1,720,988 research outputs found
The social construction of the mature student experience
No full textUsing a Social Constructionist lens, this study gathers fresh empirical data on the experience of a “Mature Student”, examining its multiple constructions, both objective and subjective, within the context of a Scottish Ancient university. For six centuries, Ancient universities have held expectations that incoming students will adjust to fit the autonomous institutional culture. However the expansion of Higher Education in 1992 has introduced changes in legislation and funding which have shifted the onus of that adjustment to the organisations themselves.
This study is placed at the fundamental core of the tension between an institution struggling with the changing nature of its purpose and non-traditional students with changing expectations. Through analysis of daily journals and semi-structured interviews with 16 students and 12 staff, it explores the interpretations which both sets of actors take from student/institution interaction, and does so with respect to the student’s holistic life context rather than viewing only the learner role. Particular emphasis is placed on the losses and gains from the experience, including examination of what a degree symbolises in personal, fiscal and psychological terms.
Based on a synthesis of literature reviews and empirical data, the study categorises the Mature students into three groups according to experiential themes within the student journey, drawing out theoretical and policy contributions from the process. Although mismatches are shown to exist between student and staff expectations of institutional purpose, a contemporary, and valid, role for the Ancient institution is outlined in terms of developing individual agency
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
(Sm)othering the self : an analysis of the politics of identity of women accountants in the UK
Full text linkThis thesis examines the politics of identity of women accountants in the UK who are mothers, by exploring the links between working in the accounting profession and the experience of motherhood. It takes a sociological approach to analyse how social, political, cultural and moral forces, in relation to accounting, motherhood and wider society, affect identity, or the self. The accounting profession is arguably a masculine enviromnent into which the accountant is socialised. Motherhood illustrates the tensions between an essentialist and a non-essentialist view of identity. The thesis explores the contradictions and juxtapositions between these two identities of accountant and mother, and the struggle of women to exercise agency within the confines of the profession. It uses a feminist methodological framework based on the subjective experience of women. As such, I present my own autobiographical account of being an accountant and mother, and the oral history narratives of fifteen other women, arguing that narrative forms an integral part of identity construction. The thesis concludes that the narrative approach and the use of oral histories has much to offer to accounting research and has important implications for our understanding of the interrelationships between accounting and motherhood. These include the emotions, transformations and constructions of identity of women accountants
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
It's just like somebody's turned on a light: an NVQ success story from the voluntary sector
No full textDispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Exploring the policy and research implications for the British National Health Service and its customers
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