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Early Career Teachers navigating the landscape of SACRE in England
No full textAs a contribution to continuing debates about RE in England, this study explores current perspectives on the determination of the syllabus for RE of trainee teachers in a university in the West Midlands. They were selected because trainees are rarely studied in academic research about locally agreed syllabi. A survey gathered 149 responses from PGCE and Year 3 undergraduate students and 52 questionnaires from Year 1. The central concern is to explore the structural matters concerning the Standing Advisory Council on RE. The findings highlight the diverse perspectives regarding the role of the Church and of religion in society, and the control of RE, nationally and locally. This diversity is echoed in the distinct rationale for RE legislation, policy and praxis and is reflected among these trainees. The findings underscore the importance of addressing these varied views in developing RE policies and curricula to ensure they reflect the democratic values and needs of future educators. The emphasis on democratic processes in syllabus development could serve as a model for other countries considering their RE frameworks. This research reveals a call for a statutory curriculum, for SACREs to continue and for agreed syllabuses to be products of a democratic process
Navigating the black box: board co-option and environmental innovation
No full textPurpose
This study examines the impact of board co-option on environmental innovation and the moderating effect of firms’ industrial context, ESG compensation and environmental policy stringency (EPS) on this relationship. Finally, we examine the implications of the board co-option and eco-innovation nexus on the market value of firms.
Design/methodology/approach
This study employs the system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator on a longitudinal panel dataset of the US-listed firms to test the proposed hypotheses. The system GMM findings are substantiated using the entropy balancing method and difference-in-differences (DiD) estimations to better establish causality while addressing endogeneity concerns.
Findings
The findings provide evidence that board co-option has a negatively significant relationship with environmental innovation. Further analyses imply that the impact of board co-option on environmental innovation is positively significant among firms operating in environmentally sensitive industries, with ESG compensation for executives, and those operating in environments characterized by high environmental policy stringency. Taken together, these results suggest that industrial context, ESG compensation and environmental policy stringency moderate the impact of board co-option on environmental innovation. The results also reveal that more environmentally innovative firms attain greater market valuation when the board is co-opted.
Originality/value
This study is a novel attempt to contribute to the debate on board composition and its impact on corporate environmental innovation. It complements the existing literature on sustainability governance and accounting by providing an understanding of the impact of board co-option on corporate environmental innovation and highlights the role of regulatory pressure, industrial context and executive compensation structure in shaping this relationship. The findings offer valuable insights for academics, senior management and policymakers
Creativity
No full textThis chapter explores the relationship of creativity to musical learning and pedagogy. In many current music curricula, creativity is assumed to be at the heart of what it means to behave musically and is thus at the heart of a pedagogy for developing a rich musical understanding. The chapter aims to place musical creativity in context through examining wider conceptions of creativity and models of the creative process. However, the notion of creativity is riven with ideological controversy such as the relative importance and sequence of developing technique versus expression. It is important for teachers to unpack and challenge their assumptions in this regard if they are to develop an approach to creativity. In this regard the chapter concludes by exploring some practical suggestions for facilitating creativity in the music classroom both in individual lessons and also in relation to continuity and progression over time
Inclusive speech interaction techniques for creative object rotation
No full textSpeech interaction holds significant potential to make creative visual design activities more inclusive for people with physical impairments, although no work has yet investigated the feasibility of graphical object rotation via voice control. An elicitation study with disabled participants (N = 12) is initially presented where candidate voice commands for rotation actions are identified. The use of these commands is then evaluated in an exploratory study with people who have physical impairments (N = 12). Results found all participants could successfully complete a series of rotation tasks, although interaction issues were also identified (e.g., estimating rotation transformation angles). To further investigate these challenges, three different voice-controlled rotation approaches were developed: Baseline-Rotation, Fixed-Jumps, and Animation-Rotation. These methods were evaluated with disabled participants (N = 25) with results highlighting that all three approaches supported users in successfully rotating graphical objects, although Animation-Rotation was found to be more efficient and usable than the other methods
The Drawn Serigraph: An Investigation Through Portraiture
No full textThis research interrogates contemporary creative practice methods that contribute to the making of meaningful fine art portraiture. The research outputs include a written thesis, an exhibition of portraits, preparatory work and a catalogue of case studies detailing the portrait-sharing exchange. The context is that the smartphone, with its inbuilt camera capabilities, is becoming a human appendage and one that requires critical analysis and applications beyond the ‘selfie’. The core question inquires, ‘How can artists contribute meaningful printed portraits in the saturated world of smartphone digital portraits?’ The answer becomes located in a slower methodology of considered handmade marks that carry the labour of their making through serigraphic printmaking and shared approval processes.
