HRD in 2020: a hop-on,hop-off city tour

This article reports on the outcome of a Future Search Conference in the UK to consider human resource development (HRD) in 2020 and beyond. We firstly consider themes from the past into the present. This includes the persistence of solutions in HRD that are systematic, predictable, how apprenticeships in the UK have had to accommodate government policies to ameliorate youth unemployment and the long-standing difficulty for HRD of failing to demonstrate a return on investment (ROI) on activities. We then present four scenarios based on key questions for the future relating to value of HRD and whether this will be a future for HRD. Reponses to the questions form scenario logics which we present against the theme of city tour. Each scenario is explained against the presented logic with positive, negative, ambiguous and uncertain implications for HRD. We suggest that each scenario carries a glimpse of what might be.     

A supervised independent-living orientation program for adolescents

A program is described that provides for transition into a relatively unstructured supervised independent-living program for adolescents with a history of behavioral and emotional disturbance, often including delinquency and/or psychiatric hospitalization. Contracts used to define expectations, logistics, and conflicts experienced by the youths are discussed. Developmental issues are highlighted, focusing on the rapprochement subphase.     

Good Mothers,Bad Mothers

This paper reports on an analysis of representations of child abuse in English-language newspapers in Malaysia. Certain media images of mothers recur: bad mothers who are unable to protect their children; and good mothers, who are feminine representatives of a maternalised national government which is charged with interceding on behalf of abused children. Mothers implicated in child abuse are harshly judged by the maternalist regime. Our findings resonate with previous feminist analyses of child abuse but manifest differently in a non-Western, non-Christian context. In Malaysia, motherhood plays a crucial role in nationalist political culture; women and mothers carry increasing economic, social and political burdens in the rapidly modernising state. Fathers are largely marginal or absent in media reporting of child abuse, while mothers are represented as fully responsible for the care of children, particularly when problems occur. The media's blaming of child abuse on social changes while valorising traditional families reflects a conservative, patriarchal perspective, occluding discussion of the contexts of child abuse and thus mitigating against comprehensive solutions.     

What are Children's Centres? The Development of CC Services, 2004–20081

Children's centres are intended to be a mainstream, universal service. They began in 2004 and their origins are diverse. Some replaced various forms of local provision, most notably Sure Start programmes; others were established from scratch. Issues for exploratory empirical work have been identified from the guidance issued by central government. Using interview data from three urban local authorities, this article explores the nature of the ‘core offer’ that centres are expected to provide and the way in which they have pursued the goal of integrating staff and services. The article highlights the problems of balancing a focus on the child and on the parent; of reconciling childcare provision as part of the employability agenda and as a means to educational achievement for the child; of permitting local variation while achieving consistency; of the role of monitoring in relation to developing good practice; and of achieving integration in a mixed economy of care. We find that despite the greater specification of the core offer for children's centres compared to that for Sure Start, there are substantial differences between children's centres in terms of services, while the mixed economy of provision poses considerable challenges to the goal of integration.     

Neuroscience and Education – an Incompatible Relationship

To date, there has been little opposition to the growing influence of cognitive neuroscience in education from the education profession itself. However there is growing criticism from the fields of psychology and philosophy. This paper aims to summarize the central arguments found in literature critical of the claims made by cognitive neuroscientists who advocate its potential to improve education. The paper is organized around three sections which draw together assessments from psychology, philosophy and sociology of education. The first, “Brain, Mind and Culture,” lays out the general argument against neuro‐education and evaluates two common assumptions made by advocates of neuro‐education: that there is a causal relationship between brain and mind and that learning is a central tenet of education. The second section, “Promises and Problems,” critically considers an example of neuro‐educational research and then goes on to discuss how neuro‐education has detrimental consequences for two necessary conditions of liberal subject‐based education; disciplinarity and pedagogic authority. The final section, “Discourses of Risk, Vulnerability and Optimal Outcomes,” considers wider sociological literature to locate neuro‐education within its contemporary cultural context. The paper concludes with a summary of the main philosophical and moral objections to neuro‐education.     

Body shopping: Maternity and alterity in Mamatoto

ABSTRACT

The products and practices of The Body Shop, both material and rhetorical, can be inserted into a number of competing discourses along the axes of feminist interests in the body and its relation to culture. We focus here on The Body Shop's Mamatoto range as it relates to contemporary Western discursive formations of maternity, alterity, and the vexed constructions of ‘difference’ and ‘globalism’ that emerge from them. Among the meta-products of Mamatoto are discursive formations of the body itself which, while they appear to endorse, even to celebrate, an active engagement with transcultural specificity and difference, actually reinstate the Western, white body of ‘woman’ as the ‘gold standard’ against which the exoticized currency of other women can be classified, appropriated and disowned. Within this framework, maternity itself is deployed by The Body Shop as a richly suggestive trope that serves to represent the problematics of body-as-nature, body-as-culture and body-as-identity that continue to preoccupy feminists across a wide range of political and cultural agendas.     

The future of inter‐country adoption: A paradigm shift for this century

Fronek P, Cuthbert D. The future of inter‐country adoption: a paradigm shift for this century The only existing international framework for inter‐country adoption (ICA) is a legal one. Current legal and welfare approaches have limitations in that ICA tends to be conceptualised in individualistic terms, while strategies that prevent ICA by strengthening communities and addressing structural inequalities in the first instance are neglected and divorced from ICA practice. A vision and an overarching framework based on a socioecological approach that informs other arenas, such as health promotion, are proposed. The article concludes that the development of collaborative, intersectoral approaches, the reorientation of public and private resources and international leadership from academics, legislators, policy makers, practitioners and communities are necessary for a paradigm shift for this century.     

Theoretical and practical issues in purchasing power parities illustrated with reference to the 1993 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development data

This paper deals first with some theoretical issues in purchasing power parities, including the definition of a generalized class of additive indices, which includes the standard Geary–Khamis and Iklé indices as special cases, and the definition of indicators of price and quantity structure which are independent of the particular units in which quantities are originally expressed. The paper then provides a comparative analysis of the results of applying these techniques to the 1993 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development data and relates the results to underlying features of the price and expenditure data.