Vibrant and engaging online social learning: an innovative response to threatened part-time study in Higher Education

Austerity measures and increased tuition fees place heightened pressures on universities to provide sustainable, cost effective, high quality provision. This paper analyses how a team of staff in a School of Education at a UK University are leading collaborative work with partner colleges, to deliver a model that ameliorates the financial pressures, whilst developing high quality student-centred engagement for part-time students. When face-to-face teaching sessions were significantly reduced, an online academic social network for tutors and students was introduced to encourage collaboration, peer support and ‘coffee room’ discussion. Feedback from participants through focus groups and surveys confirmed a social support network as important for engagement and was perceived as supporting achievement, even by those who were reluctant to join the network. Recommendations include: more time face-to-face at the beginning of the course, more online tutor presence and scaffolded activities to build confidence in using an academic social network

Congress has a very limited ability to hold central bankers to account

The financial crisis has brought new prominence to the role of central banks and bankers on both sides of the Atlantic. But who holds these powerful figures to account? In the U.S., Congress has this responsibility, but new research by Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey finds that it has been largely unable to significantly challenge the Fed since the 1970s. She argues that congressional oversight is constrained by members’ electoral incentives, a lack of expertise in monetary policy, the extreme transparency of hearings, and the sheer size of the House and Senate banking committees

Smile or smirk? Why nonverbal behaviour matters in parliamentary hearings

When witnesses appear before select committees, Hansard records their words, but not their expressions. Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey analysed nonverbal behaviour in 12 economic policy committee hearings. She argues that gestures, expressions and tone may be pivotal in whether a policymaker’s arguments are accepted

Why Too Much Transparency is a Bad Thing: The WarshReview on Transparency in the BoE’s Monetary PolicyCommittee

Following the review of the Monetary Policy Committee’s (MPC) transparency practices and procedures, the Bank of England today published a report by former Federal Reserve Board Governor Kevin Warsh. Warsh makes five broad recommendations for creating a balance between the demand for greater transparency and the intrinsic defence of genuine deliberation as the foundation for sound policymaking. Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey finds the report is a novel approach to the conundrum that transparency poses to good public policy in the face of uncertainty

19th Century British Data

Data derived from Contents of Parliamentary Debates on Trade Policy and Corn Laws between 1813 and 1846 - please note that this archive is a compressed ZIP file, and must be unzipped before use. Roll Call Data for 1841-47 Parliament (requires SPSS). Also includes supplementary guide to navigating the Parliamentary Debates ZIP file. Dataset used in: Schonhardt-Bailey, Cheryl (2003) Ideology, party and interests in the British Parliament of 1841–47. British journal of political science, 33 (4). pp. 581-605. ISSN 0007-1234 http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/863/ and Schonhardt-Bailey, Cheryl (2006) From the Corn Laws to free trade: interests, ideas and institutions in historical perspective. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. ISBN 9780262195430 http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/12320

The accountability gap: deliberation on monetary policy in Britain and America during the financial crisis

We employ multiple methods to gauge empirically the quality of the deliberative process whereby central bankers are held to account for their policy decisions. We use quantitative text analysis on the monetary policy legislative oversight hearing transcripts in the UK and US during the financial crisis. We find that the UK performs significantly better than the US in holding the central bank head to account on monetary policy, namely by engaging in a reciprocal dialogue between the legislative committee and the central banker. We then manually code selected exchanges from these transcripts, according to four criteria of deliberation: partisanship, accountability, narrative and response quality. We find that British MPs invoke almost no partisan rhetoric and target their questions more to relevant aspects of monetary policy; by comparison, their American counterparts seek to appeal more to their constituents and tend to veer away from discussing the details of monetary policy

Mothers with Serious Mental Illness: Their Experience of “Hitting Bottom”

This study sought to understand the experience of “hitting bottom” from the perspective of 32 mothers with serious mental illness. Secondary narrative analysis of 173 stories about experiences related to hitting bottom were identified. Enactment of their perceived mothering roles and responsibilities was compromised when confronted by the worst of illness. Subsequent to women's descent to bottom was their need for a timely and safe exit from bottom. An intense experience in bottom further jeopardized their parenting and treatment self-determination and, for some, their potential for survival. The results suggest that prevention of bottom is feasible with early assessment of the diverse issues contributing to mothers' vulnerabilities. Interventions to lessen their pain may circumvent bottom experiences. Healing necessitates purposeful approaches to minimize the private and public trauma of bottom experiences, nurture growth towards a future, and establish resources to actualize such a life