Leadership development programme: a multi-method evaluation

This report investigates findings arising from a variety of forms of feedback provided by the first cohort of participants (2012-2013) in Cumbria Partnership Foundation Trust’s “Leadership Development” Programme (LDP). The report summarises both quantitative and qualitative feedback, and synthesises findings to provide a more three-dimensional overview of participant experience and systemic impact. Feedback reflects, throughout, the diversity of the participating cohort in terms of professional roles and levels of seniority

Learning Leaders: a multi-method evaluation, final report

This report investigates findings arising from a variety of forms of feedback on Cumbria Partnership Foundation Trust’s “Learning Leaders” Programme (henceforth LLP) running from 2012-2013

Mountains, cones and dilemmas of context: the case of "ordinary language" in philosophy and social scientific method

The order of influence from thesis to hypothesis, and from philosophy to the social sciences, has historically governed the way in which the abstraction and significance of language as an empirical object is determined. In this paper, an argument is made for the development of a more reflexive intellectual relationship between ordinary language philosophy (OLP) and the social sciences that it helped inspire. It is demonstrated that, and how, the social scientific traditions of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis press OLP to re-consider the variety of problematic abstractions it has previously made for the sake of philosophical clarity, thereby self-reinvigorating

The boy done good? Football’s clichés and the philosophy of language (games)

Football is often celebrated as a global language. No less global, though considerably less celebrated, is the plethora of football-specific clichés which make up the language of commentary, post-match interview and expert analysis. The persistence of clichés suggests they are an important element in understanding the world of football. However, cliché itself is a relatively unexplored philosophical phenomenon. In this presentation, findings are reported from some research for a forthcoming book chapter. We aim therein to challenge the philosophy of language to account for the meaning that football gives cliché, and, in turn, use this account to assess the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ clichés in language of football. The problem is that, philosophically speaking, the notion of the ‘cliché’ seems to resist critical appraisal because of the number of different and opposing meanings that can be attributed to a clichéd statement: when it comes to definitions, cliché literally gives 110%. What, then, makes a cliché? More significantly, what differentiates ‘meaningful’ or ‘authoritative’ cliché from mere lazy or banal uses of language? As football is a game of two halves, we will explore two approaches within the philosophy of language for possible explanations, approaches that offer very different accounts of how such a use of cliché produces meaning; the approaches of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Through a comparison of the effectiveness of these philosophies for assessing footballing cliché as meaningful, we explore (at the end of the day) what particular conditions enable cliché to be useful, and what conditions produce simply tiresome language

Silent about silence: the ethical importance of ‘non-talk’ in qualitative health research

One of the key tenets of ethically robust health research is the effective demonstration of what is said by participants, i.e. the preservation of a speaker’s original meaning, without misrepresentation or decontextualisation of verbal data to better fit a theoretical model or anticipated research outcome. This principle is grounded in long-standing philosophical traditions in both moral philosophy and the philosophy of research itself (see Alexandra & Miller 2009; Schwartz, Preece & Hendry 2002). While this, appropriately, directs health researchers to take great care in the ways they ‘tidy up’ these kinds of data during transcription and presentation for qualitative analyses, the same attention is rarely accorded to the matter of participant silence. As Harvey Sacks (1992) observes, pauses, non-answers and extended silences in any verbal interaction are central to the understanding of its practical, contextual sense. Not speaking when one is expected to, for example, or delaying an answer to a question it rather than providing it instantly, are not simply absences of activity but highly meaningful interpersonal events. To delete or overlook non-talk in qualitative data is therefore, potentially, an act of misrepresentation. Using evidence from an empirical study of the diagnosis of depression in primary care, this paper explores (a) some of the practical ways in which orthodox qualitative data presentation measures, even when reporting exactly what is said, can radically alter the sense of those data by failing to consistently highlight where non-talk is significant, and (b) the direct ethical implications thereof

Transformation: Challenges and Opportunities – Vocational ODL in New Zealand

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Probiotics for preventing acute otitis media in children

This is a protocol for a Cochrane Review (Intervention). The objectives are as follows: to assess the effects of probiotics to prevent the occurrence and reduce the severity of acute otitis media in children.</p

An Integrated Content and Metadata based Retrieval System for Art

In this paper we describe aspects of the Artiste project to develop a distributed content and metadata based analysis, retrieval and navigation system for a number of major European Museums. In particular, after a brief overview of the complete system, we describe the design and evaluation of some of the image analysis algorithms developed to meet the specific requirements of the users from the museums. These include a method for retrievals based on sub images, retrievals based on very low quality images and retrieval using craquelure type

Does a 10-valent pneumococcal-Haemophilus influenzae protein D conjugate vaccine prevent respiratory exacerbations in children with recurrent protracted bacterial bronchitis, chronic suppurative lung disease and bronchiectasis: protocol for a randomised c

BackgroundRecurrent protracted bacterial bronchitis (PBB), chronic suppurative lung disease (CSLD) and bronchiectasis are characterised by a chronic wet cough and are important causes of childhood respiratory morbidity globally. Haemophilus influenzae and Streptococcus pneumoniae are the most commonly associated pathogens. As respiratory exacerbations impair quality of life and may be associated with disease progression, we will determine if the novel 10-valent pneumococcal-Haemophilus influenzae protein D conjugate vaccine (PHiD-CV) reduces exacerbations in these children. MethodsA multi-centre, parallel group, double-blind, randomised controlled trial in tertiary paediatric centres from three Australian cities is planned. Two hundred six children aged 18 months to 14 years with recurrent PBB, CSLD or bronchiectasis will be randomised to receive either two doses of PHiD-CV or control meningococcal (ACYW135) conjugate vaccine 2 months apart and followed for 12 months after the second vaccine dose. Randomisation will be stratified by site, age (&lt;6 years and &ge;6 years) and aetiology (recurrent PBB or CSLD/bronchiectasis). Clinical histories, respiratory status (including spirometry in children aged &ge;6 years), nasopharyngeal and saliva swabs, and serum will be collected at baseline and at 2, 3, 8 and 14 months post-enrolment. Local and systemic reactions will be recorded on daily diaries for 7 and 30 days, respectively, following each vaccine dose and serious adverse events monitored throughout the trial. Fortnightly, parental contact will help record respiratory exacerbations. The primary outcome is the incidence of respiratory exacerbations in the 12 months following the second vaccine dose. Secondary outcomes include: nasopharyngeal carriage of H. influenzae and S. pneumoniae vaccine and vaccine- related serotypes; systemic and mucosal immune responses to H. influenzae proteins and S. pneumoniae vaccine and vaccine-related serotypes; impact upon lung function in children aged &ge;6 years; and vaccine safety. DiscussionAs H. influenzae is the most common bacterial pathogen associated with these chronic respiratory diseases in children, a novel pneumococcal conjugate vaccine that also impacts upon H. influenzae and helps prevent respiratory exacerbations would assist clinical management with potential short- and long-term health benefits. Our study will be the first to assess vaccine efficacy targeting H. influenzae in children with recurrent PBB, CSLD and bronchiectasis