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Is students’ energy literacy related to their university’s position in a sustainability ranking?
Get PDFUniversity rankings are increasingly important internationally, and in the UK include a sustainability ‘Green League’. However, there is little evidence about experiences of studying in ‘sustainable universities’. We report an empirical study at five universities in varied positions in the Green League, exploring students’ energy literacy, environmental attitudes and perceptions of their institution’s energy-saving efforts. Although the link to energy literacy is not clear, findings suggest that there are significant differences between students’ environmental attitudes at universities placed at different points in the league. In addition, students at higher ranked universities are more positive about their university’s energy-saving efforts, suggesting that these institutions may exhibit more overt manifestations of sustainability. This is important since students report being more likely to choose energy-conservation behaviours if there is visible representation of energy use. The study is the first to attempt a comparison between universities at different positions in a sustainability ranking
The Impact of Social Networks on “Born Globals”:A Case of De-Internationalisation
No full textThis paper aims to explore the role and impact of entrepreneurs’ social networks on the internationalisation
of “Born Global” firms, in particular, its de-internationalisation process. The research is based on
a case study approach and adopts a series of face to face and online qualitative longitudinal interviews.
It provides some useful insights into the relationship management of “Born Global” entrepreneurs and
unveils some negative impacts of social networks on the initiation of ‘de-internationalisation’. The study
reveals the importance of online social networks, high-tech communications and contemporary management
techniques for “Born Global” entrepreneurs
Class of 2010: A Qualitative Longitudinal Study of an English Secondary School That Became an Academy
Get PDFThis project was a qualitative longitudinal research study into cultural and structural change in an English secondary school. The schools’ consistent underperformance led to its conversion to ‘academy’ status as part of a development under the Labour administration of 1997-2010. The Labour policy for academisation was designed first, to challenge the culture of underachievement in areas of high deprivation and secondly, to encourage schools to play a part in local community regeneration. Our research began at the point of conversion to academy status, and we have subsequently visited the school each year to interview senior leadership, teaching staff and a sample of pupils to investigate their views on continuity and change within the institution and the impact on their own roles. Wider context for the research has been provided by annual publicly-available performance data and academy documentation. In this case-study report we consider research design and some methodological issues that we encountered during the data collection. We show how trust is an essential ingredient between researchers and participants for the project to yield rich and interesting data
Theorising everyday life after acquired brain injury
Get PDFThis paper provides a conceptual argument for the sociological analysis of the everyday experiences of disabled people through the example of acquired brain injury (ABI) survivors. Most research concerning ABI has been carried out within a medical framework. This paper adds a new dimension to research concerning ABI, and indeed, to my knowledge, is the first to explore a long-term, interdisciplinary view of both ABI and neurological rehabilitation. This paper sets out how the use of critical sociological theory can provide thorough analyses of disabled people’s experiences that are free from the pre-judgement of traditional discourses
Proposal to disregard athletics world records prior to 2005: a radical and misjudged initiative
Get PDFThe recent announcement that the European Athletics Council has proposed to disregard all athletics world records set prior to 20051 has caused considerable controversy and debate among the athletics community. It is a radical initiative with commendable aims to redress the consequences of past undetected doping violations that may have led to some of the least attainable world records. This proposal has now been put to the world governing body, the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF), and its merits require discussion
Evaluating academic development in the higher education sector: academic developers’ reflections on using a toolkit resource
Get PDFThe professionalisation of teaching is of increasing importance in UK higher education due to converging processes including the proliferation of managerialism, increasing quality agendas and changes to student fee structures. These have brought into sharp relief the need for greater understanding of how quality teaching evolves in university settings. One key element of this involves academic development and its impacts on teaching and learning. Current literature suggests that a plethora of ideas, frameworks and instruments claiming best practice exist but that take-up of these is inconsistent. This prompted a UK national research project which produced an evidence-based toolkit for evaluating academic development. As part of the toolkit augmentation, academic development representatives from across the sector were asked to create, review and test uniquely tailored evaluation instruments. These instruments were then piloted on university teachers who had participated in teaching-related continuing professional development activities. This paper reports on these individuals’ reflections of using the toolkit. It suggests that academic developers are interested in evaluating the impact of their work on teachers, students and on the wider institutional culture but that confidence and expertise varies. Using the toolkit generated ‘traditional’ evaluation data including satisfaction with the development activity and changes to lecturers’ conceptions and behaviours. However, it also prompted critical discussions around current evaluation practice. This included the need for transformational reform of institutional culture to support links between evaluation and good standing; and making explicit the thorny issue of evidencing student learning. This paper will be of interest to those with an interest or responsibility for evaluating teaching in higher education. The paper offers an important contribution to the international literature at a time when global higher education is faced with questions about teaching, learning and quality. Evaluation, and how to do it well, is timely and important business
Applied Theatre in Adolescent Mental Health Transition Care
Get PDFThe Transition from CAMHS to AMHS
The transition from Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) to Adult Mental Health Services (AMHS) has been recognised as a key concern within healthcare, described as a ‘cliff edge’ by the House of Commons Health Committee, and ‘poorly planned, poorly executed and poorly experienced’ by the National Institute for Health Research.1,2 This short article identifies one way of working in this area, together with plans to conduct research evaluating the initiative.
