Professional learning in clinical supervision: highlighting knowledge work

Purpose Clinical supervision is a crucial workplace practice for professional learning and development. Research is needed to investigate in detail what happens in supervision to understand how this practice contributes to learning. This paper aims to examine how professionals work with knowledge and navigate epistemic challenges in working with problems of practice. Design/methodology/approach Three pairs of psychologists audio-recorded five consecutive supervision sessions and were interviewed twice during that time. Analysis considered supervision as a site of emergent learning, focusing on what was discussed and how problems were worked on, whether as epistemic objects (open-ended, aimed at generating new insights) or by using an approach to knowledge objects that focused more directly on what to do next. Findings One pair consistently adopted an epistemic object approach, while another was consistently more action-oriented, focused on knowledge objects. The third pair used both approaches, sometimes expanding the object with a view to gaining insight and understanding, while at other times focusing on next steps and future action. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to study clinical supervision in terms of how knowledge work is done. Foregrounding the epistemic dimensions of supervision, it reveals previously unexplored but consequential differences in how knowledge is worked with and produced as supervisory pairs discuss complex issues of practice.

Markets, infrastructures and infrastructuring markets

Despite a growing understanding of market infrastructures—the rules and socio-material arrangements that enable agreements on the properties of goods, and the calculation of value, equivalence and exchange—we know little of what lies beneath the arrangements that underpin and are implicated in exchange. The socio-material lens has done much to explain how specific assemblages circulate information and goods, but has done little to explain how different infrastructures configure relations between dispersed market practices. Using the history of the development of the market for market research we show how knowledge-based infrastructures constitute markets as knowledge objects: new expertise emerged through alliances between academia, government, and private actors form a new occupation embodied in specialist agencies that set themselves up in an infrastructural relation to marketing practices. Our conceptualization of markets as knowledge objects extends extant understandings of markets by showing how: (1) extant knowledge-based infrastructures are drawn on to construct new markets; (2) infrastructural relations emerge between different markets to constitute multiple systems of provision and demand, leading to an increasingly valuable knowledge infrastructure; and (3) organized practices in one market are often heavily reliant on connections to other markets, including knowledge-based infrastructures such as market research services.

Mapping Inuinnaqtun: The Role of Digital Technology in the Revival of Traditional Inuit Knowledge Ecosystems

The term Inuinnaqtun is often used in reference to a dialect of Inuktut spoken by Inuinnait (Copper Inuit) of the Central Canadian Arctic. The broader meaning of Inuinnaqtun, however, is to speak, to create, to practice, to do, to think, to be, like an Inuinnaq (a human being). Inuinnaqtun was once its own robust ecosystem, with Inuinnait physically immersed in a landscape and way of life that nourished a fluent and full language, supported human relationships, and maintained a sophisticated body of cultural knowledge. The Inuinnait journey into the 21st century has challenged the practice of Inuinnaqtun, along with the connectivity of its ecosystem. How can an integrated Inuinnaqtun ecosystem be restored in contemporary Inuinnait society? In this paper, we outline the decade-long development of a digital mapping program to document traditional forms of engagement between Inuinnait people, language and land, and facilitate the continued circulation of knowledge that underlies these relationships. In reviewing its various successes and challenges, we critically question digital technology’s ability to digitally represent Inuinnaqtun ontology, in addition to the role that digital technologies can play in facilitating the local relocation of knowledge, objects and relationships dispersed into global contexts.

PRINCIPLES OF APPROACH TO DETERMINATION OF TECHNOLOGICAL ELEMENT BASE FOR AUTOMATION OF MACHINING PRODUCTION PREPARATION THROUGHOUT CYCLE

