Digital Commons Network^™

Exploring Enablers Of And Barriers To A Fruit And Vegetable Voucher Scheme In England:: Insights From The Fresh Street Community Feasibility Study, Jiang Pan, Clare Relton, Lisa Howard, Paridhi Garg, Manik Puranik, Michelle Thomas, Jane Bradbeer, Rachel Sutton, Carol Wagstaff, Clare Pettinger

School of Health Professions

Background/Objectives: Many deprived communities in the UK have low fruit and vegetable (FV) intake, leading to poor health outcomes. Fresh Street is a place-based voucher approach that enables households to buy FV from local independent suppliers. Fresh Street Community embeds this approach within community hubs, thus enabling households to use vouchers to purchase FV from community centres. This paper explores the enablers and barriers influencing the uptake of Fresh Street Community in two UK urban areas of high deprivation. Methods: This three-phase exploratory qualitative study was informed by ‘co-production’ with community researchers at both sites: (1) literature review and observations …

Factors Associated With Link Workers Considering Leaving Their Role: A Cross-Sectional Survey, Stephanie Tierney, Lucy Moore, Debra Westlake, Kamal R. Mahtani, David Nunan, Kerryn Husk, Shoba Dawson, Jane Smith, Emma Fuller, Lilly Sabir, Pauline Roberts, Obioha C. Ukoumunne

Peninsula Medical School

Background: Social prescribing (SP) link workers (LWs) listen to patients’ concerns and difficulties, and connect them to relevant community assets (groups, organisations, or charities) that can help with their non-medical issues (for example, loneliness, debt, housing). LW retention is key to sustaining SP within primary care. Aim: To examine occupational self-efficacy, job discrepancy, and other factors as potential predictors of LWs’ intentions to leave or remain in their posts. Design & setting: Cross-sectional survey involving LWs from the United Kingdom. Method: An online questionnaire was distributed via SP-related organisations. Questions were on the following: (a) intention to leave the role; …

Quantum Phase Transition Of Non-Hermitian Systems Using Variational Quantum Techniques, James Hancock, Matthew J. Craven, Craig Mcneile, Davide Vadacchino

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

The motivation for studying non-Hermitian systems and the role of $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry is discussed. We investigate the use of a quantum algorithm to find the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of non-Hermitian Hamiltonians, with applications to quantum phase transitions. We use a recently proposed variational algorithm. The systems studied are the transverse Ising model with both a purely real and a purely complex transverse field.

Bridging Classrooms And Communities: The Transformative Impact Of Community-Based Dental Education On The Learning Experiences Of Undergraduate Students, Kamran Ali, Sruthi Sunil, Nidhi Gupta, Rebecca Glanville, T. Vanishree, Sadeq Ali Al-Maweri, Asmaa Al Khtib

Peninsula Dental School

Aims: This study aimed to evaluate the impact of community-based dental education (CBDE) on the learning experiences of undergraduate dental students and recent dental graduates from two diverse geographical regions. Methods: The study followed a cross-sectional design, conducted online using Google Forms, with ethical approval from Qatar University. A non-probability purposive sampling method was used to recruit dental students and recent graduates from three institutions in India and one in Qatar. A questionnaire based on 20 closed-ended items and two open-ended questions, developed by a team of dental academics, was used for data collection. Data analysis involved descriptive statistics, analysis …

What Are Family Caregivers’ Experiences Of Coordinating End-Of-Life Care At Home: A Narrative Review, Harriet Nicholls, Matthew Carey, Kevin Hambridge

School of Nursing and Midwifery

Objectives People with life-limiting diseases, who are no longer receiving active or curable treatment, often state their preferred place of care and death as the home. This requires coordinating a multidisciplinary approach, using available health and social care services to synchronize care. Family caregivers are key to enabling home-based end-of-life support; however, the 2 elements that facilitate success - coordination and family caregiver - are not necessarily associated as being intertwined or one and the same. This narrative review explores family caregiver experiences of coordinating end-of-life care in the home setting. Methods Studies were identified systematically following the Preferred Reporting …

Developing A Citizen Science Approach To Monitor Stranded Marine Plastics On A Remote Small Island In Indonesia, Radisti A. Praptiwi, Carya Maharja, Fauzan Cholifatullah, Dwi Cj Subroto, Sainal Sainal, Peter I. Miller, Vikki Cheung, Tatang Mitra Setia, Nasruddin, Datu, Jito Sugardjito, Melanie Austen

