'One cut too many?' History and film: a practice-based case study

This article explores the different ways that film-makers and historians approach the narrating of the past. It draws upon a collaborative, practice-based case study of a feature film project, The enigma of Frank Ryan, in order to explore the role of the history film as a vehicle for extending historical understanding. In the dialogue between film-maker and historian, a range of issues regarding the import of the history film for the practice or 'poetics' of history is explored.

Practice-near Research: Exploring Insights from Different Degrees of Closeness

This presentation reports methodological issues from a practice-near study that spans the four nations of the United Kingdom. The TLC project: Social Workers Talking and Listening to Children aims to explore how social workers communicate with children in their everyday practice and how the social workers and children involved in these encounters experience and understand them.

FITS into Practice: Translating Research into Practice in Reducing the Use of Anti-psychotic Medication for People with Dementia Living in Care Homes

Objectives: This paper reports on the acceptability and effectiveness of the FITS (Focussed Intervention Training and Support) into Practice Programme. This intervention was scaled up from an earlier cluster randomised-controlled trial that had proven successful in significantly decreasing antipsychotic prescribing in care homes. Method: An in depth 10-day education course in person-centred care was delivered over a three-month period, followed by six supervision sessions. Participants were care-home staff designated as Dementia Care Coaches (DCCs) responsible for implementing interventions in 1 or 2 care homes. The course and supervision was provided by educators called Dementia Practice Development Coaches (DPDCs). Effectiveness data included monitoring antipsychotic prescriptions, goal attainment, knowledge, attitudes and implementation questionnaires. Qualitative data included case studies and reflective journals to elucidate issues of implementation. Results: Of the 100 DCCs recruited, 66 DCCs completed the programme. Pre-post questionnaires demonstrated increased knowledge and confidence and improved attitudes to dementia. Twenty per cent of residents were prescribed antipsychotics at baseline which reduced to 14% (31% reduction) with additional dose reductions being reported alongside improved personalised goal attainment. Crucial for FITS into Practice to succeed was the allocation and protection of time for the DCC to attend training and supervision and to carry out implementation tasks in addition to their existing job role. Evaluation data showed that this was a substantial barrier to implementation in a small number of homes. Discussion and conclusions: The FITS into practice programme was well evaluated and resulted in reduction in inappropriate anti-psychotic prescribing. Revisions to the intervention are suggested to maximise successful implementation.

Adult literacy, numeracy and language : policy, practice and research.

Es un recurso para los profesionales, investigadores y estudiantes de los cursos de adultos y educación continua, para estudiantes de postgrado e investigadores en el campo de la educación post-obligatoria. Estudia la práctica social de la alfabetización, la aritmética y el lenguaje y las implicaciones de la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de las competencias básicas de los adultos. Los principales expertos internacionales propugnan un cambio en el enfoque de su definición por otra más abierta que sostiene que la alfabetización, la aritmética y el lenguaje son más que un conjunto de habilidades o técnicas, pues están determinadas por el contexto social y cultural en el que están teniendo lugar, el sentido que tienen para los usuarios, y los fines que persiguen.

A hearing screening protocol in a pediatric practice based on otoacoustic emissions

This paper evaluates the routine of one pediatrics facility interested in incorporating a hearing screening protocol into their practice and suggests such a protocol using distortion product otoacoustic emission tests (DPOAE).

Foucault's 'What is an author' : towards a critical discourse of practice as research

A vexed issue for many artistic researchers is related to the need for the artist/researcher to write about his or her own work in the research report or exegesis. In the creative arts, the outcomes that emerge from an alternative logic of practice are not easily quantifiable and it can be difficult to articulate conclusions objectively given the emotional and ideological investments and the intrinsically subjective dimension of the artistic process. How then, might the artist as researcher avoid on the one hand, what has been referred to as 'auto-connoisseurship', the undertaking of a thinly veiled labour of valorising what has been achieved in the creative work, or alternatively producing a research report that is mere description or history?

In this paper I suggest that a way of overcoming such a dilemma is for creative arts researchers to shift the critical focus away from the notion of the work as product, to an understanding of both studio enquiry and its outcomes as process. I’d like to draw on Michel Foucault’s essay ‘What is An Author ‘ to explore how we might move away from art criticism to the notion of a critical discourse of practice-led enquiry that involves viewing the artist as a researcher, and the artist/critic as a scholar who comments on the value of the artistic process as the production of knowledge.

Foucault’s essay provides artistic researchers with a template for more objective and distanced discourse on the practice-led research process and its writing. It allows researchers to locate themselves within contexts of theory and practice and provides an analytical framework though which researchers might locate themselves and their work within the broader social arena and field of research, As I will show with reference to the work of Donna Haraway and a number of commentaries on Pablo Picasso’s Demioselles d’Avignon, an application of Foucault’s ideas need not negate those subjective and situated aspects of practice as research.

Studio enquiry and new frontiers of research

Given the growing complexity of human existence, there is a need for new ways of representing ideas and of illuminating the world and domains of knowledge. A growing recognition of the limits of traditional ways of representing the world has given rise to a search for alternative approaches to transform and represent the contents of consciousness or what can be known of lived experience. Researchers are recognising that scientific inquiry is just one type of research and that ‘research is not merely a species of social science’ (Eisner 1997: 261). Dissatisfaction with positivism and behaviourism as reductive modes of knowing has also come from within the science disciplines themselves. In his work entitled, The Discontinuous Universe, (1972) Werner Heisenberg states that the knowledge of science is applicable only to limited realms of experience and the scientific method is but a single method for understanding the world. Moreover, the notion of scientifically-based knowledge as statements of ultimate truth contains an inner contradiction since ‘the employment of this procedure changes and transforms its object’ (Heisenberg 1972: 189). The work of Heisenberg and others including: Lincoln and Denzin (2003), Schwandt, (2001) and Schon (1983) reveals that knowledge is relational and that different models of inquiry will yield different forms of knowledge.

Cervical cancer services for Indigenous Women: Advocacy, Community-Based Research and Policy Change in Australia

Collaborative research undertaken in the state of Queensland, Australia, resulted in major changes in cervical cancer screening and treatment for Indigenous women. Guided by an Indigenous statewide reference group and with an Indigenous researcher playing a lead role, qualitative data were collected using interviews, focus groups, and larger community meetings; and case studies were conducted with health workers and community members from diverse rural, remote and urban communities, to explore the different cultural and structural factors affecting understanding and awareness of cervical cancer and Indigenous women's use of and access to health services for screening, diagnosis and treatment. These data were supplemented by an analysis of clinical data and health service checklists. We discuss the methodology and summarize the key social and structural factors that discourage women from presenting for screening or returning for follow-up. These include women's misunderstanding of cervical cancer screening, fear of cancer, distrust of health services, poor recall and follow-up systems, and the economic and social burden to women presenting for treatment. We describe how the research process and subsequent activities provided Indigenous women with a vehicle for their own advocacy, resulting in important policy and program changes.