'Race', gender and educational desire

In the government, media, and public mind the relationship between 'race' and education is overwhelmingly negative. In Britain when we talk of 'black and ethnic minorities in schools' we think of underachievement, rising exclusions and low aspirations. However, research evidence shows racialised people, particularly the women, have a positive and enduring relationship with education. Drawing on historical, archival, personal and research evidence, this article, which is drawn for the text of an inaugural professorial lecture, looks at the pervasive myths behind the link between 'race and education' and asks, "Why is there a crisis in 'multicultural education' in 21st Century Britain?" The author argues that by understanding the black and Asian collective desire for education, we can begin to reclaim the meaning of education, reinstating it as a radical site of resistance and refutation, so evident in the postcolonial experience

There is nothing honourable about honour killings: gender, violence and the limits of multiculturalism

'Honour killings' are extreme acts of domestic violence culminating in the murder of a woman by her family or community. However only in relation to religious and ethnic communities is the concept of 'honour' invoked as motivation for domestic violence. In this paper we argue that ethnicised women are caught up in a collision of discourses. Women who are victims of honour killings are invisible within the cultural relativism of the British multicultural discourse and the private/public divide which characterises the domestic violence discourse. But since September 11, while ethnicised women have become highly visible, they are now contained and constructed in the public consciousness within a discourse of fear and risk posed by the presence of the Muslim alien 'other'. By developing an effective human rights approach to honour killings it could be possible to move away from the 'gender trap' of cultural relativism within the liberal democratic discourse on multiculturalism

The Career Aspirations and Expectations of Young Black Women: The Maintenance of Inequality

This study is an investigation into the career aspirations and expectations of 62 second generation, Afro-Carribean, young women. The belief that, in a meritocratic society, the occupational outcomes of the pupils should be a reflection of their educational achievements, regardless of class, race, or gender, is subject to critical appraisal. Investigations conducted in two South London Schools, over a period of 18 months, explored the occupational choice processes of 198 male and female pupils aged between 15-18 years. The results of the investigation suggest that the higher (in terms of social class) and distinct aspirations of young black women can be explained by their historically specific and culturally unique experience of the labour market. Young black womens' particular expectations of the labour market are characterised, in the main, by a cultural disposition that supports female labour market participation. This participation, however, takes place within the limited opportunities afforded by a racially and sexually segregated labour market. The subjective rationalising of labour market limitations explains, in part, the distinct qualities that characterise young black womens' career choices. Other evidence suggested that these distinct qualities also owed much to the west Indian female experience of schooling. Schools were seen to play a crucial part in both structuring and restricting black female occupational aspirations and expectations. Access to vital career information, active discouragement and discrimination, poor educational standards, leading to poor qualifications, were some of the material obstacles encountered by young black working class women when making their career choices. In conclusion, the evidence suggests that, whatever the educational level or labour market disposition of these young black women, their occupational location is subject to a variety of factors, in particular, labour market structures and educational resources. Inequalities based on race, gender, and class remain an integral feature of this society in spite of its ideology of meritocracy

Decolonizing Higher Education: Black Feminism and the Intersectionality of Race and Gender

Drawing on black feminist theory, this paper examines the professional experiences of postcolonial diasporic black and ethnicized female academics in higher education.1 The paper explores the embodiment of gendered and racialized difference and reflects on the power of whiteness to shape everyday experiences in such places of privilege. The powerful yet hidden histories of women of color in higher education, such as the Indian women suffragettes and Cornelia Sorabji in late nineteenth century, are symbolic of the erasure of an ethnicized black feminist/womanist presence in mainstream (white) educational establishments. The paper concludes that an understanding of black and ethnicized female agency and desire for education and learning is at the heart of a black feminist analysis that reclaims higher education as a radical site of resistance and refutation

Cost-effectiveness analysis of a pragmatic randomized trial evaluating surgical reconstruction versus rehabilitation in patients with long-standing anterior cruciate ligament injury

