Doing relevant, funded mass media research

Motivations for conducting relevant communication research are discussed and examples provided of advantages and pitfalls of seeking funding from government and media institutions.     

Staff Development in Higher Education - Towards the Learning Organisation?

The concept of the learning organisation is related to current and emerging practice in staff development, particularly in the Enterprise in Higher Education initiative. We examine the link between organisational development and individual development and argue that the current climate of rapid change makes a strategic and coherent approach particularly necessary. Key issues include the renegotiation of relationships between managers and professionals, the role of corporate strategy and the development of organisational cultures which are tolerant, but purposive. We conclude by describing the characteristics of staff development processes which have the capacity to enhance organisational learning.     

Identity,Narrative and Practitioner Research: A Lacanian perspective

This paper sets out to show how some theoretical concepts derived from Lacanian psychoanalysis might be put to work in the business of reflective practitioner research in education. It seeks to offer a more sophisticated, reflexively produced account of researcher identity built out of the narrative generated within a research enquiry. It illustrates, with reference to examples of writing from a specific research project, carried out within the context of a higher degree, how one teacher-researcher has used the concepts in forging a more productive understanding of her own evolving identity as a researcher through a process predicated on developing her own professional functioning. Shifting perspectives are provided on what the researcher wants from the enquiry as the researcher herself unfolds and analyses the successive phases of her narrative.