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The Richard Review of the United Kingdoms (UK) Apprenticeships in 2012 proposed degree apprenticeships (DA) as a new model for the unification of academic and vocational learning. Apprenticeships have long been acknowledged as a practical vehicle to develop the vocational skills and educational achievements of the UK employee resource. The UK Government set a target of 3 million apprenticeship starts between 2015 and 2020. In order for higher education institutions (HEI) to participate in the new apprenticeship marketplace, they need to consider distinct factors that do not surface in traditional Bachelors programmes. Cognizant of these challenges this paper evaluates the development of the new degree apprenticeship programmes for built environment education through the research lens of HEI. This paper evaluates extant literature and primary data collected from qualitative interviews carried out across the UK HEI sector during 2017. Research findings are presented following analysis using NVivo. Narratives on the barriers, benefits, and opportunities, of degree apprenticeships, including academic quality assurance, governance, and pedagogic dimensions are presented. The findings include industry designed curriculum producing a different graduate output, redefining the purpose of HE, restructuring governance and resource, additional contractual obligations for stakeholders and the embedding of work-based learning strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agriculture has a hugely important role to play in meeting many of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Ensuring the economic resilience of farms and improving their capacity to respond to a wide range of challenges is key if agriculture is to contribute positively to achieving SDGs and sustainable growth. This paper aims to calculate the economic vulnerability and resilience of agriculture in England and Wales (UK), by analysing individual farm business data and using it to compute an aggregated agricultural resilience index at regional level across the two countries. The results of our analysis are visualised as maps, showing the geographical distribution of the input indicators and the final composite resilience index. We argue that this type of spatio-economic approach is useful for understanding the geography of agricultural resilience at sub-national levels, which could be valuable for helping to inform decisions and formulate strategies for promoting sustainable agriculture.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Concept maps have been used extensively for developing higher order thinking skills and are considered significant artefacts in constructing understanding in educational contexts. Increasingly, they are being used as a tool to chart a way towards ‘new understanding’ rather than recording ‘accepted knowledge’. This study is set in an academic development department in a UK higher education institution in which previous research projects have utilised concept map-mediated interviews as a tool in data collection. This paper reports on the relationship between the process of the concept map-mediated interview and the resulting concept map and focuses on the talk during the interview process. Purpose: The purpose of the study was to explore the co-constructed nature of the concept map which resulted from the concept map interview. The research question was: how is the concept map accomplished through and in the interview talk? Sample: The three researchers and authors of this paper are colleagues in an Academic Development department in a UK higher education institution. The focus of the interview was to probe the research perspective underpinning the practice of one of the authors. Design and methods: The study used a qualitative, unstructured concept map interview. The aim of the interview was to elicit an understanding of one of the authors’ research frame and how it influenced her work with staff. The interviewer noted labels on post-it notes during the interview which both participants then arranged on a sheet of paper. The interview lasted 36 minutes and was transcribed verbatim. Sociocultural discourse analysis was used to examine the trajectory of concepts in the interview talk. Results: The results highlight the collaborative nature of the interview and how the concept map is co-constructed through the interview talk. We demonstrate how the concept map is co-constructed through and in the dialogue between interviewer and interviewee, not as a result of the interview. Results also reveal how the context of acquaintance interviews impacts on the co-construction and thus the resulting concept map. Conclusions: A concept map which results from such an interview is co-constructed with the interviewer playing a pivotal role in the talk and the mapping. The implications are that the interview as research tool needs to be recognised as a site for the co-construction of ideas and perspectives. Concept maps resulting from interviews need to be recognised as co-constructed. A further implication for research methods is that the transcripts from the interview itself can be used as data to provide a richer understanding of the concept map. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a 9-month project commissioned by Halton Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and Liverpool photography organisation, Open Eye Gallery. Socially engaged photographers worked with local residents from the Windmill Hill estate in Runcorn to describe healthy and unhealthy aspects of the area. Six women were trained to use cameras to document everyday things that mattered to them. Through focus groups they discussed what these photographs revealed about the health and ill-health of the area. The resulting exhibition, As and When, told their story. Despite being a deprived area with more than average incidence of illness, they identified many positive things that enhanced their sense of wellbeing and resilience. The benefits of the project included increased social engagement and participation, an improved sense of vitality and rejuvenation, emotional benefits, a feeling of greater political agency and increased visual literacy. This paper outlines the model of practice developed with the support of CCG and in collaboration with local stakeholders. It makes a case for the value and the ways in which clusters of general practices could develop links and work with health assets in their local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: England has a long history of government-commissioned reviews of national inequalities. The latest review, the Marmot Review, was commissioned by a government headed by the same party (the Labour Party) that had introduced the National Health Service in 1948, but the review was implemented by a coalition of different parties (Conservatives and Liberal Democrats). At the same time, a government reform of health services took place, and the monitoring of the existing inequality strategy was changed. Objectives: This paper examines the lessons that can be learned about indicators for monitoring social determinants of health inequalities from the Marmot Review and recent health inequality strategies in England. Design: The paper provides a narrative review of key findings on the collection, presentation, and analysis of routine data in England in the past 5 years, comparing what has been learned from the Marmot Review and other evaluations of the first health inequality strategy in England. Results: The emphasis on monitoring has progressively shifted from monitoring a small number of targets and supporting information to frameworks that monitor across a wide range of determinants of both the causes of ill-health and of health service performance. As these frameworks become ever larger, some consideration is being given to the key indicators. Conclusions: Although the frameworks used in England for monitoring health inequality strategies have developed considerably since the first strategy began, lessons continue to be learned about how monitoring could be improved. Many of these are applicable to countries initiating or reviewing their strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I discuss the ways in which the conference stream ethics and values manifested at the 2015 RCGP Annual Conference in Glasgow, and the ways in which it is planned for the 2016 RCGP Annual Conference in Harrogate. The 2015 RCGP had plenaries, oral presentations, breakout symposia, a debate, and a poster stream. I briefly discuss each in turn before offering a manifesto (a public statement of aims and proposed policy) for ethics and values at healthcare conferences. It is my hope that others will critique this, flesh it out further and even consider how ethics and values relate to conferences for healthcare workers of various specialities. A conference provides opportunities for ethics and values discussion that are potentially distinctive from any other kind of forum. Because conferences offer the potential for knowledge and attitudes to be revisited and revised, issues can be ‘unsettled’ in a way that permits different perspectives to be more fully discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]