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Child neglect is a problem that presents many challenges to learning and teaching in schools. Children are unable to learn if their basic needs are not met. Neglect is the second most common reason for a child to be on a child protection plan in Wales. Given the universal nature of their provision within the community, and the prevalence of neglect, schools are well-placed to notice and intervene early and provide support to children that promotes their health and wellbeing. In fact, staff in schools have the opportunity to observe children's behaviours, and their interactions with other pupils and family members up to five days a week over an extended period of time. However, little is known about the specific ways in which staff in schools respond to neglect and what factors help them to provide effective school-based support to families. This paper presents findings from thirty interviews with staff in six mainstream primary and secondary schools in Wales. Findings identify three factors that support neglect-practice within the school-setting (i) a whole-school proactive approach to child neglect; (ii) a positive learning and development environment for staff members; and (iii) relationships between staff and the child(ren)'s family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The urban culture of medieval Swansea, which provided the political context for William Cragh and his rebellion, represents only one aspect of the Marcher lordship of Glamorgan. Within the same lordship, Welsh gentry families engaged with national politics through a literary culture shared with their English neighbours. This paper looks at some of the most significant manuscripts associated with south Wales in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, including the ‘Red Book of Hergest’ and National Library of Wales MS Peniarth 50. This latter manuscript is particularly noteworthy for its multilingual contents and for its large collection of political prophecy in Welsh, English and Latin, testifying to Welsh involvement in English politics. The paper argues that Welsh literary culture was a strong element in Glamorgan Marcher society and that an elite group of Welsh gentry were at the heart of a mobile network of scribes, poets and manuscripts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article argues that George Borrow'sWild Wales(1862) and O. M. Edwards'sCartrefi Cymru(1896) construct Wales in significantly different ways through their authors' journeys around Wales in the mid- and late-Victorian periods, by drawing on Benedict Anderson's theory that nationalism requires industrial capitalism to construct an “imagined nation”. I suggest that Borrow's neo-Romantic Wales allows for elective affinity for cultured outsiders while discursively excluding “lower” ethnic groups, while Edwards's work constructs an essentialist and exclusive respectable, Nonconformist Wales. It further argues that beneath the didactic purpose of the texts, both texts hold therapeutic or recuperative significance for their authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research concludes that diglossia between languages is a barrier to minority language use in health, social care and criminal justice settings. In addition, it concludes that more fulsome service provision is the key for promoting greater minority language use in such settings. Using the case of Welsh speakers in Wales as an exemplar, this paper explores what is known about minority language use in service settings and how that knowledge has been acquired. It is argued that the existing research has neglected the influence of interviews on accounts of minority language use. Moreover, it is argued that an important issue in promoting minority use in service settings is recognising and addressing the diglossia that can come to exist within a minority language once its use is institutionalised in such contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

According to the 2001 Census, there has been a substantial increase in the numbers of Welsh speakers aged 5–15 years, especially in south-east Wales. It is generally accepted that this increase can be largely attributed to the success of Welsh-medium education. Indeed, Welsh-medium education has long been seen as an effective language planning tool and language transmission sphere to transmit the Welsh language in Wales. The aim of this paper is to look at the main parental incentives for choosing Welsh-medium education in the Rhymni valley, Caerffili County. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods was used to gather information from parents from the ‘meithrin’ stage (Welsh-medium nursery) and from the primary and secondary school sectors. The main parental incentives in the Rhymni Valley were seen to be cultural, educational, economic and personal reasons and integrative rather than instrumental incentives that came to the forefront. Past studies have tended to emphasise economic reasons, but the findings of this present project indicate that cultural reasons were more predominant factors for parents in the Rhymni valley. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to evaluate the factors influencing students’ choice of Higher Education provision with specific reference to language of study. Placing the recent development of the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol (the National Welsh-Medium College) in an appropriate historical and theoretical perspective, this paper evaluates a major qualitative study relating to student choice in Wales. It argues that while location, reputation, finance and employability are the primary drivers for student choice, there is considerable evidence to demonstrate a latent demand for Welsh-medium provision in specific subjects and locations. Furthermore there is a clear link to future job prospects in patterns of linguistic choice amongst prospective Higher Education students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the aim is to problematize the common distinction made between 'assimilationism' and 'nationalism' by exploring the liberatory dimension within assimilationist thought in nineteenth century Wales and African America. Whereas what we might call the 'conservationist nationalism' of Michael D. Jones (in Wales) and Martin Delany (in America) sought to preserve what they deemed to be valuable in their people's cultures, the assimilationism of Samuel Roberts and Frederick Douglass may best be conceived of as a 'contributionist nationalism' that saw the distinctive characteristics of all peoples as significant ingredients in the making of a human civilization envisioned in universalist terms. The common contrast made between nationalism and assimilationism is too simplistic to account for the positions adopted by Roberts and Douglass. In never losing sight of the universal terrain on which to locate their arguments for social and cultural advancement, Douglass and Roberts can be seen to have embraced a position that would later be described by W. E. B. Du Bois as 'assimilation through self-assertion'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the centuries, a sense of national identity in Wales has manifested itself in a variety of ways – aspirations to statehood, a unique language, cultural distinctiveness, religious affiliation, sporting achievement and, most recently, political devolution. Educational institutions in myriad forms have reflected aspects of these manifestations and themselves shed some light on their nature. In turn, the historiography of education in Wales is itself a product of national, educational, social and scholarly preoccupations which both reflect the ideas and priorities of the time and shed some light on their nature and significance. It is the purpose of this article to make a preliminary exploration into some of these interactions and, in so doing, provide an introduction to some of the major secondary sources of information on Welsh education. To this end, the article outlines in very general terms outstanding landmarks in those elements of Welsh education since the early modern period which might be claimed to be distinctive and the way in which the historiography reflects and reinforces such claims. Although the article sketches the picture in the centuries from the Tudors to industrialisation, its main thrust, reflecting the historiography, is on the period since the nineteenth century when the England/Wales state took over the financing of the education of its citizens to an ever increasing extent. Within this period, there is particular emphasis on such episodes as the ‘Treason of the Blue Books’ in 1847, the Welsh Intermediate Education Act of 1889, the ‘Welsh Revolt’ following the Education Act of 1902 and the more subtle but steady devolutionary episodes evident in the twentieth century, culminating in the creation of the National Assembly for Wales in 1999. All have generated a range of secondary works which itself reflects the priorities of historians in a scholarly environment which, since the 1960s, has seen changes in approach to the study of history which have allowed historians of Welsh education to take their place in the mainstream of historical studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]