The influence of parents, places and poverty on educational attitudes and aspirations

This report aims to better understand the relationship between young people 19s aspirations and how they are formed. There is a high degree of interest among politicians and policymakers in aspirations, driven by two concerns: raising the education and skills of the UK population, and tackling social and economic inequality. High aspirations are often seen as one way to address these concerns, but how aspirations contribute to strong work and educational outcomes is not well understood. Based on longitudinal research in three locations in the UK, the report investigates aspirations and contributes empirical evidence to the debate

Shaping educational attitudes and aspirations: the influence of parents, place and poverty: stage 1 report

An interim report of a study which aims to better understand the relationship between children’s aspirations in relation to education and employment, and the context in which they are formed. In particular, the study seeks to explore how parental circumstances and attitudes, the school as an institution, and the opportunity structures of the neighbourhood come together to shape aspirations in deprived urban areas. This report examines: • The assumptions of current policy that aspirations are a key ingredient of educational and labour market outcomes; • What aspirations are and how they can be understood; • What young people’s aspirations are for further and higher education and for future occupations in three secondary schools; • The main influences on those aspirations, including the roles of parents, schools and the neighbourhood context • Messages for the second stage of the research and emerging lessons for policy. The report provides some evidence to question the assumption among policy makers that there is a ‘poverty of aspirations’ among young people from disadvantaged backgrounds or living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods

Troublesome youth groups, gangs and knife carrying in Scotland

"... the research reported here set out to: Provide an overview of what is known about the nature and extent of youth gang activity and knife carrying in a set of case study locations; Provide an in-depth account of the structures and activities of youth gangs in these settings; Provide an in-depth account of the knife carrying in these settings; Offer a series of recommendations for interventions in these behaviours based on this evidence." - exec. summary

Governance and sustainability in Glasgow: connecting symbolic capital and housing consumption to regeneration

To transcend a legacy of slum-living, paternalistic provision and urban decline, Glasgow City Council has endeavoured to transform the city's fortunes by a plethora of mechanisms that have at their core the establishment of sustainable communities. Framed within a policy discourse which emphasises 'cultural and social' as well as 'physical and economic' renaissance, the crux of the Council's strategy has been to stem the migratory tide of affluent households and to empower public sector housing tenants. Drawing on Rose's 'ethopolitics' we argue these developments in Glasgow reflect the wider emergence of technologies of governance in UK housing policy that seek to realign citizens' identities with norms of active, entrepreneurial consumption

Is there a place for place in educational attainment policy?

This paper aims to examine the case for a focus on place-based drivers of inequalities in educational attainment among secondary school students in Scotland. Using desk-based sources, it provides an account of the post-2015 policy episode around improving educational attainment among children from disadvantaged areas. This started with the Scottish Government claiming that its ‘defining mission’ was to ‘close the gap’ but the place-based focus of policy was soon dissipated and the legislation that intended to be the flagship of reform was shelved. The paper shows that international evidence prompts a need for the impact of disadvantage based on place to be factored into approaches to schooling and provides a regretful account of its insecure traction in Scottish policy. It argues that a serious weakness of the case for place in Scotland is the underlying evidence base and concludes by suggesting how existing data sources could be used more effectively and by outlining some alternative policy approaches

The (re)making of polycentricity in China’s planning discourse: the case of Tianjin

Polycentricity is promoted as an ideal urban form to achieve sustainable and balanced development, and it has been widely adopted by planners in China, especially in large cities. However, the rhetoric about polycentricity has rarely been interrogated in planning research in terms of scales, contextuality, power and rationality. To fill this gap, we carried out a Foucauldian discourse analysis in our research to interpret the nature of polycentric practice in City Master Plans, using Tianjin as a case study. Through an analysis of how the discourse of polycentricity is being deployed in planning documents, we develop two principal arguments in this article. First, the conceptual substance of polycentricity evolved alongside the urban transition process in China, and its discursive practice involved multiple scales and spatial elements. Secondly, rather than being mere technocratic practice, the production and legitimation of distinct discourses of polycentricity is an articulation of multi‐scalar power involving various stakeholders, which is disguised and justified by the planning profession

What does it mean when people call a place a shithole? Understanding a discourse of denigration in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland

This paper investigates what people mean when they engage in the discourse of denigration. Building on existing literature on territorial stigmatisation that either focuses on macro‐scale uses and effects of territorial stigmatisation or micro‐scale ethnographic studies of effects, we develop a novel approach that captures the diverse voices that engage in the discourse of denigration by tracing the use of the word and hashtag “shithole” on the social media platform Twitter in order to examine who is engaged in the stigmatising discourse, the types of place that are stigmatised and the responses to stigmatised places. Using a robust data set, we highlight two key findings. First, the majority of tweets were aimed at places where the tweeter was not from, a form of othering consistent with how territories are stigmatised by those in positions of power such as policymakers, politicians and journalists. Second, we note that an important and gendered minority of tweets can be characterised by a “cry for help” and powerlessness, where the stigma is aimed at their own places. We offer an interpretive lens through which to understand and frame these minoritarian voices by engaging with theories of abjection that allow us to see how minoritarian voices relate to place

Urban expansion and land use changes in Asia and Africa

No abstract available

Troublesome Youth Groups, Gangs and Knife Carrying in Scotland

Recent years have witnessed growing concern about the existence of youth gangs and the engagement of their members in violent conflict involving knives and other weapons. However, there is limited reliable evidence relating to the nature, form and prevalence of youth ‘gangs’ and knife carrying in Scotland. Based on interviews with agency representatives and young people involved in gangs and knife crime, this research report provides an overview of the nature and extent of youth gang activity and knife carrying in 5 Scottish case study locations. It also reveals a detailed picture of the structures and activities of youth gangs in these settings and offers a series of recommendations for interventions to reduce or prevent such behaviour based on this evidence

Sustainable, healthy and learning cities and neighbourhoods

This prologue establishes the case for comparative study of urban neighbourhoods in cities in the developing countries in Asia and Africa to help achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. We first outline the debates about sustainable development and sustainable cities. We then discuss the urgent nee for comparative and multi-disciplinary research on the internal physical and socio-economic structures of cities and sustainable issues at the neighbourhood level