Findings from a qualitative study of comprehensive assessments in child protection social work in the UK are discussed. The accounts of social workers in formal interviews, informal interactions and case files are analysed, examining their explanations and understandings of the process of decision making. Two discourses of decision making are discerned: scientific observation and reflective evaluation. Whilst most social workers understand their work, at different times, through both discourses, it is argued that the discourse of scientific observation becomes the dominant one when communicating with other agencies such as the court. The findings are discussed in relation to wider issues in contemporary social work including the bureaucratisation of social work and the nature of assessment.
In the last few years, on our road towards the dreamed school, we have been repeatedly diverted to a cul-de-sac called quality. No doubt education is an extremely hot topic: in the same way nobody would be against quality health systems or quality nutrition, nobody would stand against quality education. This biased approach has stood behind the fact that the quality discourse has taken deep root in the socio-educative context, its language, its institutions and even legislation. This is a slow process, but a sure one, a market-led process. In this paper, we reflect on the subtle effects of the quality process, we try to counteract its distracting effect, and we have an insight into its origins, background and foundations. ; Viajando hacia la escuela soñada, en los últimos años nos están desviando reiteradamente hasta la parada de la calidad. Sin duda se trata éste de un tema fascinante, porque ¿quién no va a estar de acuerdo con una salud, una alimentación y por supuesto con una educación de calidad? Esta verdad tendenciosa ha sido una de las responsables de que el discurso de la calidad cale paulatinamente en el lenguaje socioeducativo, en sus instituciones e incluso en su legislación, y lo hace con poco a poco, pero cada vez con más insistencia y con una mayor inclinación al mercado. A continuación tratamos de reflexionar sobre lo que el discurso de la calidad encierra, intentando superar lo distractor del término y adentrándonos en sus orígenes, causas y fundamentos.
This research work, lead by a designer-researcher embedded into the professional field, questions the conciliation between real-life practice and reflective hindsight. On this basis, it partly relies on the epistemological issue: what kind of specific knowledge can design research create? How does it fit into both academic and professional frameworks? In a more personal way, how can one conduct a poietic design approach that combines practice and discourse? How to reconcile it with working reality? Exploring the continuities, echoes or tensions between praxis, theories and social implications linked to design practice is a way to develop a dynamic knowledge, rooted in reality. When looked at with a focus on experience, these disciplinary axes become complementary. They overcome the conservative oppositions between theory and practice, facts and values, sciences and society, aesthetics and politics. A design theory cannot aim at seeking the absolute truth, but rather at anchoring practice in ethics that respects the uniqueness of each individual and situation. For the design researcher, that means starting by describing the relations between practice and thinking, in order to rearrange them according to one's needs. Then, the reflexive practitioner evolves into a theorist and a broker of ideas. ; Cette recherche, menée par un designer-chercheur en immersion dans le monde professionnel, interroge la problématique de la conciliation entre pratique réelle et prise de recul réflexive sur le métier. Dans cette visée, elle est en partie fondée sur une question épistémologique : quelles sont les connaissances spécifiques apportées par la recherche en design ? Quelle est sa place dans les cadres académique et professionnel ? De manière plus individuelle, peut-on aujourd'hui mener une démarche de design-poïétique, qui concilie pratique et discours ? Si oui, quelles sont les modalités de cette dualité, et comment l'intégrer dans le monde professionnel ? Explorer les porosités, les échos et les tensions entre praxis, pensées et implications sociales du design permet de développer une connaissance active, ancrée dans le réel. Envisagés sous l'angle commun de l'expérience, ces axes disciplinaires deviennent complémentaires, dépassant les dualismes qui ont trop souvent cours entre théorie et pratique, entre faits et valeurs, entre sciences et société, entre esthétique et politique. Une pensée du design ne peut pas viser à ériger des vérités, mais plutôt à ancrer la pratique dans une éthique, qui respecte les singularités de chaque individu et de chaque situation. Pour le chercheur, il s'agit de commencer par décrire ces relations entre pratique et réflexion pour ensuite les redéfinir en fonction de ses besoins – et permettre à d'autres de le faire. Le profil du praticien réflexif se double alors de celui de théoricien et de passeur.
