Stella Williams, Anatoli Karypidou, Catherine Steele and Lorna Dodd
The purpose of this paper is to adopt the perspective of personal construct theory to conceptualise employability. The study explores differences in the implicit employability…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to adopt the perspective of personal construct theory to conceptualise employability. The study explores differences in the implicit employability theories of those involved in developing employability (educators) and those selecting and recruiting higher education (HE) students and graduates (employers).
Design/methodology/approach
A repertory grid technique (RGT) was employed to uncover the implicit theories of 22 employers and 14 educators across the UK.
Findings
A total of 717 constructs were elicited. A differential analysis of data gathered demonstrated several areas of consensus among employers and educators (including emotional management, confidence, professionalism), as well as divergence in representations of commitment, proactivity, interpersonal competencies and vision to the conceptualisation of employability.
Practical implications
Findings from this analysis indicate a need to integrate group process assessments within undergraduate programmes and recruitment procedures.
Originality/value
This study represents a personal construct approach to employability, utilising the unique value of RGT to further inform our understanding of employability within an HE context. This study contributes to an understanding of employability as a continually re-constructed concept. This study provides insights to its nature via two information rich cases that have extensive knowledge on the topic.
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Outlines the background of Nigeria, politically, citing particularly the British influence on the education system. Offers a framework that traces the historical background of…
Abstract
Outlines the background of Nigeria, politically, citing particularly the British influence on the education system. Offers a framework that traces the historical background of inequality in education and shows how this is linked to the global internal workings of Nigeria’s education system. Argues that most women are aware of their right to equality, but there is a need for the state to acknowledge their obligation to encourage development in areas of educational inequality.
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Meaghan M. McCollow, Jordan Shurr and Andrea D. Jasper
A shift from a medical model to a social model of including learners with disabilities has occurred over the past 25 years (Stella, Forlin, & Lan, 2007). This shift has impacted…
Abstract
A shift from a medical model to a social model of including learners with disabilities has occurred over the past 25 years (Stella, Forlin, & Lan, 2007). This shift has impacted both preservice teacher preparation and in-service teacher professional development. This chapter utilizes a conceptual framework built on the work of Forlin and colleagues (Forlin, Loreman, Sharma, & Earle, 2009; Sharma, Forlin, Loreman, & Earle, 2006; Stella et al., 2007) to guide teacher preparation and professional development. This conceptual framework provides a model for (1) addressing attitudes and perceptions; (2) increasing knowledge of disability policies, laws, and evidence-based practices for providing instruction in inclusive settings; (3) and increasing experiences with individuals with disabilities, including experiences within inclusive settings. In addition, the framework incorporates aspects of the context within which inclusion is to occur. Implications include recommendations for teacher training and professional development to improve inclusive education for learners with LID.
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Tess Huia Moeke-Maxwell, Janine Wiles, Stella Black, Lisa Williams and Merryn Gott
Is collaborative story production (CSP) a useful method to collaborate with bereaved families to record their reflections on the end of life circumstances and care of people of…
Abstract
Purpose
Is collaborative story production (CSP) a useful method to collaborate with bereaved families to record their reflections on the end of life circumstances and care of people of advanced age? The paper aims to discuss this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing from Te Pākeketanga, a bicultural study involving 58 bereaved Māori and non-Māori families on behalf of 52 older relatives, the authors describe the CSP method. Researchers and participants co-created personalised written stories about the older person and their end of life experiences, supported with photographs of family, friends and memorabilia. The authors aimed to uplift the status of the older person and their family by tangibly reflecting the significance and magnitude of what had been shared and to strengthen the research analysis.
Findings
CSP supported member checking, promoted a robust understanding of participants’ narratives and increased the trustworthiness of data and strengthened the Kaupapa Māori and social constructivist analysis. However, some participants experienced difficulty revisiting painful memories when reading their story. CSP took longer than anticipated, was labour intensive and required a highly skilled and resourced team to ensure participants benefitted.
