18 research outputs found

    Great Works: 50 Paintings Explored

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    Great Works: 50 Paintings Explored is a fully illustrated collection of essays on individual paintings drawn from his Great Works column in The Independent that ran from 2005 - 2010. As literary executor for the estate of Tom Lubbock I facilitated the production of Great Works together with Andrew Dunn from Frances Lincoln: proofing, editing, image calibration, working from the essay schedule set by the author

    Introduction

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    Introduction to the memoir Until Further Notice, I am Alive, by Tom Lubbock, art critic of the Independent. The work is a record of two years following diagnosis of a brain tumour. It is a meditation on language and mortality and was published by Granta in 2012 to great acclaim. I wrote the 2200 word introduction, giving the text the contextual framework of an experience both of us lived through

    Will the electoral system continue to ‘skew’ towards Labour in 2015?

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    With less than one week to go until polling day, and irrespective of the fact that the polls are extremely close (they are), we should focus on whether the electoral system helps one or other of the two largest parties, argues Tom Lubbock. In recent years the system has had a skew to Labour resulting from its biases. Will it this time around

    The new “skew” of the electoral system in 2015

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    Historically, the electoral system has tended to help Labour in the way it translates votes into seats. In 2015, the skew changed, giving a significant advantage to the Conservatives, argues Tom Lubbock

    Thinking specifically about your own constituency…

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    The 2015 election has seen more constituency-level opinion polls than any previous election, most of which have been administered by Lord Ashcroft. In this post, Tom Lubbock examines the differences in reported vote intention when those polled are asked to think about the candidates in their specific constituency, rather than a more general question. The results suggest significant differences from national polls, particularly for the Liberal Democrats

    Exploring UK medical school differences: the MedDifs study of selection, teaching, student and F1 perceptions, postgraduate outcomes and fitness to practise.

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    BACKGROUND: Medical schools differ, particularly in their teaching, but it is unclear whether such differences matter, although influential claims are often made. The Medical School Differences (MedDifs) study brings together a wide range of measures of UK medical schools, including postgraduate performance, fitness to practise issues, specialty choice, preparedness, satisfaction, teaching styles, entry criteria and institutional factors. METHOD: Aggregated data were collected for 50 measures across 29 UK medical schools. Data include institutional history (e.g. rate of production of hospital and GP specialists in the past), curricular influences (e.g. PBL schools, spend per student, staff-student ratio), selection measures (e.g. entry grades), teaching and assessment (e.g. traditional vs PBL, specialty teaching, self-regulated learning), student satisfaction, Foundation selection scores, Foundation satisfaction, postgraduate examination performance and fitness to practise (postgraduate progression, GMC sanctions). Six specialties (General Practice, Psychiatry, Anaesthetics, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Internal Medicine, Surgery) were examined in more detail. RESULTS: Medical school differences are stable across time (median alpha = 0.835). The 50 measures were highly correlated, 395 (32.2%) of 1225 correlations being significant with p < 0.05, and 201 (16.4%) reached a Tukey-adjusted criterion of p < 0.0025. Problem-based learning (PBL) schools differ on many measures, including lower performance on postgraduate assessments. While these are in part explained by lower entry grades, a surprising finding is that schools such as PBL schools which reported greater student satisfaction with feedback also showed lower performance at postgraduate examinations. More medical school teaching of psychiatry, surgery and anaesthetics did not result in more specialist trainees. Schools that taught more general practice did have more graduates entering GP training, but those graduates performed less well in MRCGP examinations, the negative correlation resulting from numbers of GP trainees and exam outcomes being affected both by non-traditional teaching and by greater historical production of GPs. Postgraduate exam outcomes were also higher in schools with more self-regulated learning, but lower in larger medical schools. A path model for 29 measures found a complex causal nexus, most measures causing or being caused by other measures. Postgraduate exam performance was influenced by earlier attainment, at entry to Foundation and entry to medical school (the so-called academic backbone), and by self-regulated learning. Foundation measures of satisfaction, including preparedness, had no subsequent influence on outcomes. Fitness to practise issues were more frequent in schools producing more male graduates and more GPs. CONCLUSIONS: Medical schools differ in large numbers of ways that are causally interconnected. Differences between schools in postgraduate examination performance, training problems and GMC sanctions have important implications for the quality of patient care and patient safety

    The Analysis of Teaching of Medical Schools (AToMS) survey: an analysis of 47,258 timetabled teaching events in 25 UK medical schools relating to timing, duration, teaching formats, teaching content, and problem-based learning.