School of Psychology

Marine plastics stranded on the coastlines of remote small islands threaten both the ecological integrity of local ecosystems and communities’ well-being. However, despite the growing quantities of stranded plastics in these locations, the remote nature of these sites renders monitoring and intervention efforts difficult to undertake. Within this context, we developed a citizen science approach to monitor stranded marine plastics in collaboration with villagers living on a remote small island in Indonesia. This study reports the co-development and application of an approach that can be used and maintained independently by remote coastal communities. In the monitoring stage, the participants quantified …

Bringing Matter, To Matter: ‘Wild Ideas’ About ‘Readiness’ In The Transition From The Early Years Foundation Stage To The Key Stage 1 National Curriculum In England, Katherine Evans

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

‘Readiness’ and transition are topics of ongoing debate in relation to early childhood education. Critiques of schoolification and the impact of a ‘school-readiness’ agenda on policy and practice point to a tendency for increased formalisation of learning as children progress through their early years of schooling. In England, these first years of school-based education involve a transition between different and distinct educational frameworks, from the Early Years Foundation Stage to the National Curriculum in Key Stage 1. This transition can be problematic as tensions emerge between different pedagogical traditions, thus creating a potentially challenging experience for children as they progress …

Self-Reports Map The Landscape Of Task States Derived From Brain Imaging, Brontë Mckeown, Ian Goodall-Halliwell, Raven Wallace, Louis Chitiz, Bridget Mulholland, Theodoros Karapanagiotidis, Samyogita Hardikar, Will Strawson, Adam Turnbull, Tamara Vanderwal, Nerissa Ho, Hao-Ting Wang, Ting Xu, Michael Milham, Xiuyi Wang, Meichao Zhang, Tirso Rj Gonzalez Alam, Reinder Vos De Wael, Boris Bernhardt, Daniel Margulies, Jeffrey Wammes, Elizabeth Jefferies, Robert Leech, Jonathan Smallwood

School of Psychology

Psychological states influence our happiness and productivity; however, estimates of their impact have historically been assumed to be limited by the accuracy with which introspection can quantify them. Over the last two decades, studies have shown that introspective descriptions of psychological states correlate with objective indicators of cognition, including task performance and metrics of brain function, using techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Such evidence suggests it may be possible to quantify the mapping between self-reports of experience and objective representations of those states (e.g., those inferred from measures of brain activity). Here, we used machine learning to show …

Assessing The Interrelationships Of Sustainability Drivers In The Liner Shipping Industry: A South Korean Perspective, Junseung Kim, Stavros Karamperidis, Lijun Tang, Saeyeon Roh

Plymouth Business School

Container shipping companies play a crucial role in global trade and bear significant social and environmental responsibilities. Given resource constraints, identifying key sustainable drivers is essential for guiding investments. This study explores sustainability drivers in South Korean liner shipping companies using stakeholder theory. Through literature reviews, expert interviews, and fuzzy Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (f-DEMATEL) method, six key drivers were identified. Sustainability performance improvement emerged as the most important driver. The study also reveals complex casual relationships among the drivers. These findings offer valuable academic and managerial insights.

Exploring Perceived Barriers To Palliative And End Of Life Care Provision In South-West England: Bringing Together The Perspectives Of Professionals, Patients, And Families, Gary Hodge, Gina Kallis, Tomasina Oh, Hannah Wheat, Susie Pearce

School of Nursing and Midwifery

INTRODUCTION: Palliative and End of Life care (PEoLC) in the United Kingdom (UK) is increasingly being reported as inadequate. This is occurring amidst a wider backdrop of health and social care systems facing unprecedented pressure, particularly as they recover from the long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to explore the barriers to PEoLC faced by those providing and receiving care in South-West England (UK). This region of the UK brings its own set of unique challenges due to its rural and coastal location, an aging population, and a historical lack of research.

METHODS: An exploratory study was …

Introduction: From Broken Systems Towards Extended Possibilities Of Xr Technologies, Misha Myers, Victoria Duckett, Katy Morrison, Lienors Torre

School of Art, Design and Architecture

The ‘Extending Realities’ Special Issue originated out of the desire to open discussion between industry and academia around the status of extended reality (XR) in Australia today. Our intention is to generate a dialogue that is community-focused, speculative and reflective, engages a range of communities, and is both forward-moving and backwards-turning. Because of this, we explore critical language and perspectives that are emerging around XR so that we might mark a provisional location point, or at least a record of where some of us think we are–both within the XR community of makers, and within academic communities of scholars and …

Marketing With A Social Conscience: Strategic Windows For Aligning Societal Marketing With Corporate Identity, Christopher Agyapong Siaw

