Growing up in rural Scotland

Sweep 1 of GUS provides some evidence that children in rural areas may be more likely to live in favourable socio-economic circumstances than their urban counterparts. This is associated with greater exposure to positive parental behaviours, such as breastfeeding, among rural babies. However, in many other respects the early experiences of children in urban and rural areas in terms of service use, health problems and contact with significant others are not very different. Moreover, other evidence suggests that families in rural areas may be relatively disadvantaged in respect of easy access to ante-natal classes and having grandparents living nearby, for example

Democratic Teaching: An Incomplete Job Description

The importance of public education in democratic states is almost beyond dispute. Too often, though, discussions of democratic education focus solely on policies and systems, forgetting the individual teachers who are ultimately responsible for educating future citizens. This paper attempts to illustrate just how complex and significant the role of teachers in a democratic republic can be

Delivering justice for Darfur: is the ICC simply a significant step in the right direction?

The establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002 was to be humanity's swift and just response to the most heinous of international crimes. The momentum that had gathered in the 1990s facilitated clear goals and high aspirations for the world's first permanent international criminal court. However, concessions made to entice universal support for the institution, ultimately weakened its practical ability to provide an effective alternative to impunity. The Darfur region of Sudan has been described as one of the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with UN records suggesting approximately 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million people have been displaced since 2003. The residents of Darfur have been subjected to many human rights abuses including murder, rape, torture and forcible removal, at the hands of government officials and supporters. Although the Office of the Prosecutor has commenced fervent investigations, the jurisdictional limits of the Rome Statute have impeded the ability of the Prosecutor to bring those responsible for the atrocities that have occurred in Darfur to justice. Investigations have shown that the government of Sudan has tolerated and even actively supported the alleged perpetrators of these war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Sudanese government has declined to cooperate with the Prosecutor and has refused to take any further action in relation to the arrest warrant for government minister Ahmad Huran. It has also rejected the option to domestically investigate Ahmad Huran, and in demonstration of defiance has appointed Huran as the Minister of State and Humanitarian Affairs. The present situation therefore raises the question as to whether the ICC can be the powerful international force against impunity that can effectively deliver justice to the people of Darfur

Improvement in Tripod student survey ratings of secondary school instruction over three years

This study examined data from Tripod student and teacher surveys administered over three academic years in a midsized urban school district in the United States. Two multifaceted questions guided the research: (1) How do teachers’ student survey ratings tend to behave over time? (2) How, if at all, do trends in student survey ratings relate to certain teacher background characteristics and professional experiences as reported on teacher surveys? Analyses indicated significant improvement in ratings, but only during the district’s first year of student survey implementation. Teachers’ perceptions of principal leadership emerged as the variable most closely tied to increases in ratings over time. Findings varied, however, depending on the dimension of teaching measured. Taken together, the study’s results translate into several specific recommendations for leaders and policymakers interested in instructional improvement and its relationship to student surveys

Improvement in Tripod student survey ratings of secondary school instruction over three years

This study examined data from Tripod student and teacher surveys administered over three academic years in a midsized urban school district in the United States. Two multifaceted questions guided the research: (1) How do teachers’ student survey ratings tend to behave over time? (2) How, if at all, do trends in student survey ratings relate to certain teacher background characteristics and professional experiences as reported on teacher surveys? Analyses indicated significant improvement in ratings, but only during the district’s first year of student survey implementation. Teachers’ perceptions of principal leadership emerged as the variable most closely tied to increases in ratings over time. Findings varied, however, depending on the dimension of teaching measured. Taken together, the study’s results translate into several specific recommendations for leaders and policymakers interested in instructional improvement and its relationship to student surveys

