Institutional Expectations Research Articles

Institutional influences on the supervision of GP trainees: a documentary analysis

ABSTRACT Introduction: The supervisory relationship is a key source of support for postgraduate GP trainees in the United Kingdom. This article focuses on the institutional influences on GP supervision through an analysis of training documentation. Methods: Training documents were identified through a search of key sources of institutional influence: General Medical Council, Royal College of General Practitioners, Health Education West Midlands and a local university’s supervisor-training material. Searches were run from September 2016 until February 2019, and 60 documents identified. Content analysis was undertaken, and documents were considered based on audience, context, language and purpose. Results: Institutional expectations regarding the functions of trainees and supervisors were identified, and supervisory relationships appeared entangled within the broader contexts of the training practice, wider profession and political events. Collation of evidence, quality assurance and patient safety were prominent messages within the documents. The institutional hierarchy was accentuated through these messages, and through processes for trainees to raise concerns. Moving down this hierarchy, messages from within the profession changed in emphasis and content. Conclusion: With patient safety paramount, and high-quality training and supervision expected, the hierarchical system outlined by the documents is perhaps unsurprising. However, unintended messages may result: collation of evidence may be prized above quality and trainees may feel unable to raise legitimate concerns. Furthermore, conflicting messages from different institutions illustrate the tensions and complexities of GP supervision. For trainees and supervisors, these inconsistencies could lead to different perspectives and expectations as they interact within the supervisory relationship.

Multilingual International Students at a Canadian University: Portraits of Agency

This paper draws on the theoretical concepts of individual agency and academic buoyancy to explore the ways in which three multilingual international students responded to and overcame the challenges they encountered while studying at a university in Canada. This investigation is situated within and against the discourses of deficit and disruption that have traditionally surrounded the accounts of international students who use English as an additional language (EAL) in institutions of higher education. Methodologically conceptualized through the lens of portraiture, which focuses on identifying goodness in participants, this paper presents the portraits of the three students with an attention to the physical and sociocultural contexts where the students were embedded. Individual semi-structured interviews and observations of the host institution were conducted in order to gain an in-depth understanding of the students’ experiences. Findings indicate that the students’ challenges were complex, found primarily in the linguistic, academic, and social dimensions, and originating from both structural and individual factors. Simultaneously, the students strategized and employed agency by seeking support in conventional and alternative ways and by refusing to conform to institutional expectations. This paper is concluded with a discussion about the importance of considering the context when examining multilingual international student agency.

‘It’s for others to judge’: what influences students’ construction of the ideal student?

ABSTRACT Recognising the changing landscape and financial costs, changes in the higher education sector continue to challenge the purpose and operations of universities, notably the shift towards student consumerism. Given this, what it means to be a student in contemporary higher education can evolve and would arguably have implications about the expectations of university students and staff for learning and teaching practice. To promote greater transparency of expectations, this paper develops the concept of the ideal student further with closer look into the spheres of influence that shape university students’ construction of the ideal student. We draw on 23 focus groups with 105 university students to explore the key factors that contribute to how the ideal student is developed and recognised. Our findings indicate that students’ construction of the ideal student is closely shaped by and rooted in their prior educational experiences, interaction with their peers and the curriculum, and perceptions of lecturers, institution and employer expectations. All these influences lead to a fluid and complex negotiation process as students navigate the meanings of being a university student. We conclude with practical implications for learning, teaching and curriculum development in higher education. The paper therefore provides a platform for key stakeholders to discuss different influencing factors as we support student transition and progression and manage their expectations of higher education.

Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the productivity of academics who mother.

