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Community Food Insecurity Interventions for Adults Living in the United Kingdom: A Scoping Review
Full text linkFood insecurity is a growing concern worldwide, particularly in the United Kingdom. Despite this, community‐based interventions to address food insecurity remain an under‐researched area. Existing food insecurity reviews have focused on international evidence, limiting investigations to foodbank use and/or interventions targeted towards children. This scoping review aimed to understand the evidence on available community‐based interventions for adults experiencing food insecurity in the United Kingdom and the suggested elements for a feasible, acceptable intervention. A comprehensive electronic search was completed up to January 2024. All study designs were considered. A descriptive analytical approach was used to summarise intervention data. Narrative synthesis explored the data further, using the Food Ladders model as a framework. This review identified a very limited scope and quantity of evidence on community food insecurity interventions for UK adults, with 21 included studies. Over half of interventions (52.4%, n = 11) relied on volunteers, and a high proportion used donated or surplus food. The nutritional quality of emergency food provision was poor, and it was unclear whether providers could adequately cater for special dietary requirements, cultural and/or religious needs. There were very few studies (19.0%, n = 4) assessing the feasibility or acceptability of interventions or their impact on food insecurity. Further research is required into the feasibility, acceptability and effectiveness of community food insecurity interventions for adults in the United Kingdom
Unveiling the ChatGPT Educational Revolution: Assessing the Dynamic Impact on Students and Educators
Full text linkDue to shifting social demands and technology breakthroughs, the higher education environment is changing quickly. Despite initiatives to make education accessible to everyone, accessibility is still a major problem, especially in light of the digital divide. This study investigates how ChatGPT, an AI-powered chatbot, can revolutionize higher education by tackling important problems including resource efficiency, personalized learning, and accessibility. This study intends to improve learning outcomes for both students and educators by comprehending how instructors and students incorporate ChatGPT into instructional methods. Students and instructors were given both quantitative and qualitative questionnaires as part of a mixed-methods approach, in order to gather data on the usage of ChatGPT for different academic tasks, such as lesson preparation, grading, and student help. Results showed that most people believe ChatGPT to be a useful tool that improves productivity, saves time, and helps with grasping difficult subjects. Questions were raised concerning the veracity of the data that ChatGPT offered and the necessity of organized training. ChatGPT and other AI technologies have the potential to enhance educational results by enabling personalized instruction and offering on-demand learning help. In addition to the continuing discussion on the use of cutting-edge technology in higher education, the findings provide insightful information for educational institutions seeking to use AI to improve teaching and learning. Received: 16 September 2024 | Revised: 9 April 2025 | Accepted: 15 July 2025 Conflicts of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work. Data Availability Statement Data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Author Contribution Statement Swathi Ganesan: Conceptualization, Methodology, Data curation, Writing – Original draft, Writing – review and editing, Visualization, Project administration. Lakmali Karunarathne: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review and editing, Visualization, Project administration. Ghanshyam Mahota: Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft. Sangita Pokhrel: Conceptualization, Writing – review and editing, Visualization
Decolonising Outdoor Learning: Developing Connectedness Through Place-responsive Pedagogy Beyond the Early Years in England
No full textThis chapter explores connections between child development, culture and place-responsiveness in outdoor learning (OL). Theoretical influences are traced from historical to contemporary educational thinking. Expanding the conversation beyond the Early Years (EY – 0 – 5 years old), this chapter embraces connectedness to inform place-responsive pedagogy and places a lens on Indigenous and local knowledge in curricula in Wales and New Zealand. Our broader aim is to adopt a decolonised, global view of place-responsive OL. This entails considering how different knowledge and values can provide children with opportunities to ‘meet themselves in relation to the world’ (Biesta, 2021). The challenges of negotiating this ‘meeting’ relate to broader socio-cultural and socio-political and environmental structures which shape outdoor encounters. This chapter expands a socio-cultural analysis to propose that slow, place-responsive pedagogy should be valued beyond the EY in England
Sustainable Green Marketing Strategies for a Circular Economy African Realities and Imperatives
No full textProvides novel focus areas such as green marketing governance and sustainable green marketing as a business model.
Focuses on important issues in green marketing and sustainability transitions from an African perspective.
