Femininity,science, and the denigration of the girly girl

Hyper-femininity and the construction of the ‘girly girl’ label have been documented widely, but there has been less attention to their content (or any distinctions between these constructs). Indeed, it can be argued that the content of femininity remains a controversial and somewhat under-researched topic in feminist scholarship. This is also the case in relation to science, which has been widely characterised as a masculine terrain, but there has been less attention to why femininity is excluded from/by science. This article attempts to unpick some of these issues, with a particular focus on the construct of the ‘girly girl’, in relation to access to science. Drawing on qualitative data from the Economic and Social Research Council-funded ASPIRES 2 project, we analyse the discourses used by young people and parents in discussion of ‘girly girls’ and physics. We show the misogynist and excluding discourses projected onto the ‘girly girl’, and indeed that are used to interpolate femininity more broadly. We found that in discussions of science and (hyper-)femininity, even potentially positive feminine attributes were denigrated. Hyper-femininity was produced as ‘more than lack’: vacuous, but also a risible presence. In reflecting on our findings we consider whether femininity may be more derided in some discursive contexts (e.g. science discourse) than others, and whether femininity can or should be conceived as more than lack.     

Quality in early years settings: Government,research and practitioners’ perspectives

This article begins by outlining the UK Government policy context, offering a brief critique before moving on to summarise recent research into ‘quality’ in the early years. The main body of the article locates the perspectives of early years practitioners within this context, drawing on data from an Economic and Social Research Council‐funded study of 18 early years settings, including interviews and focused group discussions with 165 practitioners. The findings reveal that practitioners’ understandings of ‘quality’ are influenced by government discourses but appear to be linked to the context of their setting together their personal and professional histories. In discussing the nature of ‘quality’, the authors focus on tensions inherent in the government discourses and draw out the implications for children's experiences and the training and development of early years practitioners.     

Thinking in sex education: reading prohibition through the film Desire

This paper argues that sex education must move beyond a focus on compliance so that we may risk the uncertain work of thinking. How might we understand the work of thinking in sex education if we begin from the assumptions that learning is conflicted, that sexuality resists being educated even as it inspires curiosity, and that the subject of sex education is herself divided and liable to act in her own worst interest? Drawing on theories of thinking in psychoanalysis, I consider this question through the status of prohibition in sex education and argue that prohibitions can function either as a way of shutting thinking down or as a tentative step towards thinking an intolerable thought. The documentary film Desire illustrates the potentially productive use of prohibitions and suggests some of the conditions necessary for developing the capacity for thoughtfulness in sex education.     

University students’ perceptions of a holistic care course through cooperative learning: implications for instructors and researchers

The benefits of cooperative learning have been advocated in a wide range of educational contexts in higher education. There is, however, rare information on the contributions of holistic education courses on college students. Using grounded theory methods, this preliminary study was to explore participants’ perceptions of a holistic care course through cooperative learning. The results indicated that five primary categories including learning environment construction, multiple learning processes, cognitive change, solitary learning and transfer, and personal growth emerged as prominent and consistent themes. Moreover, positive and negative feelings about the learning experience, a greater understanding of holistic knowledge, and an enlargement of the experiences of connecting to others were also found. Finally, a pattern of university students’ construction of holistic knowledge was developed, and several research questions were generated. Future implications for research and practice on the holistic curriculum and cooperative learning in higher education were also suggested.     

Affect: a tool to support pedagogical change

In the early childhood education field, the way children are conceptualised has substantially shifted in recent times. Child development theory has been unsettled as the single canon of early childhood practice. This has in turn challenged constructions of educators as keepers of a universal knowledge base, and as apolitical, non-interventionist facilitators of the natural unfolding development of individuals. While reconceptualising the early childhood knowledge base has oriented theorists and activists towards equity, unsettling educator subjectivities requires careful consideration in a feminised profession such as early childhood education. There is a need for greater discussion about how educators experience the uncertainties that accompany profound changes in teaching practice and identities and how educators can harness these uncertainties in ways that strengthen the profession. In this paper, I offer excerpts from teacher research that show how theories of affect support practitioners to engage productively the reflexivity needed to reconceptualise their roles as educators. I use affect theory to consider how the intra- and inter-personal dimensions of critically reflective practice can bolster the democratic and collectivist orientations in the teaching profession.     

Collaborative practitioner research: opening a third space for local knowledge production

Early childhood education and care is currently experiencing unprecedented policy interest and expansion. This policy and practice landscape requires new forms of adaptive leadership, new spaces for production of the knowledge necessary for this changing context, and tools that can support the development of leadership qualities. This paper examines the potential of practitioner research to produce contextually relevant knowledge and to develop leadership capacity. Our findings show that collaborative practitioner research groups provide a relatively safe environment for the sharing of dilemmas and critical reflections. The practitioners who participated in this research wanted access to narratives of change in typically resourced early childhood contexts as well as in the more highly resourced settings that are more often reflected in academic research and literature. This suggests there is a need for much more of this work to be publicly available. These groups can generate the courage required to open practice based research to public critique. This, we argue is an important element of activist leadership. Collaborative practitioner research opens up the possibility for practitioners to position themselves as knowledge producers and to revitalize the knowledge base that informs teacher education in the academy. In supporting this move, academics need to position themselves as resource gathers and co-learners thus opening a third space for knowledge production. The challenges for the profession are how to fund and effectively disseminate collaborative practitioner research and how to draw it into dialogue with other forms of research.     

An insulator-based dielectrophoretic microdevice for the simultaneous filtration and focusing of biological cells

Manipulating and discriminating biological cells of interest using microfluidic and micro total analysis system (μTAS) devices have potential applications in clinical diagnosis and medicine. Cellular focusing in microfluidic devices is a prerequisite for medical applications, such as cell sorting, cell counting, or flow cytometry. In the present study, an insulator-based dielectrophoretic microdevice is designed for the simultaneous filtration and focusing of biological cells. The cells are introduced into the microchannel and hydrodynamically pre-confined by funnel-shaped insulating structures close to the inlet. There are ten sets of X-patterned insulating structures in the microfluidic channel. The main function of the first five sets of insulating structures is to guide the cells by negative dielectrophoretic responses (viable HeLa cells) into the center region of the microchannel. The positive dielectrophoretic cells (dead HeLa cells) are attracted to regions with a high electric-field gradient generated at the edges of the insulating structures. The remaining five sets of insulating structures are mainly used to focus negative dielectrophoretic cells that have escaped from the upstream region. Experiments employing a mixture of dead and viable HeLa cells are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed design. The results indicate that the performance of both filtration and focusing improves with the increasing strength of the applied electric field and a decreasing inlet sample flow rate, which agrees with the trend predicted by the numerical simulations. The filtration efficiency, which is quantitatively investigated, is up to 88% at an applied voltage of 50 V peak-to-peak (1 kHz) and a sample flow rate of 0.5 μl/min. The proposed device can focus viable cells into a single file using a voltage of 35 V peak-to-peak (1 kHz) at a sample flow rate of 1.0 μl/min.