Developing the Potential of Observation - Generating Ideas Using Video Data From a Nursery School: a Students as Academic Partners Project

This Students as Academic Partners (SAP) project aimed to explore the potential of a creative approach to reflection. Developing approaches to reflective practice is directly relevant for a wide range of professional occupations including school teachers, early years practitioners, lecturers within HE and also trainees. Individual reflections were produced by project participants based on several very short video clips of children in a nursery school. The reflections include speculative observations, explanations and use of theoretical perspectives linked to broader themes. The analysis was extended through a collaborative reflection on the combined individual reflections. The focus on broader themes within this particular project seeks to contribute to an encompassing discourse related to early years practice

Creative Reflection in Action

This (Students as Academic Partners) project aimed to explore the potential of a creative approach to reflection. Developing approaches to reflective practice is directly relevant for teachers and those who are training to become teachers. Individual reflections were produced by project participants based on several very short video clips of children in a nursery school. These individual reflections were extended into a collaborative reflection highlighting common themes. This broader focus seeks to contribute to an encompassing discourse related to early years practice. The poster aims to show how critical reflection and speculation can develop an understanding of the child, their development and potential barriers to this development. Through observing stills from the video footage, viewers of the poster are challenged to speculate about the child’s body language, what they might be doing or whether the learning environment is suitable to develop and progress their knowledge and understanding further

NIHR Liver/Renal Biomarker Programme Final Report: Evaluating the benefits for patients and the NHS of new and existing biological fluid biomarkers in liver and renal disease

Protein biomarkers are naturally occurring substances that can be measured, often in fluids such as blood or urine, and which provide information about a patient and their illness. Different diseases have different biomarkers. When people become ill, changes in biomarker levels may occur before any clinical symptoms or signs become apparent. Measuring biomarkers in blood or urine is simple, safe and may help the doctor diagnose which disease the patient has, determine how severe it is, help choose the best treatment and help detect if the disease is getting worse or better. Unfortunately, for many diseases there are not enough biomarkers that are of proven usefulness in patient care today. New developments in research mean that many more are now being discovered but there is no quick and reliable way to decide which of the markers are good enough to be useful clinically. While our research proposal focusses on diseases of the liver and kidney, in the future it can also serve as the "blueprint" for similar work in other diseases. It is aimed at developing a structure and methods to assess the clinical usefulness of biomarkers as quickly and efficiently as possible. The research is divided into three parallel workstreams : 1. Identification of the best research methods for monitoring disease or treatment with biomarkers - the lack of understanding this has hampered this field so far. 2. The creation of a sample "banking" system for collecting and storing patient samples and relevant clinical data from large numbers of patients. This will allow the immediate testing of potential new biomarkers now and in the future. The best biomarkers would then go on to full trials to see if patients and the NHS would benefit from their use. 3. A clinical trial at multiple hospitals in the UK of three new biomarkers for liver damage (together called the "Enhanced liver fibrosis" or "ELF", test). We will find out if ELF can give early warning of dangerous liver damage (cirrhosis) and therefore reduce the risk of major complications. This trial may radically alter the way in which patients with liver disease can be looked after clinically. This research programme will benefit patients and the NHS by ensuring that biomarkers in the future can be evaluated and introduced more rapidly, improving clinical management for each individual patient and leading to better use of NHS resources