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Probation. Why and how? Brochure

"Probation is a fast-developing field that plays an important role in the response to crime and the prevention of reoffending. Probation covers various sanctions and community-based measures, including supervision and community service, designed to promote community safety and the social inclusion of offenders. This brochure is intended for justice ministers, other politicians and senior civil servants interested in setting up or upgrading a probation service. The ‘key message’ highlights the main topics and messages in this brochure. Readers who want to learn more about the benefits of probation and about how to bring these into practice should read the full text."

‘Everything revolves around gymnastics’: athletes and parents make sense of elite youth sport

The continuation of emotional abuse as a normalized practice in elite youth sport has received scholarly attention, often with the use of a Foucauldian framework. The use of sense-making, a theoretical framework that focuses on how meaning is created in ambiguous situations, may give additional insights into the continuation of emotionally abusive coaching practices. The purpose of this study was to apply the seven properties of sense-making to explore how athletes and parents made sense of coaching practices in elite women’s gymnastics. We interviewed 14 elite women gymnasts and their parents to examine how they made sense of what occurred during practices. The results show how the sense-making of athletes and parents was an ongoing activity that resulted in a code of silence and a normalization of abusive coaching practices.

Professional and personal experiences as leverage for learning.

Professional and personal experiences as leverage for learning

The current transnational climate (British Council, 2014) in Europe is likely to continue to generate institutional and classroom situations which dictate that difference and otherness be the norm rather than the exception. Unfortunately, in the 1960's, Black and minority ethnic (BME) migrants from the former British colonies had less-than-favorable educational experiences in Britain due to prejudice and stereotyping mainly arising from cultural differences. Since then there have been a plethora of studies, policies, and reports regarding the perpetuation of discrimination in educational institutions. Today, British higher educational institutions have finally begun to recognize the need to reduce progression and attainment gaps. However, their focus tends to only consider the student “Black and Minority Ethnic attainment gap” with almost no attention being given to educators', or more specifically there is a distinctive lack of thought given to the female BME educators' progression and attainment in British HEIs. As such, this paper draws theoretically and conceptually on critical cultural autoethnography, to illustrate the value of conducting research into a female's BME educators' personal and professional experiences, and “gives voice to previously silenced and marginalized experiences” (Boylorn and Orbe, 2014, p. 15). In doing so, I highlight how higher educational institutions underutilisation of such competencies and contributions have and continue to perpetuate BME underachievement. I conclude the paper by questioning the accountability of providing support for BME educators progression and attainment, challenge educational leaders to consider the value and utilization of cultural knowledge, and implore all educators to reflect on how their personal experiences influence their professional identity.

Between hope and fear: Distinctiveness of media accountability online in The Netherlands

News media in The Netherlands show great variety in the extent and ways, in which they realize media accountability online in terms of actor transparency, product transparency and feedback opportunities online. It is suggested that even those news rooms that seem to adhere to transparency and public accountability still need to explore the functionality and application of media accountability instruments (MAI). Both in terms of potentials and pitfalls, news rooms need to consider about what they want to be transparent and in what ways. To the extent that online innovations are visible, traditional news media seem to experiment, as is the case with newsroom blogs or the project of hyper local journalism Dichtbij.nl, part of the Telegraaf Company. Various news media have on-going projects on audience participation, online applications and distribution models. However, since many projects merely aim at finding new applications, processes, platforms and business models, it remains to be seen assess whether projects are indeed reasonably innovative and feasible at the same time. The development of an online and therefore immediate, archived, personalized and interactive context, offers practical and ethical challenges to Dutch journalism. These challenges bring shifts in its role and responsibility to society. It means that changes occur in what journalists are accountable for, as well as ways in how they are accountable. The Dutch media landscape lodges various professional accountability instruments like the press council and both profession-wide and news media specific codes of ethics, but some of these instruments receive only moderate support. Proactive openness is more an exception than the rule and may well be a distinctive indicator for quality journalism. Although news media often acknowledge the importance of media accountability offline and online, they often lack the resources or courage to use them or have different priorities. This ambiguous position may indicate that in relation to media accountability online, Dutch news media are between hope and fear: that it will either improve their relationship with the public and fuel professional quality, or ask too much of resources with too little benefit.

Exploring the line between the preventive and punitive character of measures in the frame of a just culture

This paper presents the results of a survey which aimed at exploring the perceptions of the employees of a large aviation organization regarding the punitive or preventive character of possible measures that management could take in cases of errors and violations. The analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data collected showed that the viewpoints of the staff were sufficiently aligned only for half of the measures and that all measures inflicting a short- or long-term dissociation of the end-users from their current working place and function were highly unfavourable and linked to castigation. Also, statistically significant differences were observed across groups of specialties and years of service regarding the appropriateness of specific measures especially in the case of errors. The findings of this study in combination with literature references, suggest that the establishment of a just culture structure with agreed lines between the punitive and preventive character of measures and its endorsement by the employees is achievable, but it requires a bottom-up approach and periodical revision. Similar exploratory research, complemented possibly by explanatory studies, is recommended to be carried out by organizations prior or during the development of their just culture policy andrelated measures.