As part of a new initiative, IPED will be accepting student (UG and PGT) essays for consideration in the journal. Essays will be peer reviewed, although reviewers will be asked to provide a commentary on the essay – it’s strengths and where it can be developed. Essays can be on any area of equality and diversity, and be written in English, Greek, German, Thai and French. If you wish to have an essay in another language considered, please send an email to the editor (Kate Sang k.sang@hw.ac.uk) as we may be able to accommodate this. We ask that essays have an abstract in English (if the submission is not in English) to facilitate peer review.

Essays should be submitted via the online system, with a covering letter which clearly explains that this is a student essay http://journals.hw.ac.uk/index.php/IPED/index

Dr Maria Tsouroufli, PhD, Senior Research Fellow in Education, Institute of Policy Studies in Education, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, London Metropolitan University, London, UK. Email. Tel: 00442071332158.

In this post I unravel some of the risks embedded in the trade of internationalisation, including unproblematic notions of universalism and disembodiment of medical education and the implications for student access, participation and outcomes. I draw attention to the learning and professional capacities that international medical education favours within a competitive higher education market, dominated by western medical pedagogies, but marketed as valuing diversity and difference.

I propose an emancipatory framework of international medical education which can open up possibilities for equity and social justice in medical education and medicine.

‘Internationalisation of Medical Education: Hierarchies, Inequalities and Future Directions’

Within the wider higher education literature there is a diversity of perspectives on internationalisation. Some scholars have expressed concerns about the reduction of the concept and its policy implications to mobility issues and international student numbers (1, 2).  Internationalisation has been defined by OECD (3) as the integration of an international/intercultural dimension into all of the activities of a University, including the teaching, research and service functions.  Recently there has been a turn to ‘internationalisation at home’ in an attempt to enhance knowledge about intercultural communication and inform the development of pedagogic and management strategies that will promote inclusive learning and teaching within internationalised Universities (1).  Within the literature of ‘internationalisation at home’ the majority of research tends to compare the experiences of University students from one culture with those of another or to evaluate internationalisation strategies developed by institutions.

Internationalisation has become the latest imperative for medical education.  Global economic and social changes have increased the mobility of medical professionals and students and have opened up possibilities for international research and teaching collaborations in medical education. Along with opportunities have come concerns and an increasing interest in defining international standards of medical education that will facilitate the transportability of qualifications and the migration of the international medical workforce (4).

Concerns have also been expressed about the quality of the learning experience in international internships (5,6) and the challenges and coping strategies of international medical students (7).  However, these voices seem marginal within a context of glorification of internationalisation of medical education.  I do not adverse some of the benefits of internationalisation, including the advancement and communication of information and the potential improvement of patient health in digital knowledge economies.  Instead I propose we approach internationalisation with criticality in an attempt to unfold the hidden assumptions upon which the internationalisation imperative is predicated and sustained.

To my knowledge, there has been no systematic attempt to develop a coherent definition of internationalisation or international medical education and its fundamental tenets. For the purposes of this blog I discuss international medical education that encompasses the provision of undergraduate and postgraduate medical education beyond national borders (exporting higher education) and provision of undergraduate and postgraduate medical education for foreign students within the provider country (importing). In what follows I will focus on the hierarchies and inequalities that dominant discourses of internationalisation/international medical education simultaneously reproduce and are shaped by. The discussion is focused on three fundamental questions:

• Whose knowledge and whose culture translates into symbolic capital (resources and prestige) in international medical education?
• What capacities for learning and professional practice are privileged in international medical education?

• What directions do we need to consider in the development of an emancipatory framework of international medical education?

