As educational institutions, conservatoires remain largely unresearched and, crucially, relatively unchallenged. In particular, research has paid little attention to in-depth studies of culture, so that not enough is known of the cultural practices that characterise and shape a conservatoire education. This article addresses this gap through seeking to understand the constructed nature of the ‘learning cultures’ - the cultural practices through which students learn - of a UK conservatoire. Working within an ethnographically-informed case study, multiple qualitative methods were employed to collect in-depth data. Key findings from a four-phased analysis procedure reveal that the conservatoire’s learning cultures are constructed across four intertwined features: (1) learning cultures of performing specialism, (2) learning cultures of social networking, (3) learning cultures of musical hierarchiesand (4) learning cultures of vocational position taking. Implications of the study are discussed, and recommendations made for the introduction of creative and reflective spaces for learning in the conservatoires of the future.
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At the age of a failing economic system and undeniable evidence of the effects humankind has had over the planet, it is necessary to look for alternatives to the way we live locally. This article explores the use of designing narratives and metanarratives to co-create imaginaries serving as the needed alternatives. This research starts by considering the historical factors to understand how industrialisation and the loss of traditional practices created a culture of disconnection from Nature in the Girona area, but also looks at why people start now reconnecting with it. The analysis is the foundation for speculative design practices to co-create a new local narrative of connection and regeneration. The project adopted the Integrative Worldviews Framework and used paradoxes to create possible future worldviews based on historical factors and literature. Citizens participated in conversational future-visioning workshops to develop and evaluate their local imagery of the previously created worldviews. This conversation-based exercise evidenced the potential of paradoxes in destructive futures to create imaginaries of regeneration. These imaginaries merge and form future stories. From the future narratives, the practice created cultural artefacts embodying a new culture of connection based on storytelling, traditional jobs, and a mythological understanding of Nature. Finally, as observed at the end of the project, these artefacts allow citizens to adopt them as their culture and expand their current worldview.
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Fans constitute a very special kind of audience. They have been marginalized, ridiculed and stigmatized, yet at the same time they seem to represent the vanguard of new relationships with and within the media. ‘Participatory culture’ has become the new normative standard. Concepts derived from early fan studies, such as transmedial storytelling and co-creation, are now the standard fare of journalism and marketing text books alike. Indeed, usage of the word fan has become ubiquitous. The Ashgate Research Companion to Fan Cultures problematizes this exaltation of fans and offers a comprehensive examination of the current state of the field. Bringing together the latest international research, it explores the conceptualization of ‘the fan’ and the significance of relationships between fans and producers, with particular attention to the intersection between online spaces and offline places.
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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how strategic vision of change is communicated by managers and how this affects the discourse behavior of service engineers. The case study describes the consequence of variations in professional discourse of managers and employees (mostly engineers) working together in a public housing foundation.
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To adequately deal with the challenges faced within residential care for older people, such as the increasing complexity of care and a call for more person-centred practices, it is important that health care providers learn from their work. This study investigates both the nature of learning, among staff and students working within care for older people, and how workplace learning can be promoted and researched. During a longitudinal study within a nursing home, participatory and democratic research methods were used to collaborate with stakeholders to improve the quality of care and to promote learning in the workplace. The rich descriptions of these processes show that workplace learning is a complex phenomenon. It arises continuously in reciprocal relationship with all those present through which both individuals and environment change and co-evolve enabling enlargement of the space for possible action. This complexity perspective on learning refines and expands conventional beliefs about workplace learning and has implications for advancing and researching learning. It explains that research on workplace learning is itself a form of learning that is aimed at promoting and accelerating learning. Such research requires dialogic and creative methods. This study illustrates that workplace learning has the potential to develop new shared values and ways of working, but that such processes and outcomes are difficult to control. It offers inspiration for educators, supervisors, managers and researchers as to promoting conditions that embrace complexity and provides insight into the role and position of self in such processes.
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The body of evidence that the working alliance is associated with positive outcomes for mandated clients is growing. The aim of this research was to investigate the influence of several characteristics of probation officers (POs) and offenders on the course of the working alliance during probation supervision. This study examined the patterns on the four alliance subscales: Trust, Bond, Goals-Restrictions, and Reactance of the Working Alliance With Mandated Clients Inventory (WAMCI) in 201 offenders and their 137 POs. Three patterns on each alliance subscale were found: deteriorating, improving, and stable. Multinomial logistic analysis revealed that change of POs and the preference of the PO to maintain rules were associated with a deteriorating Trust pattern. From the perspective of the offenders, being motivated to take part in supervision was associated with a stable pattern on every alliance subscale, but having problems with substance use increased the likelihood of a deteriorating pattern on every alliance subscale.
