Search

ABSTRACT In a context in which men's relationships to dress, fashion and style is only just beginning to receive serious academic attention, this article presents the findings of a small-scale [...]

There is in higher education a powerful discourse of "independent learning". While there may be pedagogical rationales to support the desirability of increased independence at the tertiary stage, it may also serve other institutional agendas, such as functioning as a way for academic staff to "manage" the frustrations experienced as teachers as a result of pressures to prioritise research. However, the individualisation of learning constituted by this discourse under-emphasises the collaborative nature of learning. Academic success and failure are neither the property of the individual students nor of the instruction they receive, but lie rather in the relationships between students and the practices in which they and their teachers engage during the course of their ongoing interactions. The learning experiences of international doctoral students are used here to illustrate ways in which discourses of dependence and independence can operate to disempower students.

As U.K. school exam results continue to rise, perennial accusations appear in the media of the "dumbing down" of the curriculum and of employers' complaints about school leavers' lack of basic literacy skills. In this context, Andrew Motion, the poet laureate, has raised questions about how to provide an inspiring English curriculum, the place of creativity and imagination within it, and how much emphasis there should be on the nuts and bolts of language. If idealism isn't added into the mix, he asserts, it will have denied English the chance to fulfill its proper responsibilities to strike a balance between functional values, literary values, human values, and philosophical values. This article explores these issues. It continues an earlier story told in "QI," and by drawing on contemporaneous diary extracts from the author's 1960s schooldays, it introduces and acknowledges the significance of a character who had remained hidden there. (Contains 7 notes.)

Recent UK legislation, operational from December 2006, places a duty on all public authorities, including higher education institutions, to actively promote equality of opportunity for people with disabilities. The university studied here has a number of initiatives in place to develop good practice in this area, but how do students themselves experience that provision? Research about people with disabilities has sometimes alienated them by failing to reflect their own perspectives. This study, explicitly aimed at incorporating students' voices and using interview and video data, offers some insight into students' experiences of the aids and obstacles to an inclusive learning environment at one university.

Investigated the impact of gender issues on the university campus in the United Kingdom through 37 interviews with students and staff. In male-dominated disciplines a "narrow" definition of curriculum as a body of knowledge to be transferred to students prevailed. In disciplines where more women were present, gender dimensions were more likely to be incorporated. (SLD)

The need for an inspiring English curriculum in the United Kingdom that allows communication, values and creativity as those evident in the diary extracts of the writer is presented.

NHS Direct is a 24 h telephone helpline established in England and Wales, UK to offer advice and information for people about health, illness and the National Health Service (NHS) so that they are better able to care for themselves and their families. In 2001/2002 we undertook in-depth home interviews with 60 users of the service in two NHS Direct sites in England. In this paper we consider the extent to which NHS Direct facilitates patient empowerment in terms of helping people to be in control of their health and health care interactions. Our research suggests that NHS Direct facilitates patient empowerment by enabling patients to self care and to access health advice and services. It is also seen to offer the prerequisites for empowerment perceived to be lacking in the wider NHS, including time, respect, listening, support, and information. The service also functions by offering an alternative contact point for people seeking to avoid being labelled 'time wasters' by other busy health care providers. In the context of a wider health service which appears to problematise individuals' ability to make decisions about the appropriateness of seeking health care, NHS Direct legitimises help-seeking actions. Empowerment in the context of NHS Direct has been associated with self care as a way of reducing 'unnecessary' demand on health services. However, health professional and patient perspectives on what is considered necessary demand differ, and in certain contexts, patient empowerment may involve service use as well as self care. Further, our data reveal the context-dependent nature of a concept like empowerment. For example, when people are ill, in pain, or anxious about a loved one, they may value being cared for more than being empowered. Our research suggests that, in addition to its other functions, NHS Direct is also valued as contributing to a sense of being cared for. Keywords. NHS Direct; UK; Patient empowerment; Self-care; Legitimacy

National Health Service (NHS) Direct is a nurse-based, 24-hour health advice line run part of the UK's NHS. The service delivers health advice remotely through the telephone where the central aspect of the service is the attempt to provide a standard level of health advice regardless of time, space or the background of the nurse.

This paper, which is an autoethnographic text in its own right, examines class, gender and education through highlighting the processes at work and the resources drawn upon in the making of autoethnographic texts. At its centre is a poem about my father, which acts as an illustration of how such artefacts exert agency across time, through the play of what Keighley and Pickering refer to as 'the mnemonic imagination', enabling a re-interpretation of the past in the present and on into the future. Using the work of feminist scholars Steedman and Walkerdine, the paper offers an insight into the way cultural analyses and 'affective histories' make sense of the fortunes of a 'Scholarship Girl'. At the same time, in exhuming an instance of the good that men do in the form of a crucial intervention in my life by my father, it pays homage to what the poet Robert Hayden called the performance of 'love's austere and lonely offices' plus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]