Exploring professional orientations to community voice in professional practice settings: The IMAP process

The tension between technical experts and the populations they seek to serve is well established in the literature examining professional social problem solving. In this piece, I examine this tension as one between the distinct discursive worlds of technical expertise and community voice. I develop an analytic process, IMAP, for exploring this tension by looking at a wide variety of professional orientations around a relatively fixed concept of community voice. IMAP involves I&barbelow;dentifying social problem solvers, M&barbelow;apping social problem solvers' claims, A&barbelow;nalyzing professional orientations that arise from this mapping, and P&barbelow;redicting, diagnosing, and remediating conflicts. IMAP can be used by analysts external to social problem solving settings or by social problem solvers themselves. The use of IMAP by external experts poses questions of expert alignment with either of the discursive worlds. I examine two cases in public health practice settings: a mobile immunization service and the efforts of a foundation to improve health in an inner-city neighborhood. I develop four modal types that can be anticipated in social problem solving settings or, more specifically, in public health practice. Understanding of these “world views” can enhance mutual understanding between public health professionals and between public health professionals and the communities they seek to serve. IMAP might also address ongoing conflicts to clarify differences in unspoken normative commitments and the impact of these on social problem solving. I discuss implications of the research for public health practice and further research in the area. ^

Everything in di Dark Muss Come to Light: A Postcolonial Investigation of the Practice of Extra Lessons at the Secondary Level in Jamaica's Education System

Despite the vast research examining the evolution of Caribbean education systems, little is chronologically tied to the postcolonial theoretical perspectives of specific island-state systems, such as the Jamaican education system and its relationship with the underground shadow education system. This dissertation study sought to address the gaps in the literature by critically positioning postcolonial theories in education to examine the macro- and micro-level impacts of extra lessons on secondary education in Jamaica. The following postcolonial theoretical (PCT) tenets in education were contextualized from a review of the literature: (a) PCT in education uses colonial discourse analysis to critically deconstruct and decolonize imperialistic and colonial representations of knowledge throughout history; (b) PCT in education uses an anti-colonial discursive framework to re-position indigenous knowledge in schools, colleges, and universities to challenge hegemonic knowledge; (c) PCT in education involves the "unlearning" of dominant, normative ideologies, the use of self-reflexivity, and deconstruction; and (d) PCT in education calls for critical pedagogical approaches that reject the banking concept of education and introduces inclusive pedagogy to facilitate "the passage from naïve to critical transitivity" (Freire, 1973, p. 32). Specifically, using a transformative mixed-methods design, grounded and informed by a postcolonial theoretical lens, I quantitatively uncovered and then qualitatively highlighted how if at all extra lessons can improve educational outcomes for students at the secondary level in Jamaica. Accordingly, the quantitative data was used to test the hypotheses that the practice of extra lessons in schools is related to student academic achievement and the practice of critical-inclusive pedagogy in extra lessons is related to academic achievement. The two-level hierarchical linear model analysis revealed that hours spent in extra lessons, average household monthly income, and critical-inclusive pedagogical tents were the best predictors for academic achievement. Alternatively, the holistic multi-case study explored how extra-lessons produces increased academic achievement. The data revealed new ways of knowledge construction and critical pedagogical approaches to galvanize systemic change in secondary education. Furthermore, the data showed that extra lessons can improve educational outcomes for students at the secondary level if the conditions for learning are met. This study sets the stage for new forms of knowledge construction and implications for policy change.

Meeting the challenge on the path to democracy: discursive strategies in governmental declarations

The communicative practice in the ex-GDR was complex and diverse, although public political discourse had been fairly ritualized. Text-types characteristic of the Communist Party discourse were full of general (superordinate) terms semantic specification was hardly possible (propositional reduction). Changes in the social world result in changes in the communicative practice as well. However, a systematic comparision of text-types across cultures and across ideological boundaries reveals both differences in the textual macro- and superstructures and overlapping as well as universal features, probably related to functional aspects (discourse of power). Six sample texts of the text-type `government declaration', two produced in the ex-GDR, four in the united Germany, are analysed. Special attention is paid to similarities and differences (i) in the textual superstructure (problem-solution schema), (ii) in the concepts that reflect the aims of political actions (simple worlds), (iii) in the agents who (are to) perform these actions (concrete vs abstract agents). Similarities are found mainly in the discursive strategies, e.g. legitimization text actions. Differences become obvious in the strategies used for legitimization, and also in the conceptual domains referred to by the problem-solution schema. The metaphors of construction, path and challenge are of particular interest in this respect.