First, we need to consider the global shifts in higher education in terms of philosophy of governance, management and knowledge production.  Shifts from the welfare state to competitive state have resulted in reduced funding for higher education and the corporitization of Universities in many capitalist societies, including the UK.  Higher education is now governed by enterpreneurial ideologies and a culture of ‘corporate managerialism’ (9) with emphasis on accountability, productivity and marketable consumer satisfaction. Universities are caught up in the production of income, graduates and ‘knowledge workers’ (10).  They operate within a context of increased competition and knowledge capitalism which legitimises hunting of new markets and a new form of colonization.  Innovative forms of medical educational provision including cross-national medical schools and e-learning postgraduate medical education courses have grown as economic imperatives in the UK in an attempt to respond to wider political programmes that place higher education at the centre of their capitalist agenda and allegedly the national wealth generation.

Embedded within a global neo-liberalism environment, international medical education programmes are designed to attract and achieve maximum economic and educational capital. Giroux (11) argues that the corrosive corporate culture of Universities ignores privileges and hierarchies, and impacts on our understanding of higher education.

Face-to-face international undergraduate medical education programmes in the Mediterranean and the Middle East and online international postgraduate medical education programmes are American or British initiatives that serve a predominantly non-white and non-Anglosaxonic student population. Medical education in English in these regions and bilingual (English and Chinese) medical education in another big market, China, are very popular (12).  The marketed value of such courses is scripted in two contradictory premises; the assumed neutrality and universality of medical knowledge and professional practice, and the realisation of educational and cultural capital that will enhance graduates’ employability within the international market.

Within the social sciences there is a long tradition of problematization of knowledge production and generalizability. The political power, control and injustices intertwined with knowledge claims (e.g. Western theories used to support the assumed inferiority of certain races or medical science used to construct the ‘hysterical’ female body); the partiality of all knowledge, including the uncertainty of medical evidence (13) and the authentication of knowledge claims by powerful actors within academia (14, 15) are some examples of influential work on knowledge production and legitimization. However, such claims might seem an anathema to medical science and indeed all ‘hard’ sciences, allegedly indifferent to geography, nationality and politics.

My intention here is not to contest the validity of certain medical claims but rather to draw attention to the complex practices and processes that construct hierarchies of knowledge, credentials and professional practice and perpetuate inequalities within the international education market.

The control of medical education markets by predominantly American, British and Australian higher education is legitimised through global representations endorsing the superiority of one medical education curriculum over another (‘non-Western’).  The long history of colonialism provided the context for constructing ‘Western’ driven, but universally applied systems of knowledge and education. Neo-liberal domination on the other hand has led to redundancy of pedagogies of social justice, and a pre-occupation with educational and economic outcomes of higher education curricula.

The ascendancy of neoliberal ideology in higher education shifts attention from higher education as a public good to individual good as a civic responsibility. Under neo-liberalism, learners are faced with endless possibilities and free choices in knowledge economy. They are expected to be entrepreneurial, competitive and pre-occupied with success (16, 17).  The silencing of the pedagogical and ethical challenges posed by international medical education is legitimised within a context of learning reduced largely to economic motive (18) and individual, cognitive-technical practice.

 ‘The way that knowledge is organised both physically and epistemologically within most mainstream higher education context demands the erasure of the body’ (19).  The body is discussed here as both a physical as well as social-cultural site for reifying, re-making or resisting learning and professional meanings and practices (20). It has feelings, morals, and dilemmas lived within communities of practice (21) and shaped by personal as well as collective predispositions influenced by social constructs of gender, class, culture and ethnicity (22). The body does emotional labour, and perpetuates ideologies within a web of professional and power relations in a hospital, general practice or community setting. For example a female orthopaedic surgical trainee might manage her body (e.g. appearance, emotions, ‘technical’ skills and even reproductive choices) in ways that are acceptable within the gendered hidden curriculum of surgery. All these embodied acts are fundamental in the learning experiences of medical students/trainees and their professional identification process (23).

