Tesi sul tema "College of Midwives (Great Britain)"

Building on the success of previous investigations, the doctoral thesis offers a contribution to the study of communication between health professionals and their clients. Since the overall aim of the investigation was to analyse both the verbal and non-verbal communication strategies used by both midwives and mothers in antenatal clinics in Great Britain and Germany, data was collected in the form of videotaped recordings of consultations during pregnancy. Socio-demographic data was retrieved through the use of questionnaires designed to investigate the participants' perceptions of the consultation. Working within a framework of speech act theory and conversation analysis, data was analysed in order to assess the varying degrees of asymmetry apparent in the communicative patterns of interactants. Typically occurring features such as use of the first person plural pronoun, references to the expected baby, interruptions, requests for information and confirmation, and unrelated responses were examined under the linguistic areas of lexis and pragmatics. The significance of non-verbal behaviour and its relation to verbal requests was investigated through the analysis of listener-oriented and other-oriented head movements. Statistical analysis of the phenomena chosen for observation revealed that the appearance and frequency of certain linguistic features (e.g. the first person plural pronoun) was significantly associated with socio-demographic variables such as age and occupational status. Analysis of request sequences also revealed significant correlation when compared with social variables such as age of participants and occupational status of mothers. Qualitative analysis of detailed transcriptual data appeared to indicate that the functions of particular utterances were positively associated with socio-demographic and cross-cultural features such as age and country of study, respectively. Confirming the hypothesis that both linguistic and sub-linguistic features are subject to influences from social and external factors, the results offer a thorough description of the communicative behaviour of both midwives and mothers in antenatal consultations in Great Britain and Germany. Furthermore, it is suggested that the findings arising from the study will enable professional midwives and members of the public alike to develop greater awareness of the importance of good communication skills in order that consultations may operate effectively and to the benefit of both parties. Linguistically, it is argued that the study contributes to our understanding of the distribution and functions of language according to its particular context.

Collections of tangible heritage and material culture found in university museums present both challenges and opportunities for their parent institutions. The identification and recognition of objects and collections of material ‘heritage’ proves difficult to universities, due to the formation and utilisation of their collections. Although each university possesses a history of varied content, length and significance, the rich heritage collections kept by universities remain undefined and largely unknown. This thesis addresses new and changing roles for university museums and collections, focusing on the issues surrounding heritage. What purpose does an institutional collection of academic heritage serve beyond preserving or representing the history of a university? Using data collected during the field research programme and two case studies (University of St Andrews and University of Liverpool) the thesis explores the definition and role of heritage in the university. Through the exploration of these topics, the thesis provides a new model for university collecting institutions based on the concept of ‘university heritage’ and ‘institutional identity’, encompassing collections ranging from subject-specific departmental teaching collections to commemorative collections of fine art. By utilising these once undefined and underappreciated collections, universities can use the heritage objects and material culture representative of their academic history and traditions as institutional promotion to potential students, staff and funding bodies.

This thesis examines the working lives of foreign-born academics who come to work to the UK. Its main aim is to understand the degree and conditions of migrant scholars' inclusion in professional practice abroad. The thesis fulfils this aim by developing a conceptual approach to encapsulate how migrant professionals' working lives are conditioned by the pre-existing professional structures. Grounded in the principle of social closure, this framework proposes that migrant professionals' employment abroad is influenced by the different forms and rules of closure, as well as by the sites in which closure rules are applied. The synthesis of the theoretical framework with findings from sixty-two interviews with foreign-born scholars employed in thirteen British universities shows that migrant academics' working lives are explained by ‘modes of incorporation'. ‘Modes of incorporation' designate the distinct ways in which the academic profession has reacted to the increased presence of foreign incomers, and comprise integration, exclusion, subordination and indifference. The proposed framework extends the understanding of the demographic change in professions, and offers a way to capture migrant professionals' movement across countries.

