Orchestras as “Ensembles of Possibility”: Understanding the Experience of Orchestral Musicians Through the Lens of Communities of Practice

This article examines the professional culture of a UK symphony orchestra and the ways the musicians perceive themselves as a Community of Practice (CoP). The study draws on data from semi-structured interviews. Findings illuminated aspects of a CoP among the musicians, including having a shared purpose, valuing their collective endeavor, and experiencing tension between individual and collective development. These elements provide insights for our understanding of CoP, and highlight critical aspects of musical and interpersonal interactions that emerging professional musicians and advanced students need to develop and skillfully balance if they are to operate effectively within an orchestral CoP.     

Sexology as a Profession in Spain: Results of the “Euro-Sexo” Study on the Practice of Sexology in Spain

This article presents the major results of a survey on the profession in Spain. An international research program previously conducted in eight European countries (Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and the United Kingdom) was adapted to Spain. The sample was made up of Spanish professionals who were members of professional organizations in sexology. The questionnaire used in the other European countries was translated and adapted into Spanish; its 89 questions inquired into: the sociodemographic profile of respondents, their initial academic and professional background, the specific training received in sexology or human sexuality, and their professional practices in sexology. In Spain, most sexologists are women from a nonmedical health profession. Most respondents received specific training in sexology and stated that it is not necessary to be a physician to be a sexologist. The findings bring to light many similarities with the data collected in the eight other European countries.     

Are We Making the Most of Learning From the Practice Placement?

It is almost universally accepted within social work education that placements are a defining feature of training and ‘… have a more profound and lasting impact than classroom teaching’. Consequently the placement is regarded as the signature pedagogy in social work education. However, it is also asserted that universities pay little attention to this aspect of teaching and concerns about a ‘significant level of disjunction between academic and practice learning’ are expressed.

The development of a new distance learning MA social work programme in which units are studied alongside part-time placements afforded opportunities for innovation in curriculum delivery, alongside increasing connections with learning on placement. Practice educators were invited to respond to an online mixed methods survey exploring their perceptions of the programme and views as to how greater integration of academic and practice learning can be achieved in social work education generally. Analysis of the results identified the important role which supervision with the practice educator can play in integrating learning on placement with the academic curriculum. The paper concludes that a greater focus on learning from practice may offer opportunities to maximise the learning potential of the placement as social work's signature pedagogy.     

Creativity and Learning Jazz: The Practice of “Listening”

This article is about interaction, culture, and creativity. The ethnographic setting is a set of jazz performance classes at a California university. Although I write about jazz music, the reader need not have a background in studying or performing jazz (or music in general) to understand this article. In the title of the article, the term “practice” refers to (1) “listening” as a culturally specific communicative practice, and (2) the practice (a.k.a. rehearsal) of that culturally specific version of “listening”. I document and analyze how jazz instructors communicate with students about group interplay during musical performance. Extrapolating from this focus, I suggest some ways that contemporary linguistic anthropology can contribute to theories of creativity, focusing on the role that cultural norms of interaction defined by a particular activity play in constraining or shaping creative processes.     

A Practitioner’s Guide to Sampling in the Age of Evidence-Based Practice: Translation of Research into Practice

Evidence-based practice must include the translation of research into practice, and the social work practitioner is the essential link in that translation. As part of the EBP process, researchers must present findings in a way that is accessible to practitioners and practitioners must view the study as relevant and representative of their clients’ needs. This article provides practitioners with tools to interpret research, specifically the sampling process. Our goal is to support practitioners in bridging the gap between research and practice. We discuss how sampling fits with the translation of research and describe sampling procedures. We conclude with a unique three-step approach for reviewing research that is designed to assist practitioners to translate research into practice.     

“Mapping Social Justice”: Integrating Policy Practice Across the Curriculum

ABSTRACT

The National Association of Social Workers and the Council on Social Work Education identify social justice as a guiding principle of the social work profession, yet there is little consensus in the field of what the term actually means and how it can be achieved. Master of Social Work programs are likewise struggling with how to educate students on social justice and prepare them to engage in macro-level advocacy after graduating. This article examines how one student-led social justice initiative at a school of social work is seeking to increase student engagement in macro-level social justice work through the use of targeted advocacy alerts. This article explores the project’s development, implementation, first-year feedback, and modifications made to provide other MSW programs a blueprint to adopt their own version of the project. Findings suggest that the targeted alert model may be successful in engaging clinical MSW students in social justice advocacy.     