Western medical training has claimed to intentionally aspire to produce ‘rational’, disembodied doctors, homogenised and neutralised in terms of social difference and diversity (24).  Despite increasing interest on socio-cultural theories of learning in medical education research and teaching, the body is paradoxically obsolete, discredited and always present in medical training and work.  Embodied experiences such as power, control and assimilation, have received attention in undergraduate medical education research on gender, medical student identity (25, 26, 27, 28) and medical enculturation in postgraduate medical training and practice (29).

However, even in this pioneer medical educational literature the body remains conceptually and analytically implicit, rather than a fundamental instrument in constituting scholarly and professional habitus (30);  a set of dispositions to learning and professional practice that generate identities and shape successful participation in medicine and medical education.

Successful performance of favoured embodied acts allows medical students to fit into social relationships and knowledge paradigms in international medical education and develop educational capital. Embodied and gendered dispositions such as doing independent learning (15), not asking for help, controlling emotions and working ‘all hours’ have been viewed as positive and subtly reinforced in UK medical education.  Demonstration of these ‘qualities’ has been associated with capacity for educational achievement and professional competence (31).

Unfortunately medical education research has not so far explored the contradictions or oppositions between the learning dispositions and capacities of medical students/trainees and the formal and informal international medical curricula. What capacities are required for access and successful participation in international medical education? What sorts of habitus and capital facilitate access to international medical education?  If competence in the English language is one of the selection criteria we need to think what educational and economic capital would successful international applicants need to have, and what educational and social inequalities might be reproduced or increased within the context of international medical education.

How might local understandings of learning and doctoring influenced by the lived experiences of culture, religion and the gender order contradict valued and favoured embodied capacities in international medical schools? For example, if ‘selling’ the self in an admissions interview in a cross-national medical school is valued and assessed positively, what strategies of self-regulation might some non-Western female students have to employ in an attempt to participate and fit in international medical education?

Currently, student-centred methods originating in Western culture seem to represent an ‘international’ standard (32). For example, the application of problem-based learning in non-Western contexts raises a lot of questions about the implications for these methods for student participation and achievement in international medical education. What feelings, dilemmas and difficulties might international students have to manage to align their learning dispositions and identities with the normative expectations of international medical schools?

Medical education research is replete with examples of inequalities in educational achievement among different ethnic groups (33, 34). Recently considerable attention has been given to biographical and bio-psychosocial risk factors among underperforming factors in the UK, including cultural differences and country of qualification (35, 36).

Although this research is valuable in raising awareness about inequalities in medical education and medicine, it does not tell us much about the embodied learning and professional practices in undergraduate and postgraduate medical education that shape and are shaped by students’ different forms of capital (cultural, economic and social), nor does it throw any light on the learners’ relationships with the field (e.g. a hospital or a specific medical school); ‘a network of objective relations between positions’ (37)  functioning as an arena ‘of production, circulation and appropriation of goods, services, knowledge or status which participants struggle for power and capital’ (38).

Empirical research in international medical education needs to examine the different forms of capital that medical students bring and the implications for learning; the embodied medical habitus valued and reproduced in international medical education; as well as the costs of international students performances of fitting in (39, 40). I propose an emancipatory framework of international medical education which can open up possibilities for equity by focusing on the following future priorities:

• Embracing medical student diversity and difference (cultural, religious, ethnic etc.) as a resource for developing inclusive medical curricula for all learners and cosmopolitan identities

• Shifting attention from diversity in admissions to challenging marginalisation and racism, and the effects of racism on retention and success in international medical education.

• Conducting medical education research on belonging and inclusion of ‘international’ medical students and the personal and professional costs of embodied performances of fitting in.

