First Left, Guv? Mapping the Class-encoded Agency of Commercial Television's Spy-cop Archetype, 1967–78

This article examines depictions of class-encoded agency in the English spy operative and police detective protagonists that appeared on commercial television during the late 1960s and 1970s. Its purpose is to discover connections between constructions of this agency and class-based discourses relating to what Michael Kenny (1995) has termed the ‘first New Left’ (1956–62). The focus of attention is The Sweeney's DI Jack Regan (John Thaw), the most recognisable and fluent expression of the male ‘anti-hero’ archetype in question; but in order to frame an analysis that deals with interrelationships at the level of metanarrative, the article also traces a process of genre interconnection and development. Considerations of class in series such as The Sweeney (ITV, 1975–8), Callan (ITV, 1967–72) and Special Branch (ITV, 1969–74) tend to offer meaning along the lines drawn by the likes of E. P. Thompson, Raymond Williams and Richard Hoggart, as well as other figures associated with the first New Left. The article proposes that key first New Left themes – working-class men finding ‘voice’; empiricism/theory binaries; and discourses of Americanisation and anti-Americanism – not only provide a historical/contextual lens through which to view class-encoded agency, but also constitute a mechanism through which it is expressed.

Social Class Oppression as Social Exclusion: A Relational Perspective

The ways we think about systemic inequalities can open up new forms of resistance and reform. This chapter explores and extends understandings of social class oppression with an aim to re-imagine psychologists’ role in contesting economic inequalities. It argues that social class injustice is produced through and constituted by forms of social exclusion. In emphasizing the ways that poor people are excluded from everyday sources of power, security, and democratic rights, the chapter highlights the relational dimension of social class, demonstrating that class is something that happens in human relationships. From a relational view, class is embodied through the everyday processes in which we all participate, and patterns of systemic injustice are enacted among individuals occupying different social class locations. A relational approach opens up new possibilities for counteracting the social exclusion of poor people, both for psychologists and for citizens committed to social change.

Template-Based Bitmap View Selection for Optimizing Queries Over Tree Data

Developing and exploiting flexible techniques for optimizing the evaluation of queries over loosely structured data (e.g. tree or graph databases) is of crucial importance for modern database applications. In this context, we consider a new type of views which can be materialized as compressed bitmaps over tree data. We introduce the concept of view structural template to define classes of views. We then define and address a novel view selection problem (called view class selection (VCS) problem) where the goal is to select classes of bitmap views in order to optimize the overall evaluation cost of all tree pattern queries (TPQs) that can be issued against a database while satisfying a space constraint and ensuring that all the TPQs can be answered using exclusively the materialized views. We show that the VCS problem is NP-hard and we design two heuristic greedy algorithms which iteratively generate new batches of candidate view classes and make them available for selection. Each algorithm uses a different view class expansion technique to enable the systematic generation of candidate view classes from classes with smaller templates. We run extensive experiments to evaluate both the effectiveness of the algorithms and their efficiency on real, benchmark and synthetic datasets. Our algorithms are able to suggest high quality selections of view classes in a reasonable amount of time.

Issues of partial credit in mathematical assessment by computer

The CALM Project for Computer Aided Learning in Mathematics started at Heriot-Watt University in 1985. hi the first phase of the project CAL materials were created in calculus with each topic structured around Theory, Worked Examples, Motivating Examples and a Test. Students chose most readily to work through the Test section questions, welcoming the chance to assess their own progress. In addition, the teachers could view class progress. The weekly tests were designed from banks of questions with randomized parameters in each question. These questions prompted students for a mathematical answer and asked them to type in the response on one line using a style similar to computer languages such as Pascal. Students of engineering and science took only a short time to adjust to this approach. The routines developed in those early stages of CALM meant that testing could be more meaningful and did not rely on the more usual multiple-choice format favoured by so many computer projects. Over the years 1989-1992 CALM developed techniques to trap predictable wrong answers and this form of self-testing proved to be a powerful learning aid for students. Nevertheless, some problems which are discussed in greater detail in later sections remained.DOI:10.1080/0968776990070105