23022 research outputs found
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Fostering teacher agency in school-based climate change education in England, UK
Get PDFDrawing on conceptualisations of teacher agency through the ecological approach, and in the context of recent policy activity, we explored primary and secondary school teachers' experiences of agency in relation to climate change education in England. Data collection occurred over two distinct but related phases. Firstly, we completed a series of interviews with the same three secondary geography teachers at the outset of their careers (15 interviews during 2020–2022) which included 1 year of Initial Teacher Education and 2 years as Early Career Teachers (ECTs). Secondly, we captured the experiences of further 24 in-service science and geography teachers (with expertise beyond the ECT period) through two online workshops held in November 2022, the first for primary teachers (n = 10) and the second for secondary teachers (n = 10). Interviews were held with four teachers (two primary and two secondary) who could not attend the workshops (n = 4). Our findings underline the importance of structures (e.g. school leadership) and culture (e.g. ideas and values) in fostering teacher agency. Teachers across primary and secondary phases and at different career stages highlighted the value of curricular and extra-curricular spaces for climate change education. If all children and young people are to access effective climate change education, researchers and policy makers will need to further consider ways to ensure teachers can achieve agency, including through access to transformative professional learning which fosters agency in relation to climate change education
“I have to stay inside …”: Experiences of air pollution for people with asthma
Get PDFAsthma, characterized by airway inflammation, sensitization and constriction, and leading to symptoms including cough and dyspnoea, affects millions of people globally. Air pollution is a known asthma trigger, yet how it is experienced is understudied and how individuals with asthma interact with air quality information and manage exacerbation risks is unclear. This study aimed to explore how people living with asthma in Scotland, UK, experienced and managed their asthma in relation to air pollution. We explored these issues with 36 participants using semi-structured interviews. We found that self-protection measures were influenced by place and sense of control (with the home being a “safe space”), and that the perception of clean(er) air had a liberating effect on outdoor activities. We discuss how these insights could shape air quality-related health advice in future
The effects of different types of organisational workplace mental health interventions on mental health and wellbeing in healthcare workers: a systematic review
Get PDFObjective To determine if and which types of organisational interventions conducted in small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) in healthcare are effective on mental health and wellbeing. Methods Following PRISMA guidelines, we searched six scientific databases, assessed the methodological quality of eligible studies using QATQS and grouped them into six organisational intervention types for narrative synthesis. Only controlled studies with at least one follow-up were eligible. Results We identified 22 studies (23 articles) mainly conducted in hospitals with 16 studies rated of strong or moderate methodological quality. More than two thirds (68%) of the studies reported improvements in at least one primary outcome (mental wellbeing, burnout, stress, symptoms of depression or anxiety), most consistently in burnout with eleven out of thirteen studies. We found a strong level of evidence for the intervention type “Job and task modifications” and a moderate level of evidence for the types “Flexible work and scheduling” and “Changes in the physical work environment”. For all other types, the level of evidence was insufficient. We found no studies conducted with an independent SME, however five studies with SMEs attached to a larger organisational structure. The effectiveness of workplace mental health interventions in these SMEs was mixed. Conclusion Organisational interventions in healthcare workers can be effective in improving mental health, especially in reducing burnout. Intervention types where the change in the work environment constitutes the intervention had the highest level of evidence. More research is needed for SMEs and for healthcare workers other than hospital-based physicians and nurses.Additional co-authors: Katharina Schnitzspahn, Mónika Ditta Tóth, Chantal van Audenhove, Jaap van Weeghel, Kristian Wahlbeck, Ella Arensman, Birgit A. Greiner & MENTUPP consortium member
How can agent-based modelling provide new insights into the impact of minimum unit pricing in Scotland?
