Laura Gutierrez-Bucheli, Alan Reid, Gillian Kidman and Julia Lamborn
This study aims to explore how engineering curricula can address sustainability considerations. Through a cross-case analysis, a hybrid theoretical-empirical model is developed to…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore how engineering curricula can address sustainability considerations. Through a cross-case analysis, a hybrid theoretical-empirical model is developed to identify and analyse a broad range of possible and actual responses to sustainability within engineering education.
Design/methodology/approach
The study employs a multiple-case study design to compare the experiences of educators and students engaging with sustainability topics in two contrasting tertiary civil engineering programs. It draws on an original conceptual framework informed by the literature for analysing educational responses to sustainability around the world, which can be applied to a diverse range of educational settings. Conceptual review, fieldwork, case-specific and cross-case analysis have been used to refine the framework, enabling the emergence of a hybrid model.
Findings
The hybrid model suggests three levels of response to sustainability in engineering education, which can be characterised as: 1) incorporation, 2) integration and 3) transformation. Each level is analysed in relation to five dimensions: functions, content, relationships, spaces and time, which influence the nature of the response and its capacity to foster learning. Cross-case analysis findings suggest that the shape and focus of a particular response to sustainability are significantly influenced by both the types of engineering problems, and the diversity and extent of relationships that engineering educators and students engage during teaching and learning.
Practical implications
Cross-case analysis reveals that developing and supporting (inter)subjective relationships can play a pivotal role in fostering a transformation level of response. Engagement with Indigenous, more-than-human and interdisciplinary perspectives in engineering education for sustainability can also be critical to deepening students’ reflexivity.
Originality/value
The study helps ground theory-driven frameworks for analysing the nature and purpose of responses to sustainability in engineering education, and higher education more broadly. The study also offers a novel hybrid model for identifying and classifying responses to sustainability in engineering education and other disciplines.
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Peter H. Reid, Elliot Pirie and Rachael Ironside
This research explored the storytelling (collection, curation and use) in the Cabrach, a remote Scottish glen. This study aims to capture the methodological process of…
Abstract
Purpose
This research explored the storytelling (collection, curation and use) in the Cabrach, a remote Scottish glen. This study aims to capture the methodological process of storytelling and curation of heritage knowledge through the lens of the Cabrach's whisky distilling history, a central part of the area's cultural heritage, tangible and intangible. This research was conceptualised as “telling the story of telling the story of the Cabrach”. It was concerned with how the history, heritage, historiography and testimony associated with the parish could be harvested, made sense of and subsequently used.
Design/methodology/approach
The study was epistemological in nature and the research was concerned with how heritage knowledge is gathered, curated and understood. It was built around the collection of knowledge through expert testimony from Colin Mackenzie and Alan Winchester, who have extensively researched aspects of life in the Cabrach. This was done using a series of theme-based but free-flowing conversational workshop involving participants and research team. Issues of trust and authority in the research team were crucial. Data were recorded, transcribed and coded. A conceptual model for heritage storytelling in the Cabrach was developed together with a transferable version for other contexts.
Findings
The research was conceived around identifying the stories of the Cabrach and grouping them into cohesive narrative themes focused on the most important aspect of the glen's history (the development of malt whisky distilling). The research showed how all crucial narratives associated with the Cabrach were interconnected with that malt whisky story. It was concerned with identifying broad thematic narratives rather than the specific detailed stories themselves, but also from a methodological perspective how stories around those themes could be collected, curated and used. It presents the outcome of “expert testimony” oral history conversations and presents a conceptual model for the curation of heritage knowledge.
Practical implications
This paper reports on research which focuses on the confluence of those issues of heritage-led regeneration, intangible cultural heritage, as well as how stories of and from, about and for, a distinctive community in North-East Scotland can be collected, curated and displayed. It presents methodological conceptualisations as well as focused areas of results which can be used to create a strong and inclusive narrative to encapsulate the durable sense of place and support the revival of an economically viable and sustainable community.