Plymouth Business School

PurposeThis study proposes a conceptual framework for strategically integrating societal marketing (SM) into corporate identity to effectively represent a firm’s SM programs to stakeholders. The framework is crucial for firms to align their SM efforts with their identity in a manner that minimizes, if not eliminating, the accusations of dishonesty, such as greenwashing, brownwashing, or greenhushing.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on corporate identity theory and synthesizing the literature on SM, the study identifies three levels of corporate identity (strategic, operational, and functional) and three dimensions of SM’s alignment with business objectives (direct, indirect, and remote). Subsequently, the study develops a conceptual framework based on …

A Five-Year Retrospective Analysis (2017-2022) Of Reported Incidents From A Primary Care-Based Education Provider, Afsha Musa, Robert Witton, Kamran Ali, Ewen Mccoll

Peninsula Dental School

Background Patient safety incident reporting and analysis are often confined to secondary care, despite 95% of dentistry occurring in primary care. Peninsula Dental Social Enterprise (PDSE) delivers primary care dentistry in education-based settings and uses a report-review-action process to underpin its patient safety framework. Aim This article analyses trends in clinical incident data, reflecting on learning to improve overall patient safety. Methods A retrospective observational study was employed to analyse incidents over a five-year period (2017-2022) using anonymised data from the PDSE reporting system. Results Over the five-year reporting period, there were an average of 13.1 total incidents per 1,000 …

The Simca Study Protocol: Factors Influencing The Implementation Of The Midwifery Continuity Of Carer (Mcoc) Model Of Care In Nhs Maternity Care In England: A Mixed Methods Cross Case Analysis Involving Clinicians, Women And Policy Makers, Rebecca Milton, Susan Channon, Julia Sanders, Sara Kenyon, Aimee Middlemiss, Heather Strange, Kate Davies, Lena Choudary-Salter, Susan Barry, Tina Prendeville, Aled Jones

School of Nursing and Midwifery

Background: During pregnancy, labour and early motherhood, most women in the UK receive care from different midwives. NHS policy change in England sought to introduce a model of care whereby each woman is cared for by the same midwife throughout antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal periods, supported by a small team of midwives to cover off-duty periods. This model is called the Midwifery Continuity of Carer (MCoC). This study proposes to evaluate the implementation and delivery of MCoC across England, aiming to better understand the factors that result in different rates of progress with MCoC implementation. Aim: To identify the local, …

Understanding Pathways To Radicalisation: Examining The Risk Factors Among Uk Secondary School Students, Freya Cooper

Plymouth Interdisciplinary Education Open Journal

With the rise of social media usage, adolescents are becoming easier targets for far-right extremist groups on the internet. There are specific factors that make young people, specifically those of secondary school age, more likely to be at risk of becoming radicalised. The factors explored in this analysis include: developmental stage of youth, gender, and social media. This analysis looks at the patterns of radicalisation and the risk factors that contribute to susceptibility of extremist thoughts, beliefs and occasionally actions. Through placing this investigation within the secondary school setting, this opinion piece explores the implication of this stage of a …

Naming Names: Phenomenology And Pseudonyms, Rebecca Woods

Plymouth Interdisciplinary Education Open Journal

This short opinion piece uses my experiences of formulating pseudonyms during my doctoral project as a way of examining this task. Names are our public labels and as such they are part of self-perception and are catalysts for responses to others. Pseudonyms are not empty; they are cultural artefacts in academia which form connections with participants. The issues addressed with regard to re-naming are research context, ontology, method, navigating sensitivities, contextual determination, concluding with a review of congruence and robustness. The task of generating pseudonyms has the potential for being an exciting way of encapsulating how researchers consider participants and …

Exploring The Experiences Of Autistic Girls Within Mainstream Primary Education In England, Olivia Jones

Plymouth Interdisciplinary Education Open Journal

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a developmental disability that causes social difficulties such as making and maintaining friendships and sensory difficulties that cause distress triggered by light, sound or smell stimuli that significantly impact daily life. Roughly 1 in every 100 children are diagnosed with ASD (NHS Inform, 2023). However, females are notably less likely to receive a formal diagnosis than males, which leads to higher rates of poor mental health and lack of self-acceptance. Females with ASD are likely not to receive their diagnosis or support for their difficulties until late teens or early adulthood. Those diagnosed with ASD …

Cross-Domain Transfer Learning For Domain Adaptation In Autism Spectrum Disorder Diagnosis, Kush Gupta, Amir Aly, Emmanuel Ifeachor

