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The Prevalence of Specific Learning Difficulties in Higher Education: A Study of UK Universities Across 12 Academic Years
Get PDFSpecific learning and attention difficulties are often first identified in childhood but they can cause lifelong academic and occupational challenges. We explored the prevalence of these difficulties and the representation of sex and ethnicity amongst all first-year students in UK higher education across 12 years– almost 5.7 million students –and compared course preferences and University destinations of those with and without difficulties. Students declaring learning/attention difficulties were more likely to be White or of Mixed ethnicity and least likely to be Asian. They were more likely to attend specialist HE institutions or newer universities, and more likely to study courses in creative arts and design, agriculture and architecture than law, languages, computer science and mathematical sciences. The number of students declaring difficulties has increased year on year, in actual terms and as a proportion of the student body, suggesting that efforts to increase diversity and inclusion have been successful. However, differences remain between students with and without learning/attention difficulties in terms of ethnicity, subjects studied, and HE institutions attended, so more needs to be done to identify and address reasons for this. While this paper reports data from UK students, it addresses an international question and invites similar explorations of other national datasets
"Good" and "Poor" Lawyering in Continental Law: the Criminal Defence Lawyer in Greece as a Case Study
No full textThis chapter offers a legal cosmopolitan perspective into ‘good’ and ‘poor’ lawyering, by taking the continental legal system of Greece as a case study. The concepts of ‘good’ and ‘poor’ quality criminal defence practice are examined from the dual vista of the broader role of defence lawyers in criminal proceedings in Greece and their effective participation in custodial interrogation in practice. The former vista sheds light on the centrality of criminal defence lawyers in the criminal process, from a historic, institutional, cultural and contemporary procedural perspective, which then makes obvious the extent to which ‘good’ and ‘poor’ quality criminal defence practice can influence the criminal process and its outcomes. It also allows a reflection on potential denominators of ‘good’ and ‘poor’ quality criminal defence practice: competence, experience, manoeuvrability, empathy and even prestige, reputation and charisma in this way emerge as endogenous to how we visualise ‘good’ lawyering in Greece, while disconcerting examples of ‘poor’ quality criminal defence services can be observed to underpin entire areas of procedural and institutional practice such as in relation to legal aid or the postponement of criminal trials
Spin
No full textThe term spin is thought to have originated as part of political reporting during the US Presidential campaign of 1984. With the development of the permanent campaign under conditions of 24/7 media, it came to mean the manipulation of the news agenda by governments for partisan purposes. This facilitated the institutionalization of public relations (PR) as part of the governing process. The demonized ‘spin doctor’ acts as a convenient scapegoat for journalists who resent their declining influence. After the election of Donald Trump in 2016 post-truth politics was seen by some as an evolution of spin, while others claim it represents a more troubling paradigm shift that denies the symbolic authority of truth. More recently spin has been implicated in the repositioning of dictatorships and the spread of ‘manufactured indignation’ by religious traditionalists. The meaning of spin has diversified but it remains a versatile and widely used term in academia and colloquial speech that can be summarized as a biased and self-advantaging form of public communication.
Keywords: Spin; public relations; post-truth; disinformation; government; democracy
An Exploration of Lived Experiences of Sexually and Gender Diverse Staff Members in Higher Education: A Case Study
Get PDFSexually and gender diverse staff in Higher Education Institutions may experience a sense of belonging and acceptance in inclusive environments, but may also face discrimination and bias, leading to feelings of isolation and exclusion. This paper reports on findings from 40 in-depth interviews and six focus group discussions with LGBTQIA+ self-identified staff members in a HEI and LGBTQIA+ allies who may identify as LGBTQIA+ themselves. Findings reveal that first impressions when joining a university as a staff member may have a long-lasting effect, while both positive and negative experiences are present. Further, a pattern is developed among gay men who may be placing more emphasis on their relationship with line managers, which can be supportive but at times toxic, unsupportive and inattentive. In addition to this, the findings highlight discrimination faced by staff, its impact on their wellbeing, and the significance of visibility and representation. This paper concludes that lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ staff members in Higher Education continue to be mixed with a high percentage of staff experiencing discrimination, primarily in the form of microaggressions, but institutions need to be more pro-active to foster safe spaces for all with more inclusive policies and practices
Digital Twin: Securing IoT-Networks using integrated ECC with Blockchain for Healthcare Ecosystem
