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Seclusion is the supervised containment of a patient, away from others, when immediately necessary to manage safety on a psychiatric inpatient ward. When seclusion is necessary, it should be used for the shortest time possible, with a regular multidisciplinary review of the patient’s mental and physical health, medication and risk guiding decisions around continuation or ending of this restrictive measure. However, many medical and nursing staff can be anxious about taking part in such reviews. Simulation has been used in many areas of medicine to help people to develop competence and confidence, in a safe setting where their own needs can be paramount. This paper aims to describe the use of a blended learning approach, including simulation, to build confidence and competence amongst healthcare professionals in the safe review of seclusion.

A multidisciplinary group, including input from individuals with lived experience of use of seclusion, put together a one-day training course, which included group debate exploring the relationship between seclusion and the Human Rights Act, guided discussion of videos exploring some aspects of practice and a half-day of simulation where multidisciplinary teams could act as the team reviewing a patient who had been secluded.

This paper found that the course’s blended learning approach helped participants to feel more confident in their understanding of several aspects of seclusion, including what their team discussions should include before and after seeing a patient and in knowing when to end a period of seclusion.

While simulation is slowly becoming a more familiar component of the undergraduate and postgraduate education offer in psychiatry, the authors are unaware of any evaluation of a dedicated simulation-based training course around reviews of seclusion.

This article makes the case for a different approach to the professional development of teachers and school leaders called personal, professional coaching (PPC). Personal, professional coaching is grounded in reflective practices that cultivate self-awareness, emotion management, social awareness, and relationship management. Findings from two case studies support the benefits perceived by teachers and administrative leaders who participated in coaching to enhance their leadership potential and performance. A description of the content and process of coaching is provided.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the case of a school on the Caribbean island of Sint Maarten that was created to serve students who had experienced educational and other injustices in the broader society.

Using qualitative methods, the paper explores two research questions: how did Triumph Multiage School (TMS) conceptualize community and the goals of education, and how did these perspectives reflect or diverge from those of the local, national, and global educational communities to which TMS was connected? What was the nature of curriculum knowledge at TMS, and what points of alignment and difference existed among TMS’ curriculum knowledge and those of its local, national, and global educational communities?

Analysis found points of symmetry and disjunctures among TMS’ conceptualization of community, purposes of education, and curriculum and those of the local, national, and global educational communities to which it was connected. However the strength of ideological and sociopolitical boundaries separating TMS and its local and national communities constrained opportunities for building professional community and curriculum knowledge across them.

The paper contributes to research on the creation of new schools and teacher professional communities by demonstrating the need to expand the construct of community to include local and trans-global dimensions. Such a reconceptualization of community is essential for building professional capital and community that will equip schools and teachers to meet the social and educational needs of student populations in a globalized world.

Purpose – The purpose of this work is to explore ways in which parents of children with disabilities actively seek to create a place for themselves and their children within supportive communities of others – despite structural and attitudinal barriers.

Methodology – Semi-structured, interactive interviews were conducted with six mothers and six fathers of older teens and young adults with severe impairments. Interview transcripts were analyzed for themes related to barriers to social participation and strategies used to create and sustain communities of supportive others.

Findings – Results suggest that, while there are indeed many barriers to social participation, these mothers and fathers have successfully utilized a variety of strategies in order to create a sense of community for themselves and their children including: garnering support from family; creating enclaves of “wise” individuals; and active social networking. Findings also suggest that children with disabilities can provide opportunities for parental community involvement in unexpected ways.

Limitations, implications and value – The sample is small and selective and the study used retrospective interviews to examine parental memories. Despite these limitations, the narratives of these parents provide a provocative look at the potential role of personal agency in the community experiences of parents of children with disabilities. The stories told by these parents clearly suggest that it takes concerted effort to construct a village in the face of significant barriers to social participation. Once created, however, that village of supportive others can provide life enhancing support for children with disabilities and their families.

Over 30 years have passed since the enactment of Title IX, the legislation that required all schools receiving federal aid to provide “equal opportunity for both sexes to participate in interscholastic, intercollegiate, intramural, and club athletic programs” (East, 1978, p. 213). Since 1972, girls’ and women's sport participation has increased in high schools, colleges and universities, the Olympics, and professional sports. Researchers interested in the study of gender and sport have raised critical questions and conducted empirical research concerning the meanings of masculinity and femininity, the implications of sport participation, the meanings of heterosexuality and homosexuality, gender equity, and media coverage of sports (Dworkin & Messner, 2002). One persistent theme in the literature on girls’ and women's sport participation is the connection between athleticism and femininity. Historically, researchers have used the role conflict perspective or the apologetic defense strategy to examine girls’ sport participation. In this chapter, I analyze athleticism and femininity on a high school basketball team using a third framework.

Using the perspectives of dramaturgy and symbolic interactionists like George Herbert Mead and Carl Couch this study focuses on paid sex work in the hypermodern, virtual world of Second Life. Using seventeen semi-structured interviews and six months of ethnographic fieldwork, I find that the employment of sexual scripts, carrying off a successful erotic scene, and the creative use of communication and embodiment are highly valued in escorts’ performance of Second Life sex work. Escorts craft an online persona that is a digital representation of the self, which is manifested in the embodiment of their digital body or avatar. In addition to digital representations of the physical self, Second Life allows for multiple methods of computer-mediated communication, and escorts are able to re-embody the first life body through the trading of first life pictures, voice cybersex, and web cam cybersex. The data allow the conclusion that most escorts are unwilling to re-embody the first life body for reasons of personal safety and the desire to restrict access to the first life self. I find, however, that there is a porous boundary between first life and Second Life in which the first life self comes through in the Second Life persona. In the concluding remarks, I explore the implications this study has for the negotiation of privacy for new social media actors who are reluctant to fully disclose their lives yet perform a persistent, archived persona for friends and followers on the Internet. This study contributes to a small, but growing, body of literature on Second Life and expands the existing work on embodiment and privacy in the digital realm.