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Moving Beyond the Comfort Space : Exploring the Potential of GenAI to Support Higher Education Instructor Successfully Implement Universal Design for Learning
Full text linkThis paper showcases work in progress currently being carried out to explore ways generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) can support post-secondary instructors. The study is taking place on a campus located on the west coast of Canada. The methodological approach selected is participatory action research; an instructor is collaborating with two graduate students to review the learning activities and assessment tasks present in two Masters of Education courses taught by the principal investigator. The team is using prompt engineering to explore ways to implement Universal Design for Learning (UDL) more widely within these components. The gen AI are being reviewed collectively for their fitness to purpose. A set of graduate students participants having taken these courses in the past, will later be selected to offer feedback as to whether the versions of the courses redeveloped with genAI more effectively meet the needs of diverse learners. It is hoped that the study will highlight the degree to which instructors can rely on genAI to explore UDL in more depth and select strategies that otherwise remain outside of their habitual zone of comfort in relation to inclusion.  
Book Review: The Future of Mental Health, Disability and Criminal Law, Edited by Kay Wilson, Yvette Maker, Piers Gooding and Jamie Walvisch (Routledge, 2023)
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An investigation into the mechanics and affordances of digital escape rooms
Full text linkIncreasing in popularity, escape rooms offer an educational opportunity to offer such activities in the classroom. Digital escape rooms take aspects of physical escape rooms and apply them to digital environments using technological affordances and technically mediated devices such as computers, mobile devices and VR headsets. This work-in-progress paper investigates game mechanics and the affordances (Norman, 2013) of digital escape rooms to understand how players are engaged in play in digital escape rooms. This has been explored through a small-scale qualitative study of eight ‘educators’ with experience of escape room play. Semi-structured interviews were used to identify examples of mechanics used to engage players in digital escape rooms and their associated affordances. Through thematic analysis several game mechanics and their affordances were identified. Participants demonstrated particular interest in spatial mechanics which is an exploration in this paper. The findings indicate that digital tools offer opportunities to increase access, flexibility and create mixed reality experiences for players. Manipulating digital spatial boundaries enhances player immersion and interaction with digital tools, creating opportunities for discovery, teamworking and adventure. These findings offer insights into design implications for digital escape rooms for use in education
Bridging design prototypes (BDPs) : A design tool to research and resource sustainable, equitable, flexible learning
Full text linkTo support digital access and equity, human-centred design (HCD) has been recommended to facilitate the construction of culturally sensitive, accessible, and flexible learning. The bridging design prototype (BDP) approach is an HCD method, used to advance novel educational practice in K-12 and distance higher education. BDPs are fully functional rapid prototypes of resources/technologies that educators accept to incorporate in real activities with their students. Early adoption of a BDP enables a classroom community to participate and play a critical role in a design process, which makes them suitable to investigate needs and emergent practices in a sustainable and respectful manner. This approach is comprised of six principles underpinned by concepts drawn from: human-centred product development, user-centred design, inclusive design, participatory design, and a theory for meaningful learning. The first set of principles help to understand who we are designing for and the second set of principles help to implement resource features. BDPs are useful in projects seeking community design, bottom-up adoption, decentring external designer participation, and enabling users to become designers. A walked through example on the implementation of a BDP is used to illustrate how this framework is used for prototyping resources that engage educators, students, and support staff in meaningful and engaging experimentations.
Uncovering Gender and Temporal Dynamics: Career Resources Impacting Career Success
Full text linkThis study examines whether the Conservation of Resources theory propositions are supported using three-wave survey data (one month between measurements) of 543 employed individuals, as analysed via Latent Growth Modelling. Subjective career success fluctuated throughout the two months of the study, decreasing in the absence of career resources. Human capital, environmental, motivation, and self-management resources predicted workers’ subjective career success over time, but these effects were moderated by gender. Human capital only predicted the objective career success of women, not men. This means that men’s subjective and objective success are aligned and predicted by the same resources, whereas women need to mobilise different resources to achieve each type of success.
