Communities of leadership in FE

This working paper highlights the significance of multiple communities as crucial conditions, processes and consequences of FE leadership. Our research suggests that in (almost) all their activities FE colleges engage communities. They make important, but frequently under-estimated contributions to the local community and economy. This is the case within colleges (e.g. students and employees), between colleges and their multiple-partners (e.g. in the local community and economy) and between different colleges (e.g. professional networks and associations between Principals). The paper argues that in the FE sector communities and leadership are inextricably-linked, sometimes in mutually-reinforcing, but also in potentially contradictory ways. These communities are not only both internal and external to colleges themselves, they are also multiple and diverse, frequently shifting, interacting and impacting in complex, simultaneous ways. Our working paper: 1. Outlines (some of) the multiple communities served by FE colleges. In particular, we explore the FE college as: a learning community, a socially inclusive community, an inclusive learning community and a provider of adult and community learning. 2. Examines some of the important challenges for those occupying FE leadership positions in seeking to engage with these multiple communities. Our research findings suggest that on-going attempts to engage diverse communities constitute a crucial challenge for effective FE leadership. 3. Suggests a different way of understanding the nature of FE leadership. This indicates that a ‘blended leadership’ (Collinson and Collinson 2005c) approach may be particularly effective in engaging multiple, shifting communities in sustainable ways. 4. Suggests that the community contribution of FE colleges is frequently neglected and/or under-estimated. Many of the staff we have interviewed argue that important aspects of colleges’ community engagements remain invisible or undervalued, particularly by those who evaluate per

''Blended leadership'': employee perspectives on effective leadership in the U.K. FE sector

This paper draws on research into what constitutes ‘effective leadership’ from the perspective of FE employees. It highlights FE staff’s preference for what we term ‘blended leadership’, an approach that combines specific elements of both traditional hierarchical leadership with more contemporary aspects of distributed leadership. FE staff prefer leadership practices that provide structure, clarity and organization as well as team-working, communication and a shared sense of mission, responsibility and accomplishment. Within the literature on both education and on leadership, distributed and hierarchical models are typically seen as opposing polarities. Frequently, distributed leadership is highly valued whilst traditional approaches are criticised as outmoded. By contrast, this working paper suggests that FE employees continue to value important elements of a directive leadership approach combined and integrated with aspects of a distributed style. Our research finds that in the FE sector, such ‘blended leadership’ practices are routinely accomplished in the context of multiple, conflicting, shifting and contradictory demands on FE colleges

Cardiac biomarkers by point-of-care testing - back to the future?

The measurement of the cardiac troponins (cTn), cardiac troponin T (cTnT) and cardiac troponin I (cTnI) are integral to the management of patients with suspected acute coronary syndromes (ACS). Patients without clear electrocardiographic evidence of myocardial infarction require measurement of cTnT or cTnI. It therefore follows that a rapid turnaround time (TAT) combined with the immediacy of results return which is achieved by point-of-care testing (POCT) offers a substantial clinical benefit. Rapid results return plus immediate decision-making should translate into improved patient flow and improved therapeutic decision-making. The development of high sensitivity troponin assays offer significant clinical advantages. Diagnostic algorithms have been devised utilising very low cut-offs at first presentation and rapid sequential measurements based on admission and 3 h sampling, most recently with admission and 1 h sampling. Such troponin algorithms would be even more ideally suited to point-of-care testing as the TAT achieved by the diagnostic laboratory of typically 60 min corresponds to the sampling interval required by the clinician using the algorithm. However, the limits of detection and analytical imprecision required to utilise these algorithms is not yet met by any easy-to-use POCT systems

Narratives of and from a running-woman’s body: feminist phenomenological perspectives on running embodiment

The female sporting body has been studied in myriad ways over the past 25-30 years, including via a range of feminist frameworks (Hall 1996; Markula 2003; Hargreaves 2007). Despite this developing corpus, studies of sport only rarely engage in depth with the ‘flesh’ (Merleau-Ponty 1969) of the sweating, panting, pulsating, lived female sporting body (Allen-Collinson 2009) and a more corporeally-grounded, phenomenological perspective can enrich our understandings of women’s sporting ‘bodywork’. Here, I suggest that employing a sociological and feminist phenomenological framework can provide a powerful lens through which to explore narratives of the subjective, richly-textured, lived-body experiences of sport and physical activity. Phenomenology of course offers only one of a multiplicity of avenues to investigate sporting embodiment, and here I offer just a small glimpse of its possibilities. To date, sports studies utilising a phenomenological theoretical framework remain surprisingly under-developed, as Kerry and Armour (2000) highlighted over a decade ago, and which largely remains the case (Allen-Collinson 2009), including in relation to phenomenology’s fascinating off-shoot, ethnomethodology (Burke et al. 2008; Hockey and Allen-Collinson, 2013). Further, as Fisher (2000) notes, the significance of the interaction between phenomenology and feminism has only relatively recently begun to be explored. It seems timely, therefore, to address this intriguing, potentially productive, but sometimes uneasy nexus, focusing in this instance upon narratives of female running embodiment

Feminist phenomenology and the changing running body: the pleasure/danger nexus

The female sporting body has been studied in myriad ways – both theoretical and methodological - over the past 30 years, including via a range of feminist frameworks. Despite this developing corpus, studies of sport only rarely engage in depth with the ‘flesh’ of the worked-out, sweating, panting, pulsating, lived female sporting body (Allen-Collinson 2011) and a more corporeally-grounded, phenomenological-sociological perspective (Allen-Collinson & Pavey, 2014) is needed to enrich our sociological understandings of women’s sporting/exercising ‘bodywork’. In this paper, I suggest that employing a sociological, feminist phenomenological framework can provide a powerful lens through which to explore narratives of the richly-textured, lived-body experiences of sport and physical activity. Drawing on data from a 3-year autoethnographic and autophenomenographic research project on female distance running, this paper examines the shifting interplay of structure and agency experienced in the lived sporting body, and specifically focuses upon the changing nexus of pleasure and danger as corporeally experienced whilst running in ‘public’ space and place

Assault on self: intimate partner abuse and the contestation of identity

The complexities of intimate partner abuse and violence have been studied from a range of theoretical, conceptual, and methodological perspectives. It is argued here that symbolic interactionist analyses offer specific and powerful insights into this particular interactional domain. This article is based on data generated by a topical life-history case study of a well-educated, middle-class, middle-aged man, whose wife subjected him to sustained unilateral violence and abuse, resulting in deleterious consequences for his health and well-being. Data were gathered via a series of in-depth interviews and a personal diary. The analysis draws on Goffman’s conceptualization of “possessional territory” as one of the “territories of the self,” in order to examine the role of possessions in the interactional routines of intimate partner abuse. Key words: intimate partner abuse, domestic violence, abused men, possessional territory, Erving Goffma