Citizens as Social Work Educators in a Post-Conflict Society: Reflections from Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT This paper examines how service users and carers can contribute to social work education in a post conlict society. A small-scale study undertaken in Northern Ireland is used as a case study to show how such citizens can potentially critically contribute to social work students’ understanding of the impact of conlict on individuals, groups and communities. The need to appreciate the effects of such community division is now a core knowledge requirement of the social work curriculum in Northern Ireland. The article reports on research indings with service users, carers and agency representatives which points to ways in which social work students can achieve a critical understanding of the impact of conlict. Northern Ireland, in this way, is presented as a divided society, still in a state of adjustment and evolution, following a period of protracted community strife and violence. The author suggests that individuals who have been directly affected by conlict can contribute in an informed and critical way to social work students’ developing knowledge and experience in an important area of their professional competence and understanding of anti-oppressive practice more broadly.

Gene-environment interactions and aging visual function: a classical twin study.

OBJECTIVE:
To elucidate the contribution of environmental versus genetic factors to the significant losses in visual function associated with normal aging.
DESIGN:
A classical twin study.
PARTICIPANTS:
Forty-two twin pairs (21 monozygotic and 21 dizygotic; age 57-75 years) with normal visual acuity recruited through the Australian Twin Registry.
METHODS:
Cone function was evaluated by establishing absolute cone contrast thresholds to flicker (4 and 14 Hz) and isoluminant red and blue colors under steady state adaptation. Adaptation dynamics were determined for both cones and rods. Bootstrap resampling was used to return robust intrapair correlations for each parameter.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES:
Psychophysical thresholds and adaptational time constants.
RESULTS:
The intrapair correlations for all color and flicker thresholds, as well as cone absolute threshold, were significantly higher in monozygotic compared with dizygotic twin pairs (P<0.05). Rod absolute thresholds (P = 0.28) and rod and cone recovery rate (P = 0.83; P = 0.79, respectively) did not show significant differences between monozygotic and dizygotic twins in their intrapair correlations, indicating that steady-state cone thresholds and flicker thresholds have a marked genetic contribution, in contrast with rod thresholds and adaptive processes, which are influenced more by environmental factors over a lifetime.
CONCLUSIONS:
Genes and the environment contribute differently to important neuronal processes in the retina and the role they may play in the decline in visual function as we age. Consequently, retinal structures involved in rod thresholds and adaptive processes may be responsive to appropriate environmental manipulation. Because the functions tested are commonly impaired in the early stages of age-related macular degeneration, which is known to have a multifactorial etiology, this study supports the view that pathogenic pathways early in the disease may be altered by appropriate environmental intervention.

Towards Educational Inclusion in a Transforming Society: Some Lessons from Community Relations and Special Needs Education in Northern Ireland

This paper takes an original approach to an important aspect of educational research and its role in transforming societies, namely that of educational inclusion. It brings together what some might consider two rather strange bedfellows i.e. community relations and special needs education. It also draws upon new tools for theorising educational inclusion, which give a central role to the discursive nature of human conduct and which take a view of human behaviour as socially embedded and meaningful.

Towards Educational Inclusion in a Contested Society: From Critical Reflection to Cultural Action

This paper is written by democratic educators who stand for the idea that is it worth developing, through classrooms and schools, a socially just (egalitarian), anti-discriminatory society where interdependent relationships are valued. This paper significantly develops some of the ideas explored in the authors’ earlier contribution concerned with progress in Northern Ireland towards educational inclusion, and how this might more effectively advance in a post-conflict transforming society. In particular, the paper poses the ‘so what’ question, and it responds by exploring the practical implications of six key ideas thought essential for transforming learning environments supportive of cultural diversity, equity and excellence for all. In addition, it includes examples of how school staff, along with collaborating partners, might utilize these key principles in order to facilitate school improvement.

Can Civil Society Succeed Where Elites Have Failed in the War on Sectarianism? Towards an infinitely demanding politics for the North

Caught between the well-armed imaginations of paramilitary organisations competing for the hearts and minds of a divided population, and state engineering of a liberal peace, civil society's impact on Northern Ireland's identity politics was limited during the thirty-year conflict. Specifically, the community and voluntary sector itself has tended to replicate as much as it challenged patterns of segregation in many of its own structures. With plans set out in the Northern Ireland Executive's Programme for Government (2008-11) to engage civil society in opening a new era of ‘good relations’ work to counter sectarianism and racism, civil society organisations will face a complex terrain, facing scepticism about their contribution to peace-making before the Good Friday Agreement, and working in a post-Agreement environment marked by continuing elite and communal antagonism demonstrated by the crisis at the turn of 2009 over devolution of justice and policing powers to the Northern Ireland Executive. A significant aspect of the resolution was a belated agreement by Sinn Fein and the DUP on a new community relation strategy, Cohesion, Sharing and Integration. This article suggests that civil society has a significant role to play in encouraging communities to confront the contradictions and tensions that continue to haunt the political architects of the Good Friday Agreement by affirming a radical and contingent vision of democracy as democratisation at a distance from the identity-saturated politics of the state-region of Northern Ireland. It draws on the work of Simon Critchley, Emmanuel Levinas and Wendy Brown, to offer an approach to identity politics in post-conflict Northern Ireland, focusing on the future orientation of civil society.

Methods and code for 'classical' age-modelling of radiocarbon sequences.

Age–depth models form the backbone of most palaeoenvironmental studies. However, procedures for constructing chronologies vary between studies, they are usually not explained sufficiently, and some are inadequate for handling calibrated radiocarbon dates. An alternative method based on importance sampling through calibrated dates is proposed. Dedicated R code is presented which works with calibrated radiocarbon as well as other dates, and provides a simple, systematic, transparent, documented and customizable alternative. The code automatically produces age–depth models, enabling exploration of the impacts of different assumptions (e.g., model type, hiatuses, age offsets, outliers, and extrapolation).

Organisational Self-Evaluation and Teacher Education for Community Relations in a Transforming Society?

During 2004, the School of Education at the University of Ulster embarked on an innovative three-year project designed to embed community relations objectives within initial teacher education. With the advent of more peaceful times in Northern Ireland, this was a precipitous time for initial teacher educators to review the preparation given to beginner teachers for teaching in an increasingly pluralist society emerging from conflict. The present paper reports on one very specific and time-limited element of the broader project. That is, development work designed to investigate the possibilities of using processes of self-review and evaluation as a lever for improvements in initial teacher education for community relations. Following a brief contextualisation, the background to, and the development of, a set of materials designed to support rigorous and systematic self-review of all aspects of provision in a university-based initial teacher education department is described. The Community Relations Index for Initial Teacher Education (Cr-ITE) was envisaged as being of use to initial teacher education establishments in order to help teacher educators take responsibility for rigorous learning from their practice, whilst placing inclusive values at the centre of organisational development. The final section includes further critical reflection on the role of organisational self-review in transforming teacher education for inclusion in a society emerging from longstanding communal conflict.