Haptic criticality: can risk be deflected through development of critical thinking with adult learners?

The objective is to develop adult student critical thinking (CT) skills to equip participants to be flexible in a world risk society. The first aim of this paper is to create channels of communication and connection. The second aim examines the meta-narrative of pedagogic policy in relation to adult learners in the petite-narrative (Lyotard 2004) of my classroom, creating a piece of action research (McNiff 2014). The significance to the field of policy studies in adult education is that, haptic criticality, thinking through doing is essential to equip vocational students for problem solving in industry or self-employment. Relevant policies are:- the Foresight Review into the Future of Skills and Lifelong Learning (2016) and the Department of Education (DfE) adult learners policy (2018). The paper is relevant to the conference in that, the Education World Forum (EEF 2019) asks, ‘how might education policy encourage using what we know to improve what we do?’ A good question when considering risk, haptic criticality in andragogy or adult pedagogy. There is a role for the critically engaged artist in a world risk society. Responding to the conference theme ‘Education policy and new social risks: How can adult education and learning policy contribute to community integration today?’ An outcome is community building interventions such as poetry group and book club creating social cohesion and group bonding. Participants become agents of change in their own education. Wider implications are integration in work, higher education, community and family. The research problem or question asks, if risk may be deflected through the development of critical thinking (CT) skills with adult learners. Brown (1998: 1) believes there is a thinking skills deficit. To increase possibilities of social mobility and social capital CT skills could be instrumental in escaping poverty and gaining qualifications. The Canadian Ministry of Education states that all students will need to develop a flexibility and a versatility undreamed of by previous generations and to employ critical skills (Shaheen, 2007). The significance of the paper highlights the importance for students to understand ‘wicked problems’ as part of a world risk society. Then to translate their story into the universal. Gregory (2009), suggests that myth and narrative are a vital part of our identity, although Adichie (2009) warns against the idea of a single narrative becoming dangerously inflexible, if taken to risk extremes. The central theme and question of the paper is, what is CT and practice based research? Can it aid deflecting concepts of fear and risk? Could connection be discovered through community of inquiry and narrative? What are current andragogic policies, are they community makers or cohesion barriers? Ethical guidelines use British Education and Research Association (BERA 2018). All participants and institutions are anonymised. Theoretical and conceptual frame works are a double ontology of the art school and the world of andragogy. Auto/biography and anthropology are methodological approachs used to add reflexivity to the paper. Pedagogy is a socially constructed reality, with power dynamics. When postmodernist theories unsettles assumptions and decolonise educational theories then space can be made around historical concepts. Qualitative mixed methodologies are inclusive and illuminative in this newly created space (Kara 2015: 26). A sample of 133 self-selecting participants volunteered for CT methods. Data is inductively, iteratively linked and analysed in a cycle of reading, labelling and coding, to discover patterns and themes. Tentative conclusions are, a community of inquiry accesses the legacy of the critical traditions. Classroom democracy is a high-risk strategy, Beck (2013) implies, risk can be both positive and negative. Democracy is unpredictable and it does not have a predetermined outcome, it can be, ‘the transformational power of critical thinking.’ Participants in the research have become more confident and articulate, argumentative and discursive. I have observed an increase in the way participants use haptic criticality to talk out practice and theory in lectures and workshops, confronting risk. The output of the paper is to disseminate findings at conferences and in a relevant journal

A survey of an x school in Newton, to discover the number of pupils working up to, above and below ability, according to a regression technique.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Library project management in a collaborative web-based working environment

This paper discusses the emerging paradigm of project management performed in a web-based working environment. It highlights how project management and its associated features are strongly linked to fulfilling quality and value criteria for customers, and it examines how collaborative working environments can greatly reduce the administrative burden of managing large projects, especially and almost paradoxically, when resources are limited. Specifically, the paper examines the application of a project management methodology (PRINCE2) together with the use of a collaborative web-based working environment over a number of pilot projects at Leeds University Library. It describes the pilot phase of a library management decision to run a series of major Library projects using project management methodology, while continuing to run other projects through the existing locally developed planning mechanisms and describes the pitfalls of these latter alternatives, less sophisticated project management tools, and describes the main issues that this change in practice has brought to light. It draws preliminary conclusions about the effectiveness of this change in practice in one of the UK’s largest academic libraries

