This paper explores the emotions connected with music performance. Performing music provides the potential to attain wellbeing via the hedonic and eudaimonic routes, appealing to pleasure, engagement and meaning (Seligman, 2002). To date, most research exploring emotions amongst performers has focused on these components separately, exploring…

The purpose of the essay is to demonstrate that study of quality of life can explore eras before our own. There are caches of social data as early as the seventeenth century, and there were people who attempted to formulate social circumstances close to today's concepts of quality of life. Data from England and Ireland are presented and analyzed.

Background: The impact of a total laryngectomy on an individual's life has primarily been measured from a male viewpoint reflecting the demographics of a diagnosis of laryngeal cancer. A small number of studies have looked specifically at females, but very few are comparison studies. Consequently, there is little consistent research regarding any…

Background: There is much interest in the use and prevention of unnecessary restrictive behavioural procedures; however, accurate estimates of their use are lacking. The Healthcare Commission and Commission for Social Care Inspection (2007) recently reported such data from a large sample of units administered by the National Health Service (NHS).…

Objective: We used ecological momentary assessment to understand the physical activity and sedentary behaviour patterns of university students. Study design: Cross sectional, opportunistic sample from a university in the English midlands. Methods: Ecological momentary assessment diaries were completed every 15 minutes across two days. The sample…

Background: Hospital closure programmes in England have generally sought to attain a fulfilling life for people with an intellectual disability by locating them in domestic-style housing in urban settings. Few have been placed in intentional or "village" communities. Yet comparative studies of different housing types have found that…

Honored by the invitation to read and comment on the papers in this special edition, this final contribution is an appreciation of critical studies in education. This "C" word is dangerous in a neo-liberal world, but as the authors show there is much intellectually practical work that researchers and theorizers are doing. I take my…

School leadership is significant for student learning, but increased workload and complexity are believed to be in part responsible for the difficulties internationally in managing succession, with experienced leaders leaving the profession prematurely and potential future leaders reluctant to take on the role. This article draws on a national…

This report describes the evaluation of a whole-school intervention to improve morbidity and psychosocial well-being in pupils with asthma. In all, 193 children with asthma (7-9 years) from 23 primary/junior schools in the south of England participated. Schools (n = 12) randomly assigned to the intervention group (IV) received a staff asthma…

The quality of care offered in four different types of non-parental child care to 307 infants at 10 months old and 331 infants at 18 months old was compared and factors associated with higher quality were identified. Observed quality was lowest in nurseries at each age point, except that at 18 months they offered more learning activities. There…

The present review summarises literature on the needs of disabled children and their families and draws on research identifying promising service provision. The review took 1997 as its starting point to build on two thorough reviews that were written prior to that time. The findings of the current review largely echo earlier work in terms of what…

Background: This paper considers some economic aspects of a therapy and support service for people with stroke and aphasia. This material was part of a broader evaluation of the service, which is reported elsewhere (van der Gaag et al. 2005, van der Gaag and Mowles 2005). Aims: The purpose of this part of the study was to investigate the…

This paper describes the conceptual development of a self-enumerated scale of quality of life (CASP-19) and presents an empirical evaluation of its structure using a combination of exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic approaches across three different survey settings for older people living in England and Wales in the new millennium. All…

Background: This article is concerned with professional learning within multi-agency settings. Since the publication of the government document "Every child matters" in 2003, professionals involved in working with children and young people have been moving into newly organized services that are required to deliver improved services for…

The widespread acceptance of home schooling has persisted long enough to address the question of how well home-schooled children do later in life. In this book, 20 interviews investigate the long-term effects of home schooling in Britain. In the 1980s, the author conducted interviews with several of the same students, when most were teenagers…