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‘Impact’, educational influence and the practice of shared expertise
Abstract
This paper argues that participants and locals should be seen as at the centre of all development, including international and health development work. Consequently, in contexts of health and wellbeing, patients should be seen as active participants, which also implies the need for the independence and freedom of all and the development of dialogical spaces in which all may negotiate what counts as a life worth living. ‘Impact’, on this view, should be seen from a lifeworld perspective of evaluating the effects of dynamic evolving practices where all are seen potentially as donors and beneficiaries within contexts of mutually negotiated reciprocal relationships. Data drawn from extensive fieldwork with local trauma surgeons, midwives and healthcare personnel in rural Cambodia provide the basis of new perceptions about processes of ‘passing on’ knowledge and expertise. The ideas presented have potential implications for normative understandings of the social organisation of healthcare in domestic and international settings.
... Greenwood and Levin (2007) define action research simply as research that is conducted by at least one expert with individuals in an organisation or common field, to bring about a transformation of the context in which the individuals exist or work whilst Altrichter, Kemmis, McTaggart and Zuber-Skerritt (2021) define action research as an activity that mainly aims to develop process skills and achieve emancipation. The transformation leads to a better and more functional environment in which the individuals live or work (Greenwood & Levin, 2007;Hendricks, 2019;Kemmis, McTaggart & Nixon, 2019;McNiff, Edvardsen, Steinholt & Margit, 2018). ...
The purpose of the current action research study within a case study design was to explore teachers’ understanding and enhancement of Learning for Sustainability (LFS) in the Mauritian primary education context using a participant-designed action research. Theoretically, the study drew from Burns Model of Sustainability Pedagogy and O’Donoghue’s Active Learning Framework. LFS might be simply understood as a concept that describes all educational activities concerned with developing an understanding of the related concepts in sustainability. Teachers find it difficult to bridge their understanding and practice through enhancement in their teaching. This study helped to address such a shortfall in schools and to address the purpose, methods including observations and reflections to generate data from six participants were used. Data generated was analysed using thematic analysis where data was categorized and interpreted in terms of common themes which were synthesized and generalised to provide an overall portrait of the case constructed. The findings indicated that there was different understanding of LFS among primary school teachers and that their understanding greatly influenced their enhancement in their teaching. The study further found that enhancement of LFS improved teachers’ practices and experiences by bringing new knowledge in their understanding of LFS. We recommend that this study allows other teachers, school leaders, policy makers and curriculum writers to develop proper understanding of LFS and address the lack of data and provide insights for future teachers’ enhancement by bringing positive change and adaptation strategies in teacher learning and understanding practices.
Keywords: Learning for Sustainability, Primary, Schools Teachers.
... Previous studies have noted that the direct transferability of existing materials from other settings may not be culturally or contextually appropriate to meet the inherent needs of the host country (Kang et al., 2018). McNiff et al. (2018) proposed that the process of improving practice should be linked to knowledge generation rather than the consumerism of other's knowledge. It is recognised that acquired knowledge does not necessarily equate to accepted or sustained changes in behaviour (Morseth et al., 2020). ...
This is an evaluation of neonatal nurses continued professional development delivered in Vietnam. Course outcomes of participant's academic and clinical performance, nurse feedback and service improvement were mapped to Kirkpatrick's evaluation model. The data showed that the nurses were proficient in technical skills but possessed limited autonomous clinical decision-making ability. The training enhanced their understanding of the evidence base underpinning neonatal care, but their learning experience was restricted by limited academic resources available in Vietnamese. The results of the evaluation concluded that in order to support nurses in constructing their own practice knowledge, the training provided should be founded on their individualised and specific clinical and contextual needs rather than replicating existing programmes. Recommendations for nurse continued professional development consists of building capacity amongst the local nursing workforce to ensure sustainability of learning and enhance clinical outcomes.