Capturing strategy as an everyday practice:quantitative methodologies for analysing practice data

Few works address methodological issues of how to conduct strategy-as-practice research and even fewer focus on how to analyse the subsequent data in ways that illuminate strategy as an everyday, social practice. We address this gap by proposing a quantitative method for analysing observational data, which can complement more traditional qualitative methodologies. We propose that rigorous but context-sensitive coding of transcripts can render everyday practice analysable statistically. Such statistical analysis provides a means for analytically representing patterns and shifts within the mundane, repetitive elements through which practice is accomplished. We call this approach the Event Database (EDB) and it consists of five basic coding categories that help us capture the stream of practice. Indexing codes help to index or categorise the data, in order to give context and offer some basic information about the event under discussion. Indexing codes are descriptive codes, which allow us to catalogue and classify events according to their assigned characteristics. Content codes are to do with the qualitative nature of the event; this is the essence of the event. It is a description that helps to inform judgements about the phenomenon. Nature codes help us distinguish between discursive and tangible events. We include this code to acknowledge that some events differ qualitatively from other events. Type events are codes abstracted from the data in order to help us classify events based on their description or nature. This involves significantly more judgement than the index codes but consequently is also more meaningful. Dynamics codes help us capture some of the movement or fluidity of events. This category has been included to let us capture the flow of activity over time.

Capturing strategy as an everyday practice:quantitative methodologies for analysing practice data

Few works address methodological issues of how to conduct strategy-as-practice research and even fewer focus on how to analyse the subsequent data in ways that illuminate strategy as an everyday, social practice. We address this gap by proposing a quantitative method for analysing observational data, which can complement more traditional qualitative methodologies. We propose that rigorous but context-sensitive coding of transcripts can render everyday practice analysable statistically. Such statistical analysis provides a means for analytically representing patterns and shifts within the mundane, repetitive elements through which practice is accomplished. We call this approach the Event Database (EDB) and it consists of five basic coding categories that help us capture the stream of practice. Indexing codes help to index or categorise the data, in order to give context and offer some basic information about the event under discussion. Indexing codes are descriptive codes, which allow us to catalogue and classify events according to their assigned characteristics. Content codes are to do with the qualitative nature of the event; this is the essence of the event. It is a description that helps to inform judgements about the phenomenon. Nature codes help us distinguish between discursive and tangible events. We include this code to acknowledge that some events differ qualitatively from other events. Type events are codes abstracted from the data in order to help us classify events based on their description or nature. This involves significantly more judgement than the index codes but consequently is also more meaningful. Dynamics codes help us capture some of the movement or fluidity of events. This category has been included to let us capture the flow of activity over time.

Collaborative futures:discursive realignments in austere times

This paper explores the future of collaboration in an era of austerity. Boundary object theory provides a framework to examine the significance and role of four key discourses in collaboration – efficiency, effectiveness, responsiveness and cultural performance. Crisis provides a way of examining how and in what ways discourses realign. The exploration of discourses aids critical analysis of collaboration across sectoral, geographical and disciplinary boundaries, highlighting the importance of understanding the contextual roots of collaboration theory and practice, and the implications of local/global dynamics.

All change? Managers' experience of organizational change in theory and practice

Purpose - This paper aims to examine the usefulness of organizational change theory for management practice. Design/methodology/approach - The authors present an exploratory, empirical study of managers who were taught organizational change theory as part of a postgraduate degree. Building on the study findings, they analyse managers' subsequent experiences of organizational change; of how they use change theory in practice and the impact on their practice of their earlier formal study. Findings - The paper finds that the complexities of managing change in practice reflect distinctive organizational environments and cultures. The skills and knowledge which managers found most useful were those that enabled them to "make sense" of the organizational change they subsequently experienced. The main impact of their earlier studies was to prompt informative, discursive and reflective approaches to change management. Practical implications - The paper discusses the implications for future teaching of organizational change and the development of organizational change theory. Originality/value - The qualitative findings of the study add to, and help to explain, earlier research findings on the questions of how managers' experience change, how they use organizational change theory and its impact on their practice. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

From art for arts sake to art as means of knowing:a rationale for advancing arts-based methods in research, practice and pedagogy