References

1. Haigh, M.  Internationalisation, planetary citizenship and Higher Education Inc. Compare, 2008;4: 427-440.
2. Hyland F, Trahar S. Anderson J, Dickens A, A Changing World: The internationalisation experiences of staff and students (home and international) in UK Higher Education. The Higher Education Academy: The Subject Centre for Education ESCalate, 2008.
3. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Internationalization of Higher Education: policy brief, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Observer, 2004.
4. Van Niekerk JP, Christensen L, Karle H, Lindgren S, Nystrup J. WFME global standards in medical education: status and perspectives following the 2003 WFME world conference. Medical Education, 2003;37:1050-1054.
5. Majoor GD. Internationalisation of undergraduate medical studies: promoting clinical tourism of academic development, Medical Education, 2001;35:1162-1163.
6. Niemantsverdriet S, Van Der Vleuten SPM, Majoor GD,Scherbier AJA. An explorative study into learning on international traineeships: experiential learning processes dominate. Medical Education, 2005;39:1236-1242.
7. Malau-Aduli B. Exploring the experiences and coping strategies of international medical students, BMC Medical Education, 2011; 11: 40.
8. Cohen J. Academic medicine’s latest imperative: achieving better health care through global medical education standards. Medical Education, 2003;37: 950-951.
9. Moke KH, Lee HL. Globalization of re-colonization: higher education reforms in Hong Kong, Higher Education Policy, 2013;13: 361-377.
10. Wilmott H. Commercialising Higher Education in the UK: The State, Industry and Peer Review, paper presented at the Higher Education Close-Up conference, University of Central Lancanshire, 1998.
11. Giroux H. Neoliberalism, Corporate Culture, and the Promise of Higher Education: The University as a Democratic Public Sphere, Harvard Educational Review, 2009;4: 425-464.
12. Yan Z, Xi J. Billingual medical education: opportunities and challenges, Medical Education, 2009;43:613-614.
13. Griffiths F, Green E, Tsouroufli M. The nature of medical evidence and its inherent uncertainty for the clinical consultation: the example of midlife women, BMJ, 2005;330:511
14. Bourdieu P. (2001a). Homo Academicus, Cambridge: Polity Press.
15. Tsouroufli M, Ozbilgin M. Gender and discourses of independent learning in medical education, Global Education Review, 2012; 1: 36-47.
16. Dent M, Whitehead, S. Managing Professional Identities: Knowledge, Performativity and the ‘new’ professional. London: Routledge2002.
17. Pollack S, Rossiter A. Neoliberalism and the entrepreneurial subject: Implications for feminism and social work, Canadian Social Work Review, 2010.
18. Gabbard DA. (Eds.) Knowledge and Power in the Global Economy: Politics and the Rhetoric of the School Reform. NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc, 2000.
19. Sutherland A. The role of theatre and embodied knowledge in addressing race in South African higher education. Studies in Higher Education; 2011:1-13.
20. McLaren P. Schooling as a ritual performance. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1993.
21. Lave L, Wenger E. Situated Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
22. Bourdieu P. Masculine Domination, trans. Nice. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001b.
23. Tsouroufli, M. ‘Breaking in and breaking out a Medical School: Feminist Academic Interrupted’, Special Issue on ‘Being a Feminist Academic’ Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, 2012; 5: 467-483.
24. Beagan BL. Neutralizing differences: producing neutral doctors for (almost) neutral patients. Social Science & Medicine, 2000; 8:1253-1265.
25. Babaria P, Bernheim S, Nunez-Smith M. Gender and the pre-clinical experiences of female medical students: a taxonomy. Medical Education, 2011;45:249–60.
26. Rees CE, Monrouxe, LN. ‘I should be so lucky ha ha ha ha’: the construction of power, identity and gender through laughter with medical workplace learning encounters. Journal of Pragmatics, 2010;42: 3384-3399.
27. Rees CE, Morouxe, LV. Medical students learning intimate examination without valid consent: a multi-source study. Medical education, 2011;45, 261-272.
28. Monrouxe LV and Rees, CE. ‘It’s just a clash of cultures’ emotional talk within medical students’ narratives of professionalism dilemmas. Advances in Health Sciences Education, 2011, DOI 10.1007/s10459-011-9342-z.
29. Gordon J, Markham, P, Lipworth W, Kerridge I, Little M. The dual nature of medical enculturation in postgraduate medical training and practice. Medical Education, 2012; 9: 894-902.
30. Colley HJ, Diment K, Tedder M. Learning as becoming in vocational education and training: class, gender and the role of vocational habitus. Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 2003: 4: 471-498.
31. Tsouroufli M, Ozbilgin M, Smith M. ‘Gendered forms of othering in UK hospital medicine: Nostalgia as resistance against the modern doctor’ Special Issue: ‘Understanding the dynamic of careers and identities through multiple strands of equality’, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. 2011;6: 498-509.
32. Frambach JM, Driessen,, EW, Chong Chan L, Van der Vleuten Cees PM.  Rethinking the globalisation of problem-based learning: how culture challenges self-directed learning, Medical Education, 2012;46: 738–747.
33. Esmail A. Ethnicity and academic performance in the UK. BMJ,2011; 342:d709.
34. Woolf K, Potts HWW, McManus IC. Ethnicity and academic performance in UK trained doctors and medical students: systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ, 2011;342 , d901. 10.1136/bmj.d901.
35. Cohen D. et al. Identifying biographical and biopsychosocial risk factors amongst underperforming doctors, ERSC RES-153-25-0092: 2009.
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40. Luke H. Medical Education and the Sociology of Medical Habitus: ‘It’s not about the stethoscope!’ Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003.

