General practitioners’ perceptions of the barriers and solutions to good quality palliative care in dementia

The general practitioner (GP) is in a pivotal position to initiate and adapt care for their patients living with dementia. This study aimed to elicit GPs' perceptions of the potential barriers and solutions to the provision of good-quality palliative care in dementia in their practices. A postal survey of GPs across Northern Ireland was conducted with open-ended items soliciting for barriers in their practices and possible solutions; 40.6% (138/340) were returned completed. Barriers to palliative care in dementia were perceived to be a dementia knowledge deficit for healthcare staff and the public, a resource shortfall within the GP practice and community, poor team coordination alongside inappropriate dementia care provision, and disagreements from and within families. These findings have significant implications for educators and clinicians as enhanced dementia education and training were highlighted as a strong agenda for GPs with the suggestions of dementia awareness programmes for the public.

‘Plugging the Gap’: Shared Education and the promotion of community relations through schools in Northern Ireland

Although there is no consensus amongst educationalists as to the role schools play as drivers of hostilities in divided societies, there is broad agreement that they can facilitate more positive intergroup relations. In Northern Ireland the promotion of school based inter-group contact has been offered as a means through which this can happen. Until 2007, the approach was twofold, reflected on the one hand in short-term contact opportunities for pupils in predominantly Catholic and Protestant schools, and on the other, in support for integrated schools which educate Catholics and Protestants together. In 2007 the Shared Education Programme was introduced to ‘bridge the gap’ between short-term opportunities for contact, and ‘full immersion’ integrated schools. Informed by contact theory, shared education offers curriculum based interaction between pupils attending all school types, aimed at promoting the type of contact likely to reduce negative social attitudes and ultimately contribute to social harmony. In this paper, we examine the impact of shared education thus far. Our analysis suggests that whilst shared education is generally effective in promoting positive assessments of other group members, there is a danger that programme impact may be inhibited by the foregrounding of educational over reconciliation priorities. Appreciating that the downplaying reconciliation objectives may have been necessary when the programme was established in order to maximize recruitment to it, we argue that if the full potential of shared education is to be realized, moving forward, it is important for schools to engage with issues of group differences.

QA and Enhancement Marketplace for HEIs – An Erasmus+ project

Improving European education and training system quality has been set as a key target in Europe’s strategy to become a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy by 2020 (European Commission, 2010). These objectives are more specifically defined in the so called Modernisation Agenda (European Commission, 2011). More specifically it sets a goal to improve the quality and relevance of higher education. In this process external evaluation and
Proceedings of the 11th International CDIO Conference, Chengdu University of Information Technology,
Chengdu, Sichuan, P.R. China, June 8-11, 2015.
self-assessment are seen in a key role! In the CDIO approach the 12 CDIO standards provide a framework for continuous improvement. Each institution/institutional department are encouraged to regularly do the self-evaluation using the CDIO Standards. Eight European universities identified a need for further enhancement of the self-evaluations and creation of processes with peers to reduce the inertia of heavy accreditations/evaluations in HEIs. In September 2014 these universities started an Erasmus+ project (QAEMarketPlace4HEI) aiming at
1. Developing a collaborative, comprehensive and accessible evaluation process model, methods and tools for HEIs to complement the accreditation systems.
2. Promoting, increasing and exploiting further the European collaboration in the evaluation processes and the exchange of best practices.
3. Disseminating the model, best practices and widen the cooperation to new HEIs in Europe through the partner networks.

Irish language education and the national ideal: The dynamics of nationalism in Northern Ireland

Since the beginning of the Northern Ireland conflict in the late 1960s, Irish nationalism has been identified as a prominent force in the political culture of the state. Recent studies have suggested, however, that the ‘Nationalist’ population has become increasingly content within the new political framework created by the peace process and the aspiration for Irish unity diminished. In placing the Northern Ireland situation within the theoretical framework of nationalism, this paper will analyse how these changing priorities have been possible. Through an analysis of Irish language study in Northern Ireland's schools, the paper will examine how the political ideals espoused by the nationalist Sinn Féin Party reflected the priorities of the ‘nationalist community’. It will be contended that the relationship between the ideology and ‘the people’ is much more complex than is often allowed for and that educational inequalities are a significant contributing factor to this.

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.

Implementing a Videoconferencing Studio in Cape Verde to Support a Blended Learning Education System

In 2004, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation invited the University of Aveiro to develop an education and training program in advanced topics of ICT for Cape Verde. The focus should be on technologies to support the development of distance education. Two years later, when the program was started, the University of Aveiro had a high-performance videoconferencing Studio installed by the Foundation for National Scientific Computing. However, the investment to duplicate this high quality structure and operating costs were not compatible neither with the project’s budget nor with the technological options available in Cape Verde. This paper demonstrates the decision-making process by an economically viable option to meet the needs and local peculiarities.

