Access and Express: Professional Perspectives on Public Library Makerspaces and Intellectual Freedom

This study examines the roles of makerspaces and librarians in public libraries, as defined by nine librarians instituting makerspace services. It explores their understanding of creative spaces and library policy, specifically the foundational principles of intellectual freedom and access. Using constructivist discourse analysis tools, this study analyzes interview data to illuminate a concept of access grounded in expression, incorporating hands-on activities, tools, and social connections. This study has implications for practitioners and policymakers in reconsidering access as a positive liberty enabled by social contexts, and librarians’ enzymatic roles in facilitating those contexts.     

Evaluating efforts to enhance health and wellbeing in Scottish secondary schools

Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland outlines a policy vision of a more progressive, integrated and holistic form of education; a commitment which contains an obligation for health and well-being (HWB) to be a responsibility of all teachers. A critical policy analysis approach was utilized in order to review school-level progress in different stages of policy development, i.e. policy formulation, legitimation, implementation and evaluation. Evidence was collected through 15 semi-structured interviews with head teachers, teacher education academics and staff with national and local authority quality improvement remits. Questions focused on: aims and curriculum goals; school culture; learning and teaching; partnership relationships and evaluations of practice. Findings suggest a high degree of support for curriculum aims, however, there were often problems communicating policy expectations (policy formulation). Thus, despite impressive examples of innovative practice in relation to school ethos, wider achievement and pupils’ broader general education (policy legitimation), there were also examples of HWB being constrained by senior school examinations and the backwash effect this had on curriculum planning and engagement with interdisciplinary learning approaches (policy implementation/evaluation). These findings have implications in terms of policy to practice coherence as well as highlighting the need for further more specific research evaluations.     

Course teams: myth and actuality

This article argues for the development of group intervention techniques to improve the efficacy of course teams in the preparation of distance education materials. A review of recent commentaries on course teams is presented along with an initial selection and discussion of course team issues. These are presented in the refreshingly frank domestic context of actual interactions. The irritations generated by these will be familiar to practitioners. The author concludes with a series of recommendations to enrich the quality of course team life and output. It is hoped that this provocative analysis of the course team method of producing distance education materials will generate a lively response.