1. A lot of the stuff on tools4Dev you have to pay for, but their blog often has interesting (free!) posts, like this one, How to Write a Monitoring and Evaluation Report https://tools4dev.org/blog/how-to-write-a-monitoring-and-evaluation-report/ and this one, Monitoring and Evaluation Tools for NGOs, with a number of useful links https://tools4dev.org/blog/monitoring-and-evaluation-tools-for-ngos/ including this one to the NCVO (The National Council for Voluntary Organisations) site which has a lot of free templates and guides https://www.ncvo.org.uk/help-and-guidance/
2. When I was working in Sweden in 2010, at a time when Swedish educationalists were beginning to be much less sure that the ‘free schools’ they had enthusiastically promoted were a good thing, we hosted a number of visits from UK politicians keen to learn more about free schools, which had provided much of the ‘evidence’ underpinning the English ‘academy’ system that had been introduced a number of years earlier. Here’s a piece for The Conversation by Stephen Gorard from Durham University that doesn’t mince its words, Academies haven’t raised pupil achievement – there’s no need for them to have privileges that other schools do not https://theconversation.com/academies-havent-raised-pupil-achievement-theres-no-need-for-them-to-have-privileges-that-other-schools-do-not-247023
3. Loic Menzies has written an interesting piece for the Cambridge journal PS: Political Science & Politics, Elite Interviewing as an In-Betweener https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/article/elite-interviewing-as-an-inbetweener/4578ED29D7C15ED739228F7FD11EBE8B PDF below.
Conducting elite interviews presents well-documented challenges, often linked to dynamics that are influenced by researchers’ status. This aspect of positionality is sometimes characterized as “insider” or “outsider” status, but scholars have noted the lack of nuance in this rigid binary. Drawing on experiences during interviews with policy elites—primarily in England—this article describes the author’s “in-betweener” status and reviews four methodological considerations from this perspective, highlighting the challenges and opportunities associated with different points on the insider–outsider spectrum. These observations are meant to stimulate reflexivity among researchers regardless of their status.
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4. Here’s the audio version of an elegant essay for Engelsberg Ideas by Alexander McCall Smith on the writer’s right to speak freely https://audioboom.com/posts/8627380-ei-weekly-listen-alexander-mccall-smith-on-the-writer-s-right-to-speak-freely
While we may think we have moved beyond the censorship of the past, writers’ artistic freedoms are still constrained.
5. And, finally and mysteriously, pursuing Tuesday’s thriller writing theme, a piece for Crime Reads by the historian of British crime writing, Martin Edwards on Rediscovering the Golden Age Detective Novels of Dostoevsky Translator David Magarshack https://crimereads.com/rediscovering-the-golden-age-detective-novels-of-dostoevsky-translator-david-magarshack/
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