Social implications
This conceptual model offers a framework with universal elements (Place, People, Perception) alongside a strong core narrative of storytelling. That core element may vary but the outer elements remain the same, with people and place being omnipresent and the need to build an emotional or visceral connection with visitors being crucial, beyond “telling stories” which might be regarded as parochial or narrowly focused. The model informs how communities and heritage organisations tell their stories in an authentic and proportionate manner. This can help shape and explain cultures and identities and support visitors' understanding of, and connection with, places they visit and experience.
Originality/value
The originality lies in two principal areas, the exploration of the narratives of a singularly distinctive community – the Cabrach – which plays a disproportionately significant role in the development of malt whisky distilling in Scotland; and also in terms of the methodological approach to the collection and curation of heritage storytelling, drawing not on first-hand accounts as in conventional oral history approaches but through the expert testimony of two historical and ethnographic researchers. The value is demonstrating the creation of a conceptual model which can be transferred to other contexts.
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Brian Griffin, Mike Harkin, Alan Day, Alan Duckworth, David Reid and Michael Wills
MY VOTE for the Most Depressing Spectacle of the Month goes to a shelf of leather‐bound, gold‐tooled ‘video classics’ seen in my local video rentals shop. The leather binding and…
Abstract
MY VOTE for the Most Depressing Spectacle of the Month goes to a shelf of leather‐bound, gold‐tooled ‘video classics’ seen in my local video rentals shop. The leather binding and gold lettering looked quite impressive until you touched one of the volumes—Wuthering heights, for example—and realised that this ‘book’ was plastic, every single molecule of it. And empty, unless you counted the video tape.
This article discusses the development of Radio Frequency Identification technology and its legal implications. The technology promises to transform the supply chain, through…
Abstract
This article discusses the development of Radio Frequency Identification technology and its legal implications. The technology promises to transform the supply chain, through increased efficiency, stocktaking accuracy and ultimately lower costs for consumers. RFID technology creates a variety of potential legal concerns. In particular, RFID tags have the potential to seriously undermine the human right to privacy. RFID tags are privacy neutral, in that they neither destroy privacy nor promote privacy. However, RFID tags may greatly facilitate the surreptitious collection of personal data. The privacy of consumers of RFID enabled products may be violated which will seriously undermine consumer confidence in the trustworthiness of commercial organisations. Within the European Union, RFID technology may facilitate actions designed to undermine the Internal Market. RFID technology is in its infancy, however, the speed of technological development in this area will require a range of legislative and non‐legislative responses in the near future. Solutions to the privacy problem must be holistic, and encompass responses from a range of stakeholders. Firstly, at the design stage, RFlD technology must be privacy promoting. Thereafter, utilisation of RFID technology must be accompanied by the adoption of privacy protecting legislation, voluntary self and coregulation, codes of conduct and technological tools.
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Wilfrid Snape, Ruth Thompson, Alan Duckworth, David Reid and Wilfred Ashworth
IN LESS than sixteen years time—on June 30 1997 to be precise—the lease on Kowloon beyond Boundary Street, and on the New Territories, will, according to British Law, expire…
Abstract
IN LESS than sixteen years time—on June 30 1997 to be precise—the lease on Kowloon beyond Boundary Street, and on the New Territories, will, according to British Law, expire. Naturally Hong Kong is concerned as the Peking Lease nears its end. Writing in the Daily telegraph on September 28 1981 Graham Earnshaw commented that China ‘obviously wants to keep Hong Kong as it is for at least the immediate future because of its immense economic value, and that is the main thread of hope that Hong Kong people keep returning to when discussing the future’. Kevin Rafferty concluded a lead article ‘The first city in Asia’ in the Financial times special supplement on Hong Kong (June 15 1981)—‘China and Hong Kong are two different worlds and it will take a lot of effort and patience to bring them together’. David Bonavia writing in the Times on October 3 1981 sees in China's recent ‘seemingly generous offer to Taiwan of easy terms for a political reunion’, ‘the true way to a possible solution for the eventual re‐absorption of Hong Kong into the People's Republic’.
