A Curriculum for Excellence: a review of approaches to recognising wider achievement

The is the report of work undertaken by the Quality in Education Centre of the University of Strathclyde on behalf of Learning and Teaching Scotland into Recognising WiderAchievements of young people both in and out of school.Desk research and empirical research were undertaken in January and February 2007. This short timescale inevitably limited the extent of the work undertaken. The views ofstakeholders were sought through interviews and questionnaires. Definitions of wider achievement have been emerging in the UK since four key areaswere identified by the DfES (DfES, 1984). These were recognised in 'National Records of Achievement' and included recognition of achievement (exams and other activities), motivation and personal development, curriculum organisation, and a document of recordthat is 'recognised and valued'. Further policy development in the 1990s and into this century raised further issues including the range of activities and variation in types oflearning, equity of access to opportunities, and challenges of assessment

Include 2011 : The role of inclusive design in making social innovation happen.

Include is the biennial conference held at the RCA and hosted by the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design. The event is directed by Jo-Anne Bichard and attracts an international delegation

Contextual influences on social enterprise management in rural and urban communities

The idea that difference exists between rural and urban enterprise activity is not new, the obvious comparators are measures such as social architecture, resource availability and accessibility. However, when the concept and practice of management in social enterprise is compared in these two contexts then there is opportunity to further our understanding of the contextual challenges encountered by social enterprise. In this paper six cases studies are compared and analysed: three cases are urban social enterprises and three classified as remote rural social enterprises. The urban cases are social enterprises located around Glasgow in the west of Scotland and are compared with three remote rural location studies, one on the Scottish mainland peninsula, the other in northern Scotland and the final case on a Scottish western island. We conclude that the main differences between remote rural and urban management of social enterprise are heavily nuanced by in-migration levels in both rural and urban locations, leadership and community needs and therefore deserving of context relevant policy

New Audiences for the Arts: The New Audiences Programme Report

This 269 page report gives a detailed overview of a £20 million funding programme ‘New Audiences’, designed to foster new practice in audience development by arts organisations in England. It was the culmination of a five-year scheme which supported 1200 audience development initiatives across the country. Glinkowski was one of a team of seven researchers who compiled the report: ACE Research Officers, Clare Fenn, Adrienne Skelton and Alan Joy compiled the statistical information for the report appendices; the main body of the report, from Executive Summary to Conclusions, was written by a team of three consultant researchers, Glinkowski, Pam Pfrommer and Sue Stewart, working under the supervision of the ACE Head of New Audiences, Gill Johnson. The report was a summary, compilation and interpretation of key themes emerging from the material contained within around 1150 evaluations of projects funded by the £20 million ‘New Audiences’ programme during the 5-year period from 1998-2003. The interpretative work and writing up was undertaken collaboratively by the consultant researchers and Glinkowski’s particular input was to the Executive Summary; Introduction; General Audiences; Disability; Social Inclusion; Rural; Older People; General Findings; and Conclusion sections of the report. He was also the principal author (although in keeping with ACE practice on advocacy material, not formally credited) of the ‘New Audiences Advocacy Document’ (ISBN 0728710331), produced in conjunction with the main report with introduction by Tessa Jowell, Secretary of State, Department of Culture, Media and Sport and Peter Hewitt, Chief Executive of Arts Council England. The full report is published online, with a companion volume summarising all projects undertaken within the ‘New Audiences’ programme. Additionally, Glinkowski was commissioned to contribute case studies to the ‘New Audiences’ website (http://www.newaudiences.org.uk/index.php), including 'Open Studios/Artists Presentation Research' (http://www.newaudiences.org.uk/project.php?id=680)

Behavior analysis for aging-in-place using similarity heatmaps

The demand for healthcare services for an increasing population of older adults is faced with the shortage of skilled caregivers and a constant increase in healthcare costs. In addition, the strong preference of the elderly to live independently has been driving much research on "ambient-assisted living" (AAL) systems to support aging-in-place. In this paper, we propose to employ a low-resolution image sensor network for behavior analysis of a home occupant. A network of 10 low-resolution cameras (30x30 pixels) is installed in a service flat of an elderly, based on which the user's mobility tracks are extracted using a maximum likelihood tracker. We propose a novel measure to find similar patterns of behavior between each pair of days from the user's detected positions, based on heatmaps and Earth mover's distance (EMD). Then, we use an exemplar-based approach to identify sleeping, eating, and sitting activities, and walking patterns of the elderly user for two weeks of real-life recordings. The proposed system achieves an overall accuracy of about 94%

