Making Social Work Education App’ier : The Process of Developing Information-based Apps for Social Work Education and Practice

Mobile App technology in social work education remains in the embryonic stages of development with a few notable exceptions. The use of Apps in College and University settings has been reported in other sectors of higher education, although there is a paucity of research in relation to its relevance to social work education and practice. The following article describes the creation of four social work education and practice Apps by a team of social work educators. The primary focus is on the design process and the partnership approach to the creation of the tools. It also outlines the rationale for the App development, the working process and the theoretical framework underpinning mobile learning. Furthermore, it provides information on the level of usage of the Apps according to geographical location, download information and time spent on each section of the App. The article also incorporates a pragmatic summary of developmental guidelines which may aid social work educators in the development and implementation of specialist information-based Apps for education and practice.

Difference, Diversity and Difficulty: Problems in Adult Peace Education in Northern Ireland

The peace process in Northern Ireland has been hailed, variously, as the successful resolution to one of the world's most intractable conflicts, and as a failed attempt to reconcile the conflciting claims of the two main ethnonationalist communities. At both these points, and at every other point along the continuum, recognition is given to the centrality of education. This article looks at the role played by adult learning, and contrasts two fundamentally different apporaoches. In one, Enlightenment assumptions about the power of knowledge to dispel prejudice have run alongside attempts to create a world of shared values; in the other, a postmodern acceptance of different cultures has accompnaied a peace process that builds upon ethnic diistinctions. As with the Dayton Accord and with other peace agreements brokered with international assistance, the consociational model of governance has been chosen for Northern Ireland in order to create a political equilibrium between the unionists and nationalists. Such a political framework reverses the direction of previous integrationist educational policies in favour of a celebration of difference, an approach that is fraught with difficulties.

Application of a Generic Curriculum Change Management Process to Motivate and Excite Students

The School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Queen’s University Belfast is committed to enhancing the quality of student learning. A plan to implement curriculum change around this goal has been formulated and is already several years underway. A specific part of the plan involved instigating a first year introductory module to engage the students in the practice of their engineering discipline. The complicated nature of devising this type of module with regard to objectives, resources, timeframe and the number of students involved meant that a very systematic approach had to be adopted. This paper presents the simple but definitive change management process that facilitated in the creation of a first year Introduction to Engineering module. The generic nature of this process is described and its application to other facets of curriculum change is discussed. Within this process the importance of collaboration to establish a forward momentum is emphasised. This enables academic staff to progress as a group and build curriculum development based on their own experiences, expertise and established practice

The Design Process- Making It Relevant For Students

Within the ever-changing arenas of architectural design and education, the core element of architectural education remains: that of the design process. The consideration of how to design in addition to what to design presents architectural educators with that most constant and demanding challenge of how do we best teach the design process?

This challenge is arguably most acute at a student's early stages of their architectural education. In their first years in architecture, students will commonly concentrate on the end product rather than the process. This is, in many ways, understandable. A great deal of time, money and effort go into their final presentations. They believe that it is what is on the wall that is going to be assessed. Armed with new computer skills, they want to produce eye-catching graphics that are often no more than a celebration of a CAD package. In an era of increasing speed, immediacy of information and powerful advertising it is unsurprising that students want to race quickly to presenting an end-product.

Recognising that trend, new teaching methods and models were introduced into the second year undergraduate studio over the past two years at Queen's University Belfast, aimed at promoting student self-reflection and making the design process more relevant to the students. This paper will first generate a critical discussion on the difficulties associated with the design process before outlining some of the methods employed to help promote the following; an understanding of concept, personalisation of the design process for the individual student; adding realism and value to the design process and finally, getting he students to play to their strengths in illustrating their design process like an element of product. Frameworks, examples, outcomes and student feedback will all be presented to help illustrate the effectiveness of the new strategies employed in making the design process firstly, more relevant and therefore secondly, of greater value, to the architecture student.