This paper reports on the novel methodology used in a participatory project called ‘Inside the History of Learning Disabilities.’ Through engaging learning-disabled people as co-researchers with valuable insider knowledge and expertise to share, the project sought to disrupt hegemonic discourses around both the history of ’learning disabilities’, and of the lived experience of learning disabilities today. The overall objective was to make an important contribution to the growing field of interdisciplinary and emancipatory research about learning disabilities. The year-long project used a bespoke, two-step methodology in addressing this objective, combining archival research with a series of participatory focused workshops. Traditional methods and academic expertise in archival research and textual analysis were combined with less orthodox approaches to elicit insider knowledge about learning disabilities, which was then expressed in a range of ways. These expressions provide preliminary indications of how emancipatory and transformational research aims may be met. The paper makes a contribution to the discourse around new and emerging action research methodologies which seek to promote social justice. It describes away to not only recognise and challenge the oppression and exclusion encountered by disabled people, but to advocate for appreciation of disability and the insider-knowledge learning-disabled people have.
Music therapists have been working in special education contexts for many decades, utilising research and case studies to inform practice. Growing interest in the link between the creative arts and well-being has led music therapists to consider what aspects of their knowledge others could feasibly appropriate in the school system. An action research approach was utilised to explore this question, grounded in partnerships between university-based music therapy researchers and staff at a school for learners on the autistic spectrum. Five cycles of planning, action, observation and reflection framed the collaborative partnership, with a music therapist acting as consultant to explore how music could be used across the school day. The greatest shift evidenced through qualitative and quantitative analysis was in the area of relationship building. Rather than seeing music as a tool that supports the acquisition of specific skills, the professionals and students in the school came to understand that music could be a meaningful part of their encounter with one another. This is congruent with music therapy research findings that also emphasise the ways music can be used to motivate, evoke and elicit meaningful responses from young people. Some limitations were identified in the sustainability of music practices in the school, particularly when other parts of the school culture were changing.
This paper deals with the topic of professional development programmes’ impact. Concepts and ideas of action research, constructivism, and systems theory are used as a theoretical framework and are combined to describe and analyse an exemplary professional development programme in Austria. Empirical findings from both quantitative and qualitative studies regarding the programme’s impact are provided and discussed. Moreover, implications for future programmes’ planning and implementation are provided.
The article outlines ethical aspects of action research at two different levels: philosophical and ‘applied’. It also emphasizes ethical aspects of practitioner research and conventional social research tacitly implied in the relations between researchers and researched presupposed by the two approaches. Conventional research ethics is insufficient for grasping these aspects, since it is constituted within the relations assumed by conventional research. Conventional research ethics is also claimed to be a ‘condescending ethics’ unfit for action research because of its practice of ‘othering’ human beings as research subjects. This article interprets many ethical dilemmas experienced by action researchers as ‘othering-effects’, only to be overcome through the establishment of peer communities of inquiry among combined ‘practitioners-researchers-researched’. It uses a book on ethics and action research as a starting point for reflections about the very real challenges of creating peer communities of inquiry doing action/practitioner research.
In this chapter we report on and discuss a 14-year-long, participatory research (PR) project. This process was implemented in The Port, a small coastal village in Yucatan, Mexico, the 586 inhabitants of which share a strong Mayan cultural ancestry. Our main goal is to 36 Changing the Culture of Dependency to Allow for Successful Outcomes in Participatory Research: Fourteen Years of Experience in Yucatan, Mexico M a r í a Te r e s a C a s t i l l o-B u r g u e t e , M a r í a D o l o r e s V i g a d e A l v a a n d F e d e r i c o D i c k i n s o n We report about a 14-year-long participatory research (PR) process in a coastal village in Yucatan, Mexico. In this process we identified several factors and dimensions that strengthen the PR process and should be taken into account when developing PR: communication and conscious interrelation between PR agents; visualization of the PR process from different points of view; recurrent and systematic motivation and empowerment. We also experienced some factors that limit attaining proposed PR objectives: patronage relationships; gossip; lack of seriousness; and technical errors made by us. After the analysis of this process we conclude that: (1) a long-range approach is useful in PR for understanding how the learning acquired in the process is applied to the facets of daily life; (2) young people use PR learnings to change their reality; (3) interdiscipli-narity is highly useful since the problems addressed with PR are typically complex, involving social, political, economic, cultural and environmental aspects; (4) participation is part of a community's cultural capital; and (5) PR process agents must invest abundant time, effort and feedback to promote horizontal, multiple leaderships, manage resources, negotiate agreements, account for actions, understand group norms, patterns and behaviors, and facilitate learning in action.