This thesis is an account of the 'household and social science' course opened at King's College for Women in 1908 and its evolution up to 1939. The course was a significant departure for women's higher education in England as it was the first attempt to define a special university discipline based upon women's 'domestic' roles. However, historical accounts of women's higher education have either ignored or dismissed it, largely because of the predominance of'separate spheres' analyses in the historiography of women's higher education of the 1970s and early 1980s. Such accounts have presented the household science course in a negative light because of its 'domestic' image. This thesis thus offers a reassessment of the household science movement and those who supported it. The 'household science' concept owed its origin to the American 'home economies' movement which originated in the mid-nineteenth century. Chapter 1 provides a history of the home economics movement in America, tracing its evolution in the context of women's higher education until 1914. Initially home economics was seen as a 'vocational homemaking' course aiming to train women for home life. At the turn of the century, however, a 'scientific' model was developed by women scientists in order to promote research into social problems connected with the domestic sphere. These two models~the vocation and the scientific, have developed in tandem in American home economics. Chapters 2 and 3 consider the origins and early evolution of the 'household science' course in England, which was largely influenced by the American 'scientific' model. Chapter 2 first considers the concept of domestic education in the history of women's education and factors that precluded the development of a 'vocational homemaking' course in English higher education. The rest of the chapter analyses the origins of the household science movement in its social and intellectual context, in particular its connection with Edwardian preoccupations with 'physical deterioration' and infant mortality. Like their American counterparts, the founders of the course saw household science as a reform movement which aimed to promote research into domestic problems such as hygiene and nutrition, as well as to create a more useful and relevant university discipline for women's domestic roles, whether as housewife/mother or in 'municipal housekeeping' roles. Chapter 3 discusses the household science course from a disciplinary standpoint, looking at how the syllabus was constructed, the contemporary educational controversies it engendered, and its evolution up to 1920 when the B.Sc. degree was granted. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 examine the main factors which ultimately undermined the success of household science as a discipline. Chapter 4 evaluates career trends amongst KCHSS students from 1910-49, analysing to what extent the KCHSS administration was able to create a professional career structure for the household science discipline. The interplay between administrative policy, career trends, and professionalization is analyzed in relation to three career fields-social welfare, laboratory research, and dietetics. Chapters considers the professional conflicts between KCHSS and the domestic subjects teaching profession. Chapter 6 analyses KCHSS's failure to carve out a unique academic 'territory' or expertise and the various factors that affected this. The final chapter assesses how successful KCHSS was as an institution, looking at how students themselves experienced the course, their motivations for taking it, and its impact on their lives. Although household science was unsuccessful as a discipline, the course did give students a wide choice of career options, creating openings in less conventional spheres for women who did not want to teach and providing opportunities for the less-able student to follow a scientific career. The conclusion considers how the social climate of the interwar period affected the working out of the original household science ideals.

This research is a case study of the quality improvement process in an English further education college. It examines the way that staff involved in the design and operation of the quality system shape the process in a part of the education sector that struggles with issues of performance. The case is placed into the context of an unstable policy environment, where further education colleges have been subjected to frequent bouts of government intervention and a funding regime that is unfavourable when compared to secondary schools and universities. The contribution to knowledge of this thesis is that it addresses an under-researched area of further education by viewing the quality process from the perspective of the governors, managers and professional staff responsible for its design and operation. As such it addresses a problem where a lot of attention has been given to teaching staff who experience the quality process or to macro studies where the focus is on outputs in the sector. However, less attention has been paid to the governors, senior staff and quality teams who assess teaching and learning in colleges. The data for the case study were gathered over a two-year period between 2010-2012 and include interviews with college staff, senior staff from OFSTED and the Department for Business Innovation and Skills and staff from a second college, used to help verify the findings. In addition to this, documentation for the quality system was gathered including inspection documents and policy documents. The data were analysed in order to surface traits of social and organisational practice that address the problem of operating a quality system in an environment that is highly resistant to systemisation and predictability. The findings are presented as 'fuzzy' generalisations supplemented by guidance in the form of design principles. The thesis provides an empirically grounded description of key elements of the relationships and the surrounding sociotechnical system that were found in the case. The design principles augment the case study and provide guidance on how a combination of trust relationships, resilience of processes to disruption and flexibility of application provide a background for the quality improvement process at Stretchford College, which was rated as 'Outstanding' at the time of the research.

