Welsh Students Research Articles

The cultural making of the citizen: a comparative analysis of school students’ civic and political participation in France and Wales

ABSTRACT This paper examines the complex relationship between the state, civil society and education through comparative research with young people in France and the UK. Survey data derived from two cohorts of school students in South Wales and Lyon reveal strong differences in their levels of civic and political participation. While our Welsh students have higher levels of ‘civic participation’, as measured in terms of charitable work and volunteering, our French students have far higher levels of what might be considered ‘political engagement’, defined in terms of campaigning and demonstrating. We argue that these differences can be accounted for by the different cultural repertoires and priorities of citizenship education which themselves reflect the contrasting historical configurations of education, the state and civil society in these two countries.

Home- Grown Foreign Language Anxiety: Experiences Of Welsh University Students Studying Through the Medium of English

University students studying in a language other than their first face significant barriers that can detrimentally impact their wellbeing and academic performance. The relationship between language, confidence and performance has been examined in a wide range of national and cultural contexts. However, little research has focused on the experience of Welsh- medium educated students studying in English at the university level. The goal of our study was to compare how Welsh students who completed their primary and secondary education in Welsh perceived their undergraduate university experience to those who completed their formative schooling in English. Using online and in-person questionnaires, we surveyed 125 Welsh undergraduate students studying at a Welsh university on their academic background, and three core areas of their university experience: attendance, contribution and satisfaction. Results indicate that course attendance and grade satisfaction are not statistically significantly associated with language. However, there was a statistically significant relationship between language of secondary education and student's contribution to lectures and seminars. Students educated primarily in Welsh were less likely to contribute to discussions than their first language English counterparts – a common outcome of foreign language anxiety. Although this lack of comfort and confidence did not appear to impact grade satisfaction, it may be related to, and lead to, further barriers and challenges regarding mental health, academic performance, and post-graduation

Part-time learners in open and distance learning: revisiting the critical importance of choice, flexibility and employability

In this article, we argue that, if open learning seeks to (re)assert a social justice mission, issues of openness and flexibility are more critical than ever. Drawing on qualitative data from a National Union of Students Wales/Open University study, which explored, in the voices of Welsh students, the identity, motivation and barriers faced by part-time distance learners, three key findings emerged. First, the chimaera of ‘choice’ – for part-time distance learners whose personal circumstances prevent any other mode of study; second, the vacuity of policy assertions around ‘flexibility’ in HE – what personalised learning means for part-time distance learners should be contested and re-examined; third, the mantra of ‘employability’ – for part-time distance learners, employability is a conundrum which needs to be understood in a far more inclusively nuanced way. We conclude that the voices of part-time distance learners need to be heard by policy makers and should inform open universities’ continuing efforts to enable vulnerable and marginalised learners to access HE.

Into the Lion’s Den: The Jesuit Mission in Elizabethan England and Wales, 1580–1603 (review)

