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With this theme, the thirteenth Conference of the International Federation of Training & Development Organisations was held in Sydney, Australia in August. ABE was privileged to have three representatives there: Lyndon Jones (Chairman), Dr. Alec Martin (Education Consultant), Denys Page (Council Member and regular contributor to Education & Training).

I am going to ask you to do something which information staff are often asked to do—two things at once. My group in the DEP is concerned with initiating useful research in training, monitoring it when it is in progress, feeding the results and other information about training into a central classified storage and retrieval system and publishing this information mainly for the benefit of training specialists. More exactly, training specialists are the bulls‐eye of our target, but there are many other people such as managers, research workers and information staff who need to keep in touch with training developments. We are therefore not only concerned with training but also with information about training and we try our best to apply to our own staff the principles which are being developed for industry at large. We certainly want to avoid the old paradox ‘those who can, do; those who can't—teach’. I therefore want you to learn at two levels, about our information service and about the principles inherent in its design.

Human resource management (HRM) may be construed either as the beginning of a new wave of authoritarianism — the Pharoahs presumably managed massive human resources in constructing the pyramids — or as part of a growing world‐wide movement expressing a reaction against ‘object‐level’ thinking about persons. On the one hand we are all increasingly documented, classified, tabulated and quantified to the extent that invasion of privacy is questioned; on the other hand there are indications of growing concern for the development of more complex ‘persons‐in‐relation’ models of man, emphasising interdependence and recognising subjectivity and quality as well as objectivity and quantity. People of all ages question in ‘future‐shock’ terms the validity of the object‐growth quantitative thinking which has tended to dominate western industrial civilisation. Realization of the rate of change tends to generate change‐resistant behaviour patterns or alternative technologies designed to reinstate persons above systems.

The consultative paper Towards an Adult Training Strategy, published by the Manpower Services Commission in 1983, explicitly recognised and sought to foster wider appreciation of the need for systematic continuous learning throughout adult life. Adults will come from four decades; from various backgrounds of culture and language; from work, leisure and unemployment. If the opportunities of this situation are seized, a massive commitment will have been made to the development of the learning society. Inevitably this will mean commitment to the Open Society which, as Karl Popper long ago pointed out, also has its enemies, and recognition that mass communication has already decentralised power by distributing the information‐base.

Everything about the Chewton Glen Hotel is true‐blue British…except its cuisine which is French. All staff are the most dedicated professionals…except the boss, the monarch of the Glen, who is a gifted amateur. And each department runs with effortless ease…except behind the scenes where enormous effort is invested.

This year showed a healthy increase in student registrations of which there were 3,230. 20 Licentiates were awarded Associate Membership. 220 other applicants were awarded Associate Membership, and 9 Membership.

Sir Harold Wilson has accepted an invitation from the Open University Students Association to give the Fourth OUSA Lecture to be held at the University of York on 1 April, the pipe‐opener to the National Conference. Each year's lecture is always the view of the presenter, who is invited to give a perspective of Adult Education in general and the Open University in particular; Sir Harold, who on his retirement as Prime Minister said he would like to be remember for his involvement with the Open University, has entitled his lecture The Open University: Its Origin & Development.

February WED.4. Aslib Engineering Group. One‐day Conference. Newcastle. Aslib Transport Group/Motor Industries Information Group joint meeting. Plans for a new system of business statistics. Speaker: M. C. Fessey (Business Statistics Office). University of Aston. 2.30 p.m.

This paper aims to provide a living tribute to the leading autoethnographer, Alec Grant.

Alec provided Jerome with a list of names of people he might approach to write a tribute on his behalf.

The accounts describe the influence that Alec has had both as an educator and as a trusted colleague for the people approached.

While this is a living tribute, it is about one man and could, therefore, be described as a case study. Some people wonder what can be learned from a single case study. Read on and find out.

Alec has carved out a path for himself. In many senses, he chose “The Road Less Travelled”. He has never shied away from challenging “The System” and defending the rights of the marginalized and socially excluded. It is not a road for the faint-hearted.

For systems to change, radical thinkers need to show the way. “Change keeps us safe” (Stuart Bell).

Alec was a well-known and highly respected cognitive behavioural academic practitioner and the author of key textbooks in the field. He then decided to reinvent himself as an autoethnographer. This has brought him into contact with a much more diverse group of people. It has also brought him home to himself.

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated restrictions created a range of potential additional stressors for families, particularly for parents living with children. This study aims to explore whether there were any differences in the mental health and emotional experiences of those living with children, and those who were not, during the pandemic and related lockdowns; and whether there were any specific risk factors associated with these mental health outcomes and emotional experiences.

Regression analyses of ten-wave repeated cross-sectional surveys between May 2020 and November 2021 on a total sample of 42,529 UK adults, which measured mental health with a range of pleasant and unpleasant emotional experiences. The interaction effects of living with children and age as well as marital status were tested.

During the pandemic, individuals who were living with children were more likely to feel hopeful (OR: 1.1) and grateful (OR: 1.163), less likely to feel hopeless (OR: 0.918) and lonely (OR: 0.799), while more likely to feel guilty (OR: 1.185), unprepared (OR: 1.195) and pressurised (OR: 1.14), than those not living with children. More nuanced findings and diverse emotional experiences were also found in people of different age groups and marital statuses.

This study has highlighted that being parents and living with children could be important factors of emotional distress, especially during the special circumstances of the pandemic and lockdowns, drawing on the large-scale national data.