This paper interrogates the relationship between working-class participation in higher education (HE) in England and social and cultural mobility. It argues that embarking on a university education for working-class people has been construed in governmental discourses as an instrumental means of achieving upward mobility, or of aspiring to ‘become middle class’. Education in this sense is thus ...

The psychosocial construct of “social cohesion,” understood as social behaviors indicating trust, reciprocity, and concern for the well-being of the members of one’s community, is the key determinant of health in the “income inequality and social cohesion model” model (Ref. 1, p. 211). Social cohesion is defined as participation in public affairs, civic responsibility or involvement in public l...

Most statistics courses at the college (or high school) level, whether conducted in departments of statistics, mathematics, psychology, or elsewhere, are taken as a requirement by students who, unfortunately, often have little interest in the subject. There are several excellent textbooks at this level, and lecture time is often used to present examples--including realistic applications of stat...

The spring 2013 graduate class in NLP decided to participate in the ShARe/CLEF challenge Tasks 1 & 2. The timing for the challenge coincided nicely with the spring semester session. There were six students in the graduate class, and the challenge tasks appeared to be good material to expose students to a practical task faced by healthcare industry. The general approach used by the class is to u...

In a depopulated region where population aging is advancing, it is necessary to establish a method so local residents themselves can be actively involved in older people's health promotion. Net Step Exercise, a novel dual-task walking program, introduced residents to opportunities for physical activities and social participation without any health specialist support. In one depopulated town (Ik...

Recent research on social capital has explored trends in membership in voluntary organizations. However, there is currently little robust evidence on such trends in the UK since the 1970s, nor is there any analysis of whether participation bridges social divisions or accentuates them. This paper explores trends in participation in England and Wales since 1972 using data from the Social Mobility...

This paper examines engagement with an online discussion forum, aiming to identify the different levels of participation and to investigate factors that encourage or discourage student participation. The case involved the posing of a short real-life problem via a forum on the university’s virtual learning environment. An in-class survey was conducted to identify students’ participation and atti...