Is Group Singing Special? Health, Well-Being and Social Bonds in Community-Based Adult Education Classes Group singing, well-being and social bonds

Evidence demonstrates that group singing improves health and well-being, but the precise mechanisms remain unknown. Given that cohesive social networks also positively influence health, we focus on the social aspects of singing, exploring whether improvements in health and well-being are mediated by stronger social bonds, both to the group as a whole (collective-bonding) and to individual classmates (relational-bonding). To do so, seven newly-formed community-based adult education classes (four singing, N=84, and three comparison classes studying creative writing or crafts, N=51) were followed over seven months. Self-report questionnaire data on mental and physical health, well-being, and social bonding were collected at Months 1, 3 and 7. We demonstrate that physical and mental health and satisfaction with life significantly improved over time in both conditions. Path analysis did not show any indirect effects via social bonding of Condition on health and well-being. However, higher collective bonding at timepoint 3 significantly predicted increased flourishing, reduced anxiety and improved physical health independently of baseline levels. In contrast, relational-bonding showed no such effects, suggesting that it is feeling part of a group that particularly yields health and wellbeing benefits. Moreover, these results indicate that singing may not improve health and well-being more than other types of activities. Nonetheless, these findings encourage further work to refine our understanding of the social aspects of community-based adult education classes in promoting health, well-being and community cohesion

Neanderthals and Homo sapiens: Cognitively Different Kinds of Human?

Membership of an extensive social network is imperative for human survival. However, maintaining network cohesion is particularly challenging for hunter-gatherers because they are dispersed over large home ranges, and need to keep track of absent social partners for extended periods. The archaeological record suggests that compared to Neanderthals, contemporary modern humans main-tained social ties between greater numbers of individuals over great-er distances. I argue that such differences would have influenced neural development, driving differences in brain structure and the degree of social complexity that each taxon could sustain cognitive-ly. Following recent suggestions that modern humans’ larger parie-tals might suggest an enhanced ability to create a ‘virtual inner world’, I hypothesise that this capacity allowed them to monitor larger numbers of absent social partners and thus maintain larger dispersed social networks than their Neanderthal counterparts. Larg-er social networks would have boosted the ability of modern humans to insure against local resource failure, sustain demographic stability and conserve cultural innovations

Broadening design-led education horizons: conceptual insights and future research directions

© 2017, Springer Nature B.V. Design as an overarching pedagogical framework has been regarded by some as the avenue to re-envision general education to develop capabilities required for twenty-first century citizens. However, despite the adoption of design thinking within other domains, generic design-based education for lifelong learning remains largely unexplored. A comprehensive review of literature on educating a workforce for the knowledge economy, and the role of design in business and educational innovation, has been conducted to create a new approach to building a culture of practice for design-led education, based on the theory of the Innovation Matrix. This study proposes ‘design-led educational innovation’ as a new area of research which requires a deeper understanding of the knowledge, skills and mindsets students require to thrive in the twenty-first century and beyond as lifelong learners in informal and formal education contexts. The findings provide an opportunity to explore dynamic theories and methodologies borrowed from within the field of design-led innovation in business that will broaden the horizons of design-led education, challenging existing practices to transform educational institutions as knowledge creation organisations. This is the first paper to introduce the Design-led Education Innovation Matrix, providing a prototype design-led framework to assist educators in developing and assessing twenty-first century knowledge, skills and mindsets. In addition, it identifies related future research areas for academia, thereby extending the reach and scope of this emerging research area