Profession In England Research Articles

History of the regulation of the medical profession in Britain

History of the regulation of the medical profession in Britain

The occupational roles of nurses and midwives in the UK: an analysis of the Nursing and Midwifery Council-census England and Wales 2021 data linkage study

ObjectiveThe nursing and midwifery professions are facing challenges to recruitment and retention. Understanding the occupational choices of people registered as nurses and midwives can inform policy as to the potential of initiatives to encourage registrants back to practice. This study thus aims to ascertain the occupational roles taken by nurses and midwives in the UK in 2021 and the drivers behind choosing to work outside of direct clinical practice. ApproachThe Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) register contains information on everyone meeting required standards to practice in those professions in England and Wales (currently around 800 thousand people). Registrants must not only complete a course of study for registration but must revalidated every three years. The register has been linked to the 2021 census for England and Wales. The census includes questions ascertaining occupation. Information provided is categorised to provide indication of individuals’ main occupation. These include codes for nursing and for midwifery which provides indication not only to occupation but also to engagement in clinical practice. Analysis uses logistic regression to ascertain how socio-demographics influence engagement in clinical practice or otherwise. Conclusions and ImplicationsData linkage for this study is now completed with the conference being the first time results will be shared. This will be the first time there has been concrete evidence as to nurses and midwives actual occupational roles. A stakeholder group supporting this work includes individuals from Chief Nurses’ Offices to enable findings to feed into policy.

Representativeness and diversity within the teaching profession in England, 2010–2020

The focus of this paper is the ethnic representativeness of the teaching profession in England. The novel methodology does more than simply count how many ethnicities exist, but also takes into account the relative size of the different ethnicities and tracks changes in the diversity of the teaching workforce compared to that of the general population over the ten years between the 2011 and 2021 census. It finds that while the teaching profession is getting more diverse, it is becoming less representative of the general population, which is increasing in diversity more rapidly. The paper’s methodology shows the way forward for policy-makers and similar analyses in Developing and Global South economies where the collection of relevant data is less established.

The Art of Speech: Elocution, Speech Training, Speech Therapy, and the Performative Limits of Class in Mid-twentieth-century Britain.

This article argues that elocution, speech training, and speech therapy-three professions concerned with the voice-were intimately bound up with a shifting politics of class in early- and mid-twentieth-century Britain. The last two, in particular, attempted to stake new claims in the changed landscape of the post-1945 welfare state. Proponents of speech training distinguished themselves from elocutionists and saw their role to improve children's speech, but they performatively disavowed class as an organizing category within it. This was paralleled by speech therapy, which emerged as a formal profession in Britain in 1945 through the unification of two separate (and often rival) halves of the profession under a single regulatory college, and which found itself having to justify where its pathologizing of vocal production ended and elocution's focus on the aesthetics of accent began. I argue that these disavowals provide a useful framework through which to read class dynamics and consider the performative dimensions of class identities at this time. Mobilising select writers and speech experts-who straddled the boundaries of elocution, speech training, and speech therapy-this article shows how a variety of different categories, from gender to geography, were employed as proxies to allow for the problematization of dialect but not accent and to efface 'class'.

New roles deployment in England: Fitting it all together

In the context of the large-scale introduction and development of new roles within the psychological professions which are first outlined, this article explores a number of emerging frameworks which may be useful in meaningfully aligning these new roles with each other, with the wider family of psychological professions, and with other professional groups commonly employed in the NHS. The role of frameworks that enable clear comparison of shared and distinctive features of roles and highlight inter-dependencies will be explored in the context of their potential to reduce confusion, support career pathways and maximise the impact that psychological professions can have within the NHS and beyond. This article will also seek to explore how psychologists can help to support the ongoing development, implementation and wider understanding of these new roles within the extended family of Psychological Professions in England.

Managing Uncertainty and Risk in Access to the Solicitors’ Profession in England: Classed Pathways?

Despite decades of diversity and widening participation initiatives, access to elite professions for those from lower socio-economic backgrounds remains a troublingly persistent issue. Degree apprenticeships present an alternative to the traditional university pathway and an opportunity to increase social mobility into professional occupations. Yet, uptake of this pathway has so far been from more advantaged individuals. This article explores the dispositions of key stakeholders towards alternative pathways. It asks whether professional apprenticeships are perceived as legitimate and, if not, what are the likely consequences? Using the solicitors’ profession in England as a pertinent case, interviews with 23 participants on the degree apprenticeship and university pathways were asked about their social and educational backgrounds, exploring the influences on their career and pathway decision making. The analysis demonstrates differing perceptions of risk and legitimacy among those from different social and educational backgrounds, with implications for equity, inequality and social mobility.

