Imperialism and colonialism

Many who see the Northern Ireland problem as the result of imperialism frequently overlook the fact that, although the territory was indeed originally part of the British expropriation of Ireland, it has remained under British jurisdiction largely because of the size and determined resistance of its settler population. Imperialism and settler colonialism in general are not identical; and in respect to the 'native' peoples, the imperial ideology of the metropolis has differed in important ways from the colonial ideology of settlers. The British and French empires have been the most extensively studied in this context, both being particularly relevant because they included two important settler colonies which fiercely resisted majority rule, namely Southern Rhodesia and Algeria. Works on Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, German and Belgian empires, however, draw very similar conclusions to those of the British and French (Alatas 1977:7)

Blank slates or hidden treasure? Assessing and building on the experiential learning of migrant and refugee women in European countries

Commonly, the work situation of migrant and refugee women declines notably on arriving in the new country, irrespective of their existing qualifications and even after they have taken accepted qualifications. The primary objectives of this research were to test the hypothesis that women bring to their new countries skills and competences arising from their education, working life and experiential learning, in addition to those learnt in the process of adapting to a new way of life, such as communicative and intercultural competences; and to develop a typology which would facilitate access to appropriate education and training. This process also, crucially, involves vocational guidance and counselling to ensure that women develop goals which are both realistic and desirable to them. To this end an interview schedule was developed and delivered, after adaptations to local circumstances, to 120 women in four countries: Denmark, Germany, the Czech Republic and the UK. This paper presents the detailed findings only from the UK research. The main value of the data gathered is qualitative and the samples used were non-random, but certain patterns emerged which are described in this paper. It was concluded that education and training were usually necessary in the new country but that a much more considered approach needs to be taken to placement on courses. The paper concludes with recommendations for practice by institutions of further education and case studies to illuminate the findings. Four case studies are attached

Was it worth it? A comparison of the role of adult education and training in the labour market insertion and progress of men and women in the West of Scotland: results of qualitative research

Despite a number of relevant longitudinal studies carried out in Sweden, Finland, Norway and the United States of America, there is a relative paucity of research into the long-term outcomes of adult return to learning. This paper uses data from the first survey in Scotland into the long-term outcomes of adult learning (in this case, formal education/training) in order to explore the potential of adult learning for enhancing social citizenship, by facilitating labour market insertion and progress.The paper focuses particularly on an analysis of gender patterns. The issues addressed are: the extent to which respondents expected participation in adult education to benefit them in the labour market; whether labour-market-orientated participation in adult education brought positive occupational outcomes; the extent to which unintended labour market outcomes arose from participation in adult education; how women who undertook adult education did in labour market terms compared to men; to what extent personal perception of labour market progress was related to income; the kind of adult education which appeared to bring the most beneficial labour market outcomes; and any differences between men and women in this respect; and finally, the extent to which adult education appeared to promote greater social citizenship

European generation link: promoting European citizenship through intergenerational and intercultural learning

In the past decades, Europe has experienced several waves of internal migration, including displaced persons before, during and after World War II, in the 1960s when “guest workers” were invited from South Europe to the richer states, after the fall of the Iron Curtain and through conflict in the former Jugoslavia. There are, therefore, millions of older people who are “European citizens” in the sense that they have lived in several European countries, cultures and societies and who have thus collected considerable experience of “a wider Europe”. Promoting European citizens’ awareness of Europe has been one of the main objectives of European policy for many years, but prejudices and attitudes linger on, especially among those who have little or no European experience with migration and multicultural approach. Furthermore, the treasure of those older people who have experienced a multilingual and multicultural life in Europe has hitherto been under-researched. The project “European Generation Link” has, therefore, developed a web-based platform that contains recordings of people who have, during their lifetime, lived in more than one European country. The site is arranged like a real library, with individual volumes containing the “stories”. They are based on structured interviews, mainly carried out by young people, and complemented with photographs, audio files and videoclips. Visitors may search the library using a variety of search parameters, including include countries, periods, cultures and languages. This presentation will introduce some of the stories uncovered so far and a preliminary analysis of the contents of the library

Working on: choice or necessity?

