'It's good to talk': Exploring Effective Professional Conversations in Teacher Education

Professional conversations are significant in teacher education, yet policy makers and practitioners differ in their understanding of what these involve. The purpose of this study was to identify and understand the critical elements of successful professional conversations; the elements that effectively contribute to critical reflection and evaluation of teaching practice. Insight is provided by 10 participants who took part in a discussion group, in-depth interviews and written reflections. All participants are involved in professional conversations for a teacher education programme in Wales, in their capacity as either a student teacher, practice tutor or mentor. Findings highlight that some of the significant elements needed for an effective professional conversation include adequate preparation time for the conversation itself, knowledge of programme requirements and professional teaching standards, along with knowledge about the student teacher's school context – these can all be described as 'hard' inputs; whereas the 'soft' inputs include effective listening and questioning skills, and being able to offer challenge to the student teacher. Similarly, outputs of professional conversations can also be recognised as 'hard': effective reflections contributing to progress against the professional teaching standards; and 'soft': collaborative working relationships that are honest and positive with two-way learning for the mentor and the student. It is concluded that the softer skills of questioning and understanding the student teacher's expectations must be developed effectively for professional conversations in teacher education to have a positive impact on all those involved

Exploring the effects of financial stress on undergraduate nursing students in Scotland

The sharp increase in the cost of living in the UK over the past few years has affected all populations, including higher education students. Many higher education students, including nursing students, are experiencing financial difficulties and concerns, which adversely affect their mental health and can cause them to consider leaving their course. This article reports the findings of an online survey undertaken in one university in Glasgow, Scotland, that aimed to explore the effects of financial stress on second and third-year nursing students. Most respondents had experienced financial worries since starting their preregistration nursing degree programme; many were concerned about the cost of living, and financial worries adversely affected their academic performance and clinical placements. The authors suggest there is a need for a collaborative partnership between universities and practice placement areas to adopt a student-centred approach to identifying solutions to nursing students’ financial concerns as well as a review of the available funding for this cohort

Social Bridging Finance: a new Scottish model for financing public service design and delivery?

In the UK, some devolved governments such as in Scotland have taken a distinctive approach to implementing public service reforms. In this article, we explore the key enablers and constraints of outcome-based initiatives at the sub-national level. Drawing on a formative evaluation of the delivery of the Social Bridging Finance model, this study contributes to understanding results-oriented funding models and pluralist governance in welfare services beyond Scotland in three key ways. First, it emphasises the critical role of independent, multi-year grant funding in enabling more equitable and collaborative relationships between public bodies and the third sector. By reducing financial risk, such mechanisms challenge traditional state-led financing models. Second, it highlights the dual role of contractual agreements - supporting early sustainability discussions but revealing limitations when legal enforceability is weak. This points to the relevance of informal and relational accountability in outcome-based commissioning. Third, the study identifies the importance of collaboratively developed success criteria. The diverse experiences revealed in this study emphasise the need for flexibility, shared ownership, and continuous learning - particularly given public sector responsibility for service continuit

LongEval at CLEF 2025: Longitudinal Evaluation of IR Model Performance

This paper presents the third edition of the LongEval Lab, part of the CLEF 2025 conference, which continues to explore the challenges of temporal persistence in Information Retrieval (IR). The lab features two tasks designed to provide researchers with test data that reflect the evolving nature of user queries and document relevance over time. By evaluating how model performance degrades as test data diverge temporally from training data, LongEval seeks to advance the understanding of temporal dynamics in IR systems. The 2025 edition aims to engage the IR and NLP communities in addressing the development of adaptive models that can maintain retrieval quality over time in the domains of web search and scientific retrieval

The contribution of the 24-hour Bed Manager's role to care quality in an Acute NHS Trust in England

