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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]

Over the centuries there have been a number of attempts, for economic, political and religious reasons, to create Welsh settlements overseas. The most successful of these, in terms of longevity at least, and perhaps the best known of all Welsh emigration ventures, was the establishment in 1865 of a Welsh Settlement in Patagonia, in what is now the Province of Chubut in Argentina, where perhaps as many as 5,000 of the inhabitants still speak Welsh fluently or have some ability with the language. The preservation of Welsh identity was central to the Patagonian project, which aimed to create a new Welsh-speaking, self-governing Wales overseas, founded on Christian and democratic principles. From the outset, songs played an important role in fostering the ideals that inspired the founders of the Settlement, ideals that would come progressively under threat as the Argentine government increasingly asserted its authority over the Settlement, promoting Argentinian identity and replacing Welsh with Spanish as the medium of education. This paper gives an overview of the development of the Welsh Settlement in Chubut down to the present day, focussing especially on the role of song in nurturing the dream of the Settlement's founders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

So‐called "left behind" regions have gained infamy for working‐class discontent. Yet a concurrent phenomenon has gone unremarked: middle‐class lifestyles in peripheral places. This article examines how middle‐class migrants (defined by economic, social, and cultural capital) to peripheral regions envisage and enact their aspirations. Against presumed migration trajectories to growing urban centres or for better‐paid employment, we argue that seeming moves down the "escalator" reveal how inequalities between regions offer some migrants opportunities to enact middle‐class lifestyles affordably. We present a qualitative case study of West Wales and the Valleys, predominantly rural and post‐industrial and statistically among Europe's most deprived regions. Drawing from interviews with EU and UK in‐migrants alongside long‐term residents, we illustrate how three dimensions of quality of life—material, relational, subjective—are mobilised in middle‐class placemaking amidst peripherality. We demonstrate how spatial inequalities and career trade‐offs offer affordable material access to lifestyle and how middle‐class aspirations enable migrants to subjectively transform peripherality into enchantment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the circumstances, content, and locus of the first two privately financed political translations into Welsh. Published in 1716 and 1717, both rendered a 1716 anti-Jacobite thanksgiving sermon preached by William Fleetwood, bishop of Ely, into Welsh. An interlude will engage with a cross-genre English verse translation, also done in 1716. Whereas Fleetwood's text, the 1716 Welsh translation of it, and the cross-genre translation pursued a radical Whig agenda, the 1717 translation of Fleetwood into Welsh took care to remove the most radical content of his sermon. All four texts, however, focused on advertising a Protestant nation centered on a national church and the House of Hanover. The present analysis contributes to explaining how Wales's separate cultural identity was confirmed while being bound politically into a Hanoverian nation demarcated by the Anglican Church. It explores the uncharted Welsh-language dimension of early eighteenth-century British pamphleteering, non-elite Anglo–Welsh cross-border communication networks, and the role that cultural entrepreneurs and provincial publishing centers like Shrewsbury played in not only disseminating metropolitan ideas but also enabling wider participation in the political discourse. [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]

The article discusses the revitalization of language in Wales. Topics discussed include the use of Welsh language by a large percentage of the population of the country and other residents elsewhere in Great Britain, the role of language revitalization in local government, public education, and community development, and the influence of globalization, advance capitalism, and internationalization on Welsh language and its associated culture.

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]

This article explores how the land and the agricultural community were made out to be central to the assertion of Welsh national identity between the world wars. Political Nationalism came out of a disillusion with Liberal national sentiment. Liberal nationalists had recognised the significance of the land in Wales and made secure a devolved administrative regime for agriculture, the Welsh Council of Agriculture, originally established before 1914. For the political Nationalists, however, this was far too little. They perceived a cultural and economic crisis which might be overcome only through complete self-government. That crisis originated historically in the annexation of Wales to England which had intruded an alien land system and destroyed a natural, patriarchal rural order; which had foisted an alien commercial, industrial system and had led to the Anglicisation of Welsh society. In its depressed state, inter-war Wales was subjected to a new and reactive form of politics, often influenced by European right wing ideas, which was anti-urban, anti-capitalist, anti-English and anti-modern, all of which had wider repercussions for the future of Welsh identity. [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]

