Improving services for pupils with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties : responding to the challenges

This paper considers some of the major challenges facing key stakeholders, including teachers, professionals working in support services, parents and pupils, as they strive to improve services for children with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD). For each of these challenges (working with families, low educational attainments, including pupils with SEBD in mainstream schools, transition from school to college or employment, early intervention and prevention) we review research evidence, mainly from the UK and USA, and discuss possible solutions. A key theme in the paper, discussed in the concluding section, is that governments, local authorities and schools, should use the research evidence to develop carefully planned and evidence based interventions that will lead to sustained improvements being made in the education of vulnerable young people.peer-reviewe

Social Digital Series: Reflecting on the State of Social Digital Behaviour in the UK

Social digital behaviour, in the form of building digital skills and improving digital literacy, has been part of the political, social and academic landscape in the UK for at least a decade. Initiatives have been set up by the government, the third sector, and commercial and other partners, with the aim of improving socio-economic well-being and creating greater equality through improving access to computers and the internet, and giving people the skills they need to use them

Campus Art Museums in the 21st Century: A Conversation

In the summer of 2012, the authors of this study brought together a group of campus art museum directors and outside experts to 'think out loud' about the changes already occurring at campus museums and where new opportunities and roles may be emerging. We hope the resulting paper will further the field's larger, continuing exploration of its roles and potentials through dialogue, research, and experimentation -- an exploration that contributes to the continued healthy evolution of campus art museum practice

Transferring a Question-Based Dialog Framework to a Distributed Architecture

Inquiry skills are an essential tool for assessing and integrating knowledge. In facilitated face-to-face settings, inquiry skills were improved successfully by using a “question-based dialog” and its resulting visual representation. However, groups that work without a facilitator, or in which members collaborate asynchronously or in different geographical regions, such as Communities of Practice (CoP), cannot schedule face-to-face inquiry meetings. This paper summarises the unmet requirements of CoPs for a collaborative inquiry tool found by previous research on the Noracle model and proposes a distributed Web architecture as a solution. It mitigates the need for a common infrastructure, central coordination or facilitation, addresses the evolutionary nature of communities of practice and reduces the cognitive load for the individual by filtering and organising the representational artefacts with respect to the social network of the community. The implementation we envision in this paper aims at applying the concept to a much broader audience, ultimately replacing the need for local meetings

Inconsistent, incomplete and incidental: site safety culture from a constructionist perspective

Safety culture is a common concept within both academia and industry, where large UK contractors have made significant efforts to improve the safety culture and consequently the safety of their sites. Academic research has sought to identify and measure safety culture on sites, however such a quantification of culture is something that may not ultimately be possible. Grounded in social constructionism, this study instead sought to explore and examine safety culture in practice. This epistemology enabled the exploration of culture through the discursive patterns and constructional frameworks that surround safety on sites, themselves constructed through shared social practices and resources. Data was collected from five UK construction projects, all over £20m in value, and included site safety signage, safety talk and various safety documents. Discourse analysis, followed by triangulation of the key themes and representations, revealed considerable variation in the constructions of safety on sites. Safety culture was found to be inconsistent, incomplete and incidental; relating to a variety of different realities in a variety of different contexts. This variation not only has significance for the practices of large contractors in their desire to develop safety culture on sites, but also the direction of further academic research. Recommendations for practice were generated, in order to facilitate further improvements in safety on sites

Collaborative procurement: an exploration of practice and trust in times of austerity

Despite authoritative calls for an increase in collaborative working and partnering practices, recent austerity is causing many companies to move back towards traditional competitive procurement routes. Clients may feel the only way to assure themselves that they are not paying too much is to market test their projects in a highly competitive environment. Organisations may feel vulnerable opening themselves up to partnering and collaborative practices during a time of uncertainty, and are reluctant to take unnecessary risks. This study seeks to explore the effects of the recent economic downturn on collaborative working, with particular emphasis on manifestation in practice and the positioning of trust within such relationships. Eight interviews were carried out with senior industry professionals, all experienced in partnering and collaborative working practices. Austerity was found to have influenced collaborative practices in industry at both individual and organisational levels. Individuals have responded with a quest for job security which has in turn developed risk-averse work practices and affected the establishment of short term collaborative relationships. Organisations have returned to traditional competitive procurement methods, seeking to reduce risk in their practices and maintain control in uncertain times. Sceptical considerations of collaboration have re-emerged; the abuse of collaborative relationships for financial benefits, employing austerity as leverage, have become contemporary legend if not fact. Perceptions of collaborative working have shifted within the austerity context, and there is the potential for industry to lose ground gained before the recession in the development of collaborative practices. Further research is recommended to examine the repercussions of this shift in both practice and philosophy, as austerity-born projects come to completion