Gendered pedagogic identities and academic professionalism in Greek medical schools

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Gender and Education on 07 Dec 2016, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09540253.2016.126200

Governing through trust: community-based link workers and parental engagement in education

This article seeks to further understandings of contemporary patterns of parental government. Parenting has emerged as a key policy domain in twenty-first century Britain and we explore the politicisation of family life by examining a pilot programme tasked with enhancing parental engagement in education amongst ‘hard-to-reach’ families within the white British community of a large inner-London borough. Concentrating upon the programme’s signature device – the deployment of community-based ‘link workers’ to bridge home and school – ‘governmentality’ (Foucault, 2009) is used as a theoretical lens through which to foreground the link workers’ role in governing parents. We draw on qualitative data collected from link workers, parents, and school leaders, to argue that link workers represent a mode of governmentality that privileges the instrumental use of trust to achieve strategic objectives, rather than coercive authority. The aim being to produce responsible, self-disciplined parents who act freely in accordance with normative expectations as to what constitutes ‘good’ parenting and effective parental support. As such, the article highlights the link workers’ role in (re)producing the ideal, neoliberal parent. However, governing through trust comes at the cost of being unable to firmly secure desired outcomes. We thereby conclude that this gentle art of parental government affords parents some latitude in resisting institutional agendas

‘‘Playing it right?’ Gendered performances of professional respectability and ‘authenticity’ in Greek academia’’

This paper draws on the career narrative interviews with 15 female academics to unravel the performative politics of gender in Greek Medical Schools. I explore the gender positioning and embodied performances of Greek women as they relate to the contingencies of participation, recognition, and esteem in academic medicine and framed within the wider gendered discourses and structures of the increasingly neo-liberal Greek academia and society. Drawing on Butler’s notion of performativity, I illustrate the possibilities of making the successful Greek female academic subject through subjection to normative, gendered discourses of respectability, encompassing integrity, respectable aesthetics, and affective work and scripted along intersecting privileges of class and heteronormativity. I argue that although Greek women’s gendered professional authenticity and respectability projects demonstrate intentionality and agency, they leave little, if any, room for displacement of gender norms. Gender transformation and promotion of gender equality in Greek academia requires institutional support and political action

Gendered Ideas and Practices in Secondary Schools in England

This chapter discusses the findings of the qualitative baseline data collected in schools in England. The data is organised under the seven thematic categories of the GECM: gender stereotyping, leadership, curriculum, physical environment, school-related gender-based violence, community and inclusive education. Within each thematic category, comparisons are made across the three schools that participated in the project. There were some differences in the ways entrenched gender and racial inequalities and gender regimes operated across the three pilot schools, as well as in the ways schools dealt with gender issues. However, tacit and explicit assumptions about gender permeated, reflected and shaped all aspects of schools’ life, including culture, divisions of labour, gendered relations of power, emotions and human relations

‘Powerless, poor and needy?’: Reproducing colonial discourses of gender and Muslim women through educational interventions by I-NGOs in Afghanistan

International development initiatives in the Global-South are often shaped by Western and Eurocentric constructions of gender, female agency and empowerment embedded in popular narratives of universal rights and white mainstream feminist ideals. Through a qualitative desk-study and documentary-analysis, this paper explores the cases of two I-NGOs: Canadian Women for Women of Afghanistan (CW4WA) and Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) to unravel how colonial discourses of gender and educational development, and homogenous and pathological notions of Muslim women are mobilised in Afghanistan to deliver various political agendas and reproduce patriarchal relations, as well as wider Global South/North divisions and entrenched inequalities. We engage with epistemic shifts. We argue that I-NGOs educational interventions take bottom-up approaches informed by local knowledges and contexts and decolonised notions of gender, power and participation, which promote and sustain a more socially just and transformative education in the developing world. We also argue that epistemic shifts are required informed by post-colonial and critical realism approaches to gender and development, both in terms of research/theory and policy formulation.ESR

Intersectional barriers to women’s advancement in higher education institutions rewarded for their gender equity plans

Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). This paper reports on a research project designed to understand the work experiences and career opportunities of people working in higher education institutions (HEIs) across the UK, which received formal recognition for supporting gender equity between 2015 and 2020. The findings reveal multiple intersecting barriers to women’s full engagement, inclusion, support and career success in higher education, despite the implementation of organization-based gender equity plans, and institutional inter/national recognition for advancing equity. Most axes of de/privilege that are based along lines of gender, race, ethnicity and religion are enacted as everyday sexism that resist gender equality policy. Moreover, our findings suggest that ‘place’ is a constitutive element of intersectional dis/advantage, not merely a context within which compounded barriers to inclusion and advancement may exist. In addition, the findings demonstrate that whilst inter-categorical intersectionality is based on the notion that all social categories (such as age, race and gender) are equally salient, the degree of importance of any category will likely depend on location or context of the phenomena being examined. Our findings therefore invite further, iterative and translocational research into the impacts of the intersections of gender, ethnicity, race and religion in spaces of higher education, particularly those with colonial legacies and presence