Ethnic Disparities in Sentencing in England and Wales: Review of Recent Findings
Full text linkFollowing the 2017 Lammy Review, research into ethnic disparities in sentencing in England and Wales has intensified. This article reviews the main findings from recent studies, focusing on the robustness of evidence, areas where disparities are most prevalent, gaps in the literature, and potential solutions.
Ethnic disparities are less severe and more offence-specific than previously reported. There are no substantial differences in custodial sentence length, while for the probability of receiving a custodial sentence, disparities are concentrated primarily among drug offences. However, such disparities cannot be fully explained by statistical bias, suggesting a degree of direct or indirect sentencing discrimination.
Sentencing disparities appear consistent across most minority groups. However, intersectional analyses reveal nuanced patterns; for instance, white male offenders require over 50% longer criminal records than black male offenders before crossing the custody threshold, while no significant differences are observed between black and white female offenders. Notably, socioeconomic factors, such as area deprivation, do not seem directly linked to ethnic disparities, although deprivation independently influences sentencing outcomes.
Several gaps remain in the literature. Multivariate analyses focused on magistrates’ courts, where most sentences are imposed, are lacking. Qualitative research is also needed to explore disparities in areas like drug offences, male ethnic minority offenders, and assessments of mitigating factors.
Current efforts to mitigate disparities should be expanded to include more structural solutions, such as increasing funding for legal aid, improving the quality of pre-sentence reports, and ensuring community services for addiction, mental health, and employment are universally accessible
An Insider Within: Reflections from Navigating Positionality during Doctoral Research on University Law Clinics
Full text linkThis article utilizes doctoral research on access to justice and clinical legal education to reflect on the positionality that the researcher embodies from their diverse professional affiliations. It adds a nuance to the debate on positionality by relaying it as a concentric experience. The article offers insights on navigating layered insider status through the use of reflexivity journals, removing familiarity in the interview environment and returning to the literature after fieldwork. Noting that one may still be perceived as ‘other,’ it outlines the role of go-betweens to access research participants, follow-up questions to allow for participant voices to be heard and a friendly demeanour to build rapport. The article supports training of novice researchers in reflexivity and grounded theory research as ways of facilitating rigour. It will be useful for socio-legal researchers who have a propensity to embody layered insider status from their diverse professional affiliations when researching in their own countries.
A Right to a Male Curfew
Full text linkThis article explores the case for a right to a male curfew. It argues the epidemic of male violence and harassment against women in public spaces is a major breach of women’s human rights. This generates an obligation on the state to protect women. The article substantiates that claim and explains why a male curfew would be a reasonable way for the state to fulfil its obligations and is therefore required unless an alternative can be found
Popular Criminology, Sexual Violence and Alternative Modes of Justice
Full text linkThe idea of ‘popular criminology’ has gained currency within academic criminology, with criminologists recognising that popular cultural portrayals of crime, violence and justice offer alternatives discourses which enhance the criminological imagination beyond the limits of academic criminology, offering more complex understandings of crime and violence and reimagining the nature of justice (Brown and Rafter, 2012; Rafter, 2007; Wakeman, 2013; Wattis, 2018, 2022). This article will consider cultural representations of sexual violence as progressive portrayals which reveal the harms of sexual violence, disrupt stereotypical rape narratives and highlight the victim experience (Powell et al., 2015; McGlynn and Westmarland, 2019).
There is now a growing activist and academic movement calling for a reimagining of justice beyond formal redress. This is in part a response to the widely acknowledged failure of formal justice systems to deliver justice for victims of sexual violence and the anti-carceral critique of feminism’s support for carceral justice responses to violence against women. Ultimately, I consider how popular culture might contribute to a more progressive vision of justice which resonates with McGlynn and Westmarland’s (2019) notion of ‘kaleidoscopic justice’ where victims are centred and the harms of sexual violence are fully recognised. I conclude by considering the ethics of representations of violence against within popular culture.