Reviewed by: Into the Lion’s Den: The Jesuit Mission in Elizabethan England and Wales, 1580–1603 Lisa McClain Into the Lion’s Den: The Jesuit Mission in Elizabethan England and Wales, 1580–1603. By Robert E. Scully, S.J. [No. 23 in Series 3: Scholarly Studies Originally Composed in English.] (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2011. Pp. xvi, 468. $32.95. ISBN 978-1-880810-78-1.) Robert E. Scully’s Into the Lion’s Den is the first in-depth inquiry into the early years of the Jesuit Mission in both England and Wales, placing it in context of the development of the Society of Jesus and its worldwide missionary efforts in the sixteenth century. What was, Scully asks, the impact of this relatively small, underfinanced, and understaffed mission to the history of the English Reformation and the history of the Catholic Church more broadly? To address this question, Scully draws heavily from traditional sources such as Henry Foley’s Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, the writings and correspondence of organizational leaders such as William Allen and Robert Persons, and autobiographies penned by Jesuit missionaries such as William Weston and John Gerard. He describes and contextualizes the origins of the mission; the creation of the English colleges; English Jesuit writings; the clandestine nature of the mission based in the manor houses of the gentry; women’s recusancy and support of the mission; the dangers to Catholic laypersons and clergy; and the conflicts arising among Jesuits, the Elizabethan government, and Catholic secular clergy. Of particular interest are [End Page 811] plates from the Ecclesiae Anglicanae Trophaea (1584), a series of thirty-five engravings detailing English Catholic history and martyrology. When discussing these familiar sources, Scully uses a broader interpretive framework than did earlier scholars such as Philip Caraman and William Bangert who published on the English Jesuits. In particular, he focuses special attention on Wales and the Marches. Such attention is justified, Scully argues, since Allen and Persons identified Wales early on as key mission territory. Scully contrasts English recusancy patterns with those in Welsh and Marcher lands and highlights divisions among the English and Welsh students at the English colleges based on perceptions of cultural and perhaps racial difference. Scully’s analysis differentiates between the religious worldviews of Catholics residing in different regions of England and Wales and also addresses issues such as sacred space and material culture. With a lesser degree of success, Scully attempts to weave the contributions of women and lower ranking Catholics into his narrative of the Jesuit missionary endeavors. Scully includes much that is valuable about women and the poor but little that is new. When evaluating the success or failure of the Jesuit Mission, Scully enters existing debates begun by historians such as John Bossy and Christopher Haigh by asking scholars to assess the mission not as one monolithic effort but in terms of the different groups involved. Jesuit missionary efforts, Scully argues, succeeded better than those of other groups because of the Society of Jesus’s more developed organizational and financial structures and the unique spiritual mission of the society. Moreover, adding to recent scholarship that distinguishes English Catholicism from continental post-Tridentine Catholicism, Scully highlights how innovative and flexible Jesuit missionary strategies in the officially hostile regions of England and Wales look different from Jesuit evangelization approaches in more welcoming environs worldwide. Scully ultimately credits Jesuit efforts as instrumental in making a modest success of the Elizabethan Mission, encouraging the “unexpected tenacity and even resilience” of a minority Catholic community that had staying power in an increasingly Protestant Northern Europe (p. 435). Overall, Scully uses a generally balanced approach that does not shy away from addressing the challenges and conflicts as well as the accomplishments of the Jesuits. Although not groundbreaking, Into the Lion’s Den is a solid text that draws together a wealth of information useful to scholars of English Catholicism or who want to compare and contrast the Elizabethan mission with other Jesuit efforts worldwide. [End Page 812] Lisa McClain Boise State University Copyright © 2012 The Catholic University of America Press

Cross-cultural Communication: Arab and Welsh students’ use of Facebook

This study focuses on the major sociocultural attributes of communication via Facebook in two different geographical settings. It identifies cross-cultural differences among two different student cohorts in the UAE and the UK.Sociocultural specificities were addressed by means of quantitative surveying complemented by qualitative interviewing. The social information processing (SIP) theory and Geerte Hofstede theory of ‘cultural dimensions’ represented the epistemological framework for the study.The findings indicate that although the users shared similar responses in terms of their preferences and uses, the study shows that they differ in certain key points related to online behaviour and communication modes (e.g. preferences for contacting friends), conceptualization of Facebook (an extension to university life or a portal to the world) and issues of privacy (expressing oneself openly). These deviations reflect essentially a cultural dissimilarity, which is a core point of the study.

Alun Roberts, The Welsh National School of Medicine 1893–1931: the Cardiff years, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 2008, pp. xxiv, 389, illus., £55.00 (hardback 978-0-7083-2174-4).

