(Mis)understanding underachievement: a response to Connolly

In British Journal of Sociology of Education Volume 29 number 3, 2008, Connolly presented what he termed a 'critical review' of some of our previous work on the relative attainment of male and female students in UK schools. He proposed three general areas for criticism - our use of attainment gaps, our consideration of outcomes other than at specific thresholds, and our querying of the idea of student 'underachievement'. These problems, he claimed, have 'given rise to a number of misleading conclusions that have questionable implications for practice'. However, those of his 'criticisms' with any merit are actually the same as our own conclusions, transmuted by Connolly from our papers that he cites, while his remaining 'criticisms' are based on faulty elementary logic. In case readers have not read our work and were somehow misled by Connolly, we give here a brief reply to each criticism in turn. This matters, because a greater understanding of patterns of attainment and of the nature of underachievement is a precursor to the design of successful initiatives to overcome inequalities in educational opportunity and reward. This is both a practical and an ethical issue

Are you serious? From fist bumping to hand hygiene: considering culture, context and complexity in infection prevention intervention research

Infection prevention is an under-resourced research and development topic, with limited evidence for practice in the most basic of measures. A survey of IPS R&D members indicated that what might appear to be simple interactions and interventions in healthcare, such as hand shaking and hand hygiene, should be considered complex interventions taking account of behaviour at the individual and social level as well as contextual factors. Future studies need to be designed utilising comprehensive approaches, for example, the Medical Research Council complex interventions framework, tailored to the country and more local cultural context, if we are to be serious about evidence for infection prevention and control practice

From Protecting Lives to Protecting States: Use of Force Across the Threat Continuum

The increasing prominence in recent years of non-international armed conflicts that extend across state borders has strained the traditional legal categories that we use to regulate state use of force. Simultaneous with this phenomenon has been growing acceptance that human rights law and international humanitarian law should co-exist, with the former informing interpretations of the latter to varying degrees. Scholars continue to debate vigorously the implications of these developments and how these bodies of law should interact. As Kenneth Watkin’s book Fighting at the Legal Boundaries: Controlling the Use of Force in Contemporary Conflict observes, however, commanders have no choice but to navigate these ambiguities and attempt to reconcile these tensions on the operational level as they engage in hostilities. Watkin’s magisterial book can be seen both as a work of operational law and a major scholarly treatment of the law governing the use of force. It provides detailed accounts of how situations arise on the ground that evade easy classification in terms of our existing conceptual and legal categories. At the same time, it furnishes a valuable framework for analyzing the features of such operations that are relevant in assessing how force should be used in particular scenarios. Finally, Watkin offers a set of principles for both operational law and broader policy decisions to help navigate the complex terrain of modern security challenges. Watkin argues that the twenty-first century approach to conflict must be “holistic” in nature. On the one hand, it must it must acknowledge “the simultaneous application of humanitarian and human rights law,” and the greater influence of the latter in shaping perceptions of the legitimacy of violence. On the other hand, it must appreciate that “the altered security environment of this century has witnessed a definite move away from looking at conflict itself as being uniquely conventional or unconventional,” as transnational non-state organized armed groups have emerged that do not resemble traditional armed forces. This review essay describes the main ideas in Watkin’s rich and comprehensive analysis. It then focuses in more detail on two of his suggestions. The first is that state forces should presumptively operate under law enforcement rules until this is insufficient to meet a threat, even in the course of an armed conflict. This reflects the incorporation of human rights principles as a default policy even when more permissive rules on use of force are available. The second suggestion is that certain hostile engagements with non-state forces may appropriately be characterized as armed conflicts of limited duration, governed by international humanitarian law. These two proposals reflect his view that characterization of the nature of hostilities should depend upon facts on the ground, specifically the nature of the means that states must use in order effectively to deal with a threat. I then discuss whether this approach should lead to assessments of state use of force that rely on contextual analysis of the weight of the interests at stake in a given situation, rather than on classification of hostilities in one of our two traditional main legal categories. While Watkin does not take this step, I analyze the work of others who make a cogent argument that we should. Ultimately, I conclude that our existing imperfect legal framework is preferable to a purely contextual approach, because of the radically different moral universes that animate human rights law and international humanitarian law

