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Taken for granted or wilfully ignored? Seeking legitimacy for the entrepreneurship educator
Full text linkPurpose –This study offers insights into how the entrepreneurship educator is legitimised in higher education.
Design/methodology/approach – This exploratory study is based on content analysis of 73 university programme specifications, 61 university strategies, and 35 job advertisements. The study uses Suchman’s (1995) conceptualisation of organisational legitimacy to assist in categorising the results according to type of legitimacy.
Findings –Connections are made between the legitimacy of the entrepreneurship educator and wider societal discourses surrounding the legitimacy of enterprise/entrepreneurship as expressed in university strategies. Attempts to legitimise the entrepreneurship educator specifically, as opposed
to ‘the educator’ more broadly understood, are quite limited. Programme specifications mainly offer a cognitive form of legitimacy relating to teaching, with elements of pragmatic legitimacy arising from educators’ links to industry and research prowess. Job descriptions are more focused on the educator’s research as a form of legitimation.
Originality/value –The concept of legitimacy, despite widespread application in other disciplines, has found very limited application in the study of entrepreneurship education. Using three sources of data, the paper offers a first application of Suchman’s (1995) conceptualisation of legitimacy to
entrepreneurship education. It thereby offers a critical perspective on the role of the entrepreneurship educator as shaped by institutional norms.
Research implications: The study creates a baseline of knowledge surrounding the legitimacy of the entrepreneurship educator, which raises important questions as to how the educator is supposed to add value in relation to different stakeholders
Understanding how volunteer companionship impacts those during the end of life: A realist evaluation
Full text linkVolunteers are a popular unpaid support role in end of life care yet how accompaniment influences the dying is underdeveloped. This study examined how companionship works, for whom, in what circumstances and why. Initial realist ideas were developed through participant observation (14 months), document analysis, and realist interviews with companionship trainers (n = 6). Theory testing involved volunteer interviews (n = 7), accounts from the dying, proxy accounts for the dying, and written reflections from companionship training. Companionship helps people live well until they die, prepare for death, and experience a good death. Four areas of volunteering explain these outcomes namely a loving friend, a holistic presence, a non-judgmental intermediary, and wrap around care. The four areas activate mechanisms related to reminiscing, preserving dignity/personhood, and easing suffering, contingent on specific contexts. The findings unpack how volunteering exerts its influence and what contextual factors facilitate outcomes, advancing the knowledge in this area
Conceptualizing the tourism entrepreneurial ecosystem
No full textThis chapter seeks to provide a conceptual underpinning to the notion of the tourism entrepreneurial ecosystem. Entrepreneurship does not occur in a vacuum and yet for some considerable time, much focus in the entrepreneurship literature has been on the characteristics of the entrepreneur. More recently, and building on systems theory and subsequent applications in economics, the concept of the entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) has spawned much research interest. In part because of its relative novelty, the concept has only just begun to attract interest in tourism. We argue that the concept deserves increased focus because of entrepreneurship’s importance to tourism development. Based on a review of the EE concept and its application to tourism, a framework is provided that supports the use of the tourism EE as an analytical category, thereby assisting future research in this area
Visualising seascapes
No full textIn this chapter, two case studies, involving university students in St. John’s Canada, and Plymouth England, are presented. The first case examines how the tutor utilises the seascape of the island of Newfoundland to nurture a deeper sense of place, as well as adventurous learning, in undergraduate students. Building on strong visual representation of this rugged North Atlantic island, students capture and explore their learning experiences of the seascape in visually based learning portfolios. These are powerful reflective tools that both tutor and students utilise to further cross-curricular connections to the seascape, maritime culture, and places of historical significance. In Plymouth, Place based outdoor education is an undergraduate class. Drawing on place-responsive outdoor education, literature students are provided with opportunities to collectively explore the rich maritime heritage of Plymouth and investigate their attachment to place. Visual methods are utilised in teaching and assessment, as are lived experiences, photographs/videos, as well as historical images. Sailing in Plymouth Sound, and exploring the land from the water, allows students to experience similar seascapes as Drake, The Pilgrim Fathers, Cook, and Darwin. Using photo-elicitation allows students in both contexts to make meaning from their experiences of seascapes
Impact of Initiating Biologics in Patients With Severe Asthma on Long-Term Oral Corticosteroids or Frequent Rescue Steroids (GLITTER): Data From the International Severe Asthma Registry
Full text linkBackground
Effectiveness of biologics has neither been established in patients with high oral corticosteroid exposure (HOCS) nor been compared with effectiveness of continuing with HOCS alone.
Objective
To examine the effectiveness of initiating biologics in a large, real-world cohort of adult patients with severe asthma and HOCS.
Methods
This was a propensity score–matched, prospective cohort study using data from the International Severe Asthma Registry. Between January 2015 and February 2021, patients with severe asthma and HOCS (long-term OCSs for ≥1 year or ≥4 courses of rescue OCSs within a 12-month period) were identified. Biologic initiators were identified and, using propensity scores, matched 1:1 with noninitiators. The impact of biologic initiation on asthma outcomes was assessed using generalized linear models.
Results
We identified 996 matched pairs of patients. Both groups improved over the 12-month follow-up period, but improvement was greater for biologic initiators. Biologic initiation was associated with a 72.9% reduction in the average number of exacerbations per year versus noninitiators (0.64 vs 2.06; rate ratio, 0.27 [95% CI, 0.10-0.71]). Biologic initiators were 2.2 times more likely than noninitiators to take a daily long-term OCS dose of less than 5 mg (risk probability, 49.6% vs 22.5%; P = .002) and had a lower risk of asthma-related emergency department visits (relative risk, 0.35 [95% CI, 0.21-0.58]; rate ratio, 0.26 [0.14-0.48]) and hospitalizations (relative risk, 0.31 [95% CI, 0.18-0.52]; rate ratio, 0.25 [0.13-0.48]).
Conclusions
In a real-world setting, including patients with severe asthma and HOCS from 19 countries, and within an environment of clinical improvement, initiation of biologics was associated with further improvements across multiple asthma outcomes, including exacerbation rate, OCS exposure, and health care resource utilization
Sustainable transitions in the surfing sector. The role of risk and branding
Full text linkThis paper explores a theoretical and empirical discussion of the ability of business form a particular sector to transition towards sustainability. The paper contextualises the discussion within the theoretical framework of a‘Risk Society’ as outlined by Ulrich Beck. In particular, the paper highlights the relationship between sustainable development, and what Beck describes as the emergence of an emancipatory catas-trophism. This theoretical framework is then applied to a novel approach for exploring sustainability through the process of branding ultimately highlighting an industry's receptiveness to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Uniquely, this paper challenges and expands on the narrative of branding as a discursive process that moves beyond a narrow marketing framework. Using a mixed methods approach of in-depth observation, interviews and surveys, the paper focuses on a case study of the largest lifestyle retailer in the surf skate and snow sector. The empirical research is applied both within the case study company itself and over 300 brands in the surf skate and snow sector. Results point to a receptiveness to embedding the sustainable development goals in business models whilst highlighting the challenges that exist from both a business operation and resourcing perspective through to external fac-tors. Furthermore, results highlight the disparity between internal business processes and the process branding. A typology is presented that highlights the relationship between business, the sustainable development goals and theoretical debates
BOOK REVIEW: The Essential Guide to Forest School & Nature Pedagogy by Jon Cree & Marina Robb, London, Routledge, 2021, 406 pp., ISBN 9780367425616 (pbk) ISBN 9780367853440 (ebook).
No full textBeings Here: An Exploration of Outdoor Educators Relationship with Place.
Full text linkThis inquiry explores how a small group of woodland-based outdoor educators in the South West of England make and describe their relationship with the place where they work. It takes a post-qualitative, posthuman, new materialist approach employing a diffractive methodology and analysis, leading to a set of case�assemblages. The inquiry approach and methods are influenced by Indigenous scholars and methodologies. Materials were gathered through walking interviews and a talking-circle, which took place in the woodland. The analysis was enacted through three diffraction questions, summarised as Making Kin, Attunements with Place and ‘Non-language’ Visible. Discussion of the case-assemblages has enabled a series of four implications for practice to emerge, which are framed as questions: How practitioners can be supported to spend more time becoming familiar with their places, encouraging them to find ways to shift their perspective towards be-coming with the place; how practitioners can hear or be present to stories of place; how practices and pedagogy can enable more-than-human agency to be included; and how we support educators to trust and the instinct to be with their senses, and to be led by the more-than-humans, as well as value their cognitive knowledge. Tentative ideas for enacting these are offered, along with new areas of inquiry including work with Indigenous scholars. The discussion also reflects on the complexity of taking a post-qualitative approach
Re-framing Physical Activity in Sport Development: Managing Active Partnership’s Strategic Responses to Policy Change
No full textPurpose – This paper examines the role of senior personnel within Active Partnerships as they seek to strategically manage UK policy developments. It explores how Active Partnerships engage with the policy process within an environment characterized by systemic structural changes, mounting fiscal challenges, political uncertainty and a succession of public health concerns.
Design/methodology/approach – Using the Multiple-Streams Framework (MSF), a case study approach was adopted, focusing on the perspectives of senior personnel. Semi-structured interviews with individuals involved in the management and operation of five Active Partnerships across the South of England and one national stakeholder that works closely with Active Partnerships, were conducted. Data were collected during the period following Andy Reed’s review on the operation of Active Partnerships. The interviews were complemented by documentary analysis.
Findings – Findings illustrate that while senior practitioners within Active Partnerships often behave in line with Lipsky’s notion of street-level bureaucrats, by maximizing their collective leverage, advocating their priorities, and providing a voice for local partners, they adopt behaviors more akin to policy entrepreneurs. In this sense, they also seek to influence the policy process at critical junctures in order to promote preferred outcomes and protect sectoral interests.
