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Menstruation and menstrual stigma have recently attracted the attention of education policymakers in England. In 2019, the Department for Education (DfE) published new guidance on delivering relationships, sex and health education that included teaching about menstrual wellbeing and in 2020 made menstrual products freely available in all state-funded primary and secondary schools in England. The DfE argue that these dual interventions are important for tackling menstrual stigma by normalising menstruation in school. However, these interventions emphasise the management of menstruation in terms of physical health while this article argues that foregrounding how menstruation features in young people's everyday experiences and routines could also be important for addressing stigma. This theory-focussed paper invites a turn away from a humanist positioning on menstruation and menstrual stigma. It discusses existing human-centred research on menstruation and draws on ideas from relational sociomaterial theory to highlight how researching the role of material things in young people's engagements with menstruation can influence understandings about menstrual stigma and young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses Feminist New Materialist theoretical perspectives on time and temporality to critically explore the social work practice of life story work, designed to help children who are or have been in public care, or are adopted, assemble a coherent narrative of their care journey, adverse experiences and identity. Interview data presented here was produced with 17 participants (foster carers, adoptive parents and social work professionals in care or adoption teams) who were part of a project which sought to understand how aspects of life story work could be transformed into everyday care conversations between children and the adults who care for them (see www.difficultconversations.info). Our analysis highlights the way participants understood and constructed temporal elements of children's experiences and identities: their pasts, presents and futures, in the context of having conversations about care with them. Through the discussion, we indicate a need to loosen the configuration of children's life stories and identities as 'pre-care' and 'post-care', and instead move toward an acceptance of children's multiple selves and multiple important others as existing across time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) are said to experience severe congenital impairments to consciousness and cognition stemming from neurological damage. Such children are understood as operating at the pre-verbal stages of development, and research in the field typically draws conceptual resources from psychology to devise educational interventions and assessment tools. Criticism has been levelled at studies that treat children with PMLD as objects of research rather than subjects to be consulted. Proponents of the latter view have attempted to redress the situation by exploring how personal experiences can be gleaned through adapted qualitative methods. Debate about methodology in the PMLD field tends to coalesce around these individualist polemics: either children with PMLD are positioned as incompetent and lacking voice; or researchers are positioned as lacking the appropriate tools to gain access to such voice. This paper offers an alternative position to the individualism of post-positivist/constructivist approaches, identifying the need for a critical and participatory approach that sees knowledge about children with PMLD as situated and co-constructed through regular and longitudinal interaction between the researcher, children with PMLD, and significant others. Context to this argument is provided by exploring the application of this approach to an inclusive education research project for a child with PMLD.

This article utilises critical whiteness theory to explore the ethnic discourses observed in a children's centre in South London. Whilst critical whiteness has been used as a framework to understand race, racism and multiculturalism in a number of settings, including education, there are few studies that have sought to understand ethnicity in early year's contexts in this way. A key focus of the research was to develop child focused methods that captured the perspectives of three- to five-year-olds on ethnicity through photo-elicitation and walking tours. The article explores the multiple ways that whiteness was performed, constructed and deconstructed by the parents, young children and staff in the centre. The article concludes that further explorations of whiteness in early childhood settings are needed in order to develop strategies that will help to produce a version of whiteness that can play a role in the struggle against racism and offer more multicultural early years and family support provisions.

Teaching and learning support assistants (TLSAs) are notoriously underpaid and undervalued as members of school workforces in England and elsewhere in the world, where the discourse of "support" has worked to legitimize their poor status. This article reports and explores empirical findings through the lens of positioning theory. This theoretical approach has revealed ways in which the positions occupied by TLSAs are consolidated in social acts and discursive practices that contribute to a narrative that is shared and understood by those positioned and those positioning. The multiplicity of, and sometimes competing, positions occupied by TLSAs are revealed through different readings of the collective storylines of "pond life" and "knowing one's place" that determine a set of social and occupational practices. These serve to illustrate the discursive fights TLSAs were engaged in to assert their professionalism in schools and to challenge their low status. (Contains 4 notes.)

The ectonucleotidases CD39 and CD73 are present on immune cells and play important roles in cancer progression by suppressing antitumour immunity. As such, CD39 and CD73 on peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) are emerging as potential biomarkers to predict disease outcomes and treatment responses in cancer patients. This study aimed to examine T and B cells, including CD39 and CD73 expressing subsets, by flow cytometry in PBMCs from 28 patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) and to assess the correlation with the treatment modality, human papillomavirus (HPV) status, and relapse-free survival (RFS). The PBMCs were examined pre-, mid-, and post-radiotherapy with concurrent cisplatin chemotherapy or anti-epidermal growth factor receptor antibody (cetuximab) therapy. Combination radiotherapy caused changes to T and B cell populations, including CD39 and CD73 expressing subsets, but no such differences were observed between concurrent chemotherapy and cetuximab. Pretreatment PBMCs from HPV+ patients contained increased proportions of CD39−CD73−CD4+ T cells and reduced proportions of CD39−/+CD73+CD4+ T cells compared to the equivalent cells from HPV− patients. Notably, the pretreatment CD4+:CD8+ T cell ratios and CD39+CD73+CD19+ B cell proportions below the respective cohort medians corresponded with an improved RFS. Collectively, this study supports the notion that CD39 and CD73 may contribute to disease outcomes in HNSCC patients and may assist as biomarkers, either alone or as part of immune signatures, in HNSCC. Further studies of CD39 and CD73 on PBMCs from larger cohorts of HNSCC patients are warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a case study investigation into creativity involving young dancers and faculty members on the UK government-funded pre-vocational contemporary dance training programme. Qualitative research techniques were used to gather and interpret data on how individuals nurtured and viewed creativity at an individual level, as well as how the facilitation of creativity was perceived and manifested at a teaching and institutional level. Findings suggest that nurturing creativity at a within-person level involves the evolution and development of personality characteristics and abilities in both direct and indirect ways. Two other factors were influential at this level, namely inspiration and motivation. At an interpersonal and environmental level, the study found that a communal and collaborative approach underpinned the nurture of creativity in the setting. Additionally, teaching styles which supported the development of dancers' own voice alongside dance skills were critical in helping to encourage and realise creativity in young people. The study sheds light on the constantly evolving and dynamic processes involved when nurturing and facilitating creativity. (Contains 1 figure.)

This article argues that whilst there have been substantial advancements in the ways in which learning is conceptualised, theoretical understandings of assessment, and practices that contribute to meaningful statements of learners' achievements, have not mirrored these changes in certain learning contexts. The authors challenge contemporary methods of educational assessment, particularly for marginalized groups of learners, specifically young people and adults in informal, vocational and professional learning. They critique the assessment and formal accreditation opportunities available to these groups of learners, and emphasise a need for more authentic, learner-friendly methods to encourage their engagement and retention. Drawing on empirical work with three contrasting groups of learners, they outline a theoretical framework for assessing the authentic performances of learners in a range of settings. The assessment of authentic performance is an important but under-reported area of assessment activity, which has the potential to address a number of contemporary criticisms of assessment systems in national and international contexts. The emphasis on the assessment of performance in this article recognises that informal and vocational learning is inherently social, is mediated by more knowledgeable others and relies on professional judgements as to how good practice is defined, shared and understood within the wider community. The first section sets out this theoretical framework alongside the "assessment problem", and defines the authors' understanding of "authentic assessment". The second section describes the outcomes of an empirical study that aimed to develop processes and rubrics of alternative forms of assessment based on performance. The conclusion proposes some key components of a model for the authentic assessment of performance. (Contains 3 notes.)