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    BACKGROUND: What subjects UK medical schools teach, what ways they teach subjects, and how much they teach those subjects is unclear. Whether teaching differences matter is a separate, important question. This study provides a detailed picture of timetabled undergraduate teaching activity at 25 UK medical schools, particularly in relation to problem-based learning (PBL). METHOD: The Analysis of Teaching of Medical Schools (AToMS) survey used detailed timetables provided by 25 schools with standard 5-year courses. Timetabled teaching events were coded in terms of course year, duration, teaching format, and teaching content. Ten schools used PBL. Teaching times from timetables were validated against two other studies that had assessed GP teaching and lecture, seminar, and tutorial times. RESULTS: A total of 47,258 timetabled teaching events in the academic year 2014/2015 were analysed, including SSCs (student-selected components) and elective studies. A typical UK medical student receives 3960 timetabled hours of teaching during their 5-year course. There was a clear difference between the initial 2 years which mostly contained basic medical science content and the later 3 years which mostly consisted of clinical teaching, although some clinical teaching occurs in the first 2 years. Medical schools differed in duration, format, and content of teaching. Two main factors underlay most of the variation between schools, Traditional vs PBL teaching and Structured vs Unstructured teaching. A curriculum map comparing medical schools was constructed using those factors. PBL schools differed on a number of measures, having more PBL teaching time, fewer lectures, more GP teaching, less surgery, less formal teaching of basic science, and more sessions with unspecified content. DISCUSSION: UK medical schools differ in both format and content of teaching. PBL and non-PBL schools clearly differ, albeit with substantial variation within groups, and overlap in the middle. The important question of whether differences in teaching matter in terms of outcomes is analysed in a companion study (MedDifs) which examines how teaching differences relate to university infrastructure, entry requirements, student perceptions, and outcomes in Foundation Programme and postgraduate training

    On their own initiative: how politicians use direct democracy in the United States

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    The central purpose of this thesis is systematically to show why politicians use direct democracy in the US. By identifying multiple situations in which politicians make use of direct democracy, the argument that they use it for some gain is made irresistible and the reasons underlying this behaviour are brought out. Politicians are shown to use direct democracy in three arenas: before launching a candidacy for state-wide office, whilst running for state-wide office and whilst in government. Politicians are shown to do so to expand their public profile, to change campaign agendas, and at the level of the institutions of state government, to bypass another branch of government. These effects are shown using statistical tests of the occurrence of behaviour by state legislators and candidates in the first two instances. Multilevel models are used in the last two instances, to identify when state legislators and governors used direct democracy in battles over lawmaking between the branches of government. A test for the use of the legislative referral by state legislatures is particularly timely and has not been considered before. These uses together lay the groundwork for a new theory of the effects of direct democracy institutions on state government policy. The tests of policy responsiveness in later chapters reject existing theory that might provide an explanation of both why politicians use direct democracy and with what effects on state government and show on responsiveness increasing effect

    On their own initiative: how politicians use direct democracy in the United States

    No full text
    The central purpose of this thesis is systematically to show why politicians use direct democracy in the US. By identifying multiple situations in which politicians make use of direct democracy, the argument that they use it for some gain is made irresistible and the reasons underlying this behaviour are brought out. Politicians are shown to use direct democracy in three arenas: before launching a candidacy for state-wide office, whilst running for state-wide office and whilst in government. Politicians are shown to do so to expand their public profile, to change campaign agendas, and at the level of the institutions of state government, to bypass another branch of government. These effects are shown using statistical tests of the occurrence of behaviour by state legislators and candidates in the first two instances. Multilevel models are used in the last two instances, to identify when state legislators and governors used direct democracy in battles over lawmaking between the branches of government. A test for the use of the legislative referral by state legislatures is particularly timely and has not been considered before. These uses together lay the groundwork for a new theory of the effects of direct democracy institutions on state government policy. The tests of policy responsiveness in later chapters reject existing theory that might provide an explanation of both why politicians use direct democracy and with what effects on state government and show on responsiveness increasing effect

    On their own initiative: how politicians use direct democracy in the United States

    No full text
    The central purpose of this thesis is systematically to show why politicians use direct democracy in the US. By identifying multiple situations in which politicians make use of direct democracy, the argument that they use it for some gain is made irresistible and the reasons underlying this behaviour are brought out. Politicians are shown to use direct democracy in three arenas: before launching a candidacy for state-wide office, whilst running for state-wide office and whilst in government. Politicians are shown to do so to expand their public profile, to change campaign agendas, and at the level of the institutions of state government, to bypass another branch of government. These effects are shown using statistical tests of the occurrence of behaviour by state legislators and candidates in the first two instances. Multilevel models are used in the last two instances, to identify when state legislators and governors used direct democracy in battles over lawmaking between the branches of government. A test for the use of the legislative referral by state legislatures is particularly timely and has not been considered before. These uses together lay the groundwork for a new theory of the effects of direct democracy institutions on state government policy. The tests of policy responsiveness in later chapters reject existing theory that might provide an explanation of both why politicians use direct democracy and with what effects on state government and show on responsiveness increasing effect.This thesis is not currently available via ORA
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