Out of the comfort zone: enhancing work-based learning about employability through student reflection on work placements

This paper examines the work-based learning about employability reported by 26 undergraduate Geography and Environmental Management students on part-time, unpaid work placements. The students' “reflective essays” emphasized their learning more in terms of emotional challenges than in terms of skills, as being pushed out of their “comfort zone” forced them to be more proactive, tackle unfamiliar activities and develop emotionally. This conceptualizes employability as more than skills and as integrative, reflective and adaptable. This also emphasizes that higher education institutions must support employability and work-based learning outside the academic zone and better integrate off-campus work-based learning with on-campus reflection.     

Appendix: deconstructive commentary

Abstract

A ‘short and thin’ model for work experience has been devised at Middlesex University. The reasons for adopting this approach are discussed, and its benefits and drawbacks are identified. The challenge of designing a work experience for a technological area such as GIS that also meets the academic requirements of a non‐vocational degree programme is also discussed.     

Staying Power: What Influences Micro-firm Survival in Tourism?

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how previous experience and location of entrepreneurs influence the survival of new tourism firms. The paper departs from recent evolutionary economic geography advancements, highlighting the importance of routines and skills as well as location-specific knowledge for firm success. While having been well-researched for manufacturing industries characterized by high entry barriers, little knowledge is currently available on the factors influencing survival rates in service sectors with low entry barriers. A quantitative approach applies hazard models to investigate the survival rates over a seven-year period of a total of 133 new micro-tourism firms started between 1999 and 2001 in the four northernmost counties of Sweden. The geo-referenced micro-database ASTRID links information on firm features (e.g. firm births and deaths, spatial coordinates and industry codes) to characteristics of entrepreneurs (e.g. age, education, previous experience). The main finding is that entrepreneurs with previous work experience in related sectors are more likely to survive and, in this case, entrepreneurs without local experience tend to be less successful. We find no evidence that new firms operating in regions specialized in tourism have a survival advantage. Our analysis also indicates that surviving firms improve performance over time. The paper thus contributes new knowledge on the determinants of micro-firm survival in tourism.     

Democracy and the Criminal Justice System

Abstract

This paper explores the difficulties faced by European secularism in dealing with a Muslim diaspora of unprecedented size in the continent's history. It shows how this presence has highlighted contradictions in European conceptions of the religious and of the public-private divide. The paper does this by comparing Europe to Latin America where a quite different process of secularization seems to have taken place.     

PUBLIC GOVERNANCE OF ARTS ORGANISATIONS IN SWEDEN: STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS

The article investigates public governance of arts organisations in Sweden by examining the relationship between these public principals and arts organisations and by illustrating how this connection affects the strategic action of individual arts organisations. Two case studies provide the basis for the analysis: Nationalmuseum, the national museum of older fine art and crafts located in Stockholm, and Edsvik konst och kultur, a kunsthalle, or gallery, located in the municipality of Sollentuna. The article concludes that public governance does affect strategic planning and action in the individual arts organisation by presenting it with opposing logics of control and evaluation and by creating economic and political vulnerability for the organisation through budget and management controls.     

The Platonic Enlightenment

Abstract

Mark Blitz has written an analysis of Plato’s political philosophy that engages with a large proportion of the Platonic corpus. His examination is orientated by Plato’s intention of expressing his views in dialogue form, and animated by Plato’s principle that political philosophy must emerge from the attentive critique of ordinary or political experience. This article raises the question whether Blitz has done justice to the “poetic” (constructed, historical, etc.) character of ordinary experience or doxa, and so of the radical nature of Plato’s political thought.     

我读天下无字书——世界视野与立足本土

根据自己在国外求学的经历,介绍几位西方左派知识分子感人的作为。马若德、丹尼尔.贝尔、本.哈罗德都是全世界在他们那个领域里面最著名、有的甚至可称之为最伟大的学者。这些学者治学、为人的方方面面,可以让大家了解西方意义上的左派优秀知识分子。同时,以自己出生于中国三代贫民家庭的孩子,能够有机会在改革开放之初,通过教育扶贫的政策,一步一步走向世界最好的大学,有机会在全世界最伟大的思想家和大学者的身边学习的经历,说明最穷困的地区的孩子翻身,可以通过读书而不是造反去实现。期待通过教育扶贫的方式,改变贫困地区孩子的命运。     

Nested assemblages: migrants,war heritage,informal learning and national identities

ABSTRACT

This article examines relations between Anzac heritage and Australian national identity, among migrant visitors to the Australian War Memorial (AWM). What meaning could a story derived from Australian involvement in the First World War have to migrants who moved to Australia after the Second World War? Participants in qualitative interviews were eleven first-generation Australians, whose countries of birth were England, Greece, Ireland, New Zealand, Philippines, Scotland, South Africa and Sri Lanka, with parental countries of birth extending to Austria, Germany, India and Japan. Drawing on sociomaterial assemblage theory, the findings illustrate the concept of nested assemblages. At increasing scalar levels, the migrants form visitor-AWM assemblages, they may (or may not) feel part of a national Anzac heritage assemblage, and as migrants they are entangled in multiple national assemblages concurrently. Assemblages pertaining to family, faith, learning and memorialising were additional networks at play. Mapping interrelations amongst these assemblages showed migrants as actively gathering and interpreting heritage, sometimes as the enactment of national identity and at other times as the performance of informal, lifelong learning. The findings have importance to institutions seeking to be responsive to diverse and changing populations, particularly those wrestling with tensions around national identity.     

初论段义孚人本主义地理学思想的形成

1976年,人本主义地理学之父段义孚在《美国地理学家协会会刊》发表的论文中首次使用了"人本主义地理学"这一称法。人本主义地理学的出现由20世纪60年代末的人本主义思潮所带动,其通过关注人类自身状况而反映出与地理学学科的其他分支息息相关的各种现象,因而从属于地理学。段义孚将融合了地理学与哲学的、曾被称为"地理知识学"的学科推向一个新的高度。段义孚认为,"对生命意义的探求"是人本主义地理学的实质性核心,也是一直以来推动其进行人本主义地理学研究的动力。正如人本主义研究以人类的经验、意识以及知识为出发点,本文从人本主义视角出发,对段义孚人本主义地理学思想的形成过程进行系统化梳理。通过追溯段义孚人生经历中对其有重大影响的人物和经典著作,指出时代背景与个人经历共同促成段义孚人本主义关怀的形成。     

体验链条产业化:旅游吸引物构建的一种系统方法——基于新疆博尔塔拉温泉县的个案研究

旅游核心吸引物不仅具有某种特殊的客观属性,同时还具有人为主观建构的符号属性,它在旅游体验中的价值体现在多个方面。论文提出了旅游核心吸引物构建的一种新方法,其基本思路是:从市场空白与产品创新角度切入,通过二维矩阵定位方法萃取旅游主题;然后按照"真实性体验"原理进行旅游产品设计,以地方特色产业为纽带,构建由一系列游客参与体验活动串联而成的旅游体验链条。这种建立在旅游目的地本地产业化需求与外部旅游市场需求双向驱动基础上的新方法,突出旅游吸引物的体验价值性及其产业化生产组织过程,能有效解决少数民族地区旅游产业开发与地方优势传统产业的衔接问题,从根本上实现少数民族地区旅游业发展的立地性和可持续性。