Clinical Legal Education: A Student Perspective

Fiscal restraint has forced many law schools to reconsider funding clinical education programs. Using the Dalhousie Legal Aid Service (DLAS) as an example, the educational effectiveness of clinical legal education is examined. Clinical education provides a context in which students can learn and apply the traditional law school curriculum. There is a danger, however, that clinical education will focus on technical skills without honing analytical skills such as ends-means analysis. The supervisor plays a crucial role in structuring the clinical experience into an educational one, from which students develop approaches to solving legal problems in practice. If the pitfalls are avoided, clinical education can be invaluable to the student and can enhance traditional programs. Although there are weaknesses in DLAS\u27s program, its educational value warrants its continued existence. *** La contrainte fiscale a imposé à de nombreuses facultés de droit une reconsidération de la question des fonds donnés au programme d\u27éducation clinique. En se servant de l\u27exemple de Dalhousie Legal Aid Service (DLAS), l\u27efficacité pédagogique de l\u27éducation clinique légale est examinée. L\u27éducation clinique procure aux étudiants un contexte où ils peuvent apprendre et appliquer le curriculum scolaire traditionnel en droit. Il existe, toutefois, un danger que l\u27éducation clinique se concentre sur des aptitudes techniques sans aiguiser les aptitudes analytiques telle l\u27analyse fins et moyens . Le surveillant joue un rôle crucial, à savoir, structurer l\u27expérience clinique pour qu\u27elle soit une expérience éducative, d\u27où les étudiants développent des approches à la résolution de problèmes légaux à travers la pratique. Si les pièges sont évités, l\u27éducation clinique peut fournir des avantages inestimables pour l\u27étudiant, et peut même rehausser des programmes traditionnels. Bien que le programme DLAS ait des points faibles, sa valeur pédagogique justifie sa continuation

Fostering the Self-Esteem of Children with Reading Difficulties: A Christian Approach

This paper seeks to promote a Christian approach to nurturing the self-esteem and improving the academic performance of children with reading difficulties. First, research findings concerning some of the causes and consequences of reading failure will be discussed in more detail. The next section of the paper will briefly discuss some of the implications of the secular humanist approach to improving student performance through the enhancement of self-esteem, before outlining principles for nurturing self-esteem and improving academic performance, which are consistent with a Christian worldview. This will be followed by a brief description of a research project, based on Christian principles, which was designed to improve the reading performance of poor readers at upper primary level

Job dissatisfaction and early retirement: a qualitative study of general practitioners in the Northern Deanery

Early retirement has become an important labour market trend for workers in professional occupations. General practitioners (GPs), however, are in short supply, and are being encouraged by the government to stay at work beyond the age of 60. In this study, which followed up a questionnaire survey of all general practitioners over 44 working in the Northern Deanery, 21 GPs took part in semi-structured interviews looking at their plans, reasons for, and feelings about, retirement. Interviews were taped, transcribed, and the text coded using themes from the interview schedule and those derived from the data. Findings are reported using a qualitative distinction between ‘happy’ and ‘unhappy’ doctors and on this basis just over two-fifths of those interviewed were ‘unhappy’, all of whom wanted to take early retirement. The major factor influencing these plans to retire was dissatisfaction with their role and none of this group would be persuaded to change their minds by various incentives such as ‘golden handcuffs’. ‘Happy’ doctors who wanted to stay in practice had found ways of accommodating themselves to change and factors outside of work provided no incentive or ‘pull’. This was not the case for ‘happy’ doctors who wanted to leave: they wanted to pursue hobbies and other interests whilst they were young enough to do so. The paper concludes that change is a major factor producing job dissatisfaction among GPs and that future generations of doctors need to be equipped with the means to cope with it, while governments need to consider the merits of stability and continuity

Nicolas-Louis de La Caille, James Dunlop and John Herschel: An analysis of the First Three Catalogues of Southern Star Clusters and Nebulae