This thesis explores academic propaganda in the first two years of the First World War, examining the activity of the university men in Britain and Germany who were left behind when their students went to the Front. Using pamphlets and manifestoes, it seeks to highlight the way the War split the international academic community and the creation of a debate which examined not only the causes of the War, but the reasons for which the nations were fighting. By exploring the propaganda organisations of both countries, as well as the academic milieu in which the subjects of this thesis worked, it hopes to provide the context within which this propaganda was created, before turning to an examination of the content of the propaganda - an aspect which has often been overlooked in propaganda studies. The investigation of the content looks first at the outbreak of war and the reaction of the academic community to a shock which shook their community. It then turns to the arguments expounded on culpability for the War, and the ideals for which each side felt they were fighting, illustrating the shift in emphasis from a political war to an ideological conflict between two opposing world views. Finally, the thesis considers perceptions of the War in the early years of the conflict, and the way in which it was seen both as a panacea to overcome social divisions and a catharsis which would lead the way to a new world - ideas which would provide the foundation for later war aims. In taking this comparative approach, the aim is to provide new insights into a fascinating and relatively little-known aspect of the history of the First World War.

This thesis analyzes Benjamin West's altarpiece St. Paul Shaking the Viper from His Hand After the Shipwreck and his designs for thirty-three related artworks in the Royal Naval College Chapel, Greenwich, England, as a synthesis of the major influences in his life and as an example of both traditional and innovative themes in his artistic style of the late eighteenth century. This study examines West's life, the Greenwich Chapel history, altarpiece and decorative scheme, and concludes that the designs are an example of West's stylistic flexibility and are related thematically to his Windsor Royal Chapel commission.

The present thesis is an investigation into the impact and role of formal peer mentoring programmes as retention and enrichment strategies within UK Higher Education. Reviews of the literature highlighted several limitations within the empirical evidence for benefits of mentoring schemes. This thesis systematically evaluated the availability and impact of peer mentoring schemes within UK Higher Education. Firstly, a new measure of wellbeing was constructed and validated in student samples. A UK wide survey of 94 Universities supported the notion of increasing popularity of formal peer mentoring schemes and demonstrated the perceived benefits of peer mentoring as a retention strategy. Employing a theoretically driven longitudinal methodology a controlled comparison between first year students’ attending a UK university with a peer mentoring scheme versus a university without a peer mentoring scheme further substantiated the benefits of peer mentoring. Those within the peer mentoring university were three times less likely to think of dropping out of university, were coping better with the transition to university and were better adapted to university life: an important predictor in intention to leave. The relationship between peer mentoring and intention to leave was mediated by integration in university as proposed by Jacobi (1991). In support of the ‘buffering’ hypothesis existence of peer mentors moderated the relationship between predicted changes in social support, affect and self esteem during the transition to university. Within the fourth research study of first year students at a Scottish university; attitudes towards the introduction of a peer mentoring scheme within a university without such a scheme was investigated. Results indicated a positive perception of mentoring, with no student stating that they would not seek advice from a peer mentor if one was available. Although individuals who were experiencing greater levels of stress and homesickness were more likely to indicate they would use a peer mentor demographic variables did not differentiate between individuals who wanted peer mentors and those who felt less need. The most important attributes of a peer mentor for this sample of 158 first year students were commitment to the scheme and listening skills. Finally the impact of formal peer mentoring schemes within Higher Education was assessed from the perspective of the mentor, employing a qualitative (focus group) methodology at a university with an established peer mentoring scheme. Multiple benefits were indicated including personal, emotional, and academic advantages of becoming a mentor. All of the mentors within this study highlighted numerous motives for becoming a mentor although most important was their own previous experience (negative and positive) of the peer mentoring scheme. The results of each study are discussed in line with previous literature, limitations of the research and suggestions for future research. This thesis concludes that formal peer mentoring schemes can have a positive impact on the mentees, mentors and institutions involved and specifies nine recommendations for policy and practice.