Action research changes people’s practices, their understandings of their practices, and the conditions under which they practice. It changes people’s patterns of ‘saying’, ‘doing’ and ‘relating’ to form new patterns – new ways of life. It is a meta‐practice: a practice that changes other practices. It transforms the sayings, doings and relating that compose those other practices. Action research is also a practice, composed of sayings, doing and relating. Different kinds of action research – technical, practical and critical – are composed in different patterns of saying, doing and relating, as different ways of life. This paper suggests that ‘Education for Sustainability’, as an educational movement within the worldwide social movement responding to global warming, may be a paradigm example of critical action research.
In his introductory chapter, Rorty defends pragmatism from charges of simplistic relativism lodged by people who consider themselves "defenders of common sense." He argues that such "common sense" is not found, but rather invented to suit certain purposes. He explains the difference between ideas being discovered and ideas being created and notes that pragmatists tend to side with the latter belief. He notes that pragmatism breaks with the Cartesian worldview, in which reality is an externally existing entity that is merely described by language. Linguistic descriptions suit our purposes, rather than objectively reporting reality. Rather than search for objective truth, Rorty supports seeing ideas as tools that humans use to interact with their environment. Truth should not be the goal of inquiry by itself. Rather, the creation of truths should be seen as a means to certain ends.
Education systems worldwide will only successfully serve the needs of people with disability when we inclusively examine and address disabling issues that currently exist at school level education as well as further and higher education and beyond. The chapters contributing to this edited volume are presented to assist readers with a critical examination of contemporary practice and offer a concerted response to improving inclusive education. The chapters address a range of important topics related to the field of critical disability studies in education and include sections dedicated to Schools, Higher Education, Family and Community and Theorising. The contributors entered into discussions during the 2014 AERA Special Interest Group annual meeting hosted by Victoria University in Australia. The perspectives offered here include academic, practitioner, student and parent with contributions from Australia, New Zealand, Nigeria, the UK and the US, providing transnational interest. This book will appeal to readers who are interested in innovative theoretical approaches, practical applications and personal narratives. The book is accessible for scholars and students in disciplines including education, sociology, psychology, social work, youth studies, as well as public and allied health. The Introduction by Professor Roger Slee (The Victoria Institute, Victoria University, Australia) and Afterword by Professor David Connor (City University of New York) provide insightful and important commentary. Cover photograph by Paul Dunn and design by Hendrik Jacobs.
The series of invasions and changes in rulers which had characterized Indian history before the coming of the Europeans made little impression on traditional society. Conquest had not been the original aim of English traders but as they became involved in local politics, and extended their territory and influence, the Indian way of life was transformed. The Indian reaction to the British impact was a determination to be free and in 1947 India and Pakistan emerged as independent nations (see figure 12.1).
Analytical RutsWhat does the Standard Deviation of an IRR Series Measure?Plains, Foothills, and MountainsExplaining IRR VolatilityVolatility of the MultipleThe Time-Weighted ComparisonConclusion
Objective:
The majority of maternal and perinatal deaths are preventable, but still women and newborns die due to insufficient Basic Life Support in low-resource communities. Drawing on experiences from successful wartime trauma systems, a three-tier chain-of-survival model was introduced as a means to reduce rural maternal and perinatal mortality.
Methods:
A study area of 266 villages in landmine-infested Northwestern Cambodia were selected based on remoteness and poverty. The five-year intervention from 2005 through 2009 was carried out as a prospective study. The years of formation in 2005 and 2006 were used as a baseline cohort for comparisons with later annual cohorts. Non-professional and professional birth attendants at village level, rural health centers (HCs), and three hospitals were merged with an operational prehospital trauma system. Staff at all levels were trained in life support and emergency obstetrics. Findings The maternal mortality rate was reduced from a baseline level of 0.73% to 0.12% in the year 2009 (95% CI Diff, 0.27-0.98; P<.01). The main reduction was observed in deliveries at village level assisted by traditional birth attendants (TBAs). There was a significant reduction in perinatal mortality rate by year from a baseline level at 3.5% to 1.0% in the year 2009 (95% CI Diff, 0.02-0.03; P<.01). Adjusting maternal and perinatal mortality rates for risk factors, the changes by time cohort remained a significant explanatory variable in the regression model.
