examples of various safe spaces created in diverse educational settings (Chapter 4). Chapters in Section II include aspects of the conceptual foundations and details about the purpose, development, and implementation processes, and outcomes of various efforts to create and/or maintain a safe space for education.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance the water resistance and the heat resistance of poly(vinyl acetate) (PVAc) emulsion adhesive, by providing the emulsion with controllable thermosetting capability.

Emulsion polymerisation was used to synthesise PVAc/VeoVa 10 copolymers with varying proportions of acetoacetoxyethyl methacrylate (AAEM) incorporated in the copolymer chains. The AAEM component provided sites for crosslinking the chains via reaction of diamines with AAEM. The emulsion copolymers formed crosslinked films on addition of a range of diamines, during drying at ambient temperature. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy were employed to characterise the copolymerisation and crosslinking reaction. Glass transition temperatures of the polymer films were measured using dynamic mechanical thermal analysis to quantify the effects of copolymer composition variation and crosslinker. The performance of the crosslinked emulsions as wood adhesives was evaluated in accordance with the ISO 6238 standard by measuring the maximum shear stress of wood joints.

The crosslinking reaction between acetoacetoxy groups in the copolymer chains and the added diamines gives enamine structures, and occurs rapidly at ambient temperature. Major changes in the ¹³C NMR spectrum include the appearance of an enamine signal at 82 ppm, and disappearance of the acetoacetoxy carbonyl signal at 202 ppm. The new vibrational band at 1,597‐1,606 cm⁻¹ in the FTIR spectrum is assigned to the vibrations of the enamine double bond. The experimental results showed substantial increases in T_g and viscosity as the AAEM proportion in the copolymer emulsion increased. The crosslinked adhesives showed superior wood adhesive performance to unmodified PVAc emulsion.

It was necessary to adjust the pH of the emulsion for extended shelf life.

The method developed provides a simple and practical route to emulsions with improved water and heat resistance and bonding strength.

The method for enhanced water and heat resistance of PVAc wood adhesive was novel, straightforward and environmental friendly.

The Disadvantaged Schools Program (D.S.P.) has been an important and integral part of education for many students in Australia for over a decade. The original goals and philosophy of the program still hold true today. However, we suggest that perhaps it is time to build on the foundation which has been developed by adding a much stronger academic strand as part of the overall D.S.P. mission. Recent school effectiveness findings offer a powerful and compatible opportunity for the D.S.P. to provide a more complete education for their students. The adoption of the school effectiveness characteristics by D.S.P. schools would not interfere with, but rather would enhance an already valuable program. The eight most important school effectiveness variables are reviewed in this article. We then argue that by combining the current focus of the D.S.P. with the focus of effective schools research, the overall quality of education received by students in Program schools can be enhanced. We argue that critical elements of the effective schools movement, such as emphasis on academic success and cognitive skills, can help create D.S.P. projects that produce a wider array of important student outcomes. By making effective school variables an important aspect of the D.S.P., we believe that both equity and quality will be emphasized to a greater extent than they are currently.

This paper aims to explore developments over the past 25 years in the knowledge base on instruction-oriented middle leadership in schools. The authors document the trends in the literature since middle leadership began to attract scholarly interest in the late 1990s and explore the shifting structural and content patterns in the knowledge base.

The authors use a topographic methodology to analyse both structural elements and major results drawing from 147 peer-reviewed journal articles.

The authors draw on the review's outcomes to propose a model that frames a core set of middle leaders' instructional leadership practices. They also identify the personal, departmental, organizational and external influences shaping middle leadership practices and identify a lack of research conducted outside Anglo–American societies. This gap in the literature suggests the need for the increased study of middle leadership in different national settings and systems and how these influence the practice and enactment of middle leaders around instruction. There is also a need to employ a greater range of methodologies to understand middle leaders' instructional roles.

The paper lays a foundation for the future development of middle leadership for instruction and highlights signposts to guide future inquiry.

The paper contributes to the middle leader knowledge base by focussing on their enactment of instructional leadership.

The views of two philosophers who have recently published books on Ethics are discussed by a distinguished cybernetician. The link between philosophy and cybernetics is examined in relation to life and it is demonstrated that both philosophers arrive at the same conclusion which is that a cybernetic attitude must be adopted.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how instructional leadership, a concept imported from Western scholarship, has been conceptualized in the Taiwanese context and how principal instructional leadership is realized in schools. The development trajectory of principal instructional leadership is delineated by examining empirical studies in the past two decades.

This paper adopts an exploratory approach to review the Taiwanese empirical literature on principal instructional leadership. A total of 80 studies were systematically analyzed and common themes were identified.

This paper finds that a hybrid model of the conceptualization of instructional leadership has been developed in Taiwan. Principals performed more indirect than direct leadership behaviors. A gap exists between the ideal instructional leader and the reality.

The development of a formal theory of instructional leadership is expected as various substantive theories are developed and more data are accumulated. To yield the desired outcome of knowledge acceleration, the coordination of research efforts across scholars and institutions is a must.

The articles reviewed suggest less effort spent by principals on the teachers. Yet with a national promotion of teacher learning community, as well as cooperative and collaborative learning in recent years, principal instructional leadership behaviors are expected to rise in terms of ensuring instruction quality and professional development.

This paper is an attempt to accumulate knowledge about principal instructional leadership in Taiwan. It is a contribution to the exploration of indigenous perspectives and practices and the understanding and building of educational leadership in Asia.