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Due to the changing technological possibilities of services, the demands that society places on the level of service provided by the Dutch Central Government (DCG) are changing rapidly. To accommodate this, the Dutch government is improving its processes in such a way that they become more agile and are continuously improved. However, the DCG struggles with the implementation of improvement tools that can support this. The research described in this paper aims to deliver key factors that influence the adoption of tools that improve the agile way of working and continuous improvement at the DCG. Therefore, a literature review has been conducted, from which 24 factors have been derived. Subsequently, 9 semi structured interviews have been conducted to emphasize the perspective of employees at the DCG. In total, 7 key factors have been derived from the interviews. The interviewees consisted of both employees from departments who already worked with tools to improve agile working and continuous improvement as well as employees from departments who haven’t used such tools yet. An important insight based on this research is that the aims, way of working and scope of the improvement tools must be clear for all the involved co-workers
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While much attention has been given to organisational culture, there has been less focus on workplace culture. Yet workplace culture strongly influences the way care is delivered, received and experienced. An effective workplace culture is crucial for the well-being of individual staff members and teams as well as for patients’ experiences and outcomes of care. This article describes the ‘Guiding Lights for effective workplace cultures’ which were developed by the authors and provide a framework to assist in understanding and promoting effective workplace cultures and creating environments where staff and patients feel safe and valued. There are four Guiding Lights: ‘collective leadership’, ‘living shared values’, ‘safe, critical, creative learning environments’ and ‘change for good that makes a difference’. Each one articulates what good workplace cultures are through descriptors and intermediate outcomes and together produce a set of ultimate outcomes. The Guiding Lights provide nurses working in older people’s care settings with an opportunity to learn from, and celebrate, what is going well in their workplaces and to consider areas that require further development.
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Food from home can increase feelings of belonging and act as a source of comfortfor people who move to another country and their children. Nevertheless, people whomove elsewhere often start taking over dietary elements of the host culture, a dynamicprocess referred to as food acculturation. This paper argues that this process is not only related to identity negotiations and emotional connections, but that food choices are also shaped by everyday practical realities. Using a social practice theory-inspired approach, focusing on the elements of material, competence, and meaning, this study investigates the food provisioning practices of eighteen people with a migration background through semistructured interviews.Keywords: migration; acculturation; food environment; procuring; cooking; eating; social practice theory
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Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionisation time of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) is a fast and reliable method for the identification of bacteria from agar media. Direct identification from positive blood cultures should decrease the time to obtaining the result. In this study, three different processing methods for the rapid direct identification of bacteria from positive blood culture bottles were compared. In total, 101 positive aerobe BacT/ALERT bottles were included in this study. Aliquots from all bottles were used for three bacterial processing methods, i.e. the commercially available Bruker's MALDI Sepsityper kit, the commercially available Molzym's MolYsis Basic5 kit and a centrifugation/washing method. In addition, the best method was used to evaluate the possibility of MALDI application after a reduced incubation time of 7 h of Staphylococcus aureus- and Escherichia coli-spiked (1,000, 100 and 10 colony-forming units [CFU]) aerobe BacT/ALERT blood cultures. Sixty-six (65%), 51 (50.5%) and 79 (78%) bottles were identified correctly at the species level when the centrifugation/washing method, MolYsis Basic 5 and Sepsityper were used, respectively. Incorrect identification was obtained in 35 (35%), 50 (49.5%) and 22 (22%) bottles, respectively. Gram-positive cocci were correctly identified in 33/52 (64%) of the cases. However, Gram-negative rods showed a correct identification in 45/47 (96%) of all bottles when the Sepsityper kit was used. Seven hours of pre-incubation of S. aureus- and E. coli-spiked aerobe BacT/ALERT blood cultures never resulted in reliable identification with MALDI-TOF MS. Sepsityper is superior for the direct identification of microorganisms from aerobe BacT/ALERT bottles. Gram-negative pathogens show better results compared to Gram-positive bacteria. Reduced incubation followed by MALDI-TOF MS did not result in faster reliable identification.
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