Get PDFIn recent years we have gained insight into the impact of minimum unit pricing (MUP)-a legal floor price below which a given volume of alcohol cannot be sold-on population-level reductions in alcohol sales, consumption and harm. However, several questions remain unanswered including how individual-level purchasing changes impact the local economy (e.g., balance between on-licence and off-licence outlets), lead to long-term population-level trends (e.g., youth drinking) and social harms (e.g., violence). Agent-based modelling captures heterogeneity, emergence, feedback loops and adaptive and dynamic features, which provides an opportunity to understand the nuanced effects of MUP. Agent-based models (ABM) simulate heterogeneous agents (e.g., individuals, organisations) often situated in space and time that interact with other agents and/or with their environment, allowing us to identify the mechanisms underlying social phenomena. ABMs are particularly useful for theory development, and testing and simulating the impacts of policies and interventions. We illustrate how ABMs could be applied to generate novel insights and provide best estimates of social network effects, and changes in purchasing behaviour and social harms, due to the implementation of MUP. ABMs like other modelling approaches can simulate alternative implementations of MUP (e.g., policy intensity [£0.50, £0.60] or spatial scales [local, national]) but can also provide an understanding of the potential impact of MUP on different population groups (e.g., alcohol exposure of young people who are not yet drinking). Using ABMs to understand the impact of MUP would provide new insights to complement those from traditional epidemiological and other modelling methods.Funding information Chief Scientist Office, Grant/Award Number: SPHSU20; Medical Research Council, Grant/Award Number: MC_UU_00022/5
Uncertain world: How children’s curiosity and intolerance of uncertainty relate to their behaviour and emotion under uncertainty
Get PDFCuriosity and intolerance of uncertainty (IU) are both thought to drive information seeking but may have different affective profiles; curiosity is often associated with positive affective responses to uncertainty and improved learning outcomes, whereas IU is associated with negative affective responses and anxiety. Curiosity and IU have not previously been examined together in children but may both play an important role in understanding how children respond to uncertainty. Our research aimed to examine how individual differences in parent-reported curiosity and IU were associated with behavioural and emotional responses to uncertainty. Children aged 8 to 12 (n = 133) completed a game in which they were presented with an array of buttons on the screen that, when clicked, played neutral or aversive sounds. Children pressed buttons (information seeking) and rated their emotions and worry under conditions of high and low uncertainty. Facial expressions were also monitored for affective responses. Analyses revealed that children sought more information under high uncertainty than low uncertainty trials and that more curious children reported feeling happier. Contrary to expectations, IU and curiosity were not related to the number of buttons children pressed, nor to their self-reported emotion or worry. However, exploratory analyses suggest that children who are high in IU may engage in more information seeking that reflects checking or safety-seeking than those who are low in IU. In addition, our findings suggest that there may be age-related change in the effects of IU on worry, with IU more strongly related to worry in uncertain situations for older children than younger children
"History from Marble": Church Notes and Epigraphy in Early Modern England
Get PDFThis essay examines a new form of historical writing that emerged in seventeenth-century England. Mixing the study of inscriptions with the examination of tombs and other church monuments, this form of history came to be known as “history from marble”. Its practitioners drew upon the methods of epigraphy pioneered by sixteenth-century Italian humanists and the genealogical and heraldic research characteristic of late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century English antiquarianism. What resulted was a distinctive (and distinctly English) early modern historical innovation. This essay traces that development through scrutiny of four landmark works in this tradition by William Camden, Hugh Holland, John Weever and Thomas Dingley. Shaped by both continental classical philology and the specifically English interest in material culture post-Reformation, these works were at once genealogical, heraldic, epigraphic and preservationist. Influenced by memories of the recent past, but also by contemporary methodological innovations, they spearheaded a transformation in English historical and antiquarian culture. In their method of studying and writing about churches and their interest in monuments and inscriptions, they also promoted, perhaps for the first time (in an English context at least), a distinctly visual sense of the past
The geographies and complexities of online networks in the off-street sex market
