No description available.

No description available.

The study investigated the relationship between personal tutor and tutee, perceptions of support encounters and their lived experiences within an undergraduate preregistration nurse education programme. The personal tutoring system plays a vital role in sustaining nurse learners by being an anchor for their professional and personal development. The tutors monitor progress, support, intervene on the tutees' behalf and act as a confidante. The need for support is especially acute in university based nurse education when the tutees face challenges in clinical practice due to the vocational and professional nature of the course they are undertaking. Yet the meaning of the personal tutoring role is often confusing and serious misunderstandings may exist between tutors and tutees. The aim of this study is to search for the meamng of personal tutoring by illuminating their lived expenences and encounters. An 'Husserlian' phenomenological approach was taken. A purposive sample of 36 tutors and 44 tutees (9 tutors and 10 tutees were from a Northern university and 27 tutors and 34 tutees from a London university) took part in the study. Each of their experiences were recorded in a 30-45 minutes open-ended taped interview. The findings were analysed by Colaizzi's (1978); Van Manen's (1990) and Cortazzi's (1993) data analysis methods. The findings revealed a wide variation of encounters on the nature of support and practice. The tutees varied in their readiness to learn, define, discuss and negotiate support. Often they lacked the powers of effective communication skills or the ability to think about their role in the process of negotiating access and support. They then found themselves experiencing a 'sink or swim' phenomenon. They reported a 'parent and child relationship' and attributed problems to a shortfall in the quality of their tutors' interpersonal interactions. Tutees reported positive encounters when they got and felt supported by their tutors. The tutors' data showed that they had an overwhelming feeling of frustration when tutees lacked study skills and presented their personal problems. Some tutors indicated a high level of empathic understanding for their tutees and showed that they would often 'go an extra mile' to support their tutees. A few other tutors offered very little support or guidance. The essences that were found to be important in the tutor-tutee relationship were: mutual trust, engagement, respect and accepting responsibilities. The study illuminated the complexity and skill required to be a tutee and a tutor. Tutors individual support styles echoed with the tutees to varying degrees. A positive experience by tutees and tutors was perceived when each had a shared understanding of the support concept. Therefore, the study has highlighted the need for greater (and arguably formal) guidance to learners on the premises of learning and personal tutor support in the Higher Education context. Conversely, it suggests that benefit might accrue from skill training in personal tutor work for nurse teachers to enable them to better understand students learning needs and skill training for tutees to enable them to be more self-aware of their learning needs., thereby ensuring a more sophisticated support relationship between both tutor and tutee.

This thesis, and the focus of my research, has emerged from my own practice and some of the challenges I have faced as a practitioner involved in developing widening participation initiatives and Foundation Degrees. It consists of an exploration of the value of a Professional Doctorate in enabling researching professionals to develop research in the context of their everyday practice, and how this can encourage practitioners to unsettle their taken for granted notions of their practice world. It uses both a Practice Development Project, and a research project to achieve this aim. In particular the study sought to explore whether widening participation policy and practice does realise the potential of those groups it targets, or whether it sustains the status quo of educational inequality. The study uses theoretical concepts such as habitus and sense-making in developing an understanding of the identities of nontraditional mature learners. A Complementary Purposes Model was used to interview three different groups – higher education staff, further education staff and Foundation Degree students. A number of key themes emerged concerning the way in which Foundation Degrees are seen as being ‘not quite HE’ by students and staff alike. Alongside this FD students are seen as ‘other’ and different to traditional HE students. Principally my thesis concludes that widening participation policy can be challenged in a number of ways, including the way it has been linked to the needs of the ‘knowledge economy’, and the way that it tends to be focused on individual learner deficits rather than on challenging oppressive social structures that reinforce and maintain inequality. Activity is focused on realizing individual potential rather than on the potential for learning that remains untapped within particular social groups. Unless widening participation activity is embraced by all institutions with the same level of commitment and support, the status quo will remain, and the potential to learn within certain social groups will remain untapped.

No description available.