The aim of the study is to document how academics who mother have reorganized work and childcare since the beginning of the coronavirus (COVID‐19) pandemic in the United States, how those shifts have affected their academic productivity, and solutions proposed by academics living these experiences. We collected data via an online survey and, subsequently, by conducting qualitative interviews with a subsample of participants. From June to August 2020, 131 female‐identified academics who mother were recruited via a Facebook group, Academic Mamas, and participated in our online survey. Twenty participants were then interviewed via phone or Zoom to explore more deeply the experiences of academics who mother. Results of our research suggest that since the start of the COVID‐19 pandemic, the pressure on academics who mother is immense. Analysis of the qualitative data revealed three major themes: (1) inability to meet institutional expectations; (2) juggling work and family life; and (3) proposed solutions. Our results suggest that significant efforts must be made by academic institutions to acknowledge and value the childcare responsibilities of academics who mother and to create solutions that fully address the challenges they face in meeting the academic expectations and requirements that largely remain unmodified despite the pandemic.

LBA: Online Learning-Based Assignment of Patients to Medical Professionals.

Central to any medical domain is the challenging patient to medical professional assignment task, aimed at getting the right patient to the right medical professional at the right time. This task is highly complex and involves partially conflicting objectives such as minimizing patient wait-time while providing maximal level of care. To tackle this challenge, medical institutions apply common scheduling heuristics to guide their decisions. These generic heuristics often do not align with the expectations of each specific medical institution. In this article, we propose a novel learning-based online optimization approach we term Learning-Based Assignment (LBA), which provides decision makers with a tailored, data-centered decision support algorithm that facilitates dynamic, institution-specific multi-variate decisions, without altering existing medical workflows. We adapt our generic approach to two medical settings: (1) the assignment of patients to caregivers in an emergency department; and (2) the assignment of medical scans to radiologists. In an extensive empirical evaluation, using real-world data and medical experts’ input from two distinctive medical domains, we show that our proposed approach provides a dynamic, robust and configurable data-driven solution which can significantly improve upon existing medical practices.

Refugeeness, Sexuality, and Gender: Spatialized Lived Experiences of Intersectionality by Queer Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Paris

In the last few years, asylum claims based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity (SOGI) have received increased attention within migration and queer studies. Mostly focusing on the refugee status determination process, these works have emphasized how the expectations of asylum institutions about “genuine queer refugees” lead to the exclusion of many applicants from SOGI asylum. This paper aims at shifting the analysis perspective from the legal categorization process to the impacts of everyday experienced categories of “asylum seekers” or “refugees” on queer migrants in the Parisian area. Using a three-year long ethnographic fieldwork, completed through interviews with queer asylum seekers and refugees, this paper investigates how refugeeness, understood as the objective and subjective effects of migration and asylum policies on individuals, contributes to shaping lived experiences of sexual and gender minorities in France. By drawing attention to the ways that the multiple power relationships queer asylum seekers and refugees have to face are spatially grounded, this paper discusses how an intersectional understanding of sexuality, gender, and refugeeness allows us to emphasize the role played by migration status in the negotiation of hetero- and cisnormativity. This paper also argues that far from remaining passive toward the categorization process they are subjected to, queer asylum seekers and refugees strategically appropriate the administrative categories with which they are associated. Such an analysis of lived experiences of queer asylum seekers and refugees in the country of arrival thus highlights the complex reshaping of social location caused by migration.

Unethical practices within medical research and publication \u2013 An exploratory study

The data produced by the scientific community impacts on academia, clinicians, and the general public; therefore, the scientific community and other regulatory bodies have been focussing on ethical codes of conduct. Despite the measures taken by several research councils, unethical research, publishing and/or reviewing behaviours still take place. This exploratory study considers some of the current unethical practices and the reasons behind them and explores the ways to discourage these within research and other professional disciplinary bodies. These interviews/discussions with PhD students, technicians, and academics/principal investigators (PIs) (N=110) were conducted mostly in European higher education institutions including UK, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Czech Republic and Netherlands.Through collegiate discussions, sharing experiences and by examining previously published/reported information, authors have identified several less reported behaviours. Some of these practices are mainly influenced either by the undue institutional expectations of research esteem or by changes in the journal review process. These malpractices can be divided in two categories relating to (a) methodological malpractices including data management, and (b) those that contravene publishing ethics. The former is mostly related to “committed bias”, by which the author selectively uses the data to suit their own hypothesis, methodological malpractice relates to selection of out-dated protocols that are not suited to the intended work. Although these are usually unintentional, incidences of intentional manipulations have been reported to authors of this study. For example, carrying out investigations without positive (or negative) controls; but including these from a previous study. Other methodological malpractices include unfair repetitions to gain statistical significance, or retrospective ethical approvals. In contrast, the publication related malpractices such as authorship malpractices, ethical clearance irregularities have also been reported. The findings also suggest a globalised approach with clear punitive measures for offenders is needed to tackle this problem.

A Sociocultural Perspective on English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) Teachers' Cognitions About Form-Focused Instruction.

There has been much research into teacher beliefs about teaching and learning as seen in the general teacher education literature. In the field of language teacher education, this line of research has been evolving, with the recent trend being streamlined into “teacher cognition” as a generic or umbrella term. Despite increasing amounts of research output so far, research into foreign language teachers’ cognitions about their own teaching and decision-making is still insufficient, particularly with regard to university-level English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teachers in China. Drawing on Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory, this qualitative research focused on EFL teachers’ cognitions about form-focused instruction in Chinese university settings. It intended to discover how teachers’ cognitions changed when they were expected to teach in actual classrooms and what factors contributed to these changes. Data collected from four teacher-participants through semi-structured interviews, classroom observations and follow-up stimulated recall interviews showed participants’ support for focus-on-form instruction, which means they not only paid attention to the grammatical form of the language but also to the meaning it is intended to convey. However, data also showed that the teacher-participants shifted from focus-on-form to focus-on-formS instruction in actual teaching, which suggests that they might have realized the challenges of carrying out teaching activities surrounding focus-on-form and would like to take an easier approach by only teaching the grammar of the language by focusing on formS. Such incongruences are interpreted with reference to a plethora of sociocultural factors including traditional Chinese thinking and institutional expectations. The implications of the findings for stakeholders in universities, including faculty members, students, and curriculum developers in similar contexts, are also discussed.

Crossing the border from candidate to supervisor: the need for appropriate development

ABSTRACT Postgraduate education has grown enormously worldwide, which has led to supervisors being expected to take on a supervisor's role immediately upon graduation. But crossing the border from being a doctoral candidate to becoming a doctoral supervisor entails significant shifts in identity and an understanding of postgraduate pedagogy and institutional expectations. This paper argues that supervision development opportunities are crucial, but they need to be contextualised and include critical key agents with some institutional authority if they are to be deemed worthwhile and effect change. An online survey completed by 186 participants from across institutional types and disciplines in South Africa is analysed using Archer's social realism to provide insights into how emerging supervisors are currently supported. The resultant recommendations on supervision development could contribute to more confident border crossing by emerging supervisors.

Brazil is my cousin, the U.S. has parks: Children’s construction of Brazil and the United States in a bilingual education program

Drawing from a 3-year ethnographic project in one elementary school in the United States, this article examines how a group of 43 first graders perceived and constructed Brazil and the U.S. during a drawing and writing activity in their bilingual (Portuguese-English) classroom. The majority of the participating children (81.4%) either migrated from Brazil to the U.S. or were born in the U.S. of Brazilian parents. Data analysis reveals that Brazil was frequently portrayed as an idyllic landscape that included several relatives and friends and a range of activities with loved ones, while the U.S. involved immediate family members, material goods, and places for leisure. Grounded in a relational understanding of place and placemaking, we argue that the children engaged in a range of place-based moves to construct Brazil and the United States during the activity. These acts of placemaking included evocations of transnational memories, ongoing activities and aspirations, social relationships, and local institutional expectations, particularly the school curriculum and teachers’ discourse about Brazil. The findings suggest that immigrant children’s construction of place is multifaceted, dynamic, and situated.

