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In Ireland and the UK it is accepted practice that agencies with formal responsibility for delivering school examinations allow examination candidates, and in many cases their teachers, to see their examination papers once they have been marked. Returned papers can carry various pieces of information; as well as the total score given for a performance, additional information is included in the form of the annotations left on the examination paper by the marking examiner. As far as we know there has been no research into how this information affects those who come into contact with it. The study uses teacher interview and survey data to explore whether a sociocultural approach to analysis can illuminate the factors that might influence their interpretation of those annotations. These analyses suggest that a key influence on the valid interpretation of an examiner's annotations is a teachers' involvement in examining activity. The analyses support further conceptualisation that these teacher-examiners' interpretative capacity is related to their positioning in a boundary zone between two different activity systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic output is just one aspect of a successful career as a plastic surgeon. However, for those with a strong interest in academia, the academic output of a department will likely be a key factor when deciding how to rank jobs. The aim of this study was to quantify and rank the academic output of plastic surgery units across the UK and Ireland. The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) Web of Science Bibliometric analysis tool was used to collate cumulative (1950-2016), 10 year (2006-2016) and 3 years (2013-2015) research output data for plastic surgery units in the UK and Ireland. Sixty-six plastic surgery units were identified. Departments were ranked for each time period according to the number of papers produced, number of citations (Nc) and h-index (a measure of the impact of scientific output). The top 3 departments for number of papers in the last 10 years were The Royal Free Hospital, London (226) Broomfield Hospital, Chelmsford (218), and Morriston Hospital and Swansea (188). The top 3 for h-number were The Royal Free Hospital (21) Wythenshawe Hospital, Manchester (18) and Morriston Hospital (17). Academic output varies across plastic surgery units in the UK and Ireland. A number of departments have consistently maintained high academic outputs across the years and will be of interest to surgeons hoping to pursue a career in academia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Social & Cultural Geography is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Recent years have witnessed a significant shift in the financial reporting frameworks available in the UK and Ireland affecting entities of all sizes with the Financial Reporting Council issuing three financial reporting standards replacing the extant UK GAAP. This paper reports the results of a content analysis of 151 comment letters sent to the standard-setter in response to its policy proposal. The paper explains why the standard-setter stepped back from its controversial proposal to enforce IFRS for SMEs based on the absence of public accountability. Additionally, the standard-setter addressed all concerns positively apart from two, representing two anomalies. First, despite being opposed by the majority of the respondents, the standard-setter published a new framework for wholly-owned subsidiaries of listed companies allowing them to make substantially less disclosure. Second, the standard-setter is yet to respond to the call by the accounting profession and the Not-for-profit sector to publish a sector-specific framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we report on the outcomes of a survey of students across 12 higher education institutions in Ireland and the UK. Participants were asked to give their views on what tutors should do and not do when they are providing Mathematics Learning Support to students. We present the categories that emerged from an analysis of student responses, including tutor behaviour, teaching methods, content knowledge and management items. We discuss the implications that these responses have for tutor selection and training, how they relate to mathematical pedagogy and we consider the high expectations that students appear to have for tutors, who are providing this supplemental support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mental health services in prisons in the United Kingdom and Ireland have long received criticism for falling behind that of services available in the community. In recent years, the mental health of people in prison has received increasing attention and developments have been seen in commissioning, provision and quality. This paper summarises the key findings from the first three annual reports of a quality improvement initiative, the Quality Network for Prison Mental Health Services (QNPMHS), organised by the Royal College of Psychiatrists' Centre for Quality Improvement. Between 2015 and 2018, participating services were subject to review against a set of evidence-based specialist standards via an annual process of self and peer-review. The paper explores whether any changes have been observed in the average compliance of the quality standards during this period. Slight improvements were observed in five of the nine standard domains; however, a longer period of review is required to fully assess the impact of such programmes within prison mental health services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Home-school partnership has often been lauded as a key contributor in raising educational attainment. However, the level of partnership experienced by parents who use English as an Additional Language (EAL) can be limited by poor English-language proficiency and other unique challenges. This paper is concerned with a systematic review and analysis of the evidence of home-school partnership for learners with EAL in primary schools. It identifies international research trends, and gaps in research in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The analysis demonstrates that there is a dearth of literature pertaining to home-school partnership interventions in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It also identifies a global necessity for interventions aimed at instigating attitudinal change among teachers and systemic institutional change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits core family support messages for social work practice in working