Machinic Assemblages: Women, Art Education and Space.

In this paper I explore connections between women, art education and spatial relations drawing on the Deleuzo-Guattarian concept of machinic assemblage as a useful analytical tool for making sense of the heterogeneity and meshwork of life narratives and their social milieus. In focusing on Mary Bradish Titcomb, a fin-de-sie`cle Bostonian woman who lived and worked in the interface of education and art, moving in between differentiated series of social, cultural and geographical spaces, I challenge an image of narratives as unified and coherent representations of lives and subjects; at the same time I am pointing to their importance in opening up microsociological analyses of deterritorializations and lines of flight. What I argue is that an attention to space opens up paths for an analytics of becomings, and enables the theorization of open processes, multiplicities and nomadic subjectivities in the field of gender and education.

The militarisation of English schools: Troops to Teaching and the implications for Initial Teacher Education and race equality

This article considers the implications of the Troops to Teaching (TtT) programme, to be introduced in England in autumn 2013, for Initial Teacher Education (ITE) and race equality. TtT will fast-track ex-armed service members to teach in schools, without necessarily the requirement of a university degree. Employing theories of white supremacy, and Althusser’s (1971) concept of Ideological and Repressive State Apparatus, I argue that this initiative both stems from, and contributes to, a system of social privilege and oppression in education. Despite appearing to be aimed at all young people, the planned TtT initiative is actually aimed at poor and racially subordinated youth. This is likely to further entrench polarisation in a system which already provides two tier educational provision: TtT will be a programme for the inner-city disadvantaged, whilst wealthier, whiter schools will mostly continue to get highly qualified teachers. Moreover, TtT contributes to a wider devaluing of current ITE; ITE itself is rendered virtually irrelevant, as it seems TtT teachers will not be subject specialists, rather will be expected to provide military-style discipline, the skills for which they will be expected to bring with them. More sinister, I argue that TtT is part of the wider militarisation of education. This military-industrial-education complex seeks to contain and police young people who are marginalised along lines of race and class, and contributes to a wider move to increase ideological support for foreign wars - both aims ultimately in the service of neoliberal objectives which will feed social inequalities.

A Race to the bottom – Prison Education and the English and Welsh Policy Context

This article examines prison education in England and Wales arguing that a disjuncture exists between the policy rhetoric of entitlement to education in prison at the European level and the playing out of that entitlement in English and Welsh prisons. Caught between conflicting discourses around a need to combat recidivism and a need for incarceration, prison education in England exists within a policy context informed, in part, by an international human rights agenda on the one hand and global recession, financial cutbacks, and a moral panic about crime on the other. The European Commission has highlighted a number of challenges facing prison education in Europe including over‐crowded institutions, increasing diversity in prison populations, the need to keep pace with pedagogical changes in mainstream education and the adoption of new technologies for learning (Hawley et al., 2013). These are challenges confronting all policy makers involved in prison education in England and Wales in a policy context that is messy, contradictory and fiercely contested. The article argues that this policy context, exacerbated by socio‐economic discourses around neo‐liberalism, is leading to a race‐to‐the‐bottom in the standards of educational provision for prisoners in England and Wales.

Profiles of ageing in the South of Portugal: education and cognitive functioning in elderly persons living in institutionalized and community contexts

The region of the Algarve shows huge differences between the coastline where population in the urban areas grows, and the inland rural areas, in some cases very isolated, which frequently have high ageing indexes. This general scenario, with an elderly population with very different economic and social conditions, frames the ongoing PhD research designed as a cross-sectional study of an intentional sample of elderly persons. The basic theoretical framework departs from the perspective of developmental psychology of life-span and the model of selection, optimisation and compensation for optimal ageing (Baltes & Baltes, 1990; Freund & Baltes, 2002). The present study is a first step in the analysis of empirical data collected in the PhD sample (N=156; age range 65 to 97 years; M = 80.4 years; SD = 7.2 years). Its purpose is to assess the cognitive functioning of participants, screening for cognitive impairment and examine the relations between the cognitive status of the subjects and a number of selected variables including educational level, age, physical activity and living contexts of the subjects. We accessed the cognitive status of the participants with the Portuguese version of Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) finding a 10.3% prevalence of positive cases with cognitive impairment. The results also show significant relationships between the cognitive status accessed by the MMSE and educational level, professional qualification, age, living arrangement and activity level of the participants. The relationship verified between educational level and cognitive status of the participants was the largest correlation found in the study with the variability in educational level accounting for 44.8% of the variability in MMSE score. This results points in the same direction of several lines of research that corroborate the strong intercorrelation between education and cognitive functioning in old age.