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The notion of borderlands implies a boundary demarcating a crossing to/from an unfamiliar territory. It is a productive metaphor for dual-status academics -- those employed in academic roles in universities who concurrently undertake doctoral studies. We argue that dual-status academics dwell in an extended form of boundary crossing, potentially to-ing and fro-ing several times a day, inducing unforeseen impacts on identities. Having previously reported the structures that frame this boundary crossing, here we re-analyse an existing data set for the visceral: the stories of code-switching, of peripheral existence and of agentic purpose. Our data indicate that dual-status academics adopt a transactional approach to doctoral supervision that results in a 'fight or flight' response to the emotional and relationship challenges these borderlands present, with implications for how academics manage colleague supervision, both as supervisor and supervisee. Our study leads us to recommend tailored institutional and supervisory support pedagogies for these academics.

Neurodiversity is an umbrella term, including dyspraxia, dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyscalculia, autistic spectrum and Tourette syndrome. The increasing number of students with learning difficulties associated with neurodiversity entering higher education (HE) poses a shared and growing challenge internationally for teachers and institutional leaders. This narrative synthesis draws together a corpus of international literature on how neurodiverse students experience higher education and the ways in which higher education institutions respond to the cluster of neurodiverse conditions. A systematic review was carried out to search, retrieve, appraise and synthesize the available evidence to provide an original contribution to the literature and significant insights of worth to higher education internationally. An inclusive approach to data extraction was used to ensure that all the relevant studies were included. All stages of the review process, including the initial search, screening, sample selection and analysis, are described. Three main themes and 11 subthemes were identified. Although the majority of publications focus on either dyslexia, autistic spectrum disorder, or ADHD, some common themes are evident in student experience across learning difficulties associated with neurodiversity. Although support services and technologies are available to meet students' specific needs, there is an apparent dislocation between the two. Fear of stigmatization and labelling worsens the divide between what is needed and what is available to ensure neurodiverse students' success in higher education, where good intentions are evidently not enough.

Touch is an integral part of human life. Consequently, touching and being touched are also fundamental to healthcare practice. Despite a significant literature on touch, it is rarely conceptualized or discussed in terms of the student journey from layperson to practitioner. We chose to explore professional touch using the threshold concepts framework (TCF), which provides a theoretical model for exploring the way in which learners encounter, engage with and understand fundamental concepts in a discipline. This qualitative research synthesis (QRS) describes the use of the TCF to identify key issues involved in developing and using professional touch. Through a cross-professional analysis and synthesis of recent international literature, we aimed to identify key characteristics of the transitional journey for professional touch. Three orders of analysis were applied, employing a methodology described by Major and Savin-Baden (An introduction to qualitative research synthesis: managing the information explosion in social science research, Routledge, London, 2010). Following identification of threshold characteristics in the overall sample of articles, second order analysis revealed the nuances of professional touch associated with the characteristics. The final synthesis led to identification of five themes: (1) touch as dialogue; (2) being changed by touch; (3) multiple boundaries of touch; (4) multiple meanings of touch; and (5) influences on touch. Whilst providing support for some assertions within the literature, this QRS also offers new insights into the complexity of professional touch. Given the paucity of explicit learning and reflection around professional touch in training programmes of health professionals, the TCF reveals ways in which professional preparation might be improved to promote understanding of the role and impact of touch in practice.

This article explores the experiences of a group of established academic staff in New Zealand and the UK, as they undertake a doctorate in their home institutions. Our interest is in how individuals negotiate this dual status from a cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) stance that explores how rules, tools, community and divisions of labour, and interacting activity systems, shape doctoral experiences. The focus in this article, having analysed their detailed narrative accounts, is on how academics experience three interdependent activity systems: those surrounding the thesis, the institutional context, and the home-life spheres. Issues related to time, workload and supervision issues, variability in collegial support and impact on personal priorities and time emerged. There is a range of particularities -- from easy access to resources/supervisors to inflexible institutional regulations -- applicable to this group of doctoral candidates. Negotiating life as an academic with concurrent doctoral candidature provides positive outcomes in terms of teaching, research confidence and general personal and professional development. However, a range of difficulties can also be encountered, particularly in relation to personal and professional relationships, and workload management.

