Since the Millennium, the use of physical punishment in the home has been a widely debated topic across the UK. Reliance on public opinion has been an important feature of this debate with a variety of UK surveys showing that many find physical punishment acceptable and do not support a complete ban on smacking. Drawing on the results from a…

This paper asserts that an Irish dimension should be taught within the context of diversity within the English history curriculum. The study explores perceptions of a wide range of respondents through the use of questionnaires and interviews undertaken during the period 2002-2007. Research findings suggest that perceptions of the place of Ireland…

Although the quality, performance and future of public library services in the UK is a matter of debate, there is little doubt that in recent years, despite claims relating to the emergence of a cyber-society, interest in library buildings and the library as "place" has been intense, almost matching that seen during the Carnegie era of…

This article attempts a contrast to the contribution by Hugh Starkey. Rather than his account of the inexorable rise of human rights discourse, and of the implementation of human rights standards, human rights are here presented as always and necessarily scandalous and highly contested. First, I explain why the UK has lagged so far behind its…

This article reports on the views of seven Asian female Social Science students following a class seminar on religious issues and schooling at a university in the UK. It explores the importance of the post-class spontaneous student dialogue where participation in much teaching and learning is voluntary. The concern is with engaged pedagogy and…

This article examines the reported influences on the university choices of 17 gay male undergraduate students attending a UK institution. It is argued that this process is strongly mediated by, and, therefore, has to be considered in relation to, class. Data analysis provides insight into the factors gay students say are important in selecting…

In this paper, based on a project funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council considering how people position themselves in relation to popular representations of mathematics and mathematicians, we explore constructions of mathematicians in popular culture and the ways learners make meanings from these. Drawing on an analysis of popular…

Many students who re-locate from host to home country are said to undergo a process of reverse culture shock akin to bereavement, involving stages of a grieving process. This has been likened to a "W-curve" in which feelings fluctuate before reaching a more balanced state. The present study examined the re-acculturation of Taiwanese and…

This article addresses the issue of harm in the research process. While researchers seek to conduct research that minimises harm, this paper argues that approaches adopted often create new forms of harm. This proposition is examined through drawing on Bourdieu's ideas about symbolic violence and poststructural theories of identity, to critically…

This study investigated attitudes toward people with intellectual disabilities among the general Hong Kong Chinese population and compared these to a White British sample, using the Community Living Attitudes Scale-Mental Retardation form (CLAS-MR; D. Henry, C. Keys, F. Balcazar, & D. Jopp, 1996). As predicted, attitudes among the Hong Kong…

This article reports on a small-scale research study commissioned by the then Department for Education and Skills ([DfES] now the Department for Children, Schools and Families [DCSF]) in June 2006 to aid the work of the Diversity and Citizenship Curriculum Review Group, headed by Sir Keith Ajegbo. The findings concentrate on how…

Responds to M. Stanton's comments on the current author's original article. One of the puzzles of motivational interviewing is why it works at all. How can it be that an individual interview or two yields change in a long-standing problem behavior even without any effort to alter social context? The time involved is such a tiny part of the…

This article considers the way that affect shaped the unfolding of a curriculum initiative which aimed to expose undergraduate art and design students to the insights of critical disability studies. This initiative, funded by the Big Lottery and managed by disability charity Scope, asked students in art, design and multimedia programmes in four UK…

In the wake of the general election, the new government--and the United Kingdom--face a range of pressing challenges. In this article, the author sets out what he believes to be the principal challenges and calls for action to create a learning society. The agenda set out would, if followed by the new government, pave the way to a genuine learning…

We examined the prospective associations between family socio-economic background, childhood intelligence ("g") at age 11, educational and occupational attainment, and social attitudes at age 33 in a large (N = 8804), representative sample of the British population born in 1958. Structural equation Modeling identified a latent trait of…