Virtual worlds are authentic sites for learning

This chapter considers how ‘meaningful learning’ can be understood in the context of knowledge-age skills. Through a study conducted in Second Life™, it investigates whether terms such as ‘authentic’, ‘active’ and ‘collaborative’ can be applied to activities undertaken in virtual worlds. It examines the knowledge-age skills employed in virtual worlds, relating these skills to the characteristics of the learning environment. Finally, it asks whether the distinction between meaningful and non-meaningful learning environments is more important for the development of knowledge-age skills than the distinction between formal and informal situations or between staff-run and student-run situations

What do we mean by 'wellbeing'? : and why might it matter?

There is significant ambiguity around the definition, usage and function of the word ‘wellbeing’, not only within DCSF but in the public policy realm, and in the wider world. This has implications for DCSF. Essentially, wellbeing is a cultural construct and represents a shifting set of meanings - wellbeing is no less than what a group or groups of people collectively agree makes ‘a good life’. The meaning and function of a term like ‘wellbeing’ not only changes through time, but is open to both overt and subtle dispute and contest. There is evidence that the discourse of ‘wellbeing’ - how, for what purposes, and with what effects the term is being used - is at present particularly unstable in the UK. Given the importance of the term to DCSF’s policy and communications, we recommend a low key but deliberate strategy to manage the DCSF position within this ambiguity and instability

The Ideal Judge: How Implicit Bias Shapes Assessment of State Judges

Judicial Performance Evaluation (JPE) is generally seen as an important part of the merit system, which often suffers from a lack of relevant voter information. Utah’s JPE system has undergone significant change in recent years. Using data from the two most recent JPE surveys, we provide a preliminary look at the operation of this new system. Our results suggest that the survey component has difficulty distinguishing among the judges on the basis of relevant criteria. The question prompts intended to measure performance on different ABA categories are also indistinguishable. We find evidence that, on some measures, female judges do disproportionately worse than male judges. We suggest that the free response comments and the new Court Observation Program results may improve the ability of the commission to make meaningful distinctions among the judges on the basis of appropriate criteria

Fairness and desert in tournaments

We model the behavior of agents who care about receiving what they feel they deserve in a two-player rank-order tournament. Perceived entitlements are sensitive to how hard an agent has worked relative to her rival, and agents are loss averse around their meritocratically determined endogenous reference points. In a fair tournament sufficiently large desert concerns drive identical agents to push their effort levels apart in order to end up closer to their reference points on average. In an unfair tournament, where one agent is advantaged, the equilibrium is symmetric in the absence of desert, but asymmetric in the presence of desert. We find that desert concerns can undermine the standard conclusion that competition for a fixed supply of status is socially wasteful and explain why, when the distribution of output noise is fat-tailed, an employer might use a rank-order incentive scheme. Keywords; desert, equity, tournament, loss aversion, reference-dependent preferences, reference point, psychological game theory, status, relative performance evaluation

Postgraduate blogs: beyond the ordinary research journal

The study described in this paper investigated ways in which keeping a research journal as a blog rather than as a paper document influenced the postgraduate student research experience. Four blogs (three individual and one collaborative blog) initiated by three research students were used as the corpus of data. The three individual blogs acted as alternatives to the traditional research journal. The analysis indicated that blogs can promote a community where students are encouraged to reflect and share ideas, skills and research life idiosyncrasies. Blogs also acted as memory repositories and encouraged collaboration amongst the research students

Shifting themes, shifting roles: the development of research blogs

The study described in this paper investigated the use of research blogs by postgraduate students over a four-year period. An initial, one-year, pilot focused on the research blogs of three first-year doctoral students (Ferguson, Clough, & Hosein, 2007). Analysis indicated that blogs were used to promote a community where students were encouraged to reflect and share ideas, skills and stories of research life. The blogs also acted as memory repositories and encouraged collaboration. The main study followed the students’ blogs for another three years, as they completed their doctorates and took jobs as early-career researchers. It investigated changes in the use and content of research blogs during this period. All three students continued to make use of their blogs for reflection over this period, and the blogs’ use as a memory repository became increasingly important, especially during the period of writing up research. Once the students had made the transition to early-career researcher, the nature of their blog use changed and began to fragment. This was due, in part, to issues of confidentiality, and data protection associated with their employment. While they continued to use their original research blogs to promote community and collaboration, the constraints of their work meant that new posts were often posted in closed blogs, or were marked as protected. At the same time, they were required or encouraged to make use of project-related blogs as part of a planned communication strategy by their employers. The findings of this longitudinal study clarify the changing expectations and needs of learners, employers and society in relation to researchers’ blogs, and identify skills, awareness and knowledge needed to support the use of blogging by research students

Brave little Belgium arrives in Huddersfield ... voluntary action, local politics, and the history of international relief work

This article recounts the arrival of Belgian refugees in the textile districts of Huddersfield during the early months of the First World War, examining their reception by local Belgian refugee committees and the controversial question of their employment in the mills. The intention is to place these responses into a wider context of voluntary action, local Labour politics and international relief work, specifically the ‘networks of concern’ that re-emerged after the war as part of a renewed liberal internationalism (for example, in the early work of the Save the Children Fund) and in alternative attempts to tie class politics more firmly to international relations, evident, for instance, in the offer to accommodate Basque refugees in Huddersfield over 20 years later

Belgian refugees in World War 1: local archives & histories

Twentieth century world wars led to many refugees seeking sanctuary from violence and persecution in other countries. Yet our knowledge and interest in these population displacements is far from consistent. Belgian refugees fleeing the violence of the German invasion in 1914 have been relatively forgotten compared to attention granted the Armenian refugee, or Spanish, Jewish, Czech and Polish refugees fleeing later conflicts.[1] Recently however this gap has narrowed with interest in Belgian refugees by media outlets, and historians in Britain and Belgium.[2] In recovering the history of Belgian refugees we can better address the question of ‘forgetting’ but we can also, through a focus on local history, establish what legacies and personal memories persisted