Jane Roberts

Video Diaries: A Tool to Investigate Sustainability-Related Learning in Threshold Spaces.

This paper takes as a case study an undergraduate field class from a UK university to rural Uganda. It describes and evaluates the use of video diaries as a tool for investigating the process of transformative learning in the context of education for sustainability. The applicability of threshold concept theory to this learning is investigated. Results show the video diary technique to be much more successful in capturing the development of student learning than written diaries. Despite some practical difficulties, rich data were generated. Analysis demonstrated that learning met three of the five criteria for threshold concepts: the learning was transformative, integrative and troublesome. Further research could test whether the learning in this case study met the threshold concept criterion of irreversibility. Further elaboration of the theoretical relationship between threshold concepts, transformative learning and education for sustainability is also needed. It is concluded that the video diary method is potentially transferable to other educational research contexts and may be particularly suitable for researching learning in threshold spaces.

Why Losing Political Office Matters to Us All

Losing political office is a major life transition for the individuals involved and the ripples spread wider, to family members and beyond. But are there further implications for our democratic system? Other than at a human level, why should we care?

What Is Known About Losing Political Office

John Keane, the widely respected writer and academic, qualifies Enoch Powell’s much quoted observation that,

The Current Politicians: Views of Political Careers and Motivations

I begin with the perspective of current politicians—council leaders, directly elected mayors and MPs—about their motivations for seeking office, their experience of holding it and how long they might seek to remain in office. What factors might influence such their decision on their preferred duration in office? In order to maintain confidentiality, I shall include both directly elected mayors and council leaders under the rubric of ‘council leaders’.

After Office: The Longer Term

How did individuals fare in the longer term following loss of office, whether they had stood down or had been defeated?

Reflections from 2015 and the UK General Election

Despite the evidence presented in preceding chapters that leaving political office is a major, yet unrecognised, transition for individuals, partners and families and that there may be wider implications for our system of democracy, there appears to be relatively little interest in this issue in the Westminster Parliament. Local government under the auspices of the Local Government Association has shown some stirrings of interest, but it is questionable how far this extends within the sector as a whole.

What May Help or Hinder the Transition from Political Office

As we have seen, the experiences of leaving political office shared some commonalities but differed too. The previous chapter explored how we might better understand the process of transition from political office, and thus better understand the differences in the experiences of those exiting office as well as the experiences that may be shared.

Partners and Families

All my interviewees had partners at the time of loss of office, even if this subsequently changed. Three former political office holders were no longer in a relationship with the partner with whom they had been at the time of their defeat. In a couple of cases, the defeat seemed to have played a significant part in the separation. One commented that s/he did not think her/his then partner “could cope with me … morose, down … very hard to be with.”

Privatization, pluralism and PWRs—looking beyond market forces

Market forces were generally held to be responsible for the failure of the UK governments attempt to privatize nuclear power and for the curtailment of the PWR programme. This paper examines a hitherto neglected factor: the institutional changes proposed by privatization, which both fragmented and alienated the political support for the nuclear industry at this crucial juncture. The history of nuclear policy is analysed in terms of corporatist theory. It is concluded that a fully developed corporatist policy sector, its authority unchallenged by other systems of representation, will usually be a necessaly condition for a successful nuclear programme.