The RIX Wiki: the use of multimedia advocacy to support person-centred planning in a special needs secondary school – implications for current policy and practice

The article documents findings from a pilot study undertaken in 2012–2013 in a special needs secondary school in the England, that trialled the use of a multimedia advocacy tool, “The RIX Wiki”. The trial was part of the pathfinder programme, which aimed to reform existing Special Education Needs provision, from the system of statementing to one of developing education health care plans. The reforms became enshrined in the Children and Families Act (2014). The findings were overall positive and helped with person-centred planning processes. The discussion is framed within current and future policy directives. We argue that multimedia advocacy approaches and software tools, like the “RIX Wiki” will have a continued role to play in ensuring the needs, aspirations and choices of children and young people with learning disabilities remain central.     

Sources of information-seeking on sexually transmitted infections and safer sex by older heterosexual Australian men and women

Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) have risen among older people in Australia and other countries. To guide future initiatives, we examined sources of information that older people use or are willing to use for knowledge about safer sex and STIs, including whether there are any gender differences. A total of 2137 Australian adults aged 60+ years completed a nationwide survey. Analyses focused on participants who were at risk of an STI (n = 686; 220 women and 466 men). Overall, information-seeking on STIs in the last year was low (18% men; 15% women). When sought, common sources included general media outlets (e.g., magazines, TV), healthcare providers (HCPs), and the Internet. HCPs were the most relied upon source among both women and men. Brochures, websites, and HCPs were rated highest as future sources; however, women indicated they were more willing than men to have information provided by brochures and websites. STI information-seeking was generally low, but there was willingness among both men and women to use a range of sources for gaining future information.     

Towards a network governance of European lifelong learning: a structural analysis of Commission expert groups

ABSTRACT

The influence of the European Commission (EC) expert groups on policy coordination within the European Union has received a growing interest among researchers, who have assessed their role in policy-making processes, their participation patterns, their transparency, and their knowledge-generating process. This article interrogates the structural configuration of the networks, and the relationships between the actors, formed through the Commission expert groups on adult learning, and under the Education and Training 2020 work programme, respectively, by means of a Social Network Analysis. So attention is paid on the mutual-constitutivness of a social network and its members, or the potential power within a network, and of a network, to influence member states’ domestic adaptation of communitarian policies. Our analysis points at noticeable differences between the connectivity of each of the Commission expert groups, and the groups emerging from the two forms of network governance these produce in the adult learning, and education and training domains. A key result, however, is that two actors (i.e. Flemish Department for Education and Training, Ministry of Education and Culture of Finland) stand out as fully embedded in both forms of network governance, and represent highly connected ‘informal’ brokers across policy domains.     

Emerging partnership practices in VET provision in the senior years of schooling in Australia

School partnerships support the effective provision of Vocational Education and Training (VET) in the senior years of secondary schooling, to a varying degree, in most OECD nations. However, the nature and quality of these partnerships vary considerably from school to school and, indeed, from nation to nation (see Murray and Polesel, Eur J Educ 48(2):233–246, 2013). Given the role of these partnerships in VET provision in the senior years of schooling, it might be argued that there has been limited discussion about the role and nature of these relationships and the challenges associated with their establishment and long-term sustainability, especially in the Australian context (Allison et al. Building learning communities: partnerships, social capital and VET performance. NCVER, Adelaide, 2006). This paper explores the emergence of partnerships in a variety of educational and training contexts in Australia and describes the types of partnerships that have been established to respond to the specific needs of students. It also identifies the benefits and challenges associated with the delivery of VET programs through partnerships and the ways in which these partnerships can be developed and sustained to improve VET provision.     

An evaluation of an adaptive learning system based on multimodal affect recognition for learners with intellectual disabilities

Artificial intelligence tools for education (AIEd) have been used to automate the provision of learning support to mainstream learners. One of the most innovative approaches in this field is the use of data and machine learning for the detection of a student’s affective state, to move them out of negative states that inhibit learning, into positive states such as engagement. In spite of their obvious potential to provide the personalisation that would give extra support for learners with intellectual disabilities, little work on AIEd systems that utilise affect recognition currently addresses this group. Our system used multimodal sensor data and machine learning to first identify three affective states linked to learning (engagement, frustration, boredom) and second determine the presentation of learning content so that the learner is maintained in an optimal affective state and rate of learning is maximised. To evaluate this adaptive learning system, 67 participants aged between 6 and 18 years acting as their own control took part in a series of sessions using the system. Sessions alternated between using the system with both affect detection and learning achievement to drive the selection of learning content (intervention) and using learning achievement alone (control) to drive the selection of learning content. Lack of boredom was the state with the strongest link to achievement, with both frustration and engagement positively related to achievement. There was significantly more engagement and less boredom in intervention than control sessions, but no significant difference in achievement. These results suggest that engagement does increase when activities are tailored to the personal needs and emotional state of the learner and that the system was promoting affective states that in turn promote learning. However, longer exposure is necessary to determine the effect on learning.