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In the realm of construction education, the investigation of immersive learning and extended reality (XR) technologies has experienced a surge in recent times. Nevertheless, there remains a notable lack of comprehension surrounding the most efficient ways to integrate these technologies into tailored teaching approaches for vocational construction training. This research study aims to pinpoint the key factors that construction vocational education and training (VET) providers must consider when introducing XR technologies into their training schemes.

This study conducted an in-depth literature review to develop an initial framework to summarise training, technology and institutional factors influencing the educational-technology integration of XR technologies in VET. In addition, this study utilised a Delphi technique, including semi-structured group discussions and two rounds of online follow-up questionnaires, to capture VET experts’ judgements on the importance of decision-making criteria.

This study has identified the critical factors to be considered in the VET sector when adopting XR technologies. Findings revealed institutional factors were the most important criteria for participants, followed by training and technology factors.

The current decision-making process focuses on selecting XR technologies rather than evaluating their performance after implementation. Therefore, more research is needed to monitor the implementation of this technology in curricula from a senior management perspective. This will help to understand the cost and value factors related to the value proposition of XR technologies in courses.

To ensure the success and long-term viability of the technology-curriculum interface, it is important to consider factors such as the availability of technical and educational support, data security and cost-effectiveness. It is also crucial to focus on ease of use and content development that emphasises instruction to create engaging content for learners.

The potential impact of this study is underpinned by two facts: (1) it constitutes the first effort made in the field to comprehensively elicit VET expert judgements in relation to XR technologies, and (2) it offers decision-making criteria that are at play in seeking to take advantage of high-cost technologies that are rapidly evolving. While there is no simple checklist for XR implementation, this study takes a step further to identify significant factors influencing XR integration in vocational construction training.

Key challenges currently facing Higher Education (HE) in the UK are the continuing dominance of curricula by West-centric knowledge traditions which reinforce normative Whiteness and undergird racism, and glaring disparities in student outcomes. Seeking to address these challenges and promote fair access and educational opportunities aimed at enabling a more equitable, just and life-enhancing society, London Metropolitan University has launched its Education for Social Justice Framework (ESJF) (2020) as an integrative framework for inclusive curriculum redesign.

This chapter explores the context and moral imperative of the ESJF, its integrative elements, its pedagogical challenges and its transformative potential, through critically reviewing its application during a pilot phase of implementation in 2020–2021, based on the perspectives of six academics involved as course leaders of the participating programs from various disciplines, as well as the authors. Data from individual interviews with the course leaders are used to throw light on key themes concerning the importance and character of the ESJF, challenges and enabling factors in implementing the ESJF, resulting course changes, and the role of students in curriculum development. This chapter concludes with some general implications of adopting an ambitious, integrative approach to curriculum and pedagogical transformation.

THE following lists of contracts placed by the Air Ministry during September and October are extracted from the October and November issues of The Ministry of Labour Gazette:

Sociologists have tended to construct theories of identity based on unitary notions of social location which avoid conceptualizing disjunction and contradiction and which therefore fail to capture certain characteristics of the postcolonial condition. This paper engages in a postcolonial re-reading of sociological theories of practice (in particular, Pierre Bourdieu's notion of habitus). It does so through an analysis of the historical development of the field of health and healing in South Africa. From the beginning of the colonial enterprise, biomedicine resisted amalgamation with other forms of healing and insisted on a monotherapeutic ideology and practice whereas indigenous healing accommodated not only biomedicine, but invited pluralism within and across cultural and ethnic differences. As such, a bifurcated and parallel system of healing emerged, whereby Black South Africans practiced pluralism and white South Africans utilized biomedicine in isolation. This disjuncture became acrimonious in the post-apartheid era as the state attempted to forge a united health system and battle the AIDS epidemic. Despite the historical and contemporary bifurcations within the field of health and healing, people living with AIDS continue to subscribe to a hybrid health ideology. There is, therefore, a structural disjuncture between the realities of consumption within the field of health and healing and the logic of the field as it is articulated in the symbolic struggle raging in the field of power. The field of health and healing is characterized, therefore, by a simultaneous bifurcation and hybridity – which is reflected in HIV-infected South Africans’ beliefs and practices. In order to make sense of this puzzling disjuncture and its impact on subjects’ trajectories of action, this paper draws insight from Pierre Bourdieu's theory of habitus and Homi Bhabha's conceptualization of hybridity – transforming each of them through their synthesis and application to the postcolonial context.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the issues raised by and the possible long-term significance of the judicial review obtained by the pressure group UK Uncut into HM Revenue and Customs’ decision to forgive £10 m of interest payable by the investment bank, Goldman Sachs.

Using Lukes’ (2005) three dimensions of power as a conceptual framework, the paper compares this case with a similar case from the 1980s in order to discuss the importance of democratic oversight of the way in which public bodies discharge their duties, the extent to which this should override the principle of taxpayer confidentiality and the extent to which legal rules and procedures permit such oversight.