By Dr Kate Bower, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney.

I recently had the pleasure of talking with Professor Terry Threadgold, eminent feminist scholar whose academic work has traversed the areas of English literature, performance studies, women’s studies, media studies, journalism, linguistics and legal studies.

She recently retired as Pro-Vice-Chancellor: Staff at Cardiff University, a role she described as an ‘equality champion’.

Terry is highly regarded in the UK and internationally for her work in equity and diversity in the higher education sector. Our discussion was wide-ranging and fascinating but one thing in particular struck a chord with me – her views on workload models and planning in academia.

In the Australian context (the only one I’m familiar with), workload plans are frequently derided by academics as yet another form of neo-liberal managerial control imposed on our creative minds.

Unions view them as a tool that the administration wields to corral unruly academics into line with university directives. When used incorrectly workload plans can be an exercise in box-ticking and time-wasting, contributing to the growing administrative load on academics.

However, Terry Threadgold thinks that workload models should have a central place in a feminist and equity and diversity agenda in higher education.

Why?

As a lifelong academic, Terry was aware in her role as PVC: Staff of the tendency for academics’ to work themselves into the ground if left to their own devices.

For most, if not all scholars, their work is a labour of love, a creative endeavour, a vocation in the original sense of the word.

Hence, academics’ resistance to ‘accounting’ for their work in the crude matrix of workload modeling.

Yet because of their commitment and dedication, academics frequently spend many hours working outside normal business hours – nights, early mornings and weekends.

A personal anecdote gives an indication of the commonality of the practice.

A work colleague posted a Facebook status update on a Sunday afternoon complaining that his institutional email was not functioning and asking colleagues if they were having the same problem.

Twenty-five colleagues responded noting the same problem and complaining about the work that wasn’t getting done because of it.

That is twenty-six academics working on a Sunday and not one mentioned it as exceptional!

Additional hours spent working is not necessarily problematic on its own, if it’s a decision made by an individual because they choose to devote their time to their passion.

A problem arises when it becomes the norm.

Management develops expectations about what an ordinary academic can achieve in terms of workload and outputs on the basis of what the workforce is producing – the expectation is that this work is done in a 40-hour week (in Australia the official working work is in fact 35 hours), when in reality many academics are spending 50 or even 60 hours a week working.

This means the ‘standard’ for academic achievement becomes distorted and expectations become unrealistic.

Just like any other job, an academic’s job should be achievable in normal business hours.

Overtime should be a choice not a necessity.