with children and families, linking to findings from high-profile child protection cases in the UK and the Republic of Ireland. Drawing on a comparative study where these identified practice messages were explored through the lens of testimony of family support workers in the UK and Ireland, these core messages are examined. Operating with hard-to-engage children and parents, we hear how families and family support worker colleagues now view the core functions of child and family work across both jurisdictions (Ireland and England). The authors argue that by naming a more detailed set of practices that are deemed as most useful by families, based on the benefits and challenges of intensive family support work, key messages arise that have major resonance for social work and multiagency practice into the future. A basic message from this study is that valuable lessons on engagement and intervention with families can be drawn for professionals by examining the practice elements of this group of paraprofessionals in the child and family arena. This paper adds to debates on the role of support and intervention in social work and family support work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In narratives around insurgencies, terrorism, and other forms of political violence, the media—and policymakers—frequently portray women as victims or unintelligent pawns of men. But these violent women get more media attention than their male counterparts because they are a shocking departure from gendered expectations of nurturing, peaceful women. However, even such narratives of deviance can reinforce societal stereotypes about women by emphasizing that they are emotional but not political, easily manipulated, often deranged, or simply unintelligent. Using in-depth interviews in Ireland and the United Kingdom with practitioners in counter terrorism (CT) and countering violent extremism (CVE), this paper argues that a failure to ask meaningful questions about women's roles in extremist violence has reinforced gender stereotypes, leading to disengagement and deradicalization practices that ignore or downplay women's importance in fostering violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets the scene for this Special Issue of Educational Review on Truancy and Behaviour. The paper begins with a brief consideration of the other contributions to this Edition. It is followed by a synthesis of existing policy and recent research on behaviour and attendance in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales especially in 10 core fields. These are on leadership, school transitions, pastoral support, training and professional development, school structure and organisation, parental involvement, pupils' voices, early intervention, multi-agency working and finally, the role of the education welfare service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2011Forum on Patronage and Pluralism in the Primary Sectorpresented Ireland with an opportunity to rethink the issue of patronage in Irish primary schools, as well as to consider how ‘religious education’ might be approached in such schools in the future. This paper suggests that, for the first time since 1831, Ireland had an opportunity to provide ‘state schooling’ for all children, regardless of their religious beliefs or lack thereof. The paper proposes educatingallchildren in the state in non-denominational secular settings, leaving faith formation to the private domain of parents and communities. Although the concept of ‘secularism’ has negative connotations for those who belong to a religious community, this paper suggests that it provides a framework for inclusive and egalitarian education, offering children and young people the opportunity to learn alongside their peers, irrespective of religious backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper summarises the state of the art for strength grading of construction timber grown in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. It includes the latest approvals based on recent research on spruce, larch and Douglas-fir. It lists the following information along with the primary references: visual grading grades and strength class assignments; grading machines with approved settings for machine control grading; the species, size ranges and strength class combinations covered; and grade determining properties of specific strength classes for the UK and Irish markets. This paper is useful for those grading timber, and those specifying UK and Irish grown timber. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on UK data from an international, comparative project involving eight countries. The study examined how social workers' conceptions and definitions of family impact on the way they engage with complex families, and how social policies that frame social work context impact on the way social workers engage with families. Focus groups were held in which social workers from four service areas (child welfare, addictions, mental health and migration) were asked to discuss a case vignette. Several factors were embedded in the vignette to represent a realistic situation a social worker may come across in their day-to-day work. Social workers clearly identified the complexity of the family's situation in terms of the range of issues identified and candidate 'causes'. However, typical first responses were institutional, looking for triggers that would signify certainty about their, or other agencies' involvement. This resulted in a complicated story, through which the family was disaggregated into individual problem-service categories. This paper argues that understanding these processes and their consequences is critical for exploring the ways in which we might develop alternative, supportive professional responses with families with complex needs. It also demonstrates how organisational systems manifest themselves in everyday reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific and public health knowledge must be communicated efficiently to the public during a health crisis to allow communities to prepare, respond and recover. Public briefings and national campaigns are important components of this communication, and sign language interpreting may be an element of this process. This paper examines the experiences of sign language interpreters during the COVID-19 crisis in Ireland and the UK, and explores their role in providing access to scientific and public health information for the Deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) community. Findings are based on interviews conducted in the first half of 2020 with 16 