Factors fostering and hindering research collaboration with doctoral students among academics in Hong Kong

This study explored factors that influence academics to collaborate in research with their doctoral students. It focused on Hong Kong academics, using data from the Academic Profession in Knowledge Society survey conducted in 2017–2018. The study found that academics’ research collaboration with doctoral students is influenced by several factors, including research and teaching styles and institutional conditions. Specifically, those academics whose research agendas were characterised by discovery and collaboration were more likely to report working with their doctoral students, whereas those whose research agendas focused more on convergence were less likely to do so. The more legislative the academics’ teaching style was, the less they collaborated with their doctoral students. Independence in research and institutional expectations of external funding increased the propensity to collaborate with doctoral students. Academics in the humanities were found to collaborate less with their doctoral students than those in other disciplines. The study suggests that the scholarly preference and styles of the academics, as well as their disciplinary and institutional backgrounds, need to be considered to improve research collaboration between academics and their doctoral students.

‘Gallagher’ and ‘Iba’ hard red winter wheat: Half‐sibs inseparable by yield gain, separable by producer preference

AbstractCornerstone cultivars earn their status as much by their genetic fortitude and successive progeny as by their own visibility. ‘Duster’ hard red winter (HRW) wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) established a foundation of yield potential, pest resistance, and baking quality on which two half‐sib progenies named ‘Gallagher’ (Reg. no. CV‐1177, PI 667569) and ‘Iba’ (Reg. no. CV‐1178, PI 667570) were released by the Oklahoma Agricultural Experiment Station in 2012 and subsequently assumed significant commercial hectares in the U.S. southern plains. Our objectives were to characterize and compare Gallagher and Iba with their parent Duster for a wide array of agronomic, end‐use quality, and wheat sensitivity traits. Bulked descendants of sister F4:5 lines, Gallagher and Iba were tested as experimental lines OK07214 and OK07209, respectively. In one breeding cycle, they showed an 8% yield gain in grain‐only environments, with 10–17% increases in kernel weight, divergent wheat protein responses, unidirectional responses in total fructan content, and wide bidirectional responses in flour levels of immunotoxic gluten epitopes. Both cultivars remain excellent sources of yield potential and functionality, yet their ultimate adoption histories did not align with institutional expectations at the time of release. This retrospective analysis provides a non‐abstract reminder worthwhile for any agent of wheat improvement: wheat producers may exercise cultivar choice on seemingly modest characteristics but with yield‐equivalent precedence.

Reflections on Practitioner Research: A Practical Guide for Information Professionals. Lee Ann Fullington, Brandon K. West, and Frans Albarillo, eds. Chicago, IL: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2020. 290p. Paper, $78 (ISBN 978-0-8389-4847-7).

In Reflections of Practitioner Research: A Practical Guide for Information Professionals , the authors acknowledge that conducting research is often at odds with the service orientation of the library and information science field. Not every library professional who conducts research has had formal training in conducting and publishing research, and so this book aims to serve the practitioner-researcher who is doing this research while working in a public service, whether that work is paid or voluntary, informal or formal. It is refreshing to see this book immediately widen the scope of who is considered a researcher: everyone working in a library setting regardless of type or experience who is pursuing a project can add that title to their list of professional identities. As the editors say in their introduction, the book “celebrates and tries to draw insights from the messiness of applying research methods” (x) in the face of all the limitations that library professionals experience, including juggling responsibilities, time, and institutional expectations. The chapters are written by a blend of novice and experienced practitioner-researchers from many different types of libraries who were encouraged to write in a first-person perspective “to promote the feeling of having a conversation with a colleague.” (xi) The book is thematically organized into three sections that are not designed to be read in a linear progression but rather allow the reader to freely navigate throughout to find guidance relevant for their own research journey. Every chapter describes a research project or technique from start to finish, often describing setbacks or barriers and how the author found a solution. Each chapter ends with a reflection section where the author/s acknowledge/s how the process went, providing recommendations for fellow practitioner-researchers who may be pursuing a similar project or method.

