Government attempts in recent years to create a national system of vocational education and training have marked a profound shift both in educational policy and in underlying concepts of what education is for. Relations between schools and the working world are changing all the time and the implementation of ideas of vocationalism has forced a blurring of the time-honoured boundaries between educations concerned with concepts and training, or with skills. The challenge now is to define how...

Aunt: *calling loudly from sitting room* Helen, can you help me?Me: *drops everything, rushes to front room, expecting her to have fallen*Aunt: The cat's on my lap, could you pour me a small Jameson?Cocooning with my ninety-year-old Aunt is not the life I'd imagined when I came back to live in Dublin after 30 years of being a high-flying media executive in London.From the Groucho Club to our North Dublin coastal cocoon, it was back to earth with a bump. Funn...

Thousands of studies have been conducted by social scientists in the villages and islands, and increasingly in the towns, of the Pacific. Despite this, there are few longitudinal studies of any great depth and sophistication in the region.The contributors to this book have all conducted long-term research in the islands of the Pacific. During their visits and revisits they have witnessed first-hand the many changes that have occurred in their fieldsites as well as observing element...