This paper advances a philosophically informed rationale for the broader, reflexive and practical application of arts-based methods to benefit research, practice and pedagogy. It addresses the complexity and diversity of learning and knowing, foregrounding a cohabitative position and recognition of a plurality of research approaches, tailored and responsive to context. Appreciation of art and aesthetic experience is situated in the everyday, underpinned by multi-layered exemplars of pragmatic visual-arts narrative inquiry undertaken in the third, creative and communications sectors. Discussion considers semi-guided use of arts-based methods as a conduit for topic engagement, reflection and intersubjective agreement; alongside observation and interpretation of organically employed approaches used by participants within daily norms. Techniques span handcrafted (drawing), digital (photography), hybrid (cartooning), performance dimensions (improvised installations) and music (metaphor and structure). The process of creation, the artefact/outcome produced and experiences of consummation are all significant, with specific reflexivity impacts. Exploring methodology and epistemology, both the "doing" and its interpretation are explicated to inform method selection, replication, utility, evaluation and development of cross-media skills literacy. Approaches are found engaging, accessible and empowering, with nuanced capabilities to alter relationships with phenomena, experiences and people. By building a discursive space that reduces barriers; emancipation, interaction, polyphony, letting-go and the progressive unfolding of thoughts are supported, benefiting ways of knowing, narrative (re)construction, sensory perception and capacities to act. This can also present underexplored researcher risks in respect to emotion work, self-disclosure, identity and agenda. The paper therefore elucidates complex, intricate relationships between form and content, the represented and the representation or performance, researcher and participant, and the self and other. This benefits understanding of phenomena including personal experience, sensitive issues, empowerment, identity, transition and liminality. Observations are relevant to qualitative and mixed methods researchers and a multidisciplinary audience, with explicit identification of challenges, opportunities and implications.

Constructions of Clinical Psychology in Adult Mental Health: A Discursive Thematic Analysis

In face of the current economic-political changes facing the UK and its State institutions and of the new evidence about the impact of social inequality on human distress, this study attempts to understand the increasing practice of delivering psychological therapy by the British clinical psychology profession. A review of the critical histories of the profession in the UK identified the need for a more detailed study of the “history of the present” to reveal the discursive operations that construct professional practice. A discursive thematic analysis (DTA) based on the theoretical concepts of the late post-modern scholar Michel Foucault was used to explore public available documents produced by British clinical psychologists between 2010 and 2014. Two dominant professional discursive themes were identified: alternative and leadership. These themes were found to be supported by the discursive sub-themes of applied science, well-being, Cognitivism and therapy which align the aspiration of the profession with those of the State. The tension between the applied scientist and the therapist role - specifically the need to establish simultaneously the profession’s scientific credibility and its therapeutic abilities in order to respond to market pressures – showed recurrences of the conflicts of the early history of professionalization of clinical psychology. The positioning of clinical psychology against the use of functional psychiatric diagnosis and the challenges and opportunities identified by the opening of the NHS market to ‘any willing provider’ revealed how professional discourses operate to maintain the status quo. This study recommends that the socio-historical construction of the profession should be investigated further, in particular through the subjugated discourse identified here

WOMEN, CYCLING, AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE: HOW DISCURSIVE AND COMMUNITY PRACTICES AFFECT ENGAGEMENT

This thesis considers the impact that discursive and community practices have on women’s access to the public sphere by examining female cyclists and a cycling community in Miami, Florida via interviews and observation. In the interviews, female cyclists frequently reported fears for their safety, including concern over harassment, when riding in public space. I interviewed participants of the cycling community and observed Emerge Miami’s meetings and events, where publicly organized cycling excursions were a major component. Using the theoretical and methodological lenses of Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis and Communities of Practice, I examined the interviews to understand how participants discursively framed and contextualized gender-based harassment. I found two meta-discourse frames in operation: a normative frame (that essentially accepted the status quo) and a feminist frame (that challenged the “naturalness” of women’s harassment as just what one had to live with). The feminist frame offered a pathway for women to exert control over their experiences and alter the cultural understanding of harassment’s meaning and effect. The local community practices of Emerge Miami also challenged the normative frames that often silence women, employing explicitly invitational practices, which demonstrates how local discursive and social activity can impact and increase women’s involvement by creating a more accessible space for women to engage with their local cycling community.

[the Teaching Of Social Sciences In Health: Between Practice And Theory].

The models of teaching social sciences and clinical practice are insufficient for the needs of practical-reflective teaching of social sciences applied to health. The scope of this article is to reflect on the challenges and perspectives of social science education for health professionals. In the 1950s the important movement bringing together social sciences and the field of health began, however weak credentials still prevail. This is due to the low professional status of social scientists in health and the ill-defined position of the social sciences professionals in the health field. It is also due to the scant importance attributed by students to the social sciences, the small number of professionals and the colonization of the social sciences by the biomedical culture in the health field. Thus, the professionals of social sciences applied to health are also faced with the need to build an identity, even after six decades of their presence in the field of health. This is because their ambivalent status has established them as a partial, incomplete and virtual presence, requiring a complex survival strategy in the nebulous area between social sciences and health.