Ten Tips for Pharmacy Faculty Members for Successfully Navigating Promotion and Tenure

This paper presents 10 key tips or recommendations for successful navigation of the promotion and tenure process. The 10 key tips are: know institutional expectations, develop an action plan at least two to three years in advance; identify your balance of teaching, scholarship, service; synergize activities and develop a niche; prioritize time to activities of high-impact to promotion and tenure; track achievements in the format expected for promotion and tenure application; seek out faculty guidance on promotion and tenure; meet with mentor(s) regularly to review progress; have a well-written personal statement; and have your final dossier reviewed by colleagues. Faculty members are more likely to be successful through timely and appropriate planning, balancing and synergizing activities, tracking activities and achievements, developing a well-written personal statement, and requesting help from experienced colleagues.

Politically Active Firms and Innovation Decisions: A Legitimacy Based View

Corporate political activities (CPA) of a firm have long been viewed as a means of gaining legitimacy which help the firm to access to unique and vital resources. Although researchers have thus far widely examined the antecedents and the outcomes of CPA, top management teams (TMT) are less attention by CPA scholarship, not to mention the behavioral side of managerial perception is also relevant to their tendency to invest accessible resources on innovation. This paper aims to explore the innovation effect of CPA-active firms in their legitimacy-building process as a strategic response to institutional expectation. We attempt to make inquiries into why do CPA-active firms which are embedded agents, choose to innovate themselves and develop propositions upon if managerial perception affects the ways they bear the risk of innovation. Building upon the institutional theory and prospect theory, this paper suggests that firms with higher levels of CPA generate better innovation performance through their unique acquire rare and valuable resources, and are more aware, open and motivated to satisfy the institutional expectations. Further, we also propose that top management team factors will moderate the relationship between CPA and innovation. In the face of a sure-loss context, the top management team increases the propensity of risk-taking, which enhances the innovation effect of CPA intensity. Meanwhile, when the top management team is faced with a sure-gain context, it reduces the managerial propensity for risk-taking, which negatively moderates the innovation effect of CPA intensity. The study contributes to the corporate political activities literature and strategy research by bridging non-market strategy and market-favored outcomes and integrating institutional perspective and the behavioral logic for a more complete view of firm innovativeness than either theory alone.

Normative Expectations in Epistemology

There are all sorts of normative expectations in epistemology—expectations about the epistemic condition of other subjects—that would appear to be relevant to epistemic assessment in ways that do not conform to epistemic standards as traditionally understood. The expectations in question include expectations of inquiries pursued or completed, expectations of certain competences, professional expectations, expectations of having consulted with experts, institutional expectations, moral expectations, expectations of friends, and so forth. My goals in this paper are two. First, I aim to highlight the prevalence of such expectations, and the range of distinct types of circumstance in which they arise. Second, I assess several responses to the allegation that normative epistemic expectations are relevant to epistemic assessment. These range from “explaining away” the appearances to trying to offer one or another positive account of their significance. The former sort of reaction comes at a greater cost than many appear to appreciate, given the prevalence of these expectations and the range of circumstances in which they arise. The latter sort of reaction comes at the cost of having to revise our account of epistemic assessment itself. My own favored view does so in terms of the doctrine of normative defeat; I present my reasons for preferring this view, though I cannot claim in this paper to vindicate it.

Student Expectations on Service Quality as a Determinant of Service Planning and Marketing for Higher Education Institutions in Tanzania

This paper examines the university students' expectations of higher education institution (HEI) service quality (SQ) as a determinant of service planning and marketing of institutions. The paper embraces three models of customer-provider relationships to examine the possibility of satisfying students' expectations on SQ to market HEIs to prospective students. These models encompass the relationship marketing (RM) model, Tinto's students integration theory, and Parasuraman et al.'s conceptual model of service quality (SERVQUAL). The study used students' demographic characteristics to examine their expectations about SQ in HEIs and the likelihood to attract other students to do the same for marketing strategy. Multiple linear regressions were used to assess the influence of demographic characteristics on students' expectations about SQ. Students' years of study and the degree programs had statistical significance on SQ. The overall service quality (OSQ) was a determinant of students' likelihood to entice colleagues to the same programme.

