• Exploring Learning Conversations between Mentors and Associate Teachers in Initial Teacher Education

  Jones, Luke; Tones, Steve; Foulkes, Gethin; University of Chester (Emerald, 2019)

  Purpose - The aim 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 (PE) subject mentors and their associate teachers (ATs) during a one-year postgraduate programme. Design/methodology/approach – Self-completion questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, with eleven 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.
• A Quantitative Sensory Testing Approach to Pain in Autism Spectrum Disorders

  Vaughan, Sarah; McGlone, Francis; Poole, Helen; Moore, David; University of Chester; Liverpool John Moores University (Springer Verlag, 2019-02-15)

  Sensory abnormalities in autism has been noted clinically, with pain insensitivity as a specified diagnostic criterion. However, there is limited research using psychophysically robust techniques. Thirteen adults with ASD and 13 matched controls completed an established Quantitative Sensory Testing (QST) battery, supplemented with measures of pain tolerance and central modulation. The ASD group showed higher thresholds for light touch detection and mechanical pain. Notably, the ASD group had a greater range of extreme scores (the number of z-scores outside of the 95% CI >2), dynamic mechanical allodynia and paradoxical heat sensation; phenomena not typically seen in neurotypical individuals. These data support the need for research examining central mechanisms for pain in ASD and greater consideration of individual difference.
• No Such Thing as Society: The Novel under Neoliberalism

  Pollard, Eileen; Schoene, Berthold; University of Chester; Manchester Metropolitan University (Cambridge University Press, 2018-12-20)

  Because literature always depends on evoking a sense of community between writers and their readers, there can be no flourishing of literature without society. Indicative of this axiomatic is the novel’s contribution to how any specific ‘social imaginary’ or ‘structure of feeling’ comes to crystallize in the first place. Complementing Raymond Williams’ influential encapsulation of ‘structure of feeling’ as each new generation’s response to ‘the unique world it is inheriting, taking up many continuities [...] yet feeling its whole life in certain ways differently’, Manfred Steger defines social imaginaries as the ways in which ‘“we” – the members of a particular community – fit together, how things go on between us, the expectations we have of each other, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie those expectations’. The final two decades of the twentieth century are no exception in this regard, as they too constitute a singular slice of history with its own particular set of common understandings, expressions and practices of culture and community. Importantly, the perceived distinctiveness and newness of the period was the result not so much of a gentle generational shift as a wholescale political revolution, the enormity of which would jolt society into a hitherto inconceivable direction of socio-economic change and cultural transmutation. As Colin Hutchinson puts it, the inception of Thatcherite neoliberalism in Britain is best understood as a violent ‘assault […] on the public realm [leading to] the erosion of civic sensibilities and collective allegiances’. Another point of interest for us is the formative implication of ‘The Individual’ in the symbiosis of society and the novel. Nancy Armstrong describes individualism as ‘the ideological core’ of the novel; in her view, ‘novels think like individuals about the difficulties of fulfilling oneself […] under specific cultural historical conditions’. Armstrong’s proposition assumes special significance in the light of Margaret Thatcher’s announcement in 1987 that ‘there is no such thing [as society]! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.’ Thatcher’s eradication of society and her hyperbolic championing of the individual instigated a fundamental ideological recasting of late twentieth-century Britain’s social imaginary, which in turn significantly influenced the development of the British novel.
• Evaluating unmet needs in patients undergoing surgery for colorectal cancer: A patient reported outcome measures (PROMS) study.

  Sutton, P A; Bourdon-Pierre, R; Smith, C; Appleton, N; Lightfoot, T; Gabriel, C; Richards, B; Mohamed, S; Mason-Whitehead, E; Hulbert-Williams, N J; Vimalachandran, D (2019-03-03)

  Patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) are self-reported measures of patients' health status or health related quality of life at a single point in time. We aimed to evaluate the use of a colorectal PROM, and conducted a focus group to further explore this and other unmet needs in our patient population treated surgically for colorectal cancer. A multidisciplinary research group consisting of colorectal surgeons, nurse specialists, psychologists, sociologists and patient representatives devised a composite tool of new and existing outcome measures which was piloted in our local population (n=35). Participants were subsequently invited to attend a semi-structured focus group during which the PROM was reviewed and an unmet needs analysis performed. Thematic analysis of focus group transcripts was undertaken for emergent themes. Initial consensus was for a tool including the EQ-5D, FACT-C, the distress thermometer, a validated measure of stigma, an unmet needs analysis, and questions assessing the psychological impact of cancer. Median and IQR values suggested all metrics were discriminatory with the exception of FACT-C. All participants agreed the tool was acceptable, and reflected the current state of their health and emotions. Thematic analysis of focus group transcripts identified four major themes: Physical symptoms, emotional response, information provision and coping mechanisms. Through expert consensus, local piloting and patient focus groups we have evaluated a novel PROM for colorectal cancer. Furthermore, through our direct engagement with patients we have identified several unmet needs which we are currently exploring within the clinical service. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. [Abstract copyright: This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.]
• Introduction

  Pollard, Eileen; Schoene, Berthold; University of Chester; Manchester Metropolitan University (Cambridge University Press, 2018-12-20)

  The central premise underpinning our volume is simple: the final two decades of the twentieth century no longer constitute an integral part of what we call the contemporary. We now view the late twentieth century through a complex historicising lens darkened by the events of 9/11, the ensuing ‘clash of civilisations’ and ‘war on terror’, the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, ongoing austerity and – most recently – the rise of populist politics. An additional impediment to immediate access and perfect recall is the impact effected by technological advances on everyday life in the twenty-first century: how reliably can we ‘supermoderns’ (to adopt Marc Augé’s term ) be expected to recollect and relate to a now bygone world that did not have the internet, email, social networking, wifi or the mobile phone? Even those of us who lived through the 1980s and 1990s will be finding this increasingly difficult. Superseded and defamiliarised by previously unimaginable technologically-modified ways of everyday living, the late twentieth century is beginning to look more and more like history. One prominent theme informing the tone of this introduction is how the final two decades of the twentieth century were marked by the speed of accelerated change in society’s attitudes to class, subnational devolution, religion, sexuality and the Black and Asian Minority Ethnic experience, as well as how these complex and mutually imbricated discourses helped produce a notable sense of motion sickness in the literature of the period.

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