“I wanted to be Darcey Bussell”: Motivations and expectations of female dance teachers

Dance, analogous to professional sport, constitutes an interesting occupation in that there are relatively few vocations in which the athleticism of the body is inextricably linked to the ability to perform and teach. Dance-teachers could pursue teaching as a career as a way to remain involved in the physicality of dance to maintain a sense of self as a dancer. Dance-teachers make up a large proportion of the professional dance world in the United Kingdom and yet little is known about their role, training, continuing professional development and motivations to engage in a dance-teaching career. To address this lacuna, research was undertaken with ten female dance-teachers (24 to 71 years). Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data, from which two key themes emerged as salient: (i) staying in dance; (ii) dance teaching as a career: challenges and skills. Pursuing a career in dance-teaching was viewed as a way to maintain a sense of self as a dancer. Participants who had been dance-performers appeared to view teaching as a natural career progression. The complex skills required of a dance-teacher were highlighted and participants positioned dance-teaching as a highly specialist career

Managing the circulation of banknotes

Issuing banknotes is one of the Bank of England’s best known and most recognisable functions. To maintain confidence in the physical currency, genuine notes must be available to meet public demand. This article explains how the note circulation is managed to maintain this confidence. The Bank’s role in this has changed considerably over the past 50 years with technological innovations and as the involvement of the commercial sector has grown. The Bank’s response to future developments will continue to be consistent with its objective of ensuring the availability of genuine notes of good quality in a balanced mix of denominations.

Landscapes of Helping: Kindliness in Neighbourhoods and Communities

Increasing geographical mobility, economic change and the rise of an individualist culture in the UK have contributed to the loosening of close ties in communities. Communities need to evolve, to reconnect, so that people cultivate the ‘background hum’ of sociability that has been associated with neighbourliness. This ‘background hum’ is characterised by people’s awareness of each other, by a respect for each other’s privacy and by a readiness to take action if help is needed. In this research we define kindliness as ‘neighbourliness enacted’ and describe the process of reconnection within communities as the ‘reinvention of sociality’. Hebden Bridge’s relative success in melding traditional and more contemporary forms of sociality helps to identify some broader lessons about fostering kindliness in neighbourhoods and communities

Receptor usage by the Acanthocheilonema viteae-derived immunomodulator, ES-62

ES-62 is an immunomodulatory phosphorylcholine (PC)-containing glycoprotein secreted by the rodent filarial nematode Acanthocheilonema viteae. Previously, the use of knockout mice has revealed the effects of ES-62 on macrophages and dendritic cells to be dependent on TLR4. However, it is possible that ES-62 may interact with additional proteins on the surfaces of target cells and hence that cells may vary with respect to receptor usage. In this study, we identified by molecular weight, proteins that interact with ES-62 and found differences amongst the immune system cells studied. Thus, whereas lymphocytes appear to have two major interacting proteins of 135 and 82 kDa, U937 monocytes only contain an ES-62-binding protein of the latter molecular weight. Binding to the proteins on B cells and U937 cells wasblocked by PC, suggesting a critical role for this ES-62 moiety in facilitating interaction. Finally, ES-62 binding is followed by internalization in both macrophages and B cells but only in the former was absence of TLR4 found to block internalization. These findings are consistent with differences in receptor usage by ES-62 amongst different cell-types

It’s scary, scary, scary …”: the lived experience of asthma.

The research presented here contributes to a developing sociological-phenomenological empirical corpus of literature by addressing the lived experience of asthma in non-élite sports participants and committed exercisers. Despite the prevalence of asthma and exercise-induced asthma/bronchoconstriction, there is a distinct lacuna in terms of qualitative research into living with asthma, and specifically in relation to participation in sports and physical cultures. Here we focus upon the aural dimension of asthma experiences, examining the role of ‘auditory attunement’ and ‘auditory work’ in sporting embodiment

Challenging conceptions of gender: UK dance teachers’ perceptions of boys and girls in the ballet studio

In the ‘Western’ world, dance is generally considered a feminised activity and gender traditionally tends to be drawn along binary lines. Traditional notions of idealised gendered bodies in dance are often valorised. Psychologically, girls are expected to be passive, by unquestioningly accepting the instructions of the dance teacher, whereas boys are encouraged to be challenging, energetic and daring. Dance educators have an important role in influencing such attitudes but to date have been under-researched. To understand their perceptions of boys and girls in the dance studio, 10 female dance teachers from across the UK participated in semi-structured interviews. Data were analysed using thematic analysis, from which two key themes emerged: ‘Performing Masculinity’ and ‘Boys’ Challenges to Traditional Dance Pedagaogy’. Within the ballet studio, teachers encouraged the performance of masculinity in boys and femininity in girls. However, there was some reflection by the teachers on such traditional conceptualisations of gendered physicality. Boys were perceived to challenge the traditional, authoritarian pedagogy by not conforming to behavioral expectations of docility. Whilst teachers were found to respond by changing their pedagogy, this paper calls for the use of a model of pedagogy that is gender neutral, fosters creativity and empowers all genders

Designing whole-systems commissioning: lessons from the English experience

The paucity of formal evidence, allied to the requirement for strategies that are sensitive to local history and context, means that a ‘blueprint’ for successful strategic commissioning is not currently available for adoption. We are therefore confined to proposing ‘design principles’ for those seeking to embark upon a transition towards a whole systems approach to strategic commissioning. People and relationships are of critical importance all the way through the chain from strategic commissioning to micro-commissioning. Most crucially, experience suggests that structural solutions alone cannot deliver effective relationships and will not be effective when relationships are neglected. The need to ensure staff, partner and political buy-in suggests that relationship management and consensus-building are an integral component of the leadership role in moving toward strategic commissioning. As with any major re-organisation, the move to strategic commissioning is essentially a change management initiative and therefore will stand or fall according to whether it adheres to good practice in the change management process. Central to this, and to achieving commissioning outcomes, is the requirement for meaningful service user and public engagement. Effective commissioning emphasizes individual capabilities as well as needs, and community assets as well as deficits and problems. Adoption of strategic commissioning approaches is still at the developmental and learning stage and arguably all structural arrangements should be regarded as transitional

A Classification of Infographics

Classifications are useful for describing existing phenomena and guiding further investigation. Several classifications of diagrams have been proposed, typically based on analytical rather than empirical methodologies. A notable exception is the work of Lohse and his colleagues, published in Communications of the ACM in December 1994. The classification of diagrams that Lohse proposed was derived from bottom-up grouping data collected from sixteen participants and based on 60 diagrams. Mean values on ten Likert-scales were used to predict diagram class. We follow a similar methodology to Lohse, using real-world infographics (i.e. embellished data charts) as our stimuli. We propose a structural classification of infographics, and determine whether infographics class can be predicted from values on Likert scales