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Social Work Education: Preparing Students for Practice Learning

Evaluating the effectiveness of social work education has become a topic of major interest in the UK in the wake of a succession of child-care tragedies that have undermined confidence in the profession. However, many key aspects of social work education remain under-researched and/or contested and our knowledge of how students acquire and develop professional expertise remains limited. This paper reports on the first part of a longitudinal study aimed at developing evidence-based knowledge in this area by considering student perceptions at different stages of their social work education at Queen’s University Belfast. Focusing on the strengths and limitations of preparatory teaching, and their first experience of practice learning, this article considers the impact of demographic factors, including age, gender and experience, on how students experience the learning process. The findings indicate a significant level of disjunction between academic and practice learning and suggest that better integration between these two domains of learning is needed if social work students are to be more effectively prepared for the challenges they are likely to encounter in practice.

Revisioning assessment through a children’s rights approach: implications for policy, process and practice

The linkage between the impact of assessment and compliance with children’s rights is a connection, which although seemingly obvious, is nonetheless rarely made, particularly by governments, which, as signatories to the relevant human rights treaties, have the primary responsibility for ensuring that educational practice is compatible with international children’s rights standards. While some jurisdictions are explicit about an adherence to children’s rights frameworks in general policy documentation, such a commitment rarely features when the focus is on assessment and testing. Thus, in spite of significant public and academic attention given to the consequences of assessment for children and governments committed to working within children’s rights standards, the two are rarely considered together. This paper examines the implications for the policy, process and practice of assessment in light of international human rights standards. Three key children’s rights principles and standards are used as a critical lens to examine assessment policy and practice: (1) best interests; (2) non-discrimination; and (3) participation. The paper seeks new insights into the complexities of assessment practice from the critical perspective of children’s rights and argues that such standards not only provide a convenient benchmark for developing, implementing and evaluating assessment practices, but also acknowledge the significance of assessment in the delivery of children’s rights to, in and through education more generally.

A work-based research assessment of the impact of 'lean manufacturing' on health and safety education within an SME

Globalisation has had a major impact on the engineering industry as pacific Rim countries undercut manufacturing costs and provide a more cost-effective location for many businesses. Engineering in Nortehrn Ireland has mostly declined owing to increased competition from these countries. Engineering companies are now forced to streamline their production processes and employ cost-reducing practices in order to meet customer demands at reduced prices. This article aims to analyse the effects of one such streamlining endeavour which was first introduced after World War II in Japan- 'lean manufacturing' . 'Lean manufacturing' aims to reduce all wasteful activities within the production process in order to improve productivity, while reducing manufacturing costs. The work-based project under consideration was concerned with the impact 'lean manufacturing' may have on health and safety performance and education within an engineering company. The focus of the project was to determine through work-based research, and quantitative analysis, the employee perception on health and safety: has it changed (either positively or negatively), as a consequence of implementing 'lean manufacturing'.

International perspectives on the influence of structure and process of weaning from mechanical ventilation.

Background 
Recently, clinical and research attention has been focused on refining weaning processes to improve outcomes for critically ill patients who require mechanical ventilation. One such process, use of a weaning protocol, has yielded conflicting results, arguably because of the influence of existing context and processes.

Objective 
To compare international data to assess differences in context and processes in intensive care units that could influence weaning.  

Methods 
Review of existing national data on provision of care for critically ill patients, including structure, staffing, skill mix, education, roles, and responsibilities for weaning in intensive care units of selected countries.

Results 
Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom showed similarities in critical care provision, structure, skill mix, and staffing ratios in intensive care units. Weaning in these countries is generally a collaborative process between nurses and physicians. Notable differences in intensive care units in the United States were the frequent use of an open structure and inclusion of respiratory therapists on the intensive care unit’s health care team. Nurses may be excluded from direct management of ventilator weaning in some institutions, as this role is primarily assumed by respiratory therapists guided by medical directives. Availability of critical care beds was highest in the United States and lowest in the United Kingdom.

Conclusion 
Context and processes of care that could influence ventilator weaning outcomes varied considerably across countries. Further quantification of these contextual influences should be considered when translating research findings into local clinical practice and when designing randomized, controlled trials.

