Teacher Labor Markets and the Perils of Using Hedonics to Estimate Compensating Differentials in the Public Sector

Assesses the difficulties of using hedonic modeling -- which assigns dollar weights to teacher- and location-specific factors to set salaries -- in determining pay differentials for public school teachers, including the lack of wage flexibility

Radical: Free or Token? Darren McGarvey (2022) The Social Distance Between Us. London: Ebury Press, hardback, 400 pp., ISBN 9781529104080

IntroductionFew other recent events encapsulate the gulf between the ruling class and disenfranchised more fully than the Grenfell Fire of 2017. Tantamount to social murder rather than disaster, the litany is now well known: a rentier class fat on public contracts and cost-cutting on basic safety measures, with the full knowledge of a Chelsea and Kensington Council more concerned with generating commercial income from the sale of public assets, and a Prime Minister unwilling or afraid to console survivors. Even the Editorial Board (2017) of the New York Times saw that a British state “infatuated with austerity and deregulation” had “gone too far in shedding its fundamental duties to protect public health and safety”

Exploring the Impact of the Glory and Dismay Football Literacies Programme on Hard-to-Reach Adult Learners

This thesis aims to contribute to the field of New Literacy Studies by giving voice to the experience of learners involved in a situated pedagogy, namely the Glory and Dismay Football Literacy Programme (GDFLP). This programme evinces the view that reluctant adult learners will engage in literacy learning programmes if such programmes have a direct bearing on learners' interests, concerns and lives. The thesis describes the nature of the specific GDFLP programme and explores the impact of this programme on learners' lives and literacy practices. As the coordinator and a tutor on the GDFLP, this thesis also reflects some of the complexity I experienced in managing a combined teacher and academic researcher positioning. My key research question is 'what are the learners' experiences of the GDFLP?', underpinned by a set of sub questions including one which is at the centre of much debate around literacy teaching, that is, 'what is the impact of the GDFLP on adult learners' functional and critical literacy acquisition?' To answer these research questions I adopt a qualitative case study approach. Primary data includes semi-structured interviews and participant observations recorded over a period of 12 weeks. Secondary data includes existing material generated by the GDFLP. The key findings presented in the thesis are in the form of six case studies at the centre of which are learners' narratives about their learning and literacy experiences and which are complemented by understandings drawn from my participant observations and engagement with academic literature. The representational aim is to 'give voice' to the learners' educational and literacy journey, particularly their engagement with the GDFLP. I draw on critical discourse analysis, literacy studies and some aspects of narrative analysis and sociolinguistics. The case study approach provides a framework to explore how learners are subjected to a discursive formation that suffuses working-class Scottish football culture. This thesis explores how learners are made 'subjects', investigating how learners 'partially consent' to the interests of others with much more power. As an educator working for Community Learning and Development, City of Edinburgh Council with the Adult Learning Project (ALP) in Edinburgh, influenced by Paulo Freire, I examine how critical literacy pedagogy, enacted in the GDFLP, seeks to and succeeds in addressing such inequities. This thesis is motivated by a desire to do something about the structural inequalities to which the learners are subjected and to provide academic evidence for the social practice approach to adult literacy teaching currently advocated by the Scottish Government

LEISURE, OBESITY AND WEIGHT LOSS: AN EXPLORATION OF LEISURE, THE PUBLIC HEALTH ECOLOGICAL MODEL OF OBESITY AND IDENTITY THEORY

Obesity is a global health crisis with complex causal relationships. From the mid 1990s to 2010, obesity related research in the clinical and social sciences has exploded. This expansion has resulted in a proliferation of obesity-related articles published in top-tier journals and the creation of new journals solely devoted to obesity research. In contrast within leisure scholarship, a review of leisure journals reveals that published research on the relationship of leisure, obesity and weight loss is minimal. However, numerous leisure scholarship/theory principles are relevant to obesity prevention and treatment. Similarly, public health officials have developed numerous systems-oriented multilevel framework models for addressing obesity (ecological models). A review of these models reveals targets where the application of leisure theory and practice could inform and facilitate obesity prevention and treatment. The value of this facilitation is supported by research demonstrating the power of leisure for personal life transformation that enables health improvements. Individual identity and personal choices are primary factors in lifestyle change and influence individual obesity treatment and prevention. It is at the intersection of public health, leisure scholarship and the individual that recreational therapies may provide a bridge for personal and collective success in the prevention and treatment of obesity. Using qualitative narrative via case-study methods, identity aspects of weight-loss support group leaders are examined. Observations will be made regarding the identity change process in light of modern identity theory and consideration will be given to demonstrated aspects of the Serious Leisure Perspective. Finally, a critical multiplist paradigm call to action is issued to scholars and practitioners

'Slamdance the cosmopolis': Political Discourses around Drugs and Alcohol

My name is John Player, like the cigarettes. Some readers won’t have heard of these odious cigarettes. My grandfather, also called John Player, died of lung cancer and is buried in a grave in Glasgow. His gravestone looks like the John Player Special (JPS) packet - gold lettering on a matte black background. He died of lung cancer at 55. This was, and remains, around the age that so many men die in Glasgow and the West of Scotland. I never met him, so this is personal. The tobacco companies knew they were using the most addictive substance known to humankind to create one of the most successful capitalist commodities. They were also well aware, from the 1960s on, of the causality between smoking and early deaths due to lung cancer though this knowledge was suppressed for decades. In turns out that the tobacco companies were experts in semiotics: the study of signs deployed in advertising, for instance. The John Player Navy Cut signage of the dependable sailor was 'interpellated' (see Althusser 2001) in my grandfather's consciousness. He was 'hailed' by the tobacco companies shouting 'Hey, you there!' My grandfather turned around answered the call! Like so many others, he became their addicted 'subject'