The comparison shows that, by permitting the review to proceed, greater weight was given to the importance of democratic oversight in the UK Uncut's case, but the rejection of both cases demonstrates that the tax authority is permitted very wide administrative discretion. However, whilst UK Uncut's challenge ultimately failed, it exposed aspects of the tax authority's relationship with large taxpayers to public gaze. This has contributed to demands for changes in the taxation system, which legislators might eventually feel forced to heed.

This paper reminds that any significant shift in public attitudes must always have a beginning, and that, even if the challenge fails, it might be the first tangible evidence of a demand for greater transparency in the administration of the tax system which might lead to future changes.

OUR theme in general this month is the personality of the librarian. One may say that librarians have a habit of discussing the recruitment of the profession, its pay and other factors in the personnel. And it is natural that they should have, because after all it is their life. The librarian as a man rarely figures at any length or in any detail in the books or magazines that we usually read. Lately, it is true, Mr. L. Stanley Jast has been contributing to a contemporary, The Library Review, some admirable all‐too‐brief articles on his memories of personalities and doings mainly in connection with the Library Association thirty or more years since. It is a pity that Mr. Jast cannot be persuaded to give these reminiscences at much greater length, and although it is possible that their main appeal is to the born librarian, yet for those who read as they run, they possess many things of quite living interest. In short, the librarian is bound to be interested in the librarian himself; that is human nature.

If this is the only voice that is heard it will be deplorable. These restaurants and many like them, but which do not actually carry the official title, could and should fulfil as essential rôle in peace‐time as under war conditions. They are almost universally popular—mass observation reports 96 per cent. favourable comments by those who use them—they serve nutritious meals, based, as are school meals, on a defined nutritional plan, they are economic, they show very low wastage figures. On the whole, the same is true of industrial canteens, now over 4,000 strong and increasing at the rate of 100 a month. In these two closely related types of communal restaurant we have the essentials of what might become, with competent handling and appropriate guidance, one of the most vital foundations of our industrial machine, the health and efficiency of the workers. In 1937 I saw what could be achieved in this direction. It was in Soviet Russia, and I was deeply impressed. I could long exceed my time by referring to other developments in practical nutrition that will, I believe, proceed at a greatly accelerated speed in the post‐war years as a result of what has happened during the war. One more matter I would like to discuss. It is not only of outstanding importance, but one on which most of the others depend. I refer to education about food and food values. Outside Soviet Russia, no such effort has ever before been made to teach a nation the simple facts of nutrition and what to eat as the publicity campaign carried on since the war began by the Public Relations Division of the Ministry of Food. Its success is not measured by the expenditure of many thousand pounds, but by the millions who tune in their wireless sets at 8.15 a.m. for the “Kitchen Front” and by the popularity of the ubiquitous “Food Facts.” The campaign might have been a dismal failure. Had it been presented in scientific jargon about calories, proteins and vitamins, its fate would have been sealed within a few months. As it was planned, the basic idea was to draw attention to the natural foods good for health and the best ways of serving them. It aimed at making the people “food conscious,” in the best sense of the term, and left all but the barest scientic outline to the experts, who know how to fill in the detail, and the cranks, who usually do not. It was sound judgment and, in my opinion, any continuance on an extensive scale of food propaganda after the war must have a similar basis if it is to lead to better feeding and better cooking and not result in half the nation becoming hypochondriacs and the rest faddists. It was touch and go in the United States, already for some years past very much more “food conscious” than we are. Commercial exploitation of the sale of special vitamin products has been on such a scale in recent years that to‐day every drug store counter is loaded with a bewildering choice of pills and tablets, capsules and candies, every one guaranteed to contain all the vitamin alphabet. The movement actually gained such strength that it threatened at one time to pervert men of standing in the nutritional field. There was a more serious aspect of this than the mere possibility that they would themselves acquire the tablet habit. There is about to be launched in the United States a vast nation‐wide and Government‐sponsored propaganda campaign for promoting sound health by ensuring good nutrition. The plans for this campaign are now approved, and it is shortly to open in every one of the 3,000 counties of the 48 States of the Union. The really important thing is that it is planned on the note “eat good food.” What is the message? Consume every day a pint of milk—more for children—an orange, grape‐fruit or fresh vegetable salad; one big helping of green or yellow vegetables; other vegetables (potatoes); whole grain products or “enriched” bread; meat, poultry or fish; at least three or four eggs a week; butter and other “spreads.” Then, “eat other foods you like!” Do you appreciate what it will mean when a nation of the size of the United States wholeheartedly adopts such a programme, as I am convinced it will, cost what it may? It will mean even more than a new era of health for millions who have in the past lacked the means to buy the food they need. It will call for a vast expansion of agriculture. Seventy per cent. more tomatoes and citrus fruits than are now eaten will be needed; over a third more eggs, nearly 25 per cent. more milk, and so on. In all, an increase representing at least 35–40 millions more acres of land under cultivation, and not an acre of it for cereal crops. I was surprised during a recent visit to Washington to find how great an interest is being taken in the agricultural implications of the new nutrition programme, and how many influential people have accepted them as indicating the general line of agricultural development there in the very near future. There is an atmosphere of anticipation. How they will bring the more expensive “protective foods” to the poorer families is not yet clear, but they have already shown by Mile Perkins' admirable Stamp Plan that simple and effective measures are not hard to devise. This ingenious relief measure would repay study here. We have certainly to tackle the same problem on an even wider front than at present, and the post‐war period will be every bit as important as the times to‐day. As Sir John Orr recently said in commenting on nutrition as a foundation of the New World Order : “A system which of set purpose in the interest of a few, limited the production and distribution of food and other necessities of life urgently needed by the vast majority of men is incompatible with human welfare.” In the wide expansion of the application of knowledge about food and its influence on health that will take place after the war, largely as a result of the striking successes that have followed its application to the problems of war‐time feeding, we shall need more active help from the doctors. America can show us the way. Her medical profession is solidly behind the nutrition “drive” in that great country. You will not find a hospital in the U.S.A. or Canada where the scientific planning of the diet of patients is not a first consideration. You will not find there that any sort of food is thought fit for nurses; I often think that the obsession of nurses in this country with purgatives of every type reflects more than tradition. I do not believe that such an historic innovation as the free distribution by the Government of cod‐liver oil and orange juice for every infant in the country would have been treated by the medical press of America as a matter worth no more than passing reference. I am certain the merits of an 85 per cent. wheaten flour of good quality would have evoked a warmer response from the American doctors, as a body, than they did here. But our doctors cannot be blamed if they do not know about these things, and the hard fact is that few outside the younger generations have the knowledge. I once remarked some years ago that a group of intelligent housewives could talk more sense about food values than a random selection of middle‐aged or elderly medical men. That is still a fair statement. The fault lies in our medical education. Apart from a few lectures during his physiology or bio‐chemistry course in the pre‐clinical years—and those of us who teach medical students know how little impression that makes—and seeing a certain amount of happy‐go‐lucky therapeutic administration of vitamins when he is in the wards, the average student has few opportunities to get anything like a proper comprehension of a subject vital to his whole life's work.

