Forum : the Magazine of the DIT Students\u27 Unions, No. 1, 5th February, 1987

Magazine of the DIT Students\u27 Union

2016 Annual report town of Deerfield, New Hampshire.

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire

Policy development of outdoor education in Scotland

The advent of the Scottish ‘Curriculum for Excellence’ created a new paradigm of outdoor education. The term ‘outdoor learning’ found more common parlance as a reflection of contemporary discourse with renewed focus on curricular breadth and progression in outdoor education. This thesis examines these changes through the lens of educational policy analysis. The study bridges the gaps between literature in the fields of outdoor education, public policy making and curriculum theory to present a broad and historical analysis of the processes for the policy development of outdoor learning in Scotland. The methodological approach is grounded in the philosophy of pragmatism, and combines desk based research with data analysis of thirteen interviews with key policy actors. The findings identify health as an early policy driver and a prelude to later policy agendas including ‘character training’, work and employment. The processes for change in outdoor education policy are influenced by ‘galvanising events’ and via a ‘policy corridor’ of outdoor education advocates. Post Scottish devolution, the work of advisory groups has been a key influence in resolving what is identified as a ‘policy squeeze’ on outdoor learning. The research has implications for effective lobbying and understanding the processes for policy growth in outdoor learning

Towards understanding the root causes of outdoor education incidents

Outdoor education involves the interaction of people with the natural environment, often in challenging situations. Because of this there are often real risks involved that must be suitably managed. Despite efforts at managing these risks, incidents are still occurring during outdoor education experiences that sometimes culminate in serious injury and even death. While in the past these injuries and fatalities would have been considered unfortunate acts of misadventure, new attitudes in society seek to ascribe blame in the wake of an accident and those involved, or their families, seek penalties for those blamed. Recent legislation such as the Health and Safety in Employment Act make these penalties easier to apply, while the recent actions of both the police and officers of the Department of Labour show the willingness of public officials to investigate and prosecute outdoor education providers if accidents occur. The outdoor education sector has been poorly equipped to reply to the public in the wake of serious incidents. There are few if any statistics on incident rates in the outdoor education sector, and there is very little known about the underlying causes of those incidents. To ensure that outdoor education provision can continue into the future such information needs to be available and training programmes developed based on those findings. This research builds a profile of almost 2000 incidents that occurred in the years 1996 - 2000 at 12 of the 25 larger outdoor education centres in New Zealand that were invited to participate. That profile includes calculating accident rates for the group of organisations sampled and compares these to the rates of accidents occurring in outdoor centres in other parts of the world as well as those occurring in other aspects of life in New Zealand. Eighteen of the incidents were chosen that had potential for serious injury, and these were studied for the root causes of the incidents using a Delphi technique involving three panels of outdoor experts. From this investigation, and an in-depth review of literature from the fields of safety management and psychology, I developed a taxonomy of root causes of outdoor education incidents and suggest a new model of how these root causes can interact to result in an incident. Not all of the identified types of error in the taxonomy of root causes could easily be accommodated within the existing frameworks of outdoor decision-making. In order to provide a model that incorporated these error types, theories of cognitive psychology were combined into a new model of outdoor education decision making in hazardous situations. This shows how personality factors, attitudes and other social factors can act to bias decisions and lead to incidents occurring. As a result of this research, an ongoing collection of incident data in the outdoor education sector is advocated, as is the adoption of the taxonomy of root causes and model of an outdoor education incident into training programmes for outdoor instructors. Through these processes it is hoped that risk management practices will be improved, incidents reduced in frequency and severity, and therefore participation of young people in outdoor education programmes for personal development outcomes can continue to be promoted and justified. Suggestions for further research to build the knowledge of the processes leading to incidents in outdoor education activities are made at the end of this thesis

The first steps of digital cities : development and social shaping of Web-based urban cyberspace in Europe

The rapidly increasing worldwide usage of the Internet and the World Wide Web since the second half of the 1990s has affected the way geographers, built environment scholars and commentators look at concepts like space, distance, and the city itself. The possibility for real-world functions such as gathering, informing, communicating, taking decisions and performing economic transactions to be hosted by a new type of electronic, virtual space, has opened up new opportunities together with many new questions for those who are involved in planning urban spaces. One of the most interesting phenomena related to the emergence of 'urban' Internet functions is the creation - started around 1993-94 - of local public information systems called 'digital cities'. These systems were hailed as highly valuable 'cyber' additions to urban space and to the public sphere of Western cities. This thesis has constituted one of the first, systematic attempts to observe and analyse the 'digital city' phenomenon within the boundaries of the European Union. It has contributed to the creation of a much-needed typology of digital cities by surveying and analysing the contents of over two hundred early developments across Europe. Another important contribution has been going beyond the observation of the contents of the initiatives and, through in-depth case studies, analysing how a couple of advanced and exemplar experiments were being socially shaped, concentrating on the important - and often overlooked - processes behind the design and deployment of technology. Information and Communication Technologies are in constant - and rapid - evolution, and so are IT-based systems used to run several aspects of urban life. However, as the early phaseso f the developmenta nd acceptanceo f new technologiesa re crucial and able to influence later ideas and initiatives, the results and recommendations from this thesis can be seen as a valuable contribution to the study of urban technology in general.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo