Carol Linehan

Positioning in Practice: Understanding Participation in the Social World

In this paper we explore the possibilities of building on the complementarities of practice and discourse, specifically community of practice and discursive positioning, as a way of developing accounts of the childs experience in the classroom. Our accounts are based on interpreting extracts of classroom practice which are drawn from a broader project concerned with describing participation in schooling. Our aim is. to develop conceptual resources for understanding particular moments of interaction in a social setting.

Reviewing the "Community of Practice" Metaphor: An Analysis of Control Relations in a Primary School Classroom

Treating classroom learning as a community process of transforming participation in social practices has provided a useful corrective to predominantly abstract, mentalistic conceptualizations of learning. For example, Laves community of practice and Rogoffs community of learners emphasize the ways in which learning is deeply situated in a persons becoming part of a community through participation in socially organized activities or practices. Although highly suggestive, both practically and conceptually, a review of the community metaphor and its development in theories such as Laves and Rogoffs is necessary. In current use the metaphor pays insufficient attention to the complex and often messy relations between individuals and between individuals and communities, which contribute to shaping the very social practices in which learning is situated in these models. Further development of community models of classroom learning requires a clearer conceptualization of these relations, if individual and community are not to be reified and rendered useless in a relational account of learning. We develop this argument with reference to an analysis of control relations in a primary school classroom. Our reading of extracts from interactions in this classroom highlights shifting relations of responsibility and control in the classroom and the negotiated nature of participation in particular practices.

Females and Precarious Board Positions: Further Evidence of the Glass Cliff

The ‘glass cliff’ posits that when women achieve high profile roles, these are at firms in precarious positions. Previous research analysed appointments (male/female), estimated the precariousness of firms involved and drew inferences about the glass cliff. This study is different as it directly tests the relationship between a precarious situation and changes in board gender diversity. The sample is companies listed on the UK stock exchange reporting an initial loss in the years 2004–2006. A matched control sample is used in a difference‐in‐differences analysis to avoid inadvertently attributing improvements arising from societal/regulatory changes in gender diversity to the loss event. Findings suggest that when the loss is ‘big’ there is a difference in the increase in gender diversity versus both the control and the ‘small’ loss subsamples, i.e. compelling evidence of the glass cliff. In the context of ongoing political and social debates about women on boards our work (i) identifies continuing structural barriers for women ascending to board level in that women are more likely to be over‐represented on boards of companies that are more precarious and (ii) sounds a note of caution about celebrating increased gender diversity on boards without considering the precariousness of the company involved.

The internet and offending behaviour: A case study

Abstract Summary: The COPINE Project at the Department of Applied Psychology, seeks to address childrens vulnerability in relation to the Internet and child pornography. As part of the project, offenders convicted of downloading such images have been interviewed. This paper considers existing models of offender behaviour alongside literature relating to Internet use. A single case study is used to illustrate a process-focused model of offending, using interview material to demonstrate how the offender represented and accounted for his behaviour. The offender in question had no history of engaging in sexual behaviour with actual children, but his case illustrated many of the stages described by offenders in their involvement with pornography, including: setting events, engagement, collecting behaviour, and the emergence of relationships.

Naming the parts: a case-study of a gender equality initiative with academic women

Purpose – This paper aims to seek to contribute to current debates about the effectiveness of different types of gender equality interventions in the academic context. This paper presents an argument for the need to move beyond an individual-structural dichotomy in how such interventions are perceived. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on an action-research case-study, the Through the Glass Ceiling project, to challenge the idea that “individual”/single-actor interventions serve only to reinforce underlying inequalities by attempting to “fix the women”. Findings – It is suggested that actions that support women in their careers have the potential to achieve a degree of transformation at individual, cultural and structural levels when such actions are designed with an understanding of how individuals embody the gendered and gendering social structures and values that are constantly being produced and reproduced within society and academia. The case study highlights the benefits of supporting in...

The last taboo?: surfacing and supporting Emotional Labour in HR work

Abstract The emotional challenges Human Resource Professionals (HRPs) face, and the work they do in managing emotion in day to day HR practice, have largely gone unacknowledged and unsupported and yet is arguably HR’s most value-added activity. Through in-depth interviews and diary study, we uncover the emotion handling aspect of HR work. Specifically we explore Emotional Labour (EL) which, despite its centrality to HR work, remains under-researched in the HR context. By asking our participants to recount and reflect on emotive interactions, we examine HRPs’ use of EL in their relational work; how they come to learn the emotion display rules of their role; the strategies they use to cope with such emotional demands and the factors that help/hinder this process. Our contribution is to ‘surface’ emotion in HR work and identify how organisations can prepare HRPs for, and support them in, their emotion handling efforts.

When is a bed not a bed? Exploring the interplay of the material and virtual in negotiating home-work boundaries

ABSTRACT Working from home is often associated with possibilities of anytime-anyplace working and with a fusion of work and home. In this empirical paper, we explore how the sociomaterial contexts of home-working define and tether what is possible for home-workers in their negotiations with others. Drawing on qualitative data sets, Wengerian concepts are used by exploring the role of boundary objects and brokering in negotiating temporal and spatial boundaries around and across work and home. The home-workers’ bodies are shown to be the key boundary objects, through which technology objects and furniture objects are sometimes fused. Yet, such fusion is shown to be only temporary, always precariously situated and also mediated by identity-regulating norms and values of home-workers. The contribution of the paper is to highlight the limits of what is technologically possible by emphasising the role of the body and material objects in the home-working context.

Deriving Information Requirement in the Design of a Mathematics Workstation for Visually Impaired Students

Mathematics presents particular access problems for students who are visually impaired. Although multi-media, computer technologies provide opportunities for creative solutions, a lack of empirical analyses of people who are visually impaired doing mathematics remains an obstacle for designers. We demonstrate the use of task analysis, and particularly the ‘Wizard of Oz’ technique, for eliciting user requirements in this context. The analysis highlights requirements relevant to the units of information used, the strategies employed for gaining and manipulating information, initiative in the interaction, and memory constraints when doing mathematics.