Otoneurological Evaluation: Current Good Practice.

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[recommendations For Physical Exercise Practice During Pregnancy: A Critical Review].

Physical exercise is recommended for all healthy pregnant women. Regular practice of exercises during pregnancy can provide many physical and psychological benefits, with no evidence of adverse outcomes for the fetus or the newborn when exercise is performed at mild to moderate intensity. However, few pregnant women engage in this practice and many still have fears and doubts about the safety of exercise. The objective of the present study was to inform the professionals who provide care for Brazilian pregnant women about the current recommendations regarding physical exercise during pregnancy based on the best scientific evidence available. In view of the perception that few systematic models are available about this topic and after performing several studies in this specific area, we assembled practical information of interest to both the professionals and the pregnant women. We also provide recommendations about the indications, contraindications, modalities (aerobics, resistance training, stretching and pelvic floor training), frequency, intensity and duration indicated for each gestational trimester. The review addresses physical exercise recommendation both for low risk pregnant women and for special populations, such as athletes and obese, hypertensive and diabetic subjects. The advantages of an active and healthy lifestyle should be always reinforced during and after gestation since pregnancy is an appropriate period to introduce new habits because pregnant women are usually more motivated to adhere to recommendations. Thus, routine exams, frequent returns and supervision are recommended in order to provide new guidelines that will have long-term beneficial effects for both mother and child.

The Environment Of Professional Practice And Burnout In Nurses In Primary Healthcare.

to assess how nurses perceive autonomy, control over the environment, the professional relationship between nurses and physicians and the organizational support and correlate them with burnout, satisfaction at work, quality of work and the intention to quit work in primary healthcare. cross-sectional and correlation study, using a sample of 198 nurses. The tools used were the Nursing Work Index Revised, Maslach Burnout Inventory and a form to characterize the nurses. To analyze the data, descriptive statistics were applied and Spearman's correlation coefficient was used. the nurses assessed that the environment is partially favorable for: autonomy, professional relationship and organizational support and that the control over this environment is limited. Significant correlations were evidenced between the Nursing Work Index Revised, Maslach Burnout Inventory and the variables: satisfaction at work, quality of care and the intent to quit the job. the nurses' perceptions regarding the environment of practice are correlated with burnout, satisfaction at work, quality of care and the intent to quit the job. This study provides support for the restructuring of work processes in the primary health care environment and for communication among the health service management, human resources and occupational health areas.

Is Sport Practice A Risk Factor For Shoulder Injuries In Tetraplegic Individuals?

A retrospective cohort. To report the incidence rates of shoulder injuries diagnosed with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in tetraplegic athletes and sedentary tetraplegic individuals. To evaluate whether sport practice increases the risk of shoulder injuries in tetraplegic individuals. Campinas, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Ten tetraplegic athletes with traumatic spinal cord injury were selected among quad rugby athletes and had both the shoulders evaluated by MRI. They were compared with 10 sedentary tetraplegic individuals who were submitted to the same radiological protocol. All athletes were male with a mean age of 32.1 years (range 25-44 years, s.d.=6.44). Time since injury ranged from 6 to 17 years, with a mean value of 9.7 years and s.d. of 3.1 years. All sedentary individuals were male with a mean age of 35.9 years (range 22-47 years, s.d.=8.36). Statistical analysis showed a protective effect of sport in the development of shoulder injuries, with a weak correlation for infraspinatus and subscapularis tendinopathy (P=0.09 and P=0.08, respectively) and muscle atrophy (P=0.08). There was a strong correlation for acromioclavicular joint (ACJ) and labrum injuries (P=0.04), with sedentary individuals at a higher risk for these injuries. Tetraplegic athletes and sedentary individuals have a high incidence of supraspinatus tendinosis, bursitis and ACJ degeneration. Statistical analysis showed that there is a possible protective effect of sport in the development of shoulder injuries. Weak evidence was encountered for infraspinatus and subscapularis tendinopathy and muscle atrophy (P=0.09, P=0.08 and P=0.08, respectively). Strong evidence with P=0.04 suggests that sedentary tetraplegic individuals are at a greater risk for ACJ and labrum injuries.Spinal Cord advance online publication, 17 March 2015; doi:10.1038/sc.2014.248.