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ABSTRACT: This article is situated within an experience of conflict for Tina, a social work student, who is caught between her beliefs about the virtues of social work practice, and her disillusioning encounter with the school's administration. In this paper, we interpret Tina's experience of conflict by drawing on the central concepts of liminality and natality, and how she moves through disillusionment to illumination, thereby generating new self-understandings and meanings of social work practice. We conclude with the pedagogical implications for students, and educators, and that as messy and complex as the liminal is, it is also vital to the creation of new understandings and regeneration of meaning in professional education. Entering the shadowland Meet Tina, a senior social work student with a keen interest in social policy who believes in making the world a better place. A self-described workaholic, she moved to a distant city to begin undergraduate studies in Social Work. By making several trips home during the semester and communicating with her employer via mail, she was able to maintain part-time employment in her home community. After one semester, she applied to complete the introductory practicum in her home community, at her place of part-time employment. While this was not a typical practicum arrangement, her application was approved by the Director of Field Education, who noted, 'not all students fit into a little box'. The Director of Field Education recognized that Tina was mature, doing well in her first semester classes, wanted to go home to her family, and had submitted a well-written workplace practicum proposal that demonstrated how her employer could provide Tina with an educational experience that met the school's criteria. Therefore, after the Christmas break, Tina began her practicum. Meanwhile, the Director of Field Education who commenced a sabbatical leave, left the final practicum details to be clarified by her replacement who subsequently questioned the legitimacy of approving a distance workplace practicum for a student in her junior year. Consequently, Tina was propelled into conflict, and an uncertain space, when she learned that the decision to approve her workplace practicum was revoked.
05/2008;
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ABSTRACT: This qualitative study uses data from students, teachers and administrators to deepen our understanding of conflict in medical education, its nature and its consequences. It especially looks at systemic issues which may foster or hinder the health of an educational system or of any organization. Its intention is to provide better understanding of the medical education system so that this knowledge can be used to enhance the health of future medical education systems. It is preliminary to a study that would focus on ways of improving the healthiness of future systems. The findings underline the importance of moral education in the training of our future physicians (McWhinney, 1986). The importance of example by faculty and staff and moral development of the physician flows from the authors' data and their interpretation of its meaning. Also, it further underlines the importance of faculty and medical educators modeling both caring and exemplary moral behavior within our educational institutions. Bandura (1986) developed the notion of modeling and showed that, 'even at a preconscious level, we learn moral behaviors through observing and imitating authority figures and/or significant others' (Crysdale, 2006). This is especially important because caring, or compassionate presence, is so essential to healing.
Medical Teacher 01/2007; 28(8):e204-13. · 1.22 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Caught between the demands of the normative (what they believe they ought to be and value) and normalisation (what professional others tell them that they should be and value), teacher candidates often experience themselves as belated even though they are newcomers to the profession—simultaneously heirs to a history and new to it. In this paper we illustrate and explore the tensions that result between ‘new’ and ‘old’ in teacher education. Drawing on Lyotard's concept of the différend, we examine the narratives of a practicum triad—one student teacher and his two mentors—as they each attempt to make sense of their irreconcilable differences. We conclude by discussing how the profession might fulfill its obligation to judge the adequacy of new teachers while remaining hospitable to the difference they introduce.
Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education 07/2006; 34(2):161-179. · 0.56 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: A major component of the educative process in the professional disciplines is the field education/preceptorship experience in which students are afforded opportunities to develop professional competence under the tutelage of a practising professional and/or a university instructor. During this time students are exposed to competing discourses about what it means to think and act as nurses, teachers, doctors and social workers. Frequently, field teaching is characterized by conflictual situations involving students, field instructors and university faculty. Such conflict is poorly understood as indicated by the lack of literature available in the professional disciplines. The purpose of this study was to explore the phenomenon of conflict within the context of field teaching in professional education. Pivotal to this study was the issue of making sense of the conflict that prospective nurses, teachers, social workers and doctors experience in professional education within the practice realm and how such discourses shape their professional identities, practices and ultimate social values. At issue is the social construction of meaning that takes place within professional education. This study was conducted from the perspective of four professional programs including education, medicine, nursing and social work. The researchers focused on the final year of each program at a time when students were engaged in a major field/preceptorship experience in hospitals, schools, communities and social agencies. The experiences derived from the nursing data are presented in this paper.
International Journal of Nursing Education Scholarship 02/2006; 3:Article 6.
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ABSTRACT: The University of Calgary deployed a comprehensive, universitywide planning process to develop a vision for the university in the Knowledge Age and to redirect existing budget planning and resource allocation to meet new opportunities and changing federal and provincial resources.
New Directions for Institutional Research 12/2002; 1997(94):31 - 37.
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ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study was to use the marketing concept of segmentation in a post-secondary context in order to gain a better understanding of undergraduate students. Most post-secondary institutions segment their learners in traditional ways based on demographic characteristics such as age, year of program, gender, special needs, and grade point average. The establishment of identifiable learner-based segments is a unique, and arguably a critical, first step which can be of benefit to institutions as they develop recruitment strategies and academic programs that best serve the needs of their unique mix of undergraduate learners.
Innovative Higher Education 01/2001; 25(3):183-196.
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