Ann O'Donnell modernist jeweller

The output is a curatorial project exhibiting the work of Ann O’Donnell (1933 – 2019), a jewellery artist-maker from the North of England. The project was a collaboration between Broadhead and Norton. Both contributors were equal originators of the work, taking joint responsibility for the project design, research findings and dissemination. Research Process: Interviews were undertaken with O’Donnell in her workshop and with her archive of jewellery-related materials. Additional interviews were undertaken with O’Donnell and her pieces of jewellery. A transcript was made from this material, which was the basis for constructing a film that captured O’Donnell’s significance to the jewellery-making world. This was developed into a rationale for selecting works for a jewellery exhibition. This showed O’Donnell’s working methods, research notebooks and jewellery illustrations. Work was arranged in themes that referred to O’Donnell’s interests rather than chronologically. Research Insights: O’Donnell was found to be an artist-maker of international significance through achieving international awards, establishing a retail and gallery for ‘the new jewellery’ and showcasing international artist-makers. Her own work came from her art school background and was about the materiality of gold, silver, stones, fossils and ancient artefacts. Both narrative and formalist concerns can be seen in her work. Her position as a woman artist-maker in the 1960s and 1970s often meant that she was positioned through women’s magazines within a domestic space, rather than a professional one. This exhibition revealed the breadth and depth of her creative outputs. It also drew attention to an artist-maker with an international profile who was not based in London. Dissemination: The curatorial project was exhibited at the Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds Arts University between 11 May and 27 July 2017. The show was also screened on Made in Leeds

Contraception advice and provision for the prevention of under 18 conceptions and STIs : A rapid review

Report conducted by the Centre for Research in Primary and Community Care (CRIPACC

THINKING ALOUD & TOGETHER: PEDAGOGIC STAGES IN THINKING, SPEAKING, MAKING AND WRITING IN ARTS EDUCATION

According to Brown (2018) and Fisher (2013) there is a thinking skills deficit in the education system in the UK. Central to this thesis is the question of the extent to which Critical Thinking (CT) can be taught or whether CT can only be gained in conditions conducive to its development. In relationship to the existence of a thinking skills deficit, this thesis argues that Arts students can become confident critical thinkers who are able to understand and apply complex theories and concepts to creative projects through pedagogical scaffolding interventions (Vygotsky, 2012) based on dialogic practices and democratic principles at work in a Community of Inquiry (Lipman, 2010). This qualitative research study employs a constructivist ontology combined with an interpretivist epistemology (Coe et al., 2017) combined with Narrative Inquiry (Clandinin and Connelly, 2004) to discuss the datasets generated by the research from a range of pedagogic interventions designed to develop critical thinking (or ‘thinking skills’). The study puts Lipman’s framework of Thinking Dimensions to work in the opening up of liminal educational spaces in the university which serves as the focus of his study as a way of working through the ideas and issues underpinning the notion of thinking through making in the creation of art works. Thematic analysis is employed to bring to light findings from this study in the form of five practice-focused (Dewey, 2009) conditions in which CT can thrive. From the dataset analysis understanding is developed regarding how carefully scaffolded CT pedagogic interventions in facilitated groups can support students to develop their Pedagogic Rights (Bernstein, 2000) Enhancement, Inclusion and Participation of their experiences of education in the Arts

Committing to place:the potential of open collaborations for trusted environmental governance

Conventional modes of environmental governance, which typically exclude those stakeholders that are most directly linked to the specific place, frequently fail to have the desired impact. Using the example of lake water management in Loweswater, a small hamlet within the English Lake District, we consider the ways in which new “collectives” for local, bottom-up governance of water bodies can reframe problems in ways which both bind lay and professional people to place, and also recast the meaning of “solutions” in thought-provoking ways

Controlling nanowire growth through electric field-induced deformation of the catalyst droplet.

Semiconductor nanowires with precisely controlled structure, and hence well-defined electronic and optical properties, can be grown by self-assembly using the vapour-liquid-solid process. The structure and chemical composition of the growing nanowire is typically determined by global parameters such as source gas pressure, gas composition and growth temperature. Here we describe a more local approach to the control of nanowire structure. We apply an electric field during growth to control nanowire diameter and growth direction. Growth experiments carried out while imaging within an in situ transmission electron microscope show that the electric field modifies growth by changing the shape, position and contact angle of the catalytic droplet. This droplet engineering can be used to modify nanowires into three dimensional structures, relevant to a range of applications, and also to measure the droplet surface tension, important for quantitative development of strategies to control nanowire growth.European Research Council (Grant ID: 279342)This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Nature Publishing Group via http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms1227