Covid-19 and the Hopeless University at the End of the End of History

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Functional inversion for potentials in quantum mechanics

Let E = F(v) be the ground-state eigenvalue of the Schroedinger Hamiltonian H = -Delta + vf(x), where the potential shape f(x) is symmetric and monotone increasing for x > 0, and the coupling parameter v is positive. If the 'kinetic potential' bar{f}(s) associated with f(x) is defined by the transformation: bar{f}(s) = F'(v), s = F(v)-vF'(v),then f can be reconstructed from F by the sequence: f^{[n+1]} = bar{f} o bar{f}^{[n]^{-1}} o f^{[n]}. Convergence is proved for special classes of potential shape; for other test cases it is demonstrated numerically. The seed potential shape f^{[0]} need not be 'close' to the limit f.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figure

An Inversion Inequality for Potentials in Quantum Mechanics

We suppose: (1) that the ground-state eigenvalue E = F(v) of the Schroedinger Hamiltonian H = -Delta + vf(x) in one dimension is known for all values of the coupling v > 0; and (2) that the potential shape can be expressed in the form f(x) = g(x^2), where g is monotone increasing and convex. The inversion inequality f(x) <= fbar(1/(4x^2)) is established, in which the `kinetic potential' fbar(s) is related to the energy function F(v) by the transformation: fbar(s) = F'(v), s = F(v) - vF'(v) As an example f is approximately reconstructed from the energy function F for the potential f(x) = x^2 + 1/(1+x^2).Comment: 7 pages (plain Tex), 2 figures (ps

Constructive inversion of energy trajectories in quantum mechanics

We suppose that the ground-state eigenvalue E = F(v) of the Schroedinger Hamiltonian H = -\Delta + vf(x) in one dimension is known for all values of the coupling v > 0. The potential shape f(x) is assumed to be symmetric, bounded below, and monotone increasing for x > 0. A fast algorithm is devised which allows the potential shape f(x) to be reconstructed from the energy trajectory F(v). Three examples are discussed in detail: a shifted power-potential, the exponential potential, and the sech-squared potential are each reconstructed from their known exact energy trajectories.Comment: 16 pages in plain TeX with 5 ps figure

The relationships between technology and open education in the development of a resilient higher education

The place of technology in the development of coherent educational responses to environmental and socio-economic disruption is here placed under scrutiny. One emerging area of interest is the role of technology in addressing more complex learning futures, and more especially in facilitating individual and social resilience, or the ability to manage and overcome disruption. However, the extent to which higher education practitioners can utilise technology to this end is framed by their approaches to the curriculum, and the socio-cultural practices within which they are located. This paper discusses how open education might enable learners to engage with uncertainty through social action within a form of higher education that is more resilient to economic, environmental and energy-related disruption. It asks whether open higher education can be (re)claimed by users and communities within specific contexts and curricula, in order to engage with an uncertain world

Public service spin-outs in the UK: towards a theoretical understanding of the spin-out process

Since the election of the Labour government in 1997 and its vision of the ‘Third Way’, the UK government has been keen to support social enterprise and to utilise the third sector in welfare delivery. Over the past few years the policy environment in the UK has sought to encourage public sector workers to ‘spin-out’ the services that they deliver into social enterprises. The research reported in this paper draws on semi-structured interviews with eleven representatives across four local authorities (LA) in the UK that are spinning out a public service into a social enterprise. The services being spun out operate across four different sectors, which allows the research to identify the common experiences and barriers in spinning out. The analysis is underpinned by a theoretical model of public/third sector collaboration by Takahashi and Smutny’s (2002), later adapted by Cornforth et al (2013). We present an alternative version of this framework based on public sector spin outs. In doing so, the research identified that there are significant barriers facing public services that seek to spin-out as social enterprises and the challenges that this brings to LAs in relation to managing the process. Issues around the sustainability of the ‘business case’ of the spin-outs proved to be the main problem, along with the difficulties of maintaining service provision during the transition phas

