How integrated working affected the development of the Caring 4 Kids project (Sharing our experience, Practitioner-led research 2008-2009; PLR0809/025)

This project developed between two separate agencies and aimed to examine and identify, from a participant observer perspective, the specific effects of integrated working on the development of the Caring 4 Kids project. The project, Caring 4 Kids, was a collaborative piece of work between a voluntary sector provider of children’s centres, and a girls’ secondary school. This school has the highest rate of student pregnancy within the local authority. The research consisted largely of interviews with five of the professional participants in the Caring 4 Kids project, one from each discipline: teaching; nursery nursing; social work practitioner/management; social work; and early years consultancy. The participants were: • the director of the voluntary organization providing children’s centres, by background a social worker • the Community Liaison deputy head of a girls’ secondary school, by background a teacher • the manager of one of the children’s centre nurseries, by background a nursery nurse • an ex-social worker • an Early Years consultant with the local authority, by background a SENCO. The questions attempted to address the previous experiences of the interviewee in multidisciplinary working, their attitude to integrated working in relation to their agency’s attitude as they saw it, and their experiences of integrated working in this specific project. In addition to these questions, the research attempted to identify what the participants felt positive and negative about, and if possible to indicate what they might be taking back to their agency, or to their next experience of integrated working, from this present experience. The research identified that • integrated forums were dependent on the consent, real as well as formal, of the agencies seconding to them • the differing values derived from the different professional backgrounds of participants mattered less than the core remits of each of their agencies • some professionals may have identified more with the integrated forum in respect of some of their values than with their own agency • the success of the forum as a ‘workplace’ owed a great deal to participants not feeling disempowered with regard to higher ranking or higher status professionals

Damage classification in reinforced concrete beam by acoustic emission signal analysis

Acoustic Emission (AE) is a non-destructive testing technique which can be used to identify both the damage level and the nature of that damage such as tensile cracks and shear movements at critical zones within a structure. In this work, the acoustic emission parameters of amplitude, rise time, average frequency and signal strength were used to classify the damage and to determine the damage level. Laboratory experiments were performed on a beam (150 x 250 x 1900 mm). The acoustic emission analysis was successfully used to determine crack movements and classify damage levels in accordance with the observations made during an increasing loading cycle

On the thermal buffering of naturally ventilated buildings through internal thermal mass

In this paper we examine the role of thermal mass in buffering the interior temperature of a naturally ventilated building from the diurnal fluctuations in the environment. First, we show that the effective thermal mass which is in good thermal contact with the air is limited by the diffusion distance into the thermal mass over one diurnal temperature cycle. We also show that this effective thermal mass may be modelled as an isothermal mass. Temperature fluctuations in the effective thermal mass are attenuated and phase-shifted from those of the interior air, and therefore heat is exchanged with the interior air. The evolution of the interior air temperature is then controlled by the relative magnitudes of (i) the time for the heat exchange between the effective thermal mass and the air; (ii) the time for the natural ventilation to replace the air in the space with air from the environment; and (iii) the period of the diurnal oscillations of the environment. Through analysis and numerical solution of the governing equations, we characterize a number of different limiting cases. If the ventilation rate is very small, then the thermal mass buffers the interior air temperature from fluctuations in the environment, creating a near-isothermal interior. If the ventilation rate increases, so that there are many air changes over the course of a day, but if there is little heat exchange between the thermal mass and interior air, then the interior air temperature locks on to the environment temperature. If there is rapid thermal equilibration of the thermal mass and interior air, and a high ventilation rate, then both the thermal mass and the interior air temperatures lock on to the environment temperature. However, in many buildings, the more usual case is that in which the time for thermal equilibration is comparable to the period of diurnal fluctuations, and in which ventilation rates are moderate. In this case, the fluctuations of the temperature of the thermal mass lag those of the interior air, which in turn lag those of the environment. We consider the implications of these results for the use of thermal mass in naturally ventilated buildings

Local and global in the formation of a learning theorist: Peter Jarvis and adult education

Peter Jarvis is a towering figure in the study of adult and lifelong education and a leading and original theorist of learning. This paper sets out his intellectual and professional biography, maps the main contours of his work and introduces fourteen papers by leading scholars devoted to his work. Five broad phases in Jarvis’ life are identified: (a) youth, self-education, Methodist ministry and early teaching and research; (b) founding of the International Journal of Lifelong Education, authorship of important textbooks on adult and professional education and linking of academic communities in different countries; (c) early research on and theorisation of learning; (d) engagement from the early 1990s with debates on lifelong learning and the learning society; and (e) return to theorisation of learning, particularly from the perspective of globalisation, from around 2000. Recurring themes include ethics and responsibility, the essentially social nature of learning, democracy, and authenticity in human relationships

Consciousness, organisation, and the growth of labour: Edinburgh 1917-1927 : A study in political and industrial motivation.

SIGLELD:D50441/84 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Is Our History Bunk? Adult Education’s Historiography and the Notion of Learning Society

The notion of learning society presents a paradigm shift necessitating radical rethought of approaches to historical research in adult education. This paper re-evaluates the English-language historiography of adult education from a learning society perspective