Irish Sign Language (ISL) or British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters or science communicators, 11 of whom had direct experience of interpreting during COVID-19 briefings. These interviews constitute authentic accounts of sign language interpreters working during a global health crisis. Interviews were qualitatively analysed to discuss how specialised competence and scientific understanding factored into participants' experiences and to derive lessons to inform future crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the sets of trading relationships and interdependencies that existed between British and Irish food retailers and the Irish food manufacturing sector prior to Tesco Stores acquisition of Power Supermarkets in 1997. Power Supermarkets was at that time the largest grocer in Ireland. The paper examines the role played by Irish and British retailers in the development of the Irish food manufacturing sector. It points to some of the ways in which retail internationalisation and growing retail concentration are likely to affect food manufacturers and the sets of power and dependence relationships that exist along the food chain. It demonstrates that the effect of internationalisation is likely to be asymmetric with small and emerging firms more likely to experience adverse consequences. The impact upon manufacturers' brand portfolio and customer portfolio strategies are also highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the dynamic interrelationship between demographic change and housing systems and the implications for assessing future housing need, including a review of the literature on demography and housing and a case study of Northern Ireland. The main research method is historical analysis of census and other data relating to changing population structures and the housing system in Northern Ireland between 1981 and 2011. These changes are compared to developments in Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland over the same period. The paper identifies a long period of broadly consistent relations between demographic and housing system trends between 1981 and 2001, followed by significant changes in demographic trends and a turbulent housing system undergoing rapid change between 2001 and 2011. Our conclusions include consideration of the implications of this study for future analyses of the relationships between demographic change and housing systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the experiences of recent Irish highly qualified migrants who, having left post-Celtic Tiger Ireland, arrive in post-‘Peace Agreement’ Britain. Our paper contributes to understanding the enduring salience of place and how expressions of identities are framed by specific place-based factors as well as by temporality. We explore how these migrants’ narratives, as ‘successful’ professionals, are framed by complex intersections of historical legacies and changing socio-economic and intra-EU migration patterns. We consider the extent to which residual anti-Irish stereotypes remain, or indeed have re-emerged since the economic recession, and how these negative perceptions may impact on expressions of Irishness. Focusing on accents and other markers of identity, we discuss how Irishness may be constructed through a spectrum of visibilities at different times and in different places. This spatial-temporal perspective may help to go beyond a simplistic, one dimensional ethnic lens by highlighting the contextualities of identities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 1965, following a review of second-level education in Ireland, the report Investment in Education was published. While a concern with educational inequality and disadvantage pre-dates this report, it clearly identified the significant socio-economic disparities in educational participation at the time and emphasised an urgent need for remedial action. However, while the discussions emanating from this seminal report are concerned with issues around educational disadvantage, less attention has been given to the processes at play in underlying such inequality. Moreover, it can be argued that overarching debates on educational investment over the last 50 years (as reflected in the papers in this special issue) have focused predominantly on post-primary and higher education, to the detriment of early education. Given the recent proliferation of research stemming from the USA around the significant human capital and societal gains of early years investment – which is especially pronounced for disadvantaged children – this paper argues that it is vitally important that early education is viewed as an important window of opportunity for increased public spending and treated on par with later educational investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on the recollections of its author of the work of the Investment in Education team from its inauguration in summer 1962 until the completion of its work in early 1965. The author was a research assistant to the team throughout the period of the study and was directly involved in the collection and analysis of the data on which the findings of the report were based. The paper describes the conditions under which the team operated. It adverts to some of the contentious issues which arose out of the data analysis. It explores the evolving roles of the Steering Committee, of senior civil servants in the Department of Education and of the chairman and of individual members of the team during the two-and-a-half-year period. It discusses some of the external influences which impacted on members of the team and explores how the changing economic and cultural life of Ireland in the early 1960s affected their thinking. It touches on the setting up of the Development Branch in the Department of Education in 1966 and its premature disbandment by the Minister Richard Burke in 1973. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Social & Cultural Geography is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study examined plant-based product (PBP) consumption, related motivations and barriers, and PBP attributes of importance. An online survey collected responses (n = 456) from PBP consumers and non-PBP consumers in the Republic of Ireland (ROI) and the United Kingdom (UK). Responses were analyzed using univariate statistics, binary logistic regression, and Principal Component Analysis. Females, and those living in urban areas were more likely to consume PBPs. Primary motivations for consumption were 'sustainability,' 'animal welfare' and 'health.' Barriers to consumption for non-PBP consumers were 'not seeing a need to change their diet' and 'taste.' Taste, health, and product information on the label were cited as the most important PBP attributes. Findings are of relevance to PBP manufacturers and marketers; the paper presents related recommendations for PBP marketing strategies, considers how best to target both usage segments (PBP and non-PBP consumers), and evaluates the usefulness of a usage segmentation approach for this product category. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to analyse and evaluate the subject of supporter ownership as a form of football governance. The historical evolution of football has seen the game transform into a contemporary global product that transcends geographical boundaries, culture and tradition. The formation of Supporters Direct in 2000 represents the formalization of supporter activism as supporters sought to promote democratic practices within the game in search of a sustainable sport. The emergence of Supporters’ Trusts across the UK and Ireland symbolizes a significant shift in the governance of football. The embracement of community as a concept and an awareness of group ideology, has enabled the Supporters’ Trust model to prosper at a lower level of the game. This paper seeks to trace the conditions which contributed to the emergence of supporter ownership; explore how the concept has been formalized; and examine the role of active supporters in the League of Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a counterbalance to the emphasis on positive psychology within recent HRM scholarship by utilizing a relational framework to explore the antecedents and outcomes of alienation. We focus on the associations between relational features of work – prosocial impact, employee voice and role overload – and job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion and explore whether alienation mediates these relationships. Drawing on data from two public sector organizations in Ireland and the UK (n = 1455), our findings show that the relationships between these three work features and job satisfaction are fully mediated by alienation. In the case of emotional exhaustion, our findings indicate that perceptions of the relational elements of prosocial impact and employee voice may give rise to higher levels of exhaustion where employees are alienated. The study's contribution lies in its identification of alienation as an important mechanism through which relational work features influence well-being. In addition, by drawing on a relational framework utilised within the engagement literature, the study makes a first attempt in drawing alienation into the wider nomological net proffered by the engagement literature. Thus, it provides new insights into the nature and importance of understanding alienation in contemporary workplaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ananda Metteyya (Charles Henry Allan Bennett 1872–1923), according to some representations of Buddhism's transmission to the West, was a respectable member of an elite group of converts to Buddhism at the beginning of the twentieth century, who, in effect, stole recognition from a non-elite group. Whilst not contesting this basic premise, I first suggest in this paper that Ananda Metteyya was neither elite nor always, at least in the eyes of the Buddhist Society of Great Britain and Ireland, ‘respectable’. In fact, he came to pose a threat to the identity that the Society sought to create for itself. I then turn to three contexts within which Ananda Metteyya placed himself: international networks for the spread of Buddhism; anti-missionary networks within Sri Lanka and Burma; antiimperialist networks. His main vehicle within the first was theBuddhasāsana Samāgama, the international Buddhist organisation he founded in 1902 and the journal that accompanied it, which was sent to between 500 and 600 libraries throughout the world. Also significant was Ananda Metteyya's call for five men from four countries to come to Burma to be trained for higher ordination. Ananda Metteyya's anti-missionary agenda was realized through the promotion of Buddhist education in Burma and through a ruthless written critique of Christianity and Christian proselytisation. An anti-imperialist agenda was implicit within this and is extended in his writing. This paper argues, therefore, that Ananda Metteyya was a central figure in the global networking of a substantial number of those interested in Buddhism in the early years of the twentieth century. He was also an early Engaged Buddhist, a critic of the West and a robust promoter of the East. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is a response to David Limond's exposition, “[An] historical culture … rapidly, universally, and thoroughly restored”? British influence on Irish education since 1922', which appeared in Comparative Education, Vol. 46, No. 4, November 2010, pp. 449–462. Limond's overall thesis is that ‘a post-colonial overhang affects Irish policy-makers and bureaucrats in their educational policies and practices’. This paper contests three main aspects of Limond's exposition. First, in his analysis of the period 1831–1922, he fails to place sufficient emphasis on the extent to which the educational system was favoured by the Catholic Church, which operated in a manner which served not only its own interests, but also those of the middle classes of Irish Catholic farmers, merchants and business people. Secondly, he does not sufficiently indicate the extent to which the structure of Irish education from the early years of independence until the mid-1960s, and associated curriculum changes, were very different from the situation in Britain at the time. Thirdly, while he is correct in stating that, since the 1960s, Ireland has imported certain ideas on educational policy and practice from Britain, he neglects to demonstrate that there were also other sources, and that they were probably more dominant than the British ones. Hopefully, as a rejoinder, the paper will be read in a positive light by indicating how the historical study of Irish education within a comparative context is a neglected area of scholarship, and thus stimulate researchers to address the situation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of European Journal of Social Work is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper aims to contribute towards our understanding of Europeanization within national core executives. It is critical of conventional accounts which focus solely on the 'reception' of adaptational requirements from the European Union (EU). Instead it considers