Neoliberalism and primary education: Impacts of neoliberal policy on the lived experiences of primary school communities

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.This special issue of Power and Education analyses the ways neoliberal policy agendas inflect and infect primary school communities. In recognising that ‘schools are complex and sometimes incoherent social assemblages’, this widened perspective – beyond a customary focus on just pupils and teachers – marks the particular contribution of the Special Issue. In examining how neoliberal logics thread through and organise relations between parts of primary school communities, the collection enables a critical view of the factious contemporary socio-political landscape through the lens of primary schooling. In doing so, the varied papers address what Piper and Sikes suggest are central concerns of the Power and Education journal: to interrogate ‘the general and specific imposition of crude discourses of neoliberalism and managerialism; the need to analyse carefully what is happening in particular contexts; and the possibility of constructing resistance and concrete alternatives’. Under scrutiny here is the evolution of a new educational ecosystem that reflects a re-engineering of the primary schooling terrain. This terrain might once have been characterised by the aims of nurturing children intellectually, emotionally and culturally, so that they can become socially aware, confident and critical citizens, actively able to contribute to communities that are inclusive and socially just. As these aims are re-engineered, their contested evolution can be witnessed in the tensions between: first, specific stakeholder groups like parents or teachers organising against curricula they view as dominated by metrics that damage self-actualisation; and second, policy intentions that stress the importance of security, safety and happiness. This is a crucial area of struggle, precisely because learning is increasingly governed by discourses of human capital and efficiency, where new school governance structures and tangible re-workings of teachers’ priorities have emerged to re-shape a vision of primary education. Are the proposed outcomes holistic child development with a capacity to stimulate community-oriented social justice, or productive, long-term economic activity, or something else? In this special issue, a range of authors seek to place primary educational policy in the global North in relation to the concrete experiences of teachers, senior leaders, parents, children and community members. The purpose of this is to reveal the tensions that erupt between policy drivers for productivity, human capital, efficiency, excellence and so on, in effect policy drivers for-value, against the impetus for education to frame humane values. One core terrain in which such tensions are played out is the school, and yet the school is more than a simple set of linear relationships. Such relationships emerge at the intersection of, for instance, family and caring responsibilities, educational engagements, faith-based interactions, racialized or gendered asymmetries, the public and the private, the communal and the corporate. As such, the definition and co-option of the idea of the school as a community or the school community is complex. In this collection, we seek to highlight this complexity and to demonstrate how the concrete, lived experiences of groups inside primary schools are affected by specific flavours of policy

Public service mutuals: partnerships, collaboration and service-user outcomes

The provision of public services in England has undergone numerous reforms and a process of marketisation over the last few decades. This marketisation of public services has been led by a desire to create more cost-efficient services that are also responsive to service-user’s needs and is being driven by government through funding and legislation. In doing so, the government have encouraged the transfer of Local Authority staff into new provider and employee-owned mutual organisations (also known as ‘spin-outs’). This paper builds upon prior research that developed a theoretical overview of organisational change in the spin-out process, which was grounded in both policy-formulation and partnership theory. The research reported in this paper refines and develops this model, focusing in particular on the ‘outcome’ phase of the spin-out process. It draws on semi-structured interviews with senior managers at four spin-out organisations in order to develop a deeper theoretical understanding of what the outcomes are for spin-out staff and their service-users. In addition, it draws on survey data gathered from 66 spin-outs that allows the research to refine the partnership model by highlighting the differing importance of partners at different periods of the spin-out process. The research is ongoing but early analysis of the data reveals that service management and local authority senior managers and elected officials are the main arbiters of power at the start of the spin-out process, but that this importance reduces over time as the spin-out becomes more independent and service staff and users develop more strategic input. The data also suggests that outcomes for service beneficiaries improve following the spin-out process. The results are discussed in relation to our model of ‘organisational change in the spin-out process’ and the prior literature on partnerships, collaborations and policy-formulation