Changing boundaries and meanings of middle class houses in Sri Lanka

Houses are distinctively organised spatial networks that embody social norms and meaning of a given culture. Normally it is accepted that visually identifiable house ‘types’ which also closely fit the culture of a group are adopted by society. In Sri Lanka, there was popular house ‘types’ among the middle class until about 1980. Today, house forms of the middle class are diverse with apparent new trends in recent years. If contemporary middle class house forms are not visually characterized by type/s, how does ‘culture’ influence house form? This paper explores whether there are ‘types’ with distinctive spatial networks among the diverse house forms and the nature of embodied social norms. In the context of apparent change, such exploration advances the understanding of the association of house form and culture for the contemporary society of Sri Lanka. By using space syntax analysis, this paper argues that although eclectic in visual appearance, middle class houses share a cultural ‘gene’ in their spatial configuration as a ‘genotype’ that operate beneath the visual. Analysis of forty houses revealed that an older genotype named as the O model is diminishing and that a new genotype named as the M model had stabilised after 1980. The contemporary ‘genotype’ classifies space to accommodate meanings of a new everyday home life. The older genotype which classified space to accommodate meaning of a by-gone lifestyle is no longer popular. The negotiation between the new genotype and heterogeneous phenotypes allow for the affirming of class solidarities in new ways in contemporary Sri Lank

How the internet changed career: framing the relationship between career development and online technologies

This article examines the inter-relationship between the internet and career development. It asks three inter-linked questions: How does the internet reshape the context within which individuals pursue their career? What skills and knowledge do people need in order to pursue their careers effectively using the internet? How can careers workers use the internet as a medium for the delivery of career support? The article develops conceptual architecture for answering these questions and in particular highlights the importance of the concept of digital career literacy

Why health visiting? Examining the potential public health benefits from health visiting practice within a universal service: A narrative review of the literature

INTRODUCTION: There is increasing international interest in universal, health promoting services for pregnancy and the first three years of life and the concept of proportionate universalism. Drawing on a narrative review of literature, this paper explores mechanisms by which such services might contribute to health improvement and reducing health inequalities. OBJECTIVES: Through a narrative review of empirical literature, to identify: DESIGN: The paper draws upon a scoping study and narrative review. REVIEW METHODS: We used three complementary approaches to search the widely dispersed literature: Our key inclusion criterion was information about health visiting practice. We included empirical papers from United Kingdom (UK) from 2004 to February 2012 and older seminal papers identified in search (3), identifying a total of 348 papers for inclusion. A thematic content analysis compared the older (up to 2003) with more recent research (2004 onwards). RESULTS: The analysis revealed health visiting practice as potentially characterized by a particular 'orientation to practice.' This embodied the values, skills and attitudes needed to deliver universal health visiting services through salutogenesis (health creation), person-centredness (human valuing) and viewing the person in situation (human ecology). Research about health visiting actions focuses on home visiting, needs assessment and parent-health visitor relationships. The detailed description of health visitors' skills, attitudes, values, and their application in practice, provides an explanation of how universal provision can potentially help to promote health and shift the social gradient of health inequalities. CONCLUSIONS: Identification of needs across an undifferentiated, universal caseload, combined with an outreach style that enhances uptake of needed services and appropriate health or parenting information, creates opportunities for parents who may otherwise have remained unaware of, or unwilling to engage with such provision. There is a lack of evaluative research about health visiting practice, service organization or universal health visiting as potential mechanisms for promoting health and reducing health inequalities. This paper offers a potential foundation for such research in future

Mapping and Developing Service Design Research in the UK.

This report is the outcome of the Service Design Research UK (SDR UK) Network with Lancaster University as primary investigator and London College of Communication, UAL as co-investigator. This project was funded as part of an Arts and Humanities Research Council Network grant. Service Design Research UK (SDR UK), funded by an AHRC Network Grant, aims to create a UK research network in an emerging field in Design that is Service Design. This field has a recent history and a growing, but still small and dispersed, research community that strongly needs support and visibility to consolidate its knowledge base and enhance its potential impact. Services represent a significant part of the UK economy and can have a transformational role in our society as they affect the way we organize, move, work, study or take care of our health and family. Design introduces a more human centred and creative approach to service innovation; this is critical to delivering more effective and novel solutions that have the potential to tackle contemporary challenges. Service Design Research UK reviewed and consolidated the emergence of Service Design within the estalished field of Design