how member states may adapt at home for the purpose of 'projection': the attempt to maximize the uploading of national policy preferences into the EU policy-making arena. The paper proposes an innovative 'strategic-projection' model which conceptualizes Europeanization as operating through three distinctive modes - strategic adaptation, supranational learning and administrative optimization. Illustrated using examples of adaptation within the UK and Irish central governments between 1997 and 2007, together with evidence drawn from studies in other member states, European integration can be seen to exert largely hidden, but potentially transformative, pressures for change and convergence within national core executives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peat mass movements are relatively common geomorphological phenomena in the uplands of Ireland and parts of northern Britain. Geomorphological mapping of many peat landslides has led to the identification of different types of failures based on repeatedly occurring morphological and geometric characteristics. Furthermore, much of the recently enhanced understanding of mass failures in peat deposits, published in several recent reviews, has been obtained through detailed analysis of the geomorphological maps produced from the new field surveys that are herein presented together for the first time. The map that is the focus of this paper is a composite figure that shows geomorphological maps of the majority of extant bogflow and bog slide types of peat mass movements in Ireland, together with two peat flows and a large peat slide that has not previously been described. The paper examines the methodology used to create the maps, and highlights the value of the maps in presenting potentially critical evidence that may not be discernible by field inspection alone. Creating geomorphological maps of peat landslides from field sketches provides highly satisfactory results if selected features are geo-referenced using a hand-held GPS at an average frequency of around once for every 30 m of source area perimeter or other linear component of a landslide. In the case of very large failures and very old and degraded failures, lower frequencies of GPS points can be tolerated because critical morphological evidence appears to scale-up with failure size and smaller-scale morphological details are lost with increasing failure age due to natural degradation of the disrupted peat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of changes in the Punt/Sterling exchange rate on exports from Ireland to Britain. The approach used here differs significantly from that used in most other studies in that the long-run neutrality of the Punt/Sterling exchange rate with regard to exports from Ireland to Britain is tested using a recently developed technique. There is strong evidence that the exchange rate is neutral in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper furthers the concept of im/mobilities through an investigation of the reproductive mobilities of women migrating for abortion from Ireland (north and south) to Great Britain. Where more often the focus of reproductive mobilities concerns the movement of people and matter in order to reproduce, there is less (although some) attention to movement aligned with the prevention of reproduction. We consider the variegated im/mobilities of conception not brought to birth, in the frictional movement of people, things, ideologies and imaginations in staying with and moving beyond the dichotomy of mobility and immobility. We engage in transdisciplinary dialogue between mobilities and migration studies. Hence, underlying this exploration is the concept of the 'sometimes-migrant', used to challenge binary oppositions between mobility and immobility, broader conceptualisations of 'migrants' as 'exceptional', and more specifically the notion of travelling for abortion as 'abortion-tourism'. We adopt the call to focus on different incarnations of the 'sometimes-migrant' in the form of women travelling temporarily across national borders of intermittent porosity in order to seek care that is not available in their own country. Intersections of migration and mobilities reveal the ways women are im/mobilised through geopolitical and cultural practices at local and global scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fifty years since Dr Tudor-Hart's publication of the 'Inverse Care Law', all-cause mortality rates and COVID-19 mortality rates are higher in more deprived areas. Part of the solution is to increase access and availability to healthcare in underserved and deprived areas. This paper examined how socio-economically representative the undergraduate general practice placements are in Northern Ireland (NI). A quantitative study of general practices involved in undergraduate medical placements through Queen's University Belfast, comparing practice lists by deprivation indices, examining both blanket deprivation and deprivation quintile trends for teaching and non-teaching practices. Deprivation data for 135 teaching practices were compared against the 323 NI practices. Teaching practices had fewer patients living in the most deprived quintiles compared with non-teaching practices. Fewer practices with blanket deprivation were involved in undergraduate medical education, 32% compared with 42% without blanket deprivation. Practices in areas of blanket deprivation were under-represented as teaching practices, 10%, compared to 14% of NI general practices that met this criterion. Practices with blanket deprivation were under-represented as teaching practices. Exposure to general practice in deprived areas is an essential step to improving future workforce recruitment and ultimately to closing the health inequalities gap. Ensuring practices in high-need areas are proportionately represented in undergraduate placements is one way to direct action in addressing the 'Inverse Care Law'. This study is limited to NI and further work is required to compare institutions across the UK and Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning with a historical review of Irish education policy since the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, this paper focuses on the issue of investment in education through the lens of theInvestment in Educationreport. Following this historical review, the author explores how the legacy of the past continues to define the ways in which education is structured and delivered in Irish schools. The key achievement of the 1965 report was its success in altering the Irish state's perception of expenditure on education. While