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan’s Multifarious Activities in England

Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, the British Empire surpassed all the earlier empires in territorial size, during this time period British Empire earned the illustrious title ‘the Empire which never sees a sunset’. From 1858 to 1947, known as the British Crown Raj, the entire territory encompassing India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh was under the direct rule of Britain by the Parliament working on behalf of the British Crown. During this era, a substantial number of Indians - largely professionals - went to Britain. Indian students won scholarships for pursuing higher education and vital professional qualification in the UK, subsequently entering into the established system of colonial hierarchy upon their return to India. Political activists being qualified stayed on to practice their professions in England. Businessmen went to seek economic opportunities. In such an environment, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan decided to visit Britian. As a philosopher, activist, historiographer, thinker and educationist, he was interested in exploring and observing Britain and its culture. He was the first Muslim who intended to visit Britain just to boost up the Muslim community and indeed, his visit made history. The purpose of this article is to narrate Syed Ahmad’s social, political and literary engagements during his stay in England.

Reshaped teachers’ careers? New patterns and the fragmentation of the teaching profession in England

In this paper, we examine how evolutions related to the fragmentation of labour markets, the flexibilisation of work and employment conditions, and the multiplication of teacher training models and teachers’ roles in schools, are contributing to reshaping teachers’ careers. Drawing on interviews with teachers and senior leaders from 8 schools in London, our analyses highlight six career patterns and their embeddedness in the changing institutional environment of labour markets for teachers. Our results help renew the dialogue between research on teachers’ professional lives and on teachers’ labour markets. They have wider implications for knowledge on the fragmentation of the teaching profession, beyond the London case.

Doing diversity in the legal profession in England and Wales: why do disabled people continue to be unexpected?

AbstractA call for socio‐legal scholars to interrogate the relationship between law, disablement, ableism, and justice was recently made in this journal. Using research co‐produced with disabled people in the legal profession in England and Wales, this article responds by asking why, in a profession that has made a significant investment in widening access and diversity, do disabled people continue to be unexpected? The apparent absence of disabled people in the profession belies a complex reality. Identity concealment is widespread and maintained by genuine fears of career disadvantage. The effect of this is that disabled legal professionals are unable to access their legal rights to reasonable adjustments. Findings suggesting that status, success, and economic power offer little protection from ill treatment exposes the contradictory position that disabled people occupy in a profession that has increasingly favoured ‘business case’ over social justice diversity discourses.

The pursuit of organisational authenticity in the chartered accountancy profession in Great Britain

In contrast to the conventional focus on recruits and members, this paper examines identity construction in professional organisations. It explores authenticity work – identification activity directed at external audiences to assert distinctiveness. The focus is on commemorative celebrations of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS) and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) during the twentieth century. Evidence from archival and published documents demonstrates that the chartered bodies in Britain were anxious to assert their uniqueness in an increasingly congested professional field. The analysis shows that ICAS made authenticity claims based on its unique position as the first accountancy body in the modern world and emphasised its status as the originator of the institutions of the accountancy profession. The ICAEW, by contrast, initially stressed its alignment to progress and modernity and later emphasised its standing as the leading professional body located at the centre of economic and political power. It is suggested that comprehending the authenticity claims of these organisations is potentially significant to understanding the fragmentation of the chartered accountancy profession in Britain.

Antilocution and trust in the workplace: Perceptions of higher education trained police recruits in England and Wales

Abstract This study seeks to examine the relationship between antilocution and trust in the workplace by reflecting on the perceptions of police officers who are undertaking the new Higher Education (HE) pathway into the policing profession in England and Wales. This relationship is considered through Allport (1979). ‘The Nature of Prejudice. New York, NY: Perseus’ concept of antilocution and the lens of trust in the workplace, to understand how new police students think they are regarded by their policing colleagues and its impact on practice. Utilizing a survey of police students from five different forces in England and Wales, indicative results suggest that, whilst broadly supportive of new police officers, there may be some division regarding their education and training pathway through higher education, engendering levels of prejudice and bias towards the new recruits. Police student responses indicate that many of them feel that more is expected of them and that they are under closer supervision because they have undertaken the Higher Education route. Arguably, this prejudice and bias have an adverse effect on trust within the workplace, a concept which is front and centre of policing which ultimately can have a negative impact on public safety and security. The results of this study indicate that the interaction between new recruits (out-group) and established colleagues (in-group) is complex and not straightforward, and suggested implications for police practice are presented.