Originality/value
Using the CSP method with a bicultural cohort of bereaved families who had provided care to someone over the age of 80 was very helpful in assisting the researchers to gather narrative information and present it back to participants in a story format for their comment and feedback. The method contributed a useful way to partner with bereaved family caregivers following the death of an older family member. The authors needed a way to record the participants’ narratives of the older person’s end of life circumstances and end of life care experiences. This was very important, particularly for grieving families and indigenous families who may have felt vulnerable engaging with research, and with the research processes. The approach provided a helpful and non-intrusive member-checking process. The unique bicultural study approach deliberately utilised the CSP method to assist the researchers to work safely with bereaved families as the participants reflected upon and explored not only the end of life circumstances of the older person, but they also focused on the “death” and their own bereavement experiences. CSP also provided a helpful member-checking method; the authors were working with highly sensitive information and wanted to ensure that the authors as researchers understood and interpreted the families’ narrative data correctly, according to their perspectives.
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Elmarie Sadler and Jacobus Stephanus Wessels
The purpose of this paper is to report on the reflective identity work of a white female chartered accountant, scholar and academic manager, regarding the intersectional…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to report on the reflective identity work of a white female chartered accountant, scholar and academic manager, regarding the intersectional transformations of gender and race as well as leadership within the South African accounting profession over four decades.
Design/methodology/approach
The theoretical lens of intersectionality is applied through an autoethnographic approach. Multiple layers of personal experiences and observations are interpreted through identity work of leadership provided and received. Autoethnographic data are substantiated and contextualised through the researchers’ sense-making, official and scholarly sources.
Findings
Sustainable transformation of the accounting profession requires a deepened understanding of the interconnections of the personal, structural and systemic areas within unique contexts. Leadership, as provided and received, must be included within the intersectional orientations. Intersectional orientations become then more significant for understanding progressive changes of the demographic profile of the accounting profession not only in South Africa but also in other countries. The transformation interventions aimed at affirming high-quality black African, coloured and female candidates to the South African accounting profession are founded on the principles of social justice. A sustained reframing of the demographic profile of a profession is possible through accelerated and well-funded collaborative transformation interventions enhancing intentional structural changes of the membership pipeline.
Research limitations/implications
The possible limitations of this study lie in the contextual nature of the material and findings and the lens of the specific theory.
Practical implications
The understanding of the practice of interventions aiming at transforming the country-specific demographic profile of a scarce skills profession such as the accountancy profession.
Originality/value
The originality of this paper lies in the application of an intersectional theoretical lens that argues for leadership as a dimension alongside age, gender and race in an autoethnographic sense making of the transformation of the South African accounting profession.
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Abstract
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The Reformation, as Wolfgang Schivelbusch maintains, which redefined the relationship between the individual and God as a personal one, “took pains to regulate the relationship of…
Abstract
The Reformation, as Wolfgang Schivelbusch maintains, which redefined the relationship between the individual and God as a personal one, “took pains to regulate the relationship of man to alcohol,” and in so doing laid “an essential foundation¦…¦for the development of capitalism.” In the earlier Rabelaisian world, the Church constituted the major site of popular culture. Virtually all work was seasonal in character punctuated by carnivalesque church feasts that numbered over one hundred yearly. Although generally accepted as a safe means to vent communal anxieties, drink comprised an essential element of these festivals, with drunkenness the socially acceptable outcome.16 However, as the Reformation progressed and new modes of aristocratic behavior developed, reformative efforts to separate the