The use in the practice of design works of technological preparation of production (CCI) of parameters of design quality of the main elements of integration of the design (checkpoint) element base prevents transition of CCI to information technology of automation of a certain level of solution of problems of practice throughout its cycle. This is manifested, in particular, in the fact that during the change of technological operations of transformation along their route, as well as between the stages of CCI and checkpoint, information and logical links of knowledge are objectively interrupted. When determining a continuous, flexible algorithm in the technology of automation of solving problems of CCI practice, significant difficulties arise. Concepts of existing knowledge were often not up-to-date, which hampered automation – a fast communication system was needed. The primary basis of automation is the formalization of knowledge. Insufficient formalization of knowledge (the content is descriptive) leads to the use of inefficient dialogue technologies, the work of which is organized with reference information in the electronic form of its display. To overcome these difficulties, the structure of the CCI knowledge base in its hierarchy is proposed for seven levels of basic objects of various types, it is based on formalized approaches. Knowledge objects are focused on the consistent and continuous solution of CCI practice throughout its cycle. The structure of all knowledge objects is based on its own technological element base, which is organic for CCI. Only on such an elementary basis can the main target functions of CCI be realistically achieved in solving the problems of its practice on their possible set.

Cataloguing Michael Snow: Photo-Works

This thesis project focuses on a photographic collection of the multidisciplinary artist, Michael Snow (Canadian, b. 1929 - ), which is currently in the artist’s possession and has not been previously studied. The collection includes over 5,000 photographic materials related to Snow’s photo-works and his work in other media. The term photo-work is used in this thesis to appropriately reflect the intermedia character of Snow’s photographic compositions. The first chapter explores Snow’s artistic career and photo-work. Chapter two overviews cataloguing standards in Canada, discusses issues in photographic deterioration, and outlines proper storage techniques. Chapter three discusses the cataloguing process of Snow’s photographic collection, including information about the present condition of these materials, and provides recommendations for its future acquisition and potential use. This thesis argues that insight into an artist’s practice is an important part of the cataloguing process, particularly for collections with materials related to the production and/or documentation of intermedia works. With this knowledge, objects can be better identified and understood in relation to the collection to which they belong and the artist’s overall body of work.

Cataloguing Michael Snow: Photo-Works

This thesis project focuses on a photographic collection of the multidisciplinary artist, Michael Snow (Canadian, b. 1929 - ), which is currently in the artist’s possession and has not been previously studied. The collection includes over 5,000 photographic materials related to Snow’s photo-works and his work in other media. The term photo-work is used in this thesis to appropriately reflect the intermedia character of Snow’s photographic compositions. The first chapter explores Snow’s artistic career and photo-work. Chapter two overviews cataloguing standards in Canada, discusses issues in photographic deterioration, and outlines proper storage techniques. Chapter three discusses the cataloguing process of Snow’s photographic collection, including information about the present condition of these materials, and provides recommendations for its future acquisition and potential use. This thesis argues that insight into an artist’s practice is an important part of the cataloguing process, particularly for collections with materials related to the production and/or documentation of intermedia works. With this knowledge, objects can be better identified and understood in relation to the collection to which they belong and the artist’s overall body of work.

Conceptualising students’ experiences of understanding in medicine

This paper draws on ongoing work into student learning in higher education to consider a basis for conceptualising students’ experiences of understanding in medicine. Starting with a modest overview of research on the nature of students’ experiences of understanding the paper goes on to consider research on students’ personal understandings in terms of knowledge objects. Linking on to research on students’ epistemological beliefs the paper forges connections to recent research on threshold concepts and related research on conceptual change. Against the background of this brief overview the paper surveys the research on medical education, and then draws on interview data, currently being collected in a Swedish research project, to offer a preliminary conceptualisation of students’ experiences of understanding in medicine.

Attaining the Stable Movement of Knowledge Objects through the Swedish Criminal Justice System

This article thinks with infrastructure about the stable movement of knowledge objects such as crime scene reports, traces, and order forms through the Swedish criminal justice system. Infrastructures span different communities and borders; the criminal justice system is made up of necessarily disparate epistemic cultures. Thus, they share a central concern: Both aim for stable movement from one context to another. Thinking with infrastructure, the article argues, makes it possible to widen analytical focus and capture the structures and the continuous work that resolve the tension between different sites and thus enable the stable movement of knowledge objects. Using sensibilities from infrastructure studies– for the resolution of tensions, for continuous maintenance, and for inequalities – the article argues that the criminal justice system enacts the knowledge objects’ stability across epistemic cultures. In other words, the stable movement of evidence-to-be through the Swedish criminal justice system is the result of infrastructuring, that is, of its continuous creating of conditions that facilitate movement and create and re-create stability. This perspective may be useful for studying the movement of knowledge also in other contexts.