No abstract

For some time now qualitative researchers have been debating the implications of the crisis of representation in social and educational research. The untenability of any notion of absolute truth has left us with the problem of determining the status of research findings. Considerable attention has been devoted to finding criteria that will enable judgments to be made between competing research claims. However, this leads to a second, equally intractable problem: How can we determine which set of putative criteria to adopt? This article analyzes the nature of criteria in qualitative research from a hermeneutical perspective, arguing that criteria can only be located in the interaction between research findings and the critical reader of those findings. It is suggested that it is both illogical and pointless to attempt to predetermine a definitive set of criteria against which all qualitative research should be judged.

This text introduces recently completed research on 'no touch' sports coaching, by placing it in a broader social context which problematises the way child abuse and child protection (or safeguarding) are conceived and discussed in terms of policy and practice. It also provides a brief indicative summary of the research findings and offers a discussion of moral panic, risk society and worst case thinking, before drawing on Foucault's work on governmentality to offer an explanation of how the current situation arose. The authors suggest that the approach to discussing child abuse, and the guidelines and training stemming from the dominant discourse, for the most part initiated by the NSPCC's Child Protection in Sport Unit, together create an environment in which many coaches and PE teachers are confused and fearful, and consequently unsure of how to be around the children and young people they teach and coach.

This article addresses alternative models for a reflexive methodology and examines the ways in which doctoral students have appropriated these texts in their theses. It then considers the indeterminate qualities of those appropriations. The paper offers a new account of reflexivity as "picturing," drawing analogies from the interpretation of two very different pictures, by Velázquez and Tshibumba. It concludes with a more open and fluid account of reflexivity, offering the notion of "signature," and drawing on the work of Gell and also Deleuze and Guattari in relation to the inherently specific nature of "concepts" situated in space and time.

This paper is informed by a UK based Economic and Social Research Council funded research project which developed and deployed a case-study approach to issues of touch between children and professionals in schools and childcare. Outcomes from these settings are referred to, but the focus here is shifted to touch in sports coaching and its distinctive contextual and institutional characteristics. We consider the broader context of no touch coaching practice, including relevant theoretical accounts, review policy which impacts on coaching activity and report on preliminary enquiries. 1 We argue that the disembodiment of practice has undermined the conception and experience of sports coaching and its contribution to educating and socialising young people.