A growing expectation that academic staff in higher education institutions (HEIs) will be qualified to doctoral level can mean that doctoral study must be juggled alongside administration, teaching, and academic duties. Many academics study in their own institutions. We wished to explore their perspectives on (i) how the two roles, of being an academic as well as a doctoral candidate, interact or not and (ii) the influences and resources at play in navigating the processes. The qualitative study explored staff experiences in two HEIs in the United Kingdom and one in New Zealand. Using Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) as a theoretical framework, we identified the contradictions within and between academic life and doctoral candidature activity systems. However, we focus on the tools and rules that frame daily academic life and doctoral study, and suggest remodelling systems to be kinder to academic staff brave enough to engage in doctoral study.

This article considers the impact of a two-year collaborative European Union-funded project. The 'Sustainable Ways to Increase Higher Education Students' Equal Access to Learning Environments' (SWING) project, brought together four European higher education institutions, one institution in Egypt and two in Morocco. It aimed to promote equal access to university education, and future career opportunities, for students with disabilities in the North African countries, using accessible assistive technology. Appreciative inquiry was used to explore the impact of the project processes and outcomes. We will share how the focus on assistive technology addressed the invisibility of students with disabilities by promoting individual and collective student agency. Students' emerging sense of empowerment is attributed to two factors that inform the wider inclusive education debate: the power of technology as a mediator of change and the importance of a bottom-up/top-down dynamic.

The International Journal of Practice-based Learning in Health & Social Care is celebrating its 10th anniversary and has become a well-known and respected publication in the field. In an interview with the founding editors, they discuss the origins of the journal and its impact on sharing approaches to practice-based learning. The journal remains committed to being open access and free to publish, and it welcomes articles from authors of diverse backgrounds and experiences. The editors hope to see more innovative articles in the future, focusing on cost-benefit analysis and perspectives from different countries. The journal recognizes the importance of reviewers and looks forward to showcasing groundbreaking practices in the next decade. [Extracted from the article]

The International Journal of Practice-based Learning in Health & Social Care is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a special issue that reflects on the past decade of the journal's contributions to the evidence base. The issue includes 10 selected articles that cover a diverse range of topics, professional backgrounds, geographies, and research approaches. The articles address important issues such as interprofessional education, student failure, accessing personal therapy during training, simulated learning, expanding placement capacity, threshold concepts in healthcare disciplines, clinical academic careers for nursing and allied health professionals, and the meaning of professionalism for occupational therapy and physical therapy students. The journal's founding members also provide insights into the journal's beginnings and its contributions to practice-based learning. The given text discusses two articles published in the International Journal of Practice-based Learning in Health and Social Care. The first article by Johnson et al. explores a student-led approach to screening speech pathology students for communication skills support needs. The second article by Johnston et al. examines the impacts of reflective debriefing for care home staff through online conversations. Both articles contribute to the understanding of practice-based learning and highlight the importance of communication skills and support in healthcare education. The text also provides references to other relevant articles in the field. [Extracted from the article]

Taking on responsibilities associated with a professional role is an important aspect of experiential learning for undergraduate students on work-based placements. However, responsibility is a complex concept that is connected to issues of trust and risk in the placement context. This paper presents students' perspectives that illustrate that being given and taking responsibility can be empowering; conversely, being denied responsibility is disempowering. Through an exploration of the students' experiences, the relationship between responsibility, opportunity, risk and trust is explored. The paper points to a strong indication that the extent to which students are allowed responsibility in the workplace appears to have a fundamental impact on their perceptions of personal efficacy and professional development. (Contains 4 tables.)

This article offers insight into the realization of the Higher Education Funding Council for England's vision for Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETLs) as catalysts for change. Two CETLs, the Centre for Interprofessional e-Learning (CIPeL) and the Surrey Centre for Excellence in Professional Training and Education (SCEPTrE), provide illustrative cases of two similar but different change initiatives. CETLs might be expected to embody and inspire creativity in teaching and learning yet they are embedded in institutions where activities are increasingly shaped by the discourse of performativity. Findings from the two case studies, which focus on similar schemes designed to promote staff involvement in creative projects, challenge the suggestion that creativity is stifled in a performative context.

Through reflection on the First International iPED Conference 2006, and its overarching theme of "Pedagogical Research and Academic Identities", this paper considers the achievement of the wider aims of the conference, which were to facilitate dialogue between researchers in order to explore the conference themes collaboratively, and to provide networking opportunities which would enable participants to build alliances. The abstracts for all papers mentioned are available via the conference website www.coventry.ac.uk/iped2006.