Aims The aim of this study was to estimate the incremental use of resources, costs, and quality of life outcomes associated with surgical reconstruction compared to rehabilitation for long-standing anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury in the NHS, and to estimate its cost-effectiveness. Methods A total of 316 patients were recruited and randomly assigned to either surgical reconstruction or rehabilitation (physiotherapy but with subsequent reconstruction permitted if instability persisted after treatment). Healthcare resource use and health-related quality of life data (EuroQol five-dimension five-level health questionnaire) were collected in the trial at six, 12, and 18 months using self-reported questionnaires and medical records. Using intention-to-treat analysis, differences in costs, and quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) between treatment arms were estimated adjusting for baseline differences and following multiple imputation of missing data. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) was estimated as the difference in costs divided by the difference in QALYs between reconstruction and rehabilitation. Results At 18 months, patients in the surgical reconstruction arm reported higher QALYs (0.052 (95% confidence interval (CI) -0.012 to 0.117); p = 0.177) and higher NHS costs (£1,017 (95% CI 557 to 1,476); p < 0.001) compared to rehabilitation. This resulted in an ICER of £19,346 per QALY with the probability of surgical reconstruction being cost-effective of 51% and 72% at a willingness-to-pay threshold of £20,000 and £30,000 per QALY, respectively. Conclusion Surgical reconstruction as a management strategy for patients with long-standing ACL injury is more effective, but more expensive, at 18 months compared to rehabilitation management. In the UK setting, surgical reconstruction is cost-effective

Race and sex: teachers' views on who gets ahead in schools?

The research reported here was part of a large study of the impact of age, disability, race and sex on the teaching profession in England. The basic question asked in this research was how do these factors interact with career aspirations and achievements of classteachers, promoted teachers and headteachers? There were three different data sources: a large postal survey drawn from diverse geographic regions across England with over 2000 respondents; face‐to‐face individual interviews with over 100 teachers in 18 case study schools from across all of the main regions of England; discussions with special interest groups of teachers. Not surprisingly, the answer to the above question was complex. Nonetheless, the paper's conclusion highlights some of the noteworthy themes across this broad sample of teachers from primary, secondary and special schools

Fake anti-malarials: start with the facts.

This meeting report presents the key findings and discussion points of a 1-day meeting entitled 'Fake anti-malarials: start with the facts' held on 28th May 2015, in Geneva, Switzerland, to disseminate the findings of the artemisinin combination therapy consortium's drug quality programme. The teams purchased over 10,000 samples, using representative sampling approaches, from six malaria endemic countries: Equatorial Guinea (Bioko Island), Cambodia, Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda and Tanzania. Laboratory analyses of these samples showed that falsified anti-malarials (<8 %) were found in just two of the countries, whilst substandard artemisinin-based combinations were present in all six countries and, artemisinin-based monotherapy tablets are still available in some places despite the fact that the WHO has urged regulatory authorities in malaria-endemic countries to take measures to halt the production and marketing of these oral monotherapies since 2007. This report summarizes the presentations that reviewed the public health impact of falsified and substandard drugs, sampling strategies, techniques for drug quality analysis, approaches to strengthen health systems capacity for the surveillance of drug quality, and the ensuing discussion points from the dissemination meeting

Origin and evolution of transporter substrate specificity within the NPF family

Despite vast diversity in metabolites and the matching substrate specificity of their transporters, little is known about how evolution of transporter substrate specificities is linked to emergence of substrates via evolution of biosynthetic pathways. Transporter specificity towards the recently evolved glucosinolates characteristic of Brassicales is shown to evolve prior to emergence of glucosinolate biosynthesis. Furthermore, we show that glucosinolate transporters belonging to the ubiquitous NRT1/PTR FAMILY (NPF) likely evolved from transporters of the ancestral cyanogenic glucosides found across more than 2500 species outside of the Brassicales. Biochemical characterization of orthologs along the phylogenetic lineage from cassava to A. thaliana, suggests that alterations in the electrogenicity of the transporters accompanied changes in substrate specificity. Linking the evolutionary path of transporter substrate specificities to that of the biosynthetic pathways, exemplify how transporter substrate specificities originate and evolve as new biosynthesis pathways emerge