CAMHS and AMHS are very different services, with distinct histories, philosophies and approaches; adult psychiatry evolved out of the asylum, whereas child psychiatry emerged later and concerned itself more with developmental issues, education and family relationships. For a young person negotiating this interface (usually on turning 18, although sometimes younger, as services across the country do operate differently), it therefore does not simply involve adjusting to a new physical environment and new professionals, but also adapting to a service that considers them as autonomous adults, rather than as part of the family unit. As well as the level and style of intervention, differences in eligibility thresholds for referral also means that the remit for AMHS is narrower and they may get no input from services at all.
When discussing (or referring to) transition, it is useful to distinguish this from transfer, where the latter is simply the termination of input from child services and the commencement of input from adult services. Transition should be a therapeutic experience and involve preparation: ‘a period of handover or joint care, transition planning meetings (involving the young person and carer, and key CAMHS and AMHS professionals) and transfer of case notes or information summaries’.3 Young people experiencing this quality of transition is, sadly, rare, and thus – while also recognising the need for systemic change, locally and nationally – support for young people negotiating the challenges of moving between services needs to be developed
Support systems for mixed-site recovering cancer patients to sustain physical activity: A qualitative study
Get PDFRationale, aims and objectives: Uptake and adherence to physical activity (PA) programmes for recovering cancer patients remain low with only 20% of patients meeting the UK guidelines of 150 minutes a week. The aim of our study was to examine the support systems that enabled a group of cancer patients to sustain PA for 6 months.
Method: Fourteen mixed site cancer patients aged 43-70 (11 women, 3 men) participated in a 2-phase PA intervention that took place at a University in the South West of England, UK. The intervention consisted of an 8-week structured exercise programme and a 4-month period of independent PA. Semi-structured interviews were employed to collect the data and a grounded theory approach was used for the analysis.
Results: We found that different types of support were required for each stage of the intervention. Internal support was necessary while undertaking a structured PA programme. External support was necessary to sustain PA to 4-month follow-up. The two aspects of internal support were identified that enabled the patients to adhere to the programme; support from exercise professionals and peer support from patients on the programme. External support that enabled the patients to sustain independent PA to 4-month follow-up was support from close partners or from a spouse.
Conclusions: Our study has provided valuable insight into internal support systems that enable recovering mixed-site cancer patients to adhere to a structured PA programme and external support from close relationships to sustain independent PA for an additional 4 months
Lost souls? The demoralization of academic labour in the measured university
Get PDFIn this conceptual paper, I contend that the soul of academic labour is becoming lost in performativity. Performativity, I explain, is a form of regulation and control that deploys technical rationality and judgements to incentivize and punish academics. Indeed, performativity is central to the culture of measurement within contemporary universities. This, I contend, is demoralizing academic labour as performativity only measures and values those dimensions of academic labour that can be captured by quantitative performance indicators. To critique this process, I firstly locate performativity within a moral economy perspective. I argue that the university economy is no longer structured by the moral norm of education as a public good. It has been restructured, commodified and marketized by neo-liberal capitalism. Secondly, I explore how the reorganization of institutional practices and academic identity within the university by performativity wreaks terror in the academic’s soul. Thirdly, I critique the unsatisfying post-structural reduction of the soul to a synonym for subjectivity and offer a sociological conception of the soul as the spiritual dimension of academic labour emerging from deep, rich social relations of production. My conjecture is that the soul is the moral energy and purpose central to species-being: the peculiarly human ability to transform the socio-human world for the good of all. Finally, I suggest that within the soulless technical measure of academic labour that now dominates the university lies the possibility for developing a more soulful normative measure. My aim then is to articulate a dialectical humanist conception of the soul of academic labour in order to critique the reductive positivism of the measured university