Enhancing resident morning report with "daily learning packages"

The daily "Morning Report" is a fixture in many residency programs. In the past, librarians have attended this meeting and, in various ways, worked to enhance the resident learning experience. At the academic children's hospital discussed in this study, the concept was taken a step further. Together with the chief residents, the librarian provided a complete "learning package" consisting of the case write-up along with relevant, librarian-filtered, evidence-based information. The learning package was then e-mailed to all residents and some of the attending physicians. This program led to a huge increase in the use of library resources and services as well as a renewed recognition of the value of the library and the librarians.     

Sensemaking and Emotions in Organizations: Accounting for Emotions in a Rational(ized) Context

Organizations tend to be guided by a rationality/emotionality duality in which rational behavior is privileged over emotional behavior. Consequently, emotions in organizations have historically been undervalued in favor of rationality. Despite the privileging of rationality, however, organizations are emotion-laden environments. The present study uses sensemaking theory to explore how employees manage the rationality/emotionality duality in the workplace. Using a qualitative analysis of 38 emotional experiences derived from 19 interviews, it was found that participants accept the duality by orienting toward emotions that are associated with the disruption or enhancement of “rational” business practices. Further, participants tended to reinforce the dichotomy by carefully controlling their emotions in organizations through denial of emotions, reframing their experiences, by rationally reciting their emotional experiences, or by relegating emotions at work to appropriate time and place.     

Sounding Sense: The Place,Problems and Potential of Performance in Poetry

Drawing on a strand of findings from the Cambridge Poetry Teaching Project, a small-scale research study co-ordinated through the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, this article examines contemporary understandings of poetry performance in teaching contexts. Positioning these understandings in relation to past practices, we contend that within contemporary English teaching, the experience of performance is now largely separated from knowledge of poems developed through detailed analysis. Through an examination of theories of poetry and language more generally, we argue that performance should be more fully integrated into poetry teaching, and suggest ways in which a consideration of principles and choices relating to performance has the potential to cultivate the resources of the inner ear and to instantiate a kind of knowledge whose educational value should be given equal status with the analytical understanding of poems that currently drives the examination system.     

Gender-blind racism in the experience of schooling and identity formation

Much of the research dealing with education and race has concentrated on the experiences of black males. Research now needs to address the issue of how schools affect the production of black femininities. The aim is to explore how both black males and females adapt to schooling, and school exclusion in particular. Previous theoretical models often situate black women within the stereotype of the ‘superwoman’ and negate the experiences of black females in families that are not female-headed. Previous research also suggests that much of the black male pupil response to schooling is based on the way in which teachers equate disaffection with black masculinity. The study draws on research in schools with pupils aged from 13 to 15 years when observed and interviewed. Many pupils responded to schooling in a way that cut across race and gender. Pupils often attempted to subvert the traditional relationship of teacher as powerful and pupil as powerless, reacting to this relationship through their own racial and gendered backgrounds. It is argued that teachers often speak of black pupils in homogeneous ways when in fact gendered differences exist. The issue of how schools construct blackness is addressed and it is argued that too often this is simply to equate race with masculinity.     

Weak Ties in Networked Communities

Communities with high levels of social capital are likely to have a higher quality of life than communities with low social capital. This is due to the greater ability of such communities to organize and mobilize effectively for collective action because they have high levels of social trust, dense social networks, and well-established norms of mutuality (the major features of social capital). Communities with “bridging” social capital (weak ties across groups) as well as “bonding” social capital (strong ties within groups) are the most effective in organizing for collective action. People who belong to multiple groups act as bridging ties. When people with bridging ties use communication media, such as the Internet, they enhance their capability to educate community members and to organize, as needed, for collective action. This article summarizes evidence from stratified household survey data in Blacksburg, VA, showing that people with weak (bridging) ties across groups have higher levels of community involvement, civic interest, and collective efficacy than people without bridging ties among groups. Moreover, heavy Internet users with bridging ties have higher social engagement, use the Internet for social purposes, and have been attending more local meetings and events since going online than heavy Internet users with no bridging ties. These findings may suggest that the Internet—in the hands of bridging individuals–is a tool for enhancing social relations and information exchange, and for increasing face-to-face interaction, all of which help to build both bonding and bridging social capital in communities.     

Measuring up? The discursive construction of student subjectivities in the Global Children's Challenge™

International concern about ‘alarming’ levels of childhood obesity has seen a proliferation of interventions filtering into school physical education programmes that are designed to influence children's health practices and attitudes. This article addresses one such obesity-prevention intervention, the Global Children's Challenge?, a 50-day pedometer-monitored event, aimed at children and involving their parents and teachers. Our research problematises the effects of the GCC pedometer exercise regime. We demonstrate how the pedometer measurement imperative made available in the GCC not only enables exercise to be measured for potential health benefits but also makes available tools inextricably linked with antagonistic body relations that could propel some students into a self-monitoring world dominated by numbers. We illustrate how the emphasis on measurement allows for comparisons (dividing practices), self-surveillance and surveillance of others in the formation of particular kinds of subjectivities. This study of the discursive construction of student subjectivities in the GCC took place in one strategically chosen Australian primary school. In-depth interviews were conducted with one teacher, four Year-6 students and a parent of each child in order to produce rich contextual data. Foucauldian concepts of power, knowledge and ‘technologies of self’ underpinned the study and Gore's methodologies for analysing ‘techniques of power’ and ‘regimes of truth’ were used to explore the functioning of power and the formation of subjectivities in the GCC. Our analysis suggests a need to move away from the constraining construct of measurement in the primary physical education (PE) classroom and promote self-reflective mindful physical activity rather than telling students when, where and how to move their bodies.