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Baker Street half-baked: Is Sherlock part of a new anti-intellectualism?
History & The Arts

Baker Street half-baked: Is Sherlock part of a new anti-intellectualism?

...educated liberal elite, and the valuation of common sense over theory. Anti-intellectualism pervades our wider culture: soft drink commercials show boring university lectures explode into joyous life when someone cracks open a can; the recently established “Which University?” suggests that higher education is a decision similar to buying a washing machine. But Holmes?...
Interdisciplinary Learning – getting the most out of multi-subject degrees
Education & Development

Interdisciplinary Learning – getting the most out of multi-subject degrees

...opens your mind to the different means by which knowledge is created or presented. The academic practice and knowledge which surrounds each subject can also be called a ‘discipline’ (see figure 1 here for related terminology around studying more than one discipline). It is worth remembering that many academic disciplines are ‘constructions’ themselves, that they...
Titty or Tatty: What's in a name?
Languages

Titty or Tatty: What's in a name?

...educational principles (e.g. it was debated as to whether the children would be shown on-screen sailing without their life jackets), one might argue that keeping the character’s original name would invite inquiry from children viewers, broaden their perspectives, and open their minds to the meaning of language while at the same time conveying the innocence of a past...
The drive to improve patient safety in the NHS in England
Health, Sports & Psychology

The drive to improve patient safety in the NHS in England

...education provision and imposed policies. The ‘Berwick Report’ calls for the NHS to embrace ‘wholeheartedly an ethic of learning’ from failures and near misses. The point is to understand how organizational factors may prompt people to make errors, or prevent them from being noticed early enough. The report argues that the ability to actually achieve this culture...
Methods in Motion: The things we don't know
Society, Politics & Law

Methods in Motion: The things we don't know

...open-ended methods. Without such an approach, there was no chance of my knowledge becoming something that stood outside the preconceptions with which I began. This started a long fascination with how we produce ‘situated’ knowledge (Haraway, 1988) from particular perspectives (or standpoints, as feminists might say). Recognising this involves attending to the...
Methods in Motion: Inside Outsiders and Outside Insiders
Languages

Methods in Motion: Inside Outsiders and Outside Insiders

...opening lines often elicited immediate openness from interviewees (the refugee and migrant staff of migrant support and advocacy organisations). They formed an effective prelude to addressing a research puzzle about the positionality of refugees and migrants who work as front-line staff for migrant charities. To interpret these interview encounters, I had to abandon the...
Introducing Geography Matters
Society, Politics & Law

Introducing Geography Matters

...Open University's modules on geography, environmental studies and development – though we hope that students who aren't studying those topics will also find them interesting. Geography Matters will launch on 21 March. Among other items, there'll be a short post on Europe's borders, a video about a seedbank in north Norway and its links to wartorn Syria, and an audio...
Machiavelli and Political power
Society, Politics & Law

Machiavelli and Political power

...Open University Philosophy Department. A specialist in political philosophy, here he gives Ever Wondered? political theorist Niccolo Machiavelli’s tips to climbing the greasy pole to power. "Politics is about power and we all know that power corrupts. So should politicians have a different moral code to the rest of us? Certainly, according to the book The Prince by...