Addresses the challenges faced by African economies in achieving sustainable development goals
The Effectiveness of Partnerships With Commercial Actors to Improve Food Environments: A Systematic Review
Full text linkPartnerships with commercial actors have been proposed as a policy approach to create healthier food environments. We conducted a systematic review to assess their effectiveness for improving food environments and population health at state, national, or international levels. We searched in 14 databases and two websites for real‐world evaluations published between 2010 and 2020. Study quality was appraised using a modified Newcastle–Ottawa Scale. Data were synthesized narratively by outcome (human, food environment, policy content, and implementation progress), considering their effect direction. Seventeen studies reporting on seven PPPs in four countries were included. Most studies (n = 14) involved food reformulation, especially salt reduction. Three focused on specific settings (the eating out‐of‐home sector, schools, and convenience stores). There was mixed evidence that partnerships make people buy fewer calories or more school meals (n = 3 studies) or reduce product sodium content (n = 6). Some positive effects were described in one uncontrolled study each for decreasing trans‐fatty acid intake and for making healthier options more available in school cafeterias, but these studies had important limitations. Five document analyses highlighted shortcomings in the partnerships, including their limited scope, failure to add value to ongoing actions, varying participation levels, and lack of implementation, monitoring, and reporting. Alternative policy approaches should be considered. This systematic review is registered on PROSPERO as CRD42020170963
Leisure, Social Justice, Research, Praxis and Scholarship: A Bibliometric Analysis and Research Agenda
No full textIssues of social justice have become increasingly important as an area for academic research in recent decades. This has also been the case for researchers operating in disciplines such as leisure. The purpose of this bibliometric analysis is to review, analyze and synthesize the current state of research focusing on issues of social justice in leisure studies and, in doing so, draw together a more coherent understanding of the different strands of social justice research that are currently being undertaken. Through a quantitative process of bibliometric analysis, emergent and existing trends in research patterns, authorship, and article or journal performance were analyzed to generate greater understanding of the emergence, development and intellectual structure of social justice research over time within leisure studies. A quantitative process of bibliometric analysis was therefore undertaken to generate and analyze a nascent dataset of peer reviewed journal articles that have examined issues of social justice within leisure studies. Analysis of this dataset provided opportunities to outline recommendations for future research directions and research agendas linked to issues of social justice and leisure. This includes recommendations for expansion of research agendas within leisure studies in areas linked to: (a) ‘race’, gender and human rights; (b) a ‘broadening’ of social justice research into other socio-cultural areas of investigation; (c) initiation and/or expansion of research agendas relating to the global south; (d) business, organisations and social justice within the leisure industry; (e) issues of policy, politics and social justice in leisure
Building resilience during Uncertainty: Leadership from within
No full textCovid-19 provided a catalyst for the changing working environment, significantly impacting the way in which leaders come to the fore and how followers are encouraged and developed. This paper considers the importance of Place Leadership in working with community environments during periods of turbulence and instability. The research adopted a narrative approach to exploring the leadership dynamics among spontaneous volunteering activities during the Covid-19 pandemic. A case study methodology was adopted focusing on a singular group of volunteers that emerged in response to the emergency setting. Qualitative data was gathered allowing individuals to tell their story by interpreting events and happenings. The findings emphasise the importance of a leader who shares the values of the group, and demonstrate authentic behaviours and effective leadership approaches, whilst also embedding a community culture. The research recognises the importance of Place Leadership within the community setting as a means for the leader to demonstrate effectiveness and achieve results. Interestingly, no single leadership style is acknowledged per se, however the importance of authenticity, shared values and being embedded within the community is focal. The research will be of value and interest to a range of individuals and groups within academia and wider community settings, including those working within the Third Sector. The paper considers the situation faced during the pandemic and may not be easily repeated but is perhaps an opportunity for learning in response to disasters, crisis situations and community needs
Paradigms of Guitar Performance Practice and the Language of Metal Music
No full textIt is not an overstatement to suggest that the guitar has been central to the evolution of the language of popular music since the 1950s, with developments in the latter often being directly attributable to the employment of the former as a medium of musical expression. In this regard the guitar is a framework whose unique characteristics afford particular strategies for harmonic and melodic design that come to constitute the essential building blocks of musical genres. Metal music is a particular case in point, a musical genre whose harmonic and melodic material owes much to the centrality of the guitar to its performance practice. Moreover, as guitar-led metal performance practices have changed, so too has the music’s harmonic and melodic language, the former thereby becoming implicated in questions of musical progressivism. To elucidate these ideas, this chapter surveys a range of examples of metal music from the early 1970s to the 1990s, with a view to highlighting the ways in which particular paradigms of metal guitar performance practice have at given moments shaped the genre’s musical identity. In addition to offering useful analytical perspectives on the evolution of metal’s guitar-led musical style per se, the chapter also aims to provoke consideration of the role that technological media in general terms play in conditioning compositional outcomes