Conclusion:
The results correspond to experiences from modern prehospital trauma systems: Basic Life Support reduces maternal and perinatal death if provided early. Trained TBAs are effective if well-integrated in maternal health programs. Houy C , Ha SO , Steinholt M , Skjerve E , Husum H . Delivery as trauma: a prospective time-cohort study of maternal and perinatal mortality in rural Cambodia. Prehosp Disaster Med. 2017;32(2):1-7.
Albert Memmi's classic work stands as one of the most powerful and psychologically penetrating studies of colonial oppression ever written. Dissecting the minds of both the oppressor and the oppressed, Memmi reveals truths about the colonial situation and struggle that are as relevant today as they were five decades ago. Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer's new critical Introduction draws Memmi into the 21st century by reflecting on his achievements and highlighting his omissions. In doing so she opens new avenues of enquiry for scholars and students, and exposes new directions for activists seeking a more just world order in our neo-colonial age. With the fires of war, terrorism and protest burning around the globe, never has Memmi's work been such relevant and necessary reading.
Since its first publication, Action Research: Principles and Practice has become a key text in its field. This new updated edition clearly describes and explains the practices of action research and its underlying values, and introduces important new ideas, including: • all professionals should be reflective practitioners; • they should produce their personal theories of practice to show how they are holding themselves accountable for their educational influences in learning; •the stories they produce become a new people's history of action research, with potential for influencing new futures. This new edition has expanded in scope, to contribute to diverse fields including professional development across the sectors and the disciplines. It considers the current field, including its problems as well as its considerable hopes and prospects for new thinking and practices. Now fully updated, this book contains: • A wealth of case-study material • New chapters on the educational significance of action research • An overview of methodological and ethical discussion The book is a valuable addition to the literature on research methods in education and nursing and healthcare, and professional education, and contributes to contemporary debates about the generation and dissemination of knowledge and its potential influence for wider social and environmental contexts. Practitioners across the professions who are planning action research in their own work settings will find this book a helpful introduction to the subject while those studying on higher degree courses will find it an indispensable resource.
Contents:
Phrónêsis and Action Research – Different Kinds of General Theory – Earlier Attempts at Appropriating Phrónêsis – The Ethical and Intellectual Virtues – Different Ways of Knowing – Phrónêsis and Rhetoric – Means and Ends – General and Particular Knowledge – Developing Virtue (Excellence) – The Significance and Insufficiency of Habit / Habitus – Defining Virtue – On Dialogue and Experience – Deliberation or Definition – Theoretical Wisdom as the Highest Practical Good – Different Kinds of Theory, Different Kinds of Practice – Methodological Guidelines for Autonomous Practitioners – The Wisdom of the Commons – Common Wisdom – Theor-ethics and the Way of Theorethics – Aristotelian Politics – Neo-epistemic, Dialogical Action Research – Transformations of Modern Work Life – Aristotle Suspended.
From reviews:
«The book by Olav Eikeland is almost revolutionary (...) because it presents an extremely erudite and systematic investigation on how Aristotle creates the foundation for a critical and normative dialogue, incorporating logic and dialectics, and reducing the "performative", persuasive and manipulative strategies which are obvious as direct or indirect agendas in management and social research. Through this it contributes with an analytical apparatus which, in my opinion, is able far beyond modern theories of communication in casting light on the complexity and problems of this crucial phenomenon. [...] Eikeland's work must be greeted as a sovereign attempt to reestablish the critical and liberating content of the extremely forceful Greek, conceptual framework underlying all thinking not exclusively devoted to an idiosyncratic "scientific" research.» (Ole Fogh Kirkeby, International Journal of Action Research)
«Interest in ‘phrónêsis’ and its relations to ‘epistêmê’ and ‘tékhnê’ in Aristotle and in social research has burgeoned recently. Eikeland’s ‘tour de force’, based on his mastery of Aristotle’s corpus and his long experience in action research, complicates and enriches our understanding of what is at stake and challenges us to build philosophical and methodological foundations of action research in more robust and meaningful ways.» (Davydd J. Greenwood, Goldwin Smith Professor of Anthropology and Director, Institute for European Studies, Cornell University, U.S.A.)
