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Funders, policy-makers and public service managers should be aware that inputs can be designed into the innovation process in order to build capacity among staff engaged in innovation in public ser...

College governing boards are widely held to be the keystone of institutional strategy and the prime locus of support, challenge and accountability in respect of the actions of the senior Executive. Whilst there are many normative prescriptions about the conditions and arrangements required for effective college governance, relatively little is known about how and to what extent the practices of boards reflect or realise these prescriptions. This paper draws upon a unique research study of eight further education colleges across the four nations of the UK. Following Chia and MacKay and Hendry et al., our ‘strategy as practice’ approach gives primacy to emergence and immanence through board practices. Video and observational data, supplemented by some interview and documentary data are used to develop an understanding of governing practices. Our analysis suggests that current normative prescriptions lack the conceptual sophistication required to support governing as it really happens. We offer a reconceptualisation of both strategy and accountability suggesting that the latter includes lateral, inward- and outward-facing functions that make conflicting demands on governors. We argue that these distinctions are vital in enabling further positive development of governing in the college sector.

Racialization is frequently deployed but seldom defined precisely. The agent(s) and mechanisms of the process are often not analysed. Such processes have multiple agents, mechanisms and rationales, all of which may change over time. The key agents of the racialization of Gypsy/Travellers in England have historically been the State and the media. This article claims that a key mechanism in the racialization of Gypsy-Travellers in the twenty-first century is the English planning system. There has been a long-term racialization of Gypsy-Travellers based around criminality, dirt and various threats to order. Gypsy-Travellers respond to the State’s criminalization of their cultures by both adjusting their degree of mobility, and engaging with the discriminatory planning system to procure more advantageous outcomes. Gypsy-Travellers’ “cultural adaptations” end up further embedding the existing racist frame, in which they unfairly gain advantage over sedentary people by simultaneously infringing rules and claiming they are discriminated against.

This article considers the contribution of the governance professional to the governing of further education colleges in the United Kingdom and arises from a wider study of the ways in which college boards develop and implement college strategy. This is the first observational study to focus on what the governance professional does within the college governance space. From observation and other forms of evidence, the governance professional performs a significant, challenging and expert role in the processes and practices of governing colleges. The governance professional is instrumental as a governance sense-maker and, at a higher level, as translator of governing deliberations and decision making. The governance professional role in practice can vary depending upon a range of personal, local institutional and national factors. However, in essence the governance professional exists to legitimise college governance through the structures, processes and reporting of governing interactions. The article considers the extent to which the governance professional is pivotal to the governing of colleges and analyses the implications for college governing. Our research identifies some barriers to gaining greater impact from the college governance professional.

Can children and adults learn anything from building robots? In 2001 we ran a robot design competition with the BBC TelevisionBlue Peter, program. Some 32 000 children, aged between 5 and 16 years, submitted paper designs. We built prototypes of the four winners' robots for a Robot Design MasterClass at the London Science Museum. It is widely believed that across the curriculum, robotics is a powerful force in motivating education. We ask what the children learned from the robot design process. Our answer is that they learned many things, both inside and outside the science and technology curriculum.

Throughout the history of CAD, a variety of interfaces have been employed with the aim of supporting designers’ construction and manipulation of digital models. This paper explores the potential of eye tracking as a CAD interface, and presents a prototype that uses collected gaze data to support shape exploration in a two-dimensional vector-based sketch editor. The eye tracking interface uses the visual interactions of users to identify interpretations of constructed shapes, according to recognised parts identified using methods from shape grammar research. It can therefore be argued that it supports construction and manipulation of shapes according to user intent. The prototype has been evaluated in a user study where design students carried out controlled shape exploration exercises which involved interpretation and manipulation of shapes. In the paper, key concepts of eye tracking methodology are introduced; the methods used to implement the eye tracking interface are described; and the user study and its outcomes are reported. The results are positive and indicate the potential for eye tracking as an interface for supporting shape exploration in CAD.

This paper describes the first in a series of studies which seek to explore the correlation of eye movements with interpretation of geometric shapes. These studies are intended to inform the development of an eye tracking interface for computational tools to support and enhance the fluid interaction required in creative design. A common criticism of computational design tools is that they do not enable manipulation of designed shapes according to all perceived features. Instead the manipulations afforded are limited by formal structures of shapes. This research examines the potential for eye movement data to be used to recognise and make available for manipulation the perceived features in shapes. The objective of this first study is to analyse eye movement data with the intention of recognising moments in which an interpretation of shape is made. Results suggest that duration of fixation and distance between successive fixations prove to be consistent indicators of shape interpretation.

This paper presents recent research into the functions and value of sketch outputs during computer supported collaborative design. Sketches made primarily exploiting whiteboard technology are shown to support subjects engaged in remote collaborative design, particularly when constructed in ‘nearsynchronous' communication. The authors define near-synchronous communication and speculate that it is compatible with the reflective and iterative nature of design activity. There appears to be significant similarities between the making of sketches in near-synchronous remote collaborative design and those made on paper in more traditional face-to-face settings With the current increase in the use of computer supported collaborative working (CSCW) in undergraduate and postgraduate design education it is proposed that sketches and sketching can make important contributions to design learning in this context.

This paper outlines the conduct and findings of a research project which compared the sketching activity and sketched output of pairs of design students collaborating face-to-face with other pairs linked by computer mediated tools. The paper proposes that attention to the nature and dispersion of ‘graphic acts’ can lead to a better understanding of the exploitation of sketching between remotely located design participants. Sketch Graphic Acts are used to illuminate the phenomenon of shared sketches and the importance of ‘thumbnail’ sketches—which were commonly exploited in laboratory studies of face-to-face collaborative working but which were significantly impoverished in studies of computer mediated, remote collaborative working.

The design professions today claim to take responsibility seriously, but the knowledge base for guiding responsible designing is erratic. Some definition of the topic has been provided through the interface between engineering and ethics, but the relationship between responsibility and product design has received less attention. This paper investigates design responsibility in design education and practice. It explores the way in which designers' perceptions mediate the interpretation and application of responsibility in their practice. The results show how concepts of responsibility change across levels of expertise, with the contexts of education and practice appearing to mould and influence designers' perceptions of responsibility. The paper presents three snapshots – of first year design students, graduating students and practising designers – to demonstrate how the development of responsibility evolves.