Search results

Many development interventions fail to report results that are important to local people (intended beneficiaries of the intervention) but not of strategic importance to the donors funding the work. Failure to report unexpected results, or those not linked to strategic goals, contributes to an overly negative view from external evaluations by donors and agencies. The causes of the mismatch between actual and demonstrated results failure were studied through stakeholder interests. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Nine project and programme managers of similar but unrelated projects were interviewed. From the interviews, previous studies and project publications, the challenges posed by differing interests and different perceptions in reporting stakeholder activities, outputs and outcomes, were identified. The complex environment of many development interventions was analysed and the work was contextualised with a peacebuilding project in Sri Lanka, which the author has previously studied. A stakeholder role and perception analysis was used to map the challenges at four times in the project cycle, producing a dynamic stakeholder analysis.

The failure to fully report intervention results was linked to the changing role of competing stakeholder interests as a project proceeds, the conflicting perceptions of stakeholders, the structural over-simplification of a complex environment and power differentials that allow donors to misappropriate the role of clients.

Current practice in designing and evaluating projects needs to improve reporting of beneficiary interests.

To the author’s knowledge there are no prior publications in this area of research (under-reporting of development intervention results); the paper is considered highly original.

While the web was meant to broaden our horizons, the opposite has happened. Social media filter bubbles, a fragmented news landscape and the drive to personalization have all but insulated and polarized us. The Perspective seeks to counter the growing polarization taking hold all over the world as amplified in the case of Brexit, the 2016 US presidential election and more.

The Perspective is a global enterprise, defined by its mission of opening minds this by displaying two sides of current events. The psychological insights gathered were translated into de-facto design choices and editorial guidelines. The Perspective won the 2017 Eppy and WebAward and it is also a highly commended finalist of The 2018 Drum award and a Webby award nominee (www.theperspective.com).

An intellectual disability (ID) mental health core competency framework was developed to articulate the essential attributes the mainstream mental health workforce requires to meet the needs of people with ID. This study aims to evaluate the framework’s impact.

Mental health clinicians, managers, supervisors and educators completed an online survey at download and 3- and 12-months post-download to evaluate the implementation, utility and impact of the framework.

The majority of respondents at 3-months (62.9%) and 12-months post-download (59.1%) said the core competencies covered important aspects of their role. At 3-months 47.8% of clinicians were working towards developing the core competencies. Respondents rated their confidence working with people with ID significantly higher at 12-months post-download compared to pre-download (EMM pre = 3.51 vs 12 m = 4.21, p < 0. 001).

The framework was well-received and can be used to underpin education, training and recruitment in ID mental health. The evaluation can also inform the development of similar frameworks.

This is the first evaluation, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, of a core competency framework specifically designed for public mental health professionals from different professional backgrounds working with people with ID.

The purpose of this paper is to outline a service evaluation that gathered feedback from people with a learning disability on their experience of lockdown in Jersey and Guernsey. This feedback was intended to guide planning for service provision during any future lockdown and for life as we exit lockdown.

An accessible survey was sent to everyone accessing learning disability services across the two islands and Mencap in Jersey. Data was analysed quantitatively and qualitatively to identify patterns in the data and key themes.

Most respondents felt safe, calm and happy and valued support from services. Key themes emerging from the data included the importance of relationships, messages of safety, keeping busy and communication.

This survey has been undertaken at a time where there is a paucity of research and consultation with individuals with a learning disability self-reporting on their experiences of lockdown, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to retell the narratives of a preservice teacher and a teacher educator as they lived a story of critical literacy and curriculum-making as a curriculum of lives.

Approach – The chapter presents a year-long narrative inquiry centered on the revisioning of curriculum for an undergraduate literacy course for preservice teachers.

Findings – The researcher broadened her understanding of teacher and teacher educators as curriculum makers to include preservice teachers as curriculum makers. As preservice teachers in the literacy course were invited to reflect on their own literacy backgrounds, several crucial narratives emerged that shaped new understandings for the researcher/teacher educator and drew her into her own curriculum-making with moral purpose. One preservice teacher began a journey of narrative authority and curriculum-making as a curriculum of lives in a subsequent field experience, even through the mire of political pressure in schools.

Research implications – The preservice teacher's retelling featured children who discovered newfound understandings of social justice through literary ways of knowing and critical literacy events. She developed new understandings of how to help public school students value and define their literacies and their life events, all of which folded back into the undergraduate literacy course.

Value – Teacher educators can be encouraged to walk in relationship with their preservice teachers, valuing human experiences and lives as curriculum rather than relenting to top-down, politically driven, outside curriculum.

This monograph contains abstracts from the 2005 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, 6‐7th September 2005

In a context of increasing globalization and neoliberal restructuring and with labor's power diminishing vis-à-vis employers, American workers have turned in recent years to community-based campaigns targeting local government. These mobilizations have received considerable attention from scholars who see this emerging community orientation as a significant strategic innovation. This study, alternatively, focuses on the subjective and ideological consequences of such mobilizations for those engaged in protest. In particular, it seeks to extend social movement theory regarding the transformative impact of collective action by asking: how do distinct forms of collective action bring about particular kinds of consciousness and identity among participants?

Scholars rooted in a variety of traditions – from theorists of “post-industrial” society and “new” social movements to state theorists and geographers – have suggested that identities fostered at the local level are characterized by a “defensive,” “introverted,” or “retrospective” quality. This study examines a local mobilization, the case of a living wage campaign in Chicago, which deviates from these expectations. Through an analysis of interviews with participants, I find that instead of spurring defensiveness the campaign engendered a citizenship identity that was both active and inclusive. In explaining why my findings diverge from existing theories of identity formation, my analysis highlights three conceptual deficiencies in the literature with respect to (1) the distinction between local versus transnational collective action, (2) the relationship between social movement goals/tactics and outcomes, and (3) the prioritization of “new” social movements over the labor movement. Examining the citizenship identities that developed during Chicago's living wage campaign is instructive, finally, for understanding the sources of counter-hegemonic subjectivity within a broader context of eroding citizenship rights and a dominant market fundamentalist ideology. More generally, this analysis paves the way for a more productive engagement among theories of social movements, citizenship, labor, and globalization.

This chapter explores creative drawing mediums in research practice and education, through speculative drawing methods, and the use of temporal mediums such as film, animation, and augmented reality [AR] to move outside entrenched perspectives of communicating towards more inclusive storytelling narratives. Architectural representation mediums provide means of conveying rich layers of information, having evolved through cultural influences and technologies with their origins in Western world views. However, these methods of drawing are limited in how they convey multiple and diverse views or social understandings, ultimately delivering static representations. The student and staff approaches discussed in this chapter demonstrate approaches that recalibrate from a singular, designer-led perspective to one that is multivalent, considering and engaging other stakeholders in the negotiations and conversations of the spaces in our built environments. Through making architectural communication more accessible and inclusive of diverse audiences and voices, alternative world views can be both enabled and facilitated.