The delivery of a telephone coaching programme to people with type 2 diabetes by practice nurses in Victoria, Australia : a qualitative evaluation

Aim.  To evaluate telephone coaching undertaken by practice nurses in a randomised controlled trial of self-management support for people with type 2 diabetes.

Background.  Qualitative evaluation of the processes that take place in randomised controlled trials has the advantage of providing information on those variables that contribute to the success or failure of the randomised controlled trial. This additional information can be used to improve or modify chronic disease management programme designs.

Methods.  Grounded theory was used to analyse transcriptions of telephone coaching sessions between practice nurses and patient participants in the randomised controlled trial.

Findings.   Analysis of transcriptions found that patient participants had complex multiple medical conditions to manage, as well as maintaining their daily lives. Two approaches to working with this complexity by practice nurses emerged. We characterised one as ‘treat to target’ and the other as ‘personalised care’. While each approach shapes identities available to patients within the relationship with the practice nurse, the impact or effectiveness of these approaches on outcomes has yet to be reported.

Conclusions.  Telephone coaching takes place in complex social contexts as well as complex medical conditions. People with type 2 diabetes must manage their diabetes care and their care of other conditions within their social contexts. This means a constant negotiation of priorities.

Relevance to clinical practice.  Awareness of how health professional support for patients’ self-management becomes a relationship and element of the negotiated identity of patients is important in adapting clinical guideline-based protocols to achieving targets in the management of chronic illness.

Towards a theory and practice of policy engagement : higher education research policy in the making

Academic engagement with higher education research policy in Australia, and with education policy more generally, is in crisis. This time around, it is not just that our theoretical tools are blunt and irrelevant (Ball 1990), so are our politics. It seems our attention has been so consumed by ‘what is policy’ (Ball 1994a) and with challenging its claims to authority, that we have missed or ignored imperatives to engage with its production. Even though some have attempted contributions, for the most part we have been ‘coerced into an era of cooperation’. Getting ourselves out of this mess will take more than just better theories and new politics. It will require a degree of cooperation, to advance a theory and practice of policy engagement and to re-establish a field of education that resists the tendency to fragment and/or the temptation to defend itself ‘against’ policy. In this paper I attempt an assessment of where we are theoretically and politically with regard to education policy and where we need to look to find new forms of policy engagement. By way of illustration, I draw on examples from AARE (the Australian Association for Research in Education) and the Australian RQF (Research Quality Framework) although the analysis is by no means restricted to these.

The lived experience of flexible education : theory, policy and practice

The range of rationales that underpin conceptions of flexible education, and the re-making over time of the official meaning of flexibility in national education policy, have led to the point where flexibility might be found, or be required, in nearly every aspect of Australian higher education. This paper seeks to identify those rationales and the development of public policy rhetoric that have framed the development of the meaning of flexible education over time in an Australian context. By considering the intersection of theoretical and policy perspectives on flexible education with the realities of teaching and learning practice in the discipline context of engineering, this paper proposes the essential importance of individual context and agency in the making of real meaning from, and creating practical boundaries around, the otherwise tenuous definitions of flexibility often offered by institutional policy.

Between theory and practice : Rudolf Steiner as philosopher and architect

The philosophy and architecture of Rudolf Steiner both aim to give formal expression to his esoteric worldview, however, the means of articulating this worldview fundamentally differ within each discipline. Philosophy and architecture are separated by both process and product, and while an interdisciplinary reading of Steiner’s work does make certain connections between them evident, the incorporeal nature of thinking and the physical reality of building inevitably require different skills of their author, as well as different standards by which to assess them. Although he had no formal training as an architect, Steiner believed that his system of Anthroposophy provided a conceptual framework that would inspire a new style of modern architecture imbued with a spiritual dimension. As such, architecture provided Steiner with a means of visually expressing what words could not, and was therefore a necessary and important part of his philosophical pursuit. This paper explores the tension that exists between Steiner’s philosophy and architecture in its translation from theoretical ideas into built form. Steiner’s approach to architectural design was less concerned with the methods and techniques of the craft than with achieving what he saw as architecture’s true purpose - namely to give voice to the inner spiritual content of the work. However, in order to achieve this ultimate goal, a certain level of architectural competence is required. Therefore, Steiner’s ability as an architect to articulate such lofty ideals will also be assessed. Conceived on the edge of theory and practice, Steiner’s work serves to demonstrate the richness and depth that such an approach has to offer the field of architecture.

