Eu(rope): (re)assembling, (re)casting and (re)aligning lines of de- and re-territorialisation of early childhood

The aim of this paper is to (re)(e)value(ate) current micro-and macropolicies and politics that shape – and are shaped by – conceptualisations of and, in consequence, practices towards young children in a range of institutions/figurations. The 'geopolitical' location for our investigation is Europe, understood as conceptual space(s) as well as (geographical) territory. Whilst we begin by focusing attention on events within an English context, we nevertheless move beyond geographical boundaries. We argue that movements that are currently being undertaken in England are not individual activities. Rather, England is infected and affected by European and global histories, practices, policies, philosophies and epistemologies. We argue that it is the oscillations between different components within a broad European assemblage (human and nonhuman) that makes something happen. Subsequently, we detail and question whether 'happenings' that are occurring in England can be considered as possible creative openings where early childhood education/care could be reassembled 'differently'. Once one steps outside what's been thought before . . . once one ventures outside what's familiar and reassuring, once one has to invent new concepts for unknown lands, then methods and moral systems break down and thinking becomes, as Foucault puts it, a ''perilous act'', a violence, whose first victim is oneself

Resistance, desistance: bad girls of post-qualitative inquiry

Who or what might be the illegitimate offspring of the “bad girl” as a figure for post-qualitative research? I consider the witch as a figure of posthuman efficacy and affective relationality, drawing on recent invocations of witchcraft and divination as theoretic practice. The witch might help post-qualitative methodology fulfil its own aspirations to get beyond language and the closures of coding by infusing method with divinatory practices. Examples of such practices in recent qualitative research studies are discussed. Divination does not seek to understand, but to transform from within, by sensing and redirecting the flows and intensities of that which is coming into existence. I also consider, more briefly, the witch’s near relation, the crone—a figure that feels more befitting to my own age and status. As an anomaly in the networks that sustain human conviviality, the crone’s uselessness might also have some disruptive force. I suggest that post-qualitative method might learn from the witch the arts of transformation and resistance, and from the crone the power of desistance and the passion of disinterest

An exploratory study of community pharmacist diagnosis and management of dermatitis and acne.

BACKGROUND: Dermatitis and acne account for a large number of general practitioner appointments yet are amenable to treatment with products available to purchase from community pharmacies. OBJECTIVES: 1. The clinical appropriateness of community pharmacy interventions for these conditions 2. Patient reported measures of the effectiveness of the pharmacist's management of their condition. METHODS: Nine community pharmacies opportunistically recruited patients presenting with suspected cases of both conditions, taking digital images and audio-recording the consultation. These files were uploaded to a secure site and independently reviewed by three dermatology specialists. Following their consultation, patients received a questionnaire to assess their views on the effectiveness of the treatment provided and their level of satisfaction with pharmacy management. RESULTS: Forty patients (36 dermatitis and 4 acne) were recruited. Of 113 assessments (7 not rated due to missing data) reviewed, specialists agreed with pharmacist's diagnosis in 33.6% of cases, disagreed in 38.9% but were unable to determine the diagnosis in 27% of cases. Treatment was deemed appropriate in 42% of cases, inappropriate in 27% and indeterminate in 31% of cases. Twenty-three patients (58%) returned a questionnaire and 12 of these (54.5%, 1 missing) stated that their condition had cleared completely following pharmacist advised treatment. Almost all (91.3%) were very satisfied or satisfied with the advice and/or treatment provided. CONCLUSION: Specialists judged the clinical appropriateness of pharmacist diagnosis and management as suboptimal yet patients were more positive. This study indicates a possible need for greater assessment-related training in dermatology for study pharmacists and further work to determine the generalisability of findings

A comparison of pharmacoepidemiological study designs in medication use and traffic safety research

