Preparing for Practice: An Evaluation of an Undergraduate Social Work ‘Preparation for Practice’ Module

The requirement for social work students to undergo assessed preparation prior to undertaking their first practice placement raises key questions about the type of knowledge and experience that is needed for those at the start of their training. This paper shows the need for social work educators to become re‐engaged in debates about the practice–theory relationship and to explore what is meant by an incremental approach to learning. A Preparation for Practice Learning module which was delivered to a cohort of Level 1 undergraduate social work students at a London university is described and evaluated. The paper highlights the key themes which emerged from the evaluation; these include the importance of work shadowing, observational learning and the centrality of critical reflection in aiding students' personal and professional learning. A discussion of its effectiveness in preparing students for their first practice learning experience follows. It concludes by recommending how students' learning in relation to the nature of social work and the skills required to undertake the role effectively might be addressed within the curriculum. Finally, a Preparation for Practice Learning model based on these findings is proposed.     

Rival Paradigms at Work: Work Reorganization and Labour Force Impacts in a Staple Industry*

Des changements dans l'organisation du travail, et plus particulièrement l'adoption de relations de production postfordistes, ont fait l'objet d'interprétations nouvelles. Certaines ont permis de déceler de nouveaux systèmes de gestion qui ont favorisé la mise en valeur des compétences et la création d'emplois plus intéressants et plus humains. D'autres ont allégué que les nouvelles relations au sein du lieu de travail entraînent une intensification de l'effort ouvrier qui n'a que peu à voir avec la production d'une meilleure qualité d'emploi. Cet article compare deux entreprises d'une même industrie - la production de potasse -, dont l'une à adopté les nouvelles pratiques de gestion et l'autre demeure traditionnelle, afin d'évaluer la validité de ces arguments opposés. Changes in the organization of work, and specifically the adoption of post-Fordist production relations, have been subject to alternative interpretations. Some have identified the new management systems with skill enhancement and the production of more interesting, humane jobs. Others have argued that the new workplace relations represent an intensification of work effort that has little to do with the production of better quality employment. To assess the validity of the competing claims, this article compares two firms in one industry, potash production: one has bought into the new managerial practices, while the other has remained traditional.     

Anticipatory Eye Movements Reveal Infants' Auditory and Visual Categories

We introduce a new paradigm for the assessment of auditory and visual categories in 6‐month‐old infants using a 2‐alternative anticipatory eye‐movement response. Infants were trained by 2 different methods to anticipate the location of a visual reinforcer at 1 of 2 spatial locations (right or left) based on the identity of 2 cuing stimuli. After a training phase, infants were presented with a series of generalization trials in which novel (untrained) stimuli served as the cue to the anticipatory eye movement. Four experiments illustrated that infants can learn the 2‐choice discriminative response during training. Infants also showed anticipatory eye movements to novel stimuli, indicating sensitivity to variations along a variety of stimulus dimensions (e.g., color, shape, orientation, spatial frequency, pitch, and duration). In addition, the paradigm can be used to assess categorization in individual infants, thereby revealing the stimulus dimensions to which infants naturally attend.     

Recovering from Illness or Recovering your Life? Implications of Clinical Versus Social Models of Recovery from Mental Health Problems for Employment Support Services

Although valuable research has been undertaken in the United States little is yet known about the processes engaged in by supported employment projects for people with mental health problems. The study reported here explored these processes using semistructured interviews with employment project clients, their project workers and workplace managers. Of five projects involved in the research, two exemplified radically different approaches, one implicitly underpinned by a clinical model of recovery and the other by a social recovery model. In this article we draw on data from the seven cases studied from these projects to describe the two approaches and to consider their strengths and limitations. We conclude that approaches based on the social recovery model hold more promise, although such approaches would be enhanced through greater liaison with mental health professionals. In addition, funding structures are required that take account of job retention rates, rather than placement rates alone.     

Automated Corneal‐Reflection Eye Tracking in Infancy: Methodological Developments and Applications to Cognition

Since the mid‐1800s, experimental psychologists have been using eye movements and gaze direction to make inferences about perception and cognition in adults (Müller, 1826, cited in Boring, 1942). In the past 175 years, these oculomotor measures have been refined (see Kowler, 1990) and used to address similar questions in infants (see Aslin, 1985, 1987; Branson, 1982; Haith, 1980; Maurer, 1975). The general rationale for relying on these visual behaviors is that where one is looking is closely tied to what one is seeing. This is not to deny the fact that we can detect visual stimuli in the peripheral visual field, but rather that there is a bias to attend to and process information primarily when it is located in the central portion of the retina. Thus, although the direction of gaze is not perfectly correlated with the uptake of visual information (e.g., as in a blank stare or a covert shift of attention), there is a strong presumption that the direction of gaze can provide important information about visual stimuli even in newborn infants (Haith, 1966; Salapatek, 1968; Salapatek & Kessen, 1966).     

Mental health service users' experiences of returning to paid employment

Research into mental health and employment has focused largely on people who are unemployed. This paper reports the experiences of 20 clients of employment support agencies who had succeeded in returning to work. A number of barriers to getting back to work were identified, but receiving employment support could enable people to overcome them. There was consistency with previous studies of factors associated with high and low levels of job satisfaction. Even those participants who were less satisfied with their jobs identified benefits and none described any negative effects. The quality of the employment support provided was important, including advice and counselling during the job search, enabling informed choice about disclosure and support in work. Job retention targets are required for funding programmes in addition to placement targets. Further research into the timing and processes of disclosure and into occupational health screening processes would be helpful.     

Mapping the Bit Girl

This paper examines the fan movement surrounding Lara Croft, a computer- generated character who has appeared in computer games, comic books, men' s magazines, promotional tours, music videos, calendars, action figures and motion pictures. A fixture of the pop-culture landscape since 1996, Croft embodies or incarnates a nexus of cultural, economic, and technological forces, whose shared characteristic is their powerful hold on a vast audience base. Lara Croft is nothing without her fans. As the founding member of a new mode of celebrity system featuring female digital stars, Croft's essentially technological nature - the mode of her signification and circulation - produces continuities and ruptures with traditional fan practices, reframing our understandings of categories such as "fan', "audience', "character', and "text' in relation to a mediascape whose speed and multiplicity mark not just postmodernism, but adaptive responses to postmodernity. From this perspective, Lara Croft is less a singular entity than a coping strategy, a mediation of media. The concerns of this project are, first, to examine Lara Croft as a conjunction of industrial and representational forces intended to promote certain types of reception and consumption; second, to assess the ways in which her peculiar semiotic status - simultaneously open-ended and concrete - renders her available for appropriation and elaboration by fans; and, finally, to discuss the ways in which Croft's fandom opens up new debates about the relationship between texts, audiences, and technology.