Of Monsters, Myths and Marketing: The Case of the Loch Ness Monster

This paper examines the status of the Loch Ness Monster within a diverse body of literature relating to Scotland. Within cryptozoology this creature is considered as a source of investigation, something to be taken seriously as a scientific or quasi-scientific object to be studied and known, particularly in light of its elusive nature. In terms of mythology the creature is bound up with Scottish cultural identifications through references to a rugged wilderness landscape and to iconic, if stereotypical, images of tartanry, bygone castles, and folklore. Both sets of ideas have been used with great effect to generate a diversity of literature: from books and scientific papers that chronicle the sightings and “hunt” for the creature as well the possible case for it being a line of long-surviving plesiosaurs, through to children’s literature that deals with the mythic element that is so often used to appeal to childhood imagination, and on to a plethora of tourist marketing booklets and brochures

Global citizenship:an education or an identity?

This paper considers the recent focus on citizenship within education by examining curricular reform in Scottish secondary schooling and its linkage with higher education. In Scotland the Curriculum for Excellence reform places citizenship as one of four main capacities (i.e., successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens, effective contributors) that pupils must work towards as part of their education. The Scottish higher education Enhancement Themes framework also includes citizenship as part of the development of ‘graduate attributes’ that students work towards as they progress through their courses. A unifying theme in these reforms is the need for students to take a global perspective and work across different disciplines by, for example, considering how knowledge relates to wider issues such as in relation to sustainable development, e-democracy or human rights. One feature that unites these disparate areas is that, above all, students must learn to be active through the acquisition of appropriate knowledge and skills. In this model of citizenship education learners are enabled to develop their sense of citizenship identity in response to a fast-paced world of innovation and change. Citizenship is therefore linked to a futurist agenda, where the learner-citizen is positioned as an ongoing project, as something to be worked at or perhaps worked on. However, this kind of notion of agency is an expression of an ideological construction of the citizen as a flexible resource for society. Such citizens are active in the sense of being adaptive to change through utilizing intellectual skills but without a sense of identity grounded in one’s commitments or reflexive engagement with different forms of understanding. The paper offers a critical assessment of this learner-citizen discourse as focusing on ratiocination rather than relational identity

Graduate attributes and the knowledge society:developments in Scottish higher education

Higher education is in a state of transformation across the world. The 2009 synthesis report from the Global University Network for Innovation (GUNI) entitled ‘Higher Education at a time of Transformation: New Dynamics for Social Responsibility’ draws attention to the many challenges that confront the sector that stem from those of wider society. It argues that we must move beyond the ‘ivory tower’ or market‐oriented university’ towards one that innovatively adds value to the process of social transformation. However, there are emerging tensions that bear upon this question and coalesce around such issues as reactive versus proactive approaches with respect to knowledge paradigms; a focus on the knowledge economy versus the knowledge society; and knowledge relevance versus competitively driven knowledge. One approach to higher education that attempts to grapple in with these issues is 'The Graduates in the 21st Century Enhancement Theme' within the Scottish higher education system. This goes some way to recognising that graduate attributes rest, not simply on the ability to aster knowledge content, but perhaps more importantly on the personal qualities that graduates acquire during the course of their learning. These qualities are now regarded as key aspects of being able to contribute to the evolving globalised knowledge society and economy. This paper offers a sympathetic and yet critical appraisal of this approach as it attempts to inculcate and develop in students a range of abilities to deal with complexity, uncertainty and multi or transdisciplinarity. The demands made upon such attributes are ones that are not only concerned with employability but also an increasing concern with global issues and the development of civic awareness and responsibility. It is argued that these pressures, in effect, lead to a concern with how graduates develop their sense of identity as something that is engineered and re‐engineered to meet these demands

Prisoners’ gang-related activity: the importance of bullying and moral disengagement

Gang-related activity can have a significant impact on the effective management of prisons in the UK, yet little is known about the characteristics of the prisoners involved. I it this study, 141 adult male prisoners' gang-related activity was examined in relation to their bullying behaviour and use of moral disengagement. Results showed that prisoners most involved in gang-related activity were likely to have spent a longer total time in the prison system, be perpetrators of bullying and have high levels of moral disengagement. Findings also show that moral disengagement partially mediates the relationship between bullying and gang-related activity Implications for treatment programmes and the prison estate are discussed

Interviewing children for the purposes of research in primary care

Interviewing can provide unique opportunities for professionals to gain some understanding of the child's subjective experience, where other means of data collection are inappropriate and other sources of data are less valid. This article is concerned with the principles and practicalities of interviewing children for the purposes of health-related research. It draws on the knowledge gained from three decades of research involving interviewing young people in many contexts, including health care, social welfare and child protection. A conceptual framework is presented to illustrate the interactive and iterative processes that occur between interviewer and interviewee, and the pivotal importance of context in shaping any interaction. The influences of the young person's linguistic, cognitive and social skills are discussed. The effects of the gender and ethnicity of both the researcher and the researched are considered in relation to the conduct of the interview, and the influence of adult biases and perspectives on the evaluation and interpretation of data is explored

Social psychology:discipline, interdiscipline or transdiscipline?

