Finding a moral homeground: appropriately critical religious education and transmission of spiritual values

Values-inspired issues remain an important part of the British school curriculum. Avoiding moral relativism while fostering enthusiasm for spiritual values and applying them to non-curricular learning such as school ethos or children's home lives are challenges where spiritual, moral, social and cultural (SMSC) development might benefit from leadership by critical religious education (RE). Whether the school's model of spirituality is that of an individual spiritual tradition (schools of a particular religious character) or universal pluralistic religiosity (schools of plural religious character), the pedagogy of RE thought capable of leading SMSC development would be the dialogical approach with examples of successful implementation described by Gates, Ipgrave and Skeie. Marton's phenomenography, is thought to provide a valuable framework to allow the teacher to be appropriately critical in the transmission of spiritual values in schools of a particular religious character as evidenced by Hella's work in Lutheran schools

The British Army, information management and the First World War revolution in military affairs

Information Management (IM) – the systematic ordering, processing and channelling of information within organisations – forms a critical component of modern military command and control systems. As a subject of scholarly enquiry, however, the history of military IM has been relatively poorly served. Employing new and under-utilised archival sources, this article takes the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) of the First World War as its case study and assesses the extent to which its IM system contributed to the emergence of the modern battlefield in 1918. It argues that the demands of fighting a modern war resulted in a general, but not universal, improvement in the BEF’s IM techniques, which in turn laid the groundwork, albeit in embryonic form, for the IM systems of modern armies. KEY WORDS: British Army, Information Management, First World War, Revolution in Military Affairs, Adaptatio

The hunt for the elusive concept

Structural engineers, whether they are designers, contractors or academics, are frequently faced with the problem of introducing innovation into practice through research, such as for the development of new structures or the use of new materials such as fibre reinforced polymer. Hence, research is pivotal to the introduction of innovation. How research is applied is invariably a very complex and often costly problem and consequently needs careful examination to be effective. All engineers do research but by the very nature of research we all do research in different ways. This paper is the author's reflections on research procedures and approaches often used in structural engineering. These approaches are then illustrated using the author's research particularly on developing a generic failure model for reinforced concrete which can be applied to the seemingly disparate reinforced concrete problems of moment-rotation, shear capacity and the effect of confinement. Numerous concepts are introduced in this paper such as: the use of empirical modelling in plugging the gaps in the structural mechanics models; the elusive concept that is pivotal to understanding and should not be confused with the illusive concept; and categorisation of researchers to help sort out the mass of information available.Deric John Oehler