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We report eight new accelerator-mass spectrometer (AMS) radiocarbon (14C) dates performed directly on individual bones of extirpated species from Crooked Island, The Bahamas. Three dates from the hutia (Geocapromys ingrahami), recovered from a culturally derived bone assemblage in McKay's Bluff Cave (site CR-5), all broadly overlap from AD 1450 to 1620, which encompasses the time of first European contact with the Lucayan on Crooked Island (AD 1492). Marine fish and hutia dominate the bone assemblage at McKay's Bluff Cave, shedding light on vertebrate consumption by the Lucayans just before their demise. A fourth AMS 14C date on a hutia bone, from a non-cultural surface context in Crossbed Cave (site CR-25), is similar (AD 1465 to 1645) to those from McKay's Bluff Cave. From Pittstown Landing (site CR-14), an open coastal archaeological site, a femur of the Cuban crocodile (Crocodylus rhombifer) yielded an AMS 14C date of AD ∼1050–1250, which is early in the Lucayan cultural sequence. From a humer...

In an attempt to ensure students had a positive experience in their first semester, and to encourage future effective use of tutors’ feedback comments, a post-1992 university used a module in the school of education to develop an innovative feedback process. The process involved four stages: a first submission of written work, written feedback on that work, viva on student understanding of feedback, and final submission of written work. Between the viva and final submission, students could choose to improve their work for a specified number of grade points. The innovation was met favourably by students, and overall grades were improved against the previous iteration of the module. The project showed promise for adaptation in other forms for use across the University, though some ideological issues around assessment remain unresolved. The matter of the innovation and institutional quality standards is discussed in detail.

A small‐scale action research project was carried out on students' feedback histories on one undergraduate module. Old grades and comment sheets were collected and analysed by staff for recurring advice to individual students on the target module. This advice was then synthesized to create simple individual learning plans for the students' forthcoming assignments, in other words old feedback was applied to a new task. A number of additional teaching and learning interventions were provided for participants and the statistical outcomes showed a small gain in the grades achieved against those who did not participate. Interviews were held with participants that indicated a number of reasons why feedback was not optimized to assist further learning.

A multi‐method project was conducted in a Local Education Authority (LEA) in the north of England. The relationships between girls' friendships, bullying, school attendance and transfer were explored through documentary analysis, LEA school admission statistics, group interviews and q‐sort technique. This paper reports selectively on those elements of the study that focussed on girls' popularity in high school. The qualitative data indicated that these girls thought their relationships altered once they settled in at secondary school, changing from an intimate dyadic same‐sex friendship to a more fluid and strategic set of relationships set within a context of heteronormativity. The participants in the study expressed great interest in discussing and analysing personality and relationships through the research activities, and the author suggests such techniques might be valuable to explore these issues in regular Sex and Relationship Education lessons.

This article selectively reports on a small-scale qualitative exploration of the experiences of families who had undergone recent conflict with special educational needs (SEN) professionals. The data were collected over the spring and summer terms of 2001 from 10 families in two local education authorities (LEAs) in the English midlands. The research aimed to examine the parents' perspectives on points of conflict or dissatisfaction between themselves and education professionals. It was concerned with the parents' points of view regarding their pursuit of desired outcomes for their children and the factors that helped or hindered their endeavours. The project found that the parents' negotiation of the SEN system was held by them to be exceptionally difficult and stressful compared to other troubling issues in their lives. The research suggests that dissatisfactions with SEN provision have important implications for the management of LEA Parent partnership Schemes (PPS) in ameliorating the differences betw...

by Caroline V. Gipps, London, Routledge, 2011, 166 pp., £27.99 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-41-568956-4 Gipps’ book is a slim volume, a ‘classic edition’ reprint of the original 1994 publication. Compri...

Back in the late 1980s, I applied to Manchester University for a master’s degree in education, with a research topic on bullying in schools. I was delayed in my start, as the supervisory team expla...