Neil Cranston, Bill Mulford, Jack Keating and Alan Reid
The purpose of this paper is to report the results of a national survey of government primary school principals in Australia, investigating the purposes of education, in terms of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to report the results of a national survey of government primary school principals in Australia, investigating the purposes of education, in terms of the importance and level of enactment of those purposes in schools.
Design/methodology/approach
In 2009, an electronic survey was distributed to government primary school principals in Australia seeking their views on the purposes of education. The survey comprised 71 items of a closed format and three items of an open‐ended format. Respondents rated first the importance they ascribed to particular purposes of education, then second the degree to which they believed these purposes were actually enacted in their particular school. Factor analyses were conducted on the item responses. Differences between importance and enactment of purposes are discussed together with reasons for these differences.
Findings
The findings overwhelmingly point to tensions between what they, the principals, believe ought to be the purposes of education and what the strategies to achieve those purposes might be, and the realities of what is actually happening. It could be argued that the results indicate a major shift away from public purposes of education to those more aligned with private purposes. Many of the barriers to achieving a greater focus in schools on public purposes are seen to be related to external (to the school) issues, such as government policy decisions, differential funding and resourcing across school sectors and emerging community and societal factors.
Research limitations/implications
This research complements other aspects of this project into the purposes of education in Australia. There are some limitations to the reported findings in so far as only government principals participated in the survey. Non‐government school principals were invited but declined to participate.
Originality/value
This is the only piece of research of its kind in Australia and provides unique insights – those of principals – into what schools are focusing on and what the leaders think they ought to be focusing on. There are clearly policy and practice implications of the research.
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Roman Iwaschkin, David Reid, Alan Day, Jim Francis and Stuart Hannabuss
FOR MOST of us, public library history usually amounts to scarcely more than rapidly dimming recollections of a handful of acts and commissions; dry facts memorised during library…
Abstract
FOR MOST of us, public library history usually amounts to scarcely more than rapidly dimming recollections of a handful of acts and commissions; dry facts memorised during library school lectures and retained just long enough to put the exams behind us. Of course, we remember the great names— Carnegie, Dewey, McColvin, and perhaps a few others—but apart from retiring old‐timers' regular assurances that it was all so much better and worse back then, we tend to know little of the day‐to‐day routines of our predecessors.
GWW Young, B Hawkins, B Kelley, E Mee, P Scott, Mike Cornford, Alan Day and David Reid
PROVIDING PRACTICAL work for student librarians is now an accepted part of library work. We undertake it because of a sense of responsibility to the profession, but there seems to…
Abstract
PROVIDING PRACTICAL work for student librarians is now an accepted part of library work. We undertake it because of a sense of responsibility to the profession, but there seems to have been little research into the question whether libraries gain or lose by accepting students for periods of practical work, looking at the question selfishly and without regard to the important issues involved.
Neil Cranston, Megan Kimber, Bill Mulford, Alan Reid and Jack Keating
The paper aims to argue that there has been a privileging of the private (social mobility) and economic (social efficiency) purposes of schooling at the expense of the public…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to argue that there has been a privileging of the private (social mobility) and economic (social efficiency) purposes of schooling at the expense of the public (democratic equality) purposes of schooling.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper employs a literature review, policy and document analysis.
Findings
Since the late 1980s, the schooling agenda in Australia has been narrowed to one that gives primacy to purposes of schooling that highlight economic orientations (social efficiency) and private purposes (social mobility).
Practical implications
The findings have wider relevance beyond Australia, as similar policy agendas are evident in many other countries raising the question as to how the shift in purposes of education in those countries might mirror those in Australia.
Originality/value
While earlier writers have examined schooling policies in Australia and noted the implications of managerialism in relation to these policies, no study has analysed these policies from the perspective of the purposes of schooling. Conceptualising schooling, and its purposes in particular, in this way refocuses attention on how societies use their educational systems to promote (or otherwise) the public good.