Introduction Twenty four hour Bed Manager (BM) roles were first trialled within National Health Service (NHS) hospitals in the 1980s. The role’s remit expanded over the following 30 years, however, no professional nursing recognition, status or educational framework evolved. This study explores the 24-hour BM’s contribution to patient care quality within one acute NHS Trust, and the extent to which General Managers (GMs), Nursing Managers (NMs) and BMs recognise and value the care quality remit of the role. Methodology A two-method qualitative exploratory study was undertaken within one acute NHS Trust with fifteen NHS professionals. Virtual vignette and semi-structured interviews were carried out with GMs, NMs and BMs to obtain perceptions of the BM role’s contribution to care quality and the extent to which their care quality remit is recognised and valued. Following reflexive thematic analysis, the two method’s themes were triangulated. Findings Six overarching themes were developed: Clinical leadership, patient flow, clinical risk management, patient care, professional conflict and professional status. Clinical leadership is the BM’s overarching contribution to care quality, which included overseeing patient flow, clinical risk, patient care and staff management. There was partial recognition and value of the BM’s care quality remit amongst GMs, NM and BMs. The findings highlights the vast but less recognised contribution 24-hour BMs bring to acute hospital leadership, and the need for formalisation of the role in the NHS in the 2020s. Conclusion BMs provide a sophisticated combination of clinical and complex system leadership alongside multi- facetted contributions to patient care quality. The increasing requirement for 24 hour clinical, complexity leadership, within the context of capacity crises and care quality concerns points to this study’s capacity to contribute to national NHS policy in the 2020s. Nursing’s regulatory and professional bodies, and NHS England should undertake a national review of the BM role and formulate professional frameworks and an education programme, which could reduce practice variation and improve care safety and quality across the country.</br

The Link Between Perception and Production in the Laryngeal Processes of Multilingual Speakers

The present paper investigates the link between perception and production in the laryngeal phonology of multilingual speakers, focusing on non-contrastive segments and the dynamic aspect of these processes. Fourteen L1 Hungarian, L2 English, and L3 Spanish advanced learners took part in the experiments. The production experiments examined the aspiration of voiceless stops in word-initial position, regressive voicing assimilation, and pre-sonorant voicing; the latter two processes were analyzed both word-internally and across word boundaries. The perception experiments aimed to find out whether learners notice the phonetic outputs of these processes and regard them as linguistically relevant. Our results showed that perception and production are not aligned. Accurate production is dependent on accurate perception, but accurate perception is not necessarily transferred into production. In laryngeal postlexical processes, the native language seems to play the primary role even for highly competent learners, but markedness might be relevant too. The novel findings of this study are that phonetic category formation seems to be easier than the acquisition of dynamic allophonic alternations and that metaphonological awareness is correlated with perception but not with production

Bricolage Strategies, Stakeholder Engagement, and the Geographic Expansion of Social Enterprises

Social enterprises (SEs), hybrid entities balancing revenue generation and social or environmental goals, often employ bricolage due to resource constraints. Interviews with 37 SE managers unveiled two pivotal bricolage strategies – utilising SE status-related marketing resources and leveraging available technological resources – as well as how their interplay influences geographical expansion and the contingent roles of stakeholder participation in facilitating their impact. Quantitative studies of 778 UK SEs confirm that the predominant facilitator of geographic expansion is the utilisation of status-related marketing resources, surpassing the impact of leveraging available technological resources. SEs’ efforts to utilise SE status-related marketing resources should be harmonised with community participation, whereas SEs aiming to leverage available technological resources should align their efforts with employee participation. We also underscore the substitution dynamic between these two bricolage strategies. However, SEs prioritising employee participation are better positioned to mitigate the challenges arising from this substitution than those emphasising community participation

Abolitionism in Red and Black

This chapter aims to show how the writings of early socialist and anarchist thinkers can, and do, speak to present debates on abolitionism. It begins by situating socialist, anarchist and penal abolitionist praxis within historical context, detailing some well-known examples of anarchist and socialist-inspired penal abolitionism in the early 20th century. It then explores not only how ‘mainstream’, statist and democratic socialism has a mixed relationship with penal abolitionism, but also discusses the continuing significance of grassroots libertarian socialist and other penal abolitionist organizing today outside of the orbit of the state. The third section of the chapter explores the ‘libertarian socialist tradition’ by giving an overview of five key themes that are shared among anarchists, socialists and penal abolitionists: the critique of power; the critique of social and economic inequalities; the valorization of freedom; the importance of solidarity, mutual aid and cooperation; and a moral compass informed and evaluated by libertarian socialist ethics. Finally, it argues that socialists and anarchists working together is key to successfully challenging the penal rationale of the State in the future