Widening participation in higher education: the role of professional and social class identities and commitments

Since the neoliberal reforms to British education in the 1980s, education debates have been saturated with claims to the efficacy of the market as a mechanism for improving the content and delivery of state education. In recent decades with the expansion and ‘massification’ of higher education, widening participation (WP) has acquired an increasingly important role in redressing the under-representation of certain social groups in universities. Taken together, these trends neatly capture the twin goals of New Labour’s programme for education reform: economic competitiveness and social justice. But how do WP professionals negotiate competing demands of social equity and economic incentive? In this paper we explore how the hegemony of neoliberal discourse – of which the student as consumer is possibly the most pervasive – can be usefully disentangled from socially progressive, professional discourses exemplified through the speech and actions of WP practitioners and managers working in British higher education institutions.     

Problematizing the role of expert within small‐scale school‐university partnerships

Abstract

Since 2001, two teacher educators from distinctive midwestern universities have been engaged in partnerships with two local urban school districts that resulted from their personal relationships with educators and school leaders. By applying Macedo and Freire's (2001) framework of analysis, this article shares their dialogic reflection and assessment of the impact of their roles, intentions, and modes of operandi as qualitative researchers and the effectiveness of pursuing contextually relevant transformative agendas within these partnerships. This reflective analysis provides the forum for examining emergent issues and practices relevant to the intersection of these school and university communities, provides insight into the personal and professional commitments of those involved, and the potential for pursuing similar efforts to advance this agenda.     

Nutrition for power sports: middle-distance running, track cycling, rowing, canoeing/kayaking, and swimming

Contemporary training for power sports involves diverse routines that place a wide array of physiological demands on the athlete. This requires a multi-faceted nutritional strategy to support both general training needs--tailored to specific training phases--as well as the acute demands of competition. Elite power sport athletes have high training intensities and volumes for most of the training season, so energy intake must be sufficient to support recovery and adaptation. Low pre-exercise muscle glycogen reduces high-intensity performance, so daily carbohydrate intake must be emphasized throughout training and competition phases. There is strong evidence to suggest that the timing, type, and amount of protein intake influence post-exercise recovery and adaptation. Most power sports feature demanding competition schedules, which require aggressive nutritional recovery strategies to optimize muscle glycogen resynthesis. Various power sports have different optimum body compositions and body weight requirements, but increasing the power-to-weight ratio during the championship season can lead to significant performance benefits for most athletes. Both intra- and extracellular buffering agents may enhance performance, but more research is needed to examine the potential long-term impact of buffering agents on training adaptation. Interactions between training, desired physiological adaptations, competition, and nutrition require an individual approach and should be continuously adjusted and adapted.