By now, the implications for equity should be evident but let me elaborate the point.

For some academics, working 50 or 60 hours a week is just not possible.

Women, sole parents and people with disabilities are disproportionately affected. Despite progress in the numbers of couples co-parenting, women are still more often the primary carers for children and for elderly parents.

The responsibilities of caring for children, aging or unwell parents or perhaps a sibling or partner with severe disability make it difficult to manage a 40-hour working week, let alone finding time on nights or weekends to work.

These problems can be compounded for sole parents who have similar responsibilities but no one to share the load.

Some academics with disabilities require extra time and assistance to participate in the workforce and simply do not have the option to work overtime.

An example: I’m a member of a Facebook group for academic mums and the most common complaint is the anxiety and fear caused by having to compete for jobs with colleagues who can devote many more hours to their work because they don’t have children to care for; and the networking opportunities missed by not being able to attend after-work events or international conferences.

This is where Terry Threadgold sees an opportunity for workload models to help.

If academics use the workload model to accurately account for their time and their activities; to reflect the enormous effort in terms of intellect and time invested that produces academic work; it can be advantageous to all.

As Pro-vice-chancellor Terry was able to use workload models to create a more equitable work place by demonstrating an appropriate workload in a way that was appealing to university management.

Workload models that accurately reflect the hours spent on each activity can highlight the prevalence of overtime and change the expectations of managers overseeing academics workload, meaning that all academics can participate in the workforce equally without impacting their personal and caring responsibilities.

In the case of Cardiff University, Terry and her colleagues were also able to demonstrate the need for more permanent full-time academics leading to several new appointments across the institution.

In the long run, embracing the workload plan as an equity tool created a more equitable workplace (in terms of participation), less overtime for academic staff, new full-time appointments and greater job security for those appointed from casual or contract based positions.

Maybe it’s time to embrace workload modeling and planning as a useful strategy to address equity and diversity issues in academia?

NB: This blog post was written entirely within normal business hours!

IPED board member, Chrissi McCarthy, shares her perspectives on gender (in)equality in the UK construction industry in an open letter to the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB).

Despite a range of initiatives aimed at increasing women’s representation across the construction sector, the numbers of women still remain low.

Across the sector, women represent 11% of the workforce.

In addition, times of recession see these numbers decline further.

In this blog post, Chrissi explores the importance of celebrating women in the sector through awards, and why the lack of any nominated women for the CIOB’s Construction Manager of the Year awards matters to both men and women working in the sector.

First time conference attendance can be a daunting experience – here two PhD students are interviewed by Kate Sang about their first conferences.

For the first time I was able to take my own PhD students to conferences. Kenny Olowookere and Rafal Sitko are both in their first year of study and were able to present their proposed theoretical frameworks. Thank you to Heriot Watt for supporting our trips. Below Kenny and Rafal discuss their first academic conference experiences.

1. Can you tell me about the first conference you attended – what was it called, where was it and why did you decide to go?

Kenny: The first conference I attended was the EDI (Equality Diversity and Inclusion) Conference in Munich. My major reason for attending was in order to obtain some useful feedback on my work. I also attended in order to meet and network with colleagues in my field.

Rafal: I was lucky to attend the Gender, Work and Organisation 2014 conference, which was hosted at Keele University. It is an international and interdisciplinary forum on problems of gender inequality at work. The idea to attend GWO came from my supervisors. Knowing the rank of the GWO conference in my research area they suggested I should apply.

2. What did you present at the conference?

Kenny: I presented a conceptual paper titled: ‘The Linguistic Construction of Difference within Normative Organizational Contexts’.

Rafal: As a first year PhD student I did not have any empirical findings to share with the audience but it was a chance for me to present the theoretical framework behind my thesis. I discussed at the conference my adaptation of the intersectionality theory.

