Explaining outsourcing in health,sport and physical education

Outsourcing is a complex, controversial and pervasive practice that is increasingly becoming a matter of concern for educational researchers. This article contributes to this literature by examining outsourcing practices related to health, sport and physical education (HSPE). Specifically, it reports data on specialist health and physical education (HPE) teachers', principals' and external providers' reasons for participating in outsourcing arrangements. These data were obtained from a collective case study of six schools and the external providers that they outsourced HSPE to over a 12-month period, using semi-structured interviews and overt participant observations. The findings illustrate the ways in which the informants explained their outsourcing practices using a variety of educationally and organisationally oriented reasons. Educational value, human resources (e.g. expertise), physical resources (e.g. facilities) and symbolic resources (e.g. status) were reasons for outsourcing HSPE that were commonly cited by principals and specialist HPE teachers. Among external providers, educational value, income generation and promotion/advertising were frequently cited to explain their work with and for schools. These findings illustrate the ways in which outsourcing practices in HSPE articulate with, and are implicated in, broader educational privatisations. They also highlight the boundaries that outsourcing practices trouble or reinforce, such as those marking the purview of markets, membership of the HPE profession and the constitution of expertise.     

Sporting Entertainments,Discarded Possibilities and the Case of Football as a Variety Sport, 1905–1906

During the winter of 1905/6, Olympia held a series of spectacular indoor, electrically lit football matches. Organised by the showman Edwin Cleary, the purpose of these matches was to provide entertaining shows to large audiences. Using Pierre Bourdieu's theory of fields, this article argues that such an organisation was a continuation of a longer interaction between sport and the stage that was restricted during the coalescence of the sporting and exercise field in the late nineteenth century. The ultimate failure of the venture, moreover, is attributed to the power of the Football Association in the sub-field of football. The article uses the football games as a case study to demonstrate the usefulness of this theory to the study of sport more broadly.     

Calculating the Return on Investment (ROI) for Library Consortia

This column focuses on formal collaboration and networking among libraries through consortia. It offers in-depth examinations of issues facing modern library consortia including (but not limited to) e-resource licensing, ebooks, next generation integrated library systems, shared print archiving, shared digital repositories, governance and other relevant topics. Contributions are accepted for this column and must be submitted to George Machovec (george@coalliance.org). Contact the column editor for suggested topics, deadlines and formatting.

Library consortia are under increasing scrutiny regarding their value to member libraries. Most consortia offer a suite of services which can be valued either quantitatively or qualitatively to determine a return on investment for money and time put into consortial activities. Various common consortial activities are discussed with thoughts regarding their value to local libraries. Recommendations and suggestions are provided on how to perform a Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA)/Return on Investment (ROI).     

Gay On-Screen: The Relationship Between Exposure to Gay Characters on Television and Heterosexual Audiences' Endorsement of Gay Equality

The current study, grounded in the parasocial contact hypothesis, employed a survey of emerging adults to investigate the relationship between exposure to gay characters on television and heterosexuals' endorsement of gay equality. A positive relationship existed between exposure to on-screen gay characters and gay equality endorsement. The relationship was stronger for racial minority participants than for White participants, and for participants who had no or few interpersonal relationships with openly gay individuals than for participants who had more than three respective relationships. Results are discussed in terms of the parasocial contact hypothesis and television as an agent of social change.     

JournalGuide: bringing authors and journals together

• As a result of the considerable (and growing) number of scholarly journals, it is difficult for authors to find the best place for their research, even as many journals face challenges in finding new submissions.
• JournalGuide ( www.journalguide.com ) is a free tool that matches user‐inputted keywords or text to article metadata and returns journals that have recently published similar work.
• Users can then compare information about these journals and make an informed decision about where to submit.