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1 – 10 of 833Luke Jones, Steven Tones, Gethin Foulkes and Andrew Newland
The broad aim of this paper is to use Noddings' theory of ethical care to analyse mentors' caring experiences. More specifically, it aims to analyse how physical education (PE…
Abstract
Purpose
The broad aim of this paper is to use Noddings' theory of ethical care to analyse mentors' caring experiences. More specifically, it aims to analyse how physical education (PE) mentors provide care, how they are cared for and how this impacts their role within the context of secondary PE initial teacher training (ITT).
Design/methodology/approach
Semi-structured interviews were used to generate data from 17 secondary PE mentors within the same university ITT partnership in the north-west of England. Questions focused on the mentors' experiences of care and the impact this had on their wellbeing and professional practice. A process of thematic analysis was used to identify, analyse and report patterns in the data.
Findings
The participants reflected established definitions of mentoring by prioritising the aim of developing the associate teachers' (ATs) teaching rather than explicitly providing support for their wellbeing. This aim could be challenging for mentors who face personal and professional difficulties while supporting the training of an AT. Mentors frequently referred to the support of their departmental colleagues in overcoming these difficulties and the importance of developing interdependent caring relationships. Receiving care did not impede mentors from providing support for others; it heightened awareness and increased their desire to develop caring habits.
Originality/value
Teacher wellbeing has drawn greater attention in recent years and is increasingly prioritised in public policy. These findings highlight the value of mentor wellbeing and how caring professional relationships can mitigate the pressures associated with performativity and managing a demanding workload.
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Luke Jones, Steven Tones and Gethin Foulkes
The aim of this paper is to use the lens of figurational sociology to analyse the learning networks of physical education (PE) associate teachers (ATs) in England. More…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to use the lens of figurational sociology to analyse the learning networks of physical education (PE) associate teachers (ATs) in England. More specifically, it aims to develop a more adequate understanding of who is involved in the learning networks and how they influence ATs during their one-year postgraduate initial teacher education (ITE) programme.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 35 ATs within a university ITE partnership took part in the study during the final phase of their postgraduate programme. Questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were used to examine the nature and impact of the interdependent relationships that they had developed with other individuals and groups. A process of content analysis was used to identify and analyse patterns in the data.
Findings
Mentors have the most influence over ATs. They support the inclusion of the ATs within the PE department, but elements of the mentors' role are contradictory and can unintentionally hinder the ATs' teaching. Mentors, teachers and tutors also share a common social habitus that ensures a degree of conformity within the PE community. New experiences tend to reinforce ATs' existing beliefs about the nature and practice of teaching PE.
Practical implications
These findings have implications for providers of ITE in deciding who is involved in mentor training and how it is approached. If ATs are to be introduced to more innovative teaching approaches that promote change, then tutors need to collaborate with mentors and teachers to develop awareness of their often-unplanned influence.
Originality/value
Applying the distinctive, and more generally sociological, concepts that make up the figurational perspective helped to develop a more adequate understanding of the ATs' learning networks. It provided an insight into the changing relationships that ATs have with their mentors and other individuals who work within the school and university context.
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Luke Jones, Steven Tones and Gethin Foulkes
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the learning conversations that take place in the context of secondary initial teacher education (ITE) in England. More specifically, it…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the learning conversations that take place in the context of secondary initial teacher education (ITE) in England. More specifically, it aims to examine the learning conversations that occurred between physical education subject mentors and their associate teachers (ATs) during a one-year postgraduate programme.
Design/methodology/approach
Self-completion questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, with 11 ATs within a university ITE partnership, were used to explore ATs’ perceptions of the learning conversations that occurred between them and their mentors. A process of content analysis was used to identify and analyse themes in the data.
Findings
Meaningful learning conversations are not exclusively based on mentors’ feedback on ATs’ teaching. The ongoing everyday dialogue that occurs between mentors and ATs has a direct impact on the ATs’ teaching and a more indirect effect of nurturing collaborative relationships and providing access to a learning community. Successful mentoring is not realised through an isolated weekly lesson observation of the ATs’ teaching. It is an immersive process where the AT and the mentor face the ongoing challenge of exploring aspects of pedagogy and developing a relationship that is conducive to shared learning.
Practical implications
These findings have implications for providers of ITE and more specifically how they approach mentor training. Examining learning conversations, and in particular the more informal everyday dialogue that occurs between the mentor and the AT, may have significant impact on the learning of those who are training to teach.
Originality/value
Informal learning conversations are central to the mentoring process. These findings highlight the value of learning conversations and in particular the impact of informal everyday dialogue that may otherwise be overlooked.
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Luke Jones, Steven Tones and Gethin Foulkes
The purpose of this paper is to analyse feedback in the context of secondary initial teacher education (ITE) in England. More specifically, it aims to examine the feedback…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse feedback in the context of secondary initial teacher education (ITE) in England. More specifically, it aims to examine the feedback experiences of physical education (PE) subject mentors and their associate teachers (ATs) during a one-year postgraduate programme.
Design/methodology/approach
Semi-structured interviews, with nine PE mentors and 11 ATs within a university ITE partnership, were used to explore lesson feedback and the context in which it was provided. Interview data from the 20 participants were analysed through constant comparison to categorise content and identify patterns of responses.
Findings
Mentors were well versed in the formal feedback mechanism of a written lesson observation. This approach is well established and accepted within ITE, but the dialogic feedback that follows lessons was thought to be where ATs made most progress. These learning conversations were seen to provide less formal but more authentic feedback for those learning to teach, and were most successful when founded on positive and collaborative relationships between the mentor and the ATs.
Practical implications
These findings have implications for providers of teacher education and more specifically how they approach mentor training. The focus on lesson observations has value, but examining more informal dialogic approaches to feedback may have more impact on the learning of ATs.
Originality/value
These findings support the value of lesson feedback but challenge the primacy of formal written lesson observations. The learning conversations that follow lessons are shown to provide authentic feedback for ATs.
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Luke Jones, Zoe Avner, Joseph Mills and Simone Magill
Association Football (football) is currently recognised as the world's most popular women's sport (Andersson & Barker-Ruchti, 2019; Dunn & Welford, 2017). In this chapter, we…
Abstract
Association Football (football) is currently recognised as the world's most popular women's sport (Andersson & Barker-Ruchti, 2019; Dunn & Welford, 2017). In this chapter, we build upon a Foucauldian-informed feminist body of work (e.g. Barker-Ruchti & Tinning, 2010; Liao & Markula, 2009; Markula, 2003) to analyse the impact of the ‘shift in approach and purpose’ in the women's game (Rosso, 2010). And, in doing so, seek to explore how the relations of power operating in the context of women's elite and professional football have changed over the last 20 years. Moreover, we consider the implications of these changes for both elite female players and those responsible for their development and welfare. To achieve our aim, we compare the experiences of two players (Christine and Maria, pseudonyms) from opposite ends of the last 20 years, all the while recognising that the partial and situated insights we provide in relation to these shifts are inevitably tied to the intersections of marginalised (female) and privileged (white, able-bodied, heterosexual, middle-class) subject positions.
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Luke Jones, Tim Konoval and John Toner
The purpose of this chapter is to promote the importance, utility and necessity of applying a sociocultural lens to the analysis of the normalized appropriation of surveillance…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this chapter is to promote the importance, utility and necessity of applying a sociocultural lens to the analysis of the normalized appropriation of surveillance technologies and wearables across sports settings.
Approach
The chapter synthesizes existing literature that has embraced a sociocultural lens to examine the implications of the increasingly normalized adoption of surveillance technologies in sport settings. In doing so we hope to provoke discussion regarding the contemporary effects of technologies in order that they may be better understood by not only sports scholars but those who operate within sport. To achieve this aim, we provide an exemplar of how Michel Foucault's concepts have been a useful heuristic for this endeavour.
Findings
Within the highly commercialized and spectacularized domain of corporate sport, the performing athletic body has become a commodity of vital importance. Correspondingly, sports practitioners across the globe have rallied to devise innovative ways to train, protect and improve athletes. As this chapter details, one of the main ways in which this project has occurred is through the increased appropriation of wearable (and increasingly invasive) surveillance technologies. A major finding from existing literature is that surveillance technologies can contribute to the unproblematized production of compliant athletic commodities in sports settings. Moreover, that this can have significant limiting outcomes for athletes' development and well-being and coaches' practices.
Research limitations/implications (if applicable)
The chapter argues for three future ‘touchstone’ areas of study: Surveillance technologies and athlete retirement, unintended consequences of more technology and resisting the regulatory intentions of behavioural nudges.
Originality/value
This chapter provides one of the first summaries of the socioculturally informed research that has examined the implications of the increasingly normalized presence of surveillance technologies across sports settings. In doing so, it also acts as one of the first resources designed to help those who coach and develop athletes to reflect upon the significant dangers and limiting outcomes that can be associated with the unconsidered deployment of surveillance technology.
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Paul Jones, Gideon Maas and Luke Pittaway
This chapter provides a rationale for this book and highlights the key literature in the entrepreneurship education discipline as a background context for the study. The…
Abstract
This chapter provides a rationale for this book and highlights the key literature in the entrepreneurship education discipline as a background context for the study. The organisation and structure of the book is identified and justified. Thereafter, each chapter included within the text is introduced and profiled. The chapter ends by drawing the overall conclusions of the studies included with suggestions for further research. Implications for the discipline in terms of policy and practice arising from the book are thereafter considered.
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This chapter examines Francis Bacon’s influence on Émile Durkheim and demonstrates that Bacon’s theory of mental “idols” has a significant presence in Durkheim’s work. Both Bacon…
Abstract
This chapter examines Francis Bacon’s influence on Émile Durkheim and demonstrates that Bacon’s theory of mental “idols” has a significant presence in Durkheim’s work. Both Bacon and Durkheim sought to demarcate new methods of inquiry against contemporary contenders. Both were wary of unfettered philosophical abstraction, as well as the pseudo-scientist’s preoccupation with immediately practical results. Thus, it is fitting that Durkheim would explicitly characterize perceived dangers to sociological knowledge in terms of Bacon’s idols – as objective obstacles which habit substitutes for fact in the absence of a sufficiently powerful epistemological mechanism. In preparation against these idols, Durkheim and Bacon offer rhetorically and logically similar remedies of self-imposed discipline and restraint. A close reading of key texts reveals that Durkheim’s references to Bacon capture surprisingly deep similarities, suggesting that Bacon influenced Durkheim to a greater degree than is commonly recognized.
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