“If men like [John] Herschel are to spend the best years of their lives in recording for the benefit of a remote posterity the actual state of the heavens…what a galling discovery to find amongst their own contemporaries men [James Dunlop] who … from carelessness and culpable apathy hand down to posterity a mass of errors …[so] that four hundred objects out of six hundred could not be identified in any manner … with a telescope seven times more powerful than that stated to have been used!”4 The denigration of James Dunlop and his catalogue of 629 southern nebulae and clusters produced in 1826 originated with John Herschel and was continued by others of his day. Was this criticism justified? Was James Dunlop guilty of “carelessness and culpable apathy”? Were there “four hundred objects out of six hundred” which could not be identified, and if so, was there an explanation for this large shortfall? This question led to a search within Dunlop’s 1826 catalogue to rediscover, if possible, some of the missing objects and to reinstate Dunlop, if justified, as a bona fide astronomer. In doing this, Dunlop’s personal background, education and experience became relevant, as did a comparison with the catalogue of 42 southern nebulae and clusters produced by Nicolas-Louis de La Caille in 1751-2, and the 1834-8 catalogue of 1708 southern nebulae and clusters by John Herschel, who found the Dunlop catalogue so galling

The effects of tourism, beachfront development and increased light pollution on nesting Loggerhead turtles Caretta caretta (Linnaeus, 1758) on Sal, Cape Verde Islands

Loggerhead Caretta caretta is now the only species of marine turtle nesting on the island of Sal, Cape Verde Islands. Since 2008, ADTMA - SOS Tartarugas has patrolled all the southern beaches of the island in order to protect nesting females and to collect nesting data. Although hunting is still a major issue, with 90 turtles killed in 2009, habitat loss and light pollution are becoming an ever more serious threat. Construction sites, hotels, apartment buildings and restaurants close to beaches, bright lights and illegal removal of sand are contributing to a marked decrease in the total number of nesting turtles on some beaches. In 2009, beaches on Sal experienced an average increase in nests of 200%, while the beach most affected by construction (Tortuga Beach) saw a decrease of nests of 7.3% (from 19.1% of total number of nests in 2008 to 11.8% in 2010). This beach also recorded a much lower nest to emergence ratio than normal (17.6% of emergences resulting in nests compared to 29.9% in other areas), indicating reluctance to nest due to light pollution and other disturbances

Improving pedestrian access way planning using designing out crime

Pedestrian Access Ways (PAWs) have presented a significant and unresolved challenge to transport planners in local and State government. The result has been piecemeal local government and State government approaches that have frequently resulted in tensions between civic constituencies, high levels of administrative cost, adverse publicity, reduced transport functionality and compromises to the policy intentions of a range of government agencies. In part, this has been due to a gap between the intrinsic complexity of PAW eco-systems and the oversimplification of this complexity in ways that ignores issues of multiple uses, purposes, user interests, user groups, functionality, ownership, control and agency and the ways these vary across the day, week, seasons, years and planning fashions. In short, local interests and incomplete understanding the situation have limited the development of best practice in management of PAWs, have generated unnecessary problems, and in particular have prevented an integrated government approach. This paper presents findings of recent research on the management of PAWs to reduce crime. This required identifying and addressing unresolved and overlooked issues. Outcomes included: a morphology of PAWs and PAW functioning; the identification of information for understanding the functioning of individual PAWs; the discovery of the misapplication of Designing Out Crime techniques to PAWs; the identification of misunderstandings leading to flawed policy actions; the exposure of ways that adverse PAW outcomes are manufactured by planning policies and decisions; proposals for an improved approach to managing PAWs to reduce crime via Designing Out Crime techniques; and, the development of PAW Guidelines as a supplement to the State Designing Out Crime Planning Guidelines for use by local government. The research was funded by the Office of Crime Prevention (OCP) and undertaken by the authors as members of the cross-university Design Out Crime research group