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This purpose of this paper is to present findings from three workshops that aimed to enable learners with profound and multiple learning disabilities to have a richer, more meaningful experience of a digital curriculum and to bolster a more meaningful creative exchange than currently offered by off the shelf products.

Informed by the maker culture and participatory action research, this workshop method focussed on making prototypes and creating concepts that encourage a dialogic approach for envisioning future technologies. As a process of enabling design, this approach placed participants at the heart of iterative methods that support imaginative ideation and improvisation, rather than the production of marketable products.

A thematic analysis of post-workshop discussions revealed that participants felt inspired and supported to envision learner responses to stimuli as novel interactions, without prior knowledge of designing and coding. The collaborative approach provoked the articulation of narratives on learner ability and a reconsideration of “digital” with a contemporary curriculum for learners with profound disabilities.

Running a maker workshop requires a time and resource commitment from all parties. The emphasis is on easy-to-follow, direct teaching together with low cost electronics and non-digital materials, ensured that these demands were kept to a minimum. However, the gains of participation can only be maintained when support exists both in and out of the workshop environment through the provision of resources and communication channels.

The originality of the workshops lies in the focus on basic electronics, coding and prototyping as a means to think about digital futures. As a method of enabling technologies to tap into learner ability, this process fostered design dialogues through the social act of making, sharing and learning without the need for prerequisite skills.

Essays on social responsibility call the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) “by far the world’s largest corporate responsibility initiative”. The authors look at two avenues to encourage responsible business behavior. First, at law, where law is not the answer and, second, at the UNGC. This paper aims to increase awareness of the UNGC, an umbrella organization supporting corporate good conduct.

The goal is to make corporations socially responsible. Law by nature addresses misconduct. The UNGC is more positive, encouraging responsible behavior in ten areas. The UNGC could be more effective. The authors suggest that social media and management education can help the UNGC positively impact corporate behavior.

The UNGC represents a significant opportunity. If the UNGC lives up to its potential, corporate misconduct may be lessened and corporate good behavior could be publicized, rewarded and increased.

The time has come to let readers start thinking about the UNGC and its goals. This can help bring greater social responsibility in tomorrow’s businesses.

Colin Bloom’s recent report Does Government ‘do God’? (2023) examines, in great detail, the sensitivity and rigour of the place of religion in contemporary British society. More precisely, how the government and its institutions engage with religion. In the timely report, Bloom uncovers many instances where religion and faith are a force for good but also where society and the actors and agencies that contribute towards it struggle to understand people of faith and their expressions of it. While not specifically examining how universities engage with this, the message is clear, as a society we are largely ignorant of (at best) or hostile to (at worst) the place of religion in people’s lives. This chapter examines what this means for universities and how academics, support staff, and students can become more aware of the contributing factors to a religious worldview. An awareness of religion as a sensitive subject for many, which in turn may lead to misunderstanding, must be addressed and explored in order for shared understanding to emerge.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of leadership learning in the entrepreneurial context, by building a dynamic learning perspective of entrepreneurship. It draws on contemporary leadership literature to appreciate entrepreneurial leadership as a social process of becoming located in particular contexts and communities.

Through qualitative phenomenological interviews with nine entrepreneurs the lived experience of learning to lead is explored. The principles of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) are utilised to analyse the data and enable inductive theory‐building.

The findings illustrate situated leadership patterns and relationships unique to the entrepreneurial context. A number of significant structural and experiential factors are identified that both shape and restrict the development of leadership practice in small ventures. Specifically, the limited opportunities for leadership enactment and observation, the dominance of the business as the crucible for leadership learning, the influence of the family and the low salience of leadership are highlighted.

In appreciating the leadership learning task that nascent entrepreneurs are faced with it is vital that further research delves deeper into the varying levels of “leadership preparedness” brought to new venture creation. From a policy perspective, there is significant value in enabling entrepreneurs to engage in meaningful dialogue, critical reflection and purposive action with their peers through the creation of leadership “learning networks”.

The research demonstrates leadership learning processes and pathways that are significantly different to those experienced by managers in the employed context. In so doing, this article represents the first systematic attempt to apply a learning perspective to the subject of entrepreneurial leadership.

Research and dissemination of the results has always been an important activity for those in the academic community. The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) has brought the whole area of research publication and dissemination into sharp relief, and striving for high research rankings seems, for some, to have become an end in itself. Some argue that the RAE has restricted the wider dissemination of research as academics focus on refereed journal articles to the detriment of other forms of output, eg professional articles, consultancy, books and practitioner conferences. The RAE has intensified interest in the purpose and process of publication in most discipline areas and has created considerable controversy regarding the status of different publication channels. The small business research area is no exception. This research provides a profile of the UK small business research community, it explores their perceptions regarding research and establishes the esteem that various publication channels are held. Defining precisely what constitutes the area of small business research is problematic. Indeed, providing a specific boundary would create a false precision, small business research overlaps with areas such as entrepreneurship and innovation, and it also draws upon a range of disciplines. Nevertheless, relative limits were placed on this research by the nature of the people who were asked to express their opinion and the questions they were asked. The attitudes were sought through a survey of active UK researchers (97 per cent of respondents had published in the area, 81 per cent were academics, 7 per cent were policy makers and 4 per cent business practitioners) listed on the Institute of Small Business Affairs/Small Business Research Trust database. The title and nature of these organisations suggests that those listed at least identify with the notion of small business research as an area. In addition, the questionnaire emphasised small business research throughout, and no mention was made of entrepreneurship, innovation or associated areas. Ninety‐eight questionnaires were returned, representing a 47 per cent response rate. The community was found to be more stable and mature than expected, but small business researchers held other research areas in greater esteem and most regarded themselves as empiricists rather than theorists. The implications of these results are explored for the next RAE and for the future of small business research.

This editorial introduces the papers within the special issue and outlines their contribution to the emerging and evolving study of sexuality and sexual orientation in organisation and management studies.

A review of some key themes within the literature on sexuality and sexual orientation is provided prior to drawing out key points within the submitted papers and considering how they contribute to this literature.

These six papers make an important contribution to the fast‐changing and evolving study of sexuality and sexual orientation in organisations and the development and implementation of equality and diversity policy and practice.

The editorial refers to papers presented at the Equality Diversity and Inclusion Conference held in Istanbul, July 2009, which included a stream entitled: “Spirals of silence? Tackling the ‘invisibility’ of the sexual orientation strand and sexuality in academic research and in organisation equality and diversity policy and practice” which can lead to reflections on the processes of voice and silence as these pertain to the discussion of sexuality and sexual orientation issues in academic organisations and at academic and practitioner conferences.

The children and young people (CYP) we encounter in the classroom bring with them a range of experiences and stories about their lives outside of school. This chapter starts by considering a theoretical perspective using an ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) so we can understand and locate the child or young person at the heart of the different social worlds they encounter. It then uses a fictionalised narrative approach (Clough, 2002) to discuss the life of one child. This narrative is then explored using the ecological systems theory and discusses how the complex social world of one child can impact upon their time in school. Finally, the chapter concludes by suggesting ways in which the child's experiences of school could have had different outcomes if their life had been understood in a more holistic way. The chapter also sets the context for the rest of the section: Enhancing Pupil Engagement and Teaching Practice through the child's narrative as a means of highlighting the impact of the topics in the section on an individual's life story.