Putting the auto in ethnography: The embodied process of reflexivity on positionality

This article describes an unexpected methodological shift made in response to the COVID-19 pandemic during doctoral research, and exemplifies reflexivity in action whilst negotiating my complex positionality as both a researcher and a social worker. The first UK national lockdown was announced after I had conducted 3 months of ethnographic data collection in a local authority adult social work team, thus halting my research. As society shut down, face-to-face research was paused overnight, however, the local authority continued to provide essential services and support. Forging a path forward, I successfully gained a job practising as a social worker within the team and completed a supplementary ethics application to include auto-ethnographic data which would complement the existing ethnography. Although practicing reflexivity and analysing positionality are established and encouraged parts of ethnographic research, how a researcher actively conducts them varies and usually remains unseen. Methodologies are often presented in a sanitised and polished manner, depriving the reader of the messy yet informative reality of research. This article draws upon fieldnotes to practically illustrate and bring this reflexivity on positionality to the fore. As I move from participant-observer to complete-participant, the findings zoom in on my experience of navigating positionality, revealing a micro picture of the details and subtleties of this process. This unexpected research journey enhanced my level of intimacy with the phenomenon, the research site, and the participants. Overall, this example of enacting reflexivity helps to bridge the gap between how positionality is theorised and how it actively practiced. Finally, this article is a call for more open, deeper, and continual reflexivity on our positionality as researchers

Self-directed support: ten years on

Key Points: It is ten years since the publication of the first national strategy for Self-directed Support (SDS). Evidence, both from scrutiny activity and research, indicates a very mixed picture of delivery across Scotland, with some people benefitting and others not having full access Processes for delivery of SDS are often bureaucratic and unwieldy, with the voice of the supported person not being fully heard. In order for the goals of the SDS strategy to be fully implemented, a change of culture will be required to fully put the voice of the supported person at the heart of SDS processes. There are significant implications for the workforce in terms of training and autonomy; real investment in education and training is required

How videos are used in secondary school physics teaching

Abstract Short videos are widely used in secondary level physics classes, part of a portfolio of strategies for teaching and learning. However, research into how they are used, why they are used and the optimum design for learning is in its infancy. This paper seeks to examine how videos are used in UK physics classrooms for the communication of physics ideas and for practical work. It features the results of a small survey of physics teachers and the results of a search through the relevant literature.</jats:p

Effects of J-gate potential and interfaces on donor exchange coupling in the Kane quantum computer architecture

We calculate the electron exchange coupling for a phosphorus donor pair in silicon perturbed by a J-gate potential and the boundary effects of the silicon host geometry. In addition to the electron-electron exchange interaction we also calculate the contact hyperfine interaction between the donor nucleus and electron as a function of the varying experimental conditions. Donor separation, depth of the P nuclei below the silicon oxide layer and J-gate voltage become decisive factors in determining the strength of both the exchange coupling and the hyperfine interaction - both crucial components for qubit operations in the Kane quantum computer. These calculations were performed using an anisotropic effective-mass Hamiltonian approach. The behaviour of the donor exchange coupling as a function of the device parameters varied provides relevant information for the experimental design of these devices.Comment: 15 pages, 15 figures. Accepted for Journal of Physics: Condensed Matte

Paediatric burns in a rural South African district hospital

Objectives. To describe the epidemiology, clinical features, management and outcome of children with burns admitted to a rural district hospital. Design. A retrospective analysis of the case notes of consecutive cases of paediatric burns. Setting. Hlabisa Hospital, KwaZulu-Natal - a 450-bed rural district hospital serving approximately 200 000 people. Subjects. All cases of paediatric burns (age < 12 years) admitted to Hlabisa Hospital in 1994. Main outcome measures. Number of admissions, month of admission, age, sex, time to presentation, site of burn, complications, number of surgical procedures, adherence to management protocol and outcome. Results. One hundred and forty-nine children presented to the outpatient department in 1994 and 88 (59%) were admitted, The median age of those admitted was 36 months with 66 (75%) aged less than 5 years; 42 (48%) were boys, Thirty-nine children (44%) were admitted during the four winter months of May to August, The average interval from the tirne of the burn to presentation at hospital was 42 hours (range 1 - 120). Sixty-eight burns (77%) were due to hot fluid or food burning the legs, trunk or arms, There was a high level of morbidity, Nineteen (22%) children developed wound infections, 5 (6%) developed contractures and 20 (23%) required a total of 32 surgical procedures, There was 1 death, Burns were responsible for more paediatric patient days spent in hospital than any condition other than malnutrition, and a longer length of stay was associated with delay in presentation, Children presenting within 24 hours of the burn had a mean length of stay of 12.8 days, compared with 25.2 days (P = 0.03) for children presenting 24 hours or more after the burn. Twenty of the 22 children who stayed for longer than 3 weeks or who required transfer were judged to have been managed inadequately in at least one respect compared with 3 of 48 who were discharged within 2 weeks or not transferred (P < 0.001). Conclusion. This study shows that paediatric burns are an important cause of morbidity and contribute significantly to inpatient stay in this rural setting. The lengthy delay from time of burn to presentation at hospital is of serious concern and our results show that this delay is associated with increased hospital stay. As most burns were due to spillage of hot fluids or food there seems to be significant potential for preventive interventions. Community-based studies would help to estimate the true incidence of burns and would contribute to an understanding of the reasons for delay in presentation. The information gathered is being used to inform the development of a burns prevention programme.4 page(s

Molecular orbital calculations of two-electron states for P donor solid-state spin qubits

We theoretically study the Hilbert space structure of two neighbouring P donor electrons in silicon-based quantum computer architectures. To use electron spins as qubits, a crucial condition is the isolation of the electron spins from their environment, including the electronic orbital degrees of freedom. We provide detailed electronic structure calculations of both the single donor electron wave function and the two-electron pair wave function. We adopted a molecular orbital method for the two-electron problem, forming a basis with the calculated single donor electron orbitals. Our two-electron basis contains many singlet and triplet orbital excited states, in addition to the two simple ground state singlet and triplet orbitals usually used in the Heitler-London approximation to describe the two-electron donor pair wave function. We determined the excitation spectrum of the two-donor system, and study its dependence on strain, lattice position and inter donor separation. This allows us to determine how isolated the ground state singlet and triplet orbitals are from the rest of the excited state Hilbert space. In addition to calculating the energy spectrum, we are also able to evaluate the exchange coupling between the two donor electrons, and the double occupancy probability that both electrons will reside on the same P donor. These two quantities are very important for logical operations in solid-state quantum computing devices, as a large exchange coupling achieves faster gating times, whilst the magnitude of the double occupancy probability can affect the error rate.Comment: 15 pages (2-column