No full textExploitation and human trafficking in sex markets tend to include both online and offline spaces. Understanding the scale, complexity and geography of networks is important in policing human trafficking and online escort adverts are often used to identify organised crime in this context. This article aims to make a methodological contribution to how data relating to online networks in the sex market can be collected and analysed. Through the application of web scraping, social network analysis and principal component analysis, the digital traces of 15,016 online networks operating on an adult services website were analysed in relation to their complexity and geographical patterning. The findings suggest that structural and geographical characteristics are useful for understanding the heterogeneity of online networks. Analysing networks, as opposed to assessing escort adverts, offers a more robust approach to understanding the sex market, which is more sensitive to the continuum of experiences encapsulated therein
The early impact of the UK's new alcohol taxation system on product strength and price: an exploratory comparative descriptive study
Get PDFObjectives: We explored the early impact of changes to the UK alcohol tax system, implemented in August 2023, on the strength and price of alcoholic products available for sale on the website of the largest supermarket in England. Study design: Our comparative descriptive study using longitudinal brand-level data was not preregistered and should be considered exploratory. Methods: Data were collected weekly (May to October 2023) using automated web scraping tools. Outcomes were product strength (% alcohol by volume [ABV]) and price (per 10 mL of pure alcohol and per litre of product). We undertook paired t-tests, two-sample KolmogoroveSmirnov tests, and quantile regression to compare outcomes before and after the tax changes. Beer, cider, spirits, and ready-to-drinks (RTDs) were analysed separately. Results: There was a reduction in the mean strength of beer, driven by manufacturers reformulating a small number of weaker beers, moving them into a lower tax band (<3.5%ABV). The mean price per 10 mL of alcohol and per litre of product was significantly higher after the new tax system for beer, cider, and spirits and significantly lower for RTDs. Increases in the price of beer tended to occur across the entire distribution, whereas increases in the price of cider occurred among more expensive products. Conclusions: Changes to product strength tended to occur among weaker products near the new lowest tax band, suggesting tax bands may be a potential stimulus for change. Reformulation of stronger products would have better public health potential. Longer term monitoring, including data on purchasing/consumption, is required
Supernatural spectacle cinema: the anxiety of un-belonging and the haunted house in contemporary Hollywood horror films
Get PDFMuch recent scholarship involving ghosts has focused upon spectrality as a metaphor for trauma. While this is a fruitful area of research, in the case of Film Studies, this risks flattening haunted house films to the status of ‘text’ and overlooking their filmic quality, which sets them apart from other artforms.
This thesis centres the supernatural as a diegetic reality, focusing on the cinematic representations of ghosts, demonic entities, and haunted houses in the period between 1979 and 2015. To examine these hauntings, the thesis reads the films using three technical languages of filmmaking; cinematography, set design, and sound design. These languages make the mechanisms of hauntology visible, making this a complementary approach to traditional readings based on spectrality and trauma.
These readings are underpinned by theoretical and thematic work around belonging, the influence of technology, and the cultural stagnation created by neoliberalism. Mark Fisher’s work on the weird and the eerie becomes the starting point for belonging, and reading the languages of filmmaking reveals that in these films, it is the living that do not belong in these spaces, rather than the dead. The supernatural keeps these haunted houses caught in the past, unavailable for occupation in the present. While Fisher’s assertion that neoliberalism created a post-millennial cultural stagnation in the UK, these films reveal the same problem in the United States, where these Hollywood-produced films are haunted by the spectres of The Amityville Horror (Stuart Rosenberg, 1979) and Poltergeist (Tobe Hooper, 1982). The discussion explores the extent to which the living can return the domestic spaces to the present.
This thesis examines how the technical languages of filmmaking represent haunting on screen and visualise aspects of the Gothic around space and isolation, while revealing this preoccupation with the weird and eerie as central components of a haunting
HIV campaigns and queer activism in Athens and their transnational context, ca. 1985–ca. 1997
No full textFirst paragraph: “I had the opportunity to travel to America and Europe. I … encountered ACT UP [AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power] when it was created in New York,” narrates Grigoris Vallianatos, a prominent cisgender gay and HIV activist in Greece, highlighting the main question around which this article revolves: What was the link between queer activism and HIV campaigns in Greece, and how were such potential synergies affected by local, national, and transnational developments? In focusing on queer activists, the article does not seek to reinforce the perception that there is an indelible link between gay men and HIV as well as AIDS. This idea has been at the heart of the stigmatization of gay men as superspreaders of HIV in Greece in the 1980s and 1990s, as the article shows. By contrast, I turn the tables and explore how queer activists discussed HIV and their sexuality and, crucially, whether they also engaged with heterosexual individuals in their safer sex campaigns. However, the reception of such mobilizations and, more broadly, the popularity of safer sex in Greece are beyond the scope of this article.Output Status: Forthcomin