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ESRC Seminar Series

Service integration in schools: research and policy discourses, practices and future prospects

A series of four seminars in 2006/07 sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council

The aim of this seminar series, initiated by researchers at Aberdeen, Ulster and Birmingham Universities, is to bring together social scientists from various disciplines that inform education, health and social care policy and practice, together with policy makers, representatives of voluntary agencies, practitioners in health, education, social work and other agencies as well as service users, to exchange conceptual and empirical insights and to explore a number of important questions arising from school service reform for members of these groups.

Seminar themes include:

• the changed policy goals and mechanisms for policy-making and delivery;
• new ‘bottom up’ relationships with service users and user communities;
• issues of governance and the organisation of associative and communal relations;
• the operation of new versions of networked professionalism;
• and practitioners’ constructions of new professional identities.

The objectives are to:

• Examine the tensions and complementarities in the discourses of inter-professional and inter-agency working in relation to the idea of service integration found in the different disciplines and knowledge bases drawn upon by different professional groups.
• Investigate the implications and challenges of the multiplicity of concepts, discourses and positions for the formulation of integrated service policy in schools, with particular reference to how inter-professional collaboration policy has developed in the Scottish, Northern Irish and English policy contexts; and explore how collaboration and service integration policy is operating in practice in schools.
• Examine the OECD future schools conceptualisations and explore other global ‘solutions’ that might suggest where UK inter-professional, interagency policy and practice go from here.
• Identify opportunities for building collaborative research networks and openings for theoretical scholarship and empirical research.

Currently, there is no UK wide forum to address the above aims and objectives. This seminar series is planned as a response to the current lack of seminar outlets in which to review recent theoretical and empirical work and to share and debate research, policy and practice perspectives. Speakers will include social scientists in the fields of health, education and social work, social policy, social justice, social inclusion and social capital building and members of the policy community. Participants will include a mix of established and emergent researchers, service-users, PhD and research degrees students, members of the policy community, practitioners from all relevant agencies and their managers and leaders, local authority representatives, executive government education, health and social work departments and voluntary sector representatives.

A number of outputs are planned in a variety of forms to address the needs of different participant groups and audiences: seminar series WebPages, seminar briefing papers, individually and co-authored articles in refereed journals, articles in practitioner and voluntary agencies’ magazines and an edited series of research papers linked to each seminar in the series.

Seminar Programme

May 4th and 5th 2006 University of Aberdeen.

Oct 12th and 13th 2006 University of Ulster

Jan 25th and 26th 2007 University of Birmingham - Programme Details (doc)

April 26th and 27th 2007 University of Aberdeen - Future school services, ‘global solutions’

• Programme Details (doc)
• Seminar Documentation (doc)

In order to facilitate travelling arrangements, the seminars will start at 2.00pm (registration and coffee) for 2.30pm on one day and finish with lunch at 12.30pm on the second day.

The numbers are limited to 25 persons at each seminar. A contribution toward travelling and accommodation expenses is available for persons travelling to seminars located outside of their country.

Further Information

In Scotland, please contact: Joan Forbes: j.c.forbes@abdn.ac.uk

In England, please contact: Deirdre Martin: d.m.martin@bham.ac.uk

In N. Ireland, please contact: Roy McConkey: r.mcconkey@ulster.ac.uk

ESRC Project Group

• Michael Cowie
• Joan Forbes
• Audrey Hendry
• Walter Humes
• Cate Watson

School of Education · University of Aberdeen · MacRobert Building · King's College · Aberdeen · AB24 5UA · UK
Telephone: (+44) 1224 274776 · Fax: (+44)1224 274900 · E-mail: education@abdn.ac.uk

Page last modified: Thursday, 24-Nov-2011 15:47:41 GMT

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