Sensing Spaces:A Body-oriented Architectural Design Education

The contemporary dominance of visuality has turned our understanding of space into a mode of unidirectional experience that externalizes other sensual capacities of the body while perceiving the built environment. This affects not only architectural practice but also architectural education when an introduction to the concept of space is often challenging, especially for the students who have limited spatial and sensual training. Considering that an architectural work is not perceived as a series of retinal pictures but as a repeated multi-sensory experience, the problem definitions in the design studio need to be disengaged from the dominance of a ‘focused vision’ and be re-constructed in a holistic manner. A method to address this approach is to enable the students to refer to their own sensual experiences of the built environment as a part of their design processes. This paper focuses on a particular approach to the second year architectural design teaching which has been followed in the Department of Architecture at Izmir University of Economics for the last three years. The very first architectural project of the studio and the program, entitled ‘Sensing Spaces’, is conducted as a multi-staged design process including ‘sense games, analyses of organs and their interpretations into space’. The objectives of this four-week project are to explore the sense of space through the design of a three-dimensional assembly, to create an awareness of the significance of the senses in the design process and to experiment with re-interpreted forms of bodily parts. Hence, the students are encouraged to explore architectural space through their ‘tactile, olfactory, auditory, gustative and visual stimuli’. In this paper, based on a series of examples, architectural space is examined beyond its boundaries of structure, form and function, and spatial design is considered as an activity of re-constructing the built environment through the awareness of bodily senses.

Making Sense of Leaving Care: The contribution of Bridges Model of Transition to Understanding the Psycho-social process.

This paper is based on research into the transition of young people leaving public care in Romania. Using this specific country example, the paper aims to contribute to present understandings of the psycho-social transition of young people from care to independent living by introducing the use of Bridges (2002) to build on existing theories and literature. The research discussed involved mixed methods design and was implemented in three phases: semi-structured interviews with 34 care leavers, focus groups with 32 professionals, and a professional-service user working group. The overall findings confirmed that young people experience two different, but interconnected transitions - social and psychological - which take place at different paces. A number of theoretical perpectives are explored to make sense of this transition including attachment theory, focal theory and identity. In addition, a new model for understanding the complex process of transitions was adapted from Bridges’ (2002) to capture the clear complexity of transition which the findings demonstrated in terms of their psycho-social transition. The paper concludes with messages for leaving and after care services with an emphasis on managing the psycho-social transition from care to independent living.

Leisure goods, education attainment and fertility choice

This paper proposes a novel mechanism for the fertility decline that occurred across the world since the late nineteenth century. It suggests that the rise in the cost of children relative to leisure goods in the process of development contributed to the decline in fertility. The paper develops a unified growth model in which children are substitutes for leisure goods in the parental utility function. The theory suggests that the rise in income, the decline in the relative price of leisure goods and the increase in educational attainment in the process of development speed up the demographic transition from high to low fertility and contributed to the transition from stagnation to growth.

Research ethics committees: values and power in higher education

The rise of research governance structures in universities has created huge disquiet amongst academic researchers. The unquestioning adoption of a medical model of ethical review based upon positivist methodological assumptions has created for many a mismatch between their own ongoing ethical research practice and the process of obtaining clearance from Research Ethics Committees (REC). This paper examines the issues that have contributed to dissatisfaction with the ethical review model that is prevalent within the modern university. Using examples from the authors’ own experiences, the dynamics of values, interests and power in research governance is examined from multiple perspectives including that of REC member and applicant; lecturer/student supervisor; researcher; and
university administrator. The paper reveals a rift between the values and objectives of the key players in research governance within the modern university and concludes by asking whether differences can be resolved so that a collaborative approach to ethical review may be incorporated into a renewed academic research culture. It is suggested that the alternative is increasing alienation from anything to do with ‘ethics’, with potentially serious consequences for the ethical standards of social research.

ArchiBabel: Tracing the Writing Architecture Project in Architectural Education

Though much recent scholarship has investigated the potential of writing in creative practice (including visual arts, drama, even choreography), there are few models in the literature which discuss writing in the context of architectural education. The paper presented here aims to address this dearth of pedagogical research, analysing the cross-disciplinary Writing Architecture Project based in the undergraduate course of the School of Architecture at QUB. Over the course of four years, teaching staff, in partnership with the university's Learning Development Service, technicians and specialist librarians, have addressed an unfortunately persistent struggle for both architecture students and professionals alike to research and construct argument in written form. The paper examines the current problem as identified in the literature before analysing the efficacy of the variety of teaching methods used in the Writing Architecture Project, with conclusions about the project’s success and continuing challenges.