BU Award for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning

Development and implementation of learnng, teaching and assessment strategies which motivate and inspire student learning and achievemen

Recognising and supporting self in dementia: a new way to facilitate a person-centred approach to dementia care

This paper reports findings from a three-year study which integrated Kitwood's (1997) person-centred and Sabat's (2001) selfhood approaches in the design, fieldwork and analysis of a multi-method observational study that explored the social worlds of 14 people with dementia in continuing-care. The types of interactions that participants experienced in everyday ward life and during creative sessions were identified by observing, video-recording and engaging with them and by Dementia Care Mapping. The participants' responses to such interactions in terms of their well- or ill-being and expressions of self were identified and documented. The findings indicate that in the wards, staff interactions were often limited and sometimes abusive and that participants experienced ill-being, whereas during creative sessions, interactions were generally facilitatory and celebratory with the participants experiencing wellbeing. By developing the selfhood approach and integrating it with the person-centred approach, I argue that recognising and supporting selfhood (or not) during interactions can lead to qualitatively different staff behaviours, with consequences for the well- or ill-being of people with dementia. There is scope for incorporating this developed selfhood framework into staff training, for it has the potential to transform practice and the experiences of people with dementia in receipt of care

Book review: Mob Rule Learning

Mob Rule Learning: Camps, Unconferences and Trashing the Talking Head. By Michelle Boule, Medford: Cyber Age Books, 2011, paperback ISBN 978-0-910965-92-7, 230 pages

A proper anxiety: practice-based PhDs and academic unease

Like any other PhD, practice-based PhDs are also the focus of much anxiety but, significantly, those anxieties reach beyond personal doubt and are shared by supervisors, examiners and senior academic management. Here, I suggest that the anxiety concerning practice-based PhDs should not be lightly dismissed because it is a product of the institutional relations practice-based doctorates put into place. At least in the short-term anxiety is structured into the qualification and the aim of this paper is to examine why. I argue that the demarcation of disciplinary boundaries is important for judgements concerning academic and artistic expertise. To become an expert you have to have a specialised field, which can only be only mastered if it is clearly defined. Practice-based research crosses many of these borderlines thereby creating anxiety about criteria of competence, assessment and authority. Significantly, however, the practice-based PhD has involved a shift in the institutional arbitration of competence. In the past art that crossed disciplinary boundaries was nevertheless evaluated within art colleges and in relation to their traditions and practices, whereas in this instance art is being judged within an academic context and with a different set of expectations in mind. Unlike other previously contentious forms of art practice, this is not a change in medium or subject matter that nevertheless remains within the parameters of the art college, but is a shift in the way that the art object is legitimated as such. The paper goes on to examine the practical and conceptual consequences of art practice being acknowledged as academically valid, exploring in particular the advantages and liabilities of anxiety for all concerned

Maternity care and 'Every Child Matters'

The first part of the chapter will provide an introduction to maternity services in the UK and why it is the foundation of ‘Every Child Matters’. It is the earliest healthcare intervention of all for the child and it is essential to get it right for babies and parents. The role of the key professionals involved with care provision will be explained as they may be unfamiliar to some readers. By using case studies as examples, the chapter will then explore how each of them contributes to addressing the key recommendations of Every Child Matters including the Common Assessment framework (CAF) and the strategic challenges of the Children’s Workforce. The final part of the chapter will focus on discussing future trends in maternity care with relation to Every Child Matters

Book review: Reading Groups, Libraries and Social Inclusion: Experiences of Blind and Partially Sighted People, by Eileen Hyder

Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. 102 pages. ISBN-13 1 978 14094 4798 6. £60.00

Blindness, art and exclusion in museums and galleries

Drawing on interviews with blind people, this paper examines both their exclusion from museums and galleries and their responses to the art educational provision which is specifically designed to remedy that marginalisation. Blind visitors’ responses to these educational projects was polarised; respondents were either highly critical or very enthusiastic. This paper begins by outlining the interviewees’ criticisms which included, education officers’ misconception of how touch facilitates learning and aesthetic response, a lack of educational progression and blind people’s clear exclusion from mainstream events. I then ask why, given these problems, did other respondents respond so favourably, suggesting that these high levels of satisfaction were had little to do with museum provision but were the result of social interaction and of inclusion within the sighted community. I argue that, ironically, this sense of inclusion is premised on blind visitors’ structural exclusion from art institutions. Finally, the article examines those visitors who, illicitly or otherwise, already experience some aspects of the museum in multisensory terms but maintain that until museums’ and galleries ocularcentric orientation is reconfigured, there will be little possibility for these rogue visitors to develop their knowledge of art. Likewise, without institutional change educational events for the blind will continue to be an inadequate supplement to a structure that is and remains inequitable