Creating Citizenship Communities: Final Report

The full data are stored at the Department of Education and the National Foundation for Educational Research, University of York, and can be made available on request.The project ‘Creating Citizenship Communities’ was funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation during the period 2011–2013. The project team was based at the Department of Education at the University of York and the National Foundation for Educational Research. The project investigated the thinking and actions of professionals in schools and young people about forms of citizenship that relate to strong communities and developed educational materials designed to enhance understanding and skill development. The key stages of the project were a literature review, secondary data analysis, a national survey of schools (completed by relevant professionals) and focus groups of young people. There is widespread agreement about the importance of community but there are different perspectives about its meaning. A great deal of work is undertaken by schools to support the development of citizenship communities. However: (a) schools could do more to create a sense of community within schools themselves and (b) schools could do more to help young people engage with their local communities. The teaching and learning about citizenship and communities in schools does not have the same status as other areas of the curriculum. Young people suggest that schools should take citizenship education more seriously and that the content of citizenship education could be more directly relevant to their lives. The co-ordination of curricular and whole-school approaches to citizenship and community is not always strongly developed. There is at times relatively little attention paid to young people’s existing knowledge and experience in the development of education to explore and support citizenship communities.Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, UK (Grant 10-1102)

Educational supervision and the impact of workplace-based assessments: a survey of psychiatry trainees and their supervisors

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Educational supervision (ES) is considered to be an essential component of basic specialist training in psychiatry in the UK. However, previous studies have indicated variation in its provision, and uncertainty about structure and content. Workplace-based assessments (WPBAs) were introduced in 2007 as part of major postgraduate medical training reform. Placing considerable time demands on trainees and supervisors alike, the extent to which WPBAs should utilise ES time has not been specified. As ES and WPBAs have discrete (although complementary) functions, there is the potential for this increased emphasis on assessment to displace other educational needs.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>All junior doctors and their educational supervisors in one UK psychiatry training scheme were surveyed both before and after the introduction of WPBAs. Frequency and duration of ES were established, and structure, content and process were ascertained. Opinions on usefulness and responsibility were sought. The usage of ES for WPBAs was also assessed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The response rate of 70% showed general agreement between trainees and supervisors, but some significant discrepancies. Around 60% reported 1 hour of ES taking place weekly or 3 times per month. Most agreed that responsibility for ES should be shared equally between trainees and supervisors, and ES was largely seen as useful. Around 50% of trainees and supervisors used 25–50% of ES time for WPBAs, and this did not appear to affect the usefulness of ES or the range of issues covered.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>ES continues to be an important component of psychiatric training. However, using ES for WPBAs introduces the potential for tension between trainees' education and their assessment by emphasising certain training issues at the expense of others. The impact of reduced training time, WPBAs and uncertainties over ES structure and content should be monitored to ensure that its benefits are maximised by remaining tailored to individual trainees' needs.</p

Consultant medical trainers, modernising medical careers (MMC) and the European time directive (EWTD): tensions and challenges in a changing medical education context

Background: We analysed the learning and professional development narratives of Hospital Consultants training junior staff ('Consultant Trainers') in order to identify impediments to successful postgraduate medical training in the UK, in the context of Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) and the European Working Time Directive (EWTD). Methods: Qualitative study. Learning and continuing professional development (CPD), were discussed in the context of Consultant Trainers' personal biographies, organisational culture and medical education practices. We conducted life story interviews with 20 Hospital Consultants in six NHS Trusts in Wales in 2005. Results: Consultant Trainers felt that new working patterns resulting from the EWTD and MMC have changed the nature of medical education. Loss of continuity of care, reduced clinical exposure of medical trainees and loss of the popular apprenticeship model were seen as detrimental for the quality of medical training and patient care. Consultant Trainers' perceptions of medical education were embedded in a traditional medical education culture, which expected long hours' availability, personal sacrifices and learning without formal educational support and supervision. Over-reliance on apprenticeship in combination with lack of organisational support for Consultant Trainers' new responsibilities, resulting from the introduction of MMC, and lack of interest in pursuing training in teaching, supervision and assessment represent potentially significant barriers to progress. Conclusion: This study identifies issues with significant implications for the implementation of MMC within the context of EWTD. Postgraduate Deaneries, NHS Trusts and the new body; NHS: Medical Education England should deal with the deficiencies of MMC and challenges of ETWD and aspire to excellence. Further research is needed to investigate the views and educational practices of Consultant Medical Trainers and medical trainees