Sir Humphrey and the professors: what does Whitehall want from academics?

According to this UK survey, the majority of senior civil servants actively engage positively with academic outputs. However, it is also clear that a significant minority does not engage at all with academics and that many do so in fairly limited ways. Overview What do (civil service) policymakers want from academics? A seemingly simple question, and one to which you would already think we had a pretty good answer. Academia represents a very rich source of ideas, facts and theories about how public policies of all sorts might work (or not). Somewhere around 25,000 to 50,000 UK academics work on specifically policy-relevant areas – this represents a massive pool of knowledge that could help policymakers. Despite this obvious situation, actually very little is known precisely about how academia and policymakers interact. There are some research projects that have explored the issue, but these have mostly been case studies from which it is hard to generalise. We decided to ask the whole of the British Senior Civil Service (SCS) how they relate to academic research and expertise. We invited all 4,000+ members of the SCS to fill in our online survey. About 8% responded, with a representative gender balance and spread across nearly all policy areas, which is a reasonably good sample. Moreover the variations in responses suggest there was no obvious self-selection bias – it certainly wasn’t only those positive about academic outputs that responded. We asked a series of questions about how they access and use academic research and expertise and what impact this has on policymaking. Some of their answers were expected, and some were surprises that challenged standard assumptions. Overall, the impression from our survey is that the majority of senior civil servants actively engage positively with academic outputs. However, it is also clear that a significant minority does not engage at all with academics and that many do so in fairly limited ways. Unsurprisingly perhaps, senior civil servants had a predilection for “pre-digested” results of research and academic expertise. Their preference for “first contact” was briefings or reports (79%), or media reports of academic outputs in newspapers and weeklies (61%) or professional journals (55%)

Changing power relations in work based learning: Collaborative and contested relations between tutors, learners and employers

This is the author's pdf pre-print of a book chapter due to be published in 2011.This book chapter discusses some of the implications for the role of university tutors and the centrality of educational objectives in circumstances where there is a 'cultural shift' towards meeting the needs of learners and employers. The work based and integrative studies (WBIS) programme at the University of Chester is used as a case study to examine the changing power relations between university tutors, learners, employers and the university, compared to relations on traditional programmes

Delivering distance education for modern government: The F4Gov programme

This is the author's PDF version of an article published in the Journal of Education and Training.This article discusses the development and operation of an innovative, work based, distance delivered foundation degree developed by the University of Chester and the British Civil Service. Three areas for formal evaluation are identified - the implications of employer involvement in the design and management of the programme, the differential nature of the learning experience and factors underlying performance, and the impact of the programme in meeting employer goals

Delivering distance education for the Civil Service in the UK: The University of Chester’s Foundation for Government programme

This is the author's version of the book chapter.This book chapter discusses a distance delivered work based learning programme using a dedicated virtual learning environment for the British Civil Service called 'Foundation for Government'. There are currently about 350 students on the programme and at time of writing, the first learners are completing. The programme is designed to equip the broad mass of Civil Servants with the essential skills for modern government. While the programme has undoubtedly been successful, it has also raised a number of issues requiring further research. These are: the involvement of employers; technological versus educational imperatives; learner experience and progression and the assumption of knowledge transfer

On the Meaning of the Preponderance Test in Judicial Regulation of Chemical Hazard

As usually defined, the preponderance test is a standard of proof which directs the jury to accept the plaintiff's version of the disputed facts if they are more probably true than not. But what happens when the most important disputed "facts" are judgments about probability? This paper offers an interpretation of the preponderance test which can be applied to this situation. In the example of the paper, B is the benefit of a drug, C is the health cost if it is a teratogen, and p is the probability of teratogenicity. The contested "fact" is the magnitude of p, the probability of harm. In the interpretation considered by the paper, the jury finds in favor of the plaintiff if the jury decides that it is more likely than not that p is greater than B/C. This definition of the preponderance test does not quite minimize expected costs, and compared with expected cost minimization it is likely to be biased toward under-protection when the health costs are high compared with the benefits. But when the mean and median of the second order probability of p are the same, the definition coincides with expected cost minimization. It is also shown that under a criterion of expected cost minimization, contrary to Posner, judicial error costs are not in general the same and the number of erroneous judgments favoring undeserving plaintiffs is not likely to be the same as the number of erroneous judgments favoring undeserving defendants

Measurement of adenosine triphosphate and some other metabolites in blood cells by isotachophoresis. I. Preparative technique and enzymatic confirmation.

This study investigated the optimal conditions for detection of nucleotides in blood using an IP-1B capillary isotachophoretic apparatus. The system used 10 mM HCl-beta-alanine (pH 4.2) as the leading electrolyte and n-caproic acid as the terminal electrolyte. Direct application of lysed red blood cells was shown to be inaccurate, and a method of deproteinization based on heat in a microwave oven was developed. The zones for 2,3-diphosphoglycerate, ATP, inorganic phosphate, and lactate were identified enzymatically by withdrawal of pure samples of each zone via a special withdrawal cell. The quantitative values obtained by isotachophoresis were also confirmed enzymatically. The technique is now available for convenient and accurate identification of these metabolites simultaneously.</p

The erotic and contemporary art

Lou Andreas Salomé wrote The Erotic (1911) before she met Freud. The recent English translation of her ground-breaking book encourages us to consider how a century of social change has affected erotic behaviour, and what this may mean for psychoanalysis. In a world of online porn, internet dating and ‘digital emotions’, what are the contours of ‘the erotic’ in the world today? This interdisciplinary conference explores the significance of contemporary erotic life for human relationships and the questions it poses for psychoanalytic theory and practice. Speakers were asked to consider a variety of themes: The erotic at different stages of life Differences and similarities between male and female eroticism The difference between ‘erotic’ and ‘sexual’ The new female erotica – what is its appeal? Sexualisation of childhood and 'childhood sexuality' 'Cultural hypocrisy’ and double standards - do they still exist? Pornography – how is it used and what are its effects on individuals and relationships? Internet dating and online affairs – a modern form of infidelity? New technology and the erotic Eroticism and violence Erotic fantasies Erotic transference and counter-transference in psychoanalysis Heterosexual and homosexual erotic – is there a difference? Cross-cultural and inter-cultural perspectives on the erotic Is there such a thing as a ‘post-modern’ erotic? Emma Talbot's presentation focused on representations of the erotic in contemporary art, and was followed by a roundtable discussion

Workers researching the workplace: The confessions of a work based learning tutor

This paper discusses the work based learning module at the University of Chester, its philosophical underpinnings and the community of practice amongst tutors; the evolution of the facilitation of workplace research, how it is currently deilvered and future developments; practitioner enquiry; a research agenda