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Psychology, Sociology and Education

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/handle/20.500.12289/14

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Author: search.filters.author.Allin, Linda

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 47
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    The Importance of Trust in Mentoring Relationships for Women’s Outdoor Leadership Development
    (Taylor & Francis Group, 2025-03-20) Allin, Linda; Boocock, Emma; O'Brien, Kate
    Mentoring is an important tool that organisations can implement to help address gender barriers in women’s progression in sport and the outdoors. However, there is much still to learn about what makes for effective mentoring in these contexts. This paper explores what makes for positive and ‘successful’ mentoring relationships within a formal mentoring programme for women’s outdoor leadership development. A qualitative, interpretive approach was adopted. Twenty participants who took part in a ten-week women’s outdoor leadership course and experienced mentoring by either a male or female mentor were interviewed using semi-structured interviews lasting 30-60 minutes. Transcripts were analysed through the framework of trust and trustworthiness (Hardin, 2002), paying attention to the significance of gender for cross-gender mentoring relationships. Findings show the importance of the key elements of openness and honesty, benevolence, reliability and competence for experiences of positive mentoring relationships and we highlight the issues raised when mentoring expectations are not met. The data reveal the value of both male and female mentors but also highlight the ambiguities and uncertainties for women in cross-gender mentoring. In particular, we show the importance of the mentoring relationship as a psychologically safe space where women’s experiences in the male dominated context of the outdoors can be understood, recognised and validated. Recommendations for mentoring programmes are provided.
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    Women into outdoor education: Negotiating a male-gendered space-issues of physicality
    (Leisure Studies Association, 2000) Allin, Linda
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    Women's reflections on a career in outdoor education
    (Institute for Outdoor Learning, 2003) Allin, Linda
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    Climbing Mount Everest: Women, career and family in outdoor education
    (2004) Allin, Linda
    For women outdoor educators, combining an outdoor career with family relationships appears contradictory. Long and/or irregular hours, residentials, and increasing work commitments are, for example, congruent with traditional notions of a career in the outdoors yet they clash with social constructions of women’s primary identities as partners, wives and/or mothers. In this paper, I explore how 21 women outdoor educators constructed connections and disconnections between career and family. In doing so, I uncover how they negotiated their career identities and show how contradictions between work and home were exacerbated due to the centrality of the body to their outdoor education careers.
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    Mid-life nuances and negotiations: narrative maps and the social construction of mid-life in sport and physical activity
    (Taylor and Francis Group, 2005-03) Partington, Elizabeth; Partington, Sarah; Fishwick, Lesley; Allin, Linda
    This paper adopts a narrative perspective on the study of mid-life experiences in sport. Different types of stories about sporting mid-life are identified and discussed. Drawing upon the concept of narrative mapping, the potential of these stories to serve as narrative maps for those approaching mid-life is considered. Data from an interview study with 26 participants aged between 35 and 55 years of age, from badminton, distance running, outdoor activities and health clubs is provided. Paradigmatic and structural analyses were conducted on the data in order to identify story types and predominant narrative themes. The findings revealed a master narrative for mid-life in sport, which is that ‘age is a state of mind’. In addition two further narratives were apparent. One, ‘life begins at forty’ was a counter-narrative, which depicted mid-life as a time of rejuvenation and an opportunity to revisit the experiences of youth. The other was an antithesis narrative, which focused upon acceptance of the ageing process and the notion of ‘growing old gracefully’. Sportsmen and women linked their own stories to these idealised narrative types, but via a process of narrative slippage, created their own personal narratives of sporting mid-life. Analysis of these personal narratives indicated that there are three different maps for an individual negotiating sporting mid-life.
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    Exploring careership in outdoor education and the lives of women outdoor educators
    (Taylor and Francis Group, 2006-08-18) Allin, Linda; Humberstone, Barbara
    The last decade has seen significant interest in research associated with outdoor education and outdoor learning in the UK. However, there has been little research into the perspectives of those staff, particularly women, who make available outdoor experiences to various groups in different situations and locations. The importance of understanding the lives of educators for understanding their professional development has been much discussed in relation to the physical education profession. This article considers how the notion of careership and the use of life-history research, through illuminating how outdoor educators make their career decisions in relation to their own socio-cultural and structural contexts, can provide an insight into professional development of outdoor educators and the gendered nature of outdoor education careers.
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    Developing and evaluating online resources to enhance learning in the workplace
    (2008-05) Turnock, Chris; Allin, Linda
    Resources produced by the FDTL Phase 4 project, Making Practice Based Learning Work, aimed to make health care practitioners more effective in their role at supporting & supervising students in the workplace across a range of healthcare disciplines. The project’s original work aimed to: • Identify and document good practice on preparing health care practitioners for their educational role. • Develop learning materials for practitioners. • Disseminate online materials across health and social care communities. • Evaluate online materials for enhancing role of practice educators. Subsequent institutional funding was used to develop the project’s original set of learning materials for use in a non-health context. The Sports Sciences programmes at Northumbria require students to undertake a work-based placement, and the programme of Sport Management was chosen as one for which learning materials could be developed. Three of the original project’s learning material themes were selected for development: Assessment, Reflection and Working with Others. This session will cover factors influencing the nature of the online resources that were developed plus the evaluation of the resources based upon student (n = 30) data collected using an online questionnaire, and informal feedback from staff. Key findings indicated most students using the materials found they were accessible and useable. Enhancement of learning was also perceived by 17 of the 21 students that used the materials. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the theme most students accessed was Assessment. However, almost one third of the students (n = 9) did not access the materials, with feedback suggesting a need to explore alternative ways to raise student and employer engagement with the materials. This is viewed as particularly important when transferring materials to contexts outside profession-based courses such as health.
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    Institutional strategies to enhance research-teaching linkages
    (2008-09) Reimann, Nicola; Allin, Linda; Fishwick, Lesley; Gannon-Leary, Pat; Haworth, Tim; McDowell, Liz; Vennis, Alison
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    Engaging sport students in assessment and formative feedback
    (2009-06) Allin, Linda; Fishwick, Lesley
    Sport as a discipline in higher education is grappling with the challenge of providing authentic and relevant assessment that engages students in their learning. The centrality of assessment to the student experience is now well accepted within the research literature (Brown and Knight, 1994; Rust, 2002). In particular, formative assessment, or assessment that creates feedback to support future teaching and learning experiences, can be a powerful tool for enhancing learning (see Black and Wiliam, 1998). Given that feedback is most effective if it is considered or reflected upon, one of the key challenges is to actively engage sport students in formative assessment processes. This guide offers advice in designing and facilitating sport students’ involvement in assessment and enhancing their engagement with the feedback they receive. The aim is to support sport programme teams by taking a pragmatic approach, combining a clear academic rationale based on assessment for learning principles with case study examples of successful formative assessment exercises emphasising innovative approaches to giving feedback. The guide consists of three key sections focused on: 1) Providing staff in HLST with background knowledge of formative assessment and formative feedback and how it relates to their subject. 2) Providing case study examples of how to effectively engage sport students with assessment feedback so that it feeds-forward to aid learning. 3) Providing a resource of references and sources of support for tutors wishing to further their learning in this area.