Open Research Exeter - University of Exeter
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Using novel participatory mapping techniques to identify high leverage points for intervention in the education systems of Eswatini and South Africa
No full textThis study explores transformative intervention and education system change, with the overall aim of making education systems in Eswatini and South Africa more inclusive for marginalised learners. Building on the work of Meadows (1999), the study considers how points of high leverage – information flows, system rules, system self-organisation, system goals, societal mindsets – can be targeted to bring about more meaningful and sustainable change in the education systems of the target countries. A key aim of the study was also to develop a novel methodology for the identification of high leverage points, and to explore stakeholder power dynamics situated at these points.
Grounded in critical realism and relational ontology, the study adopts a systems thinking epistemology, and acknowledges the inherent complexity and interrelatedness of social systems. An exploratory, multiple-phase case study methodology was developed to explore the education system dynamics of the target countries and to identify points of high leverage intervention and the power dynamics situated at those points. This was participatory in nature, guided by the ethical stance of conducting research with people, rather than for people.
Findings in both countries point to the importance of high-leverage system intervention. In particular, intervention at the level of system design (information flows, system rules, self-organisation) was seen to be a way to indirectly target change at the higher leverage point level of system goals and mindsets. Ultimately, mindset shift – especially around disability and marginalisation – was seen as a necessary prerequisite to any meaningful system change, and for the inclusion of marginalised learners. In regard to the novel methodology developed, findings indicated that participants found the multi-stage system mapping exercises to be useful, engaging, and empowering.
This study suggests that participatory system mapping methods can be useful in identifying and targeting high leverage points within education systems. By focussing on the level of system design, and by analysing power dynamics at points of high leverage, the novel methodology developed has the potential to be generalisable and impactful in other fields.</p
The Illicit Trade in Cultural Property Online: A Critical Analysis of Legal Frameworks, Gaps and Opportunities
No full textThe illicit trade in cultural property has inevitably adapted to technological developments. While traditionally the illicit trade took place on-the-ground, the emergence of social media and e-commerce has necessarily created new and largely unregulated environment for the circulation of illicit cultural property. Although international and domestic efforts to diminish the illicit trade have focused on physical marketplaces and traditional actors, the digital shift has created new challenges for policymakers, law enforcement, and scholars. Digital marketplaces are characterised by anonymity, transnational reach, and speed of access, undermining the existing legal frameworks and enforcement strategies.
This thesis examines the legal and evidentiary challenges posed by the expansion of the trade to social media and e-commerce platforms. It investigates why existing international and domestic legal frameworks are insufficient to have a meaningful impact on diminishing the digitally mediated illicit trade. Scholars have recognised the Internet's significance for unlawful market in cultural goods, however there is limited scholarship on how the foundational legal concepts and evidentiary standards related to trade apply (or do not apply) in the digital environment. This thesis fills this gap by adopting doctrinal legal methodology and critically examining the existing terminology of the law which applies to circulation of cultural property, but also specific legal obligations imposed on the new stakeholders in the illicit trade – social media and e-commerce platforms. It also evaluates the effectiveness of self-regulatory efforts adopted by digital marketplaces in addressing illicit trade in cultural property.
The analysis suggests there are significant gaps in the current terminology regulating trade in cultural property and that regulations applicable to digital marketplaces remain insufficiently tailored to the issue. For this reason, the thesis argues that a reconceptualisation of key legal terms is necessary, along with more targeted frameworks that recognise the distinct risks posed by online cultural property trade.</p
HPM Schema file for HPM
No full textAn XML Schema definition for Hierarchical Process Modelling (HPM) model files. See http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema </p
Estimating intergenerational returns to medical care: New evidence from at-risk newborns
No full textWe examine whether intensive early-life government-funded interventions targeted to at-risk newborns are transmitted intergenerationally. Using a regression discontinuity design and administrative data from Chile we follow women up to the age of 25, and document the surprising fact that children of individuals who were treated at birth have worse indicators of health at birth a generation later. We suggest this owes to selective fertility, finding that marginally treated individuals are substantially more likely to give birth. These new stylised facts suggest that in certain circumstances, the long-term implications of public investments within family lineages may be quite different to their short-term implications, placing more weight on necessary reinforcing interventions.</p
Motives and Meanings in Psychedelic Use
No full textThis thesis examines two underexplored determinants of psychological outcomes in ketamine treatment and naturalistic psychedelic use: acute subjective experience and user motivation. Study 1 synthesised qualitative evidence on the acute experience of ketamine treatment for mental health problems. A systematic review of MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and Embase identified eight eligible studies from 675 records. Thematic synthesis generated five interrelated domains: altered perception, altered emotion, detachment, transcendent connectedness, and meaning-making. Clinically salient features included affective shifts, relaxed self-schemas, self-transcendent emotions, and possible malleability of autobiographical memory. Challenging psychological experiences and mild adverse physical effects were also evident, highlighting the importance of psychological support and attention to set and setting. Overall, the acute ketamine experience appeared to range from disconnection from body, self, and world to emotionally significant states of connectedness with potential therapeutic value.
