This paper reports the perceptions of 543 pupils about the strategies used by their teachers which get the class to work well. The pupils were in four secondary schools and aged between 12 and 16. Twenty-one categories of effective strategies were derived from pupil comments. However, no single category dominated the data. Examining what we have called 'pupils' constructs of effective strategies' revealed that a wide range of strategies were perceived as effective. Not only was a variety of strategies seen as effective, pupils in each school identified over 75% of the staff as being best at getting the class to work well.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the hidden social worlds of competent clandestine users of drugs controlled within the confines of the UK Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, which now includes NPS substances. The authors explore how and in what way socially competent drug users differ from others who are visible to the authorities as criminals by criminal justice bureaucracies and known to treatment agencies as defined problem drug users. Design/methodology/approach This qualitative research utilises a bricoleur ethnographic methodology considered as a critical, multi-perspectival, multi-theoretical and multi-methodological approach to inquiry. Findings This paper challenges addiction discourses and, drawing upon empirical evidence, argues the user of controlled drugs should not be homogenised. Using several key strategies of identity management, drug takers employ a range of risk awareness and risk neutralisation techniques to protect self-esteem, avoid social affronts and in maintaining untainted identities. The authors present illicit drug use as one activity amongst other social activities that (some) people, conventionally, pursue. The findings from this study suggest that punitive drug policy, which links drug use with addiction, crime and antisocial behaviour, is inconsistent with the experience of the participants. Research limitations/implications Due to the small sample size (n=24) employed, the possibility that findings can be generalised is rendered difficult. However, generalisation was never an objective of the research; the experiences of this hidden population are deeply subjective and generalising findings and applying them to other populations would be an unproductive endeavour. While the research attempted to recruit an equal number of males and females to this research, gendered analysis was not a primary objective of this research. However, it is acknowledged that future research would greatly benefit from such a gendered focus. Practical implications The insights from the study may be useful in helping to inform future policy discourse on issues of drug use. In particular, the insights suggest that a more nuanced perspective should be adopted. This perspective should recognise the non-deviant identities of many drug users in the contemporary era, and challenge the use of a universally stigmatising discourse and dominance of prohibition narratives. Social implications It is envisaged that this paper will contribute to knowledge on how socially competent users of controlled drugs identify and manage the risks of moral, medical and legal censure. Originality/value The evidence in this paper indicates that drug use is an activity often associated with non-deviant, productive members of the population. However, the continuing dominance of stigmatising policy discourses often leads to drug users engaging in identity concealment within the context of a deeply capitalist Western landscape.

This article examines recent aggregate statistical data generated by Scottish Government medical bodies concerning suicide rates and the social contexts of those who die by suicide. It compares rates and trends with international studies. Inherent in the data sets explored are indications suggesting that suicide is patterned by variables such as gender, employment, class and marital status. Neoliberalism increases social disparities that influence patterns of suicide, resulting in anomie and alienation, disproportionately impacting the already disenfranchised. Using recent statistical data (2011–2017), the article offers a theorization of suicide through the lens of Emile Durkheim’s social causation model of suicide. Suicide is associated with risk factors inherent in social structures and political processes.

British universities are experiencing a climate of fiscal austerity including severe budget cuts coupled with intensifying competition for markets have seen the emergence of audit culture which afflicts the public sector in general. This entails the risk to the integrity of university culture disappearing. This paper seeks to explore the interconnections between developing trends in universities which cause processes likely to undermine the objectivity and independence of research. We question that universities’ alignment with the capitalist business sector and the dominant market economy culture. Despite arguably positive aspects, there is a danger that universities may be dominated by hegemonic sectional interest rather than narratives of openness and democratically oriented critique. We also argue that audit culture embedded in reputation management, quality control and ranking hierarchies may necessarily promote deception while diminishing a collegiate culture of trust and pursuit of truth which is replaced by destructive impersonal accountability procedures. Such transitions inevitably contain insidious implications for the nature of the academy and undermine the values of academic-intellectual life.

Post-industrial urban landscapes connected with neo-liberalism may provide novel opportunities for the emancipation of working-class women who were traditionally, like women of other social classes, largely subjugated to men socially and economically in the period of collective male-led unionization and manufacturing. Based on qualitative data, our interpretative study locates itself in an international field of criminality and illuminates the criminal practices of women connected with the criminal world of illicit drugs. Our contribution extends this field of scholarship into the culture of the West of Scotland. We identify through an intersectional sensibility of ‘doing femininity’ on the street and the nexus of a familial domicile, the ways in which women’s agency remains restricted, contrary to an emancipation argument. We conclude that their ‘liberation’ is negatively truncated for two reasons: firstly, criminality necessarily distorts freedoms and secondly, subtle ties with an overarching violent masculinity were retained.