Is it time for the risky classroom? Dealing with risk and uncertainty is a natural part of adult life. Yet modern children are shielded from risk at every opportunity. A pedagogical shift is required

Risk within learning environments is a much debated topic within early childhood education. The sector sees and understands the benefits of risk but often remain risk adverse. No –one wishes for children to experience injury and as such safety measures are essential. However, risk has also been shown to be essential for holistic development and learning in the early years (Lights, 2014). It is very important in the formation of many important skills and contributes greatly to children’s holistic health (Brussoni, Olsen, Pike & Sleet, 2012). Contemporary research and the most up-to-date wisdom requires educators to embrace risk and risky play in order to maximise children’s learning opportunities (Brussoni et al, 2015). It is a type of play that supports the child to encounter and overcome challenge. It includes the development of self-belief in the face of adversity, resilience building and problem solving confidence as well as physical competence and survival skills. Taking risks also transfers into skills such as judgement and risk measurement as well as tenacity and the ability to try again after failure. But is risk endangered in modern childhood? This paper presents data from the Irish Neighbourhood Play Study. This study incorporated 1688 families across 240 communities. One of the things under investigation was the engagement with risk within neighbourhood play. The results indicate that the children were engaging in very low levels of risk. If the benefits of risk are to be experienced by this generation of children, educators may need to overcome their fears and reservations and learn to embrace and incorporate risk provision into Early Childhood pedagogies. ©IATED (2017). Reproduced in Research Online with permission

Developing formal, informal and popular geographical knowledges through encounters with Dorset's coastal landscape.

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN042834 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

The long and winding road: Routine creation and replication in multi-site organizations

Prior research on organizational routines in the ‘capabilities’ literature has either studied how new routines are created during an exploratory process of variation and selection or how existing routines are replicated during a phase of exploitation. Few studies have analyzed the life cycle of new routine creation and replication as an integrated process. In an in-depth case study of England’s Highways Agency, this paper shows that the creation and replication of a new routine across multiple sites involves four sequential steps: envisioning, experimenting, entrenching and enacting. We contribute to the capabilities research in two ways: first, by showing how different organizational levels, capabilities and logics (cognitive and behavioural) shape the development of new routines; and second, by identifying how distinct evolutionary cycles of variation and selective retention occur during each step in the process. In contrast with prior research on replication as an exact copy of a template or existing routine, our study focuses on the replication of an entirely new routine (based on novel principles) that is adapted to fit local operational conditions during its large-scale replication across multiple sites. We draw upon insights from adjacent ‘practice research’ and suggest how capabilities and practice studies may complement each other in future research on the evolution of routines

Child\u27s play the developmental benefits of the play choices of modern children: Implications for school curricula

This paper presents data from the Irish Neighbourhood Play Study. The Irish Neighbourhood Play Study explored the play choices of children from 0 to 15 years of age. This paper reports the findings on the play choices of children and these are presented alongside the levels of engagement within each play type. Construction Play, Motor Play, Fantasy (Imaginative) Play and Social Play are all applied as broad categories with detailed data presented that drills down into what elements of play children are choosing within each category. The developmental benefits of each play type are then explored and discussed. These findings are viewed through an educational lens and contextualised within a curricular context. The critical questions arising from the findings concern the developmental benefits inherent to the types of play children choose for themselves and how these developmental benefits translate to the school context. This paper discusses these critical questions and suggests possible implications for school curricula when adopting play-based approaches

Changing the Ties That Bind? The Emerging Roles and Identities of General Practitioners and Managers in the New Clinical Commissioning Groups in the English NHS

The English National Health Service (NHS) is undergoing significant reorganization following the 2012 Health and Social Care Act. Key to these changes is the shift of responsibility for commissioning services from Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) to general practitioners (GPs) working together in Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). This article is based on an empirical study that examined the development of emerging CCGs in eight case studies across England between September 2011 and June 2012. The findings are based on interviews with GPs and managers, observations of meetings, and reading of related documents. Scott’s notion that institutions are constituted by three pillars—the regulative, normative, and cognitive–cultural—is explored here. This approach helps to understand the changing roles and identities of doctors and managers implicated by the present reforms. This article notes the far reaching changes in the regulative pillar and questions how these changes will affect the normative and cultural–cognitive pillars

Student Engagement In Sustainability Issues Through Video Production: A Multimodal Critical Consciousness-Based Approach To Engineering Education

The formation of engineering students should prioritize both technical skills in engineering and a critical awareness of the designed world. This qualitative methods study aimed to analyze the extent to which a teaching approach, based on the in the integration of Freire’s critical pedagogy and Multimodal literacy frameworks, promotes first-year engineering students’ development of critical consciousness. Drawing from Paulo Freire’s work on critical pedagogy, the critical consciousness framework emphasizes that individuals and their practice in community awaken critical awareness of their surroundings, including the interconnectedness that exists between economic, social, political, cultural, historical, and environmental factors. To this end, we designed an activity for students to research and create videos that illustrate the interconnectedness that exists between these factors. The activity provided an opportunity to build, express, and shape their thoughts regarding the connections between the designed world and its implications on society (i.e., who wins, who loses, who is involved, etc.). Preliminary analysis identified that multimodal video production allowed students to investigate and express their own interpretations of socio-political and sustainability issues related to the use of precious minerals, specifically cobalt. Furthermore, students included descriptions of their proposals for reducing child labor abuse in cobalt mining and identified the environmental impacts of excessive use of cobalt in technological devices. Overall, this research suggests that integrating critical consciousness and multimodal literacies can be an effective strategy for promoting engineering students’ formation in terms of engineering design, literacy, sustainability, and social awareness

What Hold us Together? Analyzing Biotech Field Formation

This article proposes to analyze the formation of biotechnological field bringing actor-network theory’s lens as contribution. Based on conclusions of studies developed by Walter Powell and colleagues it was held a research to analyze the diversity of institutional relations that are active by hemophilia therapies, the principle of generalized symmetry adopted for actor-network theory is highlight to identify how socio-technical associations are assembled. Besides the interorganizational relations, research’s findings indicate the scientific and technological contents have a significant mediating role to create and sustain those connections of knowledge. So, it is emphasized the need of a boarder theoretical discussion to enlarge explanations about the dynamics of organizational fields as well as innovation processes

Business Value Is not only Dollars - Results from Case Study Research on Agile Software Projects

Business value is a key concept in agile software development. This paper presents results of a case study on how business value and its creation is perceived in the context of agile projects. Our overall conclusion is that the project participants almost never use an explicit and structured approach to guide the value creation throughout the project. Still, the application of agile methods in the studied cases leads to satisfied clients. An interesting result of the study represents the fact that the agile process of many projects differs significantly from what is described in the agile practitioners’ books as best practices. The key implication for research and practice is that we have an incentive to pursue the study of value creation in agile projects and to complement it by providing guidelines for better client’s involvement, as well as by developing structured methods that will enhance the value-creation in a project