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

A cross-domain transfer learning approach is introduced to address the challenges of diagnosing individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) using small-scale fMRI datasets. Vision Transformer (ViT) and TinyViT models pre-trained on the ImageNet, were employed to transfer knowledge from the natural image domain to the brain imaging domain. The models were fine-tuned on ABIDE and CMI-HBN, using a teacher student framework with knowledge distillation loss. Experimental results demonstrated that our method outperformed previous studies, ViT models, and CNN-based models. Our approach achieved competitive performance (F-1 score 78.72%) with a much smaller parameter size. This study highlights the effectiveness of cross-domain …

Extremism And The Potential Dismantling Of Special Education: Or Moving Forward With Inclusive Special Education., Garry Hornby, James M. Kauffman

More Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business Research

Extremism in special education has been an endemic feature for decades but its most recent iteration, the full inclusion movement (FIM), is pushing special education toward a radical ideology in which placement in mainstream schools, rather than providing effective instruction, is becoming the main focus of efforts to meet the needs of students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). We first review some realities that we believe are basic to special education as it has been conceptualised and practiced. Second, we provide examples of the rhetoric of supporters of the full inclusion movement that do not conform to those …

Languaging The Infrathin Of The Everyday Un/Clear, Claire Walsh, Edward Reardon

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

This paper plays within the moments felt as subject(ivity) formed within actual events, moments Whitehead describes as actual occasions. Moments pulled away from creative becoming, the Deleuze/Guattari conceptualisation of affect, their immanently relational nonbeing, to attune, or retune, into conformations acceptable to what Moten and Harney speak into as logistical capitalism and its assemblage of the ‘proper way to do things’.It is a thinking within the comprehensibility of logistical capitalism aiming “...to straighten us out, untangle [unravel] us...in the constant measure and regulation of flesh and earth,” conversing with Manning’s concept of the clear – the violent colonial destruction of …

Exploring The Challenges Which Influence General Dental Practitioners' Participation As Educational Supervisors In Dental Foundation Training In The South West Of England, Hesham Matabdin, Ian Mills, Amy Rathbone, Laura Clarry, Sally Hanks

Peninsula Dental School

Introduction The challenges of recruitment and retention of dentists within the NHS are a major contributory factor in delivering dental access. Availability and geographical location of dental foundation training (DFT) placements is considered to be an important element in recruiting new dental graduates to poorly served areas. A recent decline in the number of dentists applying to act as educational supervisors (ESs) for DFT has been observed, which could have a direct impact on the future sustainability of NHS services.Aims This study aimed to explore the challenges faced by ESs which influence participation in DFT in South West England.Design A …

Doing Doctorates Differently: The Parapedagogic Potentialities Of The Phd Process, Helen Bowstead, Ken Gale, Mary Catherine Garland, Claire Walsh

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

Coming together in this conference collectivity, these are doctorates that in their doing – thinking, researching, writing, supervising, assessing, publishing – live by “no preexisting rules, processes, methods, categories or ‘determining judgement’.”1 They are doctorates that “cannot be taught or learned.”23 Such PhDs – thesis’ refusing to (con)form – in their ever probing, in-forming, stubborn curiousness of problematics living beyond solution driven research, lead to transformative moments in the act of learning, that in their difference are “...made sense of, not in terms of what [they] mean but in terms of what [they] do.”4Yet in their difference, doctorates working within …

Divergent Bodyminds: Kin In The Difference, Ruth Churchill Dower, Claire Walsh

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

In breaking the habit of ‘making sense’ typified by normative, neurotypical modes of engagement with the world, neurodiverse sociality performs a treachery in relation to prescriptive, dominating forms of normative reality. Within this conference paper, a modest site of resistance, a reconsideration of neurotypical normative reality takes place, extending beyond the boundaries underpinning neurotypical hegemonic discourse about ‘human’ reality, identity and existence: rescinding the neurotypical “normative standard for human experience” requiring the mapping of bodies in advance, to foreground bodies in excess, neurodiverse bodies subject to patterns and rhythms that defy stable or coherent identification. As bodies “always extending beyond …

How Research Into Citizenship Education At University Might Enable Transformative Human Rights Education, Piers Von Berg

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

This article presents a new research design for pedagogical research at university. The design demonstrates how personal and cultural citizenship education can be a form of transformative human rights education by nurturing citizens who challenge patterns of exclusion. It draws on shared traditions of citizenship and human rights education that have focused on lived experiences of injustice and uses spaces that mitigate prevailing power structures. These ideas have shaped a new pedagogical action research design that uses theories and practices of transformational learning, authentic reflection, and participatory theatre to stimulate ‘becomings’ in civic identity and agency. ‘Becoming’ is a form …