Welsh medical education has been poorly served by historians, something which was partly rectified in the three volumes on the history of Welsh universities published by Williams and Morgan in the 1990s. While Alun Roberts claims that these gave proper treatment to the history of the medical school, Williams suggested that the Welsh School of Medicine deserved a separate history. Roberts, a former registrar of the school and a trained historian, took up the challenge. The Cardiff Medical School, as it was originally known, was established in 1893, ten years after the creation of the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire. Arguments put forward in support of this included the economic, linguistic and moral advantages of providing medical education for Welsh students at home. In the early years the school offered pre-clinical training only. It was shaped by advice from Sir Donald MacAlister, principal of Glasgow University and chairman of the GMC, and Sir William Osler, with the latter advocating a clinical unit structure modelled on that adopted at Johns Hopkins. While this led to Rockefeller Foundation support in the 1920s, it also exacerbated tensions within the medical and university communities. One of the strengths of the book is the way in which it analyses these clashes. As the Western Mail observed in 1927, “Complication follows complication in the efforts to lift the Welsh National School of Medicine from the arena of controversy.” As happened elsewhere, there were bitter disputes over the threat to private practice posed by part-time academic appointments, and the struggle for clinical control between professors and hospital clinicians. The 1920s were also marked by constitutional wrangles between the school and local hospital managers. A further complication came with the territorial disputes between Cardiff and North Wales, and the debates as to what constituted a national school. Roberts tackles all of these issues with clarity and balance. At the same time, he never loses sight of the individuals for whom the school was established. Chapter 9 examines the family, educational and social backgrounds of the students and outlines the subsequent careers of sixty of the sixty-four who graduated between 1916 and 1931. One of the most interesting statistics is the fact that only 3 per cent of the students were domiciled in North Wales; rather than journey to Cardiff, it seems that they preferred to study in Liverpool. Alun Roberts has written an unashamedly old-fashioned narrative history, a “biography of an institution” as he describes it in the preface—and it is none the worse for that. He writes clearly and sustains the story with meticulous footnotes, though at times the essential clarity of the text is swamped by detail. Extended biographical sketches often interrupt the flow of the narrative but do flesh out what is clearly intended as a tribute to Welsh medicine. While much of the information is useful, there are times when a good copy editor might have tempered Roberts’ enthusiasm. Did we really need to know of (Sir) Ewen Maclean, appointed “professor extraordinary” of obstetrics in 1921, that “[h]is nephew in due course achieved notoriety as the spy Donald Maclean”? Despite such minor cavils, this is a worthwhile contribution to the historiography of medical education in Britain.

Human Capital, Higher Education and Graduate Migration: An Analysis of Scottish and Welsh Students

This paper reports on a model of the sequential migration behaviour of some 76 000 Scottish and Welsh students, from their domicile location to the location of their higher education and on to their employment location. A logit model methodology is employed to analyse the choice of the location of the university attended, whether inside or outside Scotland or Wales. Then, within a GIS framework, migration-on-migration correlations and elasticities are estimated in order to identify the mobility effects of human capital acquisition. The results confirm the DaVanzo hypothesis that subsequent migration is related to previous migration and also the Sjaastad—Becker hypothesis that higher human capital individuals are more geographically mobile. However, there are institutional differences between the two countries which mean that the mobility effects of human capital acquisition have to be interpreted carefully in the light of other economic, geographical and social influences.