this was previously viewed as an expense and an obligation, the report highlighted its longer-term economic value as an investment in the future. While acknowledging the transformative impact of the 1965 report in terms of subsequent trends in the scale of public investment in education, this paper argues that the report's advice in relation to the nature of investment and to the optimal configuration of resources has been largely ignored and neglected in the intervening years. This paper revisits what theInvestment in Educationauthors describe as ‘the question of the existing organisation of facilities’ in an attempt to understand contemporary challenges in Irish education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents research from a small-scale study analysing how graduates and alumni feature in the strategic plans of all Irish universities (n = 7). The data suggest that the word 'graduate' is used to describe the work of the university as an enabler for the graduate, to prepare for the employment to acquire key skills, towards a foundation of 'graduateness' such as reflective thinking, moral reasoning and lifelong learning aligning with the institution's key performance indicators. In contrast, 'alumni' are featured related to alumnus/alumna success. Irish Higher Education Institutions view alumni as a key enabler to contribute to the university's mission and vision: through giving, both of their time and philanthropic donations. Based on the strategic plan discourse, the role of alumni in Irish universities suggests a similar trend, relying on alumni as an internal stakeholder with an external ability to offer value to the institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a long history of migration from Britain to Ireland, but it is rarely theorised as migration. Drawing on historical and contemporary sources as well as ongoing qualitative research, this paper makes visible the extended presence of British nationals, as migrants, in Ireland. In discussing the conflicted geographies of belonging of recent British migrants to Ireland, the paper highlights the ways in which postcolonial and nationalist discourses may suggest boundaries to belonging. However, these boundaries are undermined by the positioning of British migrants as not-quite-migrants in the changing landscape of migration in contemporary Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper argues that the football trope in literary fiction enables the writer to explore the workings of modernity. In doing so, writers define a place for the reader, which is parallel to the spectator's at a football match. If football may be seen as a form central to our thinking about modernity, the decentring of the analysis brings to light different, splintered, modernities. This study concentrates on English football, as well as on the place of Irish soccer in contemporary Irish culture, or on the writings of the Hungarian novelist Péter Esterházy, who places football at the centre of his writings. This paper concentrates on heroism in football, before turning to an analysis of audiences. Finally, the paper focuses on the relationship between football and the nation in literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After ten years of unprecedented increases in both prices and activity levels, the Irish housing market has entered a period of significant decline. In 2007, Irish house prices, for the first time in recent history, experienced negative growth rates. Similarly, rates of house building began to slow appreciably and leading indicators within the housing sector suggest that house building will contract significantly in the years ahead to levels well below the record level of construction in 2006. The sustained increase in housing construction prompted by the rapid increase in prices resulted in the Irish construction sector assuming a position of considerable importance within the overall economy. A significant slowdown in housing activity could have far-reaching domestic consequences. In this paper, we use a recently developed model of the housing sector to gauge what the likely future supply levels of housing will be in response to the slowdown in demand-side pressures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the late eighteenth century in Britain to the late twentieth century in predominantly rural societies in the global south, most descriptions of peasants provided by government planners or economists have been remarkably similar. These descriptions focus on five alleged elements of peasant life: (1) peasants are backward and uncivilised - one aspect of that backwardness is their inability to control their sexual urges and thus their tendency to have too many children, (2) peasants are not sufficiently enamoured with consumption and their too easily met needs stifle economic development - this is often considered to be a function of laziness and thus peasants need to be compelled to labour harder, (3) peasants are inefficient and do not use land effectively and thus need to be compelled to labour more efficiently, (4) peasants get in the way of the necessary process of allowing capital to be applied to the land and thus need to be swept from the land, (5) peasants are dangerous and difficult to incorporate into states as responsible citizens. This paper provides examples of the rhetoric used to describe peasants in four different periods and places: during the enclosures and the consolidation of capitalism in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Irish potato famine in the middle of the nineteenth century, the spread of colonialism and a type of modernity in other than European locales in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the rise of development practice and national consolidation in what was then called the third world after the second world war. The paper argues that these descriptions were both the result of faulty imaginings of peasants and deemed necessary as a way to sell economic and social policies that worked to expel peasants from the land and turn them into wage labourers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract As institutions established to administer the penal exile of British imperial subjects, the historic gaols of Australia and Ireland are linked by a painful legacy of involuntary transportation. Today, outstanding examples of these prisons are conserved and publicly presented as monuments of national significance. This paper considers material meanings associated with these unusual heritage places. Given their explicit historic association with British imperial power, what role do heritage prisons play in the formation of a postcolonial affiliation or consciousness? This paper will consider how heritage prisons have come to embody the emotive links of longing and belonging forged between the modern nations of Ireland and Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on developments in the International Ergonomics Association as of September 2004. Location of the International Ergonomics Association annual conference on March 26, 2004; Relocation of office of the Irish Ergonomics Society in Great Britain; Issuance of rules on work schedules for truckers by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