Fire and rescue service community safety initiatives: measuring impact

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to discuss methods of capturing the impact of fire and rescue service (FRS) community safety work which directly aims to reduce the occurrence of specific incidents. Design/methodology/approach - The impact assessment method described focuses on addressing one of the major problems with regards to attributing outcomes to FRS community safety work; the influence of external factors. This paper looked to assess the incident trends within a case study UK FRS within the context of the following external data sets: first, incident trends within other UK FRSs; second, demographic trends; and third, incident data from other public services. Findings - There were instances, either across the whole region served by the case study FRS, or within specific districts, where evidence suggested a strong likelihood of the community safety work of the case study FRS contributing towards an observed reduction in incidents. These findings were established through filtering the impact of widespread external factors, which could impact upon incident figures. Research limitations/implications - The utility of this impact assessment relies upon FRS consistently recording the specific aims and focus of individual community safety activity, so that any positive outcomes can be attributed to a particular group of community safety initiatives. Originality/value - This paper discusses how an evaluation process, to deter mine the likelihood of community safety impacting upon incident numbers, can be practically applied to a FRS

Social and Situational Influences on the Performance Rating Process

The effects of social and situational influences on the performance rating process has received relatively little attention by past research, yet merits increased attention. While there has been greater acknowledgment of the role of social and situational factors on rater cognition and evaluation, research has typically proceeded in a piecemeal fashion, isolating on a single influence at a time. This approach fails to recognize that performance rating is a process with multiple social and situational influences that need to be considered simultaneously. In the present study, a model of the performance rating process was tested, employing several social and situational variables that have been infrequently investigated and typically not in conjunction with one another. Results indicated support for the overall model and specific influences within the model. Implications of the results for performance rating research are discussed

Assessing Professionalism: A theoretical framework for defining clinical rotation assessment criteria

Although widely accepted as an important graduate competence, professionalism is a challenging outcome to define and assess. Clinical rotations provide an excellent opportunity to develop student professionalism through the use of experiential learning and effective feedback, but without appropriate theoretical frameworks, clinical teachers may find it difficult to identify appropriate learning outcomes. The adage “I know it when I see it” is unhelpful in providing feedback and guidance for student improvement, and criteria that are more specifically defined would help students direct their own development. This study sought first to identify how clinical faculty in one institution currently assess professionalism, using retrospective analysis of material obtained in undergraduate teaching and faculty development sessions. Subsequently, a faculty workshop was held in which a round-table type discussion sought to develop these ideas and identify how professionalism assessment could be improved. The output of this session was a theoretical framework for teaching and assessing professionalism, providing example assessment criteria and ideas for clinical teaching. This includes categories such as client and colleague interaction, respect and trust, recognition of limitations, and understanding of different professional identities. Each category includes detailed descriptions of the knowledge, skills, and behaviors expected of students in these areas. The criteria were determined by engaging faculty in the development of the framework, and therefore they should represent a focused development of criteria already used to assess professionalism, and not a novel and unfamiliar set of assessment guidelines. The faculty-led nature of this framework is expected to facilitate implementation in clinical teaching

Philosophical expertise under the microscope

Recent experimental studies indicate that epistemically irrelevant factors can skew our intuitions, and that some degree of scepticism about appealing to intuition in philosophy is warranted. In response, some have claimed that philosophers are experts in such a way as to vindicate their reliance on intuitions—this has become known as the ‘expertise defence’. This paper explores the viability of the expertise defence, and suggests that it can be partially vindicated. Arguing that extant discussion is problematically imprecise, we will finesse the notion of ‘philosophical expertise’ in order to better reflect the complex reality of the different practices involved in philosophical inquiry. On this basis, we offer a new version of the expertise defence that allows for distinct types of philosophical expertise. The upshot of our approach is that wholesale vindications or rejections of the expertise defence are shown to be unwarranted; we must instead turn to local, piecemeal investigations of philosophical expertise. Lastly, in the spirit of taking our own advice, we exemplify how recent developments from experimental philosophy lend themselves to this approach, and can empirically support one instance of a successful expertise defence