Introducing conceptual and contextual literacy for first year LLB students

This paper argues that the analytical tools for conceptual and contextual literacy need to be made explicit in the first year curriculum especially for non graduate entry LLB programs. The paper explains rationale for the subject, the evolution of the syllabus and evaluates the experience of facilitating student learning in the subject so far. At JCU Legal Concepts subject introduces students to a broad overview of the concepts applicable to basic areas of the law. Thus the subject offers a preparatory foundation for further three years of study. Legal Concepts is one of six subjects in the foundational JCU First Year Experience program. Other subjects are Legal Research, Writing and Analysis, Legal Institutions and Processes, Law, Society and Change and Contract 1 and 2. Law, Society and Change and Legal Concepts complement each other. Law, Society and Change introduces students to social science concepts such as: ideology, discourse, social construction, power, the state, the market, kinship and family, identity, class, race, ethnicity, caste, gender, sex, sexuality, colonialism, globalization. The subject enables students to view the law through the prism of society not vice versa. They are able to critique the law in terms of the social context in which it is made and in which it operates. For instance, to ask how relevant, given the large variety of forms that intimate relationships take, are marriage laws in Australia? Or to explore how hierarchies of esteem such as race or sexuality are constructed by law as an expression of dominant ideologies? The Legal Concepts subject, the focus of this presentation, introduces the core jurisprudential concepts of a common law legal system, namely the concepts of: - Personality, - Liability, - Property, - Contract, - Fiduciary obligations, - Rights, - Sovereignty and good process such as natural justice, constitutionalism and the Rule of Law. These concepts are selected because of the importance and breadth of areas of law they underpin. The 'law jobs' that the areas of law reflecting the concept are contextualized so that each concept is critiqued in terms of its relevance and possible obsolescence in the face a dimension of technological, political, cultural, economic or ecological change. This contextualized critique exposes areas of mismatch between, for instance, western liberal notions of property and Indigenous normative schemes, classical contract law and e-commerce, the concept of Westphalian sovereignty and the new challenges to global governance posed say by climate change, and so on. The two subjects are designed to complement each other by providing a foundation jurisprudential and social science conceptual vocabulary

The relative roles of CO2 and palaeogeography in determining Late Miocene climate: results from a terrestrial model-data comparison

The Late Miocene (∼11.6–5.3 Ma) palaeorecord provides evidence for a warmer and wetter climate than that of today and there is uncertainty in the palaeo-CO2 record of at least 150 ppmv. We present results from fully coupled atmosphere-ocean-vegetation simulations for the Late Miocene that examine the relative roles of palaeogeography (topography and ice sheet geometry) and CO2 concentration in the determination of Late Miocene climate through comprehensive terrestrial model-data comparisons. Assuming that the data accurately reflects the Late Miocene climate, and that the Late Miocene palaeogeographic reconstruction used in the model is robust, then results indicate that the proxy-derived precipitation differences between the Late Miocene and modern can be largely accounted for by the palaeogeographic changes alone. However, the proxy-derived temperatures differences between the Late Miocene and modern can only begin to be accounted for if we assume a palaeo-CO2 concentration towards the higher end of the range of estimates

Tiffany Windows in Richmond and Petersburg, Virginia

Louis Comfort Tiffany began his career as a painter in the 1860\u27s, illustrating his love of color and nature through genre scenes and landscapes. Unfulfilled as a painter he established a successful interior design firm, L. C. Tiffany and Associated Artists, designing interiors for America\u27s rich and elite, all the while trying to bring his vision of beauty within their reach. He is greatest remembered by his contributions to the industry of colored glass and the development of Tiffany Studios. Inspired by the colors in the stained glass windows of the twelfth and thirteenth century and by the lack of quality glass available to American glass artisans during the close of the nineteenth century, Tiffany devoted his life to the development of new colors, textures and patterns in glass and techniques in leading of windows. His salesmanship, desire to meet the needs of his clients, as well as his reputation for being a perfectionist helped him to create colored glass windows with subjects ranging from purely decorative to religious and mythological imagery and landscapes for churches, businesses, and homes in the fifty states and many countries abroad. The cities of Richmond and Petersburg, Virginia house over fifty Tiffany Windows in their churches and cemeteries. Much of the documentation on these windows is limited or lost consisting of mainly brief mentions in Vestry and Session Minutes. A major find was the discovery of an original black and white drawing of one of these windows. This paper will discuss these findings in order to document, catalog, describe and analyze these windows

Using sustainability to inform renewal of the LLB foundation curriculum: knowledge skills and attitudes for the future

The discipline standards for law have coincided with a renewed focus nationally on student learning in higher education. In addition to threshold learning outcomes, higher education nationally and internationally is seeking to foster sustainability education. In this paper, we chart the evolution of an explicitly designed first year law program as it has used the conceptual approach of sustainability in tandem with the discipline standards to recalibrate the balance of lawyering skills, legal method and analysis, and reflectivity in the first year curriculum. Early uptake of transition pedagogies in the program's original 2005 design gives the authors some six years of experience on which to reflect, concerning student learning and the structure of and approach to curriculum design. This case study of curriculum renewal illustrates the tools and philosophy that underpin a refresh of the first year law curriculum seeking to engage in a bigger conceptual project, with the discipline standards in mind