New Approaches to Staff Recruitment in Higher Education

This paper describes briefly the academic tenure and its legislative terms in the UK, over the last twenty years. The author refers to the current wider situation/trends in the international higher education arena of two categories of academic staff – “established” staff (on permanent contract) and fixed‐term staff – and to how their levels of protection can have an impact on the overall health of the universities and their academic freedom.     

Unemployment and social class stigmas

Western economies have seen a shift away from a model of job security to a model of work precarity. Cycles of unemployment are a defining feature of the new precarious economy. Given these cycles of unemployment, it becomes imperative to explore the barriers to reemployment. The present study uses stigma communication to explore the intersection of two barriers to reemployment: the stigmatization of unemployment and social class position. Analysis of 40 interviews revealed that the meaning of unemployment changed depending on the perceived social class of an unemployed person. Participants described typical unemployed people as pathologically lazy and unmotivated. Upper class unemployed people were stigmatized as a product of privilege. Middle class unemployed people were relatively unstigmatized. The typical unemployed person merged with the typical unemployed lower class person, suggesting that the dominant meaning of unemployment assumes that unemployment is a lower class phenomenon that is preventable if the lower class person would work harder.     

Partnering with Districts to Expand an After-School Maths Club Programme

Abstract

A key intervention of the South African Numeracy Chair Project (SANCP) since 2011 has been the introduction of mathematics (or maths) clubs, which occur in the out-of-school time space. In 2016 the maths club concept was developed into a 15-week Pushing for Progression (PfP) teacher development programme which supports primary school mathematics teachers to run clubs beyond the SANCP local area. Expanding intervention models beyond local schools is imperative in the second phase of the SANCP (2016–2020). Working from a mixed methods methodological approach, the researchers collected pre- and post-data for a 4-operations assessment of the entire PfP programme. In this article they share learner data from one of the nine teachers who participated in the PfP maths club programme in the Uitenhague District, Eastern Cape, South Africa, to illuminate how partnerships between academics, district officials and teachers can enable powerful student learning in the club space. They argue further that within the tightly focused development programme run by teachers in this one district, it is possible for learners to make substantive progress in mathematical proficiency (MP) (especially procedural fluency and conceptual understanding) when comparing scores and learner methods between a pre- and post- assessment.     

Editorial

Knowledge Management Research & Practice -     

Editorial

Knowledge Management Research & Practice -