«What is distinctive about the book is (...) that it provides valuable exegetical material for the kind of interpretation that makes Aristotle’s significance for action research stand out most convincingely. [I]t is possible, with the aid of Eikeland’s book, to defend the relevance of Aristotle to present-day educational concerns in hitherto unexplored but henceforth fresh and fertile ways.» (Marianna Papastephanou, Journal of Philosophy of Education)
«There are many unique aspects of Eikeland's work, but his interrogation of so much of Aristotle's canon (...) represents an 'exegesis' of a unique kind.» (Donna Ladkin, Action Research)
Anthropology is a disciplined inquiry into the conditions and potentials of human life. Generations of theorists, however, have expunged life from their accounts, treating it as the mere output of patterns, codes, structures or systems variously defined as genetic or cultural, natural or social. Building on his classic work The Perception of the Environment, Tim Ingold sets out to restore life to where it should belong, at the heart of anthropological concern.
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This book originated from a continuing conversation in which we voiced concern (bordering on distress) regarding the instrumentalist values that permeate (often without question) our professional schools, professional practices, and policy decisions. Like others, we were grappling with a sense that something of fundamental importance—of moral significance—was missing in the vision of what it means to be a professional, and in the ensuing educational aims in professional schools and continuing professional education.
Phronesis is the Aristotelian notion of practical wisdom. In this collected series, phronesis is explored as an alternate way of considering professional knowledge. In the present context dominated by technical rationalities and instrumentalist approaches, a re-examination of the concept of phronesis offers a fundamental re-visioning of the educational aims in professional schools and continuing professional education programs. This book originated from a conversation amongst an interdisciplinary group of scholars from education, health, philosophy, and sociology, who share concerns that something of fundamental importance - of moral signi?cance - is missing from the vision of what it means to be a professional. The contributors consider the ways in which phronesis offers a generative possibility for reconsidering the professional knowledge of practitioners. The question at the centre of this inquiry is: "If we take phronesis seriously as an organising framework for professional knowledge, what are the implications for professional education and practice?" A multiplicity of understandings emerge as to what is meant by phronesis and how it might be reinterpreted, understood, applied, and extended in a world radically different to that of the progenitor of the term, Aristotle. For those concerned with professional life this is a conversation not to be missed.
lobalization is certainly a source of anxiety in the U.S. academic world. And the sources of this anxiety are many: Social scientists (especially economists) worry about whether markets and deregulation produce greater wealth at the price of increased inequality. Political scientists worry that their field might vanish along with their favorite object, the nation-state, if globaliza- tion truly creates a "world without borders." Cultural theorists, especially cultural Marxists, worry that in spite of its conformity with everything they already knew about capital, there may be some embarrassing new possibilities for equity hid- den in its workings. Historians, ever worried about the problem of the new, real- ize that globalization may not be a member of the familiar archive of large-scale historical shifts. And everyone in the academy is anxious to avoid seeming to be a mere publicist of the gigantic corporate machineries that celebrate globaliza- tion. Product differentiation is as important for (and within) the academy as it is for the corporations academics love to hate. Outside the academy there are quite different worries about globalization that include such questions as: What does globalization mean for labor markets and
This article examines the model of social learning often believed to confirm the autonomy of the state from social pressures, tests it against recent cases of change in British economic policies, and offers a fuller analysis of the role of ideas in policymaking, based on the concept of policy paradigms. A conventional model of social learning is found to fit some types of changes in policy well but not the movement from Keynesian to monetarist modes of policymaking. In cases of paradigm shift, policy responds to a wider social debate bound up with electoral competition that demands a reformulation of traditional conceptions of state-society relations.
