'Chained and Engrained' – Breaking the PowerPoint Dependency Cycle in English Education

This paper investigates the over-dependency on PowerPoint within English education. Taking an action research approach with a group of first year students, the authors taught one unit of an initial teacher training programme employing a range of teaching strategies excluding PowerPoint. Data was gathered using semi-structured interviews at the end of the taught unit. The findings suggest that teachers were aware of the limitations of PowerPoint as a teaching tool yet still chose to use it. The justification for this was that it provided structure for the lesson and was what students and in some cases, employers, had come to expect. Despite being positive towards the teaching strategies employed in this research, the majority of participants were mindful of the need to meet the expectations of others and as a result were reluctant to change their approach

Knowledge is Power: The Struggle for Education for All

Blog Post: The pioneers of universal education in the 18th century aspired to change an education system that provided for only a tiny section of society. Here I explore the people, institutions and buildings behind the struggle for education for all

The Ruskin Speech and Great Debate in English education, 1976–1979: A study of motivation

James Callaghan’s speech at Ruskin College, Oxford in October 1976 is widely considered a pivotal moment in modern English educational policy. Whilst it is not our intention to challenge this fundamental point, the paper will critically interrogate some long-held assumptions about the motivation that led Callaghan to deliver his speech at Ruskin College. Specifically, the paper will argue that the Ruskin Speech, which spawned a subsequent great debate on education, was motivated by a desire to protect and support comprehensive education, rather than generate more fundamental and radical educational reform away from those principles. Where successive governments have referred back to the ideals espoused by the speech as justification for subsequent educational transformation away from comprehensive ideals, this has only served to imbue the Ruskin Speech and Great Debate with motivations that were not shared at the time by Callaghan and his Labour government

File audit to assess sustained fidelity to a recovery and wellbeing oriented mental health service model: An Australian case study

2019 The Author(s). Background: Over the past decade there has been increasing attention to implementing recovery-oriented approaches within mental health service practice and enhancing fidelity to such approaches. However, as is often the case with evidence-based practices, less attention has been paid to the sustainability of recovery-oriented approaches over time. This study sought to investigate whether fidelity to a recovery-oriented practice framework - the Collaborative Recovery Model could be sustained over time. Method: The study setting was an Australian community managed mental health organisation. A file audit of consumer support plans was undertaken using the Goal and Action Plan Instrument for Quality audit tool (GAP-IQ). The audit tool assessed 17 areas for quality. Consumers (n = 116) from a large community managed mental health organisation participated in the study. Sustained fidelity to the Collaborative Recovery Model (CRM) was determined by comparing results from the file audit to a similar audit conducted 3 years earlier. Results: The file audit revealed a significant increase in fidelity to CRM practices between 2011 and 2014. Fidelity to individual audit items that comprise the GAP-IQ was also found to significantly increase across 16 of the 17 GAP-IQ audit items, with the exception of the \u27Action Plan Review\u27 audit item. Conclusions: A comparison of file audit data across different time points within the same setting can provide useful feedback about whether or not a practice is being sustained over time. Although fidelity increased overtime the study design does not allow conclusions that training and coaching practices implemented by the organisation were responsible

Practitioners' experiences of delivering parenting interventions remotely:A mixed-methods study

Group Stepping Stones Triple P (GSSTP), is an evidence-based intervention for parents of children with intellectual disability that aims to improve child behavioural difficulties. GSSTP was designed to be delivered face-to-face, but during the COVID-19 pandemic some services started delivering it remotely. The evidence base for remote intervention is growing, but few studies have focused on the experiences of practitioners delivering the interventions and the consequences of their service provision. We aimed to explore UK practitioners' experiences of delivering remotely GSSTP. The objectives were to identify the advantages and disadvantages of remote GSSTP, to determine whether adjustments were made to enable delivery, and to assess perceived acceptability. Participants were identified using consecutive sampling from the Triple P UK practitioner network. Eleven practitioners, who had experience of delivering GSSTP remotely and face-to-face, reported their experiences in an online survey. Ten participants also took part in semi-structured interviews. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using thematic analysis. According to 55% of practitioners, parent attendance had increased with remote delivery, and 73% of practitioners found remote GSSTP equally or more effective than face-to-face. Survey findings about managing parent engagement remotely were mixed and building rapport with patients was considered equally or more difficult remotely. The key themes from the thematic analysis were the practitioners' ‘sincere enthusiasm’ over the advantages of the remote GSSTP provision, the ‘person-centered strategies’ that characterised their practice, the emergence of ‘remote delivery as the way forward’ for parenting services and finally, the ‘challenges of remote delivery’. Remote GSSTP was perceived to be acceptable to participants and practitioners; the advantages of remote delivery appeared to outweigh the disadvantages. Practitioners reported strategies to prompt engagement and recreate group interactions in the remote setting that could be integrated in the practice of other group parenting providers.</p