In order to explore how the choice of different study designs could influence the risk estimates, a case–crossover and case–time–control study were carried out and their outcomes were compared with those of a traditional case–control study design that evaluated the association between the exposure to psychotropic medications and the risk of having a motor vehicle accident (MVA). A record-linkage database availing data for 3,786 cases and 18,089 controls during the period 2000–2007 was used. The study designs (i.e., case–crossover and case–time–control) were derived from published literature, and the following psychotropic medicines were examined: antipsychotics, anxiolytics, hypnotics and sedatives, and antidepressants, stratified in the two groups selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and other antidepressants. Moreover, in order to further investigate the effects of frequency of psychoactive medication exposure on the outcomes of the case–crossover analysis, the data were also stratified by the number of defined daily doses (DDDs) and days of medication use in the 12 months before the motor vehicle accident. Three-thousand seven-hundred fifty-two cases were included in this second part of the case–crossover analysis. The case–crossover design did not show any statistically significant association between psychotropic medication exposure and MVA risk [e.g., SSRIs—Adj. OR = 1.00 (95 % CI: 0.69–1.46); Anxiolytics—Adj. OR = 0.95 (95 % CI: 0.68–1.31)]. The case–time–control design only showed a borderline statistically significant increased traffic accident risk in SSRI users [Adj. OR = 1.16 (95 % CI: 1.01–1.34)]. With respect to the stratifications by the number of DDDs and days of medication use, the analyses showed no increased traffic accident risk associated with the exposure to the selected medication groups [e.g., SSRIs, <20 DDDs—Adj. OR = 0.65 (95 % CI: 0.11–3.87); SSRIs, 16–150 days—Adj. OR = 0.55 (95 % CI: 0.24–1.24)]. In contrast to the above-mentioned results, our recent case–control study found a statistically significant association between traffic accident risk and exposure to anxiolytics [Adj. OR = 1.54 (95 % CI: 1.11–2.15)], and SSRIs [Adj. OR = 2.03 (95 % CI: 1.31–3.14)]. Case–crossover and case–time–control analyses produced different results than those of our recent case–control study (i.e., case–crossover and case–time–control analyses did not show any statistically significant association whereas the case–control analysis showed an increased traffic accident risk in anxiolytic and SSRI users). These divergent results can probably be explained by the differences in the study designs. Given that the case–crossover design is only appropriate for short-term exposures and the case–time–control design is an elaboration of this latter, it can be concluded that, probably, these two approaches are not the most suitable ones to investigate the relation between MVA risk and psychotropic medications, which, on the contrary, are often use chronically

Use of a Prescribed Ephedrine/Caffeine Combination and the Risk of Serious Cardiovascular Events: A Registry-based Case-Crossover Study

Ephedrine and herbal ephedra preparations have been shown to induce a small-to-moderate weight loss. Owing to reports on serious cardiovascular events, they were banned from the US market in 2004. There have been no large controlled studies on the possible association between prescribed ephedrine/caffeine and cardiovascular events in general. The authors linked data from four different sources within Statistics Denmark, using data on 257,364 users of prescribed ephedrine/caffeine for the period 1995–2002. The data were analyzed using a case-crossover technique with a composite endpoint: death outside of a hospital, myocardial infarction, or stroke. To account for effects of chronic exposure and effects in naïve users, the authors performed a secondary case-control study nested within the cohort of ephedrine/caffeine ever users. Among 2,316 case subjects, 282 (12.2%) were current users of ephedrine/caffeine. The case-crossover analysis yielded an odds ratio of 0.84 (95% confidence interval: 0.71, 1.00); after adjustment for trends in ephedrine/caffeine use, it was 0.95 (95% confidence interval: 0.79, 1.16). Subgroup analyses revealed no strata with significantly elevated risk. In the case-control substudy, there was no increased risk among naïve users or users with large cumulative doses. Prescribed ephedrine/caffeine was not associated with a substantially increased risk of adverse cardiovascular outcomes in this study

Troubling "understanding mathematics-in-depth": Its role in the identity work of student-teachers in England

Copyright @ The Author(s) 2013. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.comThis article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.In this paper, we focus on an initiative in England devised to prepare non-mathematics graduates to train as secondary mathematics teachers through a 6-month Mathematics Enhancement Course (MEC) to boost their subject knowledge. The course documentation focuses on the need to develop “understanding mathematics in-depth” in students in order for them to become successful mathematics teachers. We take a poststructural approach, so we are not interested in asking what such an understanding is, about the value of this approach or about the effectiveness of the MECs in developing this understanding in their participants. Instead we explore what positions this discourse of “understanding mathematics in-depth” makes available to MEC students. We do this by looking in detail at the “identity work” of two students, analysing how they use and are used by this discourse to position themselves as future mathematics teachers. In doing so, we show how even benign-looking social practices such as “understanding mathematics in-depth” are implicated in practices of inclusion and exclusion. We show this through detailed readings of interviews with two participants, one of whom fits with the dominant discourses in the MEC and the other who, despite passing the MEC, experiences tensions between her national identity work and MEC discourses. We argue that it is vital to explore “identity work” within teacher education contexts to ensure that becoming a successful mathematics teacher is equally available to all.King’s College Londo