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Negotiating changes to Civil Service Performance Management schemes: An analysis of the proposed Civil Service Performance Management Framewor
Get PDFThis report has been commissioned by the PCS to provide an evaluation of the proposed
changes to Performance Management (PM) schemes in the Civil Service, following the
running of a number of pilot schemes and ahead of substantive negotiation of new systems at a departmental level
Chapter 2 Writing for reflection
No full textThis chapter focuses on how early years professionals and students can use writing to reflect on practice to improve effectiveness in the work place and personal growt
Why ‘the best way of learning to coach the game is playing the game’: conceptualising ‘fast-tracked’ high-performance coaching pathways
Get PDFAt the beginning of the 2013/2014 season in England and Wales, 90 head coaches of the 92 men's national professional football league clubs and 20 of the 22 men's professional rugby union clubs had tenure as a professional elite player in their respective sports. Moreover, Rynne [(2014). ‘Fast track’ and ‘traditional path’ coaches: Affordances, agency and social capital. Sport, Education and Society, 19, 299–313] has claimed that many former elite athletes are ‘fast-tracked’ through formal accreditation structures into these high-performance coaching roles. The reasons why former elite athletes dominate head coaching roles in professional sports clubs and why a ‘fast-track’ pathway from elite athlete to high-performance coach is supported remain unclear. Thereby the present study sought to address this issue by investigating the basis for ‘fast-tracked’ head coaching appointments. Eight male directors of men's professional football and rugby union clubs in England were interviewed to examine how particular coaching skills and sources of knowledge were valorised. Drawing upon Bourdieu's conceptual framework, the results suggested that head coaching appointments were often based upon the perceived ability of head coaches gaining player ‘respect’. Experiences gained during earlier athletic careers were assumed to provide head coaches with the ability to develop practical sense and an elite sporting habitus commensurate with the requirements of the field of elite sports coaching. This included leadership and practical coaching skills to develop technical and tactical astuteness, from which, ‘respect’ could be quickly gained and maintained. The development of coaching skills was rarely associated with only formal coaching qualifications. The ‘fast-tracking’ of former athletes for high-performance coaching roles was promoted by directors to ensure the perpetuation of specific playing and coaching philosophies. Consequently, this may exclude groups from coaching roles in elite men's sport. The paper concludes by outlining how these findings might imply a disjuncture between the skills promoted during formal coaching qualifications and the expectations club directors have of elite coaches in these sports
PipeSLAM: Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping in Feature Sparse Water Pipes using the Rao-Blackwellised Particle Filter
Get PDFWater, a valuable resource, is usually distributed through urban environments by buried pipes. These pipes are difficult to access for inspection, maintenance and repair. This makes in-pipe robots an appealing technology for inspecting water pipes and localising damage prior to repair from above ground. Accurate localisation of damage is of critical importance because of the costs associated with excavating roads, disrupting traffic and disrupting the water supply. The problem is that pipes tend to be relatively featureless making robot localisation a challenging problem. In this paper we propose a novel simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) algorithm for metal water pipes. The approach we take is to excite pipe vibration with a hydrophone (sound induced vibration), which leads to a map of pipe vibration amplitude over space. We then develop a SLAM algorithm that makes use of this new type of map, where the estimation method is based on the Rao-Blackwellised particle filter (RBPF), termed PipeSLAM. The approach is also suited to SLAM in plastic water pipes using a similar type of map derived from ultrasonic sensing. We successfully demonstrate the feasibility of the approach using a combination of experimental and simulation data
Design, simulation, prototyping and experimentation of planar micro-strip patch antenna for passive UHF RFID to tag for metallic objects
No full textPassive radio frequency identification (RFID) system operating in the ultrahigh frequency (UHF) band ranging from 860 MHz to 960 MHz is getting considerable attention in the recent years as it provides a long reading range, high data rate, and small antenna size. However, the passive UHF RFID tag does not work when it is directly mounted on metal objects. The performance of the passive UHF RFID tag is becoming increasing important for tagging metallic objects, in particular, in the warehouse applications. In this paper, a micro-strip patch antenna is proposed for the passive UHF RFID systems to tag metallic objects. The proposed design of the micro-strip patch antenna is supplemented by simulation and reading range measurement results. The prototype antenna measurements show a maximum reading range of 4.5 m and a reliable reading range of 1.89 m on metallic objects. The experimental results show that the prototype micro-strip patch antenna works very well on the metallic objects
City-Region Building and Geohistorical Matters
No full textIn an article published nearly 15 years ago MacLeod and Jones (2001), carefully reviewed, situated, extended, and above all celebrated the enormous intellectual contributions of Anssi Paasi to the scholarly project of doing ‘regions in geography’. Situated within, and going beyond, the ‘new regional geography’ movement in human geography and the social sciences more broadly, they looked at Paasi’s thinking on regionalization processes, abstracted in four stages, which collectively allowed them to advance (as they claimed) a meaningful understanding of regional change. Rolling forward the research clock to the likes of the Northern Powerhouse and other devolution events across the UK, the authors of this paper maintain that Passi’s framework remains a cutting-edge theoretical framework in and through which to examine region-building processes and practices. This chapter accordingly looks at the ‘new new localism’ and suggests the need to now think about the dawn of a ‘new new regional geography’
Towards Differentiating Business Intelligence, Big Data, Data Analytics and Knowledge Discovery
No full textAbstract. Confusion, ambiguity and misunderstanding of the concepts and terminology regarding different approaches concerned with analysing massive data sets (Business Intelligence, Big Data, Data Analytics and Knowledge Discovery) was identified as a significant issue faced by many academics, fellow researchers, industry professionals and domain experts. In that context, a need to critically evaluate these concept and approaches focusing on their similarities, differences and relationships was identified as useful for further research and industry professionals. In this position paper, we critically review these four approaches and produce a framework, which provides visual representation of the relationship between them to effectively support their identification and easier differentiatio
The law in England and Wales on mental health treatment in the community
No full textAppeard as chapter 4 in Care of the Mentally Disordered Offender in the Community (2nd Edition) edited by Alec Buchanan and Lisa Wootton (Oxford University Press, Published 12th October 201
Regionalisation and civil society in a time of austerity: the cases of Manchester and Sheffield
No full textWithin the UK and as well as further afield, the spatial delineation of the ’city region’ has seen a renaissance as the de-facto spatial political unit of governance for economic development (Clarke & Cochrane, 2013). This spatial realignment has been central to the construction of state projects such as the Northern Powerhouse, charged with taking forward the combined agendas of devolution, localism and austerity. The chapter deploys case study research from two city regions (Manchester and Sheffield) to look at the ways in which the city region is being constructed and the different ways in which ‘civil society’ is negotiating its way through this changing governance landscape. It is in this context that the chapter considers how city regions are being built and the ways in which this process is being limited or undermined through austerity
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