secular and the sacred within the church resulted in attempts to abandon the popular culture of the lower classes. A broad consensus emerged that too much drunkenness amounted to social evil, and that alehouses represented an “increasingly dangerous force in popular society.”17 As the influence of the Church declined in the early eighteenth century, Carnival resurfaced in the form of gregarious carnivalesque village and town feasts: “the grotesque body of carnival was being re-territorialized” and writers such as Swift and Pope “perpetually identif[ied] the scene of writing with the fairground and the carnival.”18 Conversely, in keeping with the symmetrical component inherent in the Carnival/Lent theme, Lent transmuted into organizations such as The Society for the Reformation of Manners, which attempted to reduce drunkenness, cursing, swearing and whoring – all tropes of carnivalesque gregariousness. So, during this period, a contradictory cultural dissonance was being enacted. On the one hand, we find a resurgence of Carnival, but on the other hand, we see “a conservative desire on the part of the upper classes to separate themselves more clearly and distinctly from these popular activities.”19
P. HAVARD‐WILLIAMS and STELLA A. WATSON
In 1955 it was proposed that the Library of the University of Liverpool School of Architecture (which is administered by the University Library) should start a collection of 2 in…
Abstract
In 1955 it was proposed that the Library of the University of Liverpool School of Architecture (which is administered by the University Library) should start a collection of 2 in. by 2 in. slides (black and white, and coloured) which would be limited to a working collection of 15,000 slides. The new collection was organized as part of the work of the assistant librarian in charge, but a slide assistant was also appointed to carry out some of the photographic work under the supervision of a lecturer in the school and to assist in the routine work involved in cataloguing the slides.
Imagine a southern belle—sweet, submis‐sive, and charming with her flattering ways and soft drawl. Now conjure up a hussy— lewd, loud, brassy, or perhaps just self‐centered and…
Abstract
Imagine a southern belle—sweet, submis‐sive, and charming with her flattering ways and soft drawl. Now conjure up a hussy— lewd, loud, brassy, or perhaps just self‐centered and strongly self‐assertive, forcing her will on everyone around her. The ease with which the pictures leap to mind attests to the vitality of the stereotypes, for stereotypes they are, powerful ones in the American mythology. Although they are clearly unrealistic conceptions of real‐life modern women, they have had and still exercise a potent influence on the literature of the south. Moreover, as the works of many modern southern playwrights show, popular adherence to such myths of femininity—and their inevitable corollaries for masculinity as well—resulted in a miserable human bondage for both women and men.
Michelle Stella Mars, Ian Seymour Yeoman and Una McMahon-Beattie
Sex tourism is well documented in the literature, but what about porn tourism? Whether it is a Ping Pong show in Phuket or the Banana show in Amsterdam, porn and tourism have an…
Abstract
Purpose
Sex tourism is well documented in the literature, but what about porn tourism? Whether it is a Ping Pong show in Phuket or the Banana show in Amsterdam, porn and tourism have an encounter and gaze no different from the Mona Lisa in the Louvre or magnificent views of New Zealand’s Southern Alps. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper explores the intersections of tourism, porn and the future as a conceptual framework.
Findings
Four intersections are derived from the conceptual framework. Intersection 1, the Future of Tourism, portrays the evolution of tourism and explores its technological future. Interaction 2, Porn in Tourism, distinguishes between soft- and hard-core porn tourism. Intersection 3, Portraying Porn as a Future Dimension, delves into futurism, science fiction and fantasy. The fourth intersection, the Future Gaze, conveys the thrust of the paper by exploring how technological advancement blends with authenticity and reality. Thus the porn tourist seeks both the visual and the visceral pleasures of desire. The paper concludes with four future gazes of porn tourism, The Allure of Porn, The Porn Bubble, Porn as Liminal Experience and Hardcore.
Originality/value
The originality of this paper is that this is the first paper to systematically examine porn tourism beyond sex tourism overlaying with a futures dimension. Porn tourists actively seek to experience both visual and visceral pleasures. Tourism and pornography both begin with the gaze. The gaze is an integral component of futures thinking. Technology is changing us, making us smarter, driving our thirst for liminal experiences. Like the transition from silent movies to talking pictures the porn tourism experience of the future is likely to involve more of the bodily senses.