The Implementation of the NDIS: Who Wins, Who Loses?

The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is a major paradigm shift in funding and support for people with disability in Australia. It is a person centered model that has at its core a change in government funding away from service providers direct to individuals with disability. In principle it is heralded as a major step forward in disability rights. Nonetheless, the implementation poses threats as well as benefits. This paper outlines potential threats or risks from the perspective of not-for-profit organisations, workers in the sector and most importantly people with disability.  It draws on a range of recent reports on the sector, person centered models of funding and care, the NDIS and past experience. Its purpose is to forewarn the major issues so that implementers can be forearmed.

Aftercare of inward foreign direct investment: A case study of South Africa

Attraction of new inward foreign direct investment (FDI) globally, especially in the developing countries, is problematic. Economic development practitioners have recently started to prioritise the retention and growing of existing investments to enhance their economic development agenda. The purpose of this paper is to analyse and investigate the relationship between inward FDI and investment aftercare in South Africa (SA). Only a few studies have been carried out on the topic at the global level and none on SA as far as could be ascertained. A structured questionnaire was used to collate data, and 30 face-to-face interviews were conducted with 16 investment aftercare practitioners and 14 executives from the investment promotion agencies (IPAs) in seven of the nine provinces of SA. The main finding of the study is that although investment aftercare services are essential, they receive limited funding, staff and attention, and have not yet been developed in SA.

A Case Study Exploring Systemic Implications of Implementing the Attachment Awareness Programme at Key Stages 3 and 4

Research has highlighted how the plasticity of adolescent brains provides a window of opportunity for positively affecting a child or young person’s internal working model: their trajectory for developing positive attachments in relationships and mental health in their present and future lives. In light of the neuroscientific evidence for brain plasticity for CYP in early adolescence and the positive local authority-wide evaluations of the attachment awareness programme, this research provides a closer examination of the systemic implications of implementing an attachment awareness programme for Key Stages 3 and 4 by providing a case study of a secondary school that has adopted the programme. This was with the intention to look not at the effectiveness of the programme, but rather at the way in which the attachment awareness programme sits alongside other priorities, policies and procedures in the school. In the interest of further developing this particular preventative response to CYP’s mental health issues in schools, this research investigated a ‘real-world’ view of the intricacies involved for school staff when sustaining an attachment awareness programme alongside other school systems. The research was undertaken from a pragmatic perspective and followed an exploratory purpose utilising qualitative methods. 15 individual semi-structured interviews and two focus groups with a total of 24 participating school staff answered questions relating to the systemic implications of the attachment awareness programme. Using thematic analysis, the findings were organised into five overarching themes. Findings suggest that fundamental systemic implications include: changing organisational behaviours around behaviour; developing attachment practice; responsibility for attachment awareness; time and resources; and staff training considerations and priorities. Wider systemic implications are highlighted as the research considers the interacting influences around schools when implementing the attachment awareness programme. Educational psychologists are ideally situated to work across these systemic factors and could support the implementation of the programme to reach its potential

An Overview of Emergent Order in Far-from-equilibrium Driven Systems: From Kuramoto Oscillators to Rayleigh-B\'enard Convection

Soft-matter systems when driven out-of-equilibrium often give rise to structures that usually lie in-between the macroscopic scale of the material and microscopic scale of its constituents. In this paper we review three such systems, the two-dimensional square-lattice Ising model, the Kuramoto model and the Rayleigh-B\'enard convection system which when driven out-of-equilibrium give rise to emergent spatio-temporal order through self-organization. A common feature of these systems is that the entities that self-organize are coupled to one another in some way, either through local interactions or through a continuous media. Therefore, the general nature of non-equilibrium fluctuations of the intrinsic variables in these systems are found to follow similar trends as order emerges. Through this paper, we attempt to find connections between these systems, and systems in general which give rise to emergent order when driven out-of-equilibrium.Comment: Submitted to Entrop

R-D-L me this: A simple semi-directed learning approach to teaching first year physics students.

Students often enter physics courses at higher education with a background experience of “spoon fed” learning yet academic staff expect students to engage in self-directed learning. The Revise, Do, Learn method presented here provides a first intermediary step between “spoon fed” and independent learning. A small to moderate positive effect (d = 0.38) was found between subsequent cohorts that, when considered with the minimal time and effort required to implement the method, provides an easy win for improving student learning

Design of a Flexible Centering Tooling System

Precise machining of bearing rings is integral to the quality of assembled bearings. The output accuracy of center-based machining systems such as lathes or magnetic chuck grinders can relate directly to the accuracy of part centering before machining. Traditionally, such machines achieve centering by either hard tooling to which the ring is pressed, or through manual centering by a skilled operator using a brass hammer. Hard tooling has the problems of being subject to wear, dimensional inaccuracy, and additional setup time at part type changeover. Manual centering methods are subject to human error, both in accuracy and repeatability. Whether through setup time or manual centering time, either method requires skilled labour a nd is relatively expensive