In Search of the Missing Ingredient: Religious Slaughter, Incremental Failure and the Quest for the Right to Know.

This article examines Anna Joseph’s suggestion to introduce into United States (US) law a requirement to stun an animal still found to be conscious after forty seconds following initial cutting during religious slaughter. It is suggested that the proposed law fails to address significant ethical concerns based on scientific evidence. The conflict with human rights legislation, especially religious freedom, is discussed. A new consumers’ rights approach is proposed which highlights the life of the animal and may provide a universally applicable legal framework for meat production. This may avoid the pitfalls of conflicting with human rights thereby enabling the revision of practices through education, information and changing consumer behaviour

Creatures, the academic lawyer and a socio-legal approach: Introducing Animal Law into the legal education curriculum.

Legal education has witnessed a significant rise in the number of Animal Law courses since 1989, especially in the United States where 164 universities have offered the subject. This article discusses the world-wide growth in provision in the context of a failure to match this impetus in the United Kingdom. It addresses how the continuing rise in the profile of legal issues relating to animals such as the failure to control the disappearance of species, links between poaching and international terrorism and the welfare of 56 billion animals slaughtered for meat worldwide have been largely ignored by the UK legal academy. Possible reasons for this are postulated including a professional realignment of UK legal education. An approach to Animal Law grounded in the methodology of socio-legal studies is discussed. It is suggested that Animal Law provides an opportunity for the UK legal academy to contribute its particular skills to the development of this new area of legal education and research. It would help move UK legal education towards a greater recognition and provision regarding the interaction of sustainable human activities, animals and the law

Study of space battery accelerated testing techniques. Phase 1 report. Survey of testing methods applicable to space battery evaluation

Testing methods applicable to space battery evaluation - literature surve

Measuring the beginning: a quantitative study of the transition to higher education

This quantitative study measures change in certain factors known to influence success of first-year students during the transition to higher education: self-efficacy, autonomous learning and social integration. A social integration scale was developed with three subscales: ‘sense of belonging’, ‘relationship with staff’ and ‘old friends’. Students responded to this and existing scales measuring self-efficacy and autonomous learning, before and after participating in transition activities including a group-work poster project. The authors discuss positive outcomes regarding a sense of belonging and how the authors' expectations in other areas such as self-efficacy were not met. The importance of early contact with academic staff and small-group work is confirmed. Tinto's assertions on pre-existing relationships are challenged. The authors suggest that further investigation might prevent a ‘scattergun’ approach to transition based upon superficial understanding of outcomes. They discuss potential models for transition design and support a ‘longer’ process with several opportunities for student engagement in success factor development

The sorrow of the struggle or joy of the journey? Seven lessons from an education research writing group

Writing for scholarly higher education journals can be difficult to accomplish for many staff.  Academic writing groups have been acknowledged as a successful method to increasing both the quality and output of research publications.  In this Viewpoint paper, the authors share their experiences and insights, which are distilled into seven key lessons

Study of space battery accelerated testing techniques. Phase 2 report - Ideal approaches towards accelerated tests and analysis of data

Ideal approaches to accelerated life tests and data analysis applied to space batterie

‘I am wary of giving too much power to students” - addressing the “but” in the principle of staff-student collaboration.

Staff and students coming together to enhance learning is a key educational challenge facing the higher education sector. Literature proposes different ways of achieving this around co-creation, partnership and collaboration. This paper focuses solely on staff perspectives of a staff-student partnership project aimed at improving feedback strategies. Through a mixed-methods approach staff within four disciplines in one UK University were questioned in regard to collaborating with students, asked to take part in a co-creation experience and then invited to take part in a follow-up interview. Findings indicated that staff initially supported greater student engagement in curriculum development, but were very wary of how far they would be prepared to change in the design of curriculum content. Some doubted the experience and abilities of students in this context. The overarching response was a positive statement followed by ‘but’ and then the issues that could be caused by this type of approach

Enhancing Intercultural Competence: Engaging Teachers in Higher Education with Classroom Diversity through Reflective Practice

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.Universities in Australia are becoming increasingly diverse, with more students coming from culturally and linguistically varied backgrounds. Moreover, workforces, as well as workplace expectations, have become more globalised. Resulting from this, and from increased sensitivities to, and awareness of, social justice, increased focus has been placed on diversity and inclusivity in higher education and developing interculturally competent students. This Doctor of Education thesis investigates and analyses teacher perceptions of cultural diversity, factors affording or inhibiting engaging with diversity in the classroom, and implications of this for teacher decision-making, teacher practice, and learning. The research questions underpinning the thesis are: • What are the main factors that influence and shape teachers’ views and practices in relation to intercultural interaction in the classroom? • To what extent and in what ways do these factors guide teachers’ teaching and learning decisions in practice? This thesis presents a model of learning that has been developed from the three key factors that emerged from the study: positioning the learner, classroom awareness and learning outcomes. Based on the findings of the research and literature on engaging diversity in the classroom, a model of four learning purposes has been developed. These purposes are: learning diversity, learning diversity, learning diversity and learning diversity. The four learning purposes are interrelated. The learning purposes proceed along a continuum, from surface-level engagement, learning diversity, to critical consideration of values and the way cultural values frame behaviour, that is, learning diversity. Learning diversity is theorised as enabling inclusion through a decentring of power. Learning diversity reframes cultural learning by moving the focus from external and generic cultural differences, to individuals’ internal values and how they affect relationships. In doing so, the teacher’s values are no longer considered the one, normative authority of learning; a wider range of values is considered and viewed as part of classroom diversity, which is dynamic and evolving

Animal sentience in UK law: does the new clause need claws?

This article examines the introduction into UK law of a general requirement to take into account the sentience of animals in developing legislation. The difficulties encountered by the UK government during the Brexit debates of 2017 is examined. It is suggested that the concept of sentience is acknowledged to be multi-layered and complicated making it difficult to confine in a simple legislative formula to be considered by disparate individuals and departments. This leaves doubts over the success of the suggested legislation unless it is supported by central co-ordination, expertise and accountability. The history of UK law in relation to sentience is examined and compared with the EU. It is concluded that more is needed to enable a consistent approach to emerge in light of the on-going development of knowledge regarding sentience. It is proposed that a central animal protection commission is vital to ensure accountability and expertise. This is more likely to provide a scientifically and philosophically coherent set of principles