The Nimbleness of Neoliberalism in Queerness and EDI policy

This paper seeks to explore how queerness has been mobilized in this current historical context of neoliberal Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) policies. First, I will briefly overview the historical materialism of queerness under racial colonial capitalism. I will discuss what the lenses of surplus populations and social reproduction can and cannot help us see about queerness. Then, I will discuss how the mechanisms of neoliberalism both mobilize and repress queerness, as convenient. Finally, I will interrogate how (queer) EDI policy is implemented and negotiated in educational institutions, and situate it specifically within K-12 schools in Alberta

Cluster-randomized, crossover trial of head positioning in acute stroke

The role of supine positioning after acute stroke in improving cerebral blood flow and the countervailing risk of aspiration pneumonia have led to variation in head positioning in clinical practice. We wanted to determine whether outcomes in patients with acute ischemic stroke could be improved by positioning the patient to be lying flat (i.e., fully supine with the back horizontal and the face upwards) during treatment to increase cerebral perfusion. METHODS In a pragmatic, cluster-randomized, crossover trial conducted in nine countries, we assigned 11,093 patients with acute stroke (85% of the strokes were ischemic) to receive care in either a lying-flat position or a sitting-up position with the head elevated to at least 30 degrees, according to the randomization assignment of the hospital to which they were admitted; the designated position was initiated soon after hospital admission and was maintained for 24 hours. The primary outcome was degree of disability at 90 days, as assessed with the use of the modified Rankin scale (scores range from 0 to 6, with higher scores indicating greater disability and a score of 6 indicating death). RESULTS The median interval between the onset of stroke symptoms and the initiation of the assigned position was 14 hours (interquartile range, 5 to 35). Patients in the lying-flat group were less likely than patients in the sitting-up group to maintain the position for 24 hours (87% vs. 95%, P\u3c0.001). In a proportional-odds model, there was no significant shift in the distribution of 90-day disability outcomes on the global modified Rankin scale between patients in the lying-flat group and patients in the sitting-up group (unadjusted odds ratio for a difference in the distribution of scores on the modified Rankin scale in the lying-flat group, 1.01; 95% confidence interval, 0.92 to 1.10; P = 0.84). Mortality within 90 days was 7.3% among the patients in the lying-flat group and 7.4% among the patients in the sitting-up group (P = 0.83). There were no significant betweengroup differences in the rates of serious adverse events, including pneumonia. CONCLUSIONS Disability outcomes after acute stroke did not differ significantly between patients assigned to a lying-flat position for 24 hours and patients assigned to a sitting-up position with the head elevated to at least 30 degrees for 24 hours

Experiences of the Creative Doctorate: Minstrels and White Lines

Relationships between the expectations of the PhD, creativity and identity are a rich terrain for research, explored here. Doctoral student identity and the expectations of the PhD have been the focus of much previous work, while work on candidates pursuing research in literature and art has focused on tensions in their work, and the conceptual threshold crossings they make during the PhD journey. The research discussed here explores tensions and rich relationships between creativity, identity and success for candidates self-defined as \u27creative\u27 engaged in doctorates ranging between art or literary practice, and creative work in professional contexts

Supervisor wellbeing and identity: Challenges and strategies

Purpose This research aims to explore the professional identity of supervisors and their perceptions of stress in doctoral learning supervision. The research determines ways of developing strategies of resilience and well-being to overcome stress, leading to positive outcomes for supervisors and students. Design/methodology/approach Research is in two parts: first, rescrutinising previous work, and second, new interviews with international and UK supervisors gathering evidence of doctoral supervisor stress, in relation to professional identity, and discovering resilience and well-being strategies. Findings Supervisor professional identity and well-being are aligned with research progress, and effective supervision. Stress and well-being/resilience strategies emerged across three dimensions, namely, personal, learning and institutional, related to emotional, professional and intellectual issues, affecting identity and well-being. Problematic relationships, change in supervision arrangements, loss of students and lack of student progress cause stress. Balances between responsibility and autonomy; uncomfortable conflicts arising from personality clashes; and the nature of the research work, burnout and lack of time for their own work, all cause supervisor stress. Developing community support, handling guilt and a sense of underachievement and self-management practices help maintain well-being. Research limitations/implications Only experienced supervisors (each with four doctoral students completed) were interviewed. The research relies on interview responses. Practical implications Sharing information can lead to informed, positive action minimising stress and isolation; development of personal coping strategies and institutional support enhance the supervisory experience for supervisors and students. Originality/value The research contributes new knowledge concerning doctoral supervisor experience, identity and well-being, offering research-based information and ideas on a hitherto under-researched focus: supervisor stress, well-being and resilience impacting on supervisors’ professional identity. </jats:sec

