Learning to live together on a small planet

International understanding, once a humanitarian virtue, is now a dramatic, urgent necessity: the interdependence of the different regions and countries of the world and the strain on limited resources are such that without understanding leading to co-operation there will be disaster. The following article by Lester Brown, head of the Worldwatch Institute, should serve to remind our readers that unless we all become educated to the grave problems facing humanity, the technical skills and general knowledge imparted by our shool and university systems may well become superfluous. [Ed.] D. C.-based non-profit research organization created to analyse and to focus attention on global problems. Author of In the Human Interestand The Twenty Ninth Day: Accommodating Human Needs and Numbers to the Earth's Resources.     

Using the DYSA Programme to Reduce Stress and Anxiety in First-year University Students

With recent increases in the number of students attending universities without a proportional increase in resources, it is likely that there has been a decrease in the quality of life students experience and an increase in the stress they feel. This is of course added to by tuition fees and the need to take out student loans. The writers review research into student stress and highlight the fact that many researchers have noted the need for stress-reduction courses, though this has been a recommendation that has not generally been taken up. A specific stress-reduction programme for school pupils and university students is described. This programme was tested with first-year undergraduates. The students involved all felt that the programme had been valuable. Apart from its clear relevance to the support of university students, this paper raises issues which are of importance to those working with sixth-form students.     

Engaging employers in assessment

The authors describe a pilot project in which formative feedback from industry professionals creates a genuine learning experience for students.     

Managing Difference: secondary English in the National Curriculum

The article analyses the 2007 orders for secondary English by charting their development and comparing them with those for other subjects. Their account of literature is incoherent in relation to national identity. Their implicit model of individual identity is likewise flawed, partly because of an unexamined drift towards rhetoric. These problems are partly attributable to a lack of interest in dialogue within the orders themselves and in their creation. They do, however, make Foucauldian sense as part of a system for generating the knowledges by which state education is run – knowledges which teachers and pupils alike are expected to internalise.     

ON THE TRAIL OF THE LATE BLOOMER

This paper explores the concept of the late bloomer and identifies individuals who might, by example, motivate others to become late bloomers. Grandma Moses has been labelled a late bloomer because of her distinctive, primitive American art begun in her seventies. The concept of the late bloomer appears to be a valid one worthy of investigating in a systematic manner.     

Mutuality Meets the Market: Analysing Changes in the Control of Quality Assurance in United Kingdom Higher Education 1992–2012

There has been a tendency in the literature to see changes in quality assurance as part of a process of increased state control. This article suggests a more nuanced approach that also takes account of the different trajectories of the pre‐ and post‐1992 sectors. It finds that whilst there have been increases in both state oversight and market coordination since 1992, mutuality (self‐regulation) remains the dominant mode of control of quality assurance in the United Kingdom. However the present government's higher education reforms, coming on top of a series of market‐based policies for structure, funding and governance going back at least to 1980, as well as a growing emphasis on students' rights as consumers through the courts, may change the picture.