Study 2 examined whether motives for psychedelic use are differentially associated with depressive symptoms. Secondary analysis of the 2023 Global Psychedelic Survey (N = 5,943) used latent class analysis of six motive indicators and identified five profiles: Well-being Expansionists, Recreational users, Serious Explorers, Ambivalent users, and Health-Oriented users. Compared with Expansionists, all other classes reported higher PHQ-8 depressive symptoms, with Ambivalent users showing particularly elevated odds of probable depressive episode. Among past-year users, frequent use appeared more detrimental for non-expansion profiles, while using with close companions appeared more favourable than using alone for Recreational users.</p
Attracting measures
No full textUnder mild assumptions, the SRB measure µ associated to an Axiom A attractor A has the following properties: (i) the empirical measure starting at a typical point near A converges weakly to µ ; (ii) the pushforward of any Lebesgue-absolutely continuous probability measure supported near A converges weakly to µ . In general, a measure with the first property is called a "physical measure", and physical measures are recognised by many authors as being important in their own right. Comparatively little has been written about the second property, but we highlight that this is also important in its own right as it characterises the attraction of general absolutely continuous measures to a measure µ -- in such a case, we say µ is an "attracting measure". Attracting measures represent a kind of decay of correlation of observables that is more accessible than classical mixing when the measure is singular with respect to the Lebesgue measure. We prove a result that serves as a topological abstraction of the original result establishing that mixing SRB measures on Axiom A attractors are attracting measures.</p
Periodic ocean oxygenation events during the mid-Ediacaran
No full textThe Ediacaran Gaskiers Glaciation (579.78–579.44 million years ago) is the last major climatic event of the Neoproterozoic, but the contemporaneous ocean redox conditions remain unclear. Here we conducted carbon–uranium–sulfur isotopic (δ13Ccarb–δ238Ucarb–δ34SCAS) and elemental analyses on marine carbonate samples from the glacial-to-deglacial succession (equivalent to the Gaskiers Glaciation successions) of the Egan Formation in northwestern Australia. Negative δ13Ccarb and positive δ238Ucarb excursions paired with δ34SCAS and cerium anomaly profiles reveal an extensive ocean oxygenation event. The Gaskiers ocean oxygenation event is the middle of three such transient mid-Ediacaran events, occurring roughly 5 million years apart. Using a model for the coupled biogeochemical cycles of phosphorus, oxygen and carbon, we show that these periodic ocean oxygenation events, associated δ238Ucarb variations and part of the δ13Ccarb variation can be explained by a self-sustaining oscillation in the Earth system. An increase in the organic carbon burial flux plausibly linked to eukaryote evolution at the time could have tipped the Earth system from a stable anoxic ocean regime to an unstable oscillatory regime. A later further increase in organic carbon burial flux could have tipped the system into a stable, modern-like oxic ocean regime.</p
Developing L2 Writing Teacher Expertise: An Exploratory Study of MA TESOL Students’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Writing Across Three UK Programmes
No full textThis thesis presents an investigation into the understandings and experiences of 25 students on a full-time master’s level programme for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) with regards to the teaching of L2 writing. Drawing on data from interviews with participants across three UK universities, it explores how participants’ conceptualisations of L2 writing and L2 writing instruction relate to the development of their Pedagogical Content Knowledge for writing. Through a holistic analysis of one participant’s account, it relates the participant’s reflective engagement during the master’s programme with personal writing experience and course content to the ongoing development of their pedagogical knowledge for L2 writing instruction.