The Food and Drugs Bill introduced by the Government affords an excellent illustration of the fact that repressive legislative enactments in regard to adulteration must always be of such a nature that, while they give a certain degree and a certain kind of protection to the public, they can never be expected to supply a sufficiently real and effective insurance against adulteration and against the palming off of inferior goods, nor an adequate and satisfactory protection to the producer and vendor of superior articles. In this country, at any rate, legislation on the adulteration question has always been, and probably will always be of a somewhat weak and patchy character, with the defects inevitably resulting from more or less futile attempts to conciliate a variety of conflicting interests. The Bill as it stands, for instance, fails to deal in any way satisfactorily with the subject of preservatives, and, if passed in its present form, will give the force of law to the standards of Somerset House—standards which must of necessity be low and the general acceptance of which must tend to reduce the quality of foods and drugs to the same dead‐level of extreme inferiority. The ludicrous laissez faire report of the Beer Materials Committee—whose authors see no reason to interfere with the unrestricted sale of the products of the “ free mash tun,” or, more properly speaking, of the free adulteration tun—affords a further instance of what is to be expected at present and for many years to come as the result of governmental travail and official meditations. Public feeling is developing in reference to these matters. There is a growing demand for some system of effective insurance, official or non‐official, based on common‐sense and common honesty ; and it is on account of the plain necessity that the quibbles and futilities attaching to repressive legislation shall by some means be brushed aside that we have come to believe in the power and the value of the system of Control, and that we advocate its general acceptance. The attitude and the policy of the INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON ADULTERATION, of the BRITISH FOOD JOURNAL, and of the BRITISH ANALYTICAL CONTROL, are in all respects identical with regard to adulteration questions; and in answer to the observations and suggestions which have been put forward since the introduction of the Control System in England, it may be well once more to state that nothing will meet with the approbation or support of the Control which is not pure, genuine, and good in the strictest sense of these terms. Those applicants and critics whom it may concern may with advantage take notice of the fact that under no circumstances will approval be given to such articles as substitute beers, separated milks, coppered vegetables, dyed sugars, foods treated with chemical preservatives, or, in fact, to any food or drug which cannot be regarded as in every respect free from any adulterant, and free from any suspicion of sophistication or inferiority. The supply of such articles as those referred to, which is left more or less unfettered by the cumbrous machinery of the law, as well as the sale of those adulterated goods with which the law can more easily deal, can only be adequately held in check by the application of a strong system of Control to justify approbation, providing, as this does, the only effective form of insurance which up to the present has been devised.