The purpose and impact of postgraduate knowledge

Purpose: Much research into outcomes of doctoral learning focuses on employability, or the dearth of academic employment in relation to doctoral graduate expectations, emphasising precarity of academic future work. This new work begins with and moves beyond employment issues, highlighting professional practice and personal knowledge development and impact. Design/methodology/approach: Much doctoral education research focuses on the academic identities of postgraduates, their change and alignment to the work and experience of being a doctoral student and beyond, in academic or other jobs. This longitudinal work explores professional and social impact from doctoral research and transformational changes experienced and reported by graduates in two projects. Based on narrative interviewing turned into case studies, it asks fundamental questions about the purpose and impact of postgraduate knowledge. Findings: Respondents emphasised change in their sense of personal, academic and professional identity; immediate impact on professional practice leading to job change, status, changes in practices and longer-term impacts of further influences on professional practice, some international in reach. Research limitations/implications: This small-scale study has widespread implications for understanding the impact of postgraduate knowledge on professional practice and personal development. Practical implications: The work could influence doctoral student intentions and the focus of doctoral programmes. Social implications: Postgraduate knowledge is seen as crucial in theorised and practical contributions to social development. Originality/value: This longitudinal work generates new knowledge, answering questions: What is the purpose of postgraduate knowledge? Who benefits from results? What is the impact from the research? How are outcomes put into professional practice? It found significant developments in professional practice and personal development

Penumbra: Doctoral support as drama: From the ‘lightside' to the ‘darkside'. From front of house to trapdoors and recesses

Much international doctoral learning research focuses on the personal, institutional and learning support provided by supervisors through supervisory dialogues, managed relationships, and the ‘nudging' of robust, conceptual, critical and creative work. Other work focuses on the stresses experienced in both supervisor-student relationships and the doctoral journey itself. Some considers formal and informal learning communities supporting students on their research journeys, and roles played by families, friends and others, sometimes offering encouragement and sometimes an added stress. However, little has yet been explored, exposed and shared concerning the often unofficial, largely unrecognised range of meaningful others in students' ‘life-worlds', variously supporting their doctoral learning journeys in terms of research, writing and editing. Research, based in experience and interviews with doctoral students and supervisors from UK and international contexts, reveals a wide range of support (termed ‘the penumbra'), both university sanctioned (‘lightside'), as well as less well recognised often unsanctioned support (‘darkside') on the doctoral research and writing learning journey, opening up questions about doctoral student needs, and the range of support provided, both legitimately and well known, and perhaps less legitimately and less well known. This work concentrates in the main on the ‘darkside'

Establishing a core outcome set for peritoneal dialysis : report of the SONG-PD (standardized outcomes in nephrology-peritoneal dialysis) consensus workshop

Outcomes reported in randomized controlled trials in peritoneal dialysis (PD) are diverse, are measured inconsistently, and may not be important to patients, families, and clinicians. The Standardized Outcomes in Nephrology-Peritoneal Dialysis (SONG-PD) initiative aims to establish a core outcome set for trials in PD based on the shared priorities of all stakeholders. We convened an international SONG-PD stakeholder consensus workshop in May 2018 in Vancouver, Canada. Nineteen patients/caregivers and 51 health professionals attended. Participants discussed core outcome domains and implementation in trials in PD. Four themes relating to the formation of core outcome domains were identified: life participation as a main goal of PD, impact of fatigue, empowerment for preparation and planning, and separation of contributing factors from core factors. Considerations for implementation were identified: standardizing patient-reported outcomes, requiring a validated and feasible measure, simplicity of binary outcomes, responsiveness to interventions, and using positive terminology. All stakeholders supported inclusion of PD-related infection, cardiovascular disease, mortality, technique survival, and life participation as the core outcome domains for PD