Interculturality in Interfaith Dialogue

The study of interfaith dialogues stands to gain from a discourse analysis approach towards interculturality, given how, as a concept, interculturality emphasises non-essentialist identities and cultures in deep inter-subjective engagement. Such an approach allows researchers to examine interfaith dialogues as activities where the melding and blending of identity and cultural resources are actions directed towards various accomplishments, constrained by the institutional expectations of how dialogues are done. This article proposes using an analytic tool which draws upon 'membership categorisation devices' (from ethnomethodology) as specific 'mental space' conceptual packages (from cognitive linguistics), and takes a more telescopic view of how as conceptual packages, these devices interact in 'mental space conceptual integration' or 'conceptual blends' (from cognitive linguistics). One excerpt of a short conversation between a facilitator of an interfaith seminar and a Muslim Imam (religious teacher) is analysed in-depth.

Lessons Learnt: Reflections on the ‘Insider-Outsider Divide’ in Working With Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students in a Participatory Action Research Project

This paper explores the challenges and possibilities in research that involves students from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) backgrounds, a group that tends to be overlooked in university settings and in the literature. We present a reflexive account of our experiences as researchers in a Participatory Action Research (PAR) study that explored the needs of CALD students from an enabling (access) program in a regional Australian university. PAR was chosen as a research method out of our desire to give these students a voice and to help break down any potential barriers because of our positioning as researchers. We draw on the concept of ‘researcher as insider-outsider’ (Merriam, 2016) to highlight these aspects in our analysis of the research process.Some of our democratic objectives were achieved, but we also found there were limitations. Our position as Caucasian, Australian-born English speakers meant that we remained ‘outsiders’ to the CALD experience in fundamental ways. Further, our ‘insider’ status as researchers and lecturers was difficult to ignore, and institutional expectations created additional barriers. Some aspects of our data collection had unintended negative consequences, thus necessitating a change of course. On the plus side, however, consulting with students at each stage of the research helped to create more equal, trusting relationships and fostered empathetic understandings. The continual cycle of reflection and action assisted in ensuring we were responsive to the needs of participants. Although there are no guarantees, our experiences suggest that collaborative methods can assist in blurring the researcher-researched divide and give vulnerable communities greater agency in research. Despite the complexities and risks, exploring the needs of CALD students remains a worthwhile research endeavour. Any attempts to achieve equitable outcomes should highlight the capacity and potential of these students and not just their vulnerabilities.

Student and staff expectations and experiences of a UK–China Transnational Education collaboration

PurposeThis study reports the results of a survey of teaching staff in the UK and China and two cohorts of Chinese students. We explored perceptions of a Transnational Education (TNE) course taught by UK teachers at a Chinese university to ascertain similarities and differences in perceptions and to help inform future TNE design and provision.Design/methodology/approachTeachers in the UK (N = 10) and Chinese University (N = 20) and two cohorts of Chinese students (N = 102) completed questionnaires about their perceptions of the collaboration, including why they thought the university had developed the course and the benefits and risks of the course. They were also asked why they personally or why they thought the students had enrolled in the course. Questions were a mix of forced choice and open response formats.FindingsPrior to the course commencing, differences were identified between UK and Chinese teachers in their perception of the risks and benefits of the course and the challenges students might face. Differences were also seen in teachers' and students' views about why students enrolled and their expectations about the course. The TNE is no longer running and many of the reasons for this were identified by our participants before the course had begun.Originality/valueThis suggests the importance of engaging with various stakeholders in the setup of TNE to ensure a close match between staff, student and institutional expectations of the course. This is likely to increase the likelihood of success of such programmes.