Review: Contested Heritage: Relations between Contemporary Pagan Groups and the Archaeological and Heritage Professions in Britain in the Early 21st Century, by Will Rathouse

For most modern Pagans, the religions of pre-Christian Europe are regarded as ancestral and thus of key spiritual importance. As a result, many Pagans have expressed great interest in the archaeological evidence for these past societies as well as the ways in which this evidence is interpreted, displayed, and managed. In various cases, this has resulted in conflict between archaeologists and heritage managers on the one hand, and modern Pagans and members of allied subcultures on the other.Over the past twenty years, quite a bit of work on the relationship between these two interest groups (at least in Britain) has been published, most importantly Jenny Blain and Robert Wallis’ 2007 book on paganism and archeology, Sacred Sites, Contested Rites/Rights. In the latest contribution to this growing body of literature, Will Rathouse provides a summary of some of the core areas of contention, especially over public access to sites like Stonehenge, the excavation of significant prehistoric discoveries, such as Seahenge, and the retention and display of pre-Christian human remains. Restricting his focus to England and Wales, he looks in particular at the views of modern Pagan Druids. Drawing on his own experience as both an archaeologist and a practicing Pagan, Rathouse also offers his thoughts regarding how a more productive relationship can be cultivated between different interest groups, stressing the importance of “continuous engagement and respectful discourse between all interested parties” (128).Contested Heritage derives from Rathouse’s Ph.D. dissertation completed at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David in 2015, and its origins as a thesis feel apparent in the structure and style of the book. Although Rathouse engaged in ethnographic work as part of his project, he draws little upon it in this monograph, which instead focuses largely on summarizing and synthesizing pre-existing literature, both primary and secondary. In many areas, Contested Heritage covers ground already explored in Blain and Wallis’ book, although Rathouse also includes discussion of certain issues they did not, such as the Crossbones Graveyard in South London. The book contains nearly forty color images, although some have been reproduced poorly. Various spelling and grammar errors indicate the need for a more thorough copyedit by the publisher.Contested Heritage is primarily aimed at those working in archaeology or the heritage sector, as opposed to scholars of modern Paganism or new religious movements. Indeed, scholars of religion may be frustrated that it makes only limited use of the academic literature on modern Paganism. At no point does it cite anything from The Pomegranate, the only peer-reviewed journal devoted to the study of modern Pagan religions, for instance, and there are a range of studies of modern Pagan interactions with British archaeology that are similarly not cited. This is a drawback, although those scholars with a particular interest in modern Pagan relationships with archaeology and heritage may still find the book of interest.

Book Review: The Music Profession in Britain, 1780–1920: New Perspectives on Status and Identity

Book Review: The Music Profession in Britain, 1780–1920: New Perspectives on Status and Identity

The rise of the civil engineering profession in Britain

In this paper, based on his James Sutherland History Lecture delivered to the Institution of Structural Engineers in 2020, Steven Brindle provides a brief history of civil engineering in Britain, charting its development from hydraulic projects and early attempts to apply intellect to structural design in the 17th century, through a great commercially driven boom in the Georgian era, to the foundations of the modern profession in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Rutland Revisited

This paper explores the multiple and multifaceted relationships between the legal academy and the legal profession in England and Wales. It does so by mirroring the approach of William Twining in his ‘Visit to Rutland’ in Blackstone’s Tower. In drawing on hypothetical happenings in two fictitious law schools and a fictitious law firm, the paper offers commentary on the many points of contact between lawyers and scholars. What is made clear is that these interfaces are often ad hoc and that the legal academy acts as if it needs the profession more than the profession needs it. This may well be the case. What we see then is the modern-day Blackstone’s Tower in the shadow of Cravath’s mansion.
 Keywords: legal profession; legal education; Qualifying Law Degree; Solicitors Qualifying Examination; ‘core’ subjects; diversity; Blackstone’s Tower.