Practitioners' experiences of delivering parenting interventions remotely:A mixed-methods study

Group Stepping Stones Triple P (GSSTP), is an evidence-based intervention for parents of children with intellectual disability that aims to improve child behavioural difficulties. GSSTP was designed to be delivered face-to-face, but during the COVID-19 pandemic some services started delivering it remotely. The evidence base for remote intervention is growing, but few studies have focused on the experiences of practitioners delivering the interventions and the consequences of their service provision. We aimed to explore UK practitioners' experiences of delivering remotely GSSTP. The objectives were to identify the advantages and disadvantages of remote GSSTP, to determine whether adjustments were made to enable delivery, and to assess perceived acceptability. Participants were identified using consecutive sampling from the Triple P UK practitioner network. Eleven practitioners, who had experience of delivering GSSTP remotely and face-to-face, reported their experiences in an online survey. Ten participants also took part in semi-structured interviews. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using thematic analysis. According to 55% of practitioners, parent attendance had increased with remote delivery, and 73% of practitioners found remote GSSTP equally or more effective than face-to-face. Survey findings about managing parent engagement remotely were mixed and building rapport with patients was considered equally or more difficult remotely. The key themes from the thematic analysis were the practitioners' ‘sincere enthusiasm’ over the advantages of the remote GSSTP provision, the ‘person-centered strategies’ that characterised their practice, the emergence of ‘remote delivery as the way forward’ for parenting services and finally, the ‘challenges of remote delivery’. Remote GSSTP was perceived to be acceptable to participants and practitioners; the advantages of remote delivery appeared to outweigh the disadvantages. Practitioners reported strategies to prompt engagement and recreate group interactions in the remote setting that could be integrated in the practice of other group parenting providers.</p

Clearing the Final Hurdle: Getting Students to Engage with Feedback in Higher Education

Higher Education within the UK over the last fifty years has increasingly been defined by the end product and this means that both students and lecturers tend to focus on the outcome rather than the process. For many students this means that assessments are seen as barriers to their final grade, rather than as a support to help them reflect on their performance. The purpose of this paper is to explore how students can become more engaged with the comments made on assessments. It concludes by suggesting that whilst audio feedback has proved to be successful in this respect, video feedback might well be an even better way of encouraging students to listen to what they are being told and then improve subsequent work

The properties of highly luminous IRAS galaxies

From a complete sample of 154 galaxies identified with IRAS sources in a 304 sq deg area centered on the South Galactic Pole, a subsample of 58 galaxies with L sub IR/L sub B > 3 was chosen. Low resolution spectra were obtained for 30% of the subsample and redshifts and relative emission line intensities were derived. As a class these galaxies are very luminous with = 2.9 x 10 to the 11th power L sub 0 and (L sub IR) max = 1.3 x 10 to the 12th power L sub 0. CCD images and JHK photometry were obtained for many of the subsample. The galaxies are for the most part newly identified and are optically faint, with a majority showing evidence of a recent interaction. Radio continuum observations of all galaxies of the subsample were recently obtained at 20 cm VLA with about 75% being detected in a typical integration time of about 10 minutes

A home away from home: building an organic online support community for Chinese students using WeChat

Traditional university support structures have generally been predicated on a ‘one size fits all’ approach that stresses a mechanistic, bureaucratic approach. Support is transactional in nature with students accessing it only when needed. Support focuses on both individual tutorial and centralised mechanisms which have proved effective for only some students. This paper proposes an organic student support system that is based around five features: agility in the environment, a tutor-student partnership, informal two-way communication, a student-led community, the inclusion of a knowledge-hub. The student support system in this article is based around Chinese students at a large UK university who felt disenfranchised by the current support mechanisms, so an alternative model was set up using the group-based instant-messaging social media platform, WeChat. The findings of surveys and interviews with Chinese students demonstrated that the featured organic student support system proved extremely successful and is something that could be replicated with other groups of students in the future in UK higher education