In this thesis I present new insights into aspects of Peter Guthrie Tait's life and work, derived principally from largely-unexplored primary source material: Tait's scrapbook, the Tait–Maxwell school-book and Tait's pocket notebook. By way of associated historical insights, I also come to discuss the innovative and far-reaching mathematics of the elusive Frenchman, C.-V. Mourey. P. G. Tait (1831–1901) F.R.S.E., Professor of Mathematics at the Queen's College, Belfast (1854–1860) and of Natural Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh (1860–1901), was one of the leading physicists and mathematicians in Europe in the nineteenth century. His expertise encompassed the breadth of physical science and mathematics. However, since the nineteenth century he has been unfortunately overlooked—overshadowed, perhaps, by the brilliance of his personal friends, James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879), Sir William Rowan Hamilton (1805–1865) and William Thomson (1824–1907), later Lord Kelvin. Here I present the results of extensive research into the Tait family history. I explore the spiritual aspect of Tait's life in connection with The Unseen Universe (1875) which Tait co-authored with Balfour Stewart (1828–1887). I also reveal Tait's surprising involvement in statistics and give an account of his introduction to complex numbers, as a schoolboy at the Edinburgh Academy. A highlight of the thesis is a re-evaluation of C.-V. Mourey's 1828 work, La Vraie Théorie des quantités négatives et des quantités prétendues imaginaires, which I consider from the perspective of algebraic reform. The thesis also contains: (i) a transcription of an unpublished paper by Hamilton on the fundamental theorem of algebra which was inspired by Mourey and (ii) new biographical information on Mourey.

Some scholars, in examining the debate which led up to the Midwives Act of 1902, have portrayed the conflict as a struggle between the monolithic medical profession and midwives. However, this thesis demonstrates that the late nineteenth-century medical profession was still very much divided on the issue of midwifery. There were tensions between various branches and between elite members and general practitioners. Further, the British Medical Association, the General Medical Council, the Lancet and the British Medical Journal all competed for the right to speak for the profession as a whole. In the course of the debate the medical profession caricatured the "mythical" untrained midwife while seeking to impress upon the public their own identity as skilled and caring practitioners. The 1902 Midwives Act, which reveals that Parliament, accepted some, but not all, of the medical profession's claims, signifies both the extent and the limits of the medical profession's influence.

The research investigated the perspectives of the management team on strategies in managing a British college with a mainly South African market, namely Blake Hall College (BHC). The study aimed to identify teaching methods used at the college to be competitive in the distance education and higher education market. The approach was qualitative. Eight participants were purposefully selected and interviewed by means of an interview schedule that focused on management and teaching methods in particular. Information was also collected on quality assurance and cooperation between BHC and other higher education institutions. The results illustrated the influences of institutional growth and progress, maintenance, management structure and leadership, quality control, collaboration and communication. Regarding teaching methods, the advantages and disadvantages of distance education and face-to-face methods were illuminated. Participants also described a number of innovative teaching methods used. From the aforementioned, recommendations were made for surviving the competitive higher education market.
Educational Studies
M.Ed (Educational Management)

Despite a growing body of literature on women in leadership, few studies have empirically investigated the leadership and management experiences of female academic heads of department. It is against this background that this study investigated the experiences of these women in universities in South Africa and the United Kingdom. The position of women in higher education in these countries, together with the status of their representation in senior positions in the academe and obstacles to their advancement into such positions was reviewed. The study was carried out within the framework of a cross-sectional survey research design employing both quantitative (questionnaire) and qualitative (interview) data collection methods. The study consisted of thirty two female participants who were either currently or previously heads of academic departments in universities. For the interview a separate group of nine female academic heads of department, from the same universities as the participants in the survey, were selected. Purposeful sampling was used to select all the participants. A structured, pre-coded questionnaire was used to collect quantitative data from one group of twenty three female participants with a minimum of two years' experience in the position. A video conference focus group interview was used to obtain in-depth (qualitative) information on a number of selected issues. The quantitative data was analysed using a relevant statistical package. Key-findings from both survey and interviews were then co-ordinated. The major findings indicated that, apart from lack of mentorship and formal preparation for the position, the women did not experience any major obstacles prior to becoming head of department. The women were confident about several skills related to managing an academic department. They were not certain, however, about stress management, delegation and entrepreneurial skills. Leadership style tended toward 'interactive leadership' which is considered appropriate for today's leadership in organisations. The findings suggested that institutional and other barriers to women's advancement still exist, and that the challenges and demands women experience may be a source of stress and tension for them. Recommendations, using these findings, were made for aspiring women managers, for institutions, for policy makers and for future research.
Educational Studies
D. Ed. (Education Management)