An international and historical context for recent policy approaches to lifelong learning in the UK

This volume addresses the relationship between archaeologists and the dead, through the many dimensions of their relationships: in the field (through practical and legal issues), in the lab (through their analysis and interpretation), and in their written, visual and exhibitionary practice--disseminated to a variety of academic and public audiences. Written from a variety of perspectives, its authors address the experience, effect, ethical considerations, and cultural politics of working with mortuary archaeology. Whilst some papers reflect institutional or organizational approaches, others are more personal in their view: creating exciting and frank insights into contemporary issues that have hitherto often remained "unspoken" among the discipline. Reframing funerary archaeologists as "death-workers" of a kind, the contributors reflect on their own experience to provide both guidance and inspiration to future practitioners, arguing strongly that we have a central role to play in engaging the public with themes of mortality and commemoration, through the lens of the past. Spurred by the recent debates in the UK, papers from Scandinavia, Austria, Italy, the US, and the mid-Atlantic, frame these issues within a much wider international context that highlights the importance of cultural and historical context in which this work takes place.


Author(s):  
Jonathan Tummons

The problematisation of the professional standards for teachers in the UK lifelong learning sector tends to focus on the discourses that the standards embody: discourses that are posited as being based on a restricted or technicist model of professionalism, that fail sufficiently to recognise the lived experiences of teachers within the sector both in terms of professional knowledge and competences, and professional development. This paper takes a different approach, drawing on a branch of material semiotics – actor-network theory – in order to shift the locus of problematisation away from what the standards might mean, to how the standards are physically assembled or instantiated. The paper concludes by suggesting that a first point of problematisation rests not in the discourses that the standards embody, but in the inherent fragilities of any material artefact that has the intention of carrying meaning across spatial, institutional or temporal boundaries.


2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 731-753
Author(s):  
Alan Apperley

Several authors have identified a ’therapeutic turn’ in education in the UK, at all levels of the system. In this paper I focus on and develop this claim, specifically in relation to the Higher Education sector. I seek to do two things: First, I argue that the ‘self’ which is identified by commentators on the therapeutic turn needs to be reworked in the direction of McGee’s idea of the ’belabored’ self. This is because the therapeutic turn serves, I argue, a set of wider economic goals arising from the restructuring of capitalism which followed in the wake of the oil crisis of 1973 and the subsequent breakdown of the post-war (1939-1945) consensus around the purpose of public policy, of which education is an important part. Second, I revisit an important document in the history of the UK Higher Education sector: the National Committee of Inquiry Into Higher Education’s 1997 report Higher Education In The Learning Society (known popularly as the Dearing Report, after its chair, Sir Ron Dearing). I argue that that the committee’s ambition to bring about a learning society characterised by lifelong learning played an important and neglected part in bringing about the therapeutic turn in higher education in the UK. The project of creating a learning society characterised by lifelong learning, advocated by the Dearing Report, should properly be recognised as an exhortation to embark upon a lifetime of labouring upon the self.


Author(s):  
Robert Grimm ◽  
Gary Pollock ◽  
Mark Ellison ◽  
Alexandra Koronaiou ◽  
Evangelos Lagos ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Omar Ahmed

This chapter shifts the focus to Indian art cinema with the Marxist work of Bengali director and iconoclast Ritwik Ghatak. The impressive Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud Capped Star, 1960) is his best-known film. Dealing directly with the trauma of partition and its effects on a Bengali family, Ghatak's cinema is bold, uncompromising, and occupies a unique position in Indian cinema. Although his work is still somewhat overshadowed by that of Satyajit Ray, another masterful Bengali film-maker, and though many of his films are still sadly unavailable on DVD in the UK, Megha Dhaka Tara is now recognised as one of the key works of Indian art cinema. The chapter discusses numerous aspects, including Ghatak's position as a film-maker; the wider historical context such as the partition of Bengal; the relationship between melodrama and feminist concerns; the film's categorisation as an example of 1960s counter cinema; and the thematic importance of the family to the film's narrative.


Author(s):  
Ann Chapman

Libraries, archives and museums act as memory organizations, recording and providing access to a range of knowledge and information. In an age of increasing access to information via electronic methods, they support lifelong learning, as well as national and international goals in support of the rights of individuals to education, leisure, health and employment. The provision of new methods of accessing catalogues from a distance is severely compromised if the catalogues accessed do not record the complete stock of their institutions, and therefore the retrospective conversion of catalogues is of increasing relevance today. Items for which there are no electronic records effectively become invisible to potential users. The retrospective conversion of catalogues still in manual forms has been a goal since electronic versions were first installed, but the extent to which it has been achieved has been governed largely by financial considerations. Recent studies in the UK have revealed the extent of missing data in the electronic catalogues of libraries and archives. Some retrospective conversion is being carried out as and when funding becomes available, but progress is erratic and piecemeal, without reference to a national overview. To address this problem, a national strategy for the UK has been developed and will be taken forward by a newly formed Implementation Group.


1998 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Oswell

This paper discusses recent policy calculations in the UK concerning the Internet and child protection issues. Through an analysis of official documents, conference presentations, interviews and press reports, a story is pieced together of the culture of policy making. Problems are made visible, social agents mobilized and techniques invented for the enactment of policy. Central to my argument is an analysis of how childhood is figured discursively as a particular problem for regulation. Policy decisions are made, not in relation to ‘real’ children, but in relation to their representation and the authority of those who claim to represent them. I focus specifically on the circulation of three images of the child: the child-as-victim, the child-in-danger and the dangerous child.


Author(s):  
Adam Evans

Since the Treaty and Acts of Union in 1707, Scotland has returned MPs to Westminster. Whilst dwarfed, at least demographically by its partner in that Union, England, Scotland has, on a number of occasions, punched above its weight at the Centre—most notably at either end of the twentieth century when Liberalism and then Labour dominated Scottish politics. This chapter examines the relationship of Scotland with the UK Parliament. It begins by placing this relationship in its historical context, before then turning to an audit of contemporary Scottish influence and representation at Westminster, post-devolution. This chapter does this by breaking down two of the main and interconnected dimensions of Scottish representation at Westminster: (1) Scottish parliamentarians and the Westminster party system; and (2) institutional representation within Parliament. This latter category includes both Scottish-specific institutional mechanisms, such as the Scottish Affairs Committee and the Scottish Grand Committee, and the broader Westminster apparatus that can be leveraged for influence, such as parliamentary question times.


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