This article discusses the significance of the ‘inward’ and ‘outward’ faces of the ‘Westminster model’ for the institutions of devolved government in Wales. In 1997–1998, the objective was to create something that resembled Westminster as little as possible. Subsequently, the ‘inward’ face has seen an increasing assumption of key features of the Westminster model, notably a separation between the executive and legislative branches, due to practical political needs in Wales. In other respects, the model has not been followed. As regards its ‘outward’ face, constraints on the autonomy of the Assembly mean it forms part of broader patterns of government within the wider UK system rather than possessing any form of sovereignty or autarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Information about the conference on classics and children's literature held in Lampeter, Wales from July 6-10, 2009 is presented. Deborah Roberts, Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at Haverford College, discussed on the topic, highlighting a paper "Picturing Antiquity: Visual Narrative in Classical Works for Children." It presented the figure of author Nathaniel Hawthorne whose books "Wonder Book" and "Tanglewood Tales" have influenced the development of children's literature.

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]

This article provides empirical evidence to support recent assertions that the substantive representation of women depends not only on the numbers of women elected representatives in national legislatures, but also who they are. In this case study of one of the UK's devolved legislatures, analysis was undertaken of the transcripts of 327 plenary debates held during the first term of the National Assembly for Wales, where women constituted 42 percent of elected members (1999–2003). The gender dynamics of political debate around key equality topics reveal that the link between descriptive and substantive representation of women is complex. When a ‘critical mass’ of women is achieved the substantive representation of women is affirmed as ‘probabilistic’ rather than ‘deterministic’ for it is shaped by the institutional context, the gender dynamics of debate and, importantly, the actions of individual ‘equality champions’. While women representatives exhibited a greater propensity to advance gender equality in debate than their male colleagues, the present findings also show the disproportionate influence of ‘equality champions’: women who are able to draw upon earlier feminist activism and act as ‘strategic insiders’ who make a difference to women's issues in a parliamentary context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article Ann Williams reflects on her learning from a visit to study bilingual education in primary and secondary schools in Canada. The visit - which was part-funded by the General Teaching Council Wales and NUT's professional development programme--included meetings with representatives of school districts, the Ministry of Education, teachers' organisations and other specialist agencies as well as study visits to schools providing examples of bilingual teaching and learning. Ann reveals how this international "dialogue" has influenced her practice and intentions for her school in Wales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a British researcher's response to Ioan Matthews' comments on his article dealing with the general election of 1868 in Wales. Interference of priests in electoral politics; Ideological framework of Welsh radicals; Role of the Welsh-language press in spreading the ideas of the radicals.

Focuses on the evolution and growth of popular music in Wales. Link between popular music and youth activism from 1960 to 1985; Analysis on some elements of a period of diversification and crisis in 1990; Role of the Welsh Language Society in the provision and stimulation of live rock music; Factors contributing to the penetration of youth activism.

Principal component analysis of indicators from the 1991 Census was used to characterise the social context of school age Welsh speakers in South East Wales. The area had been largely anglicised by the Census of 1971, but the growth of Welsh-medium education was responsible for net gains in numbers of younger Welsh/English bilinguals. Doubts as to whether young people will remain active bilinguals after leaving school have been raised. The inter-relationships between figures for Welsh speaking in the Census and other social indicators were examined. Being categorised as a young Welsh speaker was found to cut across an economic advantage/disadvantage dimension, and so was a matter of life style rather than a by-product of parental choices unrelated to language resurgence. Probing life styles by means of interviews where Welsh-medium and English-medium schools could be matched on the economic advantage/disadvantage dimension showed that deciding for Welsh-medium education was embedded in authentic local life styles. Although networks of people at more local spatial scales were involved in Welsh-medium education, they were linked to wider scale networks establishing domains for Welsh language use in the public sector and local government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]