This project aims to investigate the effects of introducing peer feedback to a group of university-level students in a context where teacher-fronted classes are considered predominant. I performed a three-phased, three-month long project using various data collection methods. The study first investigated students’ initial perceptions of peer feedback and compared them to their perceptions after the experiment using semistructured questionnaires and individual interviews. The results of the first stage suggested that students approved of teacher-written feedback, but were apprehensive about peer feedback. The main objection to peer feedback was the fact that it was originated from fellow students whose linguistic level was lower than that of the teachers. The second phase of the project included members of an ESL class divided into two groups; the experimental group, which jointly used teacher-written and peer feedback; and the control group, which received only teacher-written feedback. Despite linguistic concerns, the overall perception of peer feedback became more positive and students subsequently accepted this technique as part of their ESL writing curriculum. The results suggest that peer feedback helped students gain new skills and improved existing ones. The last phase was a comparative study consisting of pre- and post-tests to measure the progress of students’ writing. Texts were evaluated and given an overall grade based on various local and global issues, using a holistic assessment approach. Students in both groups did considerably better in the exit test. However, members of the peer feedback group outperformed the other group in every aspect of writing investigated. The study concludes that the effect of peer feedback on students’ perception was profound. Students were hugely impressed by the potential of peer session on their ESL writing routines which has been reflected on their eagerness to have more similar sessions in the future. If students are properly trained to use peer feedback, the benefits could be very significant, and therefore it recommends that education policy makers and ESL writing teachers in Saudi Arabia should do more effort to introduce peer session to all ESL writing classes.

No description available.

In 2002, in response to both Government and regional health and social care policy, the Avon Gloucestershire and Wiltshire Workforce Development Confederation (WDC) of the National Health Service (NHS) collaborated with local partners in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to develop seven NHSIHEI learning academies. Although the academy concept was originally conceived as a vehicle for supporting increases in numbers of medical students, it was quickly developed by the WDC with the specific aim to deliver necessary direction and infra-structures to underpin wholescale workforce remodelling and life-long learning in the local health and social care community. Each academy housed an academy management team including a medical Dean for undergraduate medicine and non-medical Deans in both nursing and midwifery and the professions allied to medicine (AHPs). Collectively, the Deans were charged with a prime responsibility of delivering interprofessional education (lPE) against the WDC's strategic plan. This thesis is an account of what happened in two of the seven academies. It utilises the qualitative case study approach as advocated by Stake (1995). The initial aim of the case study was to examine the strategies that the Deans employed in carrying out their role. The thesis is contextualised against literature in a number of key areas. These include relevant Government and local policy. The literature review also draws out aspects from the IPE evidence base such as 'The Contact Hypothesis' (Allport 1979), (Carpenter 1995), in addition, examining the creation and exercise of power by health and social care professionals (Friedson 1970) and seminal work by Fullan (1993) on the management of change. As the case study unfolds, in the Stake manner of articulating 'what the case is and what the case is not' the thesis reveals that actually the case is not about delivering IPE within the academies. Contrary to the WDC aim, and what is seen to be the case, is that a number of barriers arose rendering attempts to deliver IPE ineffective. Some of these barriers originated from what Fullan (1993) would contend as the chaotic and unpredictable change processes inherent with the creation of new organisations. Others, had origins rooted in issues of profession identity and power. As these barriers became embedded, communication processes became more fragmented, with the consequence that some individuals became increasingly frustrated and tendered their resignations. As the time of writing (2007 I 2008) there had been no implementation of wide-spread IPE initiatives across any of the seven learning academies. The thesis follows a traditional structure. The first chapter analyses academy development against the context of national and local policy. The second chapter considers relevant aspects from the literature. The third chapter in turn, sets out the nature of case study and presents and justifies the approach, design and methods within the research. The fourth chapter is the initial presentation and analysis of data. The final chapter further analyses and discusses the results against a consideration of the exercise of power within the change process. Implications for future IPE within the locality are considered and suggestions are offered as to how the challenges presently encountered within the academies might be overcome in the future. The thesis uses a narrative reflective style throughout, within the Stake tradition of interpretive inquiry. As such, the thesis is not only the story of the research and revelation of the case but also, in some small part, the story of the researcher within the field.

No description available.

No description available.