3. What did you enjoy most about the conference?

Kenny: The streams addressed issues that were relevant to my research area and I enjoyed engaging in discussion with like-minded research oriented colleagues.

Rafal: I was impressed with both the friendly atmosphere and the high level of academic debate. Everyone was approachable and easy to talk to. The atmosphere was relaxed. At the same time there were many excellent presentations. It was a pleasure to take part in different debates.

4. What were the main benefits of attending the conference?

Kenny: I was able to obtain useful and constructive feedback in a relaxed environment; and I made several good contacts.

Rafal: It was an opportunity for me to defend but also challenge my ideas. I had to expose my work to a broader audience, which seemed scary in the beginning but turned out to be an excellent practice and experience.

Attending other presentations was also very educational. I learned many new concepts or new perspectives on topics which I was already familiar with. The presentations significantly broadened my scope of interests. I could also learn from them how to present conference papers in the future.

Last but not least attending the conference was an excellent opportunity to meet experts in my field. It was amazing to talk to and exchange emails with authors of my favourite articles.

5. What advice would you give someone attending their first academic conference?

Kenny: Engage as much as possible with the whole process; it is a valuable experience, worth the work you put into it.

Rafal: Try to attend the conference with someone else. Find out if anyone from your institution is going or encourage your friends who are also doing a PhD to apply for the same conference. Going in a bigger group can be a lot of fun!

6. How has attending the conference affected your PhD study?

Kenny: It has had a positive effect on my PhD as it helped develop some insight into future publications that could come out of the research.

Rafal: At the conference I received a lot of feedback on my thesis. It significantly changed my perception of the theoretical framework which I wanted to adopt. I realised that some of the concepts which I originally planned to use are unnecessary and that I should improve my understanding of the main theory. Overall, attending the conference was a great educating experience.

The next EDI conference will be in Tel-Aviv in July 2015 http://www.edi-conference.org/, the journal can be found here http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/journals.htm?id=edi

More detail on the Gender, Work and Organization conference and journal can be found here http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1468-0432

Dr Josephine Kinge – Lecturer in Human Resource Management, University of East Anglia, UK and Editorial Board member of IPED.

Reflecting this morning after taking an online training module as part of my institution’s commitment to Equality and Diversity – I am glad to say that I got 100% correct Phew!

I think that it is not so much staying within the law that is a challenge per se but instead it is the regulation of individual behaviour and making individuals aware about how their behaviour is perceived by those that they interact with at work.

Later on the same day I read an article in the BBC News magazine about “inappropriate” sexual behaviours and specifically whether you should ask someone’s permission to kiss them?  The online article brought up issues and debates such as the one about consent and how it should be established and also the importance of old-fashioned manners and how we behave with one another.  The article goes onto the wider debate about the role of legislation in regulating this behaviour and the problem that it is open to interpretation.  As Catherine Hakim says in the article “Law is far too crude to be used to regulate social interaction” but some would argue there needs to be a safety net and that while legislation is not the whole answer or perfect solution – it is a necessary part of the answer to ensure that we don’t risk moving backwards.

A more important point is made by Professor Frank Furedi in the same article that people should be able to trust in their own judgement and should be encouraged to do so by their employers.   – It is important to have that confidence and a maturity because if we simply follow the rules (some would say blindly) we lose our ability to judge what is appropriate by learning to read other human beings.

This leaves me with a number of thoughts and reflections about the role of legislation but perhaps more importantly – it left me considering whether we can teach judgement in these situations.

Dr Susan Sayce – Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management, University of East Anglia, UK and Co-Editor-in-Chief of IPED.

Welcome to the review of the 32nd  international Labour Process Conference 2014. The conference took place on the banks of the River Thames in April at Kings College, London UK and 194 papers were accepted and 250 delegates registered. The labour process conference aim is to expand debate between theory and research in the labour process. While the focus can be on management , labour, political context, capitalism and so on it is how this impact on the workers themselves, their struggles their experiences as workers in a changing global market that also comes into focus.