The enquiry 'Súnesis' investigates aesthetic awareness in traditional music practices in Ireland and seeks to evolve an aesthetic discourse with the practices at hand. Súnesis undertakes a critical examination of a suite of performances from contemporary and traditional folk music practices in Ireland. Engaging an interpretative model evolved by Paul Ricoeur, the author designs a dimensional pathway to articulate the modes of consciousness and aesthetic awareness at work in the creative act. It is proposed that a rethinking of traditional folk music is required, beyond the disciplinary, geographical or political boundaries more typically conceived in music studies. With an alternate process of evolving aesthetic consciousness in practice, the challenge proposed is to change the view. It is to engage an active dimensional view, a process of how, through a consideration of discourse and practice, a reflective act upon the reach and realisation of artistic representation may come into play.
Taking inspiration from Dewey's (1998) writing on experience and education and Pinar's (1981) conception of currere, dealing with autobiographical reflections of individuals regarding their educational experiences, I would like to problematize the curriculum studies as a broad education studies field in Thailand, and social studies education in particular. Locating my own positionality as a curriculum worker, I perceive curriculum as an educational text that opens diverse possibilities for critical-reflective and deliberative thoughts about my educational experiences throughout my life. Shifting the personal conception from curriculum development to curriculum understanding discourse, I have gained insights that curriculum is a hermeneutic journey through one's lived experiences grounding on the socio-cultural, historical, and political economy of each specific society. The field of curriculum studies and social studies education is still under the various forms of technical-instrumental rationality at all levels of education. I have come to recognize the reason why curriculum development becomes a mainstream educational narrative in curriculum history and theory and is currently still the powerful hegemonic discourse for conceptualizing curriculum in Thailand. Critical reflection on such discourse, therefore, has the potential to cause individuals to change their recurrently entrenched normative beliefs about curriculum and knowledge production as well as educational praxis, and to augment transformative knowledge and deliberative actions.
This article analyzes the Serbian fake news site Njuz.net, exploring the dynamics of its production, consumption, and appropriation in Serbian postsocialist, pre-EU-accession society. The increasing presence and importance of parodic media genres and the embrace of satire as a viable way to interpret and deal with social and political reality are explained in terms of both Serbia's historical trajectory and its media landscape as well as the global neo-liberal condition. Njuz.net's parody sheds critical light on various political, public, and social subjects simultaneously. Its satire communicates with multiple audiences and enables identification and detachment on several levels, a fact that makes the effects of this parody difficult to judge. The dilemmas that its writers face regarding their social activism are, I argue, a symptom of wider social anxieties and structural adversities caused by the difficulty of clearly identifying and detaching from "the enemy." Because of how labor, consumption, and everyday practices are organized, we all inevitably contribute to the maintenance of that enemy's well-being. Seen in this light, parody is not only a form of social criticism but also a self-reflective practice.
This paper concerns the relation between critical reflective practice and social workers' lived experience of the complicated and contradictory world of practice. I will outline how critical reflection based on discourse analysis may generate useful perspectives for practitioners who struggle to make sense of the gap between critical aspirations and practice realities, and who often mediate that gap as a sense of personal failure. I will describe two examples of discourse-based case studies, and show how the conceptual space that is opened by such reflection can help social workers gain a necessary distance from the complexity of their ambivalently constructed place. Discourse analysis can provide new vantage points from which to reconstruct practice theory in ways that are more consciously oriented to our social justice commitments. I understand these vantage points in the case studies I will describe as: 1) an historical consciousness, 2) access to understanding what is left out of discourses in use, 3) understanding of how actors are positioned in discourse, all leading to: 4) a new set of questions which expose the gap between the construction of practice possibilities and social justice values, thus allowing for a new understanding of the limitations, constraints and possibilities within the context of the practice problem.
Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- PART 1 Using Situated Discourse Analysis to Understand Everyday Communicative Interactions -- 1 Exploring Everyday Communicative Interactions -- The Case of Cindy Magic: A Make-Believe Game -- Sociocultural Activities -- Patterns of Participation in Sociomaterial Spaces -- Communicative Resources in Use -- Note on Methods: Selecting, Collecting, and Transcribing Interactional Data -- Summary: Situated Discourse Analysis Tools -- Reflective Observations -- Suggested Readings -- 2 Defining Success in Everyday Communicative Interactions -- The Case of Cindy Magic: Creating the Vampire Bats -- Functional Systems: A Complex and Dynamic Unit of Analysis -- Distributed Communication in Functional Systems -- Interactional Resources and Indexical Grounds -- Note on Methods: Keeping Field Notes and Conducting Interviews -- Chapter Summary: The Communicative Competence of Functional Systems -- Reflective Observations -- Suggested Readings -- 3 Situated Learning and Everyday Communicative Interactions -- The Case of Cindy Magic: Enacting Invisible Cheetahs -- Situating Learning in Functional Systems -- Situated Learning as Shifting Patterns of Participation -- Durable and Emergent Communicative Resources -- Note on Methods: Situated Learning and Thick Description -- Summary: Situated Learning Through Engagement in Functional Systems -- Reflective Observations -- Suggested Readings -- PART 2 Understanding Communication Disorders in Everyday Interactions -- 4 Situating Communication Disorders in Everyday Communicative Interactions -- The Case of Steve: On the Sidelines -- Figured Worlds and Sociocultural Activities -- Positioning People in Sociomaterial Spaces -- Using Communicative Resources to Build Identities in Figured Worlds.
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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the intersection of accounting practices and new technologies in the age of agility as a form of intellectual capital, through sharing the conceptualization and real implications of accounting and accountability ideas in exploring and deploying new technologies, such as big data analytics, blockchain and augmented accounting practices and expounding how they constitute new forms of intellectual capital to support value creation and realise Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).Design/methodology/approachThe adopted methodology is cyber-ethnography, which investigates online practices through observation and discourse analysis, reflecting on new business models and practices, and how accounting relates to these developments. The global brain sets the conceptual context, which reflects the distributed network intelligence that is created through the internet.FindingsThe main findings focus on various developments of accounting practice that reflect, utilise or support digital companies and new technologies, including augmentation, big data analytics and blockchain technology, as new forms of intellectual capital, that is knowledge and skills within organisations, that have the potential to support value creation and realise SDGs. These relate to and originate from the global brain, which constitutes the umbrella of tech-related intellectual capital.Originality/valueThis paper determines new developments in accounting practices in relation to new technologies, due to the continuous expansion and influence of the intelligence of the collective network, the global brain, as forms of intellectual capital, contributing to value creation, sustainable development and the realisation of SDGs.
Debriefing has been widely used as part of simulation-based education (SBE) to promote reflective thinking and prepare students for real clinical practice. This study examined a real debriefing transcript to identify its structure and gain insight into communication strategies used by the participants. The sample included an extended debriefing session in which a debriefer and undergraduate students, who participated in a critical care nursing simulation, engaged in a self-reflection phase. Adopting discourse analysis approaches, the analysis revealed how this interaction unfolds. The analysis also unveiled an asymmetric relationship during the debriefing that positioned the debriefer in a position of power and interactional dominance, and placed students in a passive role. Interactional features such as the use of open-ended questions, silent pauses, and informative feedback were identified as effective communication strategies to support the interaction; however, to achieve efficient self-debriefing, debriefers in this setting are encouraged to balance the use of questions to avoid restraining students from engaging and producing extended turns. Moreover, debriefers need to establish a safe environment that optimizes students' involvement in self-reflection. This study recommends the use of other debriefing techniques to minimize the dominance of the debriefer during the interaction.