Get PDFDigital Twin (DT) innovation is becoming increasingly prevalent in numerous areas. This is often particularly genuine in healthcare, which depends increasingly on Internet of Things (IoT) systems. But this combination brings up enormous issues with security, security, and being able to develop. Since information is private, it is exceptionally critical to keep it secure from individuals who shouldn't have gotten to it and from being stolen. This consideration proposes a modern framework that combines Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) with blockchain innovation to bargain with these issues. The system is implied to ensure IoT systems by making demonstrative apparatuses in healthcare more secure. A Genetic Algorithm-based Random Forest demonstration (GAO-RF) is additionally utilized to form include choice work way better, which makes it beyond any doubt that information taking care of and analysis go easily. The GAO-RF show includes the body of unused thoughts by progressing the method of choosing highlights, which is exceptionally critical for proficiently overseeing colossal sums of private information. The model that was put into activity works exceptionally well, as appeared by its execution measurements as an F1-Score of 97.3%, an accuracy of 98.4%, a precision of 97.3%, a recall of 97.4%, an MCC of 97.69%, and a kappa measurement (KS) of 97.31%. These results show an exceptionally strong framework that can handle and protect private health data. The safety and security of understanding information in IoT systems have enormously progressed by including ECC and blockchain in the DT system. A Genetic Algorithm has been shown to work well in the Random Forest model for feature selection, which has led to better security methods. This study has big effects on the healthcare field because it gives us a strong way to keep patient information safe. This method creates trust in the healthcare system by making sure that private data is handled in an honest and safe way. It could change how patient data is protected in this digital age
The university as landscape for learning, innovation and social justice: a conversation with Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli
Get PDFProfessor Sir Anton Muscatelli is now, in 2025, stepping down as Vice-Chancellor of University of Glasgow after sixteen years in the post. This interview provides the opportunity to hear his views on some of the leading issues affecting higher education today from the viewpoint of Glasgow, Scotland, but with wider significance. In three parts, the interview reflects first on questions of expansion and ambitious building schedules, and their impact on the city’s political economy and beyond. In the second part, the focus is on questions arising from leading a Scottish university and being in effect answerable to two governments, and finally in the third part of the interview, attention is paid to sector crisis, including fears for key subjects such as Modern Languages. Sir Anton stresses the importance of access, social justice and the university as an institution that retains a vision for worldwide learning and research, collaboration and impact
Exploring the transgressive, taboo and far out in a graphic novel of ‘Hansel and Gretel’
No full textHow is a graphic novel read? How do graphic novels subvert and transgress the borders and hinterlands of children’s literature? This chapter applies critical literacy and multimodal theory to the reading of a graphic novel, Hansel and Gretel & Zombies (Harper and Cano, 2016) and looks at how readers make meaning across modes. Reading children’s literature in this way recognises the complexity of multimodal communication and looks closely at the affordances of different modes. In using critical literacy and multimodal theory to analyse a graphic novel, this chapter interrogates how these texts play with the taboo and transgressive (Janks, 2010) and open up possibilities for subverting fairy tales. This approach examines the possibilities of different modes of representation to make meaning and looks carefully at how ideas are framed, from whose perspective, and how these graphic retellings play with death. It also examines how meaning is made through comic features employed in graphic novels (panels, gutter, flow, speech bubbles, movement lines and emanata, sound effects). Bringing graphic novels (and comics) into the study of children’s literature expands how we perceive the taboo in children’s literature presenting opposing viewpoints together and investigating ways that reading a graphic novel offers possibilities to the reader to play with transgressive and far-out ideas
Metacognition and young children: an exploration of how metacognition contributes to children’s thinking and learning
Get PDFMetacognition, or the ability to think about one's own thinking processes, plays a crucial role in the learning and development of young children. While initially children might not possess fully developed metacognitive skills, they begin to develop these abilities gradually as they grow and gain more experiences. This chapter will explore ways that metacognition influences young children’s learning, how young children develop metacognitive skills, and why young children should develop metacognitive skills and strategies
The ‘UNFAIR’ refugee agency: UNHCR accountability after protests and violence
Get PDFUrban refugees increasingly resort to sit-ins outside United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) offices because they lack avenues for accountability. Our fieldwork reveals their experiences of neglect, mistreatment, and violence and the ways that these are compounded by UNHCR’s responses to protests, generating deep mistrust. Drawing on interviews with refugees in three protest sites and a workshop with legal practitioners, we document disturbing accusations, implicating UNHCR in human rights violations. We reflect on these findings and explore the possibility of transforming the agency’s accountability relations in the context of declining budgets and influence. We argue that the agency must abandon its securitized response to refugee-led protests and adopt a ‘networked accountability’ approach, engaging with the plural authorities that hold legitimacy in refugee protection. Although UNHCR is currently structurally dependent upon major donors and host states, it must embed accountability relations with refugee-led organizations (RLOs), NGOs, and legal practitioners to fulfil its mandate and protect refugees
Hermann Bausinger (1926–2021): An appreciation
Get PDFThe article offers an appreciation of the Intellectual achievements of the formidable German scholar, Hermann Bausinger whose work, regrettably, remains little known in the Anglo-speaking world. As early as the 1960s he was already exploring the continued existence of folk cultures in the contemporary technological world. In his anlyses of the interfaces of ritual, science and magic, he foreshadowed (by several decades) the later work (in anthropology and technology studies) of scholars such as Alfred Gell and Bruno Latour. In a world in which our smartphone technologies have turned out to be particularly suitable to the widespread transmission of serial forms of fake/post truth and irrational rumours, Bausinger offers us a marvellously coherent and incisive anbysis of such phenomena