Being "British" In Rome: The Welsh at the English College, 1578-1584

In 1580, nearly four hundred years after Pope Innocent III terminated Welsh hopes of ecclesiastical independence by upholding Canterbury's jurisdiction over Wales, Gregory XIII followed in his predecessor's footsteps by again quashing Welsh dreams of clerical freedom from England. Yet, unlike their forebears, the Welsh diaspora in Rome during the 1570's did not advocate the ecclesiastical independence of Wales from England. Rather, they sought protect their influence over the English College of Rome, which contained a significant number of Welsh students headed by a Welshman from 1565 1579. This article demonstrates how, exactly, the Welsh emigres used the sacred history of their province as an important aspect in their defense of this national institution. The name of this establishment, the English College or Collegium Anglorum, does not indicate an obvious arena for Welsh influence. Indeed, Gregory XIII recognized this discrepancy when he allegedly remarked, Why (quoth he) I made the Hospitall for Englishe men, and for their sake I have given so large exhibition: and not for the Welsh men.1 Yet, during the late 1570's, the principal founder and rector of the English College, the Welshmen Owen Lewis and Morys Clynnog, viewed their institution instead as the Seminarium Britannicum. Importantly, while the term British acquired its modern significance during this period, Owen Lewis employed the term Britannia as a synonym for Wales, referring, like Geoffrey of Monmouth, England and Wales respectively as nationem Anglicam or nationem Britannicam.2 Thus, when the English students and their Jesuit mentors sought topple the Welsh oligarchy during Lent of 1579, the Welsh exiles reacted by turning Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1135) in order defend their interests and attack their Saxon enemies in Rome. The Welsh exiles did more than merely recite a few lines of provincial history in order defend their influence over the English College. They also worked as ecclesiastical historians and antiquarians in an attempt one of Geoffrey of Monmouth's stories, which had direct relevance for the prestige of the Welsh in Rome. Namely, in the final pages of Geoffrey's history, Cadwaladr, the last king of the Britons, renounced his claim the throne of Britain, which passed the Saxon invaders, in order make a pilgrimage Rome, where he died in the year 689.3 In the late 1570's, during the reconstruction of St. Peter's, the English exiles claimed discover an ancient tombstone in St. Peter's that bore the name of Caedwalla, king of Wessex, who according Bede had died in Rome during a pilgrimage, also in the year 689/ The Welsh exiles, already furious with the demands presented by the English students in the English College, unequivocally denounced the archaeological interpretation of the English students, and proposed instead that the unearthed tomb belonged Cadwaladr. This debate, which attracted the attention of Cardinal Guglielmo Sirleto (the Vatican Librarian) due the incessant letters of several Welshmen in Rome, was essentially a new spin on an old historiographical debate between supporters of Bede and Geoffrey of Monmouth, but it received added importance in Rome circa 1580 when tensions between the two sides were already running high in the battle for control of the Collegium Anglorum or Seminarium Britannicum.5 By the end of 1579 the Jesuits had taken control of the English College. They stripped Morys Clynnog of his rectorship and wardenship, while Owen Lewis retired the court of Cardinal Carlo Borromeo in Milan, and in the following years the presence of Welsh students at the seminary gradually decreased nothing.6 Yet, despite their losses, during the 1580's the Welsh exiles turned with new energy to avenge in the archive their defeats on the battlefield.7 Their attempt prove the legend of Cadwaladr in Rome belonged a longstanding tradition that held that Wales' special relationship with Rome could reinforce Welsh identity and protect Welshmen from English aggression. …

‘THE BREATH OF REVIVAL’

The influence of the Welsh Revival of 1905 reached out far beyond the Principality. This paper looks at the impact of Spurgeon’s College and the Metropolitan Tabernacle through the six Welsh students at the College.

What Classroom Environments Tell About the Pedagogical Aspects of Subject Matter

This study presents a cross-cultural comparison of United States, English and Welsh students’ perceptions of secondary classroom environments in six academic disciplines–English, mathematics, science, history, geography, and French. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between classroom environment and subject matter (i.e. academic disciplines). This can be phrased as a question, ‘Do academic disciplines have universal structural characteristics that influence classroom environment and the pedagogical interaction between students and teachers?’ To gain insight into the relationship between an academic discipline and teacher/student interaction, classroom environments in six subject areas were investigated, using the Classroom Environment Scale (CES). CES protocols were completed by and collected from the following students in the US ( n = 412); England ( n = 152) and Wales ( n = 232), ranging in age from 13 to 19 years. In addition to the CES, data collection included classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, and an examination of the cultural and political context of the schools. Variable differences in classroom environments were found to exist on the basis of academic discipline, nationality, age and gender across all CES subscales. Subject matter patterns suggest that the nature of the academic discipline may indeed influence teacher and student interactions and that these patterns are consistent across national boundaries.

Scottish Executive refuses to pay for graduate students

The Scottish Executive is refusing to pay NHS bursaries for Scottish graduate students studying on the new fast track medical degree programmes in England. English and Welsh students studying on the four year courses at Cambridge, Oxford, Leicester Warwick, and St George's Hospital in London will be entitled to receive the bursaries in their final three years. The situation arose after the introduction of the new programme at Leicester Warwick Medical School, one of several new medical faculties in the UK. Of the 64 students in the first year, two are from Wales …

Higher Education in Wales: The (Re‐)emergence of a National System?

This paper explores historical patterns of change in participation in higher education in Wales, using as an organising framework Halsey’s (1992) distinction between higher education as an administrative and as a social system. The nineteenth‐century development of Welsh higher education was both part of a distinctive national political project and reflected the specificities of wider Welsh society. Expansion through the early and middle decades of the present century eroded this distinctiveness, as both the governance of Welsh higher education and patterns of student recruitment and participation became increasingly integrated into an ‘England and Wales’ system. The more recent expansion of higher education institutions in Wales, as well as the participation of Welsh students in higher education overall, has further accentuated this social integration into an ‘England and Wales’ system. Currently, Wales exhibits a pattern of participation which is unique amongst the home countries, whereby the Welsh higher education institutions serve very substantial numbers of students from England (and to a much lesser extent elsewhere), whilst a large proportion of Welsh students register at institutions in England. This indicates that there is now a significant disjuncture between an increasingly distinct pattern of governance of Welsh higher education and a pattern of participation which is massively integrated in the ‘England and Wales’ system.

