In touch to teach: Do nurse educators need to maintain or possess recent clinical practice to facilitate student learning?

In recent years UK university-based nurse educators have seen a reduction in their responsibilities for nursing students’ practice-based assessments. Many university-based nurse educators feel that this lack of input into students’ clinical assessments leaves them open to criticism as they are perceived to be less “in-touch” with clinical practice and that their knowledge to teach nursing students is diminished as a result. This paper examines and debates some interpretations of the term “recent clinical practice” and challenges the misconception among many in the profession, as well as government and professional bodies, that university-based nurse educators require recent clinical practice to effectively teach students and enhance the student learning experience in the academic university setting.

An examination of student and provider perceptions of voluntary sector social work placements in Northern Ireland

Practice based learning in Northern Ireland is a core element of social work education and comprising 50% of the degree programme for undergraduate and postgraduate students. This article presents evidence about the perceptions of practice learning from voluntary sector/non-government organisation (NGO) placement providers and final year social work students on social work degree programmes in Northern Ireland in 2011. It draws on data from 121 respondents from189 final year students and focus group interviews with voluntary sector providers offering 16% (85) of the total placements available to students. The agencies who participated in the research study provide a total of 55 PLOs to social work students, and are therefore fairly representative in terms of voluntary sector (NGO) provision. The article locates these data in the context of practice learning pedagogy and the changes introduced by the Regional Strategy for Practice Learning Provision in Northern Ireland 2010–2015. Several themes emerged including; induction, support and guidance, practice educator/student relationship, professional identity and confidence in risk assessment and decision-making. Social work educators, placement providers and employers must be cognisant of newly qualified social workers’ needs in terms of consolidating knowledge within the formative stages of their professional development.

Design-Build Experiences and Student Safety

Design-build experiences (DBEs) are an essential element of any programme based on the CDIO methodology. They enable students to develop practical hands-on skills, they enable the learning of theory by stealth and they provide a forum for developing professional skills such as team working and project management. The hands-on aspect of certain DBEs has significant risk associated with it, which must be addressed through the formal evaluation of risks and the development of a methodology for controlling them. This paper considers the aspects of design-build experiences that may impact on student safety. In particular, it examines the risk associated with each of the four stages of CDIO and gives examples of risks which may commonly apply across engineering disciplines. A system for assessing and controlling the risks in any particular DBE is presented and the paper finishes by discussing the significance of health and safety in the educational environment.

Caged birds and cloning machines: how student imagery 'speaks' to us about cultures of schooling and student participation

With the advent of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), there is an increasing requirement that schools ensure children and young people's views are voiced, listened to and taken seriously on matters of significance. Encouraging these shifts by law is one thing; changing the culture in schools is another. For a significant proportion of schools, actively engaging students' voices on how they experience education poses a significant challenge and crucial gaps may exist between the rhetoric espoused and a school's readiness for genuine student involvement. This ethnographic study illuminates tensions that persist between headteachers' espoused views of how students are valued and students' creative images of their actual post-primary schooling experience. If cultures of schooling are to nurture the true spirit of democratic pupil participation implied by changes in the law, there is a need to develop genuine processes of student engagement in which students and staff can collaborate towards greater shared understandings of a school's priorities.

Impact of Government Intervention on Employment Change and Plant Closure in Northern Ireland, 1983-97

Harris R. and Trainor M. (2007) Impact of government intervention on employment change and plant closure in Northern Ireland, 1983-97, Regional Studies 41, 51-63. Financial assistance to manufacturing industry is an important element of the industrial development policy in Northern Ireland. This paper uses the individual plant-level records of the Annual Respondents Database (ARD) for the Northern Ireland manufacturing sector (1983-97) matched to the plant-level details of financial support provided by the Industrial Development Board to examine the effect of selective financial assistance (SFA) on employment change and plant closure. It is found that SFA concentrated on protecting existing, rather than new, enterprises in terms of employment change. Using a hazard model, it is found that the receipt of SFA significantly reduced the probability of plant closure by, on average, between 15 and 24%.