Social Psychology sits at the confluence of two disciplinary discourses: the psychology of sociological matters and the sociology of psychological processes. Of course these are not simply discourses but represent the entire disciplinary organisation of social psychology as a subject and what it counts as legitimate areas of enquiry within its academic boundaries. These boundaries cut across the apparent divide between psychology and sociology, between the individual and the social, between the intra-psychic world and the world of human actions. However, this interdisciplinary appeal can also be considered as tapping into two broader discursive frameworks based upon the maintenance of an inner-outer dualism on the one hand and a rational and emotive dualism on the other. This chapter considers the way in which these discursive dualisms have given social psychology its raison d'être and its distinct dynamic and appeal as an academic subject. However, the recent turn to discourse within the discipline has not only provided it with the radical potential to study the construction and operation of these dualisms, but has also thrown into relief its interdisciplinary tensions again. This discourse on discourse involves a struggle for explanatory power in terms of either examining the ways in which psychological accounting is implicated in a flexible way as part of social practices at a ‘local’ level, or moving up an explanatory notch to a consideration of the operation of discourses on a more deterministic ‘global’ level. The chapter concludes by considering this new discursive territory, rooted in social psychology’s origins

Time to talk

This chapter is concerned with the temporal nature of talk within conversation and its relationship with interpreting and understanding what is said. Within the field of conversation analysis analysts are not concerned with how fast interlocutors are thinking as they talk with one another, but instead focus on the ways that procedural issues are attended to. This aversion to inferring mental processes has been taken up by analysts interested in examining discursive psychology through the ways in which discourse is produced in talk in terms of its orientation to psychological concerns. Such an approach shares with conversational analysis an agnostic stance with respect to underlying mental processes as the modus operandi of conversational exchanges.Whilst discursive psychology had adopted conversation analysis as a methodology for its programme, it has strayed away from its focus on procedural possibilities, and instead has treated interlocutors as engaged in operations such as designing and interpreting what is said. In other words, it treats discourse as involving a tacit process which takes time to operate between interlocutors. This, in effect, leaves the conceptual door ajar for a mentalist construal of what people are engaged in doing when the talk to one another.The chapter argues against this approach and instead suggests that much of our communicative conduct does not involve thinking before speaking, or interpreting what another person has said

Developing the personal, dissolving the political

The emergence of person-centred discourse based around notions of ‘personal development planning’ and ‘work-life balance’ has taken hold in education and the workplace in recent years. This paper examines this discourse with regard to recent developments in higher education as well as the inter-related issue of work-life balance in occupational careers. In both cases there have been national and trans-national policy initiatives directed towards improving both personal opportunities and competitive advantage in a global knowledge-based economy. However, despite an increasing concern with looking outward at this globalised educational and employment marketplace, there is something of a paradox in encouraging people to look inward at themselves in order to become more self-determined. This apparent paradox is considered from a discourse analytic perspective in terms of the ideological effects of an increasing concern with the personal world. Specifically, it is argued that there are tensions that emerge from a concern with an innerdirected process of self-reflection that dissolve any engagement with wider political issues that impact upon educational and career development

The discourse of diversity and inclusion within police recruit teaching materials

Police recruit training in dealing with diverse groups is vital for ensuring that officers can secure public trust and co-operation. This study contributes to an understanding of the ways in which recruits are trained in the area of diversity and inclusion, including the related aspects of hate crimes, youth offending, and stop and search policy. Police Scotland’s recruit teaching materials are analysed from a discourse analytic perspective in order to reveal discursive dilemmas within the lessons. On the one hand there is an affirmation of diversity and inclusion, while on the other prejudiced views are located ‘down’ at the level of individual attitudes. Overall, the teaching material presents criminal actions where diversity and inclusion are challenged as being ascertainable through suspects’ discourse, often presented in the teaching material through declaratives that indicate prejudiced motives. In a similar vein, the operational nature of policing, for example in relation to dealing with youth crime or stop and search, is pitched in terms of a dilemma of duty of care versus due investigative process. This places officers in the position of operationalising codifed rules and procedures which are presented in terms somewhat abstract and static terms

Vocation and volition:career choice narratives

Psychological models have portrayed career choice narratives in terms of personality dimensions or socio-cognitive reasoning processes. In contrast to these approaches, the research reported on in this study employs a conversation analytic perspective in order to examine the deployment of career choice narratives in terms of intelligibility and accountability. Nursing students on a degree programme were interviewed about their career choice. The responses given are examined for the display of membership categories in terms of personality characteristics commonly associated with nursing as a vocational choice. In addition, the students’ accounts are considered as a means of publicly displaying their volition in terms of a reasoned process involving having made a career choice