This qualitative research was conducted within an interpretivist paradigm and employed semi-structured interviews. The study explored participants’ understandings of L2 writing and writing instruction as part of their reflection on learning during, or towards the completion of their master’s programmes. The analysis was guided by a reflective thematic approach, drawing on Braun and Clarke (2021) and Saldaña (2016). The study examined participants’ accounts of development and reflection within their master’s context, and included a holistic narrative analysis of one participant to illustrate how personal writing experience, course engagement, and pedagogical thinking converged in the development of Pedagogical Content Knowledge for writing (PCKW) and contributed to discussions of expertise in L2 writing instruction.
This study addressed three key questions: how master’s-level TESOL students conceptualise L2 writing and its instruction; how they reflect on and describe their experiences of learning and teaching L2 writing; and how their engagement with master’s course content, personal writing experiences, and contextual factors contributes to their Pedagogical Content Knowledge for writing, teaching confidence, and emerging sense of expertise in L2 writing pedagogy. While TESOL students varied in teaching experience - ranging from pre-service to novice and experienced teachers- they shared common patterns in how they made sense of writing pedagogy and reflected on their confidence in teaching writing.
The findings revealed a number of interconnected influences that form participants’ understandings of L2 writing pedagogy. While many moved beyond an initial understanding of L2 writing pedagogy as process-oriented, their reflections pointed to contextual as well as personal constraints related to their own perceived limitations as L2 writers. Contextual constraints included institutional policies around learner’s L1 use and exam-oriented instruction. The data also underscored the value of experiential learning embedded in participants’ own writing through activities that developed critical thinking skills and feedback experiences during the master’s programme. This provided a practical basiss for pedagogical reflection as areas to prioritise in their future teaching. The unique contribution of this research lies in its focus on how Pedagogical Content Knowledge for writing may develop through the participatory experiences of TESOL students, who are positioned both as writers and future teachers. Positioned between research on PCK and discussions of L2 writing teacher expertise, this study explores how participants problematize their instructional assumptions (Tsui, 2009) and professional knowledge, and engage critically with their developing PCK for writing.</p
A habitability lens to boost effective local climate adaptation
No full textClimate adaptation is what we (will) make of it, that is, either a burden or an opportunity for a brighter and equitable future. Achieving effective adaptation requires shifting from a risk-centric perspective focusing on the threats, to a more inclusive and engaging approach that envisions sustainable futures. This Perspective draws on our decades of research experience to argue that the “habitability” lens can catalyse this shift, and proposes a research framework.</p
Co-Becomings in Creative Music Workshop Practices
No full textIn this thesis, co-becomings are adopted as the starting point for understanding creative music workshop practices in the field of community music in the UK. Co-becomings take the place of individually situated humans as the basis for an understanding of subjectivity in this context that emphasizes embodiment, relationality and process. Drawing on posthuman theory, co-becomings are seen to cut across the nature-culture divide, incorporating both human and other-than-human dimensions including sound, technology and affect.
The concept of co-becoming is put into dialogue with workshop practice in three diverse sites including an early years classroom, an online music making group for young autistic people and a music group for people with early onset dementia and their families. The inquiry is guided by areas of curiosity which include investigation of material encounters and emergent assemblages as well as methodological exploration and attention to my own co-becoming through the research. The study utilizes an emergent methodology involving diffractive encounters between data and theory, described as research-making. Playful approaches are developed to collaborate with human and other-than-human participants including data, generating a variety of audio, video and mixed media artefacts which are incorporated into the thesis.
The thesis argues that foregrounding co-becomings helps to resist neoliberal narratives of individualism, standardisation and deficit which can limit the creative and aesthetic power of music workshop practices. Insight is offered into how utilizing co-becomings as the starting point for our understanding can align instead with fundamental values informing community music including co-creativity, process and inclusion. Implications for research and practice are suggested which include working with a diversity of different ways of knowing; recognition of dispersed and relational creative agency in a music workshop; and altered conceptions of both creativity and learning in this context.</p