The research focus is on personal and other factors that pre-dispose, motivate and enable people to have longer working lives, drawing on both primary research and secondary sources. After a statistical overview of the European situation, most of the data used is from the United Kingdom, where substantial research has been carried out. Unless otherwise stated, research data are British. Surveys have shown a range of predictive factors, and that financial necessity and job satisfaction are two of the most important reasons for working after normal retirement age. These are illustrated by selected biographies drawn from two research projects, followed by an analysis of enabling factors, including qualifications, the availability of jobs, attitudes and policies of employers, health, government policy and vocational guidance and mentoring. The paper concludes that working after retirement age ought to be a matter of individual choice

Counselling immigrant adults at an educational institution

The principle of promoting free mobility of citizens has been written into European educational policies. Additionally, the philosophy of educational equality has been clearly included into the educational regulation of most European countries. Furthermore, at the beginning of the twenty-first century the ideas of lifelong learning have been defined to be the goals of improving practice within the educational systems. This means that teachers all over Europe are increasingly facing students with various ethnic backgrounds of all ages and having varied educational backgrounds, life situations and work-experiences and accordingly, being in the need of diverse educational support within educational settings. The growth in demands for equal educational rights for all inevitably strengthens the demands for the development of each teacher’s and counsellor's the skills of the teaching and counselling staff for meeting the individual needs of learners emerging from diverse reasons and counselling them accordingly. However, with this new concentration on the needs of diverse students emerging on issues like immigration, age, race, gender, special educational needs or the like, there seems to be some uncertainty with regards to what the development of these skills might mean for the practices of educational settings, their teachers and other staff and, accordingly, for teacher education training professionals for educational settings. In this article we will provide the reader with a couple of examples of how these challenges have been met within educational settings. Besides offering some examples of good practice of working with immigrant adults we also focus on the challenge of training professionals and in particular to of training teachers working with immigrant adults in educational provisions institutions. With In putting the focus on teachers we would like to underline the importance of every teacher to have having the counselling attitude and skills in his/her everyday practice with immigrant adult learners besides the work done by actual counselling professionals. However, we start our article with by addressing briefly the subject of to adult learners and some grounds of working with immigrant adult learners in educational settings. This starting point provides the conceptual framework for the practical examples to be presented. The first two of these examples are dealing deal with counselling immigrant adult students. They are followed with by examples of some learning tools used in training teachers to work with multicultural adult students

Introduction: Analytic, Continental and the question of a bridge

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Introduction: Analytic, Continental and the question of a bridge, which has been published in final form at 10.1177/1474885115582078. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with SAGE’s Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.In philosophy and political theory, divisions come and go, but some persist despite beingobviously problematic. The analytic and Continental divide is one such division. Inpolitical philosophy and political theory, the division has been particularly pronounced.Analytic and Continental thinkers are divided not only over substantial issues but also over the very nature of political theorising. In spite of this fundamental nature, theorists often seem to assume that, as a division, the analytic/Continental divide requires no explanation. We suggest that, as a central division within political theory, and despite being acknowledged as problematic for quite some time, it has persisted because it has not been adequately examined. Once examined, the division turns out to be operationally weaker than it once was. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in engaging thinkers from the other side. This has been accompanied by a corresponding tendency, among both analytic and Continental philosophers and political thinkers, to reflect on the nature of their own tradition and ‘philosophy’. Both traditions have entered a self-conscious period of meta-reflection. Such questioning indicates the possibility of transformation within both groups, in the absence of settled frameworks and divisions. However, it is also clear that such signs are the beginning of the possibility of a new relation rather than a sign of the eclipse of the division. The continued institutional separation and the space between their respective philosophical vocabularies suggest that, while the time is ripe for work here, there is still much to be done

Temperature dependence of modified CNO nuclear reaction rates in dense stellar plasmas

We study the dependence of the CNO nuclear reaction rates on temperature, in the range of $10^7\div 10^8$ K, the typical range of temperature evolution from a Sun-like star towards a white dwarf. We show that the temperature dependence of the CNO nuclear reaction rates is strongly affected by the presence of non-extensive statistical effects in the dense stellar core. A very small deviation from the Maxwell-Boltzmann particle distribution implies a relevant enhancement of the CNO reaction rate and could explain the presence of heavier elements (e.g. Fe, Mg) in the final composition of a white dwarf core. Such a behavior is consistent with the recent experimental upper limit to the fraction of energy that the Sun produces via the CNO fusion cycle.Comment: Presented at NEXT2003 (Second International Conference on "News and Expectations in Thermostatistics"), Villasimius (Cagliari)- Italy in 21-28 September 2003. 7 pages including 3 figure