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Of the 52 Sites of Special Scientific Interest in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, 12 are separated from the main islands at high tide. Within these 12 sites, only one of which (St Kilda) has any human inhabitants, there are a further eight islands or groups of islands more than 2 km apart, so that within the Outer Hebrides, there are - for practical purposes - 20 separate offshore designated sites requiring survey, monitoring and management input. This presents challenges of resource allocation and logistics for the small team of conservation staff based within the two Outer Hebrides offices of Scottish Natural Heritage, Scotland’s statutory nature conservation agency. There are also challenges for the other agencies and managers involved in these sites, which in some cases allow the pooling of resources, but in others, lead to new sets of problems with conservation implications. These problems are discussed and reviewed with regard to future management and the obligations placed on Scottish Natural Heritage. more...

Many studies suggest that quality childcare can positively influence children’s outcomes in a wide range of domains, including mental health. While an extensive literature on the effects of childcare on individual children exists, how quality childcare programs contribute to trends at the population-level is yet to be established. In this study, we examine community differences in the quality of childcare and the mental health of children attending childcare centres in three communities in British Columbia, Canada. Previous research on Kindergarten children conducted in these communities indicated that two exhibited expected outcomes (based on socioeconomic criteria, these communities were classified as “better off” and “worse off”), and one exhibited better than expected outcomes and was therefore labeled “resilient.” We hypothesized that the better than expected child outcomes in the resilient community were due to better quality childcare in this community. To test this hypothesis, we assessed 621 children and their 24 respective childcare centres, and conducted extensive observations of the three study communities. As expected, teachers (but not parents) from the resilient community reported fewer children’s mental health problems and childcare quality was found to be higher in the resilient community than in the comparison communities. However, city differences were lost in the hierarchical linear regressions suggesting that the community effects were mediated through childcare quality. To interpret these findings we turned to our observations that indicated that the resilient community was markedly different from the other two in terms of the social capital and developmental assets that it possessed. more...

1. Cultural Mapping as Cultural Inquiry: Introduction to an Emerging Field of Practice Nancy Duxbury, W. F. Garrett-Petts and David MacLennan Part I: Mapping the Contours of an Emerging Field 2. Cultural Mapping and Planning for Sustainable Communities Graeme Evans 3. One Strategy, Many Purposes: A Classification for Cultural Mapping Projects Leonardo Chiesi and Paolo Costa 4. Cultural Mapping: Analyzing Its Meanings in Policy Documents Eleonora Redaelli 5. Cultural Mapping in Ontario: The Big Picture M. Sharon Jeannotte Part II: Platforms for Engagement and Knowledge Through Mapping 6. Wedjemup Wangkiny Koora, Yeye and Mila Boorda (Wedjemup Talking from the Past, Today, and the Future): An Ex-Modern Way of Thinking and Mapping Landscape into Country? Len Collard and Grant Revell 7. Understanding the Full Impact of Cultural Mapping in Ukraine Linda Knudsen McAusland and Olha Kotska 8. Engaging Public, Professionals, and Policy-Makers in the Mapping Process Janet Pillai 9. Mapping Cultures: Spatial Anthropology and Popular Cultural Memory Les Roberts and Sara Cohen 10. "Reading the City": Cultural Mapping as Pedagogic Inquiry Stuart Burch 11. City Readings and Urban Mappings: The City as Didactic Instrument Paulo Providencia Part III: Inquiry, Expression, and Deepening Understanding of Place 12. Time, Aggregation, and Analysis: Designing Effective Digital Cultural Mapping Projects Elaine Sullivan and Willeke Wendrich 13. Beyond Paper Maps: Archeologies of Place Abby Suckle and Seetha Raghupathy 14. Mapping the Complexity of Creative Practice: Using Cognitive Maps to Follow Creative Ideas and Collaborations Roberta Comunian and Katerina Alexiou 15. From Work to Play: Making Bodies in Flight's Performance Walk Dream-->work Sara Giddens and Simon Jones 16. Maraya as Visual Research: Mapping Urban Displacement and Narrating Artistic Inquiry Glen Lowry, M. Simon Levin and Henry Tsang (Maraya) 17. Beyond the Brochure: An Unmapped Journey into Deep Mapping Kathleen Scherf more...

This chapter presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides an introduction to the emerging interdisciplinary field of cultural mapping. It offers a range of interdisciplinary views that are international in scope. Cultural mapping, broadly conceived, promises new ways of describing, accounting for, and coming to terms with the cultural resources of communities and places. The evolution of cultural mapping intertwines academic and artistic research with policy, planning, and advocacy imperatives and contexts. Five main trajectories of cultural mapping practice or "use-contexts" have influenced its current methodological contours and practices: community empowerment and counter-mapping, cultural policy, municipal governance, mapping as artistic practice, and academic inquiry. The practice of cultural mapping with Indigenous peoples is generally dated to the 1960s in the Canadian and Alaskan Arctic. Mapping has long informed the work of artists, particularly those involved in public works and socially engaged art practices. more...

Conservative critiques of education and proposals for reform show striking similarities in Canada, Britain and the US. All seem to reflect what Habermas referred to as “the affirmative stance towards social modernity and the denigration of cultural modernity”. The paper uses this distinction to describe and analyse New Right criticisms of educational progressivism and conservative efforts to promote a new sympathy for business values, market discipline and market relations in schools and colleges. more...

The mental hygiene movement in Canada emerged in the second decade of this century during a period that has been called the “heyday” of public health. Understandably, the movement shared some of the features of the public health movement. One of these features was a tension between the priorities of physicians interested in establishing medicine as a successful profession, and the aims and methods of public health as a movement of social reform. more...

This study briefly examines contemporary approaches to literacy which, for purposes of clarification, it classifies in two basic categories: the "technocratic" (or "behaviorist") and the "progressive." The technocratic approach, it is argued, reduces the rich complexity of literate behavior in order to satisfy demands for a presumed scientific rigor and a simplified index of accountability. The progressive approach, on the other hand, acknowledges the complexity of literate behavior, yet fails to provide an analytical framework for a systematic investigation of its complexity. The authors discuss the currently popular concept of "functional literacy" in relation to the classical model of "high literacy." They further comment on Kirsch and Guthrie's (I977) attempt to extend and refine the notion of functional literacy. The focal concern of the authors is to outline the kinds of questions that must be asked in order to assess and to critically elaborate existing research into literacy achievement. They suggest, for example, that research must be guided by considerations of contextual factors influencing the acquisition and use of literate abilities. Finally, the authors suggest the importance of organizing research on literacy in relation to recently documented contradictions between Canadian culture and the democratic goals of Canadian society. more...