Finance, travel and lack of preceptorship put heavy burden on welsh students

Finance, travel and lack of preceptorship put heavy burden on welsh students

Leaving school: attitudes, aspirations and destinations of fifth‐year leavers in Tower Hamlets

Summary This paper presents the findings of two studies carried out in Tower Hamlets, East London, which set out to ascertain fifth‐year students’ reasons for leaving education and the influences on this decision. The first study consisted of a questionnaire survey of fifth year students. The second study followed up these students to see whether their actual destinations accorded with their planned destinations as given in the first study. It was found that students who planned to leave education at the end of the fifth‐year were disproportionately white, male and working class. Overall, the proportions of young people following each particular type of destination were similar in both studies. Just over half of the students who had taken part in the first study had continued their education at either school or college, with females being more likely so to do. Males were significantly more likely than females to have obtained manual employment and apprenticeships. A much higher proportion of black students than of English, Scottish or Welsh students stayed in education. The main reason students gave for staying on in education was to improve their employment prospects. Bangladeshi female students were particularly likely to continue their education after the fifth form. A larger proportion of English, Scottish and Welsh than black young people were in employment at the time of the follow‐up study. This, looked at in conjunction with the differing staying‐on rates for white and black students, may reflect the differing job prospects for white and black young people. Attitudes towards school and work are also reported. The findings from these two studies indicate that a number of measures to ameliorate the staying‐on rates in education could be taken by policy‐makers, employers, local education authorities and schools.

Anxiety in some Welsh students.

Sur un echantillon de 1094 etudiants, les auteurs ont trouve un bon niveau de stabilite du questionnaire d'anxiete de l'IPAT

Choosing a medical school.

The 29 university medical schools in the United Kingdom (see table), of which 10 are in London, are similar in quality but differ in environment and in the emphasis of their courses. In respect to formal education it probably does not matter very much where you study, but in respect to attitudes it is important to find a place that suits your personality and outlook because you are likely to learn best there; self learning is important throughout the course, and is the essence of clinical training. The choice of a medical school may seem arbitrary and difficult. The information given by a prospectus is often sketchy and difficult to evaluate. Far reaching decisions are made on slender evidence, often on the opinion of a single friendly doctor who, as like as not, is as fiercely loyal to his old school (perhaps experienced many years ago) as he is ill informed about others. Careers teachers often find it difficult to keep up to date with the changing courses in medical schools and often continue to plough furrows which have yielded a good crop in the past. Many considerations enter the equation, most of them matters of individual preference rather than differences of intrinsic merit. Some are geographical, some academic, some cultural, and some strategic. Some students prefer to study near home; many like to go far away. Doctors tend to settle in the vicinity of their medical school so if you are determined to settle in Northumberland it makes more sense to apply to Newcastle than to Bristol. It is also wise to note that the universities of Scotland and Northern Ireland predominantly admit Scots and Irishmen respectively, although this may simply reflect patterns of application rather than bias in acceptance. Geographical considerations are sometimes less sophisticated. There may, for example, perhaps be an element of truth in the rumour that many Welsh students apply to St Mary's Hospital Medical School because it is situated close to Paddington Station, the terminus of the south Wales railway line. A more predictable reason this than that of an applicant who presented herself one September day at St George's Hospital Medical School years ago when it was at Hyde Park Corner. When asked by the dean the reason for her late, personal application she replied that Hyde Park Corner was on her way to Harrods. The size of a university city influences many applicants: some deliberately choose to study in the largest industrial cities such as London, Manchester or Glasgow, where the most complex interplay of medical and social needs is to be found; others prefer smaller university cities such as Cambridge or St Andrews, where the university is not so dominated by the city. A third group combines the cloistered abstraction of basic medical sciences in Oxford or Cambridge (not to mention the uncloistered extracurricular activities) with clinical studies in a large city, usually London. The size of the medical school or the university itself is another consideration. Many prefer the more personal atmo? sphere of relatively small classes and the friendliness of relatively small societies and clubs; on the other hand, larger institutions may offer a greater diversity of teachers and a wider range of activities. Most medical schools admit between 100 and 120 students each year (see table). The potential disadvantage of the large Cambridge intake is offset by the personal environ? ment of life and tutorials in individual colleges.