The rapid rise of literature concerned with "female autism" warrants critical analysis due to its implications for women and girls and understandings of neurodiversity. We sought to explore these implications, as well as broader institutional and ideological ramifications, through examining how female autism is constructed in professional practices. A Foucauldian discourse analysis was undertaken of descriptions of female autism in reports and resources provided by UK-based clinicians. Female autism was framed in these texts as an advance in medical–scientific knowledge and gender equality, its identification in women and girls argued to be crucial to their personal flourishing. However, attending to the power dynamics at play, a more complicated story developed, whereby the construction of female autism extends the reach of the "expert gaze" through expanding the category of autism while reproducing patriarchal norms and reinforcing hegemonic, binary understandings of gender. Interpretive in nature, our analysis intends a troubling of female autism, with the aim of encouraging critical feminist theoretical engagement as well as reflective clinical practice.
The study examined the relationship between language use and perception of group processes. In an experiment, participants discussed their views about climate change in a group chat. Afterward, participants ( n = 239) filled out their perception of themselves and group processes. Participants who perceived more similarity among group members used less complex language (cognitive processes language) and more assenting language. As participants felt more knowledgeable and credible about the topic, their use of "we" pronouns and word count increased and use of "I" pronouns decreased. Replicating past research, participants with more extreme opinions used more "you" pronouns, and participants who reported engaging in more perspective-taking used more complex language and "we" pronouns. Results are integrated within an input–process–output model of group processes and suggest that language is reflective of individual inputs and perception of group processes.
AbstractDespite an extensive history in developing, delivering and leading child protection (CP) services, social workers are not an explicit part of the health-based response to CP in the UK. In this setting, a biomedical discourse dominates, with doctors and nurses fulfilling the roles of named and designated safeguarding professionals. Supervision for these health professionals, while considered necessary, has a multi-layered system of governance with no clear policies to guide its content and purpose. This article will argue that the inclusion of social work expertise in health-based CP services, through an interprofessional approach to supervision, can offer clarity to the operationalisation of supervision and support integrated service development. A model for supervision, with experienced social workers engaged to supervise named safeguarding professionals, is outlined and informed by a psychodynamic perspective. With both CP and supervision an inherent part of the social work tradition, social workers are well placed to use specialist knowledge and insight within the health setting, through supervision, to strengthen reflective practice in this complex area of service delivery.
The enquiry 'Súnesis' investigates aesthetic awareness in traditional music practices in Ireland and seeks to evolve an aesthetic discourse with the practices at hand.Súnesis undertakes a critical examination of a suite of performances from contemporary and traditional folk music practices in Ireland. Engaging an interpretative model evolved by Paul Ricoeur, the author designs a dimensional pathway to articulate the modes of consciousness and aesthetic awareness at work in the creative act. It is proposed that a rethinking of traditional folk music is required, beyond the disciplinary, geographical or political boundaries more typically conceived in music studies. With an alternate process of evolving aesthetic consciousness in practice, the challenge proposed is to change the view. It is to engage an active dimensional view, a process of how, through a consideration of discourse and practice, a reflective act upon the reach and realisation of artistic representation may come into play. A lexicon of Súnesis (σύνεσις) implicates the act of uniting and a union. My characterisation of Súnesis is to engage wisdom, a lively and interconnecting intelligence that activates a dimensional pathway howsoever complex or simple, from the modes of knowledge production to forming creative practice. Rather than articulating a definitional profile, to demonstrate consciousness in its understanding of intermediacy and interplay, a mutuality comes into play to form sentient ideas; that through a constellation of thought-lines, an understanding of multiple states become reconciled. In this sense, I would suggest that forming an Aesthetic sensibility is an integrative intellectual and sensory cognition; it is the consciousness of combining and connecting elemental parts to a momentary whole. Súnesis therefore suggests a cognitive mode of working, to draw an interconnecting dimensional pathway, that seeks a unified mode of thinking from a theory of the large to a theory of the small, to facilitate an integrative understanding of metaphysics with the tangible formations of the physical sciences; the act of interpretation and the act of physical representation. In this way, Súnesis implicates how art becomes, a dimensional manifestation, a medium to discoveries of consequence not solely for a music or art theory but to evolutionary theory and our potential understandings with the forces of nature.