To this end there were five special streams and two keynote speakers to help develop knowledge in this area. The keynotes were from Paul Edwards (University of Birmingham) who presented a master class in doing research in his paper ‘critical social science and emancipation some rules of engagement with policy and practices’  While Vicki Smith

(University of California, Davis) spoke impressively about how the recruitment process can be used to bolster the infrastructure of workplace to create ‘appropriate workers’ in her keynote ‘Controlling for consent: Recruitment as an under-theorized mechanism for control’.

 There were 5 major streams for this conference that explored:

• Professional Work: Digital Technologies and new managerial practices
• Reconceptualising employability through a labour process lens.
• The Missing Manager: Management through a Labour Process lens
• Occupational segregation in the global economy: Impacts across gender, ethnicity and immigration
• Workplaces regimes and worker struggles in developing countries.

 The streams generated lots of international papers around both new contemporary themes such as using social media and tweeter in worker resistance to more classic themes such as developing employability and career making in a low wage labour market.  The missing manager theme generated lots of paper about the complexity of management in areas such NGOs and their labour process as well as how managers deal with conflict.

However, as an academic interested in equality and diversity it was the last two streams that I followed the most as authors discussed problems about work labour markets in transition. In one session we had a discussion about the corporatization of mining work in Peru, the difficulty of change in Russian mining towns and then moved straight to Venezuela to discuss the ‘modelo Obrero’ and its impact there.  International research also featured in the discussion of outsourcing and its destabilizing impact on work and representation in Brazil, India  and segmented workplaces in Korea. 

The stream on occupational segregation indicates the historical link between labour process frameworks in conjunction with feminist thinking to give research insight into topics such as domestic labour, the wages of housework within a global market amongst others.  Also there was a lot of interest in a group of papers that discussed the impact of trade liberalisation on job market dynamics and the challenges that this raised in diverse countries such as the Ukraine, Spain and Poland while one session discussed domestic partnership in Sweden, women’s work in the family business in the Japanese textile industry as well as intersectionality in the Turkish tomato industry focusing on women and Kurdish workers. 

The many doctoral contributors found the conference friendly and supportive as they exposed their research work to public scrutiny for the first time to receive useful feedback. Overall there was a real mix of theory and practice in the delegate’s contribution to the conference, which was both reassuring but also inspiring as one heard about the experiences of workers and their struggles elsewhere.

So see you in April 2015 at the 33rd International Labour Process Conference in Athens Greece. http://www.ilpc.org.uk/

Susan

We are delighted to announce the launch of Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Equality and Diversity: An International Journal. This multi-lingual and fully open access journal will publish peer reviewed papers covering any aspect of equality and diversity, such as studies of employment, education and other provision of services. The aim of the journal is to provide a forum for international research which advances and challenges our understanding of equality and diversity from innovative theoretical and empirical perspectives.

We welcome the following forms of submissions:

1. Original research papers which examine equality and diversity in any disciplines / sector from any geographical location. Papers may be position pieces, theoretically informed empirical work, theoretical pieces or systematic literature reviews (between 6000 to 8000 words plus references and a 200 word abstract and up to five key words/terms).
2. Case studies, including examples of equality and diversity interventions from the public and private sector, teaching, charities and other bodies (maximum length 5000 words plus references and a 150 word summary).
3. Letters – this may include responses to previously published studies – we hope to encourage debate.
4. Professional insight including, teaching resources (many of our readers will be engaged in teaching within higher education and the school system), community and industrial outreach and reports from conferences, training sessions, etc. (maximum length of 1500 words)
5. Essays from students in the field of equality and diversity (maximum length 3000 words plus references and 150 word abstract).

Call for proposals for special issues:

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Equality and Diversity: An International Journal will publish at least one special issue per year. Please contact the journal at IPEDJournal@gmail.com with an expression of interest and further details.