The practice-based methodology offers a framework of research positing four areas of contribution to new knowledge. Firstly, signposting new insights into the use of discreet methods of photography made by artists and photographers as material foundations for their works; secondly, ethical considerations surrounding the use of discreet smartphone photography for Fine Art portraiture; thirdly, interrogation of the difficult terrain of retrospective consent methods; and finally, artists’ serigraphy and drawn mark-making employing drafting films and transparent substrates for
serigraphic silkscreen printmaking. The completed printed portraits, at first glance, appear drawn, comfortably sitting within the conventions of observational drawing. However, this deception is part of a deeper discourse whereby both the viewer and the subject become part of a layered process that is both physical and theoretical. The research methodology involves an in-depth dissection of the rich ethical dilemma of consent that exists between the artist and the observed individual when the subject has unknowingly become the topic of the artist’s gaze
Localism and Gun Control in the United States: How Political Partisanship Exploits the Intrastate Regulatory Dynamic
No full text“Most Americans live in urban areas, and a disproportionate number of gun-homicide victims die in them.”¹ However, cities are largely left unable to address gun violence. Professor Blocher suggests that this is not because of the Second Amendment, but rather a result of intrastate preemption. The current U.S. constitutional order does not explicitly afford local governments specific authority, so the states are left to decide whether cities are afforded power and, if so, the extent of this power. Typically, states have construed this authority narrowly. The aim of this research was to investigate how the silence on the role of local government in the U.S. Constitution affects the authority of cities to regulate in response to local concerns and how political partisanship and the urban-rural divide factor in the current state of play in intergovernmental relations. This narrative was established first by conducting an investigation resulting in a database of preemption bills introduced between 2016 and 2020, and secondly, the identification of local gun control ordinances enacted by the cities of Seattle and Pittsburgh and the state preemption-based legal challenges to these ordinances. It emerged that most proposed and enacted bills in the dataset were Republican-sponsored and focused on expanding preemption and imposing new hyper preemption measures. Measures proposing a greater degree of local authority, sponsored by Democrats, were in the minority. Some judges in the Pennsylvania state judiciary showed a willingness to accord a greater degree of local authority to regulate firearms than currently possible. However, this has not translated into a recalibration of the municipal regulatory authority in relation to firearms due to the inhibiting effect of preemption. This project contends that the U.S. constitutional order is not correctly calibrated for 21st Century America with the role of local governments as a primary service provider in mind. This project has located city firearms regulation within what Professor Briffault as termed a new era of preemption and what Professor Schragger identifies as an attack on American cities and contributes to the debate on the place of local government in the U.S. constitutional order
The 3D-Printed Cornett: Reflections on a Decade of Experimentation and Performance
No full textReflecting on some of the pioneering research that led to the first 3D-printed cornetts (2012–14), this paper describes various ways in which 3D-printed cornetts have since informed our understanding of historical performance practices, before discussing their subsequent use in the author's own professional practice. The latest iterations of the modular 3D-printed cornett at the center of this study demonstrate some opportunities afforded by the technology for innovation in contemporary instrument design, including a version with integrated piezo pickup for performance with live electronics. Finally, the author offers some thoughts on possible future directions for the research, with some consideration of environmental impacts and potential mitigations
Chain of Thoughts Based Prompting for Incident Detection Using Large Language Model
No full textWarehouse safety is crucial but challenging due to the variety of incidents that occur, such as human errors and equipment failures. Traditional incident reporting often focuses only on the event itself, lacking context on the actions leading to the incident. To address this, this work introduces a system using video analysis to track and document the sequence of events before, during, and after an incident. This system integrates You Only Look Once (YOLO) models YOLOv9, YOLOv11 and Faster R-CNN (Region-based Convolutional Neural Network) to detect and annotate real-time events, capturing the entire incident sequence. Moreover, a language model automatically generates detailed and clear health and safety reports based on the detected actions, ensuring their accuracy and relevance. Testing demonstrated the system’s effectiveness in detecting key incidents like forklift mishandling and goods falling. YOLOv11 achieved a precision of 0.806 and a recall of 0.955, with a mean Average Precision (mAP) mAP50 score of 0.972. The system also showed strong sequence detection accuracy, with key events identified with a recall of 1.0 in some cases. Reports generated using Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT)-based models showed strong