Supervision For School Staff: What is Valuable about Solution Circles?

Group supervision is used for support, education and/or monitoring. Despite the potential value of these elements for school staff, it is rarely practised. This mixed methods research, from a critical realist perspective, explored the use of Solution Circles to structure staff supervision groups in three schools. Five circles were run in each school, involving thirty-one participants, eighteen of whom contributed data. Thirteen staff trained as facilitators. The self-efficacy, resilience and anxiety levels of the staff taking part were not found to be significantly different as a result of the intervention. However, a small effect size was noted for self-efficacy, perhaps worthy of further investigation in the context of the small sample size. Thematic analysis of participant feedback (gathered during the last circle, which ran as a Focus Group) indicated the following mechanisms as affecting the value of Solution Circles for staff supervision groups: the structure of the sessions; aspects linked to the groups meeting a ‘need to talk’; elements which helped participants to ‘feel like a team’; and, school context factors. Semi-structured interview data from six facilitators indicated that the structure of the circles, individual characteristics of facilitators, the provision of support for facilitators, and elements of the wider school context, were all mechanisms which affected the facilitation of the programme. Further research might implement elements of these mechanisms and measure their impact

Curating women’s international thought

LSE Library is currently hosting the public exhibition Women’s International Thought, a collaboration with the Leverhulme Project on Women and the History of International Thought. Running between 5 May and 2 September 2022, the exhibition explores the ideas, genres and contexts of women’s international thinking in Britain and the US in the first half of the twentieth century. In this post, two of the curators, Katharina Rietzler and Joanna Wood, reflect on the process of curating the exhibition and committing to making the exhibition accessible to blind and visually impaired audiences

Complex Education Policy for Complex Times? Introducing this special issue

Any glance at education in New Zealand right now reveals a multitude of issues. In the schooling sector the declining rates of literacy and numeracy have been in the news, following a 2020 UNICEF report which found that only 64.6% of Aotearoa New Zealand 15-year-olds had basic proficiency in reading and maths (Hood and Hughson, 2022). Covid-19 has had a negative impact on students’ wellbeing and also contributed to significant declines in learning, especially for lower decile schools and children in Auckland (Education Review Office, 2021). While students’ wellbeing has improved somewhat in 2023, the loss of learning is still significant, with more than half of principals reporting concerns with writing, and growing behavioural issues and inequalities in student achievement (Education Review Office, 2023).

Change and Resilience in New Zealand Aid under Minister McCully

This article studies the New Zealand government aid programme over the years of Murray McCully's tenure as New Zealand's foreign minister. The article uses quantitative and qualitative data to detail changes in New Zealand aid volume, sectoral and geographic foci, and quality. We argue that despite strong rhetoric from Minister McCully, change in some areas was surprisingly modest. Yet the minister had impacts in other areas, particularly on aid quality, foremost in the form of changes to the purpose of New Zealand aid

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE WITHIN AND BETWEEN PARTICIPANT VARIANCE IN THREE-DIMENSIONAL BREAST KINEMATIC DATA DURING A 5 KM RUN

The purpose of this study was to examine the within and between participant coefficient of variance (%CV) in three-dimensional (3D) breast kinematic data during a 5 km run. Participants (n=9) performed a 5 km treadmill run in two levels of breast support (low and high) and an additional two minute treadmill run without breast support. A significant increase in within participant %CV for vertical breast displacement and velocity at the second kilometre of the 5 km run, was found when breast support was increased from a low to high level. Peak between participant %CV was found in the low level breast support and reported to be greater than 50% for 3D breast kinematics. This study is the first to report within and between participant variance in 3D breast kinematic data during prolonged running and will inform future research within this area

Towards equality: gender representation at the Royal College of Radiologists’ Annual Scientific Meeting 2014-2021

Background: Conferences facilitate career advancement, but gender imbalances in public fora may negatively impact both women and men, and society. We aimed to describe the gender distribution of presenters at the UK’s 2014-2021 Royal College of Radiologists’ (RCR) Annual Scientific Meeting. Methods: We extracted data on presenter name, role and session type from meeting programmes. We classified gender as male or female using names, records or personal pronouns, accepting the limitations of these categories. We classified roles by prestige: lead, other (speakers and workshop faculty), proffered paper or poster presenters. We calculated odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for associations between gender and binary outcomes using logistic regression.  Results: Women held 1,059 (37.5%) of 2,826 conference roles and presented 9/27 keynotes. Compared to men, women were less likely to hold other roles such as speakers and workshop faculty (OR 0.72 95% CI 0.61-0.83), and more likely to present posters (OR 1.49 95% CI 1.27-1.76). There were 60 male-only and eight women-only multi-presenter sessions. Sessions led by women had higher proportions of women speakers. The odds of roles being held by women increased during online meetings during COVID in 2020 and 2021 (OR 1.61, 95% CI 1.36-1.91) compared to earlier years. Conclusion: The proportion of women presenters and keynote speakers reflects that of RCR membership, but not of wider society. Disadvantage starts from the earliest career stages, prejudicing career opportunities. Efforts to improve inclusion and diversity are needed; focusing on lead roles and hybrid online/in-person formats may accelerate change

Pictures in Your Mind: Using Interactive Gesture-Controlled Reliefs to Explore Art

Tactile reliefs offer many benefits over the more classic raised line drawings or tactile diagrams, as depth, 3D shape, and surface textures are directly perceivable. Although often created for blind and visually impaired (BVI) people, a wider range of people may benefit from such multimodal material. However, some reliefs are still difficult to understand without proper guidance or accompanying verbal descriptions, hindering autonomous exploration. In this work, we present a gesture-controlled interactive audio guide (IAG) based on recent low-cost depth cameras that can be operated directly with the hands on relief surfaces during tactile exploration. The interactively explorable, location-dependent verbal and captioned descriptions promise rapid tactile accessibility to 2.5D spatial information in a home or education setting, to online resources, or as a kiosk installation at public places. We present a working prototype, discuss design decisions, and present the results of two evaluation studies: the first with 13 BVI test users and the second follow-up study with 14 test users across a wide range of people with differences and difficulties associated with perception, memory, cognition, and communication. The participant-led research method of this latter study prompted new, significant and innovative developments