Robert Owen Centre

As the interrelated causes of deprivation, social exclusion and academic underachievement are increasingly recognised, multi-agency working has become the new norm in community development and education. Despite the increasing prevalence of partnership models in post-devolution Scottish public policy, sustainable and fundamental transformations in working practices appear elusive. This research investigates the perspectives of front-line partners at one community education project in the West of Scotland in order to fill gaps in the extant literature and enhance ‘practice-relevant scholarship’ (Antonacopoulou, 2010). By telling the story of partnership at Killoch Homework and Cookery Club (KHCC), the benefits and frustrations of multiagency working for small community projects are highlighted, and characteristics that could support success and sustainability are identified.

Furthermore, a novel hybridization of Habermas' (1987) colonization theory is developed, incorporating the work of Michael Lipsky (1980) and Ulrich Beck (1992, 2014). Hybridization of this kind is shown to be a crucial element of building social theory that can be put to work for the benefit of society.

This report summarises major projects and proposals related to the social legacy of the London Olympic Games in East London, identifying the main parties involved and the progress of any plans. Also included are reactions from civil society as well as Community Links' recommendations for the London Legacy Development Corporation. The report focuses on three principal areas: housing; employment, skills and business; community resources and connections.

This dissemination paper presents findings and recommendations produced from the research project entitled Policies Supporting Young Adults in their Life Course: A Comparative Study of Lifelong Learning and Inclusion in Education and Work in Europe (YOUNG_ADULLLT). The project ran from 2016 to 2019 and was funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation initiative.

This paper is intended for use by Scottish policymakers, practitioners and researchers in the fields of adult education, lifelong learning, youth policy and skills policy, as well as international audiences interested in the case of Scotland.

WP1 reviews the international academic literature concerning the transfer and transferability of the dual apprenticeship model. Its aim is to address our project’s central research question: Can dual apprenticeships create better and more equitable social and economic outcomes for young people? In service of this aim, a Realist Synthesis approach has been adopted. This is an approach which has been specifically developed as a means of reviewing research evidence on complex social interventions and is particularly attentive to the role of context in producing divergent outcomes (Pawson et al., 2004). Thus, Realist Synthesis allows us to go beyond identification of ‘what works’ or simply ‘does it work?’, and instead interrogate ‘what works, for whom, in which circumstances and why?’ It does so by focusing on the identification and extraction of causal mechanisms operating in particular contexts to produce specific outcomes or Context-Mechanism-Outcome configurations (CMO-Cs) – that th...

In this chapter, we explore the meanings and motivations young adults attach to their participation in lifelong learning (LLL) policies and aim to identify LLL policy “participation styles” among young people in three functional regions across Europe: Kainuu in Finland, Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Region in Scotland, and Girona in Catalonia, Spain. We examine the participation styles in relation to young adults’ displayed agency, social background and resources, and previous life course progression, as well as the different policies and regional opportunity structures. The analysis is based on biographical interviews with young adults and thematic interviews with LLL policy experts. We identified four distinct participation styles based on the examined dimensions at both individual and policy levels. Furthermore, an additional pattern emerged from the data, as some young adults were able to alter the conditions of a given policy to meet their individual needs in a way that was n...