Twenty years of the Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice

This paper reviews the work published in JMTP during its first 20 years. It finds extensive global coverage in terms of authors and material, despite a U.S. emphasis. In addition, a diversity of topics is covered and is making a significant contribution, as defined by citations, to broader academic discourse. The works published have a strong applied focus, although this might be expected to have been higher given the journal's applied foundations. The paper also identifies the most prolific individuals and institutions, based on the number of articles published and citations to those articles. The paper concludes that JMTP has made a valuable contribution to marketing academia and its global recognition continues to grow.

The inescapability of language : theory and practice for L-1 educators

Editorial introducing a range fo papers addressing issue of research methodologies and philosphical frameworks for research in L-1 education.

Putting the cog into cognitive : the theory behind teaching practice.

During teacher education programs, lecturers introduce students to the joys of studying a range of theorists. Sadly, many teachers appear to put theoretical perspectives of practice behind them immediately the essay-writing is over. The purpose of this paper is to breathe life into the work of theorist, relevant to early childhood teaching. I aim to inspire teachers to gain a new depth of satisfaction from their teaching as they critically reflect on their practice and gain a deeper understanding of teaching strategies that support children’s learning and development.

Framework for the relational analysis of texts : theory and practice.

This workshop is useful for academic researchers and postgraduate students who wish to explore relational approaches to the examination of the organisation of academic texts.
The first part of the workshop introduces the theory and premises of the framework for the rhetorical analysis of the structure of texts (FARS). FARS provides a functional account of the structure of text in terms of the strategies employed by writers to achieve their communicative purposes. Its coherence relations obtain from the level of text as a whole to the clausal level. The discourse parts at all levels except the bottom level constitute relational schemata. FARS relational taxonomy includes the following relational clusters: Elaboration, List, Causal, Adversative, Facilitation, Assessing and Digression. The second part of the workshopl provides opportunity to practice relational analyses of selected texts within this framework.

Mana Taonga and the public sphere: a dialogue between indigenous practice and Western theory

Recent re-conceptualizations of the ‘public sphere’ facilitated a much needed shift in thinking about identity politics ‘from a substance … to a movement’ (Weibel and Latour, 2007). This laid the foundation for dissolving the ‘emanatist vision’ (Bourdieu, 1990) of self-explanatory and perpetual systems and structures towards the interrogation of actions and performances that simultaneously constitute and are affected by such wider socio-political realities. Most academic contributions, however, remain on a normative or theoretical level without offering empirical insights.

This article introduces Mana Taonga as an Indigenous Māori concept of cultural politics embedded in current museum practice at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa). It creates a dialogue between Indigenous Māori practice and Western theory leading to a refined understanding of performative democracy within a museum as forum, or public sphere. The authors argue that a specific museum offers a particular place, space and empirical reality to interrogate seemingly universal concepts such as ‘culture’ and ‘politics’ by blending theoretical notions with an awareness of institutional contexts and practices.

Relationship between intuition and emotional intelligence in occupational therapists in mental health practice

Objective: 
Clinical reasoning studies have acknowledged tacit aspects of practice, and recent research suggests that clinical reasoning contains intuition informed by tacit knowledge. Intuition also appears to be influenced by awareness and understanding of emotions. This study investigated the relationship between intuition and emotional intelligence among occupational therapists in mental health practice.