There is a long historical narrative of the relations between Britain and Ireland in which images of the Irish have been mobilised as major changing representational resources for the making of the British nation, identity and culture. Presently, the Irish diaspora in Britain is a major racialised ethnic group. However, it is absent from contemporary British theorists' representations of race and ethnicity. The paper critically explores the dominant racial regime of representation and this accompanying conceptual absence, as illustrated in anti-racist and new cultural theory texts. There is a need to rethink the histories and geographies of social closure and cultural exclusion as defining elements of the politics of race and nation. The paper argues the need to move beyond the Americanisation of British race-relations - the colour paradigm - to a critical engagement with European explanations, focusing on questions of nation, nationalism and migration. This is not an argument for the inclusion of the Irish in the current model of British race relations, but rather seeks to investigate the denial of difference with reference to Irish ethnic minority status and the specificity of anti-Irish racism. I conclude by looking at the question of self-representation in relation to Irish cultural formation and subjectivity, suggesting that in terms of a traditional racial dichotomy of domination/dominated, the Irish are not either/or but both/and. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the nature of Irish macroeconomic shocks and their correlation with German and UK shocks. A restricted VAR of real output and prices is employed to distinguish aggregate demand and supply shocks for the three countries. To identify the role of Irish exchange rate policy two periods are considered: the preERM period and the ERM period. The results indicate that while the change in exchange rate policy had an effect on the nature of demand and supply shocks, the ERM did not have the effect of increasing the correlation of Irish shocks with Germany or the UK. Evidence of substantial asymmetric shocks with Germany and the UK exist. Thus, Ireland as a member of the EMU faces increased cost of adjustment to asymmetric macroeconomic shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alister Hardy’s initiative in starting a programme of empirical research into religious experience in the UK employing the methods of the social sciences continues through the work of the Religious Experience Research Centres. John Greer initiated a similar research tradition through his questionnaire surveys of the incidence and nature of religious experience among children and young people in Northern Ireland. Leslie Francis and Tania ap Siôn replicated Greer’s classic surveys, with ap Siôn extending Greer’s analysis into nine categories of religious experience (Guidance and help, Exam concerns, God’s presence, Answered prayer, Death, Sickness, Conversion, Difficulty of description, and Miscellaneous), while also noting their setting and frequency. This paper develops the Greer tradition further, drawing on more recent data from pupils in the Republic of Ireland, and arguing for a modified analytical process in order to provide a more nuanced understanding of reports of religious experience. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is a reflective exploration of the emotional encounter between social workers and Irish Travellers in child safeguarding cases in the UK, the unconscious defences that may be triggered for social workers, unfamiliar with Travellers, and how these can impact on the relationship and outcomes. It raises concern about how pervasive societal disapproval towards Travellers may be absorbed by social workers, at the expense of a curiosity about historic marginalisation, the contemporary cultural and social context and a recognition of the strengths of the community. Drawing on psychoanalytical insights into ‘race’, it comprises a literature review which highlights themes of marginalisation in research on Irish Travellers in the UK. It also includes a narrative interview with a Traveller woman who reflects on the fear that social workers invoke in Travellers, and sets up the key question: what might the emotional state of the social worker be in this scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper uses detailed industry-level data for the UK regions which, based on the standard cross-sectional regression model, suggests that 'strong' convergence was occurring during the period 1963-92, even though plotting these data and considering their variation over time would tend to suggest divergence rather than convergence has dominated. However, since there are several, rather fundamental drawbacks associated with the cross-sectional approach, a long time-series of data for Northern Ireland and Great Britain is used to test for convergence directly, based on testing for unit roots. The outcome is that more than half of the Northern Ireland industries considered experienced 'catch-up', while the rest (with the exception of the Textiles sector) experienced long-run convergence, i.e. they tracked their counterparts in Great Britain over the period considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay traces the evolution of the demand that the principal British political parties should extend organisation to Northern Ireland. Although originally nurtured by a small Stalinist sect of the far left, the ideal of electoral integration or ‘equal citizenship’ would in time come to exercise considerable appeal among middle-class unionists disorientated by the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement. This unlikely political alliance would give rise to a vibrant pressure group—the Campaign for Equal Citizenship (CEC)—which played a vocal role in Northern Irish political life in the late 1980s. While often vaunted as its essential attribute, the political diversity of the CEC would foster divisions that would ensure