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The government’s ambition is to have three million more apprentices by 2020. The newness of degree apprenticeships and insufficient data make it difficult to assess their relative importance in boosting the UK economy, meeting higher skills needs of employers, closing educational attainment gaps, increasing social mobility and supporting under-represented groups into professional employment. The purpose of this paper, led by the University of Winchester and delivered by a new collaboration of private and public sector partners, is to build a pipeline between those currently failing to progress to, or engage with, degree apprenticeships and employers seeking higher skills and a broader pool of applicants.

The paper provides an analysis of collaborative initiatives and related research in England as the context for university involvement in degree apprenticeships. The case study illustrates the benefits of collaboration in targeted outreach initiatives within the local region to address gaps in progression to degree apprenticeships.

This paper illustrates how establishing a regional picture of degree apprenticeship provision, access and participation can inform effective partnerships and build capacity locally to deliver the higher skills employers need, further demonstrating the potential benefits of university involvement in degree apprenticeship provision in contributing to local and national policy ambition. It also shows how effective targeted interventions can help under-achieving groups, including those in social care and women in digital enterprises.

The authors believe this paper is the only academic analysis of the impact of Degree Apprenticeship Development Fund activity in the region.

This chapter explores queer theory as a “thought of a method” in educational ethnography by sharing stories of two third grade boys and situating them in a discussion of Britzman’s ideas about reading and Butler’s notion of fantasy. The stories are presented as a possible queer educational ethnography, in which the ethnographer writes the fantastic narrative of the boys as they read creatively to reveal and unsettle gender and reading as sites of constraint to which other constraints adhere. The boys’ reading itself is a queer reading of these constraints and as such makes alterity visible and possible. The study and the methodological framework suggest that educational ethnographers and other adults who work in schools should become attuned to the markers of constraint and alterity, so as to recognize, shelter, and maintain the alterity that children make possible. The chapter asserts children must be allowed to read for alterity, and shows how fantastic narratives that emerge from such readings are limited by the hushing of individuals who disallow alterity in classrooms. Ultimately, this chapter is relevant to ethnographers of education in that it suggests that queer theory not only is necessary to narrate and thus shelter the ways that gender can and should be unsettled in classrooms, but also allows us to narrate and shelter other queer urgencies related to fear, violence, and vulnerability that children experience or share in classrooms. Implications for the current climate of school reform based on standardization of curriculum are also discussed.

In this chapter we share some lessons we have learnt through doing research with – rather than on – people experiencing a range of mental health problems.

Our work has taken place within social, cultural, economic, and political contexts which create several problems or challenges. Through an extended dialogue, we explore how we have critically responded to each of these challenges across three phases of our projects: accessing and witnessing experiences of mental illness; understanding experiences of mental illness; and communicating mental health research.

Our aim is to stimulate creative responses to the question of how to do and disseminate research that is most likely to be helpful to people experiencing mental health problems.

Further Education in England today is over-regulated, over-inspected, and has suffered from an increasingly interventionist government agenda. Trainee teachers entering the sector are required to undertake regular reflective work, traditionally in the form of a written journal. However, where trainees use creative methods for reflection, such as stories, films, drawings, photography, and models, greater “reflexivity” and connection of theory to practice become apparent. This led me, as a teacher-educator, to inquire further into our practice, examining the impact that creative reflective expression might have on the teachers themselves, their resilience, and their ability to subvert the oppressions of the current education system. Drawing on a collaborative inquiry between myself as teacher-educator, and student/colleague David Ball, this chapter recounts the story of a year of experimentation through the coming together of a student-teacher artistic assemblage which pushed the boundaries of our teacher training curriculum and formal notions of “research”. We found that we moved in new configurations of “teacher-artist”, “student-curator”, and “audience-class” towards a notion of ourselves of “cosmic artisans” (Delueuze and Guattari, 1987) to share with the world our painful, emergent and embodied experiences of “becoming teacher”.

The passing of David Maines has left a void in the field of Symbolic Interactionism. His contributions to developing narrative sociology remain part of the foundation of the perspective, but his empirical contributions and theoretical insights were at least as important in advancing Interactionist thought on scientific principles. His teaching and mentoring of others stimulated interest in Interactionism and his career-long dedication to helping others as an Interactionist apostle were factors in encouraging students and peers to launch their own successful careers in academia and elsewhere. My intent here is to trace his career and provide examples of how his legacy both influenced the profession and provided the basis for defining Interactionism as the powerful approach it has become today.

Pre-existing music has been used to underscore the moving image since the days of ‘silent’ film, and this practice is still commonplace today in Hollywood and beyond. Such music may be ‘classical’ or ‘popular’ and can feature within the narrative of a movie diegetically, non-diegetically, or both. With regard to art music in film, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is often the composer of choice, given the popularity and familiarity of many of his compositions. However, his music is employed cinematically in a range of different situations and for a variety of purposes.

In this chapter, I focus on ways in which compositions by Mozart are used to manifest the music and death nexus present in the narrative of three films that were released in different decades. ‘Là ci darem la mano’ from Don Giovanni (1787) features in the first film I analyse, The Picture of Dorian Gray (Albert Lewin, 1945), with the aria being linked to the symbolic death of the moral compass of the protagonist. I then consider the inclusion of music from one of Mozart's symphonies in the storyline of the film Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958), the narrative of which includes the themes of deception and murder. The final film I examine is I am David (Paul Feig, 2003), in which one of the characters sacrifices his life to save that of his friend. Each example encapsulates death as embodied affect, with Mozart's music specifically impacting upon the emotions of the protagonists.

Provides a postmodern view of consultants′ experiences with diversity. Calls into question the relationship between what becomes a “diversity category” and the other differences that remain background. Looks at the political and economic system that sustains the categories of diversity in public housing consulting. Advocates a postmodern approach which includes the authors′ voices and the voices of the residents in the writing of organizational change.

This article considers the recent public debate in the UK on drug classification and the role of the Advisory Council of the Misuse of Drugs, particularly following David Nutt's departure as Chair of the ACMD. It suggests that there have been flaws in the arguments on both sides, and considers some of the implications for wider debate on regulation and control.