The authors work as online tutors for a BSc (Hons) physiotherapy programme at Coventry University in the United Kingdom. This paper represents a stage in our developing understanding, over a 3 year period, of the impact of group dynamics on online interaction among physiotherapy students engaged in sharing with their peers their first experiences of clinical practice. The literature exploring online interaction tends to situate meaning either in theories borrowed from conventional face-to-face interaction or on virtual interaction. Research focusing on "blended learning" that combines face-to-face and online interaction is limited in terms of considering how group dynamics impact groups that are constituted and reconstituted in the two very different learning contexts. Using a case study approach, the authors consider how group dynamics change as groups move from face-to-face to online collaboration in pursuit of learning objectives. We characterize typical features of the cases and draw conclusions based on similarities and differences. Findings suggest that group learning is linked to group cohesion, which appears to be mediated by social and cognitive factors that students bring with them. Social presence appears vital to positive group dynamics and is a precursor to cognitive presence, which develops when groups rise above their desire to be sociable and supportive. Group dynamics, whether positive or negative, and their consequent impact on interaction appear to be relatively stable across contexts once the group scene is set through face-to-face interaction. Engagement and interaction of individual students, however, can alter when face-to-face interaction moves online.

This paper explores the ways in which student health professionals undergo a transformation in their sense of identity as they engage with caring discourses that underpin healthcare. I argue that caring is a "threshold concept" by virtue of the "troublesome knowledge" with which students are confronted on meeting patients in practice. When superimposed on commonsense understandings of caring, medical connotations of care and moral and ethical dilemmas challenge students to develop their own personal framework within which to operate. I suggest a number of ways in which students can be helped to move forward towards or through the threshold to a more cogent understanding of caring. Subsequent positioning in terms of caring discourses forms a facet of the students' developing identities as healthcare professionals and therefore is a fundamental aspect of professional socialization.

Describes how reflective practice is conceptualized and interpreted by practicing physiotherapists and undergraduate physiotherapy students. Analysis of qualitative interviews and workshops highlights both contextual and practical differences in modes of reflection by practitioners. Discussion notes the context of the task-oriented culture of the British National Health Service. (DB)

This paper explores the decision-making processes involved in giving physiotherapy students responsibility on clinical placement and the impact on their developing professional autonomy. The qualitative study, using semi-structured interviews, involved physiotherapy students and clinical educators (CEs) from two higher education institutions, one in Australia, and the other in the United Kingdom (UK). Findings led to the development of a heuristic framework of 'graduated supervision,' a process of progressively less direct observation and monitoring of students as clinical proficiency improved. By focusing on the measured exposure of students to increasing complexity and inverse levels of supervision, the framework captures tacit practices, and consistent, yet varied facilitation strategies adopted across specialties, and evident in clinical education settings in both countries. The framework formalizes, for the first time, assumptions and expectations previously unacknowledged. Factors identified as affecting students' progress toward autonomy include the student/CE relationship, the development of mutual trust through ongoing dialogue, and the importance of formal discussions at the commencement of a clinical placement to establish learning goals, preferred supervision styles and learner responsibilities. Insights have significance for the CE community, and students who at times have to second-guess what is required of them and how they might excel on clinical placement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrated working can be a means of providing efficient and cost-effective care, which benefits both service users and health professionals. However, it does require readiness of practitioners to work in new and innovative ways to achieve integration. This paper describes the findings of a qualitative study exploring the nature of practice-based education and training underpinning successful integrated care teams using an ecological systems theory lens. Nine teams in the West Midlands region of the United Kingdom (UK) participated in this study. A total of 27 participants were involved in semi-structured interviews during which they shared their views and experiences of learning in practice. Thematic analysis of interview transcripts highlighted the shifting context of working in integrated teams impacting on learning, the influence of leadership on education and training, the nature of in-service training, and the knowledge-sharing culture. The findings highlight that the learning climate is highly dependent on the leadership ethos in the practice context, which influences the allocation of time and resources for training and clinical supervision. Whilst formal education and training has an important role to play in fostering integrated working, informal learning is pivotal to successful integration and potentially has greater impact making it worthy of further study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]