Some observations on the heights and weights of undergraduates, with special reference to the University of Wales.

It is standard practice, no matter what other anthropometric measurements may be taken, to record height and weight at routine medical examina tions. There are a number of reasons for so doing. Height related to weight, or to some function of weight, at a given age may be used as an index of body build and physical constitution; gross deviation from standard norms may raise the suspicion of disease or nutritional deficiency; and periodic observations on the same individual afford a stan dard for assessing physical fitness and in some instances may be an aid to diagnosis. Considerations of individual health apart, however, perhaps the most interesting information is to be found in measurements derived from groups. Such measure ments have, for example, been widely used as an index of health and development among children, and in a number of studies group differences in stature have been related to socio-economic back ground (Friend and Bransby, 1947; Bransby and others, 1946; Yudkin, 1944). Relationships between the stature of parents and their children have been studied by Pearson and Lee (1903), by Bowles (1932), and more recently by Durnin and Weir (1952). Still other investigations have demonstrated differences in stature between ethnic groups. Finally, a matter of some interest in the present context, a small but definite correlation has been established between stature and intelligence, and Parnell (1952) has drawn attention to relationships between various somatotypes and the academic performances of undergraduates at Oxford University. Students form a convenient and relatively accessible group for anthropometric surveys and are often used as standards of comparison. The last survey carried out among students generally was that of Cathcart, Hughes, and Chalmers (1935). More recently, published information has been derived chiefly from Oxford and Cambridge, and is by no means necessarily representative of the student population of this country as a whole. Indeed, differences in group measurements between one university and another would not be unexpected. The distribution of students by socio-economic status is unlikely to be the same at the older univer siti s as it is at provincial universities, and there may be differences among the provincial universities themselves in this regard. Moreover, Martin (1949) demonstrated differences in stature between young men from different regions of the country and these differences may be reflected in university groups, since provincial universities tend to draw their students predominantly from the local population. Considerable changes in the size and composition of the undergraduate population of Great Britain have taken place in recent years. Jt would be of interest to establish information which could con fidently be regarded as representative of the under graduate population of the United Kingdom, and the observations which follow are presented as a contribution from the University of Wales. There are, in addition, points of particular interest in a study of a predominantly Welsh population. There is, for example, the possibility that ethnic factors might determine differences between Welsh students and o hers. Differences in physique between groups distinguished on socio-economic criteria, might, moreover, be accentuated in Wales as a result of adverse environmental experiences during the trade dep ession of the 1930s?a time when present-day students were passing through infancy or early childhood. On the other hand, during the recent w r and in the post-war years, improved nutritional opportunities may have modified the consequences of earlier environmental stresses. Factors such as these have to be borne in mind and give added point to anthropometric studies at the present time. 60

“G. B. M.”

I FIRST saw the late G. B. Mathews on June 4, 1884, at the Queen's Hotel, Chester, when the staff of the newly founded University College of North Wales was appointed. He was chosen for the Chair of Mathematics, and almost from that time we were linked together in friendship as well as in our offices as teachers of intimately related subjects in the same institution. I well remember his youthful and striking yet attractive appearance. He was the senior wrangler of the previous year, and came full of eager enthusiasm for the teaching of mathematics and for original mathematical work, and for ten years laboured hard in the hope of founding something like a school of mathematical study in North Wales. But alas ! these hopes were dashed. Perhaps he was a little impatient, and I certainly did my best to counsel him to wait, and to find out the effect of the new Welsh university on the studies of the place, but without effect. The best of the Welsh students were at that time attracted by the Neo-Hegelian philosophy, and some of them, as seems to be the way of such students, seemed not a little proud that their mental tendencies were not mathematical. To this curious type of intellectual pride Mathews referred eloquently in the posthumous paper published in NATURE of April 22.