Browne, employability and the rhetoric of choice: student as producer and the sustainability of HE

This paper presents a critical reflection of the rhetoric of choice offered in the current system of HE. The theoretical foundation of the discussion draws on the work of Bauman (2007) as a support for a critical stance on the implementation of the recent reviews of HE, for instance by Browne (2010) and Dearing (1997). The concept and agenda of the student as ‘producer’, versus the student as consumer or even student as commodity, are further evaluated in the context of the ‘free’ market and the apparent 'industrialisation’ of HE, which has arguably brought graduate ‘employability’ to centre stage. The work goes on to discuss how student choice of course appears to go beyond judgments about potential job prospects. Along with this, it is argued that the values espoused by consumerism may well have a detrimental effect on the way that students develop the types of skills that employers say they want. Counteracting this, the student as producer is investigated as a means by which students become active producers of themselves as enterprising citizens, which also has benefit in respect of their future employability

Telling stories: engaging critical literacy through urban legends in an English secondary school

Non-dominant voices have been further marginalised in the most recent National Curriculum in England (DfE 2014) and those working across the English teaching profession often find the subject framed according to narrow, assessment driven models and prescribed skill sets. This article brings together two perspectives on the importance of literacy education that remains rooted in young people's everyday experiences of place. Katie is a newly qualified secondary English teacher. She will share examples taken from her own classroom practice of the ways in which she has responded to stories told by young people about the places in which they live. Susan is a tutor of Initial Teacher Education (ITE). She suggests that Katie’s approach provides persuasive exemplification of how engagement with alternatives to a dominant view of literacy should remain a key objective for those working with beginning teachers of English. For Katie's students, urban legends are powerful texts which offer the means to explore what we do when we tell stories, both inside and outside the English classroom. As will be shown, such stories are telling examples of the resources young people can bring to critical literacy learning in current classrooms. In the context of the dominance of a narrow, mandated experience of English as a subject, the imperative becomes even greater to recognise stories such as those shared by Katie's students as opportunities for authentic, creative and critical engagement with text

A method to quantify bedform height and asymmetry from a low-mounted sidescan sonar

Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 35 (2018): 893-910, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-17-0102.1.Rotary sidescan sonars are widely used to image the seabed given their high temporal and spatial resolution. This high resolution is necessary to resolve bedform dynamics and evolution; however, sidescan sonars do not directly measure bathymetry, limiting their utility. When sidescan sonars are mounted close to the seabed, bedforms may create acoustical “shadows” that render previous methods that invert the backscatter intensity to estimate bathymetry and are based on the assumption of a fully insonified seabed ineffective. This is especially true in coastal regions, where bedforms are common features whose large height relative to the water depth may significantly influence the surrounding flow. A method is described that utilizes sonar shadows to estimate bedform height and asymmetry. The method accounts for the periodic structure of bedform fields and the projection of the shadows onto adjacent bedforms. It is validated with bathymetric observations of wave-orbital ripples, with wavelengths ranging from 0.3 to 0.8 m, and tidally reversing megaripples, with wavelengths from 5 to 8 m. In both cases, bathymetric-measuring sonars were deployed in addition to a rotary sidescan sonar to provide a ground truth; however, the bathymetric sonars typically measure different and smaller areas than the rotary sidescan sonar. The shadow-based method and bathymetric-measuring sonar data produce estimates of bedform height that agree by 34.0% ± 27.2% for wave-orbital ripples and 16.6% ± 14.7% for megaripples. Errors for estimates of asymmetry are 1.9% ± 2.1% for wave-orbital ripples and 11.2% ± 9.6% for megaripples.This project is partially supported by the National Science Foundation through a Graduate Research Fellowship and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology Energy Initiative Fellowship. Additionally, funding used in developing the method was obtained from NSF Grants OCE-1634481 and OCE-1635151. Field work was funded under ONR Grants N00014-06-10329 and N00014-13-1-0364

Whole family-based physical activity promotion intervention: the Families Reporting Every Step to Health pilot randomised controlled trial protocol

Introduction : Family-based physical activity (PA) interventions present a promising avenue to promote children’s activity, however, high-quality experimental research is lacking. This paper describes the protocol for the FRESH (Families Reporting Every Step to Health) pilot trial, a child-led family-based PA intervention delivered online.  Methods and analysis : FRESH is a three-armed, parallel-group, randomised controlled pilot trial using a 1:1:1 allocation ratio with follow-up assessments at 8- and 52-weeks post-baseline. Families will be eligible if a minimum of one child in school Years 3-6 (aged 7-11 years) and at least one adult responsible for that child are willing to participate. Family members can take part in the intervention irrespective of their participation in the accompanying evaluation and vice versa. Following baseline assessment, families will be randomly allocated to one of three arms: (1) FRESH, (2) pedometer-only, or (3) no-intervention control. All family members in the pedometer-only and FRESH arms receive pedometers and generic PA promotion information. FRESH families additionally receive access to the intervention website; allowing participants to select step challenges to ‘travel’ to target cities around the world, log steps, and track progress as they virtually globetrot. Control families will receive no treatment. All family members will be eligible to participate in the evaluation with two follow-ups (8 and 52 weeks). Physical (e.g., fitness, blood pressure), psychosocial (e.g., social support), and behavioural (e.g., objectively-measured family PA) measures will be collected each time point. At 8-week follow-up, a mixed-methods process evaluation will be conducted (questionnaires and family focus groups) assessing acceptability of the intervention and evaluation. FRESH families’ website engagement will also be explored.  Ethics and dissemination : This study received ethical approval from the Ethics Committee for the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Cambridge. Findings will be disseminated via peer-reviewed publications, conferences, and to participating families

Is sleep disruption a trigger for postpartum psychosis?

An episode of postpartum psychosis can be devastating for a woman and her family, and it is vital we understand the factors involved in the aetiology of this condition. Sleep and circadian rhythm disruption is a plausible candidate but further research is needed that builds on the latest advances in chronobiology and neuroscience