its swift demise. The paper concludes that the decline of electoral integrationism in the early 1990s represented perhaps a prerequisite of a nascent peace process that envisaged a very different political future for Northern Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Most studies of employee involvement and participation (EIP) focus on organisation level, which is understandable given that employers have plenty of choice about how it should be implemented. However, even the most lightly regulated economies do not operate in a complete institutional void as some forms are regulated while government-funded initiatives also promote EIP. Employers' organisations, professional associations and other specialist organisations also operate as intermediary forces between the state and individual employers to shape EIP. However, these forces have not been analysed, an omission which seems strange given the ‘space’ available for occupation in lightly regulated economies. This paper compares the role these different forces play in shaping patterns of EIP at organisation level in four Anglo-American countries (the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand) through interviews and documentary evidence at national, intermediary and organisation levels. While ‘hard’ institutional forces have some influence on representative EIP, ‘soft’ institutional and intermediary forces are more likely to shape EIP because they allow employers choice and flexibility in implementation and fit with national business systems in these countries. However, given such interventions are voluntary, they are also susceptible if government priorities change or employers are attracted by the next management fad. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores affective dimensions to the positioning of teachers within persistent educational inequalities. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s concept of ‘affective economies’, we argue that inequalities are not maintained through how teachers and student teachers ‘feel about’ ‘different’ students per se. Rather, the very possibility of becoming a particular subject and object of feeling is itself already part of the production of learner differences and inequalities. We examine how affects circulate to shape particular objects (e.g. a teacher’s physical body) and collective attachments to particular signs (e.g. ‘the national teaching body’). We argue that contemporary changes to Irish and European teacher education policy reinforce rather than question educational inequalities. They produce and align ‘shock’ at student underachievement with teachers’ physical and collective bodies, while ‘sympathetically’ responsibilising teachers to professionalise in order to cope with or compensate for persistently ‘different’ and/or underachieving students. To explain how this process is lived and resisted, an analysis of interviews with our own student teachers explores how the affective economy which constitutes teacher education may become contingently directed in socially just or unjust ways. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Continuing professional development (CPD) is a substantial, but hitherto largely unappreciated component of lifelong learning and education (LLL/LLE). CPD encourages analysis of the LLL/LLE of those with high education in early years. It draws attention to the influence of particular organisations, professional associations and regulatory bodies, not only as suppliers of LLL/LLE, but also as facilitators of perpetual cycles of learning and in so doing connect lifelong learning with individual identities as professionals. This study highlights the importance of bringing a sociological perspective into understanding participation in LLL/LLE through consideration of a wider range of stakeholders. Data is presented on these organisations' CPD policies from a large-scale survey carried out in the UK triennially between 2003 and 2018, in addition to interviews, focus groups and other surveys of employees of these organisations in the UK, as well as in Australia, Canada and Ireland reported in many publications. The development path of CPD and the changes this has led to for the exercise of professionals' lifelong learning and for the functioning of these organisations themselves is analysed. CPD policies and programmes are portrayed as a structured system distinct from university continuing education and training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brexit constitutes an unprecedented crisis for the European Union and its member states. Three affected parties – the United Kingdom, the EU and Ireland – worked hard to protect their interests, making the negotiations difficult, especially regarding the Irish land border. While the key interests of the negotiating partners are clear, it is less known how and to what extent these interests were communicated by the political representatives of the three countries. We approach Brexit as a critical juncture and base our work on the framing literature. We use a unique dataset including political speeches made by EU Commission members and the UK and Irish government officials during a period from January 2016 until January 2020, relying on the innovative automated text analysis approach of keyword-assisted topic modelling. Beyond insisting on their interests, communication reflects the socio-political context. We find indications that speeches reflect the flow of the negotiations. Finally, our analysis reveals topics that largely flew under the media radar, such as research and protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that the 19th annual British and Irish Law, Education and Technology Association (BILETA) Conference was held on March 25-26, 2004. BILETA was founded in April 1986 in order to promote the use of technology in legal education throughout Great Britain and Ireland. BILETA is actively involved in the field of technology-in-law through such activities as supporting the development and distribution of software, and supporting relevant publications such as the Journal of Law, Information & Technology. The organization also represents the legal academic community through the production of written reports, and liaises with the Association of Law Teachers, the Society of Legal Scholars, and other academic and professional organizations such as the Society for Computers and Law. While BILETA remains nominally a British- and Irish-based organization, recent years have seen it become an increasingly international concern. The theme for this year's conference was designed to be as open textured as possible.