Knowing why and daring to be different: becoming and being teachers-as-learners

In Scotland, the interest and investment in the professional development of teachers is currently focused on the ongoing development and implementation of its new curriculum: Curriculum for Excellence. To cope with ever-evolving curricular and pedagogical demands and to be able to effectively identify and meet the needs of the students they teach, teachers need to become, and be, teachers-as-learners. Accordingly, teachers and those with responsibility for defining and supporting teachers’ development are likely to have a vested interest in identifying and understanding what might best facilitate teachers’ learning. Engaging with this agenda, the purpose of this study is to promote and inform dialogue within and between all those in the educational community who have responsibility for teachers’ continuing professional development (CPD), so that some of the complexity involved in becoming and being teachers-as-learners might be recognised and better understood. With the aim to explore what we can learn from teachers’ own accounts of becoming and being teachers-as-learners in Scotland today, this co-operative enquiry was conducted with nine Chartered Teachers (CT), six of whom were fully qualified CTs and three of whom were still en route to achieving full CT status. To meet the Scottish Standard for Chartered Teacher, teachers need to demonstrate that they are teachers-as-learners. Enquiring with these teachers was, therefore, seen as particularly apposite to this study’s chief aim. Attending to the personal, professional and political influences they perceived as significant, these teachers shared their views, when they looked inwards to their own feelings, reactions and dispositions; outwards, to the professional and political environments with which they interact and backwards and forwards, over time. This is the first study to carry out an inquiry with Chartered Teachers in a way that allowed them to explore this complexity, because it sought to explore all four dimensions, i.e. inward, outwards, backwards and forwards (Clandinin and Connelly, 2000:50) of their storied accounts. Storied accounts of the teachers’ learning journeys were co-created during a loosely structured, dyadic, in-depth interview. Integral to this process, was discussion about the artefact(s) that eight, of the nine, participants had created for this study, to represent, reflect upon and record aspects of their journeying. Thematic narrative analysis has illuminated the complexity and particularity of each teacher’s learning journey as well as some important commonalities across them. This thesis further explores the teachers’ accounts of their experiences, in depth, and the key issues these accounts raise. Through examination of individual accounts, we learn, for example, that the teacher’s own disposition to professional learning really matters but, importantly, that it does not necessarily define the outcome. Sometimes supported and sometimes inhibited by the professional and political contexts in which they work, these teachers, motivated by a powerful sense of moral purpose, report that they have made significant and apparently, sustainable changes to their thinking and practice. Postgraduate CT study proved crucial to their journeying because, for the first time since qualifying, they had been encouraged and supported to make sense of why and to what extent, their day-to-day practices would, or would not, meet the needs of their students. It is this understanding why that appears to have made the greatest difference to their practice and to the reconstruction of their professional identities. It emerged as one of the most significant influences to their becoming and being teachers-as-learners. To do so, however, the teachers felt they have had to ‘dare to be different’. Their ability, willingness and commitment to talk about, promote and evaluate learning, in critically informed ways has meant they have often felt isolated. Despite this, the perceived benefits of being a teacher-as-learner were seen to more than compensate for what might be viewed as negative experiences. The findings suggest significant implications for the provision of, and teachers’ participation in, CPD in Scotland. They indicate the need to establish a much clearer and more critically informed focus on developing teachers’ knowledge and understanding of why they do what they do to promote learning and to develop their professional enquiry skills and understandings. If this is to happen, it will necessitate systemic change and support, involving, individual teachers, teachers as collectives within school cultures, CPD facilitators/providers and policy makers at all levels

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy