The final year dissertation is an important part of an undergraduate degree which delivers a wide range of subject-specific and transferable skills. It plays a significant part in students' learning development and overall experience of university. Finding the right project is emotionally important to students and may underpin their subsequent…

Whether intended by education policy (e.g., via school entrance examinations) or unintended (e.g., via social stratification), selection effects in education (who goes where, gets what, and how much) shape educational opportunities -- influencing the life chances of individuals and groups, and the structure of societies. However, within the…

Assessment lies at the centre of PhD degree quality standards, with quality assurance relying on independent external examiners. This study investigates the role of the viva and the selection of external examiners from within the accounting and finance discipline across UK institutions. A questionnaire survey and follow-up interviews with…

The paper introduces a concept of a "negotiated space" to describe university researchers' attempts to balance pragmatically, continually and dynamically over time, their own agency and autonomy in the selection of research topics and pursuit of scientific research to filter out the explicit steering and tacit signals of external…

The world population is ageing. In the UK alone, it is projected that by 2035 those aged 65 and over will account for 23 per cent of the total population whilst the number of people aged 85 and over will account for 5 per cent of the total population. At the same time, the digital transformations of the last few decades are leaving behind many…

The influence of top-down cognitive control on 2 putatively distinct forms of distraction was investigated. Attentional capture by a task-irrelevant auditory deviation (e.g., a female-spoken token following a sequence of male-spoken tokens)--as indexed by its disruption of a visually presented recall task--was abolished when focal-task engagement…

Objective: Understand food choice, from the perspective of people residing in socioeconomically deprived rural neighborhoods. Methods: Focus groups (n = 7) were undertaken within a community setting involving 42 adults (2 males and 40 females) recruited through voluntary action groups. Data were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and content…

This project explored ways in which student selection in nursing can be developed. Original research was undertaken throughout the United Kingdom using qualitative interviews with a range of academic staff and partners from practice. A conceptual framework was produced which identified five categories which can confidently be seen as…

Despite much research into mate selection, non-heterosexual populations are often only included for comparison purposes, while trans people and their partners are overlooked. This study attempts to address this using qualitative methodology to explore the mate selection of the partners of trans people. Six participants were recruited from online…

This small-scale research examined den-making in three different settings in the UK. The research consisted of non-participant, narrative observations of children aged between 3- and 5-years and early years practitioners involved in supporting them in their play. Content analysis revealed common themes: the impact of the environment on the way…

Breakthrough, a global human rights organization, produced "America 2049," an alternate-reality game set in a dystopian future in which the United States is on the verge of breaking apart because of an inability to tolerate diversity and promote human rights. During the 12-week game launch, players uncovered artifacts related to the…

Some of the most significant changes in information technology are those that have given the individual user greater power to choose. The first of these changes was the development of the personal computer. The PC liberated the individual user from the limitations of the mainframe and minicomputers and from the rules and regulations of centralized…

Recent research has shown that children use colors systematically in relation to how they feel about certain colors and the figures that they draw. This study explored cultural differences between Finnish and English children's use of color to represent figures with contrasting emotional characters. One hundred and eight children (54 Finnish, 54…

Provides a case study of the acquisitions processes that were necessary when Cardiff University's School of Engineering made a decision to subscribe to electronic-only versions of journals where such subscriptions were less expensive than the print equivalent. In doing so, addresses issues of electronic subscriptions management in UK academic…

This short article explores the issue of whether teachers in colleges are being selected or directed to assume mentoring responsibilities with regard to one full time, pre-service, PCET ITE course, and whether any links are discernible between their attitudes to mentoring and the origins of their involvement in the activity. There is a particular…