Extrication Following A Motor Vehicle Collision: A Consensus Statement On Behalf Of The Faculty Of Pre-Hospital Care, Royal College Of Surgeons Of Edinburgh, Tim Nutbeam, Rob Fenwick, Charlotte Haldane, Caroline Leech, Emily Foote, Simon Todd, David Lockey

Peninsula Medical School

Background: Road traffic injury is the leading cause of death among young people globally, with motor vehicle collisions often resulting in severe injuries and entrapment. Traditional extrication techniques focus on limiting movement to prevent spinal cord injuries, but recent findings from the EXIT project challenge this approach. This paper presents updated recommendations from the Faculty of Pre-Hospital Care (FPHC) that reflect the latest evidence on extrication practices. Methods: A systematic scoping review identified 170 relevant articles from 7083 records. Findings, together with EXIT project data, informed the development of 12 core and supplemental statements on extrication. In April 2024, 43 …

Virtual Reality Game-Based Training For Preventing Falls Among Community-Dwelling Older Adults With Mild Cognitive Impairment: A Pilot Randomized Control Trial Study, Benson Ip

School of Health Professions

Using a Virtual Reality (VR) game-based application represents an innovative approach to falls prevention in community aged care service. The study investigated the effects of VR training on falls prevention among community-dwelling older adults with mild cognitive impairment. A pilot randomized controlled trial was conducted to compare the effects of full-immersive VR training with group-based exercise (Baduanjin) training on falls prevention. Eighteen participants were recruited through convenience sampling and were randomly assigned to either the VR group or the non-VR exercise group. Both groups participated in 16 falls prevention training sessions over eight weeks. Participants, identified with mild cognitive impairment …

Treatment Of Seizures In People With Intellectual Disability, Lance Watkins, Michael Kinney, Rohit Shankar

Peninsula Medical School

There is a synergistic relationship between epilepsy and intellectual disability (ID), and the approach to managing people with these conditions needs to be holistic. Epilepsy is the main co-morbidity associated with ID, and clinical presentation tends to be complex, associated with higher rates of treatment resistance, multi-morbidity and premature mortality. Despite this relationship, there is limited level 1 evidence to inform treatment choice for this vulnerable population. This review updates the current evidence base for anti-seizure medication (ASM) prescribing for people with ID. Recommendations are made on the basis of evidence and expert clinical opinion and summarised into a Traffic …

How Confident Are Final Year Students With The Speech And Language Interventions Utilised For The Educational And Social Development Of Children With Autism In One Mainstream School In South Devon?, Sadie Spira

Plymouth Interdisciplinary Education Open Journal

The aim of my research was to discover what speech and language intervention strategies are used in a mainstream school to assist children with autism, and how confident student teachers feel about these particular strategies. My method was to conduct semi-structured interviews with teachers from a mainstream school and online questionnaires for final year student teachers. This approach was adopted in order to position questionnaires for student teachers into a real context and compare their ideas about interventions to the strategies actually used in a school. After completing my research, a significant conclusion reached is that student teachers need more …

Widening Participation For Women In Initial Teacher Education It's Not A Problem, Is It? - What Are The Widening Participation Issues Encountered By Women As They Embark On A Primary Pgce Initial Teacher Training Course?, Kath Vineer

Plymouth Interdisciplinary Education Open Journal

This research explores widening participation in one university-led Post Graduate Primary initial teacher education course (PGCE) in England. Rooted in a social constructivist paradigm and utilising a mixed-method social survey approach (questionnaires and group discussions), the widening participation (WP) issues students faced when embarking on this course were evaluated. Students worked with me as co-constructors of data by sharing stories of their journeys towards studying for this course. Specifically, the issues affecting women were investigated in order to critique the assumption that WP for women in higher education has been achieved. I am a teacher educator with a strongly held …

Profiling Consumers For Their Shopping Motivations In Modern Retail Formats In Oman, Rakesh Belwal, Shweta Belwal, Zoe Morgan, Latifa Hamood Al Badi

Plymouth Business School

Purpose: Consumer shopping motivations are evolving in tandem with shifts in products, services and the retail landscape. This paper primarily aims to explore what drives shopping behavior among consumers in Oman. Additionally, the paper aims to profile consumers based on their shopping motivations. Design/methodology/approach: Based upon the review of literature, we developed a list of 63 items of shopping motivations. Exploratory factor analysis later led to a 12-factor solution involving 50 items, which were refined further into an 11-factor solution involving 44 items using CFA. A combination of hierarchical and k-means cluster analysis was performed for profiling consumers. Findings: Five …