Students as change agents: new ways of engaging with learning and teaching in higher education

This is a set of practitioner resources for those wanting to set up student-based research projects in their institutions

ESCalate news : issue 17, Summer 2010

This edition of the ESCalate newsletter celebrates 10 years of the subject centre and contains a collection of articles from our community - from past and present staff, award holders and outside agencies, all of whom have been involved with ESCalate and its range of activity in the last ten year

ESCalate news : issue 18, Autumn 2010

This is the ESCalate newsletter, issue 18, autumn 2010. It contains a collection of varied stories from across the education research community. Articles range from developments involving students directly in research, to project updates from various teams and details of innovations using online resource database

A qualitative exploration of Telling My Story in mental health recovery

Purpose: The aim of this thesis project is to explore the role of personal storytelling in mental health recovery. Design: The project is presented in portfolio format, including the following sections: a brief introduction to the portfolio, a systematic review of the literature on storytelling interventions for mental health recovery, an empirical paper exploring the qualitative experience of storytelling in a UK mental health recovery context, an extended methodology chapter, and an overall discussion and critical evaluation. Findings: The systematic review identified some preliminary evidence for the usefulness of storytelling in mental health recovery, but identified a need for inductive exploration of this in a UK mental health context to guide future developments of storytelling approaches. The empirical paper used Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to explore the experience of storytelling for individuals who had attended the Telling My Story course offered at a UK recovery college. Findings showed that storytelling has the potential to have a profound impact at the individual level, at the same time as being a social act where the role of the listener(s) is central to the experience. Five key themes were identified: a highly emotional experience, feeling safe to disclose, renewed sense of self, two-way process and a novel opportunity. The group environment of mutual storytelling was perceived as beneficial for most, although not all, participants. Originality/value: Storytelling can be a highly meaningful aspect of one’s recovery journey and more time could be dedicated to individuals telling their story within UK mental health services. The findings of the empirical paper offer insight into how storytelling is experienced by those who use it, which can be used to guide future developments and provide direction for measurement of outcomes. Areas for further research are considered

Relating the diffusive salt flux just below the ocean surface to boundary freshwater and salt fluxes

We detail the physical means whereby boundary transfers of freshwater and salt induce diffusive fluxes of salinity. Our considerations focus on the kinematic balance between the diffusive fluxes of salt and freshwater, with this balance imposed by mass conservation for an element of seawater. The flux balance leads to a specific form for the diffusive salt flux immediately below the ocean surface and, in the Boussinesq approximation, to a specific form for the salinity flux. This note clarifies conceptual and formulational ambiguities in the literature concerning the surface boundary condition for the salinity equation and for the contribution of freshwater to the buoyancy budget

Personal storytelling in mental health recovery

Purpose: Creating more positive individual narratives around illness and identity is at the heart of the mental health care recovery movement. Some recovery services explicitly use personal storytelling as an intervention. This paper looks at individual experiences of a personal storytelling intervention, a recovery college Telling My Story course. Design/methodology/approach: Eight participants who had attended the Telling My Story course offered at a UK recovery college were interviewed. Data were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Findings: Five key themes emerged: a highly emotional experience, feeling safe to disclose, renewed sense of self, two-way process and a novel opportunity. Originality/value: The findings suggest that storytelling can be a highly meaningful experience and an important part of the individual’s recovery journey. They also begin to identify elements of the storytelling process which might aid recovery, and point to pragmatic setting conditions for storytelling interventions to be helpful. More time could be dedicated to individuals telling their story within UK mental health services, and we can use this insight into the experience of personal storytelling to guide any future developments

Surging of global surface temperature due to decadal legacy of ocean heat uptake

Global surface warming since 1850 consisted of a series of slowdowns (hiatus) followed by surges. Knowledge of a mechanism to explain how this occurs would aid development and testing of interannual to decadal climate forecasts. In this paper a global climate model is forced to adopt an ocean state corresponding to a hiatus (with negative Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, IPO, and other surface features typical of a hiatus) by artificially increasing the background diffusivity for a decade before restoring it to its normal value and allowing the model to evolve freely. This causes the model to develop a decadal surge which overshoots equilibrium (resulting in a positive IPO state) leaving behind a modified, warmer climate for decades. Water mass transformation diagnostics indicate that the heat budget of the tropical Pacific is a balance between large opposite signed terms: surface heating/cooling due to air-sea heat flux is balanced by vertical mixing and ocean heat transport divergence. During the artificial hiatus, excess heat becomes trapped just above the thermocline and there is a weak vertical thermal gradient (due to the high artificial background mixing). When the hiatus is terminated, by returning the background diffusivity to normal, the thermal gradient strengthens to pre-hiatus values so that the mixing (diffusivity x thermal gradient) remains roughly constant. However, since the base layer just above the thermocline remains anomalously warm this implies a warming of the entire water column above the trapped heat which results in a surge followed by a prolonged period of elevated surface temperatures

On the future navigability of Arctic sea routes: high-resolution projections of the Arctic Ocean and sea ice

The rapid Arctic summer sea ice reduction in the last decade has lead to debates in the maritime industries on the possibility of an increase in cargo transportation in the region. Average sailing times on the North Sea Route along the Siberian Coast have fallen from 20 days in the 1990s to 11 days in 2012–2013, attributed to easing sea ice conditions along the Siberian coast. However, the economic risk of exploiting the Arctic shipping routes is substantial. Here a detailed high-resolution projection of ocean and sea ice to the end of the 21st century forced with the RCP8.5 IPCC emission scenario is used to examine navigability of the Arctic sea routes. In summer, opening of large areas of the Arctic Ocean previously covered by pack ice to the wind and surface waves leads to Arctic pack ice cover evolving into the Marginal Ice Zone. The emerging state of the Arctic Ocean features more fragmented thinner sea ice, stronger winds, ocean currents and waves. By the mid 21st century, summer season sailing times along the route via the North Pole are estimated to be 13–17 days, which could make this route as fast as the North Sea Route

Signature of ocean warming at the mixed layer base

The warming climate influences the ocean by changing its wind‐driven dynamics and by inputting extra heat. This study analyzes the warming where temperature anomalies penetrate the ocean interior, i.e. by focusing on the winter mixed layer (WML) base. This allows to distinguish regions where ocean circulation contribute to warm anomalies from locations where density‐compensated temperature anomalies locally enter the ocean along isopycnals. Multidecadal (1980‐2018) local temperature trends from a hydrographic dataset are examined at the WML base, and partitioned into components relating to isopycnal movement (heave) and change along isopycnals (spice). Subtropical gyres and western boundary currents show warming larger than the global average that mostly projects onto heave. This is the result of the strengthening of the circulation in the Southern Hemisphere subtropical gyres, and is related to both wind‐driven changes and Southern Ocean warming. Subtropical regions of surface salinity maxima are influenced by warm anomalies along isopycnals