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Social Work education has seen some changes since my first paper on how The Archers could be used to enhance a student's understanding of service user experiences (Burrows, 2016). Social Work students still, however, need to understand the difficulties that their future service users may experience; learning is developed through lectures, seminars and workshops, and most of all through practice experience, but a real challenge for educators is how to show students the constant lived reality of families and communities who have complex difficulties. A visit to a household only gives a snapshot of their life, and service users may be guarded in their behaviour during a professional visit. My original paper considered the educational value of the ‘fly-on-the-wall’ perspective of The Archers, in catching unguarded moments and drawing attention to issues in the community. From the impact of rural poverty and unaffordable housing, through issues of mental health, hospital discharge, to adult survivors of child sexual abuse and the tangled webs of modern slavery, these issues will resonate with any social worker, in Adult, Children and Families or Mental Health fields. These are not just issues in a rural setting; professionals in more urban settings will recognise these as things the families and individuals they work with must deal with from time to time.

Families conduct their affairs through processes that are built upon those of previous generations and also social capacities such as culture, class, oppression and poverty. The media has played a part in stereotyping the lower classes through their portrayal on the television programmes such as Benefits Street and Jeremy Kyle and tabloid newspaper stories. This chapter is a case study of two families who are at the opposing ends of the social scale, the Horrobin/Carter and Aldridge families. The two families were chosen due to them being linked by marriage in the younger generation. Through the use of genograms, we explore how the families differ in their attitudes towards relationships within their individual families, and also how they relate to each other as separate family groups. Despite the many differences, there are also a number of key similarities, particularly regarding the key females in the families, in terms of family background and snobbery. We also show that there is little family loyalty in the more privileged family and a power differential between the two families (oppressors vs. oppressed) in terms of the crimes committed.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the findings from an electronic questionnaire survey which set out to explore experiences of graduates of a part-time Master’s programme in dementia care at The University of Manchester.

An electronic questionnaire survey was sent to 57 graduates who had studied on the programme since it began in 2003. Thematic analysis was applied to qualitative data from responses to six open-ended questions.

In total, 31 completed questionnaires were received. Four key themes were identified from the qualitative data: juggling competing demands; experiencing personal growth and achievement; locating sources of support; and supporting changes to practice.

Limitations included the small sample size and the survey not covering the experiences of students who had failed to complete the first year of study.

The study demonstrates the perceived value of dementia education at more advanced levels for people working in professional roles in dementia care, this included professional and personal development and supporting changes to practice. The study additionally adds to a limited evidence base relating to how mature, health and social care students experience part-time study in higher education and has implications for future research aimed at informing the development of appropriate course design and employer support.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, Health Education is socio-critical in orientation and is offered as a subject that can offer credits towards the national secondary school qualification. The purpose of this paper is to explore the learning experiences of people who studied Health Education to the final level of secondary schooling in Aotearoa New Zealand. The authors focus specifically on how the subject is taught; or the pedagogical practices that are “put to work” in the Health Education learning environment.

Using in-depth interviews as the authors’ method of data production, they experiment with a post-qualitative approach to analysis while traversing the theoretical terrain of new materialism. In doing so, they explicate the non-human and human elements that are arranged in a pedagogical assemblage – and explore what these elements can do.

The authors found that an array of pedagogical practices were put to work in the senior secondary school Health Education classroom: Student-centred approaches, a non-judgemental and energetic tone to teaching, deployment of human and non-human resources, and students connecting with the community. The authors argue that these practices open up possibilities for a critical Health Education.

This research addresses an empirical gap in the literature by focusing on Health Education in the senior secondary levels of schooling. The findings in this paper may provide readers who are Health Education teachers with ideas that could be of material use to them in their teaching practice. In terms of implications for researchers, the authors demonstrate how putting “new” theory and methodological approaches to work in the area of school-based Health Education can produce novel ways of thinking about the subject and what it can do.

The shifting nature of the pedagogical assemblage can ignite new ways of thinking about teaching practice in the Health Education classroom and the capacities that result for learners. In combination with a post-qualitative approach to analysis, the paper provides a novel approach to exploring Health Education.

I address the question, Is theory useful when collaborating with teachers to improve student engagement?

We based our work on four principles of motivation drawn from the research literature: students are more likely to engage in learning if teachers support their perceptions of competence, autonomy, belongingness, and make learning meaningful. To bridge the gap between theory and practice, we suggested that teachers use certain instructional strategies, like open-ended questions, related to supporting student engagement. These strategies were both more complex than the standard practices and more challenging to implement, given the current U.S. emphasis on standardized testing. In two longitudinal studies, we provided rationales for engagement principles and instructional strategies related to student engagement and encouraged teachers to use new practices. Mixed methodology included online observation measures and video of classroom instruction, retrospective interviews with teachers, and student interviews and experience sampling self-reports.

Short case studies of teachers change illustrate the examples of implementation. In both studies, about half the teachers made significant instructional changes, which were related both to teacher perceptions of student engagement and to student self-reports.

Insights gained from the studies may offer researchers practical information about how to work with teachers to improve engagement in the classroom. They include whether teachers can understand abstract motivation terminology, consider students’ “basic needs” when planning instruction, and implement strategies so that they are likely to support student engagement. Other learnings include the strong impact of teacher culture on change efforts and the need to consider teachers’ “basic needs” if we are to support them in instructional change. Long-term collaboration and establishing mutual trust may be the best way for both researchers and teachers to develop common understandings for supporting student motivation in the classroom.