Is More Truly Merrier?: Mentoring and the Practice of Law

Cet article examine deux questions sur le mentorat. D'abord, qui est le plus susceptible de bénéficier de services de mentorat au cours de sa carrière? Ensuite, comment le mentorat influence‐t‐il les carrières des professionnels? En utilisant une enquête longitudinale sur des avocats, les auteures évaluent l'incidence des postes et des aspirations en début de carrière sur les chances de bénéficier de services de mentorat. Elles mesurent les bénéfices du mentorat au moyen des récompenses de carrière intrinsèques et extrinsèques, pour découvrir que le contexte organisationnel et les attributs individuels constituent d'importants prédicteurs de qui bénéficiera de mentorat. Les professionnels ayant de multiples mentors se sont avérés les grands gagnants, en ce qu'ils obtiennent des récompenses de carrière plus importantes et plus diversifiées que ceux n'ayant pas de mentor. This paper addresses two questions regarding mentoring: First, who is most likely to receive mentorship during their career? And second, how does mentorship shape the careers of professionals? Using a longitudinal survey of lawyers, we evaluate the impact of early career positions and aspirations on the chances for mentorship. We assess the benefits of mentorship across extrinsic and intrinsic career rewards. We find organizational context and individual attributes are important predictors of who receives mentorship. Professionals with multiple mentors were the big winners in that they obtain greater and more diverse career rewards over those with one or no mentors.     

Analysis of the Racial Ambiguity of the Characters in “Recitatif ”

Recitatif was the only published short story by Toni Morrison. It is seemingly about the development of friendship and internal growth of Twyla and Roberta, but it is at core a work closely related to racial issue. The whole story does not show us how African Americans are discriminated, or suffered in a White and male dominated society. Instead, it presents racial issue in a more subtle, psychological and ideological way. Twyla and Roberta's racial identity are never clearly revealed. Even Maggie's racial identity remains ambiguous. Why Tony Morrison chose to blur her characters' racial identity? By analyzing main characters' racial identity based on the signs and clues in the story, I will come to a conclusion that the signs and hints are society's racialized codes and readers' unconscious stereotype toward racial issue.     

Two Poems on the Death of Akhmatova: Dialogues,Private Codes,and the Myth of Akhmatova’s Orphans

Abstract

In Serhiy Zhadan’s recent novel Voroshylovhrad (2010), memory and emptiness form a duality of being and non-being, as represented by remembering and forgetting. This framework is proposed here as a metaphor for understanding some of the challenges facing Ukraine today. Using the concept of post-socialist memory as an entry point, this article positions Voroshylovhrad at the productive intersection of memory and literature, offers interpretations for several crucial scenes of the narrative, and contends that the novel recalibrates common paradigms of separation from a traumatic past. Finally, an argument is put forth that the book’s textual voids cast the reader as a key agent of recollection. This analysis of literary mechanisms involved in the memoryemptiness dichotomy contributes to an on-going exploration of strategies contemporary Ukrainian writers employ to engage in cultural and historical discourses, as well as to the studies of memory and literature in the post-Soviet regions of the world.     

“Tell Me So That I Can Help You”: Private Information and Privacy Coordination Issues in the Context of Eldercare

In order to provide competent care to aging parents, adult children, and older parents must renegotiate long-standing privacy boundaries that allow caregivers access to parents’ private information. It is reasonable to surmise that caregivers encounter privacy coordination issues when attempting to care for their aging parent. This study utilizes Communication Privacy Management theory to explore what content is considered private and what privacy coordination issues arise in the context of eldercare. Results from 27 in-depth interviews with adult children caring for an aging parent suggest that information concerning parents’ future care, health and well-being, and (in)capabilities were marked private. The findings also detail three disruptions to privacy coordination, including parental caregivers’ ambivalence toward managing parents’ care-related information. Critical implications of the study are discussed, which include how privacy turbulence may be a functional catalyst for boundary recalibration.     

“Castaway Categories”: Examining the Re-Emergence of the “Underclass” in the UK

Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, discussion of poverty often incorporated references to a so-called underclass and its purported welfare dependency. This largely disparaging keyword now seems to have reappeared; recent uncritical references have been seeping into social work’s academic literature. Dwelling primarily on the United Kingdom, this article reveals that the “underclass” notion seems to have been reignited around the time of the economic crisis that began in 2007. This coincided with public concerns about child-protection services. It was, however, the English riots (August 6 to 11, 2011) that multiplied the use of the appellation underclass in media and political discourses. However, disparaging designations of those who are unemployed or low-waged have been present across centuries; the troubled family is the most recent construction. In this context, Loïc Wacquant furnishes a useful analytical framework to conceptualise how underclass stereotypes and other castaway categories are described, contained, and managed.     

Discovery or Construction? Theorising the Roots of Adult Protection Policy and Practice

This paper outlines two models for understanding the roots of adult safeguarding/adult support and protection (ASP) policy and practice, and considers the strengths and limitations of each model in an educational context. The ‘discovery’ model understands ASP policy to be a response to a growing societal awareness of a phenomenon called ‘harm’ to ‘adults at risk’. It understands ASP practice to be triggered by the discovery of an instance of that phenomenon. The ‘construction’ model understands ASP policy to reflect a particular characterisation of the problem(s) at stake, contingent on particular historical, cultural and political influences. It understands ASP practice to be actively engaged in re-constructing ‘harm’, ‘adults at risk’ and ‘ASP’ itself. The discovery model is argued to be useful in delivering a clear, basic message to practitioners about harm and abuse, particularly where time and the potential for interaction in educational contexts are limited. The construction model is argued to be useful in connecting more deeply with practitioners’ lived experiences, promoting political engagement and developing professional judgement informed by ethical debate.