LIBERALISATION AND THE LEGAL PROFESSION IN ENGLAND AND WALES

AbstractThis article explores the process and impact of liberalisation on the legal profession in England and Wales. Liberalisation brings a tendency to consider the profession in market-focused terms, with the professional–client relationship reconfigured in overtly economic fashion as constituting the interaction of supply and demand. The article examines the past and present structure of the profession, arguments for liberalisation and manifestations of liberalisation efforts. Having identified the distinctive dynamics of supply and demand within legal services markets, the article considers the potential implications, both immediate and in broader societal terms, of reconceptualising the legal profession in this manner.

Understanding Teacher Identity as an International Teacher: An Autoethnographic Approach to (Developing) Reflective Practice

The teaching profession in England and Wales has been experiencing a steady decline in its workforce, with a significant number of teachers making the decision to move abroad and teach in international schools. Teachers cite working conditions, institutional pressures and pay and conditions at home as reasons to seek employment elsewhere. Meanwhile, exploring teachers’ experiences of teaching abroad is a relatively new area of research. The growth of international schools from 1964, when there were only around 50 such schools, to 2017, with over 8,000 international schools and some 420,000 teachers, indicates a need to understand teachers’ personal and professional experiences as they navigate these different contexts. This research presents a small case study of how autoethnography can be used as a methodological tool to support international teachers in revealing changes in their teacher identity, as well as promoting the development of their sense of self-efficacy within different sociocultural school contexts. Through Julia Sahling’s autoethnographic study, this paper explores how teachers may be able to actively engage in critical reflective practice in order better to understand these dynamic transitions, as well as the implications of teaching in multiple international contexts.

“Trusted to the ends of the earth?” An analysis of solicitors’ disciplinary processes in England and Wales from 1994 to 2015

ABSTRACT This study deals with misconduct cases involving solicitors, the largest legal profession in England and Wales. It covers a 20 year period and focuses in detail on three points during that period: 1994–1996, 2008 and 2015. These points cover different stages during the evolution of the regulatory system from what was arguably the height of legal professionalism to the post-professional system initiated by the revolutionary Legal Services Act 2007. Drawing on detailed studies of disciplinary cases we examine the relationship between professional demography and modes of regulation in determining the outcomes of regulation.

The role of neurasthenia in the formation of the physiotherapy profession

ABSTRACT Background: Neurasthenia was one of the most commonly diagnosed disorders in the later years of the 19th century. Its most widely used treatment, known as the Rest Cure, relied heavily on physical therapies, but little is known about the practitioners who administered the treatment. In this paper, I argue that the nurse-masseuses who delivered the massage and electricity so vital to the success of the Rest Cure, used the opportunity to develop approaches to treatment that would form the backbone of the physiotherapy profession in England after 1894. Methods: Extensive primary and secondary texts were drawn from a wide range of sources and critically reviewed. Findings: This study argues that the management of neurasthenic cases in the 1880s and 90s created the conditions necessary for the development of the profession’s relationship with medicine and the establishment of new practice roles for women, and that these would play an important role in shaping the physiotherapy profession in Britain after 1894. Read through the critical sociological writings of Magali Sarfatti Larson and Anne Witz, I argue that the work of the nurse-masseuses can be seen as a complex gendered negotiation between the need to be deferential to the dominant male medical profession; distinct from emerging notions of the angelic, motherly nurse; obedient, technically competent and safe. The creation of a space in the clinic room for a third practitioner who could deliver a different form of care to the doctor or the nurse, established an approach to practice that physiotherapists would later adopt almost without amendment. Discussion: I argue that this approach owes much to the work done by nurse-massueses who established and tested its principles in treating cases of neurasthenia.

Dismantling the Blueprint: Buurtzorg in English child protection social work

ABSTRACT November 2019 saw the release of A Blueprint for Children's Social Care (hereafter the Blueprint) in England. The Blueprint proposes introducing the Buurtzorg model of community nursing into the child protection social work in England, and received widespread interest and publicity. Buurtzorg is a Dutch community nursing agency that is based on a specific model of small self-managing and non-hierarchal teams. The authors of the Blueprint suggest that rapid and large-scale introduction of Buurtzorg into child protection social work would overcome many of the longstanding issues facing the profession in England. However, there are serious limitations to the suggestions outlined in the Blueprint and the Buurtzorg model does not translate well to child protection social work in England. Drawing on the work of Mark Fisher, this article examines the Blueprint under three core themes: consent and consensus, links with other neoliberal projects and failing forward. Ultimately, it is shown that the Blueprint can be considered part of a wider project of implementing neoliberal policies and market solutions to children's social care in England, a process that is increasingly being led by large, profit-driven global consultancy firms.