Search results

An alliance of schools and researchers formed a collaborative community of practice in order to understand and improve the sensory school environment for pupils on the autistic spectrum, and incorporate the findings into school improvement planning. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Representatives of special and mainstream schools in South London and a team of researchers formed the project team, including an autistic researcher. The researchers and a named staff member from each of the schools met regularly over the course of 18 months in order to work on an iterative process to improve the sensory experience pupils had of the school environment. Each school completed sensory audits and observations, and was visited by members of the research team. Parents were involved via meetings with the research team and two conferences were organised to share findings.

Useful outcomes included: developing and sharing of good practice between schools; opportunities for parents of autistic pupils to discuss their concerns, particularly with someone with insider perspective; and exploration of creative ways to achieve pupil involvement and the idea that good autism practice has the potential to benefit all pupils. A resource pack was produced for the schools to access. Plans are in place to revisit the initiative in 12 months’ time in order to ascertain whether there have been long-term benefits.

Projects building communities of practice involving autistic people as core team members are rare, yet feedback from those involved in the project showed this to be a key aspect of shared learning.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse whether high responsibility for housework or childcare is related to weak labour market attachment.

Survey data on domestic responsibilities in 1998 and 2003 were linked to register data on respondents’ employment spells for 2004-2011. Effects of the responsibilities on labour market trajectories – identified with latent class growth analyses – were analysed with multinomial logistic regression analyses.

Four trajectories for labour market attachment were identified among both genders. When adjusted for prior labour market attachment and other control variables, a high responsibility for housework predicted weak labour market attachment, compared to the trajectory of strong attachment, only among men. Compared to the trajectory of strengthening attachment, a high responsibility for housework was related to weak attachment among both men and women.

Personal orientations may, to some extent, explain both the division on domestic responsibilities and attachment to the labour market. In the Finnish type of welfare state, domestic responsibilities have long-term effects, especially on men’s careers. More attention should be given to men’s roles in families and their possible consequences.

This is the first study analysing the division of domestic responsibilities on later labour market attachment among both genders. The strength of this study is the long follow-up time and methodology; it combines survey data at two time points and register data on employment spells over eight years, identifying patterns in employment with latent class growth analyses.

This paper aims to engage with the cinematic history of Australian education by examining the historical representation of secondary schools in two Australian feature films of the 1970s: Picnic at Hanging Rock (Weir, 1975) and The Getting of Wisdom (Beresford, 1977). By what narrative strategies, metaphors and understandings were Australian high schools encoded into images and how might these interpretations differ from written accounts of the secondary schools? The discussion focuses on the social and material worlds of the schools. It reflects on the types of education depicted and the characterisations of teachers and students, including consideration of gender, class, and sexualities. The paper asks: what was the historical understanding of secondary schools that made them so attractive for cinematic explorations of Australian national identity in the 1970s?

The present study aims to synthesize and conceptualize, through a systematic literature review (SLR), the current state of gamification knowledge in the tourism and hospitality (T&H) sector, providing a roadmap for future research recommendations for service research and practice.

The research is based on a systematic literature review and adopts a systematic quantitative approach to summarize existing evidence on gamification usage in the T&H sector, focusing on relevant service literature on gamification. The authors analyze 36 papers published between 2011 and 2019.

The authors synthesize existing knowledge into five themes describing gamification's role in T&H (Edutainment, Sustainable behavior, Engagement factors, Service provider-generated content and User-generated reviews). Then, a cross-analysis of the five themes reveals the pivotal elements (affordances, behavioral and psychological outcomes, and benefits) generated by gamification mechanics in T&H, simultaneously highlighting potential implications and relevant insights for service literature. The review identifies critical issues affecting gamification research and provides a future research agenda, considering opportunities for T&H and service research.

The study provides the first SLR investigating gamification in T&H. The findings present potential implications and relevant insights for T&H contributing to the construction of a more holistic understanding of gamification adoption in service research.

There is a considerable competition within the global education marketplace, as can be seen by the growing number of higher education providers. Significant changes to information and communication technologies (ICTs) have also supported dramatic opportunities for distance and online education. This transformation, in combination with a growing demand for continuing professional education and strengthened demands by employers for tailored education and training, has caused significant shifts in higher education. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of three relevant trends within higher education. The paper explores: the significant changes in ICTs and their support for enhanced distance and online learning opportunities; the growing demand for continuing professional management education; and the strengthened demand by employers for tailored education and training.

The paper reviews current literature on higher education trends in the areas of globalisation, virtualisation and borderlessness. The impact of these trends is specifically examined relative to management education.

The paper discusses the implications of higher education trends on curriculum, teaching and administration in management education.

This paper brings together a significant amount of information from various sources to provide a coherent resource about management education trends and the implication of these trends on the future provision of management education.

In this chapter, we explore gender equity issues in relation to the governance of sport in Wales. Our focus is primarily on Sport Wales (SW), the national agency responsible for developing and promoting sport and physical activity in Wales and for distributing National Lottery and Welsh Government funding. As a public authority, SW has a statutory responsibility to promote equality and eliminate direct and indirect discrimination. Their recent policy commitments express a desire to advance equality and promote inclusion and diversity within sports organisations in Wales. They also set the agenda for National Governing Bodies (NGBs) in Wales, in terms of providing a policy framework for understanding and pursuing gender equity in sport and sport governance. In this chapter, we present a snapshot of the governance and leadership policy landscape for Welsh sport, with a specific focus on gender equity. We present data collected from publicly available online policy documents relating to SW, and their NGB partners, relevant to gender equity provision. Based on the data, we suggest that there is evidence of progress in terms of the numbers of women on boards in Wales as well as the creation of gender equity policies within NGBs in Wales. We argue, however, that progress is inconsistent across the different NGBs in Wales, and it is less clear whether sport governing bodies can implement policies to effectively challenge organisational culture and ethos. We concluded by suggesting future Wales specific research priorities on this topic.

Because of the huge advantages of Islamic credit cards for both banks and customers, the purpose of this study is to examine the main factors that influence consumers to use an Islamic credit card (ICC).

Accordingly, the innovation diffusion theory, customer awareness and loyalty concept are considered because of their ability to predict behavior and also to provide valuable information. The proposed research model of the study was empirically validated using data collected from 397 bank customers in Kish Island, Iran. Partial least squares-structural equation modeling was used to analyze the collected data from respondents.

The results indicated that relative advantage and compatibility have a significant direct effect on ICC loyalty. The significant connection between ICC loyalty by bank customers and their decision to have positive word of mouth was also confirmed.

This study represents a basis for further refinement of individual ICC acceptance and loyalty models for researchers. For practitioners, organizations and banks would be able to redesign and manage-related factors, which, in turn, would increase the probability of ICC acceptance and usage success by bank customers.

Medical imaging applied to archaeological human remains represents a powerful tool for the study of specimens of exceptionally fragile nature. Here, the authors report a tomographic computerized investigation on the naturally mummified human remains from the Takarkori rock shelter (Libyan Sahara), dated to the Middle Pastoral Neolithic (ca. 6100-5600 uncal BP). The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Medical radiological techniques allowed us to discriminate and isolate the tissues preserved thanks to their different electron density, driving us to detailed examinations of features of interest.

With a focus on anatomy and taphonomy, the authors infer on post-depositional phenomena in a way that could not be achieved through traditional approaches.

The investigation of digital data allows to acquire new sets of information with no risk for the original object. This case study is especially important considering that the human remains from Takarkori are currently not available to the scientific community due to political instability in Lybia.