alignment with human-readable text, with a cosine similarity score of 0.874 and a Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) F1 score of 0.879. These results indicate that the system improves safety practices by providing comprehensive, actionable insights.Warehouse safety is crucial but challenging due to the variety of incidents that occur, such as human errors and equipment failures. Traditional incident reporting often focuses only on the event itself, lacking context on the actions leading to the incident. To address this, this work introduces a system using video analysis to track and document the sequence of events before, during, and after an incident. This system integrates You Only Look Once (YOLO) models YOLOv9, YOLOv11 and Faster R-CNN (Region-based Convolutional Neural Network) to detect and annotate real-time events, capturing the entire incident sequence. Moreover, a language model automatically generates detailed and clear health and safety reports based on the detected actions, ensuring their accuracy and relevance. Testing demonstrated the system’s effectiveness in detecting key incidents like forklift mishandling and goods falling. YOLOv11 achieved a precision of 0.806 and a recall of 0.955, with a mean Average Precision (mAP) mAP50 score of 0.972. The system also showed strong sequence detection accuracy, with key events identified with a recall of 1.0 in some cases. Reports generated using Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT)-based models showed strong alignment with human-readable text, with a cosine similarity score of 0.874 and a Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) F1 score of 0.879. These results indicate that the system improves safety practices by providing comprehensive, actionable insights
A Theoretical Exploration of Contemporary Conductive Education Philosophy and Conductors’ Professional Identity
No full textConductive Education (CE) is an applied system, teaching people with neurological movement disorders, yet existing studies position CE as a treatment option. There is limited pedagogical research on CE, with the available literature focusing on the mechanics of the system. The philosophy of CE is not explicitly formulated in the literature, there is a presence of its underlying principles. CE’s lead professional is the conductor but it was suggested that they do not share a united voice, indicating a degree of fragmentation. A study found that conductors feel under-recognised. There is a lack of research surrounding conductors’ professional identity or what CE is as a profession in the United Kingdom today.
This research suggests a re-configured understanding of CE, aiming to provoke professional perspectives on what CE is in the contemporary world. The primary intention is to impact theory-praxis by seeking out different ways of knowing CE, which is useful to students, conductors and other researchers. This study intends to open up possibilities to explore what produces becoming-conductor identity.
This inquiry aligns to the post-qualitative paradigm and takes a new materialist stance in order to re-orient thought. Twenty-one conductors took part in four focus groups where matter was directly introduced. Diffractive analysis was utilised to investigate data< which is not passive, but has its own agency. Barad’s concepts of entanglements and intra-action were plugged into alongside Bennett’s thing-power.
Conductors’ material and discursive accounts highlighted systematic issues and (un)spoken categorisations of conductor-ness, pointing to the absence of a shared sense of identity. Conductors’ embodied encounters revealed passionate care at the core of their professionalism. Conductors value the meaningful relationships they have with their learners the most, suggesting entanglements. Viewing CE as an assemblage is useful to re-orient thought regarding its theoretical, professional and practical complexities.
Through the doing of this inquiry a diagram emerged, this shows the system of CE as a whole with its parts. The differences that matter in CE are its philosophy, paradigm, process, pedagogy and application. It was uncovered that becoming-identity is based on CE offering an alternative model, which is a potential-based conceptualisation of disability. This thesis offers a visual pathway into the profession, acknowledging CE’s heterogenicity and strengthening professional identity by exploring what produces the conductor. Furthermore, a visual conceptual framework for CE is suggested, as an emergent and always becoming tool to aid the academisation of the profession
The role of Health Technology Assessment in reimbursement decisions and pricing of new medicines across diverse healthcare systems
No full textThe rising costs of innovative medicines present a major challenge for public healthcare systems, particularly in countries striving for universal health coverage. Health Technology Assessment (HTA) is critical in guiding reimbursement decisions and negotiating medicine prices, particularly in monopoly markets where pharmaceutical companies hold exclusive rights due to patent protection. This study examines how eight healthcare systems – England, Australia, Canada, Germany, Colombia, Mexico, India, and Brazil – utilise HTA in price negotiations for new medicines. By analysing the integration of HTA into pricing mechanisms, decision-making criteria, and economic evaluation methods, this research highlights significant disparities in terms of socioeconomic context, healthcare system management, and HTA maturity. These insights offer valuable policy recommendations for optimising HTA’s role in controlling medicine prices and ensuring sustainable healthcare financing