The post-2015 debate and the place of education in development thinking

As the end date for the Millennium Development Goals approaches so the focus on goals, visions and policies for development after 2015 becomes ever heightened. However, there has been relatively little engagement by educational research community in these debates. What then is being written about education in the key post-2015 documents? How is education's role in development conceptualised by those most central to shaping new accounts? I explore these issues through an analysis of a key text on post-2015, the High Level Panel Report of May 2013 (UN-HLP 2013), and an exploration of a year's worth of posts on 30 prominent blogs and websites discussing post-2015 matters. This leads me to two further, interlinked questions: what are the implications of potential marginalisation and irrelevance from these debates for the field of international education and development research? What are the potential dangers for the field of closer engagement in these debates and their growing use of social media? The academic international education and development community may be more comfortable in keeping these policy debates at a distance, but this may play against the strong educational research drive to engage in social science that makes a difference. If there is to be engagement with post-2015 then alternative ways of developing practices of research, action and dialogue need further strengthened. This may include interdisciplinary dialogues around such issues as early childhood development, the role of professions in development or environmental sustainability. Engagement with the post-2015 debate would also require a careful analysis of how best to engage with the instrumentalised accounts of education that are dominant in the policy-advocacy arena. This would entail more strategic positions on the uses and dangers of social media. At the same time, engagement with development studies as well as the development policy community requires a reappraisal of epistemological and methodological stances

Understanding Afghan healthcare providers: a qualitative study of the culture of care in a Kabul maternity hospital.

To analyse the culture of a Kabul maternity hospital to understand the perspectives of healthcare providers on their roles, experiences, values and motivations and the impact of these determinants on the care of perinatal women and their babies

Identifying and explaining trend reversals of groundwater nitrate concentrations in Wallonia (Belgium)

Various efforts to reverse the increasing concentration of nitrates and pesticides in our groundwaters such as the Programme de Gestion Durable de l’Azote (PGDA) have been implemented in Wallonia (Belgium), driven by the EU Nitrates Directive (91/676/CEE), the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC) and the Groundwater Directive (2006/118/EC). The effects of these efforts on groundwater quality are complex to assess because of the non-linearity and the spatial heterogeneity of the hydrological fluxes, the numerous potential pollution sources, and the temporal delays due to the infiltration time in the vadose zone. The objective of our research is to define the environmental and anthropogenic factors affecting the effectiveness of the regulations and management practices. We use the monitoring data of 52 groundwater wells and galleries to assess the evolution of nitrate and pesticide concentration in four different water bodies. We use as indicators the contamination levels before and after the introduction of regulations and good management practices, as well as the actual trend. We then seek to predict these indicators and explain their variability by looking into characteristics which could support or undermine the regulations and good practices such as water depth, soil type, crop area or urban development. Our results should contribute to a better understanding and prediction of the groundwater quality trends at the catchment scale in Wallonia, providing guidance to catchment management