This paper argues that research be recognised as a right of a special kind - that it be regarded as a more universal and elementary ability. It suggests that research is a specialised name for a generalised capacity to make disciplined inquires into those things we need to know, but do not know yet. I maintain that knowledge is both more valuable and more ephemeral due to globalisation, and that it is vital for the exercise of informed citizenship. I acknowledge the 30% of the total world population in poorer countries who may get past elementary education to the bottom rung of secondary and post‐secondary education, and state that one of the rights that this group ought to claim is the right to research - to gain strategic knowledge - as this is essential to their claims for democratic citizenship. I then explore the democratisation of the right to research, and the nexus between research and action, using the Mumbai‐based Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research (PUKAR) as an example.
381 p., ref. bib. : 2 p.1/2 In a rented convent in Santa Fe, a revolution has been brewing. The activists are not anarchists, but rather Nobel Laureates in physics and economics such as Murray Gell-Mann and Kenneth Arrow, and pony-tailed graduate students, mathematicians, and computer scientists down from Los Alamos. They've formed an iconoclastic think tank called the Santa Fe Institute, and their radical idea is to create a new science called complexity. These mavericks from academe share a deep impatience with the kind of linear, reductionist thinking that has dominated science since the time of Newton. Instead, they are gathering novel ideas about interconnectedness, coevolution, chaos, structure, and order―and they're forging them into an entirely new, unified way of thinking about nature, human social behavior, life, and the universe itself. They want to know how a primordial soup of simple molecules managed to turn itself into the first living cell-and what the origin of life some four billion years ago can tell us about the process of technological innovation today. They want to know why ancient ecosystems often remained stable for millions of years, only to vanish in a geological instant―and what such events have to do with the sudden collapse of Soviet communism in the late 1980s. They want to know why the economy can behave in unpredictable ways that economists can't explain-and how the random process of Darwinian natural selection managed to produce such wonderfully intricate structures as the eye and the kidney. Above all, they want to know how the universe manages to bring forth complex structures such as galaxies, stars, planets, bacteria, plants, animals, and brains. There are common threads in all of these queries, and these Santa Fe scientists seek to understand them. Complexity is their story: the messy, funny, human story of how science really happens. Here is the tale of Brian Arthur, the Belfast-born economist who stubbornly pushed his theories of economic change in the face of hostile orthodoxy. Here, too, are the stories of Stuart Kauffman, the physician-turned-theorist whose most passionate desire has been to find the principles of evolutionary order and organization that Darwin never knew about; John Holland, the affable computer scientist who developed profoundly original theories of evolution and learning as he labored in obscurity for thirty years; Chris Langton, the one-time hippie whose close brush with death in a hang-glider accident inspired him to create the new field of artificial life; and Santa Fe Institute founder George Cowan, who worked a lifetime in the Los Alamos bomb laboratory, until-at age sixty―three―he set out to start a scientific revolution. Most of all, however, Complexity is the story of how these scientists and their colleagues have tried to forge what they like to call "the sciences of the twenty-first century.".
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Where trauma systems do not exist, such as in low-income countries, the aim of prehospital triage is identification of trauma victims with high priority for forward resuscitation. The present pilot study explored the accuracy of simple prehospital triage tools in the hands of nongraduate trauma care providers in the minefields of North Iraq and Cambodia.
Prehospital prediction of trauma death and major trauma victims (Injury Severity Score > 15) was studied in 737 adult patients with penetrating injuries and long evacuation times (mean, 6.1 hours).
Both the respiratory rate and the full Physiologic Severity Score predicted trauma death with high accuracy (area under the curve for receiver-operating characteristic plots at 0.9) and significantly better than other physiologic indicators. The accuracy in major trauma victim identification was moderate for all physiologic indicators (area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve, 0.7-0.8).
Respiratory rate > 25 breaths/min may be a useful triage tool for nongraduate trauma care providers where the scene is chaotic and evacuations long. Further studies on larger cohorts are necessary to validate the results.
En nettverk av forstshgelpere i det mindelagte Nord-Irak
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Safe Motherhood: A Qualitative Study on the Impact of Maternal Waiting Houses in Rural Areas of Battambang and Pailin Provinces, Cambodia.” End-of-project report: Battambang: Trauma Care Foundation
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The Trouble with Africa: Why Foreign Aid isn’t Working
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