Michael R. M. Ward

PaDDMAS: parallel and distributed data mining application suite

Discovering complex associations, anomalies and patterns in distributed data sets is gaining popularity in a range of scientific, medical and business applications. Various algorithms are employed to perform data analysis within a domain, and range from statistical to machine learning and AI based techniques. Several issues need to be addressed however to scale such approaches to large data sets, particularly when these are applied to data distributed at various sites. As new analysis techniques are identified, the core tool set must enable easy integration of such analytical components. Similarly, results from an analysis engines must be sharable, to enable storage, visualisation or further analysis of results. We describe the architecture of PaDDMAS, a component based system for developing distributed data mining applications. PaDDMAS provides a tool set for combining pre-developed or custom components using a dataflow approach, with components performing analysis, data extraction or data management and translation. Each component is wrapped as a Java/CORBA object, and has an interface defined in XML. Components can be serial or parallel objects, and may be binary or contain a more complex internal structure. We demonstrate a prototype using a neural network analysis algorithm.

I'm a Geek I Am: Academic Achievement and the Performance of a Studious Working-Class Masculinity.

During the last few decades, the South Wales Valleys (UK) have undergone a considerable economic, social, cultural and political transformation, altering youth transitions from school to work. Drawing on a two and a half year ethnographic study, in the paper I concentrate on a group of academically successful young white working-class men aged 16–18 years who were dealing with these changes. I argue that these studious performances of young working-class masculinity offer a different way in which to view a disadvantaged community and explore working-class educational success. However, I argue that their future aspirations to attend university are still tempered by the classed and gender codes that underpin expectations of manhood in this deindustrial community and which can impact on successful transitions to adulthood.

Acceptable Masculinities: Working-Class Young Men and Vocational Education and Training Courses

ABSTRACT Since the 1970s, the process of deindustrialisation, accompanied by social, cultural and political changes, has altered youth transitions from school to work. This paper is drawn from an Economic and Social Research Council-funded study that explored the diversity of white, working-class young men (aged between 16 and 18) in a post-industrial community. The study focused on how young men performed their masculinities through different post-16 educational pathways and within the limits of place and a disadvantaged social class position. In this paper, I explore the way three of these young men who were enrolled on different vocational education and training courses learned how to display acceptable masculinities within these settings. Drawing on the work of Goffman, I argue that these vocational courses can ‘frame’ traditional forms of working-class masculinity, but also have the potential to enable alternative performances of masculinity to come through. However, the role of a locale’s industrial heritage on gendered and classed expectations is important, and the impact this has on successful futures needs to be recognised.

‘We’re Different from Everyone Else’: Contradictory Working-Class Masculinities in Contemporary Britain

Alongside industrial change, social, cultural and political traditions have altered youth transitions from school to work. A ‘crisis’ of masculinity has also been reported to have developed alongside these changes, with working-class men in particular struggling to adapt. This chapter looks at the experiences of those who embrace a contemporary form of youth culture known as the ‘alternative scene’. These young men were often alienated, bullied and victimised for their apparent non-normative performances of masculinity in their community. However, I suggest that these non-normative performances of masculinity continue to evidence many traditional discourses that contradict their own ‘alternative’ displays.

“I am going to Uni!” Working-class academic success, opportunity and conflict

More young people than ever now remain in post-16 education and progress onto higher education. However, despite these changes, white working-class young men are one of the least likely demographic groups to enter university. Drawing on an ethnographic study with young men from a deprived community in Wales (UK), in this chapter I look at the lives of a group of educational ‘achievers’, offering a different way to view working-class educational experiences. Despite working hard academically, the future aspirations of these young men to attend university are still tempered by the classed and gender codes that underpin expectations of manhood in this deindustrialized community.

Engaging schooling: developing exemplary education for students in poverty

These points are a significant challenge to PISA and its influence in global education. The points also raise more questions than they answer, but in terms of thinking hard about education, that is no bad thing. Whilst the targeted readership is broad, such important issues should not be diluted to a homeopathic extent, and certainly, the authors have managed to strike a balance that is authoritative and accessible. Generating conversations about issues that influence educational theory and practice is to be welcomed and difficult conversations should be positively encouraged.

Doing gender locally: The importance of ‘place’ in understanding marginalised masculinities and young men’s transitions to ‘safe’ and successful futures

Observable anxieties have been developing about the position of boys and young men in contemporary society in recent years. This is expressed as a crisis of masculinity, in which place is often implicitly implicated, but is rarely considered for its role in the shaping of young men’s practices, trajectories and aspirations. Drawing on research conducted with young people who accessed a range of social care support services, this article argues that transition means different things for young men in different locales and that local definitions of masculinity are required to better understand young men’s lives and the opportunities available to them. The authors argue that home life, street life, individual neighbourhoods, regions and nations all shaped the young men’s identities and the practices they (and the staff working with them) drew on in order to create successful futures and ‘safe’ forms of masculinity. It is suggested that this place-based approach has the potential to re-shape the ‘crisis’ discourse surrounding masculinity and the anxieties associated with young men.

Working-Class Masculinities in Vocational Education and Training Courses

We have seen how The Valley Boiz, The Geeks and The Emos performed different versions of working-class masculinity in Cwm Dyffryn High School. I also looked at how their masculine identities were further constructed through different social interactions and leisure activities beyond the school gates. I argued that these young men are adapting to insecure times in different ways and emphasized how historic legacies of space and place and their family biographies impact upon their educational decision-making and leisure interests. In this chapter, I explore the way young masculinities are performed in other educational spaces. Continuing with three young men from the same cohort — Bakers, Ian and Frankie — I focus on the performance of masculinity in three different vocational educational courses (VET) at three different FE colleges outside Cwm Dyffryn. Two ‘masculine’ courses — motor vehicle studies and a Modern Apprenticeship in engineering — are compared with a more ‘feminine’ subject, equine studies.

Conclusion: Growing Up into Uncertain Futures

The restructuring of the economy and the de-industrialization process that has occurred during the last 40 years has altered traditional transitions from school to work across the global north. These economic changes have been accompanied by a set of common held assumptions that men are the new disadvantaged, and that there is a ‘crisis’ in contemporary forms of masculinity. This supposed ‘crisis’ is evidenced in political rhetoric, public policy, high levels of educational underachievement, violence and suicide rates, mental health problems, absent fathers and a lack of male role models. However, these changes have not impacted on all men equally and it is the lives of white, working-class men in communities where heavy industry has not been replaced, who have suffered the most. As an alternative pathway to adulthood and to cope with changing job markets, qualifications and progression into higher education have increasingly been since by governments as the solution to many of these issues for young people. Yet in de-industrialized communities, these contemporary pathways to adulthood that young men have to contend with, are quite different to the traditions of their fathers and grandfathers. With a lack of employment opportunities, the relationship between class and gender has been greatly affected, challenging assumptions around what it means to be a man and what defines masculinity.

The Valleys: History, Modernity and Masculinities

In this chapter, I focus on the town of Cwm Dyffryn and the surrounding area to enable what follows in subsequent chapters to be considered in the economic, social and political context of this formerly industrial place. Most, if not all, of the young men featured in this study (and their parents and grandparents) were born and brought up in this one locale, although as will become clear, their lives were far from restricted to this specific place. As the young men were able to move between spaces, this study moved with them and I followed them to different educational institutions around the locale and to the different towns and cities in South Wales. However, Cwm Dyffryn was their main base and was therefore the main location for the study. Since industrial change and the performance of masculinity is central to the book, and as few people reading this will have visited places like Cwm Dyffryn1 or be aware of the history of the area beyond generalizations or stereotypical imagery,2 I offer this chapter as a way of letting the reader ‘place’ the narratives and descriptions of my participants into a given, yet still constructed, context.