Originality/value – This study has explored the relationship between strategic management and the policy process in the context of the rapidly changing policy domain that frames the work of regional sports organizations known as Active Partnerships. The conceptual frame of investigation is the concept of “policy entrepreneurship”, which seeks to articulate how individuals and collectives engage in the policy process, in order to secure outcomes conducive to their objectives. This is turn, provides a sense of context for the contemporary challenges associated with the management of sport and physical activity (PA)
British Multiculturalism Policies and Muslim Parents’ School Choices in Northern England: Culturally Sensitive Schooling and Moments of Choice
Full text linkThis study explores British Pakistani Muslim parents’ school choices in Northern England by establishing an understanding of their perceptions of multicultural mixing, culturally sensitive schooling and ‘moments’ of choice. Multiculturalism policy development is examined to provide the context for parents’ perceptions and choices. It investigated how parents’ concerns towards aspects of culturally sensitive schooling such as the teaching of religious education, relationships and sex education, language education and single-sex education determine their ‘moments’ of choice. The study also highlights the implications of school choice in accommodating the cultural and religious needs of Muslim pupils in no-religion state schools.
Parental choice has been one of the keystones of education reform policy in the UK since the 1980s. The policy envisaged to bring choice and competition among schools to raise the educational attainments of pupils. However, it remains debatable and does not seem to favour parents from low socio-economic backgrounds. It has resulted in segregation among schools alongside segregation in residential neighbourhoods, especially in Blackburn, which is a town in North of England with ethnic Muslim residential concentration. Blackburn is one of the most segregated towns in the UK (Cantle, 2001), presenting an interesting canvas for Muslim parental school choice in a segregated setting. It is a segregated town where White British and Asian Muslims live ‘parallel lives’. This study claims its originality by filling the gap of lack of research in Blackburn in the context of the ongoing discussion around the official ‘death’ of multiculturalism and the corresponding ‘community cohesion’ debates in the UK. Therefore, the research was conducted in the North of England in a post-industrial area, Blackburn, where there is a high presence of Muslims who came to the country during the middle of the twentieth century.
This study employed a case study approach, drawing data from documentary materials and in-depth semi-structured interviews of 33 British Pakistani Muslim parents in Blackburn. The participants were recruited through the Blackburn business community, a religious organisation, and the local council. A qualitative methodology was employed through social constructionism, which provided the epistemological basis for the study. The researcher used both insider-outsider positions simultaneously during interviews, which helped to get maximum variations in the data. A thematic analysis supported the researcher’s interpretivist approach to understanding participants’ experiences, behaviour, and opinions. The in-depth semi�structured interviews helped generate ‘thick descriptions’ of participants' viewpoints on educational challenges Muslims face in a segregated northern town such as Blackburn. The ‘quantitizing’ of qualitative data: the counting of participant statements gave precision to data analysis and improved the transparency of key findings of the study.
The participants utilised their social, religious, ethnic, cultural and economic resources to navigate England’s education system. It has resulted in the typology of ii choosers such as informed, constrained, and semi-skilled choosers in Blackburn (Gewirtz et al., 995). Informed choosers had resources and were more confident about their choices; constrained choosers lacked resources and chose the closest schools, while semi-skilled choosers had a strong inclination but limited capacity to engage with England’s education system. This typology of choosers preferred four types of schools, such as community/Church schools, Muslim schools, ‘mixed’
schools, and Asian-majority schools, for multiple reasons. The choice of a particular school, Muslim, or no-religion state may be due to both reasons for making the child a faithful Muslim and for ‘good results’. Gujarati Muslim schools exercise a ‘strict’ faith-based admission policy. A minority of parents secured admissions into Gujarati Muslim schools which exhibited Wahabi ethos. However, the parents did not convert to Wahabism but accepted the philosophy of a different sect temporarily for better educational attainments for their children. Similarly, there were reasons for choosing a ‘mixed’ school if a parent thought Islamic religious education was better reserved for a supplementary school or home.
Participants ascribed different meanings to the notions of ‘mixing’ such as mixing with different ethnicities, White British, Gujarati Indians or mixing of genders or religions. It showed a lack of clear official language when talking about multiculturalism and diversity in the UK. Despite parents’ desire to ‘mix’, most of the children’s ‘mixing’ takes place within the school premises. Some parents educate their children at schools with an Asian Muslim majority, as they feel safe in the numbers. This has resulted in the ‘Asia-isation’ of state schools in Blackburn.
The findings indicated that parental opinions on issues such as ‘mixing’, ‘criteria for a good school’, ‘single-sex schooling’ and ‘good education’, showed variations depending on their preference for choices. In this way, the study illustrated the ideological power of faith and described that ‘good education’ is the ultimate goal of parents. It would give children the knowledge of deen-o-dunya (meaning religion and the world): a combination of secular and religious education, which would help them succeed in the world and the hereafter. The findings also suggest that Muslim parents are not a homogeneous group, and there is significant diversity in what Muslim parents want. However, sending the children to the state school (community/church) during the day and supplementary school in the evening has developed as a dominant pattern for the education of Muslim children in England.
The study is both significant and timely, given recent debates revealing the tensions surrounding Muslim parents’ school choices within segregated settings in a post�multicultural context. This is the first study exploring the school choice of Pakistani Muslim parents through multiculturalism policies and culturally sensitive schooling in Blackburn, Northern England