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The central theme of the paper is concerned with the educational potential that patient narratives may hold for improving patient-centred interprofessional care. It follows the processes of a research project that was required to provide an educational intervention in a multiprofessionally-staffed stroke rehabilitation ward. It discusses the evolution of the project, focusing on the ways in which patient narratives were constructed, the purposes they served, and the responses of professionals to the narratives in subsequent workshops. Along the way, the paper reflects on the responses of patients that problematise the notion of "patient-centred" care. Together with the responses of professionals to the narratives, the paper raises questions about the obstacles to and possibilities for such care.

This article extends arguments that seek to account for the paucity of research on “studying up,” suggesting that to foster a more congenial climate in which such studies can he undertaken, received discourses in educational research that assume fixed/stable identities for researcher and subjects need to be rethought. I argue that poststructuralist perspectives help us “think otherwise” on matters of power and subjectivity in research. By allowing for an inquisitorial rather than an adversarial stance to studying the workings of power, such perspectives allow a different conceptualization of research that could ease the process of doing ethnographic research with the powerful and broaden the approaches currently available to studying up in educational research.

This paper examines arguments that have been espoused for the educative and transformative potential of mixed-sex sports, and explores whether such promise can be attained and what the obstacles may be, in the context of the UK university-level, competitive cheerleading. Drawing on critical and feminist literature on the functioning of hegemonic masculinities, hyper-femininities and alternative, more inclusive gender performances, the paper analyses the narratives of three participants in what is often recognized as the ‘feminized’ activity of cheerleading. It suggests that: a) having experience of mixed-sex team membership can have a progressive influence on the gender narratives and performances of both male and female participants; b) mixed-sex teams, however, are not a panacea to rectify gender stereotypes and inequalities and c) if the implicit transformative potential of mixed-sex cheerleading is to be fully realized, then explicit organizational, promotional and structural changes to the sport itself will be needed. The paper concludes with suggestions for a new research agenda that focuses on the terms and conditions under which gender is ‘learnt’ and performed in a range of mixed-sex sporting contexts, and how these contexts serve to shape the ‘gender pedagogies’ of sports in particular ways. Such an approach will open significant new directions for research, policy and practice in the interconnected fields of gender, sport and education